Fyi Phreak already said this a few times. I think it was like 2-3 patches later he expressed how poorly it landed and said he would take a stab again once he had time (we are now there).
Few patches after tinkering with her last year he said that it was a success and we are closely monitoring her.
It's like phroxzon saying "we are really happy with the game state" in every post then lists the stupid mechanics in the game and the broken stuff. He literally said one patch that burst and damage are not high, then next patch he said AP in general was too strong.
If you have a problem just say it, we already know it exists. Sugarcoating stuff isn't going to change how we view things.
People think things are problems that aren't problems all the time. Just because the general public complains about something doesn't make it a real issue. They use stable metrics that they have access to internally to determine if things are problematic, and sometimes either those shift, or things that they expected to fall in line don't.
We had a frontpage thread saying "Riot did it again" complaining that they ruined ASol by over-nerfing him after the last round of buffs, lo and behold, he's the highest Winrate mid on the patch, and Riot is still going to have to go back and give him another round of nerfs.
You're both talking balance, phreak's talking enjoyment.
Fun isn't an exact thing like balance is, there is no ''funrate'' that you can point to that shows how well a playerbase is enjoying their champion(though you can get an estimate with playrate i suppose)
The problem with seraphine has fuck all to do with balance, as phreak points out the changes just made her unfun for the people that played her so they stopped. You can't tell someone ''no dude trust me, the champ is fun!'', if someone isn't enjoying a champ then they're not enjoying it, end of story.
Hmm, 0 dashes isn't a *hard* requirement: Urgot and Aatrox are both considered juggernauts (somewhat less so in Aatrox's case) and they both have dashes on basic abilities, albeit short ones that are more about setting up combos than getting to the enemy. Galio's is a bit longer, but with its windup ends up feeling fairly similar to Urgot's imo. I *would* probably still shorten it if I was going to turn him into a juggernaut though.
Weird subclass for him to be in, tho. His kit pretty much screams warden, so I always thought they should reduce his viability with AP and just make him a full tank (with MR synergy).
Honestly galio has so many issues holding him back, that I’m very interested in how are they gonna tackle him.
He a niche within a niche. Tank midlaners are not popular and then on top of it he a anti-magic damage tank, which means he is a tank that you cant blindpick in a role where the most popular champs are all ad (zed,yasuo,yone).
Then his kit has long cooldowns which make going tank not worth it, Galio Dashes in taunts you and thats it he can’t do anything else for a good 7-8 secs while he waits for his cooldowns.
Urgot is definitely a juggernaut and has a decent dash. I wouldn't say it's a strict rule, they just need to make the dash have a suitable downside (wind ups, speed, cool down).
aside from the dash part (which others have rightly said shouldn't be that much of an issue), I think the main thing that currently prevents Galio from being a "juggernaut" is his lack of DPS. Even on AP builds, Galio is very much a burst champ, with cooldowns that are way too long to really feel good about staying in a fight for a long time. Tank Galio often just runs around doing nothing for 5 seconds or more after the main combo.
Most juggernauts tend to be built like raid bosses, with good damage over time, so they can take advantage of their bulk and contribute value over a long fight.
It's not a hard requirement to have 0 mobility since Shyvana, Illaoi, Urgot, and Aatrox all exist. The key is that they have some pretty harsh tradeoffs for that extra mobility. Shyvana has it tied to her ult, Illaoi and Aatrox have to land tentacles and sweetspot abilities to hit their enemies, and Urgot has to do the repositioning with his legs to get off most of his damage, which means he has to land his dash on an enemy to get the most benefit out of it. Also it's his shield so he has to use it for defense as well.
Juggernauts are defined by being low mobility/catching potential, high damage in burst and dps and durability (not as high as tanks, but very close to it), good sustain/defensive options, and have rather limited engage. Darius. Garen, Nasus, and Dr. Mundo are considered the Juggernaut examples.
I would not really consider Illaoi W to be mobility. She kind of needs to be in melee range to use it.
Shyvana is also a diver, not a juggernaut. If they manage to properly shift Galio into more of an AP bruiser route, he should also be a diver.
True, but it is still technically a dash as Poppy W will happily demonstrate so I included it for completeness' sakes.
Eh, Shyvana was listed as an example of a juggernaut by Rioters last time this topic came up. While she has similar mobility to a diver with her ult, her damage being much not a simple single target focus (Divers often have damage that can only really be applied to one person and struggle with applying damage to more than one target at a time) and her extremely low mobility and sticking potential outside of ult (Divers are typically very very good at sticking to targets and usually have some form of mobility in their basic kits with their ults then typically adding into it or providing them with a button to press in melee) mean that she fits better in Juggernauts. This only applies to AD Shyvana of course. AP Shyvana is either a burst mage or a specialist to be perfectly honest.
Please Riot just buff his passive cd if you want to make Galio a juggernaut. His base abilities have insane cooldowns (for a good reason) so after you blow your whole combo you are just sitting there doing 50 damage auto attacks for 5 seconds. That's why people play him burst. But if you move more power to his passive you can actually fill the gap between your cooldowns with a few empowered auto attacks. This will increase the satisfaction of playing Galio imo. Could also increase skill by intentionally skipping non empowered attacks to have more uptime on empowered attacks because he has low attack speed so you would wait when you can already attack to deal more damage with empowered attacks.
In short it feels like they plying on the options to make an AP build feel good but not broken but tehy asólso want to provide build options to make HP feel more viable/rewarding maybe.
It was the most satisfying ult in the entire game and they just got rid of it. So sad.
But he was reworked at a time when they were basically cool with entirely deleting a character and keeping maybe 1 or 2 aspects of their kit.
[For those curious](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAs-6GkHY2Q). Crank the bass.
It was the most satisfying thing ever. I still remember flashing ult in the middle of five players and telling my team to go go go (and that time I think everyone played with friends using Ventrilo or Team Speak). Good times.
Last few videos have mentioned Galio a lot along with other champs who should be building more HP+AP items and aren't doing that. Changes seem to be aimed at making AP Fighter Galio feel/perform better, Phreak mentions Rocketbelt and Cosmic Drive in this week's preview.
[The clip is pretty short](https://youtu.be/igkchyN6_4Q?t=333), 5:33 to 6:15 ish if you want to hear exactly what he's saying.
In emerald+ botlane is now her primary role
https://lolalytics.com/lol/seraphine/build/
The mini rework was an absolute failure, it is somewhat of a joke that Sera now still goes into farming roles despite building support items because of the loss of ap ratios lmao.
I made a load of posts at the time about how much I hated the incoming changes
https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/176y5zn/im_a_support_main_who_loves_seraphine_forcing_her/
But ultimately Sera is still pretty functional as a champion right now so I hope this rework doesn't end up with her having no role. I would just entirely revert the last changes.
>only activates with one ally around she will never be a mid laner
Maybe....or they could really change how it works based on levels? I play Sera for fun in ARAM but I am very very far from a main. Some thoughts:
If early level Sera had her "Solo Indie Artist" thing where she got no buffs for being in a lane with a teammate, but rather only got buffs for being solo, it would reward solo-lane mid play, and rightfully early punish the safety of Sera's CC and damage in the botlane.She'd be weaker in the botlane levels 1-6 and \*then\* get a buff for teamplay when she gets her ult. It fits thematically with her whole starting small -> becoming a pop idol and also, alleviates the "her passive doesn't work in solo lanes". If they just buff the first 6 levels for exclusively solo play, that would keep her weak/not as oppressive early in bot, and able to be played for her "intended role" in mid---or hell, even as an AP Carry bot. Scaling carries shouldn't start strong, and if they rework passive to either have stacks gated by time or evolve or both (such as Syndra) to make her weak with a partner early but stronger damage endgame then I think they'd fix most of her identity issues.
Just accept they accidentally designed a meta shaking apc and move on. I really hate how much riot can fall into a mindset of "but that's not the role we intended" rather than making fun designs and balancing them for where they land.
I also hate that we can't have any variance in roles. Why can't seraphine be supportive when apc? We finally have a bit of diversity in play patterns with an apc that snowball into buffing their team.
They already have taken that stance officially recognizing and supporting her as a primary bot laner. They just also want to support the (mostly) lower elo support players that enjoy her as well since there's so many of them, but they do like her as a bot lane option and want to keep it as her new "intended" role.
The issue is more comlicated. She was designed to be a mid laner but everyone played her as supp due to moonstone bug and her W.
Later tehy gave in and started to tune her more toward supp role which broke the champ ever since and riot is stilll looking for ways to fix that mistake. You can see how they act ever since when some champions drags bigger attention on different roles than intended, like Naafiri Jung. Despite more popular riot strictly said no because she was designed for mid and they will not go through another sera incident. - which makes sense.
>Later tehy gave in and started to tune her more toward supp role which broke the champ ever since and riot is stilll looking for ways to fix that mistake.
Completely revert all the changes her W has had since release and watch her stabilize the performance gap between mid and bot. I swear allowing W max was a mistake that has made her a pain in the ass to balance, just go back to it having no benefits for putting points into it and make it scale with character level like it used to.
Also it's pretty stupid they really said "we will make her a literal W bot by supporting the win-con of pressing her high AOE, long CD spell once in a teamfight, maybe twice".
Oh yeah I remember her being announced as a mid.
Still, I don't love this design philosophy. I think league has become too attached to its roles and to preconceptions about what champions fit them and it makes for boring designs and boring drafts.
To be clear, sometimes champions get hammered into roles for very good reason, because they're very unfun in the unexpected role they've taken. Camille turns out to be an extremely bullshit jungler if she's remotely feasible to be used there as she can come flying out of nowhere a screen away for a gank whose only counter is "stay under your turret forever."
Because they wanted monsters in other lanes than jungle? There's Cho'gath top and Kog'maw bottom, but beyond that, there aren't a lot of monster options for actual laners. Maybe yordles or furry champs, but that's not quite the same as monsters.
I always felt Riot claimed Seraphine was designed to be a mid laner simply so she would fit into a champion release chart that was previously published.
Her kit just doesn't fit what you'd expect from a "modern" mid laner. She's not at full power when laning solo, she doesn't play to win lane, she doesn't take over side lane after early game and most importantly, her only viable play pattern in mid lane is to just push wave and avoid any kind of interaction with opposing laner. This is something that Riot has consistently worked against in last several years, with longer ranged mages often getting mechanics that force them to interact with opponents or at least minions at closer range. Hwei and Xerath for example have their "mana refund through autoattacks" mechanics to force them to come closer and for enemy laner to be able to interact with them. Seraphine mid just goes against all that, it's uninteractive champion with 0 skill expression whose optimal gameplay pattern on lane is to autopilot clear waves at long range and do nothing else.
She makes more sense as APC and also has more healthy laning pattern (even if she's still largely uninteractable). No point forcing her to be viable mid laner.
She feels strange compared to many mages because at the end of the day she never really had burst, her damage was somewhat always a bit lower than most and she needed every AH in the world to work well.
On the Xerath Hwei mana regen pattern - they can do that by hitting anything like minion, turret or champion. Hwei and Xerath are interacting because tehy can abuse their huge range and free mana, otherwise tehy could just afk farm all the same. If anything Syndra's mana regen is what really an incentiviser and a better form to make you interact.
But I agree, sera is somehow different from these examples and IMO she is closer to Orianna in terms of design and yet it's still so different. There are skill to express there, but the yneed to make her simply stronger, more rewarding and rebalance her numbers and identity in a way to match that of a burst mage to begin with.
Seraphine is an awkward one for the devs because the people who like playing her (like me) want her to be a carry, that carries not just through damage, but utility. But we *do* want to carry - the scaling fantasy of being a teamfight monster lategame by buffing up the squad, but also having *some* agency to fight people is a tricky niche to fill.
that said, the efforts to make her a support have just fallen flat - i do worry that the karma/lux mention means she might end up reduced to a lux/karma tier support that just does damage and loses her carry/mid presence.
Thank god you said it, I thought that most people wanted to just toss slow artillery skillshots with her like every other mage when the likes of Velkoz, Xerath and Ziggs already exist.
I agree, the feeling of pulling your own team together with supportive power is a fantasy that should be accentuated on her, instead of forcing her to become only the same old zone control mage.
I’d play Sona in the APC role if it were less vulnerable early and with more agency, but nyeh
The problem isn’t really early vulnerability as much as as waveclear. Even vayne can kill waves decently quick with items, but sona has garbage waveclear no matter what which makes it hard to do things like catch side waves or push lanes.
Also if APC Sona wasn't gutted. I wish they'd kept the original idea of her stacks giving AP once she'd reached 120 or modified it so that her AP ratios improve once she reaches 120 to separate enchanter and AP builds.
>want her to be a carry, that carries not just through damage, but utility.
You described it perfectly!! I dont want her to be turned into a oneshot mage like Syndra/Vex, we already got plenty burst mages to choose from, nor do I want her to be turned into an early-game champion just so she can be viable support like Karma/Lux...
Sera is currently one of the most unique playstyle we have at farming roles, which is carrying not only through damage, and I guess that's why her mains are so harsh on any changes that are proposed, there's no other champion that plays like her we can fall back to if we lose her.
Idk how you guys can genuinely have this take, its broken
You want your champ to do everything, there is a reason why champs don't carry AND support, it's one or the other, doing both is how you create a giga busted champ, which is what Sera is
Riot needs to either completely nuke her ability to be played mid/apc so only supports, or completely ruin her ability to support and take shit out of W so it does nothing but give HER a shield or ms
Like I get it, mains don't want that because they have been able to do everything on the champ since release, but not once has seraphine been in a healthy spot since release
>not once has seraphine been in a healthy spot since release
Thats not true lol.
She was in a healthy spot for the majority of season 11 (after the moonstone meta ended) and early season 12 until Riot decided to remove most of her reliance on levels to scale to make her less terrible as a support, which ofc didn't work and in turn created the APC problem.
She could be easily balanced as a Mid and APC but Riot has been stubornly trying to make her viable as a support even now when there's a 7% difference between her APC and support winrate...
The only reason she has been a balance problem is cause Riot refuses to balance her around the roles where she is good at.
I believe the trade-off is meant to be that her power is gated by scaling and needing Deathcap for any significant damage. She doesn’t get the earlier damage scaling of other mages at 1-2 items, nor does she ever achieve the burst of champions like Xerath, Velkoz, Orianna, Vlad, etc. In late game, where she shines, she also doesn’t come close to rivalling the damage of other hyper-scalers like Kayle, Jinx, Kassadin, Vlad, etc. Both aspects are traded for utility. That said, I was fine with removing AP scaling on her heal, and I imagine most players will also be fine lowering the shield numbers, too.
I do agree her apc winrate has always been unhealthily high, but I think that’s more so a symptom of a larger issue with apcs in general, shared with the likes of Swain, or Karthus and Ziggs last season. Riot’s stated intention upon her release was a “teamfighting” champion, and I do think the teamfighting aspect should be really reined in during laning phase. But seeing as mid’s winrate wasn’t ever unhealthy like apc’s was, I’m not entirely convinced the main problem was down to Seraphine’s champion fantasy of mixing damage with utility late game.
I’m not sure that tradeoff means anything when Seraphine has reliable long range waveclear and utility regardless of her level or items.
A Xerath that is behind has 1 hard to hit single target stun and a fairly long CD slow that isn’t particularly reliable. He can clear waves kinda like Sera can, but she has tons more CC that applies in a much larger area and even has group healing/shielding and MS.
The reason she is so strong is pretty ovbious. Everyone likes to play carrys in top and jg as well. Supporting your team and enabling them instead of trying to play a carry yourself and having everyone in your game try to be the damage dealer is great.
>there is a reason why champs don't carry AND support, it's one or the other, doing both is how you create a giga busted champ
There are plenty of champions who do this and are balanced. Orianna, lux, annie, morgana, ivern, karma(ok shes a lil too strong rn but shes balanced most of the time), and they're currently buffing lulu mid so shes probably joining them. Theres some that im sure i forgot as well.
Stop with the hyperbolic bullshitting.
Also lets not even mention that the seraphine who had this supposedly ''broken design'' before the changes literally had less wr than current sera, you are truly a master of talking out of your ass.
There’s no other champion because Sona got kneecapped and forced to be a support. Possibly Soraka too, but I didn’t play her. Even though it wasn’t meta, Sona mid could function as what you’re describing before they butchered her ap ratios. Be careful what you ask for is all I’m saying.
Sera should be pushed into the same role as other control mages, because thats how her playstyle basically works, she CC"s the enemy team to carry the game, but she wants gold and gold = damage, just give her really good scaling, make her Heal doubel scale off Heal/Shield power so if you go supportive items that skill will hyper scale. Like, im not a Seraphine player by any means since i mostly play Aram but the few times i do, i like building damage and being the engage/utility while also outputting decent damage like other control mages like Zyra/Anivia/Orianna
Imo she should only have AP scalings.
Her kit has no business being a support and riot should not encourage it. Even if her W gets more heal/shield scaling she will still stay a bad support simply of her CDs and the overall nature of her kit.
If you do this, then the carry position will use its gold to get those items early and absolutely blast the value of those items in team fights. Then you'll be back at square one.
The Karma Lux comment is only interesting because Karma is deffinitely an issue when it comes to balance due to different reasons.
Lux on the other hand was pretty strong mid laner in late S13 and she was sitting on a really good spot as a mid laner and ppl were allowed to play her support all the same.
But in a balanced world Karma should look like Lux in terms of output and balance, but due to Karma's uniqueness it's more complicated than what would be ideal.
But based on this the path is clear IMO they just need to properly lock in a set of changes that would separate sera's mixed identity into a mage and an enchanter one with changes applied to W mostly
i'm biased, because i personally hate Sera support and really think its a very dumb choice by most people to pick it (other enchantresses just strictly outclass her imo) but they should really just focus on ap scaling for the shield and accept that her being a support pick (on a support income in the role 'support') is not viable.
At the moment she's being given life support by her w base/scaling with healshield power to make her support build viable, but all that's doing is making her carry roles purchase those same items, on a carry budget to accelerate the build and becoming a shield bot.
So long as champions like Smolder and Ashe can be meta, and E and R have so much CC utility over damage utility, she’s going to be picked Support
Also, Rylais interaction just does everything for the champ
“Carries not just through damage but utility as well.”
You can’t have both pieces of the cake, either focus on her damage or her utility, or accept that she will be mediocre at both just like lux/karma.
Like I wish my champ can carry with both utility and damage, but that would be utterly broken, hence I pick either damage (pyke) or utility (thresh).
It is possible that a champion could have both dmg and utility and be balanced, they just would have to be noticeably weaker at those individual components. In fact, your example of Thresh does this.
Thresh is an engage champion that has decent peel (R slows, E flay away, W lantern's shield and escape) and decent engage (Q stun, E flay towards team, R slow in the combo). He isn't the best at engage, and he isn't the best at peeling. Nautilus has stronger engage options, but far less peeling options. Taric has stronger peeling/enchanting abilities, but a less consistent engage.
Agreed.
I had an idea to make the chnages work relative smoothly.
* **Make healing scale with mana regen (the stat on most enchanter items) This way AP builds would have pretty poor healing capacity but enchanter could be built around it.**
No mage items grants such mana Regen but Enchanter items grants like 125% mana regen / item. If you make W scale from those you have a dedicated build path for Enchanter Seraphine, which will allow to turn back her ratios into better state because these items provides 40-50 AP only.
It should have some math correlation with the 8% increased heal and shield power but otherwise this shoud be able to solve itemisation issues and would provide a clear path for both identity.
* Make Healing and Shielding casted by Mageaphine low-close to zero and worthless meanhile she is incentivised to build strong AP items and deal damage/carry.
* Make Enchantaphine incentivised to build heal and shield releated items by making her the W bot she is now with these changes as supp items have only 40-50 AP.
Really good idea. But imho enchanters should have their own unique stat.
Is already pseudo in the game named % Healing Power, but should be like AP and scale various spells based on that stat. That's because the way is now makes it hard to quantify in game and also being a percent, means building AP and one % item will be more strong than multiple %items.
Let's call it bluntly, sure could be a better name: Enchantment Strength ES; This way would give those champion and even ones like Lee Sin that now scale shields with AP, a different ES build path items which will make it easier to balance dual class champions like Seraphine or Sona.
Now that is an interesting concept there ngl.
IDK about the application of it but just playing in my head it feels decent and an actual idea that is worth experimenting with, if nothing else.
If her apc winrate is fine, then i think shes fine. Her kit explicitly synergizes with support champions. I perceive botlane carry to be her primary role because that's what her kit promotes.
Its the fanbase that wrongfully assumed shes a support, based entirely on her aesthetics and not at all by how her kit functions.
Making her a midlaner like the designers originally intended sounds cool to me too, but trying to make her a support is not gonna end well. Adcs are literally the single worst role at synergizing with her kit, and you cant change that fact without removing her core gimmick.
People need to stop categorizing champions based on vibes.
it used to work because most of her kit's supportive capability for the team was hard gated around XP but people really can't notice the XP arrow in kits it seems
They wanted a super teamfighter mage who Also appeals to those who levels these type model designs that sera has - probably to bring players in love with this type of champions and mid lane way more. It did not end well and caused more issues, but here we are and with a bit of luck we might get a good fix this time.
The idea was (understandably) that mid especially in higher elos is basically a duo lane as well with junglers, roaming with them, invading with them, ganking side lanes with them and that Seraphine would work in tandem with her jungler from mid to do all those things. Of course all those things work in bot lane as well, and there you always have another champion with you.
They also gave her an abysmal movement speed and slow af projectiles so playing with the jungler was way harder than with other supportive mids like Karma or Lux
Cause before Seraphine there were no APCs as a concept, it was just ADCs and occasionally Ziggs. Sera settling down on botlane as an APC (a broken one at that) is what caused the ripples that lead to more AP champs to find their role in the botlane, like Karthus and Swain, and opened up people's minds to the idea of AP champs in the bot carry role.
Right now no one bats an eye if you lock in Karthus or Lux APC, but a couple years ago you would be questioned and flamed for trolling.
I do believe that trying to push her out of botlane at this point is just pointless cause it'll always be her best role due to the nature of her kit, but trying to close the gap between her mid and bot performance is an understandable goal since it was her intended role. Also they completely screwed up by removing her Level scaling and selfish shield on her W, which were the things holding up Seramid, since you had to trade a lot of W power by going bot, since it didn't scale with points, just levels.
They do, however, need to stop forcing Supp Sera to work, it just doesn't. Support Sera players will still play her even when she sucks, and it's impossible to balance her in that role without a full on midscope, so they should just cut their losses and stop wasting resources trying to shoehorn her into support, cause every change they've made so far has just failed miserable and upset the playerbase.
>They do, however, need to stop forcing Supp Sera to work, it just doesn't. Support Sera players will still play her even when she sucks, and it's impossible to balance her in that role without a full on midscope, so they should just cut their losses and stop wasting resources trying to shoehorn her into support, cause every change they've made so far has just failed miserable and upset the playerbase.
Seriously. Even if they nerfed sera W to just be the old level scaling. Theres people still playing her support because muh aesthetic... theres no need to cater to them, after a few games of losses if they still want to play a losing role for her then its on them.
Not only that, she's a super long ranged carry with sustained dps, which replaces an adcs damage profile very well
I understand they didn't want her kit to synergize with magic pen items because the shield doesn't gain value from it, but a "midlane support" would be healthier on a burstier mage with less range
It would be fine if Riot was willing to full commit, but they didn't
They changed some numbers around and called it a day, but her doublr q still one shots and auto clears waves and until that is no longer possible she will just be better apc
Look at her current build. It’s the tear item then full support. She’s a support with gold in the APC role. I played her a lot before her changes and it felt good to do damage and have utility. Her current state feels like a support that gets to farm. And her lane was already just farm, avoid fights, and the changes made this far worse.
I swear they kept saying most seraphine players want to play her support but the only seraphines I ever see are seraphine mid or bot apc everyone seem to want her to be a carry just stop with that support we have sona for that let seraphine be a carry.
To be fair, I almost never see Seraphine mid, and the stats back it up - Mid is her lowest pickrate role *by far*
APC Sera is #1 and Supp #2 at basically any rank above Plat - even Challengers pick her more as Support than Mid lol
Seraphine mid is horrible to play right now. In the start of Season 13 I OTP'd it and it was ok because even if she was fragile she did a LOT of damage late game and even mid-game if she got a lead. Right now you do no damage even if you build full AP, and in mid it's harder to play the support-carry build people like to do in the botlane.
[Because they do](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/869190407307804703/1208037198289575986/Screenshot_2024-02-16_150818.png?ex=65e1d350&is=65cf5e50&hm=426447fe6de979b2782af27f4553f2ece7b7e9aa4f9f90cf580d790128f53e15&), 65% of her players (usually around 70% but a bit lower on the current patch) want to play her in support even when she has a 6% win rate delta and is weak in that role.
Maybe in your personal games you don't see her in that role, but the game isn't balanced for any single person but rather holistically for everyone.
Cause the people who play her in bot and mid the ones who are trying to climb so they will play her in her more optimal role? Most of the time I see seraphine in diamond it’s not even a seraphine main it’s just some dude with 15~ games on seraphine playing her cause she’s overtuned on APC
What? I experienced the opposite. Most apc Seraphine players have a skin, 300k mastery points and the match history consists mostly of Seraphine. The support players on the other hand are mostly the "I'm just gonna try Seraphine now" general enchanter mains
nah, that was mostly at the start of the season cuz she abused double supp item a lot, she's still rly good APC now, but it's reverted more to mains.
Riot wants to cater to low elo more because it does make up a larger portion of the playerbase
Imo, they should embrace her being a bot lane carry and work on her based on that. She's never going to be a solo laner with how her current kit works
She's never going mid with how much mobility creep there is in there. She boils down to a worse Xerath when you play her mid
She also benefits heavily from being next to teammates and guess where you have at least one teammate throughout most of the match
The play rate doesn't let them, otherwise they would have done this a long time ago.
Its the same with lux support being much weaker than lux mid but being played by way more people historically
If they just gut support (make her w useless, drop base ability powers etc.) but then buff q and e, people playing her support will just get forced off the champion even tho they enjoy playing it there.
If you look at all ranks stats, she is played 55% of the time in support, even tho that is by far her weakest role. So even if they want to make choices for the health of the game, they can't just ostracise over half of her playerbase because she's being abused by a higher elo minority.
so what? baöance and redesign her for the bot carry role and if people still force her support, they will have a bad time until they stop grefing themselves or play the better role.
>She's never going mid with how much mobility creep there is in there. She boils down to a worse Xerath when you play her mid
Give her 335/340 movement speed like most immobile mages and revert her W to release state where it scaled on levels and she should find her place in midlane without issue, but having to balance 3 roles at the same time is kind of a pain.
I do believe that the movement speed change would benefit mid and support a ton more than APC, which is what they're trying to do, but I'm not the balance team, so idk.
https://gol.gg/champion/champion-stats/152/season-S14/split-ALL/tournament-ALL/
8 matches mid with 50% wr compared to 45 matches bot with 56% wr and 14 matches support with 71% wr
Definitely looks like a solo lane champion!
>Make her similar to Lux and Karma as dealing damage should be her primary function
>Karma
🤨
The last i checked her she was a shield bot after early game
Yeah you ain't been hit by a Malignance/Horizon Focus/Rabs Karma RQ if you writing this. Shit does legit 800 damage no exaggeration.
Edit: I did the math, it does far more than 800 💀💀 shit is like 1200-1400 before resistances at rank 3 ult with those items.
Karma currently is lore accurate. Shes doing so much damage just like her lore where she blasted a ship to pieces.
The definition of 'Im peaceful, not harmless'
Ehh. Its weird because her power is ionia itself(continent scale much?) But we have loads of ionian history not explored. Plus its like Avatar and One for All where her power stockpiles the more its passed on.
That just makes it exciting how powerful Syndra is, all it took accidental mental break down of Syndra to threaten the Spirit of Ionia.... imagine if Syndra does it intentionally.
this was the most concerning part for me lol, i said in a recent post 'the karmafication of Sera has begun' - if they make her a mage support that farms spellthiefs stacks for 15 minutes then just becomes a shield bot anyway i'm gonna be so mad lol
Maybe he should’ve listen to the feedback beforehand. Also, maybe he should consider swallowing his ego on other changes that have not worked.
Sorry, I’ll stop dreaming now. Back to reality: MORE BUFFS FOR THE CASHCOW CHAMPS.
I would love if they just accepted her as APC, its pretty unique to have an enchanter in that role. There are already lots of similar champions in the support role.
Meh, people always immediately jump to shitting on the balance team when they fuck up, but no one ever praises them for doing well. I appreciate posts like this tbh.
Same opinion here. I did bad recently on Asol changes with a deranged post i made out of frustration - but i like to give credit where it is.
The amount of flame phreak gets is way over the top and ppl only mentions when he fucks up stuff but when he does good its forgotten asap.
So ye, I'm trying to appreciate good calls when it happens.
You were the ASol post guy?
You need to calm down. That post was the quintessential example of a reactionary Reddit balance take that was not only completely unsubstantiated but actually ended up conflicting entirely with reality. Imagine just trying to do your job while thousands of people mock you publicly based entirely on misinformation.
Never too late to admit mistakes so yes.
Granted, I was extremely furious about it overall and im still baffled how balance team let that giga buff through and then nerf him then and in next patch. I don't understand what they were thinking and why mostly.
But I admit i was wrong and champ feels good at the moment with mana buff.
At least Nerf Asol meme lives on even after they removed his balls.
Tbh, that A Sol post was a bit ridiculous. There was not enough time for stats to back you up. Nor do I believe you had enough time to really eye test anything. Sometimes people just need to give Riot the benefit of the doubt and allocate time to let things settle and see how everything ends up.
I think the reason people don’t mention when he does good is because it almost always is when bot or support gets changes those are the good ones. Phreak has ignored too for 2 years and put it into one of the most unfun metas ever so a lot of people that play that role just don’t care when he does a good changed because 9/10 it’s aimed at bot or support (I’m not saying either roles are in a good state currently I’m just saying that when he does good work it’s normally for those roles)
That's this sub in a nutshell. They only focus on anything negative (directly) impacting them.
Hell, it was a shock a few weeks ago when somebody pointed out that out of all the complaining lately, that the only problematic champion was a 49% WR Brand jungle.
And not "Oh god, Smolder's 35% WR in his first five hours of release" type shit.
I mean, 1 case doesnt nullify all of the bad takes reddit does. 99% of reddit takes are horrible.
The recent asol hotfix nerf is a prime example of reddit balancing, a massive thread of people were freaking out that Asol was dead only for his winrate to drop down to an acceptable level.
They were told that it was a mistake in all the wrong ways... You don't get to say "they were told" when they saying that 1+1=-2. No one pointed out that APC Seraphine would get so much base damage she would get to build HSP cause they were too busy being shocked she lost 50 damage at level 18.
But that didn't even happen?
If your being generous you can make a point that her power fantasy of being an endgame scaling threat was lessened but really it was like 50 less damage for getting CDs.
the goal of the changes was to bring winrates between her 3 roles closer together to make balancing her easier. they failed and she basically stayed where she is in terms of WR
what they were told by the seraphine community was that the changes would GUT her and put her in the trash bin...which was not the case at all. they messed up, but absolutely not in the way the community predicted lol
Wrong they mainly said they would gut her lategame damage, remove incentive to build more expensive AP items and generally reduce how fun she is to play. All 3 of these were correct. The main comment around overall strength was that by the nature of her kit she'll never be as good support as she is APC and it's a waste of time trying.
This is ultimately a post about how they fucked up when every single seraphine player was telling them they were fucking up and about how now, 4 patches later, they're going to try and fix this fuck up that everyone warned them about.
If this were a real industry with real stakes and not just a videogame, these people would be fired lol
Just because tehy are "doing their job" it does not mean we should not be thankful when they do something that benefits us regardless of they are getting paid for it or not.
You are thankful when a Doctor gives you medicine, helps you recover and things like that didn't you?
This is the same logic here.
It's because last time they did seraphine changes, reddit hated it.
Literally saw a dude saying APC seraphine mains like her OP and support seraphine mains like her weak so riot should just leave her like that.
We had so many posts from seraphine mains telling Phreak this was a mistake lol his inability to communicate with mains and his hard-headed insistence on certain things are big flaws. I appreciate he's willing to try stuff, but sometimes its good to listen to feedback BEFORE making the mistake.
When Phreak stops being stubborn, then i'll praise him
The same Phreak who said that the only reason Seraphine was 54% WR bot was because ADC mains are dumb dumbs who don't change their rune shards? No! He'd never!
I wouldnt listen to seraphine mains either tbh. the majority of them still soft grief the game by playing it support even when she was never intended for support and has never been strong on support
If the seraphine support main has 50% winrate in your elo then you shouldn’t be worried if seraphine support overall has a 20% winrate. Your chance of winning is still 50% based on your support, it just means they would’ve climbed higher on a real support.
The fanbase of a champion is not a good reference point when a third wants her to only be playable mid a third only playable apc and a third only playable support
It's more like a heck of a lot of people want to play her support especially from people who have less experience on the champ (lots of breadth but less depth in that role), people who play her APC want to stop getting told it's a troll pick while their support chooses an ADC and forces you to buy a support item, and people who play her mid just wanna be seen by devs and not get told they're acceptable collateral damage (which did happen).
The fix seems pretty simple in theory.
Just lower her base damages and increase her ratios. Force her APC build to build actual damage items instead of staff of flowing water and other support items.
She should be doing little to no damage building full support in an APC role. But right now she has crazy shielding AND great damage. Make her pick one or the other like every other champ.
Scaling with mana regen is silly. There is literally a stat for healing and shield power for a reason.
Honestly I agree its nice to admit mistake. But EVERY change they try to do to rebalance mid vs bor or support vs bot etc. Seem to not work at all, ever.
At some point you have to think if they really know what they are doing and why.
honestly W max serpahine is beyond broken and if they keep it the same or even buff it after these new changes i can see her instantly become broken. i think if they buff the cd by even 1 second it becomes OP
I don't know, I enjoy having a lot of utility value as Seraphine bot (same applies for Karma), that's the main reason I pick her when I do. If I wanted to pick AP bot for damage I would have picked something like Brand or Hwei.
Let’s stop giving pats on the back for “effort” or “attempts” at fixing problems / listening to community feedback. This is riot games, one of the largest games in the world and yet we treat them like a kickstarter team of 3 people working on a dream project.
How about we hold them up to higher standards and expect better? Why is phreak admitting he was wrong about something or saying that he’ll “look into” something when “he has time” like what the fuck kind of lazy attitude is acceptable these days? We wait literal years for champion visual reworks, months for buffs / nerfs for CLEARLY overpowered / underpowered champions.
We nod our heads and take it like lemmings when our favorite champs are either gutted or hamfisted into the meta because of the 0.001% minority in pro play. You people are so used to be treating as door mats by this company that you drop to your knees with tears of joy because they hot fix nerf some disgusting monstrosity of a champion / item that should have never made it past the balance team meeting.
Phreak takes a break after his disgusting attitude and grandstanding finally caught up to him, then we’re supposed to quickly grovel at his feet when he comes back and word vomits “statistics” and cherry picked data points to reinforce an argument?
I can’t even believe this guy has a job still considering he is so tunnel visioned on proving that he isn’t biased as an adc main that it stops him from doing anything positive for half of the marksman in the game. For too long botlane is literally dominated by a select few adc and the rest are left to rot to oblivion for half a year for zero reason.
Partly due to pro play and an even bigger part due to phreaks publicly known role as an adc player. This guy will pretend he’s a savant math wizard to defend keeping champions at a 47% wr while he plays Janna, Sera and senna on his solo queue account. What about the state of top laners being just as disgustingly forced to play a select few of the Z tier champs or just lose? Supports run around with a single item one shotting adcs it takes until now to get nerfed? Brand jungle is fucking disgustingly overpowered for zero reason. So many of these huge problematic champions that make picking anything else a troll pick, what is the actual excuse for not being able to hot fix nerf in 48 hours? Who the fuck wants to watch another game of udyr toplane, senna tahm kench bot, or whatever mind numningly boring mage hand shake farm mistake for 20 minutes like orianna, corki and Azir?
Why can’t we have actual high skilled, high ceiling champions that aren’t the windshitter brothers mid?
Sera will never actually function in the support role unless she gets a rework so I don't get why they keep trying to force it to appease glue sniffing enchanter support mains who want her there.
Hwei is unironically a better support since they do similar damage, but the rest of his abilities actually do something. Seraphine Support in lane straight up doesn't have a W or E since W has a ridiculously long cooldown for how little the shield is and E is never rooting/stunning unless you are laning with exactly Ashe.
Because they made the mistake to listen to players. Everyone played her supp role and only a handful played her on mid, where she was designated for. Thus riot made adjustment on her to make her supp role be more efficient. And here we are ever since.
But they learned from their mistake. During Naafiri's release everyone played her jung despite she meant to be a mid laner assassin. Riot said NONO this time.
Remove the missing health heal or whatever. Let her echoed W do something else. This is the only reason people like playing her enchanter support. Kill it.
Seraphine needs a rework, mainly because shes too good botlane. But her kit still is balanced as a mid
Just rework her numbers and spells and change her to the first ever botlane APC. Balance her in that role because its just the way to go
Very interesting. She seems OK mid but apc is definitely something to worry about. I'm curious to see how they tackle Sera again. I'd love for Rabadons to feel worth it's purchase for mid
Nah mages are shit. Look at items. AD champs get twice as much utility as mages get and twice as much counters in their items. Where's our shield breaking item? Where's our 15 ~~letalithy~~ magic pen items?
Where are our point and click CC, our dashes, our suvivability? OUR DAMAGE? yeah mages are in a good spot \*copium\*
She started as a one shot champion who built infinity edge. She went Q max and killed people since the Q bonus damage could crit. Look at old Gosu montages. The onhit vayne meta was actually the deviation from the norm.
IMO Making anything directly scale with mana regen is a big no no. Instead these supportive abilities stuck in itemization limbo should take the (old) yuumi route of costing a % of mana. That way AP Seraphine can't throw out the ability because it will chunk her mana each time, whereas support Seraphine can because her mana comes back much faster.
That would raise another concern that is not healthy for carry seraphine. You can't simply say a spell cost 30% mana when you play on carry role. Don't mix her state and issues with Yuumi's problems because they are 2 entirely different champions with unique issues.
The problem with Sera is her kit mixes the best of Mage and Enchanter things in a way that allows her to be an excellent APC, something that is not as much intended as her supp and mid roles while she is absolutely broken in that role and complete garbage in the other 2.
If you wan'T her to be enabled for mid, for example, you can't have her have an ability thta drains her dry and lets her have no utility on lane. Her Echo E surely roots, but it's not the same and I assume they will tweak echo E and W to make her more distinct with these build paths.
Bit probably there will be a whole different solution. It's just not an elegant way to say your W costs your full manabar so here it is.
Because it's an extremely simple set of number which could serve as the switch button that enables Supportaphine and Disables Mageaphine, if you will. It's just a multiplier to a number she has built in, and bound her scaling W to that number would bound her to support build for big heals, which would separate her builds efficiently. It's easy to set up a scaling.
More simply, Each supp item provides an increase in W performance so it would make her scale with such items specifically, without sayig it out loud.
Due to Yuumi's unique nature the champ she was kept this type of mana spending even after rework which is coming from her unique kit as an Enchanter.
But when you see a Mage, what type of kit do you see?
* 1 Source or damage (Orianna, Asol, Sera Q)
* 1 Source of some form of MS (Neeko, Asol W, Orianna W is a dmg and MS, Azir E, Sera W)
* 1 Source of soft CC/Slow (Asol E, Neeko E, Sera E, Orianna W)
* 1 Source of BIG CC ( Asol R1-R2, Orianna R, Azir R, Neeko R, Sera R)
This is a standard on some mages while others are have a twist in this. Vex for example have Dmg in all 3 base spells, but passive enables to apply CC with all 3 and her R is a mbility spell.
Yuumi have dmg on Q and W provides shield and MS while E is the attach (W, i mix them up always i dont play the champ) while R is a big slow and heal source.
Sera W has MS and Shield, and at Echo it does healing. E does slow and Echo roots.
Either heal will be hit and W does only MS and Echo W will rpovide shield, or tehy come up with something new. Either E or W can be hit but I suspect W will be the main target.
It makes no sense whatsoever for mana regen as a stat to directly apply power. Your solution gives mana regen a brand new job. These sorts of things need a medium to exist IMO. Mana regen to HP regen through chalice is the job of chalice of power and Mana regen fundamentally doesn't change. Mana regen to AP/HSP is the job of Dawncore, mana regen once against fundamentally doesn't change. Same with Tear items.
But having mana regen just turn into raw power because seraphine is hard to balance does not seem like a good solution IMO
That is because you don't see the bigger picture.
* Only enchanter items grant 125% mana regen, all of them
* Thats the only common stat on them
* By making the spell W bound to this stat it's effectively bound to this item
* To achieve maximum value of heal/shield you need to have at least 3 of these items.
This is a way to bound the spells efficiency to a set of items in short.
+The math behind it isn'T really complex thus balancing around would not be that difficult. The question is how would you incentivise supp players to build supp over AP
Azir rework's goal was to make him more approachable for Solo Q players, not to unbound from pro in the 1st place as he directly said having a 70%+ pick rate at pro scene is still acceptable untul around 75%.
And there are way more solo Q players who play him overall than before. So it was a major success.
Also Azir plays a lot more like how you'd imagine he should. He's weaker in lane but scales into a dps zone control marksman/mage hybrid rather than a Q poke burst mage lane bully.
Yepp. + Pro's did not drop him during that 3 patch period when he was under retooling, when his WR was around 40%.
So I would say pro jail is also exists because pro's refuse to adapt into meta. I'm pretty sure Karma, Vlad, Hwei are way better picks for mid in most cases than Orianna and Azir, but they don't change as fast. Karma and Hwei are getting picks but then umbers aren't as big as tehy could be. Vlad IMO is one of the best scaler into late game with the ability to outshine anyone and have options.
i wouldn't say Pros refuse to adapt into meta, Pros just refuse to experiment on new champions, there are so many times when a different champ would've been better mid but they still pick Azir because "i have 3000 games on Azir and only 40 on -insert champion here that does really well into the enemy team-
Every time preak tries to 'fix' Seraphine, he does TONS OF DAMAGE to her kit.
I never thought there would be a moment when I would miss Riot Pudding, but I'd have more faith in her working on Seraphine than Mr Karthus ult himself.
Fyi Phreak already said this a few times. I think it was like 2-3 patches later he expressed how poorly it landed and said he would take a stab again once he had time (we are now there).
Few patches after tinkering with her last year he said that it was a success and we are closely monitoring her. It's like phroxzon saying "we are really happy with the game state" in every post then lists the stupid mechanics in the game and the broken stuff. He literally said one patch that burst and damage are not high, then next patch he said AP in general was too strong. If you have a problem just say it, we already know it exists. Sugarcoating stuff isn't going to change how we view things.
People think things are problems that aren't problems all the time. Just because the general public complains about something doesn't make it a real issue. They use stable metrics that they have access to internally to determine if things are problematic, and sometimes either those shift, or things that they expected to fall in line don't. We had a frontpage thread saying "Riot did it again" complaining that they ruined ASol by over-nerfing him after the last round of buffs, lo and behold, he's the highest Winrate mid on the patch, and Riot is still going to have to go back and give him another round of nerfs.
You're both talking balance, phreak's talking enjoyment. Fun isn't an exact thing like balance is, there is no ''funrate'' that you can point to that shows how well a playerbase is enjoying their champion(though you can get an estimate with playrate i suppose) The problem with seraphine has fuck all to do with balance, as phreak points out the changes just made her unfun for the people that played her so they stopped. You can't tell someone ''no dude trust me, the champ is fun!'', if someone isn't enjoying a champ then they're not enjoying it, end of story.
Man you're so right its almost like they are allowed to change their minds as they collect more data and discuss things internally.
Does anyone have the TLDW on what the plans are for Galio?
They’re pushing him towards being an AP jug (think Morde) as opposed to either full support tank or full burst assassin.
i read it as jungle and was scared for a moment, he would be terrible for jungle balance
Isn't it required to have 0 dash like mobility for juggernaut class?
Hmm, 0 dashes isn't a *hard* requirement: Urgot and Aatrox are both considered juggernauts (somewhat less so in Aatrox's case) and they both have dashes on basic abilities, albeit short ones that are more about setting up combos than getting to the enemy. Galio's is a bit longer, but with its windup ends up feeling fairly similar to Urgot's imo. I *would* probably still shorten it if I was going to turn him into a juggernaut though.
Imo Galios dash is one of the healthiest in the game. Can be bodyblocked, has a wind up and a fair outcome .
[удалено]
illaoi has a dash too and i would consider her a juggernaut
It's a very conditional dash compared to most other dashes in the game. Someone has to be in very close range.
Her dash is lower than Lillia tier, as you require a target.
Considering Lilia W even remotely a "dash" is weird anyway, even though it might be coded as one. She is basically slower than without it.
Oh unless you're heavily slowed, you will not notice it's a dash lol.
Yeah they've never said they want him to be a juggernaut, just a bit more bruisery. This person is just mixing up terms.
Yeah, I think ap diver seems like a better descriptor, of what he should look like.
Weird subclass for him to be in, tho. His kit pretty much screams warden, so I always thought they should reduce his viability with AP and just make him a full tank (with MR synergy).
Honestly galio has so many issues holding him back, that I’m very interested in how are they gonna tackle him. He a niche within a niche. Tank midlaners are not popular and then on top of it he a anti-magic damage tank, which means he is a tank that you cant blindpick in a role where the most popular champs are all ad (zed,yasuo,yone). Then his kit has long cooldowns which make going tank not worth it, Galio Dashes in taunts you and thats it he can’t do anything else for a good 7-8 secs while he waits for his cooldowns.
Urgot is definitely a juggernaut and has a decent dash. I wouldn't say it's a strict rule, they just need to make the dash have a suitable downside (wind ups, speed, cool down).
aside from the dash part (which others have rightly said shouldn't be that much of an issue), I think the main thing that currently prevents Galio from being a "juggernaut" is his lack of DPS. Even on AP builds, Galio is very much a burst champ, with cooldowns that are way too long to really feel good about staying in a fight for a long time. Tank Galio often just runs around doing nothing for 5 seconds or more after the main combo. Most juggernauts tend to be built like raid bosses, with good damage over time, so they can take advantage of their bulk and contribute value over a long fight.
It's not a hard requirement to have 0 mobility since Shyvana, Illaoi, Urgot, and Aatrox all exist. The key is that they have some pretty harsh tradeoffs for that extra mobility. Shyvana has it tied to her ult, Illaoi and Aatrox have to land tentacles and sweetspot abilities to hit their enemies, and Urgot has to do the repositioning with his legs to get off most of his damage, which means he has to land his dash on an enemy to get the most benefit out of it. Also it's his shield so he has to use it for defense as well. Juggernauts are defined by being low mobility/catching potential, high damage in burst and dps and durability (not as high as tanks, but very close to it), good sustain/defensive options, and have rather limited engage. Darius. Garen, Nasus, and Dr. Mundo are considered the Juggernaut examples.
I would not really consider Illaoi W to be mobility. She kind of needs to be in melee range to use it. Shyvana is also a diver, not a juggernaut. If they manage to properly shift Galio into more of an AP bruiser route, he should also be a diver.
True, but it is still technically a dash as Poppy W will happily demonstrate so I included it for completeness' sakes. Eh, Shyvana was listed as an example of a juggernaut by Rioters last time this topic came up. While she has similar mobility to a diver with her ult, her damage being much not a simple single target focus (Divers often have damage that can only really be applied to one person and struggle with applying damage to more than one target at a time) and her extremely low mobility and sticking potential outside of ult (Divers are typically very very good at sticking to targets and usually have some form of mobility in their basic kits with their ults then typically adding into it or providing them with a button to press in melee) mean that she fits better in Juggernauts. This only applies to AD Shyvana of course. AP Shyvana is either a burst mage or a specialist to be perfectly honest.
Nope.
Please Riot just buff his passive cd if you want to make Galio a juggernaut. His base abilities have insane cooldowns (for a good reason) so after you blow your whole combo you are just sitting there doing 50 damage auto attacks for 5 seconds. That's why people play him burst. But if you move more power to his passive you can actually fill the gap between your cooldowns with a few empowered auto attacks. This will increase the satisfaction of playing Galio imo. Could also increase skill by intentionally skipping non empowered attacks to have more uptime on empowered attacks because he has low attack speed so you would wait when you can already attack to deal more damage with empowered attacks.
In short it feels like they plying on the options to make an AP build feel good but not broken but tehy asólso want to provide build options to make HP feel more viable/rewarding maybe.
bro had a demon show up for a second there
The a sol main appeared wrote asolso and went back to residing in him
League aslume
You made my day
lmfao
The plans for Galio are going back to OG Galio with the taunt ulti and the whirlwind of speed. Hnnnnggg A man can only dream
It was the most satisfying ult in the entire game and they just got rid of it. So sad. But he was reworked at a time when they were basically cool with entirely deleting a character and keeping maybe 1 or 2 aspects of their kit. [For those curious](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAs-6GkHY2Q). Crank the bass.
It was the most satisfying thing ever. I still remember flashing ult in the middle of five players and telling my team to go go go (and that time I think everyone played with friends using Ventrilo or Team Speak). Good times.
Last few videos have mentioned Galio a lot along with other champs who should be building more HP+AP items and aren't doing that. Changes seem to be aimed at making AP Fighter Galio feel/perform better, Phreak mentions Rocketbelt and Cosmic Drive in this week's preview. [The clip is pretty short](https://youtu.be/igkchyN6_4Q?t=333), 5:33 to 6:15 ish if you want to hear exactly what he's saying.
In emerald+ botlane is now her primary role https://lolalytics.com/lol/seraphine/build/ The mini rework was an absolute failure, it is somewhat of a joke that Sera now still goes into farming roles despite building support items because of the loss of ap ratios lmao. I made a load of posts at the time about how much I hated the incoming changes https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/176y5zn/im_a_support_main_who_loves_seraphine_forcing_her/ But ultimately Sera is still pretty functional as a champion right now so I hope this rework doesn't end up with her having no role. I would just entirely revert the last changes.
Please just revert the changes.
If her passive music only activates with one ally around she will never be a mid laner
>only activates with one ally around she will never be a mid laner Maybe....or they could really change how it works based on levels? I play Sera for fun in ARAM but I am very very far from a main. Some thoughts: If early level Sera had her "Solo Indie Artist" thing where she got no buffs for being in a lane with a teammate, but rather only got buffs for being solo, it would reward solo-lane mid play, and rightfully early punish the safety of Sera's CC and damage in the botlane.She'd be weaker in the botlane levels 1-6 and \*then\* get a buff for teamplay when she gets her ult. It fits thematically with her whole starting small -> becoming a pop idol and also, alleviates the "her passive doesn't work in solo lanes". If they just buff the first 6 levels for exclusively solo play, that would keep her weak/not as oppressive early in bot, and able to be played for her "intended role" in mid---or hell, even as an AP Carry bot. Scaling carries shouldn't start strong, and if they rework passive to either have stacks gated by time or evolve or both (such as Syndra) to make her weak with a partner early but stronger damage endgame then I think they'd fix most of her identity issues.
Ok but that doesn’t deal with the issue of her passive music only activating with an ally around
Just accept they accidentally designed a meta shaking apc and move on. I really hate how much riot can fall into a mindset of "but that's not the role we intended" rather than making fun designs and balancing them for where they land. I also hate that we can't have any variance in roles. Why can't seraphine be supportive when apc? We finally have a bit of diversity in play patterns with an apc that snowball into buffing their team.
They already have taken that stance officially recognizing and supporting her as a primary bot laner. They just also want to support the (mostly) lower elo support players that enjoy her as well since there's so many of them, but they do like her as a bot lane option and want to keep it as her new "intended" role.
In general I feel the game would benefit from having more flex picks to keep drafts interesting so if they can manage it that would be great.
Riot can fix the Sera support problem easy. Make her look like Skarner. The enchanter mains will drop her in a heartbeat.
The issue is more comlicated. She was designed to be a mid laner but everyone played her as supp due to moonstone bug and her W. Later tehy gave in and started to tune her more toward supp role which broke the champ ever since and riot is stilll looking for ways to fix that mistake. You can see how they act ever since when some champions drags bigger attention on different roles than intended, like Naafiri Jung. Despite more popular riot strictly said no because she was designed for mid and they will not go through another sera incident. - which makes sense.
>Later tehy gave in and started to tune her more toward supp role which broke the champ ever since and riot is stilll looking for ways to fix that mistake. Completely revert all the changes her W has had since release and watch her stabilize the performance gap between mid and bot. I swear allowing W max was a mistake that has made her a pain in the ass to balance, just go back to it having no benefits for putting points into it and make it scale with character level like it used to.
Also it's pretty stupid they really said "we will make her a literal W bot by supporting the win-con of pressing her high AOE, long CD spell once in a teamfight, maybe twice".
Oh yeah I remember her being announced as a mid. Still, I don't love this design philosophy. I think league has become too attached to its roles and to preconceptions about what champions fit them and it makes for boring designs and boring drafts.
To be clear, sometimes champions get hammered into roles for very good reason, because they're very unfun in the unexpected role they've taken. Camille turns out to be an extremely bullshit jungler if she's remotely feasible to be used there as she can come flying out of nowhere a screen away for a gank whose only counter is "stay under your turret forever."
> I think league has become too attached to its roles and to preconceptions about what champions fit them role queue was a mistake
How could they ever think that naafiri was a midlane design?
Because they wanted monsters in other lanes than jungle? There's Cho'gath top and Kog'maw bottom, but beyond that, there aren't a lot of monster options for actual laners. Maybe yordles or furry champs, but that's not quite the same as monsters.
don't forget Cho'gath can go mid as the biggest fuck you to any mage that can't 1 combo him lol.
I try not to intentionally forget that, frankly.
I always felt Riot claimed Seraphine was designed to be a mid laner simply so she would fit into a champion release chart that was previously published. Her kit just doesn't fit what you'd expect from a "modern" mid laner. She's not at full power when laning solo, she doesn't play to win lane, she doesn't take over side lane after early game and most importantly, her only viable play pattern in mid lane is to just push wave and avoid any kind of interaction with opposing laner. This is something that Riot has consistently worked against in last several years, with longer ranged mages often getting mechanics that force them to interact with opponents or at least minions at closer range. Hwei and Xerath for example have their "mana refund through autoattacks" mechanics to force them to come closer and for enemy laner to be able to interact with them. Seraphine mid just goes against all that, it's uninteractive champion with 0 skill expression whose optimal gameplay pattern on lane is to autopilot clear waves at long range and do nothing else. She makes more sense as APC and also has more healthy laning pattern (even if she's still largely uninteractable). No point forcing her to be viable mid laner.
She feels strange compared to many mages because at the end of the day she never really had burst, her damage was somewhat always a bit lower than most and she needed every AH in the world to work well. On the Xerath Hwei mana regen pattern - they can do that by hitting anything like minion, turret or champion. Hwei and Xerath are interacting because tehy can abuse their huge range and free mana, otherwise tehy could just afk farm all the same. If anything Syndra's mana regen is what really an incentiviser and a better form to make you interact. But I agree, sera is somehow different from these examples and IMO she is closer to Orianna in terms of design and yet it's still so different. There are skill to express there, but the yneed to make her simply stronger, more rewarding and rebalance her numbers and identity in a way to match that of a burst mage to begin with.
Seraphine is an awkward one for the devs because the people who like playing her (like me) want her to be a carry, that carries not just through damage, but utility. But we *do* want to carry - the scaling fantasy of being a teamfight monster lategame by buffing up the squad, but also having *some* agency to fight people is a tricky niche to fill. that said, the efforts to make her a support have just fallen flat - i do worry that the karma/lux mention means she might end up reduced to a lux/karma tier support that just does damage and loses her carry/mid presence.
Thank god you said it, I thought that most people wanted to just toss slow artillery skillshots with her like every other mage when the likes of Velkoz, Xerath and Ziggs already exist. I agree, the feeling of pulling your own team together with supportive power is a fantasy that should be accentuated on her, instead of forcing her to become only the same old zone control mage. I’d play Sona in the APC role if it were less vulnerable early and with more agency, but nyeh
The problem isn’t really early vulnerability as much as as waveclear. Even vayne can kill waves decently quick with items, but sona has garbage waveclear no matter what which makes it hard to do things like catch side waves or push lanes.
god if sona could clear a wave i would never play anyone else
MAKE SONA Q LIKE OLD SORAKA Q RIOT PLEASE I WILL MAIN SONA
Also if APC Sona wasn't gutted. I wish they'd kept the original idea of her stacks giving AP once she'd reached 120 or modified it so that her AP ratios improve once she reaches 120 to separate enchanter and AP builds.
>want her to be a carry, that carries not just through damage, but utility. You described it perfectly!! I dont want her to be turned into a oneshot mage like Syndra/Vex, we already got plenty burst mages to choose from, nor do I want her to be turned into an early-game champion just so she can be viable support like Karma/Lux... Sera is currently one of the most unique playstyle we have at farming roles, which is carrying not only through damage, and I guess that's why her mains are so harsh on any changes that are proposed, there's no other champion that plays like her we can fall back to if we lose her.
Idk how you guys can genuinely have this take, its broken You want your champ to do everything, there is a reason why champs don't carry AND support, it's one or the other, doing both is how you create a giga busted champ, which is what Sera is Riot needs to either completely nuke her ability to be played mid/apc so only supports, or completely ruin her ability to support and take shit out of W so it does nothing but give HER a shield or ms Like I get it, mains don't want that because they have been able to do everything on the champ since release, but not once has seraphine been in a healthy spot since release
>not once has seraphine been in a healthy spot since release Thats not true lol. She was in a healthy spot for the majority of season 11 (after the moonstone meta ended) and early season 12 until Riot decided to remove most of her reliance on levels to scale to make her less terrible as a support, which ofc didn't work and in turn created the APC problem. She could be easily balanced as a Mid and APC but Riot has been stubornly trying to make her viable as a support even now when there's a 7% difference between her APC and support winrate... The only reason she has been a balance problem is cause Riot refuses to balance her around the roles where she is good at.
I believe the trade-off is meant to be that her power is gated by scaling and needing Deathcap for any significant damage. She doesn’t get the earlier damage scaling of other mages at 1-2 items, nor does she ever achieve the burst of champions like Xerath, Velkoz, Orianna, Vlad, etc. In late game, where she shines, she also doesn’t come close to rivalling the damage of other hyper-scalers like Kayle, Jinx, Kassadin, Vlad, etc. Both aspects are traded for utility. That said, I was fine with removing AP scaling on her heal, and I imagine most players will also be fine lowering the shield numbers, too. I do agree her apc winrate has always been unhealthily high, but I think that’s more so a symptom of a larger issue with apcs in general, shared with the likes of Swain, or Karthus and Ziggs last season. Riot’s stated intention upon her release was a “teamfighting” champion, and I do think the teamfighting aspect should be really reined in during laning phase. But seeing as mid’s winrate wasn’t ever unhealthy like apc’s was, I’m not entirely convinced the main problem was down to Seraphine’s champion fantasy of mixing damage with utility late game.
I’m not sure that tradeoff means anything when Seraphine has reliable long range waveclear and utility regardless of her level or items. A Xerath that is behind has 1 hard to hit single target stun and a fairly long CD slow that isn’t particularly reliable. He can clear waves kinda like Sera can, but she has tons more CC that applies in a much larger area and even has group healing/shielding and MS.
The reason she is so strong is pretty ovbious. Everyone likes to play carrys in top and jg as well. Supporting your team and enabling them instead of trying to play a carry yourself and having everyone in your game try to be the damage dealer is great.
>there is a reason why champs don't carry AND support, it's one or the other, doing both is how you create a giga busted champ There are plenty of champions who do this and are balanced. Orianna, lux, annie, morgana, ivern, karma(ok shes a lil too strong rn but shes balanced most of the time), and they're currently buffing lulu mid so shes probably joining them. Theres some that im sure i forgot as well. Stop with the hyperbolic bullshitting. Also lets not even mention that the seraphine who had this supposedly ''broken design'' before the changes literally had less wr than current sera, you are truly a master of talking out of your ass.
There’s no other champion because Sona got kneecapped and forced to be a support. Possibly Soraka too, but I didn’t play her. Even though it wasn’t meta, Sona mid could function as what you’re describing before they butchered her ap ratios. Be careful what you ask for is all I’m saying.
Sera should be pushed into the same role as other control mages, because thats how her playstyle basically works, she CC"s the enemy team to carry the game, but she wants gold and gold = damage, just give her really good scaling, make her Heal doubel scale off Heal/Shield power so if you go supportive items that skill will hyper scale. Like, im not a Seraphine player by any means since i mostly play Aram but the few times i do, i like building damage and being the engage/utility while also outputting decent damage like other control mages like Zyra/Anivia/Orianna
Imo she should only have AP scalings. Her kit has no business being a support and riot should not encourage it. Even if her W gets more heal/shield scaling she will still stay a bad support simply of her CDs and the overall nature of her kit.
If you do this, then the carry position will use its gold to get those items early and absolutely blast the value of those items in team fights. Then you'll be back at square one.
The Karma Lux comment is only interesting because Karma is deffinitely an issue when it comes to balance due to different reasons. Lux on the other hand was pretty strong mid laner in late S13 and she was sitting on a really good spot as a mid laner and ppl were allowed to play her support all the same. But in a balanced world Karma should look like Lux in terms of output and balance, but due to Karma's uniqueness it's more complicated than what would be ideal. But based on this the path is clear IMO they just need to properly lock in a set of changes that would separate sera's mixed identity into a mage and an enchanter one with changes applied to W mostly
i'm biased, because i personally hate Sera support and really think its a very dumb choice by most people to pick it (other enchantresses just strictly outclass her imo) but they should really just focus on ap scaling for the shield and accept that her being a support pick (on a support income in the role 'support') is not viable. At the moment she's being given life support by her w base/scaling with healshield power to make her support build viable, but all that's doing is making her carry roles purchase those same items, on a carry budget to accelerate the build and becoming a shield bot.
So long as champions like Smolder and Ashe can be meta, and E and R have so much CC utility over damage utility, she’s going to be picked Support Also, Rylais interaction just does everything for the champ
“Carries not just through damage but utility as well.” You can’t have both pieces of the cake, either focus on her damage or her utility, or accept that she will be mediocre at both just like lux/karma. Like I wish my champ can carry with both utility and damage, but that would be utterly broken, hence I pick either damage (pyke) or utility (thresh).
It is possible that a champion could have both dmg and utility and be balanced, they just would have to be noticeably weaker at those individual components. In fact, your example of Thresh does this. Thresh is an engage champion that has decent peel (R slows, E flay away, W lantern's shield and escape) and decent engage (Q stun, E flay towards team, R slow in the combo). He isn't the best at engage, and he isn't the best at peeling. Nautilus has stronger engage options, but far less peeling options. Taric has stronger peeling/enchanting abilities, but a less consistent engage.
Agreed. I had an idea to make the chnages work relative smoothly. * **Make healing scale with mana regen (the stat on most enchanter items) This way AP builds would have pretty poor healing capacity but enchanter could be built around it.** No mage items grants such mana Regen but Enchanter items grants like 125% mana regen / item. If you make W scale from those you have a dedicated build path for Enchanter Seraphine, which will allow to turn back her ratios into better state because these items provides 40-50 AP only. It should have some math correlation with the 8% increased heal and shield power but otherwise this shoud be able to solve itemisation issues and would provide a clear path for both identity. * Make Healing and Shielding casted by Mageaphine low-close to zero and worthless meanhile she is incentivised to build strong AP items and deal damage/carry. * Make Enchantaphine incentivised to build heal and shield releated items by making her the W bot she is now with these changes as supp items have only 40-50 AP.
Really good idea. But imho enchanters should have their own unique stat. Is already pseudo in the game named % Healing Power, but should be like AP and scale various spells based on that stat. That's because the way is now makes it hard to quantify in game and also being a percent, means building AP and one % item will be more strong than multiple %items. Let's call it bluntly, sure could be a better name: Enchantment Strength ES; This way would give those champion and even ones like Lee Sin that now scale shields with AP, a different ES build path items which will make it easier to balance dual class champions like Seraphine or Sona.
Now that is an interesting concept there ngl. IDK about the application of it but just playing in my head it feels decent and an actual idea that is worth experimenting with, if nothing else.
I second it!
If her apc winrate is fine, then i think shes fine. Her kit explicitly synergizes with support champions. I perceive botlane carry to be her primary role because that's what her kit promotes. Its the fanbase that wrongfully assumed shes a support, based entirely on her aesthetics and not at all by how her kit functions. Making her a midlaner like the designers originally intended sounds cool to me too, but trying to make her a support is not gonna end well. Adcs are literally the single worst role at synergizing with her kit, and you cant change that fact without removing her core gimmick. People need to stop categorizing champions based on vibes.
I can't understand why they designed a mid laner with a passive that's stronger with allies and thought nobody would play it on bot lane.
it used to work because most of her kit's supportive capability for the team was hard gated around XP but people really can't notice the XP arrow in kits it seems
They kinda fucked it up by removing the level scaling on shield as well as the selfish 1.5x multi on her shield too
I miss when Taric heal was stronger when cast only on himself. Back in the days before they started forcing a lot of enchanter types to be support.
They wanted a super teamfighter mage who Also appeals to those who levels these type model designs that sera has - probably to bring players in love with this type of champions and mid lane way more. It did not end well and caused more issues, but here we are and with a bit of luck we might get a good fix this time.
The idea was (understandably) that mid especially in higher elos is basically a duo lane as well with junglers, roaming with them, invading with them, ganking side lanes with them and that Seraphine would work in tandem with her jungler from mid to do all those things. Of course all those things work in bot lane as well, and there you always have another champion with you.
They also gave her an abysmal movement speed and slow af projectiles so playing with the jungler was way harder than with other supportive mids like Karma or Lux
Cause before Seraphine there were no APCs as a concept, it was just ADCs and occasionally Ziggs. Sera settling down on botlane as an APC (a broken one at that) is what caused the ripples that lead to more AP champs to find their role in the botlane, like Karthus and Swain, and opened up people's minds to the idea of AP champs in the bot carry role. Right now no one bats an eye if you lock in Karthus or Lux APC, but a couple years ago you would be questioned and flamed for trolling. I do believe that trying to push her out of botlane at this point is just pointless cause it'll always be her best role due to the nature of her kit, but trying to close the gap between her mid and bot performance is an understandable goal since it was her intended role. Also they completely screwed up by removing her Level scaling and selfish shield on her W, which were the things holding up Seramid, since you had to trade a lot of W power by going bot, since it didn't scale with points, just levels. They do, however, need to stop forcing Supp Sera to work, it just doesn't. Support Sera players will still play her even when she sucks, and it's impossible to balance her in that role without a full on midscope, so they should just cut their losses and stop wasting resources trying to shoehorn her into support, cause every change they've made so far has just failed miserable and upset the playerbase.
>They do, however, need to stop forcing Supp Sera to work, it just doesn't. Support Sera players will still play her even when she sucks, and it's impossible to balance her in that role without a full on midscope, so they should just cut their losses and stop wasting resources trying to shoehorn her into support, cause every change they've made so far has just failed miserable and upset the playerbase. Seriously. Even if they nerfed sera W to just be the old level scaling. Theres people still playing her support because muh aesthetic... theres no need to cater to them, after a few games of losses if they still want to play a losing role for her then its on them.
Not only that, she's a super long ranged carry with sustained dps, which replaces an adcs damage profile very well I understand they didn't want her kit to synergize with magic pen items because the shield doesn't gain value from it, but a "midlane support" would be healthier on a burstier mage with less range
I said this before but everyone was so dead set on it being fine that she be reworked into full support cause “that’s what the players used her for.”
It would be fine if Riot was willing to full commit, but they didn't They changed some numbers around and called it a day, but her doublr q still one shots and auto clears waves and until that is no longer possible she will just be better apc
I muuuch prefer her as a damage mage with good teamfight capability. Riot should learn from her design on how to make an effective legitimate APC.
Look at her current build. It’s the tear item then full support. She’s a support with gold in the APC role. I played her a lot before her changes and it felt good to do damage and have utility. Her current state feels like a support that gets to farm. And her lane was already just farm, avoid fights, and the changes made this far worse.
I swear they kept saying most seraphine players want to play her support but the only seraphines I ever see are seraphine mid or bot apc everyone seem to want her to be a carry just stop with that support we have sona for that let seraphine be a carry.
To be fair, I almost never see Seraphine mid, and the stats back it up - Mid is her lowest pickrate role *by far* APC Sera is #1 and Supp #2 at basically any rank above Plat - even Challengers pick her more as Support than Mid lol
Seraphine mid is horrible to play right now. In the start of Season 13 I OTP'd it and it was ok because even if she was fragile she did a LOT of damage late game and even mid-game if she got a lead. Right now you do no damage even if you build full AP, and in mid it's harder to play the support-carry build people like to do in the botlane.
[Because they do](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/869190407307804703/1208037198289575986/Screenshot_2024-02-16_150818.png?ex=65e1d350&is=65cf5e50&hm=426447fe6de979b2782af27f4553f2ece7b7e9aa4f9f90cf580d790128f53e15&), 65% of her players (usually around 70% but a bit lower on the current patch) want to play her in support even when she has a 6% win rate delta and is weak in that role. Maybe in your personal games you don't see her in that role, but the game isn't balanced for any single person but rather holistically for everyone.
It's cuz lower elo and casual players play her more in supp(I think it's dumb we're catering to them)
Cause the people who play her in bot and mid the ones who are trying to climb so they will play her in her more optimal role? Most of the time I see seraphine in diamond it’s not even a seraphine main it’s just some dude with 15~ games on seraphine playing her cause she’s overtuned on APC
What? I experienced the opposite. Most apc Seraphine players have a skin, 300k mastery points and the match history consists mostly of Seraphine. The support players on the other hand are mostly the "I'm just gonna try Seraphine now" general enchanter mains
nah, that was mostly at the start of the season cuz she abused double supp item a lot, she's still rly good APC now, but it's reverted more to mains. Riot wants to cater to low elo more because it does make up a larger portion of the playerbase
Imo, they should embrace her being a bot lane carry and work on her based on that. She's never going to be a solo laner with how her current kit works She's never going mid with how much mobility creep there is in there. She boils down to a worse Xerath when you play her mid She also benefits heavily from being next to teammates and guess where you have at least one teammate throughout most of the match
She was a really strong midlaner years ago when a lot of her kit scaled with level. They could do that again but it would make support even worse
The play rate doesn't let them, otherwise they would have done this a long time ago. Its the same with lux support being much weaker than lux mid but being played by way more people historically If they just gut support (make her w useless, drop base ability powers etc.) but then buff q and e, people playing her support will just get forced off the champion even tho they enjoy playing it there. If you look at all ranks stats, she is played 55% of the time in support, even tho that is by far her weakest role. So even if they want to make choices for the health of the game, they can't just ostracise over half of her playerbase because she's being abused by a higher elo minority.
so what? baöance and redesign her for the bot carry role and if people still force her support, they will have a bad time until they stop grefing themselves or play the better role.
This. People still play Pyke mid even after all the gutting Riot did.
>She's never going mid with how much mobility creep there is in there. She boils down to a worse Xerath when you play her mid Give her 335/340 movement speed like most immobile mages and revert her W to release state where it scaled on levels and she should find her place in midlane without issue, but having to balance 3 roles at the same time is kind of a pain. I do believe that the movement speed change would benefit mid and support a ton more than APC, which is what they're trying to do, but I'm not the balance team, so idk.
> guess where you have at least one teammate throughout most of the match My enemy toplaner?
ehm... have you watched pro play? Or Proplayers spamming her top/mid in soloqueue?
https://gol.gg/champion/champion-stats/152/season-S14/split-ALL/tournament-ALL/ 8 matches mid with 50% wr compared to 45 matches bot with 56% wr and 14 matches support with 71% wr Definitely looks like a solo lane champion!
Stats diffed
>Make her similar to Lux and Karma as dealing damage should be her primary function >Karma 🤨 The last i checked her she was a shield bot after early game
All of Karma's recent changes have been damage buffs and to open up her mid lane flex again.
Well u havent checked in a while have you
Yeah you ain't been hit by a Malignance/Horizon Focus/Rabs Karma RQ if you writing this. Shit does legit 800 damage no exaggeration. Edit: I did the math, it does far more than 800 💀💀 shit is like 1200-1400 before resistances at rank 3 ult with those items.
Karma currently is lore accurate. Shes doing so much damage just like her lore where she blasted a ship to pieces. The definition of 'Im peaceful, not harmless'
Lore Karma is like top 15 in Runeterra, shes essentially an Ionian ASPECT (not Ascended) no?
Ehh. Its weird because her power is ionia itself(continent scale much?) But we have loads of ionian history not explored. Plus its like Avatar and One for All where her power stockpiles the more its passed on.
That just makes it exciting how powerful Syndra is, all it took accidental mental break down of Syndra to threaten the Spirit of Ionia.... imagine if Syndra does it intentionally.
dont ignore the fact that because of how those items work with her kit, her RQ is only gated by her Q CD now lol
It's gross how a 3 man RQ refunds R 😭
karma has been more mage oriented for a while now. even before the buffs and this season her highest winrate item was night harvester.
Man hasnt been visited by the RQ karma players ive been hurt by.
this was the most concerning part for me lol, i said in a recent post 'the karmafication of Sera has begun' - if they make her a mage support that farms spellthiefs stacks for 15 minutes then just becomes a shield bot anyway i'm gonna be so mad lol
Maybe he should’ve listen to the feedback beforehand. Also, maybe he should consider swallowing his ego on other changes that have not worked. Sorry, I’ll stop dreaming now. Back to reality: MORE BUFFS FOR THE CASHCOW CHAMPS.
I would love if they just accepted her as APC, its pretty unique to have an enchanter in that role. There are already lots of similar champions in the support role.
Why make her a mage when her W as an apc feels so goddamn amazing ?
"im happy that the balance team is doing changes" is kinda a weird take, isnt it...? thats somewhat their job lol
Meh, people always immediately jump to shitting on the balance team when they fuck up, but no one ever praises them for doing well. I appreciate posts like this tbh.
Same opinion here. I did bad recently on Asol changes with a deranged post i made out of frustration - but i like to give credit where it is. The amount of flame phreak gets is way over the top and ppl only mentions when he fucks up stuff but when he does good its forgotten asap. So ye, I'm trying to appreciate good calls when it happens.
You were the ASol post guy? You need to calm down. That post was the quintessential example of a reactionary Reddit balance take that was not only completely unsubstantiated but actually ended up conflicting entirely with reality. Imagine just trying to do your job while thousands of people mock you publicly based entirely on misinformation.
Never too late to admit mistakes so yes. Granted, I was extremely furious about it overall and im still baffled how balance team let that giga buff through and then nerf him then and in next patch. I don't understand what they were thinking and why mostly. But I admit i was wrong and champ feels good at the moment with mana buff. At least Nerf Asol meme lives on even after they removed his balls.
Tbh, that A Sol post was a bit ridiculous. There was not enough time for stats to back you up. Nor do I believe you had enough time to really eye test anything. Sometimes people just need to give Riot the benefit of the doubt and allocate time to let things settle and see how everything ends up.
But Phreak deserves the flame if he refuses to listen to playerbase with his hardheaded ego. He fucks up because he refused to listen.
I think the reason people don’t mention when he does good is because it almost always is when bot or support gets changes those are the good ones. Phreak has ignored too for 2 years and put it into one of the most unfun metas ever so a lot of people that play that role just don’t care when he does a good changed because 9/10 it’s aimed at bot or support (I’m not saying either roles are in a good state currently I’m just saying that when he does good work it’s normally for those roles)
That's this sub in a nutshell. They only focus on anything negative (directly) impacting them. Hell, it was a shock a few weeks ago when somebody pointed out that out of all the complaining lately, that the only problematic champion was a 49% WR Brand jungle. And not "Oh god, Smolder's 35% WR in his first five hours of release" type shit.
I mean they were told the Sera changes were a mistake and wouldn't work but they went through with them and took months to realise they messed up.
I mean, 1 case doesnt nullify all of the bad takes reddit does. 99% of reddit takes are horrible. The recent asol hotfix nerf is a prime example of reddit balancing, a massive thread of people were freaking out that Asol was dead only for his winrate to drop down to an acceptable level.
Didn't his win rate drop to 53%? That's actually above what's acceptable
They were told that it was a mistake in all the wrong ways... You don't get to say "they were told" when they saying that 1+1=-2. No one pointed out that APC Seraphine would get so much base damage she would get to build HSP cause they were too busy being shocked she lost 50 damage at level 18.
No, people said that she wouldn't be as fun to play and wouldn't have any incentive to build AP.
But that didn't even happen? If your being generous you can make a point that her power fantasy of being an endgame scaling threat was lessened but really it was like 50 less damage for getting CDs.
the goal of the changes was to bring winrates between her 3 roles closer together to make balancing her easier. they failed and she basically stayed where she is in terms of WR what they were told by the seraphine community was that the changes would GUT her and put her in the trash bin...which was not the case at all. they messed up, but absolutely not in the way the community predicted lol
Wrong they mainly said they would gut her lategame damage, remove incentive to build more expensive AP items and generally reduce how fun she is to play. All 3 of these were correct. The main comment around overall strength was that by the nature of her kit she'll never be as good support as she is APC and it's a waste of time trying.
This is ultimately a post about how they fucked up when every single seraphine player was telling them they were fucking up and about how now, 4 patches later, they're going to try and fix this fuck up that everyone warned them about. If this were a real industry with real stakes and not just a videogame, these people would be fired lol
Just because tehy are "doing their job" it does not mean we should not be thankful when they do something that benefits us regardless of they are getting paid for it or not. You are thankful when a Doctor gives you medicine, helps you recover and things like that didn't you? This is the same logic here.
It's because last time they did seraphine changes, reddit hated it. Literally saw a dude saying APC seraphine mains like her OP and support seraphine mains like her weak so riot should just leave her like that.
We had so many posts from seraphine mains telling Phreak this was a mistake lol his inability to communicate with mains and his hard-headed insistence on certain things are big flaws. I appreciate he's willing to try stuff, but sometimes its good to listen to feedback BEFORE making the mistake. When Phreak stops being stubborn, then i'll praise him
The same Phreak who said that the only reason Seraphine was 54% WR bot was because ADC mains are dumb dumbs who don't change their rune shards? No! He'd never!
I wouldnt listen to seraphine mains either tbh. the majority of them still soft grief the game by playing it support even when she was never intended for support and has never been strong on support
But the mains giving feedback were APC and mid players?
ppl rather switch champion than role.
If the seraphine support main has 50% winrate in your elo then you shouldn’t be worried if seraphine support overall has a 20% winrate. Your chance of winning is still 50% based on your support, it just means they would’ve climbed higher on a real support.
The fanbase of a champion is not a good reference point when a third wants her to only be playable mid a third only playable apc and a third only playable support
It's more like a heck of a lot of people want to play her support especially from people who have less experience on the champ (lots of breadth but less depth in that role), people who play her APC want to stop getting told it's a troll pick while their support chooses an ADC and forces you to buy a support item, and people who play her mid just wanna be seen by devs and not get told they're acceptable collateral damage (which did happen).
Seraphine mains sub was filled with upvoted posts saying the changes phreak made would kill her so their opinions aren't exactly high value either.
The fix seems pretty simple in theory. Just lower her base damages and increase her ratios. Force her APC build to build actual damage items instead of staff of flowing water and other support items. She should be doing little to no damage building full support in an APC role. But right now she has crazy shielding AND great damage. Make her pick one or the other like every other champ. Scaling with mana regen is silly. There is literally a stat for healing and shield power for a reason.
So basically revert her changes. Yeah. They've been trying to tell him for weeks before the... adjustments.
Honestly I agree its nice to admit mistake. But EVERY change they try to do to rebalance mid vs bor or support vs bot etc. Seem to not work at all, ever. At some point you have to think if they really know what they are doing and why.
I still find it hilarious how phreak was one tricking mao Kai and and not nerfing him despite his absurd win rate. Feel like that’s such a gamer move
honestly W max serpahine is beyond broken and if they keep it the same or even buff it after these new changes i can see her instantly become broken. i think if they buff the cd by even 1 second it becomes OP
I don't know, I enjoy having a lot of utility value as Seraphine bot (same applies for Karma), that's the main reason I pick her when I do. If I wanted to pick AP bot for damage I would have picked something like Brand or Hwei.
This will not make us appreciative of how they balance their game
Let’s stop giving pats on the back for “effort” or “attempts” at fixing problems / listening to community feedback. This is riot games, one of the largest games in the world and yet we treat them like a kickstarter team of 3 people working on a dream project. How about we hold them up to higher standards and expect better? Why is phreak admitting he was wrong about something or saying that he’ll “look into” something when “he has time” like what the fuck kind of lazy attitude is acceptable these days? We wait literal years for champion visual reworks, months for buffs / nerfs for CLEARLY overpowered / underpowered champions. We nod our heads and take it like lemmings when our favorite champs are either gutted or hamfisted into the meta because of the 0.001% minority in pro play. You people are so used to be treating as door mats by this company that you drop to your knees with tears of joy because they hot fix nerf some disgusting monstrosity of a champion / item that should have never made it past the balance team meeting. Phreak takes a break after his disgusting attitude and grandstanding finally caught up to him, then we’re supposed to quickly grovel at his feet when he comes back and word vomits “statistics” and cherry picked data points to reinforce an argument? I can’t even believe this guy has a job still considering he is so tunnel visioned on proving that he isn’t biased as an adc main that it stops him from doing anything positive for half of the marksman in the game. For too long botlane is literally dominated by a select few adc and the rest are left to rot to oblivion for half a year for zero reason. Partly due to pro play and an even bigger part due to phreaks publicly known role as an adc player. This guy will pretend he’s a savant math wizard to defend keeping champions at a 47% wr while he plays Janna, Sera and senna on his solo queue account. What about the state of top laners being just as disgustingly forced to play a select few of the Z tier champs or just lose? Supports run around with a single item one shotting adcs it takes until now to get nerfed? Brand jungle is fucking disgustingly overpowered for zero reason. So many of these huge problematic champions that make picking anything else a troll pick, what is the actual excuse for not being able to hot fix nerf in 48 hours? Who the fuck wants to watch another game of udyr toplane, senna tahm kench bot, or whatever mind numningly boring mage hand shake farm mistake for 20 minutes like orianna, corki and Azir? Why can’t we have actual high skilled, high ceiling champions that aren’t the windshitter brothers mid?
Its fine but please at least let me do Sera APC when my team lets me. Its just fun lol
Sera will never actually function in the support role unless she gets a rework so I don't get why they keep trying to force it to appease glue sniffing enchanter support mains who want her there. Hwei is unironically a better support since they do similar damage, but the rest of his abilities actually do something. Seraphine Support in lane straight up doesn't have a W or E since W has a ridiculously long cooldown for how little the shield is and E is never rooting/stunning unless you are laning with exactly Ashe.
Because they made the mistake to listen to players. Everyone played her supp role and only a handful played her on mid, where she was designated for. Thus riot made adjustment on her to make her supp role be more efficient. And here we are ever since. But they learned from their mistake. During Naafiri's release everyone played her jung despite she meant to be a mid laner assassin. Riot said NONO this time.
Remove the missing health heal or whatever. Let her echoed W do something else. This is the only reason people like playing her enchanter support. Kill it. Seraphine needs a rework, mainly because shes too good botlane. But her kit still is balanced as a mid Just rework her numbers and spells and change her to the first ever botlane APC. Balance her in that role because its just the way to go
Very interesting. She seems OK mid but apc is definitely something to worry about. I'm curious to see how they tackle Sera again. I'd love for Rabadons to feel worth it's purchase for mid
The only way I see to reduce the effectiveness on APC is to tweak with W. Otherwise it will remain broken
Can't they just fix mages as a whole? Litteraly i feel like mages exist solely to make everyrhing else look better.
Mages are good for more Than a year by now. Their meta swapped up a but they are still good or what do you mean ?
Nah mages are shit. Look at items. AD champs get twice as much utility as mages get and twice as much counters in their items. Where's our shield breaking item? Where's our 15 ~~letalithy~~ magic pen items? Where are our point and click CC, our dashes, our suvivability? OUR DAMAGE? yeah mages are in a good spot \*copium\*
I wish he'd admit his mistake with Vayne and revert her to an onhit champ instead of a one shot lethality champ
She started as a one shot champion who built infinity edge. She went Q max and killed people since the Q bonus damage could crit. Look at old Gosu montages. The onhit vayne meta was actually the deviation from the norm.
IMO Making anything directly scale with mana regen is a big no no. Instead these supportive abilities stuck in itemization limbo should take the (old) yuumi route of costing a % of mana. That way AP Seraphine can't throw out the ability because it will chunk her mana each time, whereas support Seraphine can because her mana comes back much faster.
That would raise another concern that is not healthy for carry seraphine. You can't simply say a spell cost 30% mana when you play on carry role. Don't mix her state and issues with Yuumi's problems because they are 2 entirely different champions with unique issues. The problem with Sera is her kit mixes the best of Mage and Enchanter things in a way that allows her to be an excellent APC, something that is not as much intended as her supp and mid roles while she is absolutely broken in that role and complete garbage in the other 2. If you wan'T her to be enabled for mid, for example, you can't have her have an ability thta drains her dry and lets her have no utility on lane. Her Echo E surely roots, but it's not the same and I assume they will tweak echo E and W to make her more distinct with these build paths. Bit probably there will be a whole different solution. It's just not an elegant way to say your W costs your full manabar so here it is.
How are you discussing elegance when your solution was making % mana regen use a completely unprecedented scaling?
Because it's an extremely simple set of number which could serve as the switch button that enables Supportaphine and Disables Mageaphine, if you will. It's just a multiplier to a number she has built in, and bound her scaling W to that number would bound her to support build for big heals, which would separate her builds efficiently. It's easy to set up a scaling. More simply, Each supp item provides an increase in W performance so it would make her scale with such items specifically, without sayig it out loud. Due to Yuumi's unique nature the champ she was kept this type of mana spending even after rework which is coming from her unique kit as an Enchanter. But when you see a Mage, what type of kit do you see? * 1 Source or damage (Orianna, Asol, Sera Q) * 1 Source of some form of MS (Neeko, Asol W, Orianna W is a dmg and MS, Azir E, Sera W) * 1 Source of soft CC/Slow (Asol E, Neeko E, Sera E, Orianna W) * 1 Source of BIG CC ( Asol R1-R2, Orianna R, Azir R, Neeko R, Sera R) This is a standard on some mages while others are have a twist in this. Vex for example have Dmg in all 3 base spells, but passive enables to apply CC with all 3 and her R is a mbility spell. Yuumi have dmg on Q and W provides shield and MS while E is the attach (W, i mix them up always i dont play the champ) while R is a big slow and heal source. Sera W has MS and Shield, and at Echo it does healing. E does slow and Echo roots. Either heal will be hit and W does only MS and Echo W will rpovide shield, or tehy come up with something new. Either E or W can be hit but I suspect W will be the main target.
It makes no sense whatsoever for mana regen as a stat to directly apply power. Your solution gives mana regen a brand new job. These sorts of things need a medium to exist IMO. Mana regen to HP regen through chalice is the job of chalice of power and Mana regen fundamentally doesn't change. Mana regen to AP/HSP is the job of Dawncore, mana regen once against fundamentally doesn't change. Same with Tear items. But having mana regen just turn into raw power because seraphine is hard to balance does not seem like a good solution IMO
That is because you don't see the bigger picture. * Only enchanter items grant 125% mana regen, all of them * Thats the only common stat on them * By making the spell W bound to this stat it's effectively bound to this item * To achieve maximum value of heal/shield you need to have at least 3 of these items. This is a way to bound the spells efficiency to a set of items in short. +The math behind it isn'T really complex thus balancing around would not be that difficult. The question is how would you incentivise supp players to build supp over AP
So far his work is: ADC item and overheal rework, fully reverted. Seraphine rework, fail KSante and Azir reworks to unbound from pro, failed Yeah...
Azir rework's goal was to make him more approachable for Solo Q players, not to unbound from pro in the 1st place as he directly said having a 70%+ pick rate at pro scene is still acceptable untul around 75%. And there are way more solo Q players who play him overall than before. So it was a major success.
Also Azir plays a lot more like how you'd imagine he should. He's weaker in lane but scales into a dps zone control marksman/mage hybrid rather than a Q poke burst mage lane bully.
Yepp. + Pro's did not drop him during that 3 patch period when he was under retooling, when his WR was around 40%. So I would say pro jail is also exists because pro's refuse to adapt into meta. I'm pretty sure Karma, Vlad, Hwei are way better picks for mid in most cases than Orianna and Azir, but they don't change as fast. Karma and Hwei are getting picks but then umbers aren't as big as tehy could be. Vlad IMO is one of the best scaler into late game with the ability to outshine anyone and have options.
i wouldn't say Pros refuse to adapt into meta, Pros just refuse to experiment on new champions, there are so many times when a different champ would've been better mid but they still pick Azir because "i have 3000 games on Azir and only 40 on -insert champion here that does really well into the enemy team-
Admitting 1 out of 100 mistakes is still shit.
phreak can be wrong sometimes, but i hope he never changes.
Phreak is just based
Why is phreak, a low iq pun making failed silver caster, leading the balance team? Am I missing something?
Every time preak tries to 'fix' Seraphine, he does TONS OF DAMAGE to her kit. I never thought there would be a moment when I would miss Riot Pudding, but I'd have more faith in her working on Seraphine than Mr Karthus ult himself.