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[Analysis] Let's Talk about Diana (@gypsylord)

Hyrum Graff·6/19/2014, 4:02:04 PM·5 votes·1,085 views

For a tl;dr of suggested changes, skip to "Issues to Tackle (and Solutions)" and read the

quoted text.

###First, some context for people who didn't see the GD discussion:

Here were gypsylord (a red)'s thoughts on Diana (note: they're his personal thoughts, not Riot's official stance):

Hrrmmmm...

I have some thoughts on Diana. Wondering what you guys think. Not saying any of this will actually happen. Just spitballing.

Hypothesis: Diana is NOT an Assassin. She is an "agile fighter" with a vacuum.

My opinion is that if we continue to sell Diana as "The tanky assassin with no outs." She's never going to be balanced. If she's ahead she just crushes you with no recourse and if she's behind she just dies every fight because she can't get out. On top of that she's always going to be fighting with Akali, Fizz, and the like for viability because we've had to nerf her "vacuum" out of the game to make her assassin pattern more manageable.

To me, the most unique thing about Diana is her vacuum (if we were to make it work like one). That's something that she can bring to the team that no one else in her class has. She could be this fighter who's focused, not on one-shotting squishies, but on diving into the enemy team and knocking them all together, setting up for things like Rumble and J4 ults.

Basically I'd want to shift power out of her burst pattern and put it into her Vacuum and sustained damage (passive)

Proposed change list:

  • Stats - Increase Base AS
  • P - Greatly increase base damage and AP ratio
  • Q - Decrease AP ratio
  • W - Unchanged
  • E - Turn into an actual vacuum (increase pull distance and radius)
  • R - Remove Damage (Lowers burst and incentivizes using for movement, no more double tapping a guy 2 feet from you to secure a kill)

Thoughts? Is something like this what you'd want as a Diana player? Is removing the assassination pattern a big no-no? Is putting another vacuum into League super unhealthy?

###Diana What defines the scorn of the moon?

Hypothesis: Diana is so unique that almost everything in her kit is a defining feature.

  • Her passive
  • The unique shape of her q
  • Her vacuum
  • Her R reset, which requires her R (arguably less unique because of nid, post-rework)
  • Her playstyle as an "all-in, do or die" champion (her w, while not defining, helps enforce this playstyle)

There's one feature, though, that I think defines Diana more than anything else:

  • The variety of builds and playstyles available to her

If you take a look at the GD thread, and the original Diana discussion, you'll notice immediately that people like her for all different reasons. Some people like being the assassin with no outs. Others like being a dps bruiser. Hell, I even know someone who likes building her FULL tank, with rylais and frozen mallet, and being the champ who distracts/locks down the enemy carries.

I have more analysis to make here, if you all are interested, but I think the more interesting thing is what to actually do about Diana, so I'll just leave it at this:

####The best Diana rework, will preserve her ability to build for a variety of playstyles.

That's a daunting task. Let's take a closer look:

##item 3157 item 3089 item 3128 Assassin Diana item 3020 item 3100 item 3135

Objectives: Pop a carry, then clean up.
Playstyle: Wait in the wings until a teamfight breaks out, then dive in on the enemy team's back lines.
Weakness: Squishy. Any CC and you're dead. Engage before your team and you're dead.

##item 3091 item 3115 item 3157 Bruiser Diana item 3111 item 3116 item 3143

Objectives: Engage, get the enemy grouped up so your team can do a wombo combo, do dps while being tanky
Playstyle: q-r-e-w to engage, zhonya to buy time for follow-up, auto attack a lot, so your passive does good aoe damage to all those enemies you just got grouped up.
Weakness: If you engage, you'll be tanky, but not tanky enough to survive without follow-up from your team. While your aoe dps is respectable, your burst is much lower.

##item 3075 item 3102 item 3110 Full Tank Diana? item 3111 item 3116 item 3143

Objectives: Engage, get the enemy grouped up so your team can do a wombo combo, stick to the enemy carry, tank lots of damage Playstyle: q-r-e-w to engage, repeatedly q-r to the enemy carries Weakness: You do very little damage, and have less CC than most tanks.

###Issues to Tackle (and Solutions)

  1. "How do we make Diana tanky when she builds tanky, but squishy when she builds AP, given that an aggressive shield is a really good way of enforcing her 'all in' playstyle?"
    Solution: Rework Diana's W.

Diana's original shield refresh no longer scales with AP. Instead, it scales with number of enemy champions damaged. This scaling gets weaker as Diana builds more AP.

This means that Bruiser or Tank Diana can jump into the middle of the enemy team and pop her w to tank a huge amount of damage. But if AP Diana did the same thing, her shield would not be as significant, so she'd get popped anyway. It also has the side benefit of reducing AP Diana's feast-or-famine aspect: if she's ahead, she's squishier; if she's behind, she's tankier.

  1. "How do we give Assassin Diana good burst and poor dps, but give bruiser diana bad burst and good dps?"
    Solution: Number tweaks across her kit

Passive: Better bases, worse scaling, remove bonus AS and add it to Diana's base AS
R: Hit the base damage really hard, but give it very good scaling - this will do more damage than on live, on glass cannon diana Q: Also nerf the base and increase the scaling, but not as intensely as R; this ability should end up doing about the same amount of damage on glass cannon diana as live. W: This will probably just recieve straight-up damage nerfs. You should take it for the shield (this is your fallback pattern), not the damage.

This means that AS Diana doesn't need much AP to do DPS (so she can afford to build tankier), but she won't have very much burst - her skills will be used primarily to stick to her target. With this build, though, she's probably more interested in attacking groups of people to really make use of that passive, than sticking to carries. This complements what she wants to do with w and e.

Putting more of diana's lategame damage in her ult also forces her to make a choice between mobility and burst: putting that damage in q or w would lead to the Nidalee problem, where the answer to "Should I chuck my q out for massive damage?" Is always "yes."

  1. "Diana's damage is unloaded really quickly, and is really hard to dodge - if we buff her total damage as an assassin, how do we ensure that that she can't assassinate a carry who is being properly protected by their team?"
    Solution: This is a numbers thing.

Basically, Diana's numbers need to be tweaked so that a qwerr (+ lich bane) combo deals 80-90% of a carry's hp, but not more. The same combo, plus Diana's passive, should deal 100% of their hp.

In a teamfight situation, as a squishy assassin with no escape and no way to hide, if you don't kill the carry in a single combo, you will get CC'd and bursted down. As this iteration of Diana, it's near impossible to get your passive off on an enemy carry, or to get in a second spell rotation before you get CC'd, unless you charged it first. If you charged it first, the enemy can see that, and stay out of range until it runs out. Note: some of you may try to argue that it's easy enough to q-r to a different enemy, then R to the enemy carry for the passive proc. But then you're wasting damage on someone who's not the carry, and you need all your damage to kill the carry.

This means that there's a window of opportunity for the enemy team to CC and burst you between when you make your first rotation and when you get your passive off. Additionally, this means that if you do get the carry from full hp, you're still going to die afterwards, since you needed your second R to kill the carry. On the other hand, if you wait a little, to clean up, you'll be able to kill a half hp carry with only 1 R, allowing you to escape, or move on to another target.

Anyway, That's a long post - I hope that the formatting makes it easier to get through.

Thoughts? I'll be iterating on this design as people point out flaws with my current ideas.

Cheers,
Hyrum Graff

######@Vesh; @BaconHawk, good enough for a Red Hug or a PotD? Shameless self-promotion OP ;)

P.S. I also think it'd be really cool for Diana's E to have a pull-push effect on it, maybe with a larger push radius per enemy hit with the pull, because I can imagine Diana making really cool plays with it (qrew to group them, shield and damage, then e-r to scatter them and escape). However, we'd need to evaluate new Diana's balance before playing around with this one.

27 Comments

Mandarr6/19/2014, 4:25:10 PM1 votes

I honestly don't know how it should be approached, I like to play all three of these variants to be honest. Perhaps having this many choices may be a bad thing.

DarckusMonsterz6/19/2014, 8:56:25 PM1 votes

leave my diana alone plz!!!!sorry but i think its not a good idea...

Stancealot6/20/2014, 7:51:27 AM1 votes

I personally play Diana in more of an assassin role. For me I think the one thing though that makes her unique is her e. The ability to vacuum things in makes her feel unique to me. But reading this post really opened my eyes on what this champion is stuck in right now. There aren't many options to balance her current kit as it is. I do believe that having lower base damages and higher scaling does help with the separation between the multiple forms of Diana and maybe help preserve her character. I know what I am about to say sounds unbalanced but when I look at Diana and her champion the thing I want from her is the ability to stick to a target until it is dead, where escape seems futile if she lands her q. Obviously this would create volatile gameplay but I feel like that is what her niche is. Her Q is so unique and cool I feel like it should really be an ability that is difficult to get off and rewarding if you do. That is just my 2 cents and maybe someone may agree with me. Whatever happens though I really do hope that whatever happens to Diana she still feels like herself, she is in my opinion the coolest champion in the game and the only thing I wish for her is to fleshed out and a balance-able champion. Praise the moon!

Runkata6/21/2014, 11:02:12 AM1 votes

I am not hiding Diana is one of my 2-3 fav. champs, and I always lacked on her this "target with Q as many enemy champs", jump around them dealing let's say 1.5*(live R dmg x 1.5, not as 2 R's, but something between). Why would she have double R on single enemy, when it gives a little counterplay, enemy flashes, and u jump on him second time. Also if it would be 150% dmg, not 200% (2 jumps), it wouldn't be so punishing for enemy, right? It also wouldn't proc Lich's Bane dmg twice and skill overall would be stronger, but in teamfights, not 1;1 duels. Skilled Diana would hit 4-5 champs with Q and start jumping on them dealing dmg to each one of them. The R could become current E (then we need to lower the dmg, or give some kind of tradeoff, stacks like on Akali's ult? 2-3 for example and hitting 3rd AA (passive proc) would give instant stack renewal, so she could jump on 3 enemies, get passive, and jump once again. It's all to balance, just giving the concept) The current "vacuum" E would become an ult, much stronger slow, and bigger range, so it would help her AA and get E stack from procing passive with autoattacks and in fact jump on another enemy (4th-5th). It would be an indirect ult, coz it wouldn't deal dmg like it doesnt do it now when on E slot, but would help her "renewed" kit. My idea is all based around staying in combat, being this ap bruiser you mentioned she should be and also keeping in mind the idea behind her kit as autoattacking centered and passive-procing centered. Also this would be a great change to her as her role in teamfight, she could harm all enemies if she targeted em all with Q, and ofc autoattacked em to proc 2 passives, also the stronger/bigger vacuum on ult would be a profit to team. I have more ideas regarding her, but not only her. I'll be glad to be of help. B'regards :)

Yuna Hayashi6/23/2014, 9:22:52 PM1 votes

Diana is a goddess with her bow and arrows. AS you consider removing her assassin play style, I think we can make her a range champion. you can keep her "vacuum" but i think what makes Diana unique is her Q. I think Diana's burst needs to be increased, without 2 ults she can hardly take out other team's carry.

Sire Hippington6/23/2014, 11:31:56 PM1 votes

I'd also shift damge from her Q and most of all R onto her AAs+Passive, and a more powerfull E would be awsom, but she's need a good buff to her shield to realy make use of her AAs and initiate with her E, as currently she doesn't life to long if she trys to stay in the fight.
As most Fighters tend to be either to strong 1v1 or to weak in a clash, i'd increase her shield based on the number of nearby enemys(like Jarvans W).
I'd also change her ult a bit, like adding a small as+ms steroid or reduce the base cd and remove manacosts to compensate removing the damage, as it wouldn't feel 'Ultimate' enough as just a mobillity tool i think, and Diana needs to much mana in longer fights, wich would be the focus with such changes.

Loftus6/25/2014, 3:56:57 PM1 votes

I have to admit, at first when reading through your original post, I got pretty frustrated with how these changes would leave assassin Diana (I do enjoy a bruiser jungle Diana game here and there, but assassin Diana mid is one of the most enjoyable experiences in the game, in my opinion). As I have read through your comments, I have been put greatly at ease. I read the "general trends" you saw and I was especially glad you mentioned (to quote): "Assassin pattern would be missed... Maybe switch R and E?... If she doesn't just kill a guy how does she survive in a fight?"

I really like the changes you were discussing with the scaling/base dmg changes on the passive, q, and r and the w changes have slowly grown on me (I understand that AP-heavy Diana has to be weaker shield-wise as to not easily 1v2, 2v3, or even maybe 1v3).

I was wondering how an E/R switch would look... I was very interested in the post you wrote somewhere else about a push/pull E. I was wondering how large of a push/pull it would be and what the CD would look like. It would be very nice on Diana to be able to dive with q,w,r and then use the e to push them away for an easier get-away (although I appreciate what you were saying about the "martydom" aspect of Diana). However, even though the 'vacuum' effect is very unique to Diana, to add a push may make it a lot more like an Orianna ult or Janna ult.

I do have to agree with some comment I read about this making assassin style Diana far more feast or famine. While you did mention that if an assassin-esque Diana flopped early-mid game, he/she could start building as a bruiser. However it would be nice if there was a stronger way that if you were behind as assassin Diana, you could come back. It is nice being able to fall back onto a bruiser build, however in team select, you could have chosen Diana as an assassin for the sake of team comp, a team comp where bruiser Diana would not have fit nicely. On another note about assassin Diana, I was interested to see that you considered Lich Bane to be a core item on this form of Diana. While it was very strong pre-nerf, post-nerf I see that often Diana players only get lich bane on Diana if the enemy has a hyper-carry that needs to die. While this does make Diana far more of an assassin, I think a GREAT and important part of her assassin identity is to be able to burst a champ with her combo, but have a teeny bit of beef as to stick around for a good few AAs and maybe even a second combo. I find that having a defensive item instead of lich bane gives assassin Diana this identity.

Anyways I wasn't too surprised to see that Diana was on the table for a possible rework, even though I am mostly happy with where she is and her identity. I am very excited by some of the changes you have proposed, however I do hope you put very high emphasis on preserving (not that you have not already put emphasis on this) her assassin-type build and play style currently in place. Thanks Graff and gypsylord for working on this! I wish you the best of luck and hope you treat Diana well, so-to-speak.