An AP Ezreal one trick's feedback on the rework, massive post

PotatoMine·10/12/2018, 7:12:45 AM·9 votes·28,871 views

Hi Riot and League of Legends community,

I’m an AP Ezreal one trick here to provide my thoughts on the new rework. Before we get started, I want to go through who I am.

I’ve been an Ezreal mid AP/Hybrid one trick since season 2. I have thousands of games on Ezreal, and have played him for over half a decade, and float around high plat to low diamond. AP Ezreal is extremely rare, and most people who play him do so in normal games just to have fun blowing people up. They are not genuinely trying to win games in the same way they would be in ranked. I’m a minority inside a minority.

A large reason I’m making this post is because I know just how difficult is is for Riot to actually get feedback on what AP Ezreal players want simply because we are so freaking rare. Well Riot, let’s talk.

First things first, pros and cons of the changes made:

Pro: -More mana -Easier to land E -Kill towers faster -Longer range -Extra AD ratio

Con: -Total Damage down -MUCH harder to use W -Can no longer go through people -Less total damage -Harder to hit back line targets -50% longer cool down -No longer gives attack speed

Neutral or Other: -Builds are a lot different now, many of the old AP builds don’t work anymore but there are also new builds that work a lot better than they used to. -Now AP Ezreal is more of an assassin than a poke mage -Visuals are sexy -Very different core game play loop with W

Let’s start with the single biggest concept we need to make very clear, W is MUCH worse against champions than it was before. This is not a question, it’s a fact. You my dear reader might think something like “But Potato! When I get hit by a Q W now it HURTS!”, or as Riot put it in the patch notes, “it still packs a punch with some AP itemization.” Ya ok. But guess what? It packed MORE of a punch before! AND you did not have the limitation of the mark, which while the mark certainly feels more satisfying, is a massive nerf. Sure right now if I hit someone with a W Q late game I can deal half someone’s health, I’ll feel great and go man that was awesome! But before the mark I did half someone’s health with W Q, actually .2AP ratio more damage, AND if I hit only W I did 25% of their health, while now if I only hit W I deal a massive 0% of their health. Hat’s off to you Riot, you managed to make a nerfed ability feel more satisfying, no joke well done. But that does not change the fact that from damage and usability alone it is much weaker.

Every single time I apply the mark on W I don’t go “man that was great! I got so much damage!” I go “yep, I’m sooooo happy I just had to play much better only to get less damage than before”. And every time I hit a W and don’t get the mark I curse under my breath about how frustrating it is that old W would have not had to deal with that bull.

Then we have the fact that it does not go through champions anymore, this one is actually not a problem until team fights, where it combos with the requirement to proc the Mark to make it insanely difficult to kill anyone in the back line. It’s hard enough just to safely hit tanks with the Mark and proc it, let alone weaving both W AND Q through an entire team fight.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! It ALSO has a 4 second longer cool down!

So not only does AP Ezreal straight up have less base damage, it has significantly less average damage because it’s significantly harder to actually have the damage be applied, combined with it having significantly less average damage from not being able to hit multiple people, combined with the fact that even when it does deal damage it’s significantly harder to actually have that damage be on the right target(500 damage on a tank means a lot less than 500 damage on an ADC), combined with it just flat out having significantly less DPS from having a 50% longer cool down.

But ya know what? I’m actually fine with all this...if the upsides are worth it. This mark design is extremely satisfying to play with, and solves a lot of design problems. In fact, I made an entire post talking about the mark mechanic before Riot even reviled how the rework works. And while my design has some notable differences, all things considered I like Riot’s design more, mostly because while it’s not as good for AP, Riot’s design works better for AD, and as much as it pains me as a player, the designer in me knows AD deserves the priority.

You can find that here, fair warning it’s long: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/95ucfy/a_massive_design_exploration_of_how_to_rework/

So…..the question is, do the pros outweigh the cons?

Let’s go in order, the single largest buff it would seem was the extra mana. This is great...except for one tiny little problem, I had already solved Ezreal’s mana problems. Sure in theory having more mana is great, but with my old build at every stage in the game I had all the mana I needed.And, my build is actually very light on mana. Since having more mana does not actually make you deal more damage, the extra mana the new W gives is only actually a buff if you can use that mana. So for a highly experienced AP Ezreal player with a build refined to make mana a non-issue on AP Ezreal, the extra mana is not nearly as powerful as it looks on paper. What it does do however is make AP Ezreal much more accessible. 90% of old AP Ezreal builds suck, and they sucked for a lot of reasons, but one of the most common is mana. People either got too much mana or too little, both end up with AP Ezreal being very weak. This is totally fine. A change that makes a champion significantly more accessible without significantly increasing it’s ceiling is fine in my book.

But wait…..something is missing….”Potato, why CAN’T you make use of that extra mana? I mean it’s a CRAP LOAD of mana! Surely that is good for something!” And my dear skeptic, you are right. The mana is really nice, combined with the E target access it makes his lane a good deal more reliable and more powerful over all. But not in quite the ways you might think, because while yes he got more mana, his ability to actually turn that mana into damage is also worse. Think, what does mana get you? More spell casts of course!

But what spells are we actually casting? Q W E R.

-Q is cheap enough that it is rare that you did not have mana to cast it, so you don’t really get to cast that many more Q’s. Having more mana in the system does help, but again, mana can be made to not be a problem for Q spam.

-While W costing less is nice and all, it’s longer cool down and higher difficulty to apply basically makes that a mute point; I actually find myself casing W less often than before. And we need to factor in lost mana when we hit someone with W but don’t get to proc the mark, thus basically losing out on the mana cost(since before we would have gotten the damage, since we hit them). And the fact that I max Q first(as do most people who play AP Ez in ranked at higher elo), so for a large portion of the game W was at 50 mana anyway. And by the time I put points into W I have enough mana to cast W basically as much as I want. Basically, the extra mana does not improve the power of W almost at all.

-R is gated by it’s cool down, not really it’s mana.

-So that just leaves E, which you absolutely do get to cast a lot more. But that’s the whole point of why I’m going through this, when you actually break things down while the extra mana looks like a massive deal on paper, in practice it really only means you get to cast E more often. Sure you certainly do get to cast more Q’s and W’s depending on how you manage your mana, but on the whole the biggest difference is E.

Let’s go ahead and knock out the two other easy ones: The AD ratio and longer range.

The AD ratio is a handy little buff, if you get a Gunblade and Dblade it gives 48*.6 = 29 extra damage, with LB Ezreal’s total AP ratio on his basic abilities is now .3 + .7 + . 75 + .5 = 2.25, 29/2.25 = 12.888 rounded to 13, so I’ll count the AD ratio as worth about 13 extra AP. Not bad. But we also lost .2 total AP ratio, 29/.2 = 145, so we break even at 145AP and while we are here unless I’m mistaken the base damage on W is now 5 higher, so 34/.2 = 170, so we break even at 170AP. So in short the change in ratios mean his early game W has a little more damage, mid game it’s about the same, and late game it’s less. It’s also worth pointing out that .1AP ratio came from Q, which gets cast a lot more often, thus these numbers are actually more forgiving.

Longer range is another case of “it looks good on paper but actually is not that much extra power”. Sure, every now and then you land an extra W, but it’s actually rather rare the extra 150 range is what gave you that extra W, because the most common way you get a long range W is with Q, and a very large portion of the time if you land the W Q, you are within 1000 range, so you would have gotten the W Q anyway. While it certainly does happen, the times you land a max range W Q is dwarfed by the number of times you land a W within it’s old 1000 range but don’t get the damage since you could not follow up. In short, while the range helps a bit, it is not even close to an even trade because you still have to follow up on that W somehow.

The last two targets on our hitlist is the damage to towers and E reliability.

The damage to towers is massive later in the game or even mid game, but so was the extra attack speed. Ya it’s great to do 40%+ of a tower’s health late game with one auto attack, but a lot of that damage is in the Litchbane and base auto attack, and I don’t get to give my teammates pushing with me extra attack speed. Or just extra attack speed for my ADC in the middle of a team fight. AND now people can hide from W by standing behind a tower. Don’t get me wrong, in totally I do think this is a net buff and I do think it’s a good change, but understand just like the mana it’s not as good as it looks at first glance. Also, at a very fundamental level I don’t play AP Ezreal to be good at killing towers, this is not Ziggs, so even if statistically it’s fine it does not reinforce AP Ezreal’s core fantasy. . This leaves the E reliability. It’s a solid buff that constantly lets you land E’s that you would not otherwise get to cast. Combined with the extra mana you get to hit people with a lot more E’s………..in lane. See all it does is make it easier to hit a target hit with W. W is now body blocked by tanks, and what happens in larger fights is the tank body blocks W, then you see the out of position ADC and shift right next to them and BAM! The tank gets the E. This “buff” just bitch slapped you. Sure if you land the W on the ADC you hit them instead, but most of the time if you have a clear shot on the ADC to land the W AND can safely E into them, a skilled Ezreal player is able to hit them with E regardless of the W.

So most of the time W lets you hit people with E is when they are behind minions, and that mostly is in lane. Sure every now and then you get a W on the right target you would not have outside of lane, but as with everything else here it’s not nearly as often as you’d think on paper. Similar to the range increase, it’s rare you get to hit E on someone that you would have not have been able to hit before, outside of lane

So let’s go back to the initial question, do the pros outweigh the cons?

And ya know what? In most cases I’m happy with the changes. I gained a little here, lost a little there. My lane is a lot better now, it takes more skill and attention to assassinate people, but I also have some more tools to make that assassination happen. All in all, in most cases I’m happy to say I consider this about an even trade off.

In most cases.

But most cases is not all cases, because as soon as a team fight rolls around this rework goes to hell.

Let’s take another look at those pros shale we? -More mana -Kill towers faster -Extra AD ratio -Easier to land E -Longer range

So how much power does this add to Ezreal’s team fighting? Well let’s see, more damage to towers? That’s a blank. More mana? Well, I already had plenty of mana before thank you, so that’s also a blank most of the time. That AD ratio is nice….boy do I love 34 extra damage on W, which is likely going to hit a tank! I mean at 350AP, a very reasonable amount of AP to be team fighting with, my W does 500 damage(500 - 255(base damage) = 245, 245/.7 = 350)! That’s what, a 7% damage increase to W(34/500 = .068)! Man, that REALLY makes up for having a 50% longer cool down AND it not hitting multiple targets! My W has longer range too, that way I can hit the ADC in the back but not hit them with a Q as well, who really wants to actually deal damage to people you hit with skill shots? It’s scare tactics that really get’em. And ohh boy, my W goes to whoever I hit W with? ALL THE BETTER TO HIT THE TANK THAT BODY BLOCKED MY W.

To explain it in meme language, this is how I feel about the rework. Imagine I had better editing skills, and had the text “Rework” hover over and follow the guy showing off, and had the text “teamfight” follow the other guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLRvUhyh2ok

Ok, so what next.

It’s not hard to see that AP Ezreal’s team fights are a LOT worse, not only is he a lot worse at killing priority targets since it’s harder to land W, it’s harder for him to kill tanks because his DPS is is lower. AP Ezreal before was certainly not bad at team fighting, but he was no Twitch. He dealt a lot of damage from the back and was very safe, but also did not have the game winning mass CC that a lot of other mages have. Sure he could burst and ADC, but his abilities whenever very prone to being dodge BEFORE the rework and it was hard from him to kill people through a front line BEFORE the rework, and he already had a hard time killing tanks BEFORE the rework. In total, he filled his niche, and while he had some shortcomings he made up for it in other places, mainly safety and range, and I loved him for it. The rework destroys him in team fights, leaving a husk of his former self.

This is however a solvable problem, GIVE ME BACK MY FUCKING .2AP RATIO! But not to W, put it on Q. This helps give back the DPS loss from a longer W cool down, as well as the damage loss from not being able to hit multiple targets. It reinforces AP Ezreal’s identity as a spell-slinger, he can sit at the edge of fights throwing out Q’s, and does not feel as bad if he can’t get W’s on the right target. And it will also help 1 shot caster minions in the mid game. Lastly, it does not affect AD Ezreal at all. If I did not have to worry about AD Ezreal this would be a very different conversation on what to change, but League is not a game of what might have been.

TLDR : I like the rework, but team fighting sucks now. He needs to be buffed, and +.2AP ratio on Q seems like the best option.

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I have more to add to the changing conversation, rather than making new posts I'm adding it here so it's all in the same place. So, "new post":

Title: A Simple yet powerful argument against AP Ezreal's current tower destruction power

Fundamentally, killing towers is not what AP Ezreal's core fantasy is about, put differently, killing towers is not why people play AP Ezreal.

It's like asking the question why do people play Zoe?

Zoe is good at killing towers. She has her passive and like AP Ezreal often gets a Lichbane. But imagine how strange and out of place it would be to say make Zoe's passive deal double damage to towers. Like wtf, that does not even make sense at all! Not only is it busted powerful, killing towers is not why you play Zoe.

Now in AP Ezreal's case it's a little more complicated. AP Ezreal really did need tower threat in the mid and early game, it was a major gap in his power and having mid game tower threat has had extremely healthy impacts on his game-play. The problem is how powerful it is later in the game, because it is limiting Riot's ability to give AP Ezreal what he really wants, in large part because of how it's interacting with double tear build. Fundamentally, the value of each point of AP Ezreal gets is a finite amount. Every "units of point", or UOP, per AP that is put into tower killing must be taken from someplace, and right now he has too much of his UOP per AP tied to tower killing.

Here's the question though, am I personally over valuing the tower destruction power? Well Riot, let's go through some math. Let's compare how much he got per point of AP before the rework with what he get's after the rework. You made the assertion:

"We're avoiding putting more power into AP ratios because we're already seeing the double tear builds be pretty powerful and giving him more value for AP pushes all his builds towards double tear as the way to go, removing variety."

Before the rework, for each 100 points(since it'll make the math look nicer) of AP he got : 40 damage on Q, 80 Damage on W, 75 damage on E, and 90 damage on R.

Now he gets 30 damage on Q, 70 damage on W, 75 damage on E, 90 damage on R, and 70 damage to towers.

There is also Lichbane to consider here, but Riot's assertion was they are worried about double tear Ezreal, who does not often get a Lichbane, and if it does get LB there are significant trade offs. While it's easy to consider Lichbane a given on AP Ezreal, the item is actually only 82% gold efficient without its passive. You pay a lot for that .5AP ratio, in fact while I have not done the math I suspect a Deathcap is actually just straight up better value than LB for double tear. Particularly considering it lets you get a Triforce. So I feel it's justified to not factor in LB.

So ok, 20 less total burst damage? That's not so bad right? Right. It's not that bad, but that's not the problem. The problem is the damage per second per AP. The cool down on W was increased by 50%, does not hit multiple targets, and Q's AP ratio was reduced which as a big impact on DPS. The W effect of the W cool down increase is compounded by Q's 1.5 second reduction. So, let's compare the DPS per AP before vs now, and I'm doing it at 40% CDR since double tear should have 40% CDR. And again using 100AP so it's easier to read.

Let's start with Q, it will have a 2.7 second cool down, before that gave it 14.8 damage per second per AP(40/2.7), while now it has 11.1(30/2.7) DPS_PAP. So it was 33% higher before(14.8/11.1) = 1.33. If you hit Q every time that's a 1.2 second cool down, for 33.3 and 25 respectively.

W is a bit more complicated, it got 4 more seconds to it's base cool down, so before at 40% CDR it's CD was 4.8s(8*.6) and now it's 7.2s(12 * .6), but that's not the real number because in most situations that DPS is important you'll hit at least 1 Q reducing it's CD by 1.5 seconds, so the real CD is 3.3s and 5.7s respectively. Before you got 24.24 DPS_PAP (80/3.3), now you get 12.28 DPS_PAP (70/5.7).

E and R are the same, for my calculations I'll say E has a 6.3 second cool down( 13 *.6 - 1.5), it gives 11.9 DPS_PA. I feel it's fair to not include R in this calculation.

So before you 33.3 + 24.24 + 11.9 = 69.44 DPS_PAP if you landed 1 Q per spell.

Now you get 25 + 12.28 + 11.9 = 49.18 DPS_PAP if you landed 1 Q per spell.

I'll work with these numbers since while there are a lot of different cases depending on how many Q's you land, this is a good average case, particularly considering that E is not normally used on cool down anyway.

69.44/49.18 = 1.411, so you did 141% the damage you deal now before or, said differently you deal 70% of the DPS you did before(49.18/69.44).

And I feel I'm being very nice in my numbers, considering I'm including E at full DPS value. If you just look at the delta in power for Q and W you get:

33.3 + 24.24 = 57.54

25 + 12.28 = 37.28

37.28/57.54 = .647, so you are only dealing 65% the damage you used to on your bread and butter abilities. I should not have to explain to Riot just had large of a difference that makes, particularly in relation to killing tanks.

Lastly, a lot of other changes did get made to W, mana refund, range, does not go through people, having to apply the mark, E priority, no attack speed. The mana refund does not matter to double tear, it already has enough mana. The rest I feel it's fair to say all about balance each other out at a minimum, though from my experience playing so far I actually think the old design was more powerful.

Thus, from the perspective of value per 100 AP we get:

Pro: -70 damage to towers on W cast

Con: -20 less burst -70%ish the DPS we used to have

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Very interesting, we have 70% the damage we used to for what? Tower damage????

Let me be very clear in the point I'm making, it's NOT if AP Ezreal is more powerful or not. It's directly targeting your assertion of :

"We're avoiding putting more power into AP ratios because we're already seeing the double tear builds be pretty powerful and giving him more value for AP pushes all his builds towards double tear as the way to go, removing variety."

So the question is WHY? Without the tower damage Ezreal scales WORSE with AP than he did before, BY A LOT. That SHOULD mean double tear got a massive nerf.....right? But yet you are scared to put power into double tear, so one of two things is happening:

-You had decided double tear was already a problem before the rework

or

-You are full of shit and being lazy.

Because if you did not consider double tear a problem before, then that means it became a problem with the rework. Because the damage value of AP went down a lot, the only reason it could have become a problem was because of the tower damage. Since killing towers is very much NOT what Ezreal's core fantasy is about, while dealing spell based DPS from the back line IS what Ezreal's core fantasy is about, if tower damage is what created the problem you are just being lazy Riot, and that is not something I say lightly. Imagine if I applied for a game design position at Riot and on the interview I suggested we increase the damage Zoe's passive does to towers, and then nerf her Q damage to compensate. You'd rightfully kick me to the curb.

Thus, you MUST have considered double tear a problem before. I agree, one of the goals for the rework was obviously to let Ezreal to not be forced to build a tear first after all, and if double tear is too good then it strangles out all the hard work you did with the mana return effect. No problem Riot, we cool with that. Your proposal to increase base W damage plays right into that, AP Ezreal needs more power but you can't disrupt the balance of double tear. You need a way to increase AP Ezreal's power without increasing double tears power, and increasing the base damage on W with ranks has some nice implications on AD I'll skip. Good job Riot so far.

Nothing I've said up tell this point should actually be news to you, you are good enough designers that you should have already considered all this. But what I'm doing is isolating the problem that too much of the value Ezreal gets from AP is tied to tower damage, and your proposal to increase W's damage just makes the problem worse. You want to help AP Ezreal? Then fucking help him the right way, don't be lazy. He does not need more burst and tower damage, he needs more DPS. His burst is already really solid, his tower damage is already too high. There is a reason I suggested increasing his Q ratio, while I had considered it's impact on double tear I, not having the data you have, had made the judgement call that it was not a concern. You disagree, and I'll trust you and your access to data.

The correct way to increase AP Ezreal's power is to increase his DPS from Q, but we can't just slap more AP ratio on it like I want to do because of this pesky double tear. So if we want to increase his Q damage we need to shuffle some number in the rest of his kit, namely we need to reduce the amount of tower killing he gets from AP. The simple solution is to lower the AP ratio on W, but then we run the risk of AP Ezreal's W not feeling powerful enough, and that can be helped with increasing the base W damage. The more complicated solution is to lower the damage W does to towers, which has implications on AD.

I could keep going, but I need to eat. You are good enough designers Riot to understand what I'm saying.

Edit: After rereading this, I certainly could have been a little less aggressive in my tone near the end. I'm very passionate about AP Ezreal and just want what is best for him. In many ways I'm frustrated because I feel like I'm talking into a blank void, and while I trust someone from Riot is silently listening to my words, I cannot see what goes on behind the mist. You might have very compelling counter arguments I have not considered, but I am not privy to that information.

Edit, Venting to the void: After playing quite a few games on Ezreal and explicitly paying a lot of attention to the differences increasing W damage per rank would impact them, man(or women), that's a great choice on how to improve his current state. I'm trying to dig to the root of the question, why do I so passionately believe buffs to Q is correct? And the more digging I do the more I realize it's because I'm afraid what I love about AP Ezreal is going to die. I love AP Ezreal because he is safe, because he is a long range threat that I can kit around fights, and I love AP Ezreal because he has an incredibly high level of agency. I won or lost a game based on MY skill because I had the tools needed to deal with any situation. Sure I was not the best DPS around, but I had really good DPS. Sure I did not have the best burst around, but I had burst. Sure I was safe, but if I played too safe I would not apply the pressure I needed to.

The rework has thrown all of that into chaos, and I'm only starting to tame this new beast. Ranting on the forms has in many ways been a way to help me cope with that fear. Since reworked AP Ezreal has had a weak release the uncertainty of if the champion I've played for 7 years and of thousands of hours of my life would survive has been heavy on my mind. What I guess I fear most is not his death, I fear his death through neglect.

For his entire life AP Ezreal has lived in AD's shadow, and many times I have seen Riot make changes to AD with seemingly little respect for AP Ezreal. Adding 40 seconds to his ult without any compensation in patch 6.4 crippled his already weak wave clear for years. Only now with modern improvements to itemization and runes has he recovered. I STILL find myself annoyed when I ult a wave to push and am greeted with 40 extra seconds to wait. Or recently decreeing the damage of level 1 Q by 25 in patch 8.2 with no compensation. I still think of it Every. Single. Game. That nerf destroyed one of the only saving graces to pre-work Ezreal's lane pressure, he had an incredibly powerful level 1 and 2. I was there when Lichban's ratio was getting nerfed, and initially Ezreal was not on the list of people that would get a compensation buff from it. He was added in as seemingly an after though, like ohh ya, AP Ezreal is a thing, sorry we forgot. Ironically ignoring AP Ezreal bit ya in the ass when you made a FUCKING AP SHEEN ITEM and never considered AP Ezreal getting it. Like WTF HOW DID RUNEGLAVE NOT GET TESTED ON AP EZREAl.

And worst of all, I've been around long enough to still freshly feel the betrayal of patch 3.01, in which Ezreal's base move speed was reduced by 5, his passive duration reduced to 5 seconds from 6, and R's damage falloff was increased to 10% per target from 8%. This was not long after patch V1.0.0.154 in which his base attack speed was reduced to .625 from .665, AND not long before on patch V1.0.0.150 W lost the ability to reduce enemy champion attack speed.

In the 3.01 patch notes, this is what you said:

"These changes are a continuation of our earlier effort to carefully scale back some of Ezreal’s excess power. Although these nerfs affect AP Ezreal, right now we’re focused on stabilizing AD Ezreal. After that we’ll assess the state of AP Ezreal."

Source: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3064314

I was ecstatic. I nearly jumped from my chair when I read that. Riot had not forgotten about me! These dark times would pass! Sure AP Ezreal was struggling to survive after all the nerfs to AD, but Riot would come around. And then the next patch came, no buff. Ok ok, I guess they need some more time to make sure things have settled. And then the next patch came. And the next. And the next. AP Ezreal did not receive a buff until patch V4.4, a season later, and only because it was a compensation buff from the nerf to Lichbane, which as mentioned before he only got as an after thought. It took me an hour to find that quote again, and I remembered it almost word for word.

So Riot, you tell me:

"We'd be remiss not to mention AP Ezreal, a playstyle we want to preserve with this update. Though the new Essence Flux plays quite differently than a pass-through skillshot, it still packs a punch with some AP itemization. It also gives AP Ezreal much stronger structure damage as well as more reliability from Arcane Shift"

Sorry if I have a hard time trusting you. My brother already lost his champion, he played pre-rework Kat.

Edit: This is poorly worded, my point is reworks can and do kill play styles, my brother and I both agree new Kat is better designed than old Kat, but that does not change the fact that he does not like to play it anymore.

While the player in me still feels the scars of deeds long past, the designer in me knows you do care. The designer in me understand why AD is more important, and the designer in me most importantly understands the risks buffing AP Ezreal brings. AD Ezreal is already hard enough to keep in check, and at any moment he could flip to AP or Hybrid if it is even slightly over tuned. Just look at double tear which, for the record, I used for YEARS before it become popular(Season 3 I think). Riot, thank you. Thank you for giving AP Ezreal the attention he needs, because a truly lazy designer would have just let him die.

34 Comments

ModKnightsKemplar10/13/2018, 1:21:47 AM9 votes

Now hang on.

You're saying the problem is that AP Ezreal used to have AoE, and now he doesn't, and the reward for proccing for W on an enemy is too low. So... what if the detonation was an AoE? To tell you the truth, I thought it was when I first saw the rework, and that would have been super cool imo.

Break that idea down for me.

DerMangoJoghurt10/13/2018, 10:51:32 AM6 votes

I think buffing his Q is dangerous territory, since it's a low cooldown, low mana cost ability that allows Ezreal to harass his opponent a lot if they aren't careful with their positioning. You said the rework already improved his laning; improving it more by buffing his Q might make it overbearing. Additionally, even if it's balanced by requiring you to hit two abilities, losing more than half your health to a WQ combo doesn't feel great. A buff to his Q would only make this worse. (We don't want to enter Zoe territory, do we?)

If I understand you correctly some noticeable differences are

  • Less backline access
  • Less damage
  • No longer able to hit multiple targets
  • Overall weaker teamfights

So why not buff his R ap ratio instead? It's most useful in teamfights, won't significantly buff his laning, allows you to hit the backline, still does damage to the front line, and while losing a big chunk of your health to it still doesn't feel great, it's mitigated by it's status as ultimate ability.

ƒrostγ10/29/2018, 8:47:43 AM2 votes

Well at least he's way hotter now.

oortoomeebreesuu10/16/2018, 10:52:42 PM2 votes

I'm super upset abut AP ezreal as well, thankfully somebody else understands because everybody thought I was crazy when I said W was straight gutted. No more lane harass, no more AP ezreal.

Noxo11/2/2018, 7:20:49 PM1 votes

Can we just make his W shred through all enemies and apply marks to all of them? then his ult could nuke all of them down! :D

It shouldn't stop on the first champion hit, it should keep going to its max range before dissipating. I'd like that as a "washed up used to be ezreal one trick" from season 2. And even though it doesn't do any initial damage now, having the W apply the slow from item 3116 again would be nICE as well... so please? but maybe that's asking for too much since his q already applies on hit affects. Actually nvm forget i just asked that.

DerMangoJoghurt10/17/2018, 4:12:35 PM1 votes

Now that we know AP Ezreal is getting buffed, what do you think about the changes?

We're looking at buffing his W rank up damage as a result, given AD Ezreal maxes that last and AP Ezreal maxes it first or second. That will likely be in 8.22. We're avoiding putting more power into AP ratios because we're already seeing the double tear builds be pretty powerful and giving him more value for AP pushes all his builds towards double tear as the way to go, removing variety.

Khristophoros10/19/2018, 11:16:28 PM1 votes

I want to know what's even the point of having an AP build and an AD build? The gameplay is basically the same. Hit your skillshots for damage. Both builds can use spellblade items to make Q hit harder. The big difference for me is that AD or hybrid builds have access to more utility because Trinity Force scaling is independent of items.

Way way way back in the day there were huge differences in playstyle between the two builds. AD Ezreal had much more single target DPS (his base attack speed and passive were stronger) while AP Ezreal had significantly better AoE potential in teamfights (his ult had a higher AP ratio and less falloff) and he even had a heal scaling off AP. AP build was also way more about burst comparatively due to mechanical differences of spellblade then vs now, Lichbane being stronger, and Trinity Force being weaker. I believe the introduction of Muramana shrunk the gap in burst damage further between the two builds. Also, with this most recent remake to his W, any remaining difference in AoE damage between the builds has been reduced again.

I'm not saying those differences are totally gone, but they have been muted extremely hard since every single nerf over the years actually brought the two builds closer in terms of playstyle and most changes to his items also did that.

The two builds are so homogenized now that I seriously don't understand why somebody would care if AP or AD is the better build. If Riot isn't willing to significantly split the builds in terms of playstyle I just don't see the point.

ModKnightsKemplar10/13/2018, 1:20:14 AM1 votes

Approved.