Balancing URF

many people who are against URF argued that the mode makes a few select champs completely overpowered and unstoppable. news flash, so are other game modes (Kha used to be THE META in dominion, sona has her own tier in ARAMs and xerath is a close contender)

nevertheless, it is possible and perfectly doable to rebalance things for a game mode or map! (for instance, Kayle's ult have increased cd on TT and CS compared to SR and Fizz has a higher cd on his Q on CS while Thresh collects 2 souls per soul drop in CS)

this post is intended to suggest some rebalancing for URF mode in case it gets back (and it better gets back or I'm going to strangle some puppies and kittens with onion masher)

For those of you who never ventures outside of Summoner's Rift: CS: Crystal Scar = Dominion TT: Twisted Treeline = TT

General and Gameplay

All healing done from Active abilities are reduced by 33% This is done to nerf the infinite sustain that alistar, sona and nidalee (and other champs with less than 2 sec cd heals) have (as you remembered how they got permabanned after the 1st week of URF). In addition, this also nerfs Mundo and Vladmir who are actually really strong URF champions albeit not permabanned. This change does not affect spell vamp, life steal and Health per 5 since they tend to be weaker than burst heals.

Knock-ups' duration reduced by 25% ala URF's tenacity bonus This is done to nerf champs who can juggle you indefinitely mid-air such as Aatrox, Jarvan, Janna and Cho. I believe this is codeable and doable because they nerfed Janna's Q's knock-up duration. NOTE THAT THIS ONLY AFFECTS KNOCK-UPS (i.e. displacement only on the Z-axis) and not knockbacks or displacements. If Rito somehow codes displacements as knockups, then individual tailoring must be made.

Champion-Specific Ryze Ryze was removed from URF's queue mode because he can bombard someone while snarelocking them for indefinitely until someone decide to silence or stun him. This can be easily solved with 3 alternatives:

1. Ryze's passive is disabled in URF (this is fair considering that URF also renders a lot of passives useless such as Xerath's, Swain's, Veigar's, Lissandra's, Nunu's and URF also nullifies blue buff completely)
2. Ryze only gains 40% CDR instead of 80% (while you might think that this is stupid since 40% cdr is the normal cap, you need to consider that URF's 40% cdr is free and does not require the player to itemize or grab runes and masteries for it!! so now Ryze can build 5 RoAs and an Archangel ftl)
3. Ryze's base cooldowns are increased (by a huge amount, to take into account the 80% CDR. For instance, Overload's cooldown increased from 3.5 to 10 which will put it to 2 seconds after 80% CDR)

Kassadin Riftwalks Everywhere! However, for those who get to play Kassadin in URF in non-queue games, you'd notice that Kassadin cannot cast Riftwalk if the mana cost is higher than Kassadin's max mana pool. This mechanic can be used to rebalance Kassadin for URF mode.

Riftwalk's base mana cost increased to 200 (compounding to 400/800/1600/3200) from 75 (150/300/600/1200) Riftwalk mana compounding timer reduced from 20 to 12 (meaning Kassadin needs to wait for 12 seconds without casting Riftwalk for the mana cost to reset back to 200 instead of 20) which means that Kassadin most likely cannot cast the 4th and 5th Riftwalk without buying full on mana items. However, the 2nd change is there so that Kassadin can still sparingly use Riftwalk every 12 seconds so that the 1st change will not overwhelm Kassadin players so much.

Fizz Playful/Trickster's cooldown increased to 30 (6 with 80% CDR)

Vladmir Sanguine Pool's cooldown increased to 30 (6 with 80% CDR) Self explanatory. These 2 champs are ruining URF games due to being untargetable most of the time.

Jayce Shock Blast' cooldown increased to 15 (3 with 80% CDR)

Nidalee Javelin Toss' cooldown increased to 12 (2.4 with 80% CDR) These changes are to reduce their poking power which are excruciating to play against in some circumstances

Zed Living Shadow's cooldown increased to 24 (4.8 with 80% CDR) Shadow Slash no longer reduces Living Shadow's cooldown on-hit against enemy champions Take a look at Bjergsen's URF Zed games and you'll see how frustating it is to play against a Zed with only 2-3 sec cd Living Shadow and have it immediately refreshed with a Shadow Slash hit on an enemy.

Rumble Junkyard Titan's silence duration upon Overheating reduced to 3 from 6 A six second self-silence that is not reduced by Tenacity is a no-no in URF, Rumble had the worst win-rate in URF mode and this should help him a bit.

Udyr Bear Stance stun timer on enemies reduced from 6 to 3.5 Udyr is a sad bear in URF due to internal global cooldowns on stance changing. Reducing or removing this global cooldown might result in things like 3 Tiger Strikes in under 1 second on an enemy or having an AP udyr with a 700 hp shield up all the time, this change is here so that Udyr can perhaps take a role as a stunbot in URF.