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Rumble "buffs" are fine, but it's not what he needs. @RiotWittrock

Erdamon·3/8/2018, 10:42:05 PM·28 votes·10,064 views

Hello everyone, it's your favourite Rumble-themed Malicious Metal rip-off with some more Rumble thoughts.

Well, it took some time to get here, but here we are! Rumble is getting buffed after his massive performance drop and... it's disappointing.

The changelist as of now is:

The Equalizer (R) Tick Rate lowered from 0.5s to 0.25s Linger Duration lowered from 1s to 0s Total Damage (over 5s) increased from 650/925/1200 (+150%AP) to 700/1050/1400 (+200%AP) Slow increased from 35% to 45%

First of all, ult only and essentially number only changes, it's already proven to be the biggest reason of Rumble's current balance issues and yet he's still getting only those useless "+200 on an ability" buffs? After his kit has already been butchered in terms of both skill expression and effectiveness, it'll only work if the numbers prove themselves to be too high to deal with and only because there's also very little ways to negate them.

Second, ult only buffs is a terrible way to go about things. I have stated this a lot of times, I've seen people share this opinion and I will keep saying it, Stop pidgeonholding Rumble as a dedicated ult bot I hate the fact that Rumble's entire balance revolves around his ult, I hate that it essentially prevents him from having an actually good laning phase, I hate that Rumble also can't have an actually good late game because combination of these two "might prove overbearing". I'd much rather have Rumble get his base kit buffed and ultimate nerfed to compensate rather than keep his base kit as terrible as possible for the sake of his ult being as strong as it is (which it really isn't as of now).

I suppose I should take about the actual changes now huh, for what they are, they're... fine. They will certainly have an impact, they might make Rumble's ult feel a bit better, increased slow and decreased tick rate sound pretty good, but if you read closely, and look into the full changelist, you might quickly realise that it's just a poor excuse for an unwarranted nerf. The particular part being "linger duration from 1 second to 0".

How Rumble's ultimate works as of now, is that after you step into it, rather than being continously burned like how Flamespitter works, it rather applies a very short DoT onto you that deals damage and refreshes if you keep standing in it, this change makes Equalizer now more consistent with Flamespitter where you only take damage when standing directly on top of it.

Now, if you just glance over it you might think "gee, it helps keep the gameplay clarified and more fair to play against Rumble, what's the big deal?" The big deal is that, this change alone dismisses these changes from being called buffs, I'd even dare to say that it's actually a nerf with meaningless compensation. The linger mechanic while not explained very well, played an important role in Rumble's kit, as it allowed him to still gain some value from his ult in fights against high mobility targets or slow resist/movement speed stacking, and while it might felt cheap to die to it, it was vital for Rumble's survival against the likes of Riven, Yasuo and Fiora. Now not only will it be even worse in the face of overwhelming mobility creep, but also any shmuck buying Swifties, Doran's Shield and Spectre's Cowl will still be completely unaffected by Rumble's ult, since the damage buff doesn't really kick in until late game (which is also not enough to help his pitful late game) and the slow increase is very minor.

So to get a quick recap of all the changes happening, Rumble's base kit remains untouched, and left in the dumpster to rot, Riot pretty much openly admits to designing Rumble as an LCS ult bot and nothing else, his laning phase against divers/high mobility targets got even worse, and now a solo laner that had very little freedom is now even more team dependant and cannot be picked without a shitton of hard AoE CC to back damage buff.

Please Riot, rethink these changes, push them to later patch (8.7, 8.8, hell, next preseason if you have to), try to find a better solution to Rumble's problems, and don't release these changes as they are, the last thing Rumble needs is a powershift/small-sized nerf.

51 Comments

RiotRiot Wittrock3/9/2018, 4:02:53 AM23 votes

Heyo! Thanks for the post and thoughts. Wanted to specifically comment on the discussion of removing the linger. I agree that even with the rest of the list, what went to PBE today may have been a nerf. I certainly want to avoid that, so testing some more straight-forward damage buffs on Q and R tomorrow instead.

I believe in the future revisiting removing R's linger is good; it has a clearer effect, rewards good usage, and we can pack a lot more power into it. But we would need more time to understand what buffs would bring that change to neutral; I'm interested in folks perspectives around that.

Ninjako3/8/2018, 11:02:37 PM8 votes

I'm sad because this made me actually realize it's about "Riot balance team knows better", even if these buffs make it to the live won't change the fact Rumble will still be in a bad spot after they butchered his kit and removed his core identity as a lane bully. He was supposed to be good at early/mid game abd falls off late game as a trade off but now he's bad at every stage of the game.

His laning phase is an absolute disaster as he gets bullied hard by most champions and for'ced to stay passive/safe and farme with your E most of the time and it's boring. If he's behind he becomes a heavy liability to his team since he's 100% item and team reliant and very weak to jungle ganks (since junglers have strong power to shift adavantges in toplane) and can't recover from that most of teh time.

Not to mention the new runes have introduced many safty options to champion that are supposed to be weak early game against rumble are now stronger than him and scale better than him late game.

And what about MR items, i can't believe how easy and cheap to access them early game and negates so much of Rumble's potential especially Adaptive Helms which kills Rumble from the game.

Not to forget the heat mechanic change made him very clunky and unable to duel in risky situations in lane like he used to because of how long the delay the heat drops

It's sad that they're still missing the main reason he's underperfoming from his poor non existent laning phase and decided to just buff latter problem. Please revert the Q and heat mechanic that would solve him a lor of hsi issues.

Axantucar3/9/2018, 3:26:35 AM3 votes

Rumble's issue is really not the damage on his ultimate. It's that he's an auto-lose against most opponents in top lane and against almost everyone in the jungle. That's a consequence in large part of the long cooldown on his Q, but also his lack of a viable keystone and the hit he took from the itemization rework.

If Rumble cannot power his way into the mid-game power spike he once enjoyed, his value will remain impaired, and--given his tremendous reliance upon items--his ultimate still won't be all that strong anyway. AP scaling is of limited use when you don't have the AP items you need, and an extra 10-40 damage per second won't make much difference of its own accord. It's even less useful given the marked mobility creep in the game. His ultimate isn't all that useful against champions who can simply ability their way out of it. That's a particular problem in top lane, given the huge number of champions who can cleanse the slow and/or dash/blink out of its zone of effect.

This looks like a big buff upon first glance, but as a Rumble player I feel like it entirely misses the point. It doesn't address the root of his problems.

brack812/19/2018, 8:30:43 PM2 votes

So, I'm a restarting player, havent played in 4 years and I remember when rumble was released. I tried playing him again, still does good early lane phase, useless when team fights and late game start. I can easily go 5/0/x in lane phase and do jack in late and team fights. Id like to see rumble have better armor and mr scaling as he levels, he sjmply cannot engage in a team fight and get his flamespitter in range without getting melted or cc'd then melted.

Skias3/9/2018, 6:31:22 PM2 votes

He needs work put into his kit to bring it back in terms of functionality. He's so synergy dependent that recent changes have made him clunky. He's never been designed to have huge cooldowns because he overheats. Giving his Q a massive cooldown has made him feel all fucked up. He's supposed to be at his strongest early and mid, but currently he just sucks early and mid, then sucks late. He's not good in lane and sucks in teamfights.

General Esdeath 3/9/2018, 8:14:05 PM2 votes

The problem with ult buffs is that the ult only works to its best if the enemy is dumb enough to stand in it the whole duration (or get CC'd) but that's already enough to win you a game.

CrimDeLaCrim3/10/2018, 2:14:52 AM1 votes

Rumble is good enough early game. The problem is mid to late game as he doesn't really have a purpose. He can't do enough to tanks even with liandry's and he isn't mobile enough/high trading damage to take out carries. To actually have an impact in the game the enemy team has to fight somewhat in you ult. It would be hard to add mobility to rumbles kit so I would suggest adding short stun/knock-up to his ult or his e (maybe if you hit both in a certain time period). With all the hyper-mobile champs, I believe this is one of the only ways to balance yet not overpower Rumble. Adding damage will just end up being not enough or too much.

LordGeovanni3/10/2018, 2:57:55 AM1 votes

Question why can ap laners force me to forgo my first damage item just to not feed them (im still not getting my farm) but if they get beat in lane they will never change build and are just 'weak' and 'need buffs'

buPPDrmXEO3/9/2018, 9:56:13 AM1 votes

Rumble is fine with his mains scoring a 54~% win rate. He has his counters like everyone else, but he is really strong against bruisers and tanks who can't deal with his overbearing lane presence. After level 4 he pretty much auto wins against anyone who's unable to stick on him.

Sure he struggles against Camille, Illaoi, Fiora and Riven but so does everyone else.