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Let's discuss Nami's kit

Koechophe·8/29/2018, 11:48:21 PM·6 votes·30,278 views

Preface: This post is to discuss why Nami is currently strong, and what problems her kit poses to game health and balance.

Nami in the status quo: At the moment, Nami is statistically the strongest (consistently played) support and has been for a number of patches. Clocking in at almost a 54% win ratio and a 16% pick rate (https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/platinum/plus/champion/Nami/) she is clearly in a very powerful place at the moment with stats that are high enough to suggest she is over the top (she currently has the highest cumulative play rate and pick rate of any champion in the game (https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/platinum/plus/tierlist/).

Statistically speaking, nami is a low skill-cap champion, showing only a 2.5% win rate increase on experienced players (https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/winrates-by-xp). She is also lacking in strong counterpicks, with blitz being her greatest counter at only 49% (https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/platinum/plus/champion/Nami/Support/). Contributing factors to her relative strength at the moment could be:

  1. Systematic nerfing of other enchanters (shield nerfs primarily) while leaving nami relatively unscathed.
  2. Increase in support item cost, resulting in less hp pots in lane (favors nami, a support with arguably the strongest lane sustain at the moment)
  3. Nerfing of damage runes (Does not affect nami, but hurts the all-in supports that counter her)

Issues this causes: Having a champion who crowds out other picks with a high win rate and pick rate is always problematic, but with nami it is a particular issue. Nami's kit has several game health issues that make her unpleasent to play against.

  1. Nami recieves lane sustain without sacrificing lane damage. This is the largest issue that i can identify with Nami's kit. Every other support who wants to provide powerful, on demand healing is required to invest skill points into that heal, which results in a loss of damage. Nami, however, can invest freely in her W, giving her both a heal and an easy, reliable source of damage in the same spell cast. To give a bit of context, provided is a list of the supports who provide sustain in lane to their partner, and how much healing they can provide with 1 heal with their usual skill point investment (Numbers are level 6) Alistar: 110 (and 55 for himself) Bard: 70 (+.6 AP) Nami: 135 (+.25 AP) Rakan: 42 Sona: 30 (+25% ap) Soraka: 140 (+60% ap) Taric: 30 (+ 20% AP) (+ 1% max health)

Of those, we see Alistar, Nami and Soraka as the clear winners. Alistar's heal is gated by the fact that he has no control over when it's cast (and even then, alistar is performing extremely well). Soraka's heal is countered by the 10% health cost, as well as the fact that putting levels into the heal means you aren't putting any points into damage. Only Nami's heal allows her the additional benefit of damage, and has instead been gated by an extremely high mana cost. A high mana cost, however, doesn't negate the design issue behind having both a heal and a poke built into the same skill, where leveling allows you to increase both.

  1. Nami's kit suffers from "generalist" syndrome. Nami is not the only support who suffers from this, but I would contend that she suffers from it the greatest. Consider the primary roles that supports can play (not including vision, which all supports do) -Tanks -Crowd-controllers -Engage -Disengage -Damage -Sustain -Range

Most often, supports are well-balanced when they perform specific roles on this list very well. A great example of this is Leona. Leona is balanced around being able to tank, CC, engage and damage. This is offset by her somewhat weak disengage, range and lane sustain, providing the counterplay of damaging her, then engaging and killing her. Zilean is balanced around having good crowd control, disengage and (early) damage. This is balanced by his relatively weak tankiness, lane sustain and engage. The counterplay is to kite and poke zilean to death frequently, rather than going on a full-out engage.

Nami has the unfortunate issue where she ticks every single box on the list extremely well except for the tankiness one. Her crowd control is beyond reproach, her engage is phenominal with her ult and her bubble and her on-hit slow, her disengage is extremely good with her passive speed boosts, as well as her ult and bubble for a disengage. Her damage is pretty solid all the way through, and her lane sustain is beyond reproach, as well as being ranged. Her one weakness (squishiness) is offset by her mobility, disengage and range.

It becomes difficult to identify what Nami should be particularly good at. Certainly crowd control, utility and sustain are high on the list of her attributes, but she doesn't have a niche. There is no situation where nami particularly shines, nor a situation where she's not that solid of a pick.

  1. Nami's kit carries too much reliability. While nami does have a skill shot in the form of her bubble, the rest of her kit is actually extremely reliable. Her tidal wave is massive and will slam straight through a teamfight with relative ease. Her E requires no thought or skill to use correctly: Slam it on an ememy who auto attacks and it will be used at max potential. Her W does require proximity, but no aiming and very little thought, particularly in late game.

This creates an issue that Nami can sit in lane and safely use her W to heal the laner, then her E to engage and be pretty effective. Even if she misses her bubble, she'll still be formidable and there's little to no counterplay. All Nami requires is range of her ADC, and she can cast her spells and work. The lack of skill expression is evident in nami's low skill-cieling.

In short, there seems to be a distinct lack of risk assossiated with Nami's kit.

Ideas on removing some of these issues: -Change nami's W into a shield, rather than a heal This is probably a pretty unpopular suggestion, but it seems to me that being able to sustain effectively from a skill that also does damage is an inherently problematic play pattern. If the skill was instead a shield, it would remove many of the issues and better fulfill the fantasy of her W being a battle skill, rather than pure sustain. -Require nami's W to initially be cast on enemies Barring the previous change, this would force the skill the be used offensively initially, and require Nami to get in range of the enemy. This change could possibly be offset by a larger cast range, or by an increased bounce (so that it can still heal 2 allies). It would remove a lot of the toxicity with the skill, and with nami herself. -Make Nami's passive specific to moving (either away from or towards) enemies. This would hopefully help solidify nami's role into either engage or disengage (engage would make more sense with her kit, particularly her ult). This change could be offset by increasing the amount of the speed boost, and would go a long way towards pushing Nami out of the realm of generalist.

Conclusion: Nami is undeniably very powerful at the moment, and in my opinion her kit presents problems to effective balance. This thread outlines where nami is at, what balance problems I see in her kit, and some thoughts on ways those could be addressed.

Points for discussion: -Does nami feel strong to you in the current meta? -What is your playing experience as/against Nami? -What are your thoughts on Nami's health as a champion? -If you agree with the issues presented, what are some thoughts on ways that Nami's kit could be changed to address them?

74 Comments

Ale non è male8/30/2018, 11:39:32 AM24 votes

Dear OP, if you truly think Nami kit is unhealthy, you should probably stop playing LOL, since, as far as the Riot balance design go, her current iteration is going to be one of the most balanced champions you can ever get in the game.

On topic of the point you mention: 1) Yes, Nami is very strong at healing in early game. But, isn't that kinda her role? I mean, aside from Soraka which is THE designated healer and scale far better than Nami, she is supposed to be the second/third best healer in the game. And as you said her healing is even gated by an high mana cost and relatively high CD, so she can't really spam her W for healing only purposes. Having said that, Nami's Ebb and Flow is a problematic spell, because basically Nami self damage is tied to that spell, and there is in theory no place in the current kit where you could shift some damage without creating even bigger balance problems :

  • if you further increase Q damage, it basically become Morgana Q but with a stun rathen than a root, which probably is not something people are fine with
  • if you further increase the E bonus damage, you create an ability even more obnoxious as ally damage boost than the Janna shield that people hate, and unlike Janna shield it can't even be countered (additional AD given by Janna shield holds until shield is up, Nami's empowered 3 AA remain there regardless till her E duration expire)
  • if you further increase damage on her ult, you basically make a 2750 range lane wide AoE execution spell (with a huge slow attached if the ult is not enough to execute) which is not...well...optimal

So, Nami is stuck with a spall that gives both poke and ally heal, and that is admittedly difficult to balance (and in the past she was really broken at times because of it) Now, the only spot left where you could place damage is her passive if you change it, but it is debatable if removing an enchanters passive from an enchanters without giving her enchanters power back somewhere (in form of W buff to heal/CD/mana or retaining some kind of version of the current passive but placed on another of her spells) does really fit with Nami's therme...so, probably keeping things as they are is the lesser of the evil, especially since 8.2 general changes about minion aggro made it even more difficult to her to pull out free poke without retaliation as you have to nail the proper bounce angle

Also, it should be noted that Nami's Ebb and flow is problematic because her heal is tied to her damage which tematically clash, but it is also true that she isn't the only champ where the healing is tied to other effects, I mean, Rakan heal is the consequence of hitting his damage spell (and it scales far better later on as result), and Sona give a non irrelevant shield...heck, Alistair does not even pay with the usage of a spell...

2-3) I disagree with your statements, Nami damage is not good nor reliable, a relevant chunk of itis tied on hitting a very hard and slow skillshot, so if she can deal a relevant amount of damage, is because the Nami player is pretty good and should not be penalized for that. And Nami can't even build a lot of AP to amp up her abiliies as her damage skills have pretty lackluster scaling (aside from E, but that is going to be uses to enchant another person damage, it is not self damage), and her heal scale pretty badly because of the fixed CD and mana costs

Nami does not have tankiness, has medicore range aside from ult since her most reliable skill for damage + sustain (again, her Ebb and Flow) is a measly 725 range and is not that powerful mid to late game, and in general her CC/engage is mostly tied to her difficult Q skillshot or an high CD ult

The truth is that Nami is on a very weird spot in the amount of skill required to master her, and in risk/reward ratio to use her spells. Even the worst players around can still do some powerful things reliably with her (ult + E + they can always use W in a way, even if not efficiently and they all give access to her passive effect), but to truly master Nami you got to reach a very high skill level in mastering her W range and angle bounces in the later stages of the game and find a way to hit in an efficient way a pretty difficult skillshot like her Q while empowering the necessary footwork not be caught when your ult CD is down since you are extremely squishy

Conclusion Nami current strength is the result of the current state of meta, both in ADC AND support role which for once is favoring her as many of the champs/items/runes that counter her are weak at the moment; she is not inherently too strong, and when some different pick will emerge in those roles, Nami will be pushed back to a lower tier

Her current kit, as long as you manage to keep in check W numbers which I think Riot has managed to achieve given the current state of the game (items/runes), is relatively fine and balanced, and I find your suggestions really really bad and that would push her towards an unbalanced role (do you really want her W to have more range that wat currently has and becoming really cancerous in lane? do you really want to make her a poor version of Sorala/Sona with no damage by making her W a non spammable shield? do you really want to straight nerf her for good by hitting her passive usage?). She is not problematic at all, tbh, and it is better to not fix what is not fundamentally broken

In a broader sense, if Riot ever decide to touch her kit (but there are way more problematic champions that should be tackled before her + new released champions, so it is going to be a veeeery long time before touching her), yeah, her kit design could be surely improved by moving her self damage away from her W, by either putting it on the passive (and tieing some version of the current passive to her ult rank) or creating a new damage spell on her E and moving her current E enchantment effect somehwere else on the kit (maybe placing it as bonus reward on hitting W on your enemy first so you give rewards to use her heal aggressively)

Kythers8/31/2018, 4:56:45 AM9 votes

{quoted}

  1. Nami's kit carries too much reliability. While nami does have a skill shot in the form of her bubble, the rest of her kit is actually extremely reliable. Her tidal wave is massive and will slam straight through a teamfight with relative ease. Her E requires no thought or skill to use correctly: Slam it on an ememy who auto attacks and it will be used at max potential. Her W does require proximity, but no aiming and very little thought, particularly in late game.

This creates an issue that Nami can sit in lane and safely use her W to heal the laner, then her E to engage and be pretty effective. Even if she misses her bubble, she'll still be formidable and there's little to no counterplay. All Nami requires is range of her ADC, and she can cast her spells and work. The lack of skill expression is evident in nami's low skill-cieling.

In short, there seems to be a distinct lack of risk assossiated with Nami's kit.

Absolute nonsense. Compared to other enchanters, she likely has the highest skill ceiling just from having her bubble being an unreliable stun. All other enchanters have essentially unmissable peel.

She was/is strong because her main counters weren't being played She had a high winrate because she is at her strongest in the laning phase, and games were unusually short in the last few patches. I am curious to see how it evolves I see Leona being picked very regularly now, and she wrecks nami

Nami's weakness is and has always been all-ins. Bubble can be flashed when it matters, which means her only reliable peel is an ultimate which takes almost a second to cast, travels slowly and can also be flashed

She also runs out of mana extremely fast in lane against stronger poke (Zyra hello), with her w being one of the single most expensive spells in the game mana wise, having to use it constantly doesn't let you use anything else at all in lane, and before you get your 10 mana band procs and some items she runs out of mana in like 5-6 casts if that. So yes, she can save an ADC that's getting poked to absolute hell kind of, but you won't be able to do anything, won't get your frostfang.mana band procs from constantly healing ADC, and are basically stunted for the rest of the game

She really shines against other enchanters, since she is probably the strongest enchanter in the laning phase with a decent lategame. Especially strong against Lulu, Morgana and Janna, who lack the sustain to trade with her properly.

If you're losing games to ardent censer rushing Namis (really shit build), it's because their ADC was probably a smurf or very skilled

the only nerf I would be ok with is a reduction in the cast range of her e, to force her to get a bit closer and not to sit back 5 miles behind the adc like janna used to, that playstyle of support just aggravates me and I wouldn't be sad to see it go away

Linna Excel8/30/2018, 3:37:50 AM7 votes

Interesting thread. I thought that Nami was one of the more healthy and skilled enchanters, so when I saw your post, I wanted to respond to some things. Note while I do play support, Nami's one of those champs I want to play more of but my three mains, Sona, Soraka, and Zyra are getting all of my attention.

  1. For an enchanter, I feel like Nami has one of the least problematic kits because she can either be passive or aggressive. Her Ebb and Flow has an interesting mechanic to it in how it bounces. I don't feel like Nami is a problem or bad for the game. In fact I think that her being a generalist really helps her out as an enchanter, as too often they are more passive in playstyle. Nami on the other hand gets to do interesting stuff.

  2. I think right now her strength lies in her early game. Looking at lolalytics, she's got a high win rate with most of the first items her players pick up. Looks like 98% of the time the first item she gets has a minimum of a 53% win rate and caps out at 58%. I've got to think that some of this is meta related, at most it's means she's good in the early game. This really makes it hard for me to ask for a change only because the meta is slowing down. Further more it seems like her winrate peaked around patch 8.15. 8.17 just hit so I'd like to see riot hold off on her. Sona is the only other support who is doing consistantly well after her first item and she's also got a high win rate. Alistar's 2 best first choices put him at a decent win rate. Blitz, Taric, and ZIlean (kinda) are also in the same boat.

  3. Right now I feel like there's a vacuum for enchanter supports. Riot's bleeped up Janna but Sona and Soraka are okay if you sort by tier. Lulu is worse than Janna ATM.

  4. I don't think Nami's heal is a problem. Her Ebb and Flow gets very expensive in terms of mana cost so you really have to be a little judicious if you max it early. Manaflow band helps with this but 130 mana is nothing to sneeze at.

In conclusion I really don't think Nami is the problem. Once I looked at the win rate of the other champs doing well, they were all getting the 53% winrate or higher on their first items. This is a meta/early game problem that a number of different types of support champions are exploiting. Nami is doing well in this current early game meta, but I really believe the larger issue has to do with champs that do well in the early game.

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/nami/support

There's an interesting graph if you look at nami's win rate by game duration. She wins a lot of games that end before 20 minutes and she falls off after 30 minutes or so. If you want to argue there's a problem with nami, instead of focusing on her W, I'd really look hard at her early game in general.

Daddy Ants8/30/2018, 5:00:23 PM6 votes

How can they nerf her without gutting her though?

They can't really hit the Mana cost on her heal...

It's already the highest mana costing non ultimate ability in the game at rank 5 (and she maxes it first)

Ebb and Flow has a 130 mana cost at Rank 5 and is maxed first.

EmerySA9/1/2018, 6:09:59 PM6 votes

When people ask me about supports, I tell them this: "Nami is the most balanced support, and probably the most balanced champion in the game."

I've been playing Nami since pre-season 4, and never at any point in 4 seasons have I thought she needed an adjustment herself, whether it be in terms of her kit or playstyle. I have, however, thought quite often that overall changes to the support role both in terms of itemization and the botlane meta have hurt other champions more than her. Support items are a particular sticking point here; the Relic Shield line has been consistently one of the weaker options, and the champions who counter Nami the best tend to be champions who take it. By contrast, with more aggressive mages using Spellthief's they often accelerate a lane enough to where Nami's high mana costs prevent her from having the old Soraka problem of simply negating any aggression in the lane.

I consider every matchup as Nami a skill matchup. She has clearly defined weak points that can be exploited by most champions, and this is directly a result of her generalist nature. Nami does multiple things well, but she's not best in class in any of them. Personally I find Enchanter v Enchanter to be the most difficult lanes for her. Janna is focused on disengage and can counter even a perfectly executed engage, Lulu has been a perpetual ban for me for multiple seasons because of her aggressive laning and sheer amount of tools, Soraka brings more substantial sustain that's difficult to overcome with Nami's expensive W poke, Sona has enough poke and Power Chord burst paired with sustain and shielding that it's difficult to sustain through and maintain presence in the lane, and Karma (when she's stronger) presents the same issues as Sona with her Q and E.

All of those matchups can be won with careful positioning, knowledge of the champions, and skilled ability use with good timing to counter the strengths of your opponents. And that's what I love about Nami, she's a support who allows for skill expression in spades and adapting to the game state as it changes. That she's currently tops in winrate is, as everyone else has said, a result of her biggest counters being nerfed.

InTheory8/30/2018, 8:03:06 PM6 votes

That's exactly why it always bother me when people start bitching about a champion because of their win rate and nothing else. Having a high win rate doesn't need to mean that a champion is unhealthy for the game nor does it say players dislike them. You see a high win rate and start about "this is because champion is unhealthy you can see here".

I give you an essential counterargument:

**Despite having one of the highest win rates on supports for a pretty long time - she remains one of the lowest ban rates in comparision to other meta supports. **

Players like playing Nami and players like playing against Nami. THIS is good game design. This is what shows healthy gameplay

OtterlyLost8/30/2018, 5:06:02 PM5 votes

Nami is fine. She's strong at the moment because Riot went through and systematically nerfed all of the other Supports, leaving her as the only one standing. :/ it's easier to win a competition when you're the only one competent competing.

Calling her a generalist and an enchanter at the same time seems counterproductive; if she was a generalist, she would lack a clearly defined subcategory. She, therefore, wouldn't be considered an enchanter but just a support. Furthermore, its inaccurate to call her such. Generalist implies she can do everything; she cant. She cant be a tank, she honestly cant be the only CC on a team as both of her CCs are fairly unreliable, he damage is pretty negligible so she cant be a second carry, and the only things she's truly good at is healing and engaging/disengaging.

You comment that her Heal is problematic and too free but I wouldn't necessarily call a mana cost of 130 at rank 5 free; she has massive mana costs that can, honestly, really hurt her in the laning phase. She runs OOM very quickly and while sure, she can poke with Ebb and Flow, a good nami will look to pressure more with AA harrass using either her E or not.

Her Q hit box is tiny, slow, and fairly easy to dodge, as is her ult.

If you really want to bring nami back in line, maybe what should be considered are buffs to other enchanters and all in supports(like Leo, Thresh, Nautilus, Blitz, etc) instead of just nerfing a champion who hasn't been changed in seasons.

chipndip18/30/2018, 9:03:06 PM4 votes

The only reason why you're seeing such a small win rate increase among mains is because her general win rate is so high in the first place, and the reason for that is because Riot took down all the enchanters that were on top of her before now, so now she's the biggest one.

You talk about her being too reliable, but all her strongest tools are slow moving skill shots. You can't win off of just spamming W and E alone.

You talk about her heal and damage thing going on, but different champs approach lane sustain differently. Taric has an aoe heal from two different aoes with potentially no cool down. Sona has a heal for up to 2 and a shield for up to 5 on a way lower cd than Nami. Rakan has an aoe heal if he lands his damaging skill shot, and it scales with level in case he wants to rank up another move. Alistar's heal is a passive and eats up none of his investment. Bard's heal can be left behind while he does other things. Soraka's heal is the lowest cd heal with the highest values in the game for healing off a basic ability. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses to their sustain options. It's disingenuous to make it seem like Nami's is just a mile better than the rest.

And if you think Nami's ult is good engage, I don't think you have much experience of value with the champ.

Outside of the critiques, though, if you want to see Nami pushed more in line, either she needs to be nerfed somehow (not desirable) or the competition needs to be buffed. Everyone around her being nerfed while she remained the same is exactly how she got to this point anyway, which you clearly said in your post, so I don't see how you think Nami's kit is the issue more than it's all her counters and competition being nerfed around her.

Silent Pace9/10/2018, 8:09:33 AM3 votes

They nerfed all other supports so now Nami is a bit stronger than usual, she's not overpowered though, and I'm confident in the work that Riot puts into the role. I would be happy if Nami was left untouched and they buffed all other supports across the board, especially tanks. I feel like its time for Riot to take another look at the support role. I feel like you should play her a bit more too. She has clear weaknesses. Her W mana cost is high so you can't just spam it. The only way you'll poke someone out of lane is if the enemy is stupid and ends up making a lot of mistakes. A lot of Nami's damage also comes from auto-attacking which is risky, and if Nami falls behind then she's forced to sit in lane spamming heal and hoping the enemy laner doesn't tower dive. Her bubble doesn't travel instantly and its a hard to land so you're forced to hold onto it because missing it means the enemy can play more aggressively and you end up wasting 60 mana. I might have a good day and land 80% of my bubbles or I have a bad day and land 30% of them. Her E is rarely leveled unless I'm confident in my ADC, most of the time I just use it as a low cost speed boost. Her ultimate has a reasonable traveling time for its radius and power.

If you were to make any major changes to Nami, a champion that has been balanced for years, you could end up creating more work for yourself. It would be easier to just leave her alone and wait until all other supports are strong again. If they keep nerfing everything then one day Nami might need a nerf, but I don't see anyone else picking Nami except me so I think she's fine.

Wizard Blaze9/1/2018, 12:52:56 AM3 votes

Im one trick Nami player in Summoners Rift. No denial she is one of the strongest enchanter in the game i ever played with. I also love her with passion. But you have to know her kit requires a lot of mana and has very long CD. Comparing her with other support champs she is one of the healthy. Her Q is hard to land and need lot of training to use it. Her W is expensive for mana cost and trying to heal someone would forces me to question myself twice before using it.

She is strong. but her ability has consequences if used wrongly. Missing her Q will waste mana and has a long cooldown. her W is used and it has long cooldown. her E is used in wrong time then good luck because it has long CD. and her R can be dodged if you know how to dodge.

Dont forget she is also squishy. So most champs can go 1v1 against her or in a team fight can be killed the first easily. She has high winrate because the people who plays her knows how to function her. She is played by those who are passionate for her.

So far i have read couple of weeks about Meddler saying CertainlyT is watching her closely. Let us hope she is not buffed or nerfed.

Elon Musky8/31/2018, 5:03:44 PM2 votes

As a nami main, I can say very confidently that nami is a very balanced support that does require skill, especially compared to other supports. Her ultimate is really easy to dodge, especially when you're not right in her face. Also, her ultimate knocks up and slows for a shorter duration the closer the enemy is, so it's honestly pretty fair. Her q is also pretty easy to sidestep. Nami, believe it or not, does not outsustain every support. The mana cost and cooldown on her w is high early ranks, so it is honestly easy to counter nami if you time your engage correctly. I also feel rewarded when I play nami, which is why I love to main her. Other supports, such as sona, janna, or soraka, don't provide me that feeling of oh I actually did something other than rightclick (for sona you don't even need to select a target for her q w e...). Instead of nerfing nami, the solution to the support problem should be changing the kits of other and more brainless supports.

The Goodest Boy8/31/2018, 8:43:12 PM2 votes

I really like your analysis. Posts like these are the reason I love Gameplay+. Very well spoken, objectively put.

though, from some of the comments, it seems your argument isn't exactly falling on objective ears...

Done258/30/2018, 4:21:16 PM1 votes

I think a lot of her strength is due to how much of a lane bully she can be with Ebb. It basically invalidates trading at levels 1~3. I would suggest a power shift by slightly lowering the base damage (lowers lane power) and moving the lost damage into her AP ratio. (Strengthen her late game.)

Clementine9/10/2018, 11:57:45 PM1 votes

I think Nami has been picked once in competitive in recent patches, so...