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Camille, frustration and player perception

WTBeGirl100EUhr·12/23/2018, 1:03:47 AM·5 votes·13,426 views

Camille When released Camille's kit was an abomination. Horrifically overloaded, overtuned, and stuff was shaved from her kit to bring it to a more reasonable level. It is no surprise then that Camille is still, if not the hottest champion to complain about, is consistently complained about at a lower level, due to people feeling like her kit is overloaded and frustrating.

Camille Trimming the FatCamille Camille's kit already received a lot of trimming. She lost the 1s stun on her ultimate knock-back, her ult now ends 1s after she dies rather than lasting the full duration, she no longer gains AS after missing her E, her E's stun is shorter, her W slow now decays, she no longer heals with her W against non-champions. Her utility is now fairly average, primarily being loaded into the ult which doesn't actually stop her opponent from fighting back whatsoever.

Camille So why is she frustrating to play against?Camille

  • Camille's kit is linear and gives the Camille player a lot of agency. >Her E is a potentially very long ranged dash (although is usually shorter in practice), her W is a slow to allow her to gap-close people who dash away from her E. >Her damage feels very reliable because you cannot dodge the Q. >E from fog of war can be very difficult/impossible to dodge even with flash summoner 4 >The combination of her CC, MS and freedom to simply not-AA due to her caster-style damage pattern make her very sticky.

  • Camille's ult gives a false sense of counterplay >Not being locked out completely gives you the feeling that you SHOULD be able to do something back, that you're SUPPOSED to have options. This often isn't the case. The delay on it allows to you to flash away, but her ult will follow you or pull you back depending on the timing at which you flash. The pull, in particular, feels bad to play against as it feels like you're being cheated out of your flash.

  • People hate true damage >1k true damage on a 3s CD feels bad to play against

  • Counterplay feels limited >The only real "counterplay" to Camille's ultimate is to either fight her inside it, kite her around it or stasis item 2419 the cast if she gets into range. >E is designed to hit people from fog >Her engage range is huge, particularly when hooking turrets, making "stay out of her range" feel impossible.

Camille How can the frustration be mitigated?Camille

  • Make counterplay more intuitive >Certain items are very effective at mitigating Camille's damage. Flat health is extremely effective against her, since her sources of %hp damage (W and R) are unreliable and minimal respectively. ->Camille's ult is generally ~3% of her damage to champions. ->EW is dodgable in any situation where you would dodge E. Since E from non-fog is telegraphed, it is not overly difficult to dodge the E if it is cast from vision range. E-Flash is practically guaranteed.

  • Reduce Camille's interaction with fog of war >Camille's E is completely designed around catching people from fog of war with its interaction with walls >This means you are alerted to Camille's presence very late in many scenarios.

  • Get Camille out of the Jungle >Even if not overpowered, jungle Camille feels shitty to play against

Camille Perception vs. BalanceCamille Camille's performance is only slightly above average in top lane, and is below average in the jungle. As a result, there is limited room to straight nerf Camille, so anything that takes power away from her means buffing her in other ways. Camille has relatively few tuning levers outside of damage and tankiness when trying to introduce counterplay.

Buggy interactions with Camille's E feel bad to play against, granting the illusion that Camille is immune to CC (she is not), as well as the stun interactions when travelling to the wall feel bad for the Camille player.

Camille My Proposed ChangelistCamille GAME HEALTH CHANGES: Hookshot:

  • No longer deals damage to monsters
  • Camille is revealed when passive over terrain if she would otherwise be visible
  • If Camille is unable to move or cast (stun, root, silence) when she reaches the wall, E2 is unavailable
  • E1 does not end prematurely when stunned during flight (dash-interrupting stuns will still stop is such as Veigar's E)
  • Camille cannot flash at any point during Hookshot or Wall Dive

Tactical Sweep

*Sweet-spot now deals flat damage rather than %HP damage

Hextech Ultimatum

  • Hextech Ultimatum despawns instantly on death
  • Hextech Ultimatum no longer grants minor %HP damage on hit

All told these, aside from the E1 change are pretty huge nerfs. Power would have to be returned to her kit elsewhere.

GIVING HER SOME LOVE BACK The following changes are intended as examples of reasonable ways in which to buff Camille rather than a collective changelist. In other words, it is not intended that they be reviewed as 1 but rather as individual options.

Adaptive Defenses

  • Auto-attacks on champions reduce the cooldown of Adaptive defenses (by 0.5s?) >Teamfighting survivability rewarding Camille for getting multiple auto-attacks. Adding new features is potentially unwise as it would add to the feeling of her being overloaded.
  • Adaptive defenses scales with bonus AD >Rewarding healthier high-AD builds with a small amount of survivability
  • Adaptive defenses CD is reduced based on the remaining value when it expires >Adaptive defenses can be wasted in lane when trading. This offers a small buff primarily to her currently underwhelming laning phase.

Precision Protocol

  • "Bake" time reduced. >This is probably the most controversial (and least likely) change I'd suggest. 1.5s is kind of a long time with how high damage the game currently is. It gives her damage more reliability, rather than simply granting her more of it
  • Q AD ratio increased >Whilst buffing Q1 increases her up-front damage, buffing Q2 seems like a bad idea due to the true damage conversation already creating a fairly high amount of hate for it. The Sterak's Gage item 3053 changes moved her damage to be more front-loaded already, however, so it's possible that a buff to Q2 is appropriate - particularly since it is the telegraphed damage that you have some options to attempt to avoid.

Tactical Sweep

  • Sweet-spotting Tactical Sweep grants Precision Protocol's MS steroid. >A common use of Tactical Sweep is to gap close using the slow. This facilitates this pattern to add power without granting her more damage.
  • Tactical Sweep has a higher AD ratio. >Tactical Sweep's damage is very high at early levels but falls off very quickly in lane. This is probably appropriate, as her W harrass can be very low-interaction and oppressive, particularly when Comet builds are meta. By upping the AD ratio it allows her to do more with what is probably her most fair damage source without buffing her laning harass to disturbing levels.

Hookshot

  • Stun duration increased to 1s >This is probably as controversial as the Q change. Her stun used to be 1s, too. This primarily gives her reliability in TFs and gank-assist/power without increasing her damage, but in what is probably the worst "feeling" way. Gank power was deliberately stripped from her previously so this is probably not a good way to go about things, but probably an option nonetheless.
  • Damage increased >Simple buff to one of the dodge-able sources of damage in her kit.
  • AS is granted on any empowered E, regardless of whether it strikes a champion >Camille gets hurt less by missing the skillshot she's fairly reliant on. Missing still hurts a lot, but doesn't guarantee you lose fights as much.
  • Travel speed of E2 increased >Compensate for loss of E-flash with better baseline reliability of E2.

Hextech Ultimatum

  • Hextech Ultimatum deals a burst of damage when cast >Be it just to the target or players knocked back as well. This would only be introduced in a situation where the %HP damage on hit is removed. That said, with how unimpactful her ult's damage currently is, this is probably unneccessary unless you want to increase her ult reliance as a means of reducing frustration by gating her power more behind the CD.
  • Hextech Ultimatum grants Precision Protocol's MS steroid. >Kiting Camille around her ult is surprisingly easy for some characters.
  • Casting Hextech Ultimatum refreshes the cooldown of Adaptive Defenses >Hextech Ultimatum is a huge part of Camille's defensive toolkit and this allows it to fully realise that role. Camille's shield can be fairly large, however, so this change would likely have to be accompanied by a smaller shield or lower base HP.

Note on Damage buffs vs. Utility/Defensive My belief is that the more utility-oriented changes, particularly movement speed on ult/W are the most appropriate changes here, probably followed by passive refresh on ult. The changes being made are primarily nerfs to her target access and making her more vulnerable to crowd control. Giving her tools back to recover from the loss of of interactions that are in her favour, be them defensive or utility.

Camille **ConclusionsCamille ** Thanks for reading this incredibly long post on the state of my favourite champion. I've been mulling some of this over for a long time now and I felt like it was finally time to put this up somewhere. I'm hoping that G+ will offer a productive audience for the discussion.

Camille TL;DRCamille Remove E-flash, nerf E interactions with CC, remove ult damage, buff elsewhere

17 Comments

Gilgayu12/23/2018, 2:30:59 PM2 votes

Personally, I don't think Camile is under performing in the jg at all.

She can gank from unusual angles due to her e, and can even counter gank extremly well with e flash (which I believe should be kept, as it is one of the few things that takes skill in her kit). To compensate for her sick ganks, she has an awful jungle clear, allowing her opponents to invade and solo her level two relatively easily if you are graves/kha.

I also disagree with the general direction you are moving in. You are decresing her ability to catch people and yet increasing her damage. She is supposed to be a brusier that counters brusiers (true damage). Giving her w too much damage is probably problematic. In higher elos, people start w for how much damage and zone power it has early level, by giving it a ms steroid, you are dis-allowing Camile's opponents to punish her (it is harder to land skill shots or more than 2 auto if they are ranged).

All those ad ratio increases also aren't the best thing, especially for her passive. Her passive is a defensive stat, and making its numbers depending on her ad is very limiting to her build (currently she can go tank, full ad, and brusier and all do decent damage). The few changes to her jungle abilities are also disencouraging to the direction Riot is moving. During season 9 the biggest thing is lane fluency(or whatever you call it, like the ability for more champions to become avaliable for more lanes), it is one of the reasons Camile became jungle in the first place.

I think Camile is okay right now... For me she has never been frustrating, and she can't really dive into back line during teamfights since her ult will bounce their front lines into her own back line. Her e flash is also a fun mechanic that allow you to flash over minions and e on the champion

Pokemonred20012/27/2018, 9:43:50 AM2 votes

I would like to point out that Camille's Q cook time gives it perfect synergy with item 3057 and item 3078, as the Spellblade passive has a 1.5s cooldown. Because of that, I feel like reducing the cook time can, in some ways, reduce her damage, because while it'll make her use of the true damage slightly more reliable, it can hurt her damage output overall as it can make you miss the Spellblade procs for recasting too quickly, and her base AD is enough to make those Spellblade procs hurt like all hell.

Galiö12/27/2018, 1:30:49 PM1 votes

Idk if I agree. You want to nerf very windowed situations (other than remove E damage from monsters hit) but want to buff other things. That will just give her more uptime and league champions already have too much of that as it is nowadays.

Rabbi Shekelberg12/27/2018, 2:56:11 PM1 votes

Hypermobile champion that completely shuts down mobility thank you Riot, very cool

Axzarious1/16/2019, 11:35:40 AM1 votes

My biggest gripe with Camille is that her E functions as a get-out-of-jail-free card in how if she's already got her hooks flying out before she's CC'd she just gets pulled to safety anyways. If you silence her (or apply some other form of CC) WHEN those hooks are out, she shouldn't get the pull. It's also one of the abilities that will move you the farthest. Everyone else who has a skill like that usually has some way to effectively interrupt or mitigate the ability.

Other nitpicks include how her W can be cast while moving. Most other champions who have some form of CC like this often have to briefly stop their movement to use the ability.

Also, her Q's true damage conversion doesn't scale off of skillranks, but her levels.

ı Sona ı12/27/2018, 10:42:58 AM1 votes

If you are facing a Camille top lane, try using Sona or Lulu! Penn is good too.

ModKnightsKemplar12/27/2018, 4:33:22 AM1 votes

Approved!