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An attempt at a civilized discussion about Morgana

Illabethe··7 votes·5,347 views

I've written many..... many.... posts on Morgana.

It's obvious I don't like the "hammers to nuanced problems" approach Riot has been taking. I especially don't like what they did with Morgana.

Here's why:

https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/platinum/plus/champion/Morgana/ https://champion.gg/champion/Morgana/Support?

What I'm wanting you to look at is not the 54-52% Win rate. I want you to look at more important factor breakdowns. (I'm aware Champion.GG doesn't track other role Morgana, but I'm posting it anyways).

I want you to look at what happens to Morgana over the course of a game's length.

If you look closely, you'll notice her average win rate plummets the longer a game goes. (No..... at this point it doesn't go below a 50%, but that's not what I'm trying to portray, and never have been).

What does Morgana have early game?

  1. 2+ Second root which enables teammates lockdown kills, especially those level 1 ones.
  2. Spell shield to mitigate CC and save teammates who would otherwise die.
  3. High damage scaling ult. (Starts off at 150, potentially times 2, + 70% AP at a point in the game where adcs have 800 hp, and other supports/mids have about 700-900 hp).

What she doesn't have: Sustainable kit damage that can actually carry.

If they ever balance Morgana down to a 50% by reducing W, it's going to result in a situation where she literally falls off a cliff after 25 minutes.

The W nerf is NOT the answer. If you want a balanced champ, she needs to have a late game!.

I'm all for Q nerfs to Cooldowns/Root time. That's cool. I'm all for reducing the utility of E shield size. That's also cool. But please..... consider how reducing her damage affects her actual game endurance.

This all trickles down elos. In elos who don't use her early game advantage to end a game...... this kind of nerf is unbalanced.

https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/silver/champion/Morgana/ https://champion.gg/champion/Morgana/Support?&league=silver

This is what she currently looks like in Silver. I want you to look at something:

201+ Games played on Morgana players are actually sub 50% - almost 44% in Silver right now, and although some of that is attributable to being hardstuck...... some of that is literally because she can't carry that elo anymore. Her performance is dependent on TEAMS now. I can put up a Plat level performance on her in Silver, and still not win, simply because...... there's only so much she can do.

-She can only Snare 1 -She can only shield 1 -Damage is negligible unless someone on the other side messed up a lot. -Ult falls off in its usefulness almost as early as level 10 - because by then damage has spiked too hard for her to get close.

For the record: I am not trying to argue she's underpowered. I'm not. I'm saying her power has been shoved so far into her utility and away from her damage, she's no longer rewarded for playing well, and can't actually carry in a game where she IS doing well. Her wins are heavily correlated with how well her TEAM uses her.

P.S. I'm writing this after I posted like 8 consecutive Morg LOSSES, where my team pretty much fed, and I couldn't do anything about it. In contrary..... I pick up Zyra mid and pull a hard carry while my team hard feeds. I can miss so many opportunities on Zyra. I can't miss any on Morgana, and even then..... I might lose.

37 Comments

Light Burner3 votes

I actually play morg mid when i want to tryhard and have to win a game its my fallback champ so i disagree with the statement that morg cant carry.

Illabethe1 votes

You have 4 whoping games on Morgana. You barely have 30 games in ranked lol.

Light Burner1 votes

{quoted}

You have 4 whoping games on Morgana. You barely have 30 games in ranked lol.

What are you trying to say?

Thefrostyviking3 votes

I mean morg isnt really a good midlaner, exactly because she is too reliant on her Q.

  1. Its a significant portion of her damage.¨
  2. She needs to land it actually get any damage from her W.
  3. Enemies are much more prone to escaping her ult without Q on them.

But, as the game goes people have more options for dealing with it or avoiding it or the consequences completely, cleanses, zhonya, spellshields, higher mobility&movespeed and more frequent mobility, many even gain range or unstoppable abilities.

This effectively means that for morg who needs to keep people in her W and R the game just becomes more and more difficult regardless of what she does.

I honestly dont think morg can be really good midlane generally, as a counterpick she can be good but not generally.

Illabethe1 votes

She used to be mid lane exclusive, until Mid became about mobile assassins.

Thefrostyviking2 votes

That´s a pretty skewed way of looking at it, morg mid ceased to be good ages before assassins moved in as firmly as they have now.

Like even if you take morg and somehow beat a Xerath or a lux or a ziggs in lane you´ll still be fairly useless against them later, you wont even get anywhere near them infact.

Others like Syndra or Ori can easily just walk around your Q and kill you in the meanwhile due to barely losing any mobility while casting which renders morg very helpless.

So you end up having to rely on your flash and otherwise hitting their frontline to do anything, or walking up behind your own frontline.

But flashing forward doesnt accomplish anything when the enemy side has their own flash, cleanse, zhonya, banshee and whatnot left, instead you just die without doing anything or burn zhonya and its a 50/50 if you die or not.

Oh right and cleanse summoner is a thing too, like morg couldnt win a fight in a million years against a decent opponent who runs cleanse, its impossible because they will never be caught in her W no matter what.

So her shifting from mid to support isnt really because assassins became a thing, its because she is too damn reliant on her Q and R to have any kind of kill pressure but that in itself is too exploitable.

So she like Brand and Zyra was moved down botlane because its easier to hit hapless low mobility marksmen early who dont even have the range to fight back, extra bonus for not having to farm and having super high kill pressure because the marksmen and even some of the supports are so squishy that they wont live through the Q.

Death by Glamour2 votes

have to admit it is strange why they are targeting her for nerfs when she has a fraction of the playrate but a similar winrate to the likes of vayne riven zed ahri and nami,

Meteora7072 votes

basically because vayne riven and zed promote action while morg promotes passive gameplay.

Sona Ping1 votes

Yeah, you hear that. But that doesn't answer why aren't they then nerfing champions who do that better than her, like Malzahar etc.? Nevermind why, if that's true, should they be nerfing champions for doing what they are designed to and employing fundamentals.

Meteora7071 votes

how is malzahar doing what she does better when shes sitting at 55% wr and malza is 52%?

Sona Ping1 votes

{quoted}

how is malzahar doing what she does better when shes sitting at 55% wr and malza is 52%?

"LIKE Malzahar." Malzahar in specific doesn't matter, the topic is the playstyle. Other champions are better at that passive gameplay and, again, the point if this is so bad to Riot, that it so bad they can practice this fundamental of the game, why are they making champions designed to do that and creating gameplay mechanics designed to encourage and assist clearing, like Minion Dematerializer?

Meteora7071 votes

"like malzahar etc", gives 0 examples of what actually does it better than morg because there are literally no champion that does it better (could be argued for kayle in the top lane but shes way less safe but just scales better while still being safe).

why are they making champions designed to do that and creating gameplay mechanics designed to encourage and assist clearing, like Minion Dematerializer?

the only champion that they've really recently created that's like that is kayle I guess, thing is she doesn't really do that in theory it just ends up being that way because she has a safe ranged kit in a melee lane while hard scaling, she doesn't have the gameplay of "I click on wave, it is now shoved into your turret" tho. as for dematerializer I think it was a band-aid fix for banner being broken as fuck?

Craft Zeppelin1 votes

I know they buffer her ult and it does ludicrous damage if it actually goes full channel. But a midlane AP carry in close range would always be a flaw. I tried a lot of stuff since Morgana was the first champion I ever bought on this game. Nimbus cloak seemed to have some degree of success, perfect timing to bump up efficiency to get zhonyas. But she simply isn't tanky enough to do it. You will almost always end up as a glorified support on mid.

Yeah, you can let your team carry better. Thats for sure, but when I play Morgana I always feel I'm not the one winning it even I have a smashing score.

Tobykachu1 votes

Nerfing support Morgana to make mid lane Morgana more viable is effectively going to kill the champion. Even when she was super strong in the mid laner a couple of patches ago she was very rarely played, to the point where I believe it was you made a post saying that she wasn't really that big of a problem in the mid lane. Her kit, whilst effective, is too simple for a large portion of the player base to gravitate towards, when they much prefer playing flashy, mechanical champions.

In all honesty it's a real shame they didn't do anything to make her kit feel more versatile when they updated her.

Chembaron Yamada1 votes

If they did change her alot during the update, then people would just have flooded Riot with complaints ala "Why are you fixing what isn't broken? Morgana was fine as she was!" and so on.

And in this particular case, the complaints would actually be justified. It is one thing if you update a kit that is extremely unhealthy for the game or doesn't fulfill any niche. But Morgana had neither of these problems, there was no reason to update her alot when her kit aged well and did what it was supposed to do. Not every champions needs to be extremely flashy.

Tobykachu1 votes

I'm not saying they should rework her from the ground up, I'm simply suggesting they give her more skill expression in her kit. As the original poster pointed out, all she can really do is walk around early game throwing out bindings and picking up kills and late game is really just a black shield bot to try and let her adc run rampant.

In the reveal trailer for Kayle and Morgana it really looked like her Dark Soil would have additional effects if you used it on a rooted target, but it was just visual trickery.

SuicidePlank1 votes

She thicc.

Crispy0Snake1 votes

I'm a Morgana main/one trick

She's a very strong counterpick. This is why you see her winrate is high early but falls off. If she gets counterpicked by a Janna/Nami/Soraka/Lulu they just outscale her and you tend to lose.

Morgana is good at stopping enemies from being useful. She can stop a blitz hook, zyra root, but she cannot stop an enchanter giving a shield/heal and buffing their team.

~600 games on her supp btw

Illabethe1 votes

Nice. I have over 6,700 Morg games. Everywhere.

LeBlanc Rose1 votes

Cries in pantheon and talon

iDarkWind1 votes

They target her W because they look at Morgana mid and watch her throw a W into the minion wave and back off and throw another one to clear the whole wave. Until the point where she can do it pretty much with only one W. She negates any interactivity because if you can't CC her, and she mitigate Magic damage and on top of that if you get close to her she can root you. Even if she misses her Root anyways, she uses her Ultimate and you have to retreat. They could have just adjust her W damage to minions and probably would fix Morgana mid in my opinion (x% less damage to minions).

Illabethe1 votes

Heard it all before. And....... then I see what it actually does to champions most of the time.

Why do people care about a farming tool when nearly half the meta champions have a farming tool?

There's a reason Irelia mid is meta. There's a reason Zed is meta. Yasuo Yorick etc etc etc.

They all secure CS FAR better than Morg. They all have MUCH greater map pressure than Morg. And they have it all game.

iDarkWind1 votes

The reason they're meta has nothing to do with their farming tools tough. And their farming tools are very different from what I've talked about. They have a good last hit and that's all, meanwhile Morgana can negate any interactivity by just pushing the wave with one ability. I can't explain it better for you to understand.

Also your last point:

They all secure CS FAR better than Morg. They all have MUCH greater map pressure than Morg. And they have it all game.

They secure better CS yes, but Morgana on the other hand doesn't waste that much of resources to push a wave, but yes you're right on that one. Now about map pressure, it isn't that simple. What do you define as map pressure? The roaming potencial? Because in this matchup like I said, Morgana will keep pushing and probably the enemy won't have any room to roam at all because they won't get prio and they can't get all in her at all. Also you don't point out what Morgana brings to the table at all. She can shield herself or an ally for a big fat magic damage shield that prevents CC from any source, and her Q is a teamfight changing ability in fact. On top of that, her Ultimate is such a great zone tool.

If you want to discuss about the strenght or weakness of certain champs you have to bring everything to the table and do not compare only what is convenient for you.

Illabethe1 votes

Omfg. You literally just claimed Yasuo/Yorick and Irelia's Farm is NOT why they are meta. Lmfao. Okay. Take a hit to their farm kits, drop down from 140 CS to 100 CS in 14 minutes, and see how they perform. Their entire gameplay is driven by purchases, and in the case of Irelia and Yorick, their entire use is farming. Yorick sucks as a duelist/team fighter. He's a pure farmer. Irelia's entire purpose is to wave clear and get closer to her target.

They do NOT have a good last hit lmfao. They have spammable clear. Lmfao. A good Yasuo averages 400 CS a game, simply because he uses minions to travel. Takes 1 Q to kill a wave. Yorick has minion hoard who is horrible at last hitting, but good at applying permanent pressure. Irelia post Sheen can 1 shot minions.

And ALL of them cost less resources than Morgana.

Again...... you literally said something that conflicts: You're accusing Morg of "Constantly Pushing a lane" Yet also saying she's uninteractive. WHICH IS IT?

And Yes. Most other mids do get to roam vs Morgana, because they wave clear just as well if not better than her.

If I brought the entire table you expect me to discuss 56 champions. You're nuts.

Meteora7071 votes

I'm all for Q nerfs to Cooldowns/Root time. That's cool. I'm all for reducing the utility of E shield size. That's also cool. But please..... consider how reducing her damage affects her actual game endurance.

her w is literally the only problem in the kit, its safe waveclear that removes her laning phase, its not the "this ma late game ability" its the "there's no mid lane for the first 15 min :)" ability.

some of that is literally because she can't carry that elo anymore. Her performance is dependent on TEAMS now. I can put up a Plat level performance on her in

kek, I can go into silver right now and win 80% of my games on morg, also she has a 54% wr mid lane in silver, how tf is she bad in silver?

Illabethe1 votes

  1. Her "Safe" Lane clear has one of the highest early game mana costs in the game, misses 1/3 of the minions, and is less drastic than about 70% of the active mid lane roster.

  2. I went 95% in my first 40 games on Morg this season. Then I fell off a cliff shortly after her rework. Which was a buff. Why? Because Silver/Bronze just started inting every single game, and smurf became more prolific. Every game: Zed Mid. Every game: Zed roaming and killing all other lanes but me.

Maintain 95% Morg in Silver for 40 games. Then we'll talk.

Meteora7071 votes
  1. Her "Safe" Lane clear has one of the highest early game mana costs in the game, misses 1/3 of the minions, and is less drastic than about 70% of the active mid lane roster.

I didn't realize asol and malza were 70% of the mid lane roster, nor did I realize that mana costs mattered for shit in 2k19.

  1. I went 95% in my first 40 games on Morg this season. Then I fell off a cliff shortly after her rework. Which was a buff. Why? Because Silver/Bronze just started inting every single game, and smurf became more prolific. Every game: Zed Mid. Every game: Zed roaming and killing all other lanes but me.

Maintain 95% Morg in Silver for 40 games. Then we'll talk.

first of you do realize that your match history is readily available to everyone and we can all see you lying by scrolling down right? secondly you'll have to give me an extremely hardstuck account for that as staying silver after 40 games at 95% wr is almost impossible.

Chembaron Yamada1 votes

Honestly, prefer that she gets nerfed in the way they did.

I never considered Morgana a healthy mid laner. The games I played against her, she was literally just sitting under her tower, waiting for the minions to come, throw out a W, then go back. No interaction with her whatsoever. Every time someone tried to touch her, she just used Q and E and walked away. It was the worst mid lane experience I ever had in this game, since it was forcing both of us to just play waveclear simulator without any player interaction whatsoever.

I think Riot should not support such unhealthy playstyles. For example, I am a big Camille enthusiast myself and I was really glad they they nerfed her in a way to remove her from the jungle, even if I play her myself. Because a champion with her kit (in particular E and R) shouldn't be a jungler, these ganking tools are just too powerful. Same applies for me with Morgana, the playstyles her kit promotes in that lane is not healthy in my opinion, so I would be glad if they nerf her out of it.

Illabethe1 votes

Again..... you do realize your describing about 70% of the mid lane roster...... And most of them have better mana costs, or no mana costs, and secure CS kills better (Morgs who passive W lose minions because minions often last hit).

And you know.... most of those "mids who are angry at a mid Morgana"....... Do something called roaming. They go bot and get a double. They go top and get a shutdown. They do that the entire game, while Morgana moves slowly and can't keep up with their roam.

Chembaron Yamada1 votes

You keep saying that, but in the end Morgana was the only one I encountered doing this in mid lane to me. I had more interaction with a god damn Xerath than I had with her. You keep saying that this are 70% of mid laners, but I experienced it differently.

And roaming is not really an option if you are just as slow as Morgana, is it? Especially since she is perma shoving, so if your gank is failing because of your immobility, then she will get free turret plates while you got nothing.

Illabethe1 votes

Right...... because :

Zed doesn't start game without even buying a starter item and instead builds item 1036 and never has to leave lane, kills 7 out of 8 CS, and has a wave clear twice as scaling as Morg's.

Ahri Doesn't full wave clear with 1 Q and then stand back.

Azir Doesn't use sentinels to farm, and stay at a safe range.

Galio 1 Skill clear that scales more than Morg's W.

Heimerdinger Totally interactive....... Maintains an 80+% CS capture, and usually gains first turret....

Irelia Almost free 100% CS secure, which puts her in range to assassinate champion with E. Clears waves 4 times as fast and reliable as Morg.

Karma Totally interactive wave clear....

Talon 1 skill clears.... and 2 skill kills any mid champ....

Leblanc clears entire wave with 1 skill by diving for .2 seconds and getting out before even getting hit.

Neeko aoes longer range and clear faster than Morgana, and has three options. E + Q = Instant full clear with no loss.

TwistedFate 0 Engagement mid, can gank at any time right after a wave clear.

Velkoz 0 Engagement clear with low cooldown, low mana cost.

Xerath O Engagement full clear, can recover own MP.

Ziggs 0 engagement.

Zyra 0 Engagement.

Zilean 0 Engagement.

See a pattern?

The difference:

Morg is the only one that generally doesn't push out hard and die under the other player's turret, because she knows her offensive options are limited. The others all try to go for the kills, because they can.

(Ziggs and Xerath don't even have to come out to kill)

P.S. You literally just said....... "Morgana can just free wave clear and is uninteractive" and then right after that said, "She's gonna push and take your turret."

Do you not see the contradiction in that statement?

SSmotzer1 votes

Well, my theory is that they have a new kit for Morgana that more mirrors Kayle's new kit, but they are waiting for an in game event to happen to introduce the new Morgana.

I believe that the chain she bound her wings in is the Darkin Valeeva, and a story event will awaken her, replacing Morgana's kit with a new one where over the game she is possessed by Valeeva.

Makarakarn1 votes

I know pretty much nothing about Morganna mechanically, as I've never played her. All I know is what I've seen on the receiving end, but that's for another day. Instead I just want to say that it could actually be intentional. I mean, if Kayle is meant to be trash early and god late..maybe Morganna is supposed to be the opposite? That's more of a random thing though, I don't really think it applies considering Morganna actually seemingly has great utility regardless. A more believable explanation for this imo is probably just that she isn't meant to be a carry, she's meant to be more utility. Hence why she has a ridiculous root duration AND a spellshield. But regardless, as someone who doesn't play her, I don't exactly have an opinion on how she should be changed, I only wish the best for the good ol' morganna players.

Moonscourge1 votes

Her blackshield and Q will ALWAYS be good. It doesn't matter if her damage goes down. She is a CC machine disguised as a mage that has a ton of uninteractive gameplay baked into her kit. She shouldn't be this good, ever. At least not on her own.

Illabethe1 votes

Here's the thing:

She's NOT that good. She just has a lot of early game impact. Her base damage scaling falls off hard. Her survivability falls off hard, Most of her reliable kit is Single target.

High elo use that early game. Low elo squander it more.

She has one of the slowest moving CC in the game in her Q which has always been easy to dodge.

Here's my question: What are you not reading? I'm pretty sure a Q Cooldown increase or Root duration reduction of .5 early game in exchange for more W damage would dramatically change how people play her, and also "less of a CC machine."

For being "Uninteractive," she sure has one of the slowest move speeds in the game, and is virtually incapable of surviving a 3-4 man chase, because she can only stop 1......

If you're referring to 1v1's as "uninteractive," I have news for you: that's half the champ roster.

Moonscourge1 votes

You're saying that she stopped being viable Mid and started being played Support when the assassins came?

What?

Back then champs who were able to wave clear brainlessly were winning every matchup. Morg is one of them. Plus with Zhonyas being core on her + her ult chain unable to be broken when they all in her she is at every advantage one can get.

Illabethe1 votes

The fact you hedge to Zhonyas means you know 0 about Morg. Morg only gets Zhonya defensively. She almost NEVER uses it when she wants to kill with R. Champs literally have a 80+% Escape rate when you Zhonya.

And no...... actually CS wave clear back them was by average 1.4 less minion per minute than now on average.

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