Updating Shyvana: Telling Riot Want We Want the revision

A while back RiotDyQuill, when answering questions about Varus said:

> HOW DO WE COMMUNICATE OUR PLEASURE/DISPLEASURE WITH YOUR DECISIONS? Honestly, the way you are doing it now is fine. I think what this question really is getting at is, how do we have more of an impact on the things Riot does? Which is a fair question as well. > My best piece of advice is to be proactive, saying what you would like to see from X champ long before we’ve locked in the story. Feedback after the fact is still helpful and super encouraged, but we’ve likely made our final decision already, and it's more likely to inform our next decision than the current one - whereas proactive feedback about what you'd like to see can be taken into account during the actual development cycle. Obviously there are cases where we revert those changes, but it takes a ton of strong, accurate, and consistently negative feedback for that to happen.

So here I am giving my thoughts early and ahead of time. Find the rest of his Q and A here: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/WJKTWhlI-riot-dyquill-answers-on-varus-what-are-your-plans?comment=0011

GAME DESIGN TL;DR: Shyvana is called a juggernaut, but is too squishy and to weakly scaling to really belong with other champions in the class. Shyvana’s kit is kind of like a diver, but is too squishy and doesn’t have enough burst. Shyvana’s kit is kind of like an attack speed skirmisher like Yasuo, Jax, or Master Yi, but scales too poorly and lacks the survivability tools built into her abilities to compare to either of those. Shyvana’s passive is “win more”, and sometimes power negative compared to pre-mini-rework. Shyvana lives and dies by items, masteries, or runes that happen to be relatively strong. Warwick has been historically similar to Shyvana and his rework is a good model for reworking Shyvana.

Understanding Shyvana and How We Got Here First, keep in mind Shyvana’s stat priority goes: Attack speed>survivability>Attack damage>Movespeed>everything else.

The removal of devourer made Shyvana weaker. Riot has more information than I do, so let’s concede it made the game unhealthy rather than discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the jungle items. Well then what is Shyvana supposed to be good at?

Things Shyvana can do well keep decreasing as she struggles to compensate. She can no longer top lane and jungle because she has become squishier over time and Blade of the Ruined King no longer makes sense. Here is a timeline:

• 6.22 Devourer removed.
• 6.22 Strength of the Ages keystone is removed. Shyvana must now go Ferocity primary, Resolve secondary, becoming squishier (at least once the overpowered Courage of the Colossus got nerfed enough).
• 6.23 Blade of the Ruined King’s %current health damage nerfed.
• 7.5 Blade of the Ruined King’s AD increases and AS decreases.
• Shyvana’s mini-rework divorces her passive armor and MR from her level and links it to Dragons killed. Shyvana is squishier than before unless she has killed 2 dragons and is in dragon form. Shyvana must jungle and build Frozen Mallet instead of Titanic Hydra in order to recover her lost stats (thanks to Antarlia on /r/shyvanamains for math).

Shyvana is quite the ball of stats. She enters and leaves the meta based on whether she benefits from the current strong outlier item or rune. Feral Flare, Cinderhulk, Sated Devourer, Press the Attack, etc..

If Shyvana’s presence relies on her capability to exploit the most powerful item or rune on a given patch then it means the mechanics of Shyvana’s kit needs more depth. Riot categorizes Shyvana as a juggernaut (a point I will contend later), but other juggernauts have more depth. Darius has his pull, slow, and ability to quickly max-stack Black Cleaver with his bleed. Trundle has speed buffs, CC and the ability to no-sell a tank’s survivability. A champion can still have this minimum depth, be simple to play, and remain viable over many patches.

Divers, Juggernauts, and Shyvana’s Class Shyvana’s current kit seems to be trying to make her an on-hit duelist, who clears the jungle and kills dragon quickly, and uses her ultimate to increase AoE damage for better teamfighting.

What is a juggernaut? Colt “RiotEzreal” Hallam says the following: > Nasus. Darius. Garen. Skarner. When you think brute force, these champions should come to mind: powerful, durable, immobile and melee. They’re League’s hulking titans who, come late game, turn into super tanky carries who’ll pretty much destroy anyone foolish enough to get in their way.

(Gameplay Update: Juggernauts)

Later RiotStatikk elaborates on their class and subclass categories. Dev Blog: Classes and Subclasses). RiotStatikk also shows a list of champions in their subclass categories. Champion Subclass List). Then, RiotStatikk updated the list. Taking another look at subclasses ).

I did a bunch of math under certain parameters comparing Shyvana to members of the juggernaut class with a laner's gold at 12 minutes. Note that Shyvana will likely have less gold than the laners at this time and looks better here than she actually would be. You can check my work here. Here is the summary.

** Average Effective Health** Nasus 3,581.685 (Ultimate’s growing armor and magic resist maxed and bonus health) Garen 3,581.685 (W fully stacked) Shyvana 3,126.48 (2 dragons killed, in dragon form)

These averages do not even show the full extent of Nasus and Garen’s survivability. Garen’s W active gives him 60% tenacity and damage reduction, Nasus’s passive gives him 15% lifesteal at 12 minutes.

On both of these lists Riot categorized Shyvana as a juggernaut. But as I have demonstrated, Shyvana is not super tanky and she isn’t a late game carry. If Shyvana’s tankiness and scaling don’t match juggernauts, then at least redesign Shyvana as a diver-skirmisher like Jax, Warwick (great rework!), Vi, or Xin Zhao.

Proposed Kit Passive Twin Bite: At the start of combat Shyvana’s second basic attack will be a Twin Bite, resetting her auto attack timer, attacking twice and dealing a normal basic attack’s damage + X% of a basic attack’s damage. Shyvana then twin bites every X number of basic attacks. Twin bite applies on-hit effects twice and builds up stacks twice. While in dragon form Shyvana twin bites all targets in front of her. Reasoning: Shyvana’s passive is boring. Fighting for dragons increases player interaction, but teams should be securing dragons anyway. It is just good strategy. Instead roll in 15 MR and Armor into Shyvana’s base stat scaling. They have been there so long they might as well be base stats. Shyvana players pretty much Q on the cooldown. We spam press that thing. I think we can replace it with something more interesting, but keep it in the passive to support her on-hit fighter play. Q Dragon Charge: Shyvana’s horns grow in size and she briefly manifests her wings to propel herself forward 350 units, knocking up the first champion she hits for .5 seconds. (Skillshot) In dragon from Dragon’s Charge is wider and can knock up more than one champion. Reasoning: Vi, Galio, Ornn, Sejuani, etc. Many champions have abilities like this and it seems to work for them. Alternatively make it single target, point and click, like Xin Zhao's E. In that case the dragon form version would knock up any targets that happen to be in a small circle near the primary target. W Burnout: The same except for the following: Basic attacking an enemy while Burnout is active deals 25% of its damage to all enemies surrounding Shyvana and, against non-structures, extends Burnout's duration by 1 second and _refreshes _ the movement speed, stacking up to for 4 times for a maximum total duration of 7 seconds. Reasoning: You know who else has decaying movement speed in League of Legends? No one. However, Shyvana gets a lot for a champion that is not a speed specialist so let us keep the decay, but allow Shyvana to keep up if she can get those one or two auto attacks off. That way we avoid the 1-2 and wave goodbye as they get further and further and you run slower and slower. Sometimes Shyvana will still have to start with using Burnout to catch up to a target, but the new Q wastes less time and time is damage. with burnout E Flame Breath: Keep this how it is. Good job Riot. R Dragon’s Descent: Much the same except: Shyvana transforms into a dragon (granting 150/250/350 bonus health and 5/10/15 Armor and Magic Resist) and dashes unstoppably to the target location, carrying targets the full dash distance and dealing magic damage to all enemies she runs through. Reasoning: No one is afraid of Shyvana in her dragon form. It is just a gap closer with a 150-350 HP heal. Currently, you drag your target along, only part way, and now awkwardly turn around and walk back to the target you wanted to attack. Dragging opponents the full distance might accidently save some people, but it does enable more versatile gameplay by introducing the possibility of Insec maneuvers. Since Shyvana’s transformation does not actually increase her single-target damage (except a little bit on the E thanks to the burn), but instead allows her to deal the same damage to more targets at once I think it makes sense to sharpen focus on AoE team fighting.

Thank you for reading this far. I tried to be thorough and researched in my discussion of Shyvana and hope you will take this into consideration. This board is for discussion so go an discuss the finer points. Don't get too caught up in my proposed kit, the point is she needs a kit that has useful mechanics besides what her numbers are. Kits that do things that are just useful are why champions like Lee Sin have a patch history full of nerfs and still appear in every Worlds.