Jayce: A Siege-Constructing Rework

After an informing thread about Jayce's current troubles (both with current power and balancing them) on the gameplay boards, I got to thinking about Jayce's role in the game. At the moment, his two forms have difficulty both being powerful without Jayce being as powerful as 2 champions. Cannon Form is powerful for sieges, and Hammer Form, while intended for finishing champions off, would be great for all-ins if it simply hurt more. At the moment, it doesn't hurt enough later on to do so, but instead makes his laning phase a bit overbaring for the enemy champion.

The thread suggests putting more tankiness/power on Hammer Form, with a higher cooldown on transforming, making Jayce have to choose how he's going to fight instead of using absurd 6-spell combos to win lane until he only needs Acceleration Gate and Shock Blast to kill people. When Elastoid brought up Elise and Nidalee, two other transformation champions that have had better luck in finding balance between their forms, inspiration struck.

Both of them have similar uses for their two forms: Setting up a kill with their ranged form (Human for both), and engaging with their melee form (Spider and Cougar, respectively). While they both have a different way in doing so (albeit both have a targeted dash), turning Jayce into that would be more of the same, and be too different from his current state that relies on the raw power of Cannon Form. So I swapped it, where his melee form is all about setting up for dealing large amounts of ranged damage. Cannon Form remains largely the same, with massive changes to Hammer Form.

Overall: Jayce will be less effective at melee fighting and finishing off people that survive his siege. I don't think he needs to be made squishier, since he's not exactly good at running into the enemy right now in the first place. However, his Hammer Form damage will be less powerful, as it revolves around creating the Acceleration Field for Cannon Form to utilize.

Cannon Form: Shock Blast and Hyper Charge are the same. He may be given a little more range (25) on his basic attacks. But Acceleration Gate is gone from this form. My current suggestion is that instead his E in Cannon Form, it "consumes" the nearby Acceleration Gate in exchange for a burst of speed. This would be used to run away when things look sour or just when Jayce wants to set up shop somewhere else.

Acceleration Field: As stated, Hammer Form now carries Acceleration Field. However, it does not just build one on the spot. Instead, he has to place the posts individually, which will automatically create an Acceleration Field when two of them are in range of each other. This bootup will deal considerable damage to enemies in-between the posts, but Acceleration Field will still not damage enemies outside of this. Only one Acceleration Field can exist at a time, with newer posts being prioritized. Due to the setup involved, Acceleration Field will last longer than it does currently.

Posts: Posts will have a decent cooldown (say, 6-4 seconds) and will NOT operate on a charge system. This means it will take a few seconds for Jayce to create an Acceleration Field. The casting range for posts would be about the same as Acceleration Field's cast range is now. A post expires after the duration of the Acceleration Field it creates, or if Jayce does not interact with it for a considerable length of time.

More about Acceleration Field: In addition to the speed boost it gives, ALL allied projectiles move faster and deal more damage, scaling with level (Something like 20% speed increase and 10% bonus damage). Shock Blast still gets the massive boost that it's always had (since that's what Acceleration Gate was designed with in mind). This would allow Jayce to super-charge his own team's sieging potential, if his team can protect him long enough to set up his Acceleration Field.

To the Skies! gets a nice additional effect. He can cast it to a post he planted down, which will emit a small field of lighting around it. This would allow him to create a post/leap combo to escape, but creating a meaningful Acceleration Field with a post used to run away would not be easy. It would lose some damage potential, but still a good tool for reaching enemies before knocking them away with Thundering Blow.

Thundering Blow loses the %Health damage, and is now more for disengage. That's about it for now.

Passive and Transform bonuses to remain as is, but everything is subject to number changes.

Gameplay: Jayce is now a "Setup-Siege" champion to act as a foil to the "Setup-Engage" styles of other transformation champions. His laning will be considerable less good, especially against more aggressive champions, but he can still harass them with Cannon Form. To make up for it, Jayce gets to keep his wonderful scaling, and now boosts the power of his entire team's siege after a little set-up. It's the few seconds before he has an Acceleration Field ready in which Jayce is most vulnerable. Reach him then, and at the very least he'll need to escape.