A Look at Sejuani

FyshinaTux·Jul 28, 2014·5 votes·2,442 views

So, I love Sejuani. Ever since I played my first game on her in the jungle, I've loved her. Her kit is amazing, she gets tanky and dives in (which I LOVE doing <3) and just CC's away. I'm still waiting, however, to see her in pro play. She seems like an amazing champion and she, arguably, has one of the best teamfight ults in the game. So, why isn't she played more?

LCS players as well as other professional players, only really play the best champions at any given time, and they obviously work around specific team compositions that they come up with for a key strategy that they want to play. The issue is, that I've seen so many team comps in professional play that would have greatly benefit from having Sejuani in the jungle; so why isn't she?

I took a look at her base stats as compared to other similar junglers (Nautilus, Mao'Kai, Skarner, Malphite) who are all known for being tanks and she has either "on par" or better for her health, armor, magic resist, and move speed. So I checked her AD stat, and it was actually better than all of them except Mao'Kai, I think he was the only one with a higher base stat. As for the scaling stats? Same story, either on par or better. So what is it? What does Sejuani need to get into the spotlight?

Before we go on, I think this would be a great place to mention that I feel like Sejuani is in a good place at the moment, she's not OP, she's not horribly UP, I just think she needs a bit of a tweak to make her a little higher on the priority list for junglers, or at least a consideration for pro play. In keeping with Riot's belief of "playing to the strong suit" while "bringing out the weakness", I've come up with some ideas.

First idea? Cooldowns. I feel like her Q could use dropping a second across all CD's, starting at 14 seconds, and scaling down to 10 at max level (14/13/12/11/10).

Her W feels just about right, though I think it could use some adjusting, have it start higher but end lower on its cooldown scaling. Something like 12/10.5/9/7.5/6 would be nice, but again, it doesn't seem like it's really needed.

and her E being a static 11 second CD seems a bit much as well, dropping the CD to a static 10 seconds would feel a bit better. I honestly think this might still be a little high, and I wouldn't suggest going below 8 or 9 seconds, but 11 seconds does seem a bit much (and a bit odd? o_O).

As for her Ult, I LOVE it. But sometimes I'm completely shocked when I have it back up already based on what it does, I would suggest changing the CD's to something more like 150/135/120. I know that it's already on a fairly long CD, but in all honesty, if you really need a Sejuani ult more than once every 2 minutes, you're probably not teamfighting properly, or you're teamfighting too much. Just my thoughts.

Alternatively, my other idea is boosting her damage JUST a smidge.

I'm, quite frankly, shocked at how little her Q actually does, considering it has % max health damage associated with it. It seriously hits like a [far worse in fact] wet noodle, for something that has % health attached. I'd possibly consider removing the max health and increase base/scaling accordingly in order to boost the damage a touch. (I'd also say her Q needs a bit of a mana cost reduction, not MUCH, but a bit, maybe starting at 70 and scaling to 90?)

Her W seems a bit lackluster, I'm a huge fan of things that scale really well into the late game, but her W seems kind of lackluster, and I would say tweaking the "bonus health" damage from it to "max health" damage would be just about perfect, it would only effectively add around 250ish damage to the full duration at level 18. The only problem I could see with this change though, would be that she would probably bring too much of the combination of damage and CC to her ganks both pre-6 and post-6. Something to think about though as her W DOES feel pretty lackluster atm.

And on to her E... pretty much perfect feeling in my opinion, does decent enough burst damage with its base stats, only real thoughts on this would be the CD reduction.

TL;DR Sejuani needs some love.

DISCLAIMER

I AM IN NO WAY SAYING SEJUANI SHOULD BE THE "PRIORITY" FOR RIOT, I KNOW THERE ARE OTHER CHAMPIONS IN MORE DIRE NEED OF CHANGES THAN SEJUANI! I simply wanted to share my thoughts on the potential balance concerns that I have with her.

Thoughts?

27 Comments

MasterVidallisJul 28, 20142 votes

Actually I think sej is in a good place all around the ONE THING that would be helpful for her to make her really competitive is lowering the CD on her Q. She is weak early game in the jungle and is too easy to counter jungle with a duelist, the Q is her escape and also her only way of getting on top of targets given her low movement speed and the fact her E slow requires her to have hit the target in the first place. A lower CD on the Q makes it easier for her to escape invades and gives her a bit more mobility in team fights. I'd shave off 2 sec CD from it and leave everything else about her the same and I think that would be enough to make her truly competitive.

FyshinaTuxJul 28, 2014

I completey agree, she is in a good place overall, but I don't think the Q CD is enough, it would be REALLY nice for sure, but I don't think that alone would get her to being a viable Pro pick.

MasterVidallisJul 28, 20141 votes

Possibly, another things that could be good on her is to make her W do more dmg at early levels then now while retaining the same dmg late game (which is fine). This would help her with her early game clear times which she could use a boost on, it's not that they're that slow but it's that her complete lack of sustain means even somewhat slow is enough to maker her early game ganking capability pretty limited as she has to guzzle down her pots pretty fast to get through the jungle.

Phoenix Kotori Jul 28, 20141 votes

Possibly, another things that could be good on her is to make her W do more dmg at early levels then now while retaining the same dmg late game (which is fine).

You see I don't see this as an issue, cause hp/seals (or even max hp% sometimes) and 2 armor quints you get much better clears on her imo, but people are too locked into their mindset of **must **use meta armor seals. I'd much rather the Q CD drop a bit. As it is pretty long

FyshinaTuxJul 28, 2014

Possibly, another things that could be good on her is to make her W do more dmg at early levels then now while retaining the same dmg late game (which is fine).

You see I don't see this as an issue, cause hp/seals (or even max hp% sometimes) and 2 armor quints you get much better clears on her imo, but people are too locked into their mindset of **must **use meta armor seals. I'd much rather the Q CD drop a bit. As it is pretty long

The argument could be made however, that Health seals would give 72 health, which is 7.2 additional damage over the duration of her W, arguably... that's not going to affect clear time by a large enough margin to mean anything, it is literally the difference of 10 pixels distance when arriving to top lane for your gank (or mid, or bot, wherever you happen to be going).

As for the "meta" of armor seals, since the Runes changes I've been messing around a bit, and I find that armor seals feel a bit lackluster now, I haven't settled on anything that I prefer more just yet, so I still use them, but I feel like the "armor seals meta" is going to shift, sooner rather than later.

XxxLumberJackxxXJul 28, 20142 votes

Big Fat LP tried sejuani a few times and just never got anything super good to happen on her. Mostly he missed her ultimate.

The reason noone else has tried her is she is she has 4 abilities that all need to take priority to level for various reasons (clear speed, burst, cc, etcetc) as all of her abilities are relatively awful as a 1 point wonder. She needs something that works really well at 1 level. She also has the worst mana problems of any jungler. Amumu and Karthus both jungle with more mana than her on the first clear.

Q-Really good and scales well. Pretty fine as is but it must be leveled first for burst and mobility. With just one point Sejuani really suffers in teamfights. W-It's nice to have an AA reset but the animations could be sped up a bit, maybe the damage condensed into a narrower timeframe. It does almost nothing with just one point except help her clear speed a little. E-The burst when leveling is nice, it's mana costs are HUGE and the slow scaling could be better. It's awful at just one point. R-It's awesome. Only problem is Leona* has the same ultimate that can't be blocked*... So basically she has amumu's ultimate that can be facetanked by the frontline and completely miss the backline. However unlike amumu (and like leona) it can be used to disengage very well. I also think that something happened to her when she got her bear cavalry skin that made the hitbox buggy. Support keeps telling me I'm wrong though...

Lord Graves IIIJul 29, 20141 votes

Leona ult is more easily dodged than sej ult. Sejuani deals more damage than leona. Sejuani has more crowd control than amumu, deals comparable damage, and doesn't need to close to stun the whole team.

That said Leona doesn't need money to function, and Amumu is way more durable than sej.

Oh, sej also ganks harder than amumu. Which is saying something because amumu is a great ganker.

Phoenix Kotori Jul 29, 20141 votes

Yea but Amumu clears much better due to his spammy skill and one of skills being a toggle.

Knight SoIaire Jul 28, 20141 votes

jungle tanks arent picked cause they can counterjungled i personaly cried a tear for nautilus which i like, but his cc goes unnoticed in the wave of bruisers who compete cc, dmg and tankyness to the fight at the same time being strong in all 3 stages of the game

jungle tanks are like supports , they work good with others but dont compete much when alone, on the other hand bruisers can do everything

FyshinaTuxJul 28, 2014

Then why not remove all CC from bruisers? Seems like a logical move, they're tanky, they do damage, why give them CC to boot?

Either way, that's neither here nor there in terms of this conversation, this conversation is about Sejuani.

There are a plethora of (2 or 3) tanky junglers played at the pro level, in pro matches, so why are some (in this case Sejuani <3) left out?

Knight SoIaire Jul 28, 20141 votes

i dont watch competetive scene but i suppose that you are speaking about jarwan and maokai and i dont know who else well let me say this, both of them are much harder to duel than sejuani thats the problem tank junglers face a bruisers walks into the jungle and is usualy able to kill such a tank or atleast zone him out of his jungle

why not remove cc from bruisers? cause they dont have much of cc its not like bruisers carry a lot of stuff but they are rather very wersatile at what they can do they can help to lock and kill enemy carry, they can peel , they can initiate, they can burst, they can sustain themselves while tank is locked to being a tanky support champ and nothing besides that oh and dont forget that adc's are a counter to tanks while every game has an adc not every game needs to have a full tank

FyshinaTuxJul 28, 2014

You say that bruisers can lock down and peel... Both of those actions require CC. Remove it. They can keep their damage and tankiness (though I feel like both should be reduced in lieu of getting both), but they shouldn't have ANY manner of CC.

If you look at the roles on a whole, you have Marksman that scale really well with damage but are RIDICULOUSLY squishy, Mages and Assassins that are the same way, Tanks that have high base damage and scale well with being tanky (due to high base damage), supports that... well... support?, and bruisers that get way too much damage for the tankiness they get (or way too much tankiness for the damage they get.... one or the other...).

Add to that the CC that some (most?) bruisers have, and bruisers are clearly the best choice overall, the issue, is that 99% of bruisers are melee, and range serves an extremely important role in League.

Knight SoIaire Jul 28, 20141 votes

bruisers dont have too much of anything ,they are 100% fine its the tanks that suck why is that? cause we have support already on bot lane, we dont need another in jungle

also othe main reason for tanks being popular in s3 was guess what, their lack of gold reliance (you dont need gold to cc) now as the jungle provides gold the champs who use those items are taking their place cause it makes sence, tanks dont offer so much but in s3 it was till more profitable to have one of those than a duo top (gold wise)

even if we will nerf bruisers cc as you already stated we will prolly get autoatackers in jungle (yi, udyr, ), mages in jungle, adc's and assasins in jungle before ppl will go to tanks cause they dont offer much compared to others, and they never did, while nobody wants this gold to go to waste

i suppose that we will get those tank reworks soon or some items that will have to bring that role back to viability, cause in teambuilder you can already read that tanks offer only cc just like supports who also bring some utility for their team

Phoenix Kotori Jul 28, 20141 votes

I personally suspect we'll be seeing some of the tanky junglers (hopefully Sejuani ) in playoffs/worlds this year. since riot plans to reduce aggro jungler power a bit, which aggro junglers are the only **real **issue to stop champions like her from being an good pick at all. Since she is vulnerable during her first clear in the jungle.

With the item 3205 and item 3207 as they are now, I don't feel she really needs much if any changes, as she's in a fairly good spot when ignoring the aggro jungler issue.

FyshinaTuxJul 28, 2014

Honestly, I usually do just fine with her WITHOUT item 3205 or item 3207 on her... but then, I DO build a sightstone, and I can't stand having the wasted ward from QQ or SotAG sitting in my inventory...

Sire HippingtonJul 28, 20141 votes

I think Seju got just 3 major problems:

tanky jungler(mao, malph and co share this): she get bulied around in the jungle to easy by bruisers like lee or elise. This eithern needs some buffing for all tanky junglers, or system changes like buffs for SotaG(for ur J4+mao argument: i only saw mao top so far, and J4 is a tank/bruiser hybrid and a ad-champ, beeing ad leads to an atomated adwantage in the jungle as they profit from ad+as runes wich increses the dps by a great amount)

Her Q cd and most of all manacosts, 80 mana compared to what it does is to much.

Her animations: she just feels incredible clunky for me, her AAs are way to slow and also her skills are rather clunky. easpecially the Q into AA+W combo should be way faster(like gragas E into W). It happens way to often to me that enemys walk out of my AA range after Q befor i finish my animation, wich ends with my AA beeing canceld. Speeding up that combo would be the most important thing for me.

Besides that, i'd like to see some small slow(like 7-15%) back on her frost-passive. the old 10% wasn'T much, but it helped alot at sticking to targets and keeping them in ur W. Without that slow + the clunky animation, i find it pretty hard to stick to anybody for longer than the E duration, wich probably is the main reason why i don'T like seju since the rework, as old seju was great at sticking.

FyshinaTuxJul 28, 2014

For the sticking issue, I've tried (not recently) the Boots of Swiftness and that seems to work great, Frozen Mallet is another tanky option that also increases your damage a smidge and allows you to "stick".

As for her animations, I agree they feel a bit slow, but there's very little down time between the animation as opposed to other champions, so if you're just sitting there auto'ing the blue buff, you see a constant animation of attacks (Nautilus is the same way). So I do like that, the animation isn't all that important in all honesty, the attack will do damage when the attack does damage, regardless of animation speed.

I do feel like stopping when you cast E is a bit much... particularly in an instant where you're being chased, one more auto would kill you, and you can't E because they'll get close enough to auto, but if you don't E they'll catch up and get the auto anyway... >.>

I don't know, you gave me a couple thoughts though, I'll have to think about some things that may be added to my list of thoughts on her.

Sire HippingtonJul 28, 20141 votes

Ur not right about animations, animations do matter alot. attack and cast animation have a windup and a backswing part, and a damage/cast point in between the two parts. The timeframe between two damage-points for AAs is determined by ur Attackspeed, so with higher AS the speed of the windup and backswing animation gets faster to fit in the lower timeframe between the attacks. unless u do animationcanceling(wichdoesn'T wotk on all skills, sejus Q is one there it doesn't work), u have to wait the backswing animation till u can do anythin else. Sejus Q got an awfull long backswing aniation that can't becancled and therefor kinda ccs u for aslong as ur knockback ccs ur enemy. at the same time, her AAs, especially the W one, have a long windup, so after the attack order there is quite some time till she reaches the damagepoint, and if her target moves to far away from her befor she reaches the damagepoint of the animation, she'll cancle it. a shorter backsing part or a possibility of animationcanceling on her Q would help alot, and a faster windup on her AAs wouldn'T be that bad either.

Alot other tanks share that problem, wich makes lasthitting more dificult, and sometimes gives problems on trigering AA-bound effeckts. I often see Maos run around with their passive up in clashes all day cause they can't use it. Their targets either move away during the windup or mao gets cced befor he reaches the damagepoint, denying his passive heal, and mao is one of the faster attacking tanks. With naut and his passive it'S also painfull, especially if u face malph or another AS-slow, as it also slows down ur animations. But no other tanks shoares at the same time such a backswing on theri main engage move(even though nautis Q beeing close to that)

and for the stickiness,building items is A) not aviable from beginning as u need to farm gold B) sets u back on other more needed items C) is not unique to her kit, so no part of her identity, and stickingpower belongs for me to sejus identity wich kinda got lost with the rework some time ago.

p.s, animations are a huge reason why i prefer lol over dota, as lol has generally faster animations, seju would actually be fast animated if compared to any dota hero

FyshinaTuxJul 28, 20141 votes

Attack windup, and attack wind-down. Damage hits in the middle. How fast it is, is based off your attack speed.

That makes animation seem like it's completely negligible in the overall aspect of damage out... ;)

Sire HippingtonJul 28, 20141 votes

in a scenario where u don't get interupted during windup and thus missing the damagepoint, or where using a skill interfers with ur abillity to AA, in such an scenario it wouldn'T impact the damage. Just that u rarly have that scenario if fighting vs other champions, as they have cc, escapeskills and often enough the urge to walk away from u. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qO715z_OKk watch this video to see what difference canceling the backswing can make.

ChickenWrapJul 28, 20141 votes

Try playing her as an AP top or mid and max Q first, only putting a point into W when you have nothing else to spend your points in. Build Dorans ring x2 > Haunting Guise+Sorc shoes > DFG > Other AP items and tell me if you still think she needs changes.

FyshinaTuxJul 28, 2014

Yea, I prefer to play her tanky, whether I'm doing AP Off-tank top lane, or tank jungling.

Her AP burst can be hilarious yes, but if she doesn't insta-gib her target, she's pretty well dead as a squishy. Simply missing your Q can be enough to make you a splattermark on the bottom of someone's shoe.

ChickenWrapJul 28, 20141 votes

While true, just her R+E alone in a teamfight can take off half of the entire enemy team's health. If there were changes made to her skills like this her AP ratios would take hits, and that's not something AP Sej players want to see. Especially since a tank Sej can easily hit 30%+ CDR to lower her spell cooldowns significantly.

LittleBlastJul 29, 20141 votes

I love playing sej as a support. Just go full tank, max w and just go balls deep. One rule to sej support though, your not allowed to recall. Also, the range on her q and ult are insane. Ive made so many game winning plays by qing over wraith wall into mid with a 5 man ulti. Also she can tower dive so easy early game.

FedeJul 29, 20141 votes

I don't get the W nerf though.

FyshinaTuxJul 29, 20141 votes

Idealy, both my ideas would be put together in some fashion, the CD thoughts for her W would be advised if they changed the damage to % max health to adjust the early game potential. Basically enforcing the weakness while bringing out a strength.

As it is, Sejuani's W is the only skill she has with no CC associated with it, it should have higher damage than it does currently, but in increasing damage, you'd have to give somewhere else to prevent her from being OP, which I DO NOT want. I merely want her to be in a better place overall.

With all these changes, I feel that would happen while still being quite balanced.

Lord Graves IIIJul 29, 20141 votes

The new Quill Coat item is beautiful on Sej.

She hasn't really caught on, but shes fine. As soon as guys like Naut and Mao are back in the meta, Sej will be too. Her bad early clears are keeping her down, but when meta shift causes them to be less of an issue, her long range hard CC initiations will bring her out.

Seriously, sej can reach out and touch someone. Sejuani

If she has an issue, its that she needs to build a little more damage than most tanks I feel. For this reason she needs a tank bruiser on her team to split front-line duties with her. But I don't play altogether enough sej to say for sure.