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The change Feral Flare Needs and Deserves

NA Darklarik·4/10/2014, 10:37:25 PM·8 votes·2,530 views

So ive been messing with the new FF A lot, ill cut to the chase though.

The 2 main problems ive seen with this new item are the following:"

It Promotes AFK farming
It has a huge powercurve on activation that makes it somewhat OP given how ridicoulously cost effective it is.

Riot has a "Solution" in the PBE, which is to increase the activation cap to 30. While this MIGHT fix Problem number 2 (or it might not), it will most definitely make problem number 1, WORSE. It will just promote junglers to AFK farm even longer.

My Proposal

**1. *Make Kills and assists count toards the activation, specifically make a kill worth 3 stacks.

Why: This promotes Play making, as oppose to afk farming. If a kill is the equivalent of clearing 3 camps, trust me, its worth the hastle. I think most of us have gotten one of those junglers who just afk farms, not helping a single lane in need or that is being camped, dosent even bother with dragon, all because they want to stack. Increasing the cap would make it worse.

Feral Flare is meant to be a pick up for AA reliant champs like AMONG OTHERS of course, its not meant to be a AFK farm and remove interacting with the enemy team.** Play making should be rewarded, not punished.** A jungler shouldent think "If i go help a lane, i wont get my Flare quick enough, do i help a lane or stack my Flare?"

2. My solution for Issue number 2, is tone down some of numbers slightly.

Why: The sudden curve of power this item grants is too strong. The Points per Kill, Big Camp, and Assist should be reduced from 3 to 2, and the % damage dealt to champs reduced to 30 from 33. This will help tone down some of Feral Flare huge Power curve, its only a small damage reduction, given that this item's base stats are already cost effective, not counting the free ward, the Gold income increase, and the passive heal and on hit damage, its not really a huge nerf.

Aditional Q&A fix up: Right now, the tooltip of this item read 33% Damage to champions, i would like if the tooltip actually listed the exact numbers dealt.

Discuss. Riot Plz respondas.

37 Comments

RiotJag4/11/2014, 6:26:30 PM9 votes

The purpose of Feral Flare is to offer an item choice optimized for junglers intending to farm early game, and have more carry potential later game. As it stands, the type of carry junglers whose jungle itemization options were lacking are auto-attack centric, so this item fills that niche. But the core intent of the item is to trade away some early game influence on the rest of the map and commit to your own jungle, with the reward being a powerful mid/late-game power spike when Feral Flare transforms. The problem with it on live is that the early-game trade off is low (Wriggle's has solid combat stats for fairly low cost), and the power spike (when the item finishes stacking) happens too quickly. Increasing Wriggle's cost and increasing the required amount of stacks addresses both of these issues.

As to your suggestion, kills and assists cannot aid in stacking the item when it is still in Wriggle's form because that would defeat the core purpose of the tradeoff (i.e. you're required to farm your jungle instead of interacting with lanes). They do contribute to increasing the damage of Feral Flare after it's completed because you've already made sufficient investment into your jungle at that point.

Angry Monster4/11/2014, 11:02:50 AM7 votes

I like the idea of the stacks for kills. At the 30 stack requirement, but i would say 3 is to high.

But i am not a fan of nerfing the stats. The base stats are not that great. A new item 3160 only does 33 magic damage to champs. It is supposed to be the farm weapon and u need to farm to make it good.

I feel people in lanes are not adapting to non gank junglers. Which is funny cause people were bitching that they had to much influence in s3.

With carry junglers Nocturne , MasterYi , ect coming back people need to adapt. You are asking for more ganks but the junglers are not going to want to give u the kills when they do.

So user beware of this request.

Cosmic Warper4/11/2014, 2:48:00 AM5 votes

I agree with both points. Having an item for afk farming is ridiculous since nearly every game i go to either my jungler or the enemy jungler is missing until the 20 minute mark, and nothing gets done because of it. Junglers are supposed to create pressure around the map and create opportunities for advantage, something that the feral flare denies when someone builds it. It's not worth the power curve, no matter how ridiculous it is. Definitely +1 ing this and riot should really see this post and consider reverting the 30 monster kill requirement nerf.

Doctor Eggman4/11/2014, 6:09:52 PM3 votes

I feel like the pre-transform stats are underwhelming for ganking. You almost have to farm it hard to be effective with that item. While getting 3 stacks on kills/assist would be nice, someone like Master Yi is going to need A LOT of help to still make that worth coming out of the jungle. I feel like only FF-Junglers with strong ganking potential and decent CC(looking at you nocturne) are going to be able to really take advantage of kill/assist stacks. In my opinion, stacks should be lowered and in exchange for lower base damage on passive. This gets you out of jungle faster and allows you to confidently gank sooner.

For example. 20 stack transform but it starts off with 80 bonus damage. This way by the time you have 5 stacks you're back to being close to normal FF damage at 25 stacks. So you slightly nerf it(less damage at 25 overall stacks) but make it more useful early on.

ChaosThief4/11/2014, 2:17:24 PM2 votes

It seems like a nice idea, but you forgot that flare gets stacks from champions once earned. And by then, you have plenty of items.

The jungler will wait a bit for massive power ganks. I think it's worth.

Sire Hippington4/11/2014, 12:44:11 PM2 votes

I totally agree that kills and assists should already grant stacks for Wrigles, and i think the stack gain should be changed, 4stacks for kills, baron and dragon, 3 stacks for assists, 2 stacks for big creeps and 25% of that for the heal. (with stacks i mean dmg vs creeps, still 33% of that vs champs, currently FF grants 3 for kills/assists/creeps)

ILoveTiramisu4/11/2014, 2:35:42 PM1 votes

I dont think it need nerfs. That item is OP but you need so much time for make it strong. So maybe a total change but no need nerf.

ThetaBarrier4/11/2014, 7:23:24 PM1 votes

That is exactly what i was thinking of!

If you AFK farm for a fast feral flare, you would hit 25 big minion stacks at 12 to 17 minutes, That is about 15 minutes of absolute zero jungle presence/support for laners which really sucks.

Making assists/kills count as X amount of stacks would fix that problem completely by encouraging players to create a healthy mix of farming and ganking (considering that the X amount of stacks gained by assists would make ganking here and there more efficient than afk farming to get feral flare)

Terchio4/16/2014, 9:11:01 PM1 votes

Didn't anybody notice that its on-hit proc is less than Wit's End, which isn't all that useful for power? I mean, with a slight increase on cost, you get basically MR instead of AD, don't need to charge it a bit, and it drops enemy MR as you attack, while beefing that MR even more. And I'd hardly call Wit's End OP... The Feral Flare proc needs 25 large monster kills to obtain, plus another 9. That's almost 6 full jungle clears, Ancient Golem and Lizard included, and all after first chucking out 1650 gold for the initial Wriggle's in the first place... that's also right around 100 monster kills, without including any of the monster kills required to obtain Wriggle's, and if you haven't counted your endgame scores, 100 monster kills isn't a number you reach every game. It's simply not that bad, especially since your team should be farming off of this guy's team, since he's so focused in his own woods.

And about this heal... That might be the only OP part of this item if you really farm the crap outta it, as you may just obtain crazy heal off of it. However, the solitude and game-length required to pull that off is OP as well, so I think it balances pretty good. If you are facing a jungler with a faceroll value on his Feral Flare, you probably made this game last way too long by not finishing them off. If you are in a stalemate that late in the game, that means that if the jungler who got the Feral Flare had instead gotten one of the early-game power jungle items, he would have simply facerolled you early in the match, methinks. Feral Flare is just way too long a charge to validate this even matchup not having a negative early-game effect on the holder.

NA Darklarik4/24/2014, 11:45:15 AM1 votes

LOL the irony. Latest Patch Forecast says: "League of Legends team dynamics in general lead to this item having distinctly anti-teamwork and anti-play patterns, as junglers will feel compelled to ignore their lanes for 10-15 minutes so they can farm up their stacks, while their laners will pay the price for his less team-oriented choices. While we created Feral Flare to be a more 'selfish' jungle item, its current optimal use is to be completely noninteractive on the map. The future of this item may reduce some of the combat stats it gives or reduce the value of the Maim proc at all evolutions. In exchange, we're hoping to buff teamfight-oriented stacks that contribute to the progress of Feral Flare" - http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/live-gameplay/POLbQ0Nl-47-patch-forecast

Called it. Riot anything to say?