An alternative design to Jhin's abilities
Jhin's Abilites
I recently bought Jhin and tried about 20 games with him. I dig the meticulous sniper fantasy. I think he's fun to play and has a lot of potential. But ultimately, his impact feels underwhelming. LoL streamer RedMercy summarized my feelings pretty well in his youtube video. I want Jhin to be viable, so I've been imagining how the meticulous sniper experience could be improved. What follows is a description of how I'd like to see Jhin improved.
[P] Whisper Chekhov
- Death in 4 Acts: (No change)
Every Moment MattersIn Medias Res: (no change)
[Q] Dancing Grenade
- [mostly the same as before]: (No change)
- If placed on a Lotus Trap, the smoke grenade will bounce to any enemy in range (and up to 3 other targets) upon the trap's detonation.
- Smoke and Mirrors: the smoke grenade applies nearsight to enemy champions for 2 seconds.
[W] Deadly Flourish
- After a delay, Jhin fires a long range shot in the target direction, dealing ~0 + (20/40/60/80/100% AD) damage to the first enemy unit it hits. Jhin can fire shots as quickly as he can auto attack. Instead of mana, each shot consumes Chekhov's ammunition, and therefore applies all on-hit and on-attack effects (including crit).
- Caught Out as been removed.
[E] Captive Audience
- Prelude: Jhin places a Lotus Trap. (No change)
- Denouement: When Jhin receives a kill or assist on an enemy champion, that champion spawns a lotus trap. (No change)
[R] Curtain Call
- [mostly the same as before]
- 50% armor pen.
- Range-Finding: Jhin gains vision of everything within the arc of Curtain Call's hitbox. Jhin also loses vision of everything outside of the arc of his Curtain Call's hitbox.
I want Jhin's gameplay to feel like an actual sniper. I want him to select a hidden sniper post, set up a few clay mores Lotus Traps, and spam {calculated, impactful, long-range} skillshots. I think the kit above will accomplish this.
My Reasoning
[Q] In Jhin's current kit, Dancing Grenade helps last hit and harass in lane. But its damage feels minimal during teamfights. I think adding a nearsight component will help Dancing Grenade stay relevant in teamfights. Nearsight also adds an interesting pattern in lane phase, where Jhin blinds the enemy champion on the grenade's fourth bounce, which gives him a window to harass with his fourth auto-attack with minimal retaliation. I think it would also be really interesting if Jhin could combine his grenade with his lotus trap. The fantasy is that late game, the enemy team tries to engage at a choke point, but 4 of them get blinded by the preemptive grenade/trap combo. This allows your allies to counter-engage. Both the lane combo and the trap combo will give Jhin additional dimensions of "planning".
[W] In Jhin's current kit, Deadly Flourish feels like a cc tool. But ideally, I want it to "replace" his auto attacks (like how ezreal sorta "replaces" his autos with Mystic Shot). I want it to be his primary source of damage in late game teamfights, for him to snipe the enemy squishies from the safety of a wall. But I also worry that between the long range and neglible cd, it might get out of hand in lane phase. For this reason, I handicap the early ad ratios and allow it to be blocked by minions. Otherwise, I can easily imagine that Jhin would shove the enemy under turret, then land free poke while the enemy champion struggles to last hit under their tower.
Allow a quick digression or two. One game, I was playing vs a Jhin adc. At one point, he ulted me while I was near our raptor camp. Even though I knew his ult passes through minions, my first instinct was to "duck" behind the raptors. In the same way that a target of a real sniper might duck behind a nearby object after a first missed shot. Another game, I remember I was playing Jhin adc. The enemy midlane was Zed. At one point, Zed killed our midlaner near the Dragon Pit. Both teams at the time were starting to posture around the dragon pit in wait for the dragon to spawn. Zed escaped his duel vs our mid with minimal hp and was just starting to hide behind his enemy team near his blue buff while my team approached the dragon pit area from near the raptors. I was able to finish off Zed with a max-range Deadly Flourish, even though his four teammates were trying to block the shot for him. It felt pretty clutch. In any case, the "duck" feeling and the "snipe past zed's bodyguards" feeling i want to happen more often. And I want to reward and showcase reliable sniping skills. These two games were part of my motivation behind the deadly flourish changes.
[E] In Jhin current kit, Captive Audience feels pretty okay. (Except for that awkward 20 base damage at rank 1. )
[R] In Jhin's current kit, Curtain Call's damage feels pretty useless against tanks during late game. I was hoping it could get a little armor pen, like Caitlyn and Yasuo's Ult. Just to make it feel impactful across a broader range of enemy champions. I think it would be great to give him some tunnel-vision too. I remember one game, I was playing Jhin ADC. A fight broke out over dragon while I was csing bot lane. I tried to ult the participants in the pit, but noticed that my first two shots didn't fire. I figured it might be a bug. But before I could try a third time, I died. It turns out that Zed had jumped out of tribrush and started attacking me, and I was so focused on the dragon fight that I didn't realize he was attacking me point blank and blocking the shots from my ultimate (in case you're wondering, this was not the same game as earlier). I think this should be a more common experience. Therefore, I propose granting reduced vision to those outside Curtain Call's hitbox.
**NB **I also want to change the way Jhin benefits from Bonus Attack Speed. After watching a brofresco video, I realize there are edge cases that can get out of hand if Riot simply buffs the scaling. But having done the math myself on Jhin's common build paths, Attack Speed doesn't seem as valuable as Attack Damage in almost all cases. (Yes, I'm aware of the movespeed bonus, the AD multiplier, etc -- and for me, it doesn't justify the loss of bonus AD from actual AD items). I couldn't think of anything myself though to fix this.
**NB **In case you guys are wondering, Chekhov is a reference to Chekhov's Gun. Range-Finding is an allusion to a Robert Frost poem. All the other weird names should be easily google-able.
