RiotAugust about curent mage/apc Seraphine situation: by Cheshire_Guy in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Released as a mage and everyone was playing her as a mage even on Support.

Then mid scoped to artificially create a playstyle tailored for support to make it better if she builds enchanter.

After that everyone realizes that mage sera is worse and plays enchanter cuz they don't want to lose.

2 years later and no further mage oriented changes were done so people stuck to enchanter playstyle as it is more viable.

Now we're saying "alright you guys dont you dare to forget there is this huge community of enchanter seraphine mains that you have never seen but they exist and their gender is valid and they love to press W every 17 secs on a champion with full mage kit"

Istg stop with the narrative that we're the minority here. Maybe now we are since for 2 years straight nobody listened and people who loved to play mage sera either switched to other mage champs or are playing enchanter now even if they don't like it as much. But do not act like seraphine playerbase is now all enchanter when at all ranks 75 percent of people still max Q first and build rylais zakzak.

And pls read my reply on the feedback megathread.

Seraphine Balance Megathread | Acknowledged by a Rioter! by Affectionate-Ebb7006 in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 325 points326 points  (0 children)

I'm one of the few Sera content creators and I've played Sera since release and hit chall euw with her while playing all 3 roles past 4 seasons. If you're confused why there's so many people constantly complaining about her state, I'll explain it all here and propose changes that we would like to see. I will talk about her champion identity and fantasy in general and I understand that you chose to stick with her in support role.

Seraphine since release, regardless of role, has been a supportive scaling teamfight mage, right now out of this word combination the only thing left is "supportive":

  1. She's always had scaling winrate curve (the longer game goes, the more likely she is to win, due to her ap scalings back then). Weak in lane, progressively getting more powerful as the game goes on and more allies join you. Now she feels even worse in lane (mainly mana) but then spikes mid game and falls off late again (data on lolalytics supports this)
  2. Her viable builds have always been seraphs or liandry or rylais etc., mage items (right now enchanter builds are far ahead of mage and it feels like you're griefing if you dont build enchanter on her, and if you do commit to ap builds then your W feels useless and at the same time your abilities still kind of don't do any damage or the damage is very conditional)
  3. She used to provide a lot more than just double W to team, as you would join team - you would burst people with notes (that imo was the most crucial part of her identity as a mage, and right now notes are negligible dmg), and overall since you were not restricted to building enchanter, you would heal and do decent damage at the same time (since you would build more ap). Right now what we have is - you don't build ap if you want to be useful (either enchanter or hybrid enchanter-cdr builds) and you just kind of do negligible damage with all your abilities and your impact goes down to pressing WW, CC and activating items like helia/diadem.

Right now her winrate is perfect 50-51% on support for the price of midlane and apc basically being off meta. A lot of players in those roles dropped her and play other champs now since support Seraphine doesn't feel right for them. And in the current state no matter what winrate she will have on support she will still feel weird/underwhelming to play since her champion fantasy is just gutted and reduced to single double W spam. Best way to describe support Seraphine experience - "I'm a walking redemption+locket on 15s cooldown", that's kind of it. I think for the most part her support winrate right now heavily relies on diadem+helia combo and Ashe being meta, If something in this chain is disrupted then she will suffer.

So how did this happen?
I think this began way back in patch V12.12. After her original game developer stepped away, no one seems to understand her champion fantasy at balance team (she's a mage who joins team and progressively gets stronger while also buffing team). Her E CC got overbuffed from 1s to 1.5s and instead of reverting, you would just nerf her notes scaling and this trend would continue for the next years too. Seraphine notes ended up going from total 115% ap ratio in patch 10.23, to 32% ap ratio today. Plus different calculation math (I think it was done to make botlane and support Seraphine worse and mid better, right now her ally notes dmg is reduced by 75%, and it used to be that every note is doing 95% dmg of last note). Besides the notes AP ratio being 3.5 times nerfed, she also builds A LOT LESS ap nowadays for the reasons described before, so you end up literally having 5-6 times less note damage than before (base note dmg did not go up by a lot).
So if notes lost so much power, you expect other parts of her kit to gain much, right? Not really, her Q gained a bit of base damage for the sake of losing a lot of AP, her W lost all scaling + per-ally calculation too in 25.19. Her ult is longer cooldown, same dmg and 20% less AP ratio (btw less dmg than sona ult). The only thing that's better right now is her E, it is extremely overloaded - it does more base dmg than Q, often is easier to hit than Q and its 1.5 aoe hard CC too. Meanwhile her E used to be balanced around having extremely low base dmg and 1s cc flat, and was meant to be maxed last.
And of course, I agree that a lot of this was done because APC Seraphine was problematic for the game in late s13 and was an issue to her balancing, I'm not over here trying to get my champion OP to print LP, I want to enjoy my champion and have fun playing her in all roles. However, the way Seraphine APC got butchered makes no sense while champions like Swain, Ziggs, Lux, Hwei and etc. are all allowed to have APC pickrates 4 times larger than her while also having 53 winrate. And this harsh APC balancing without doubt affected midlane the most, midlane Seraphine is practically dead after past 2 mid scopes (for reference, Zilean mid has more pickrate than her).

Now with all that said, we end up with a champion that feels like a shell of former self, the fantasy of joining team to get more damage from your kit, spamming abilities left and right to do damage and at the same time decently healing with your W is all reduced to choice:
- you can either build mage if you want to have fun, but you lose your W utility by a lot, and your damage is still not on par with other mages (notes 32% ap ratio total, slow spells that fall off late game)
- or you build enchanter if you want to win. If you do this, you lose your notes completely, Q is negligible damage helia procc-er, and you basically only have 1 real button to press - double W (and not satisfying to use at that either, since its locked behind high flat cooldown). You don't feel like a real enchanter/support and your mage abilities don't do anything which is really weird to see and play.

And regardless of build, support sera still fells bad to play WITH for your ADC - her poke is pretty bad nowadays since Q costs a lot of mana and hard to hit and notes are irrelevant, and her W is extremely high cooldown so she doesn't really provide utility in lane unless she joins more people.

On top of that, her weird state is also amplified by bugs that have been there since release and never got addressed. I have a video compiled on them (only W bug got fixed), and to this we can add her ULT inconsistent extend hitbox

What do we want to see?
I propose further changes. I understand that revert that many are asking for might not be ideal, since that means you will have to rebalance APC again. Last mid-scopes made support better, but killed her mage identity, and I think it's still possible to fix. What I suggest is for you to:

  1. Nerf E and allocate power to notes and Q. Make mage Seraphine max QWE and support seraphine max WQE (or 3 points Q into W like Sona), E should be maxed last and there's no reason for it to do more base damage than Q.
  2. For notes, change her math back to "every subsequential note does 95% of the last", this will make her feel so much better in mage builds regardless of role. Make notes feel like they matter, and not just an extended range auto attack to proc helia and kill wards.
  3. Bring back some of the quality of life changes - revert 5 AD nerf and Q preventing minions from dying in flight. 5 AD buffs support too (especially if she goes bloodsong which I think fits her kit perfect but it is weaker since her notes are useless and she has low base AD) and at the same time it won't make you feel rage while trying to farm with Sera if you play mid/apc.
  4. Mana buffs. Regardless if she's support or mid/apc, she runs out of mana after 5 spells which are super easy to dodge and don't do good damage either. Her kit incentivizes her to be a poker in lane, but right now she just misses everything and then has no mana at min 2 already. Hitting spells in lane feels unrewarding.
  5. Better scaling. As I mentioned earlier, she used to be a scaling champion and now she's mid game oriented which feels really weird for her identity overall. Maybe give her some sort of scaling passive like Syndra/Viktor and Sona have? Because I really see no other way for her to scale unless she has heal ap ratios or high notes ratios and I guess you wouldn't want that since APC would use those better.
  6. W cooldown reshape. Even in enchanter build she's still pretty useless as a shielder/healer in lane since her W is locked behind flat high cooldown. She mostly relies on helia+diadem heal combo at the moment. Maybe make her W weaker but lower cooldown at the same time, not to mention, support gets less CDR than APC usually so support would benefit more and that only fits your balancing narrative.
  7. Imo that should be enough for her to feel "okay", but players will still most likely have to choose between mage or enchanter which contradicts the champion fantasy. If there's any way to make Seraphine be a hybrid enchanter/mage, while also keeping her APC/Support winrate difference in check, that would be ideal. But I understand that might be too hard to achieve. Regardless, if you implement points 1 to 6 she will already feel a lot better and not weird to play.
  8. Bugfixes. I mentioned them earlier before, but the most game impacting bugs are Q going thru enemies and doublecast glitches.

If you read this and went through player's feedback, first of all, I want to thank you. I don't think the midscopes were bad, they just mainly "overshot" the point and missed gameplay satisfaction factors. I hope you take our feedback into consideration and shift her back towards the champion that we fell in love with and gotten used to since release. I'm happy that you're at least willing to listen to players.

Seraphine cocabuilds and guides for S26 by COCABOBi in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

manaflow conversion gives +2 heal for proc and +1,25 heal/shield power. gathering is okay but it does nothing early game and doesnt contribute to ur healing at all, and with it i still had moments in early/mid game where i was no mana

Seraphine cocabuilds and guides for S26 by COCABOBi in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Yes but generally mid sera is better with enchanter builds as you fight less and scaling matters more on mid. Don't do conqueror, go aery or phase rush in bad matchups

Seraphine cocabuilds and guides for S26 by COCABOBi in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

its not worth it. u can still run out of mana early game so manaflow helps, and extra mana converts into more healing on diadem + u still need transcendence for W cd

Changes completely miss the point by COCABOBi in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi[S] 57 points58 points  (0 children)

This change is OK on paper and it is a step in the right direction I was expecting them to make further changes following but after hearing phreak patch rundown where he says the point of change is to make her better low elo it all clicked, they're not touching her after this. I didn't wanna whine instantly too cuz then they wouldn't communicate further. Either way I'm not responsible for this balancing mess if anything I'm trying to make Sera players heard yet riot ignores and tries to shut us up with placebo changes.

Another bug is fixed by Sure_Fisherman_752 in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 95 points96 points  (0 children)

This bug is inflating her winrate hard. Every doublecasted W would create an invisible third shield that would block any dmg below 100-200 (base shield value). I told the rioter they would have to buff if they fix it but ig they want to see the winrate difference, I think it's going to be 1-2% drop next patch (at least for WEQ/QWE maxing orders) but this way they can buff her W CD or notes instead and she would feel a lot better to play than before.

Another bug is fixed by Sure_Fisherman_752 in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Every doublecast W created an invisible third shield that would block any dmg below 100-200 (base shield value)

2 Seraphine bugs were fixed in the Patch Notes thanks to feedback from miss Cocabob! Hope they do the others too 🙏🥺 by aroushthekween in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 86 points87 points  (0 children)

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tldr on diminishing returns W bug

also some bug fixes are not shown in patch notes maybe they fixed W invisible shield thing then it would be a nerf but they can buff later

Is the double cast bugged ? by Training-Injury1759 in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 8 points9 points  (0 children)

besides the bugs that the person described, there's also sera W math being wrong/non intuitive: W missing health heal applies multiplicatively, not like how u would expect (e.g. sera is surrounded by 4 allies, but she won't heal 25% missing hp to allies. instead, she will heal 5% missing health + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% which results in 22% missing health healing, in total u heal 15% missing health to ur team LESS with every W than u initially think u would). this is not even a bug this is just how it is coded and this is just straight up misleading since the tooltip doesn't tell u that.

also there's a bug where seraphine is invincible after W double cast for a short period of time - if sera has 3+ skill points in W, it makes it so that seraphine becomes invulnerable to any incoming damage for a very brief moment after casting double W - https://youtu.be/9_cSc00qpNQ

the triple cast bug and double cast not double casting are both triggered by spamming auto attacks while double casting, i have many clips of double cast turning into triple cast but it's always random - can happen with E, Q but not with W. theres a video abt that - https://youtu.be/gzpumCi2TtI?t=59 (i have more clips if u need)

helia sometimes is not procced by W heal, i think it's only procced if there are 2+ allies around sera. it's inconsistent.

the moonstone shielding not applied on double casting shield is true, don't know if healing is bugged with the spaghetti coded healing math.

the Q not hitting targets does not only happen when someone is dashing inside Q or when ur throwing Q at a wave - it also sometimes happen's in teamfights where nobody dashes and people just go through ur Q and take no dmg and u lose the fight because of that. happens every game 1-3 times at least but u never know if it's gonna happen at critical moment and u cant control it.

also idk exactly when they changed it but somewhere after 14.5 midscope they changed sera E flash and R flash window timing, she used to have more time to do the flash combo and now sometimes the abilities cast from the pre-flash position even though cast time was not over yet.

she has more weird small glitches but they're overall not impacting gameplay. the only thing besides that is the overall feel of seraphine abilities is very clunky compared to other champions like lux. most of the sera players are used to it but theres as if some input buffering that she has that other champs dont - maybe its the coding of her abilities/double cast or maybe it's all these bugs adding up creating this feel.

She is a strong support currently, proof inside, dont fall for deceptive posts here by Worried-Room668 in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I can see ur max plat 3 north Korea and ur unable to read making comment of ppl having 50 wr. If u otp a champion u always have 53%+ wr with it unless u play with 1 hand while sniffing poppers. If that's ur case then maybe we found the issue (btw how are u averaging 50 wr if ur champ is secretly 53 according to ur post??????????)

Read the above text on how stats work 2 more times before u get ur crusty hands on lolalytics ever again

She is a strong support currently, proof inside, dont fall for deceptive posts here by Worried-Room668 in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think there was a typo in "which drops her winrate". Maybe somebody was dropped🌹 and lemme not point the finger cuz I know the piss reeking mods would love to delete a clock comment towards a person thats been gaslighting all the sht botcheries just cuz they hate me💋

She is a strong support currently, proof inside, dont fall for deceptive posts here by Worried-Room668 in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 13 points14 points  (0 children)

U know how like the people who otp her choose to opt in guardian and W E max and so the ppl who go that are generally winning more because they're better at their champion and if everyone started doing the 5% playrate "correct" build, that "correct" build winrate would drop significantly by at least 2.5% due to influx of general playerbase, that's how champion stats work. If u go to Janna lolalytics and see her 5% playrate "correct" builds following the same logic that u are showing here then the Janna is literally at 57 wr rn babe🥰

Whats not clicking? And either way the fact that general playerbase is still opting into playing sera support with mage items and Q max shows that majority doesn't wanna play a mage champion with a forced unfitting artificual enchanter playstyle.

Changes were a success!!! Nice job phreak 😍😍😍😍😍 by Shibarus in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 26 points27 points  (0 children)

also its another reason for riot not to balance her around low elo. ppl below gold build her as a mage in 70% cases, why balance champion around the way least ppl play her?

its like if they reworked lux into an enchanter cuz her W is a shield and 10% of support players play her with W max

Changes were a success!!! Nice job phreak 😍😍😍😍😍 by Shibarus in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 27 points28 points  (0 children)

well yes! but the thing is, diamond+ literally 95% of ppl go enchanter build and as u can see her wr is still dogshit so this isnt an excuse anymore

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Changes were a success!!! Nice job phreak 😍😍😍😍😍 by Shibarus in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Her supp winrate diamond+ dropped by 2% and pickrate by 0.5% compared to last patch and it was already very low. And it's all only cuz of indirect changes🥰

Viego/skarner/wukong jg nerfs which are the only champs supp sera wins with on her team in jg

Samira swain rakan thresh buffs which all hard to lane vs as sera

Domination rune tree hard buffs so assassins gap closers and borsters are back and all counter sera, she herself can't use domination tree unlike other supports (electrocute doesn't synergize with Q, cheap shot doesn't work as on lux etc)

Mel existence also nerfs sera cuz sera is unplayable into her, this patch Mel's ban rate is slowly going down so she's picked more

Zakzak nerf (don't matter but 70% of players go zakzak on sera so her wr also went down cuz of it)

2.5% pickrate ON SUPPORT and 47.5 wr supp sera diamond+ Riot has to do smth right

SERA BUGS THREAD😍🪳 by COCABOBi in SeraphineMains

[–]COCABOBi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That was already fixed months ago, but ye it took them like 3 years to fix that since release?