So why is Preseason 4 Feral Flare back? Have we learned nothing?

SporadicInanity·Nov 24, 2014·1 votes·1,039 views

So we have this preseason 5 thing going on right now. For the most part its a mess. Yes, yes, its preseason and we're getting "used to it" but this one is so bad that i'm thinking i'll just skip out on LoL all together until the next patch or two. Thing is, old Feral Flare is back, except without the effort required to transform it and this baffles me at this point in LoL's lifespan. We have a PBE, right? These things get tested and there are folks trying to find all the exploits, right?

For anybody who's unfamiliar with what i'm raging about, Preseason 4 introduced the Feral Flare which unlocked at 25 stacks and started at 33 on hit damage. Games were being ruined by junglers who would afk farm through lane phase to get their lanterns transformed then showing up when nobody's ever seen them and instakilling ANYBODY on the map. Then they just go back to the jungle and get more gold than the carries and more experience than the mid laner. It was ridiculous so Riot nerfed the item several times to the point of practically cutting its effects in half.

Now its back, its cheap, and no stack farming required......wait what? Most champions can back early and straight buy this enchant for a 1500 premium price and power spike to a pre-pre-season 5 carry jungler who had a 15 stack feral flare (after the 30 stacks required to transform it) . Not only that but it gains more stacks even more quickly than the previously kind of sort of balanced Feral Flare because when you score a kill or assist you get not one, but TWO stacks. One successful teamfight? 6-10 extra on hit damage for you! Don't get me started on Warwick or anybody else who can easily exploit this...

I realize that so far this is just a straight up whiny rage thread, but i'm at least going to put it out there that i'm more angry at whoever greenlit all of this preseason stuff instead of let it cook on the PBE some more. It really makes me question whether people are even testing stuff in there anymore or whether Riot's listening to them before pushing all of the content to live. In particular, this Devourer enchantment really grinds my gears because it is a beefed up copy of another misstep they made a full year ago. Hopefully it either gets hotfixed or the next patch is filled with decent changes across the board.

11 Comments

WeihGuyNov 24, 20142 votes

You have every right to throw your hands in the air on go WTF mode. Have you played vs an Udyr, Warwick or Yi lately? Especially Warwick who is perma banned no questions asked. Infinite scaling is a bad idea and to top it off, they made it start at a flat 40 magic damage.

Here's a post I made about tuning down Devourer while keeping it a mid to late game item. Give it a like and expose this abomination http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/Y33ZNv4L-devourer-scaling-over-time-like-roa

JadeKnightblazerNov 25, 20142 votes

New on PBE: Enchantment: Devourer Magic damage on hit lowered to 25 from 40

/sigh, still not the fix needed for this item.

Lord MacaroniNov 24, 20141 votes

Some of the jungle items are in line for a nerf because of early power spikes, Riot is aware and that's why they have a preseason to balance out items/champs that the patch made a must-pick/ban.

SporadicInanityNov 24, 20141 votes

Well they had a pre-preseason thanks to the PBE. You'd think that somebody would put two and two together and figure out that this particular item when combined with another certain item on Warwick instakills squishies 10 minutes into the game. Some stuff is just rushed out with BIG oversights and its gotten out of hand now that they pushed a ton of content to live with the preseason.

Kuroi86Nov 25, 20141 votes

The game has hundreds of items and over a hundred champs and thousands of players.

Things slip through the cracks.

Kuroi86Nov 25, 20141 votes

The problem with FF wasn't the damage, it was the on hit healing and toxic choices that players made.

The Devourer is easily countered by an easily bought stat, MR. Even with the nerf to MR, it is still a massive counter to this. item 3710 1500 gold 40 magic damage at buy and 50% attack speed item 3091 2600 gold 42 magic damage 50% attack speed 30 mr and steals 5 mr on hit stacking up to 5 times.

By the time you get the additional 1100 gold, you can still out duel the champ building devourer (this is simply factoring the items, not other factors like smite or ignite). Null magic mantle and recurve bow would put you on pretty even footing.

If anything, Devourer may have too much damage on buy, may see that decrease, but over all I think it's not going to see much of a nerf. Just imo.

JadeKnightblazerNov 25, 20142 votes

The problem with FF wasn't the damage, it was the on hit healing and toxic choices that players made.

The Devourer is easily countered by an easily bought stat, MR. Even with the nerf to MR, it is still a massive counter to this. 1500 gold 40 magic damage at buy and 50% attack speed 2600 gold 42 magic damage 50% attack speed 30 mr and steals 5 mr on hit stacking up to 5 times.

By the time you get the additional 1100 gold, you can still out duel the champ building devourer (this is simply factoring the items, not other factors like smite or ignite). Null magic mantle and recurve bow would put you on pretty even footing.

If anything, Devourer may have too much damage on buy, may see that decrease, but over all I think it's not going to see much of a nerf. Just imo.

Sadly its not really the case... Devourer continues to grow in damage, were as Wits End does not. All in all FF will always be hard to balance and should just be scraped for a new idea. Even if you nerf Devourer damage down to starting 20, sooner or later it will be back up in the 100's of damage again.

Kuroi86Nov 25, 20141 votes

My point was that on initial purchase, Wit's End is actually better than Devourer, you need to farm in order to make Devourer worth getting.

And no, I don't think Devourer should be scrapped or is hard to balance, it's a late game item, it really only gets to ridiculous damage in the late game when it's damage is supposed to be extreme. If you let them get to that point, then you've made a serious misstep and threw the game. It's balanced around what it has to be, a late game scaling item that can help close out a game a long game before it drags into the 60 minute mark.

EndlessSorcererNov 25, 20141 votes

There were 3 main issues with Feral Flare that Devourer doesn't have.

The number of camps required to transform Wriggle's Lantern into Feral Flare meant that many champions had to powerfarm early to get the transformation at a reasonable time, meaning they wouldn't be ganking lanes.
The on-hit healing scaled with your stacks, so some champions could powerfarm a Feral Flare to 40 stacks and have 50 healing on-hit
The damage tripled against monster camps and minions, so Feral Flare junglers could clear Dragon and Baron very quickly

Devourer has fixed most of these issues: it doesn't need to transform, it doesn't have any healing, it doesn't deal extra damage to monster camps, and it gives 2 stacks for champion kills and assists which incentives junglers to gank and teamfight more than Feral Flare did. These changes, combined with the increase difficulty of the jungle, camp spawn times, and experience changes to jungle monsters, have greatly improved the item.

SporadicInanityNov 25, 20141 votes

There were 3 main issues with Feral Flare that Devourer doesn't have.
The number of camps required to transform Wriggle's Lantern into Feral Flare meant that many champions had to powerfarm early to get the transformation at a reasonable time, meaning they wouldn't be ganking lanes.
The on-hit healing scaled with your stacks, so some champions could powerfarm a Feral Flare to 40 stacks and have 50 healing on-hit
The damage tripled against monster camps and minions, so Feral Flare junglers could clear Dragon and Baron very quickly
Devourer has fixed most of these issues: it doesn't need to transform, it doesn't have any healing, it doesn't deal extra damage to monster camps, and it gives 2 stacks for champion kills and assists which incentives junglers to gank and teamfight more than Feral Flare did. These changes, combined with the increase difficulty of the jungle, camp spawn times, and experience changes to jungle monsters, have greatly improved the item.

So instead of gating players in any way, it was a good idea to let them have item 3091 damage and attack speed for more than 1k less gold? Sure it lacks the utility it had before, but people only really built it to shred baron or dragon or kill people stupid fast. It's still infinitely scaling and stacks much faster because a team fight will usually net you your entire jungle's worth of stacks even when you're dead. It most definitely needs to be tuned back. item 3160 was tuned all the way back to 25 damage and non scaling 10 on hit healing. Devourer should end up around the same for its price. Sure, the point of the enchantments is supposed to be a cheap ball of stats to make that slot worth it as junglers transition to mid game but this one is far too good for what you pay for it.