Shaco's rework goes against what they aimed for with the whole class update

Big Lincoln·Dec 22, 2016·18 votes·950 views

Just musing on this.

Shaco's backstab was changed from the 20% bonus damage for everything to changing one auto attack into a guaranteed crit. This front-loads his passive all into a single hit; not really any surprise he's deleting people instantly when all of your changes set him up for that, he has no reason to wait to unload his combo now.

Why did you think this was somehow worse than what he had now? You could have done something neat with his old passive if you wanted to up the kill windows for him.

I'm gonna be sad when Shaco gets VGU'd if this rework is any idea of how you think you can 'fix' him.

4 Comments

LankPantsDec 22, 20162 votes

I feel the same way about Akali. She's a champ who wasn't really an assassin. She was more of a Skirmisher in the same vain as Riven. Unlike most of the other champions reworked she did already have an extended kill window. She couldn't just jump onto people and explode them, she needed to land at least two rotations to kill.

Riot did concentrate her damage into a shorter timespan, not to the same extent as Shaco, but enough that for her to be viable she'd probably need to be capable of killing in one combo.

Riot completely ignored the fighter aspects of Akali as well. They didn't bother looking at what makes her unique as an assassin and rather just homogenized her and made her just like every other assassin.

Weasel KenseiDec 22, 20162 votes

Rengar Khazix still nuke people with their kits. I think they actualy increased the leap speed of Rengar so he comes out of the bushes faster.

When keystones came out, they made Rengar busted. The game was getting more bursty and snowbally and ultimately he had to be gutted till he could be reworked. Well he got reworked. He has about 15% more counterplay than he did before the rework, so that means "Oh no rengars ult in in effect, better run away" is a little better. That was the counter play, running away during his ult... Ok, well also grouping with your team, but even that didnt always save you with his combo being delivered in 0.2 seconds worth of burst.

Honestly the assassin rework seems like they had 2-3 different groups work on it and the only unifying voice was a bullet point memo that some of the groups ignored and just did their own thing. This assassin rework was just a clusterfuck. Dont get me wrong, I find the matches less frustrating overall because I didnt play assassins that much, but now I dont really feel like messing with them much post rework.

AP shaco is still a thing tho.

Bouncemaster ZacDec 22, 20161 votes

Speaking of front-loading into that passive: it's coded as an ability now, and backstab procs spell effects. That's a big part of why AP Shaco has been dominating. Just his backstab Q drops lich bane AND runic echoes on the target.