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Possible fix for the problems of current botlane

D357R0Y3R·8/21/2018, 9:20:19 PM·37 votes·35,375 views

To begin with for anyone that lives under a rock in the past months, botlane is pretty much dominated atm by anyone that can abuse stormrazor, i've seen for instance doublelift and qtpie chain winning with tristana or doing fine with Jinx despite getting trolled.

https://youtu.be/DIkIm-gySME

The reason is simple, Stormrazor is insanely busted. And riot forced adcs to buy it or lose because the price is 2800 now so if you don't buy it the enemy adc is going to get an insane powerspike before you because no other items cost 2800 gold except zeal items.

let's take a look at rekkles's match history on opgg http://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=rekkles https://i.gyazo.com/448317ed33ed332d2c6e1e867c95db4b.png

compare now the win rate of champions that build stormrazor (kai'sa tristana) to champions that do not build it (ashe varus) The only reason that he plays Varus and Ashe so much is because he needs it for the pro scene where Varus is the most picked and banned champion (we will get to that later) because his ult was always a problem there, and Ashe is the hardest counter to Varus in pro where over 22 games she has 63% win rate against him.

And now, there is the "but wait, how are Lucian and Ezreal doing fine without stormrazor" So Ezreal can do fine because he's Ezreal and still is safe against anything, he doesn't do anything and poke with klepto until he gets his powerspike with triforce+muramana. He's getting a vgu so idk what will change. Lucian now, in patch 8.15 he dropped hard in pro play AND in high elo since I didn't see rekkles or doublelift playing him, and qtpie is 2/3 on him. https://i.gyazo.com/36137a8a2bb2ee3f173c97da984ba8d1.png

But we don't balance around pro play right? so Yes i will give you that he does fine in solo queue where there isn't a coordinated environment and players absolutly refuse to play around winning conditions, which means Lucian will destroy them BEFORE they get their winning conditions (aka stormrazor). But as a Lucian main it's not fun, it's not fun to win just because enemies are stupid to not play safe against a 500 range adc with 22 sec cd dash, and then auto lose once they get stormrazor and poke the shit out of you every 2 seconds. So if we nerf stormrazor I would gladly welcome a Lucian nerf if it's necessary just to make botlane more fun than winning against stupid people.

Since Stormrazor isn't going to be deleted by Riot, they need to increase the cost back to 3200 and GIVE US OTHER RUSH OPTIONS

you need to understand something, Stormrazor forces you into a certain playstyle that NOT everyone wants to play. Pigeonholing the adc class into Stormrazor is not fun. and if stormrazor is the only rush options you doom the balance of botlane into failure if there is ONE option there is always going to be imbalance because not every marksman uses it with the same power what do you think? who's going to be stronger between Jinx that can poke you from 700 range with critting 110% ad rockets every few seconds and Xayah that gets a bit more damage on her 525 range autoattack without any AD steroid on it except once every 20 sec. This is why Jhin is dominating bot lane atm.

So my second question: item 3508 can you admit you fucked up? I can't stress so much about how fucking terrible this design is. You ruined essence reaver on Xayah Jhin Ashe Kaisa Sivir just to turn it into a Lucian item. And I will only explain once why: https://i.gyazo.com/774a15eb5b28280e077bbdec2aea8616.png

here is your problem, those caster adcs scale ONLY THANKS TO CRIT, sivir needs crit to scale, ashe needs crit to scale but as if it's not enough you gimicked the item with this essence flare passive, at first I thought it was funny until I realised only Lucian can make use of it. And this is the reality , as it stands now Lucian is the only champion in the game that buys essence reaver constantly, people are going to list some picks like yi or jax but those champions have a minority of games with essence reaver.

item 3095 cost increased from 2800 to 3200 AD increased from 65 to 75

item 3508 Essence flare: cooldown reduction on hit removed, attack speed reduced from 50% to 30% now has also a base stats of 20% attack speed

item 3072 cost reduced to 3500 to 3200 AD reduced from 80 to 70

This solves a lot of issues: the issue of Jhin dominating botlane, the issue of everyone forced to build stormrazor and not holding the same power with it. I would still add two fixes: Jhin passive movement speed should only scale with permanent attack speed (aka not with hail of blades) Varus World patch is going to arrive, and he's going to get the nerf hammer. Varus's problem is that in pro they abuse his ult so hard which has no counterplay, and his E poke that also has no counterplay. They need to nerf his ult projectile speed or range on his ult, give his E a higher delay, and then buff him back for solo queue

the end

40 Comments

Teridax688/21/2018, 10:14:46 PM8 votes

My thoughts on this:

  • I agree, both Stormrazor and Essence Reaver are horribly designed. At this point, I'd suggest deleting both of them, as both of them arguably occupy a niche that should not exist in the first place (we don't need more upfront burst, nor do we need Lucian having virtually no cooldowns for a window of time). Marksmen do need more items overall, as well as some better rush choices for sure, but I feel neither Stormrazor nor Essence Reaver satisfy that in a healthy manner, at least not in their current state.
  • I think now is as good a time as any to finally rework crit. Crit as a random chance to deal bonus damage has never really worked out well, as it doesn't feel particularly fair to rely on or play against (you can't really play against RNG). Moreover, there are valid fantasies that could be covered with crit that crit currently just obstructs: critical hits should be about landing exceptional attacks, whether it be lining up a headshot with Caitlyn, or getting that deadly fourth hit in as Jhin. Crits should be specific, predefined attacks that run along predictable rules that can be both exploited and outplayed, and crit itemization should cater to that by making crits even higher moments (and not necessarily just through damage). Crit marksmen should be a subclass of marksmen that rely on those critical hits within their own kits, rather than just marksmen geared towards a certain stat. The basic two stats any marksman should scale with are AD and attack speed (and sometimes CDR), and marksmen shouldn't be made dependent on a third stat just to be able to scale normally. Considering how critical strike chance exists on only one item and its upgrades (i.e. Brawler's Gloves, which builds exclusively into Zeal, which then builds into items with near-identical stats), I think it's become easier than ever before to rework crit, and remove its RNG component once and for all.
  • Side note, I don't think Jhin should gain bonus movement speed from his kit. Jhin was touted as this immobile marksman on release, but in practice he's shown himself to be capable of outrunning opponents and moving quite fast (with the right build, in fact, he becomes The Fast). The end result is that he's a champion with immense range, damage and crowd control, but also a substantial amount of movement speed. Removing this bonus wouldn't completely solve all of his issues, because marksman itemization offers a lot of persistent MS still, but it would allow him to be truly immobile in a vacuum at the very least.
ModWuks8/21/2018, 9:22:45 PM6 votes

Approved!

Thefrostyviking8/21/2018, 10:28:19 PM3 votes

As someone who has been playing a lot of Ashe recently i truly agree, stormrazor is much too cheap.

Unless i force my opponent to stay for ages post when they should have recalled to finish it while i desperately gather gold for my item 3153 then its really miserable to try and lane against it, and basically every single matchup i have except Ezreal will always get it.

Its not laning against a champion or two, its about laning against a item, it completely takes over and i feel that even if they wanted to make it a bit cheaper they could just have dropped it at 3k flat and been done with it.

Now for my Ashe to win lane i have to forcefully extend lane until i get botrk then go all in as quickly as possible and force a extended trade to either kill them to chase them out of lane right away, otherwise i´ll get poked down quicker than i can heal up and i also run the risk of exploding in 2 seconds if they get to do a engage of choice.

Then i have to end the game before they can have a shot at recovery because when they get some crit and AD i will explode in 2 hits and will never be able to fight again.

EROTIC RAID BOSS8/22/2018, 7:33:47 AM2 votes

Surely botrk is intended to be the other rush option

AirKingNeo8/21/2018, 10:45:39 PM2 votes

Death's Dance should get similar treatment to BT, so the item doesn't overtake it in slot efficiency.

As for Stormrazor, remove the crit and give it an AD ratio so Jinx doesn't break it. As for Jhin, reduce his AS to MS ratio so he can't abuse Hail of Blades with this.

Shinovar8/22/2018, 2:07:15 AM2 votes

item 3095 2800g 65ad 25as (+60% dmg on first attack) item 1038 item 1037 item 1042 item 1042 2775g 65ad 24as (no effect)

now we clearly see how at the same cost we get the same stats. going stormrazor also gives the passive (powerspike), so one would expect the crit build will be better soon after.

3425g later crit build looks like this (ignoring shoes) item 3031 item 3094

for the same gold, stormrazor build is this one (no shoes again) item 3095 item 3094 +625g (24% as?)

critbuild is: 70ad 30as 60cc (10% of crits ignores armor = 3% dps increase) >>> [~5500 gold value dps] stormbuild is: 65ad 79as 30cc (+70cc on first hit) >>> [~5400 gold value dps]

the difference is not that much, considered stormrazor gave a good powerspike quite early, the crit build is only good once completed the second zeal item (might be wrong, read the post scrittum at the end of the comment). games just don't last enough for a crit build to be worth. riot could simply make games longer by buffing towers and preventing snowball. still, the real problem of stormrazor is that even though it's well balanced as an item, it can be abused by some champions. mostly jhin. i don't see how riot can prevent this. nerf stormrazor? it will be useless and only built by him (ok for balancing, bad for game design). buff crits? same result. there shouldn't be too specific items, since they will be abusable by few champions. if stormrazor is thought to be a poke adc item, just add a damn cooldown. like 8 seconds cooldown. or make it an energized effect.

[sg-janna]

ps: even at 3 items, critbuild isn't that much better item 3031 item 3094 item 3087 70ad 65as 100cc (10% converted in true damage) item 3095 item 3094 item 3031 135ad 90as 60cc (+40cc on first hit) both builds cost 9000g. it's late night and i might be wrong, but i see the stormrazor build to be better even now, on a level 14 caitlyn. this might be for the wasted 20% crit on the crit build, exceeding 100%.

DragonIgnis8/22/2018, 8:17:38 AM2 votes

Rush options are something Riot should definitely look at. It's dumb how Stormrazor is the rush item.

Essence flare: cooldown reduction on hit removed, attack speed reduced from 50% to 30% now has also a base stats of 20% attack speed

I thought you were going to suggest that Riot add crit back at first. This change seems good but it doesn't address how niche Essence Reaver is. With only this change, Essence Reaver would mostly be a stat stick.

I think the biggest problem with Essence Reaver is that Essence Flare is too awkward to activate. Relatively few marksmen have ults that are optimal for an all in. Ashe ult is meant to be used from far away and Xayah ult is supposed to be used defensively.

In addition to transferring some attack speed from the passive, the passive condition should be changed to something like 4 attacks toward one enemy champion. This synergizes with the attack speed and mana restore. 4 attacks is also better associated with an all in than using the ult. It shouldn't be 3 attacks because then it'd activate on accident when using press the attack or on small trades. Abilities can count toward activating the passive so slow attacking champs like Jhin can still use it.

Aptest8/25/2018, 4:47:02 PM2 votes

At the risk of repeating and agreeing with Teridax68:

Stormrazor is a bad item. It should not exist, and it should be either nerfed into non-viability or preferably outright removed.

Why is this so?

Storm razor is an item for AA based champions, which grants front-loaded damage. Also, it grants good kiting potential.

Why is front loaded damage, specifically for AA based champions, and specifically when coupled with kiting boost, bad?

AA based champions are inherently DPS-y. They have a large amount of sustained damage, and as such they occupy the niche of tank busting. Also, due to their range, they offer the quality of reliable damage projection into skirmishes. The end result is a "tax the opponent when he is in range and put him on a timer to kill me" quality, which all ADCs share.

The counter to the "tax you if you are in range" quality of ADCs is to reach them, stick to them, and outpace their damage in the short run. The relatively lower levels of ADC DPS and lower levels of ADC mobility allow this outplay mechanic to exist.

By frontloading ADC damage and giving them extra kiting tools for the moment of initial engagement (when they are being engaged on), storm razor impedes on the natural counter mechanics of ADC damage patterns. This impedes on the idea that character (archtypes) should have clear and exploitable disadvantages, by essentially allowing the ADC players to build out of their class disadvantage.

This is especially important, because the whole ADC crit rework was done due to ADC damage output being very bursty against squishy targets as a result of the need to scale is sufficiently against tanks. So, on the background of ADCs having too much burst, the class is nerfed through both changes to the entire cast of characters AND the entire old item line, but the new introduced items re-introduce exactly the qualities which were intended to be removed through the previous re-work? seems like a serious error in design.

TL;DR: remove Stormrazor

Dog of Pavlov8/22/2018, 12:21:43 AM1 votes

With those ER changes, need to add some innate CDR then. Being able to get 30% CDR from it (from what I remember) was busted... maybe bringing it back to 20% base instead of 10% scaling up to 30% with crit would be a better middle ground.

Pianoasis2/4/2019, 8:07:04 AM1 votes

bump

Tetsip8/22/2018, 4:39:18 PM1 votes

Stop using youtube videos of a single game, and snapshots of pro players over a very small number of games as "proof" of your claim. I don't think stormrazor is actually that strong just based on experience, but if you could ACTUALLY find numbers that had anything to do with whether or not stormrazor was broken or not, then it would be worth discussing. Rekkles recent match history is irrelevant, you have no idea how those games went, and even his jhin which is a strong stormrazor user is at 49% win rate overall, so that does not support your claim. Don't confuse that if those numbers did reflect your argument however, that that would prove anything... because thats not how numbers work :X

Thing about stormrazor is that it needed to exist after the I.E change, and people WANTED the I.E change because its what cut down the adc's "burst" damage against squishies.

OtterlyLost8/22/2018, 5:32:11 PM1 votes

As a tristana main, I'm not chain winning off of abusing StormRazor. I dont feel it synergizes particularly well with Tristana and anyone who builds it on her is just doing so out of a lack of other options. I'm getting more success out of a BF and Pick into Zeal into IE rush as the early AD means she can easily all in and be aggressive in laning phase, where she wants to snowball to avoid her devastating midgame power trough.

The primary abusers of stormrazor I have seen are Jinx(whom they specifically buffed in order to make it better on her), Draven, and Jhin. And its honestly a problem of the item being poorly designed for ADCs. Why would you release an item that rewards you for not AAing for a period of time instead of making it so the crit is smaller but charged up by consistent AAing?

Alzon8/22/2018, 7:01:14 PM1 votes

The Lost Chapter and its triple upgrade path did wonders for mid lane diversity. Junglers have their smite item + enchantment as well. Assassins have the Serrated Dirk upgrades. Supports have... an odd quest for vision, reachable by three different paths. Bruisers get two Phage upgrades, and two Tiamat upgrades. Tanks get the bottom of the barrel as usual, but what’s surprising is how the similar “standard rush component with completed item options” for marksmen... isn’t a rush item at all. Zeal is pretty darn suboptimal as a first-back buy.

Now, I’m usually pretty against the whole “marksmen should have x” concept, but I do believe there should be a standard rush component for the class that branches into a variety of completed items. Possibly a Vampiric Scepter or Bilgewater Cutlass rework, since the goal of a marksman is to farm safely and scale up, with lifesteal being assigned to a named unique passive on most items (Death’s Dance and Gunblade being possible outliers) to prevent spamming, like the Haste passive on The Lost Chapter.

BestPudgeNA8/24/2018, 7:12:04 PM1 votes

All this talk about ADC vs ADC. I guess the whole diversity for botlane and actually have ADCs be balanced got thrown out the window in favor of ADCs being perma busted again... just so long as all/most ADCs get to be busted.

TeCoolMage8/22/2018, 3:23:59 AM1 votes

They should just fix Crit to stop Crit users from being right click machines :s Xayah’s E Crit scaling is a very good example of a possible way to fix Crit

That way items like stormrazor that buff autos are not as strong because the ADC has a lot of their damage moved into abilities

Warlord Rhinark8/22/2018, 6:37:47 AM1 votes

Remove Stormrazor.

Revert Essence Reaver.

Bloodthirster is fine.