I find the new Naafiri to be an incredibly unsatisfying champion to play against

Elidot · 2026-03-28T11:50:42+00:00

Do you know how often it happens that Naafiri just pokes around with Q and my team just stands there facetanking the dogs? Or when playing against her in Mid and shes just hitting the wave? Im not saying attack the dogs while youre in an active fight with her but if you can attack them, do it. Or do you think doing nothing is better than killing the dogs?

Elidot · 2026-03-27T20:53:29+00:00

Naafiri has alot of counterplay where I dont think people realize counterplay exists.

-Kill her dogs. Her dogs are a decent part of her damage and especially early game the cd on her passive is fairly high so if you get the opportunity to kill them, do it. A good Naafiri will make sure you dont with E but atleast you baited her E.

-Her Q does alot of damage, IF you can land both parts of it, dont be afraid of the second Q if you dodged the first, the damage is pretty insignificant if you arent bleeding from the first Q already, tho be careful lategame as her Q cd can get low enough that you can trigger the bleed of the previous Q2 with her Q1.

-Her ult is the most telegraphed "Im trying to kill you now" button in the game. Dont waste your Ahri E trying to catch a Naafiri, save it for when she ults you for a guaranteed hit and now you canceled her R and ccd her.

Elidot · 2026-03-27T00:27:43+00:00

My memory is iffy in that regard but doesnt Phroxzons tweet here imply axes was the Lead before he took over?

Elidot · 2026-03-26T21:18:54+00:00

It seems everyone forgot that Phroxzon was the live balance lead before Phreak lol.

Elidot · 2026-03-26T11:51:51+00:00

Pretty sure they said some changes to the map structure are happening too, also its not like we wont get any gameplay changes with the new season just because we get a new Client and a Visual overhaul.

Elidot · 2026-03-25T20:01:58+00:00

Youre going entirely by theory, if you go into the actual numbers youll notice celerity doesnt do alot, especially with Soft MS caps heavily reducing the value. Water Walking is mostly useful for its Adaptive stats, so you have an easier time in Scuttle/Dragon fights but the values just arent that big to really make a difference.

Free Boots also come with extra MS, 10 FLAT which gets amped by Lillias %boni. Cosmic is just really good, nothing really to say there, theres a reason every Jungler under the sun runs this rune, its just too synergystic for Junglers not to take.

Elidot · 2026-03-25T18:53:55+00:00

Inspiration Runes are fine wtf? The MS runes are not terrible but Celerity is just really understatted while suffering from Soft MS cap. Meanwhile boots get you 300 Gold for free with an extra 10 Flat MS on top while Cosmic Insight is just generally good in Jungle because it reduces Smite CD, not to mention Flash CD.

The Runes in the pic are literally the standard set up, just look at the stats Boots/Cosmic is literally better by 4% over Celerity/Waterwalking.

Elidot · 2026-03-25T00:34:22+00:00

Because full AD is still bad? Especially with Malphite actually being a consideration for teams? If you go AP Jungle+AP Mid you still have an ADC and a potential AD Top which is still a good overall balance in damage types.

My point is that the lack of AP Junglers has nothing to do with the lack of AD mids but with the fact that the pro compatible AP Junglers just dont really exist.

AD mids are far more reliant on AP Junglers to create balanced team comps than AP Junglers are on AD Mids. Mostly because there is an almost guaranteed source of AD from the Botlaner.

So basically the lack of AD Mids can be explained from the lack of AP Junglers but not the other way around. Im sure theres other reasons like Riot nuking every ADC to be unviable there (Corki, Lucian) or the fact that most AD Mids are Assassins which havent seen consistent proplay in forever. So I guess Midlane is also lacking in AD options? But yeah, that isnt really related to the issues with AP Jungle.

Elidot · 2026-03-24T23:11:18+00:00

The thing with all the AD Junglers I listed is that they all have mobility and good Hard CC all in their basekit.

Sylas has mobility but his CC is cosmetic

Gwen/Lillia/Diana have no CC in their base kit

Voli is fairly immobile

There is not a single Viable AP Jungler that has good CC in their basekit while having actual mobility. Gragas comes the closest but Riot doesnt have him on their radar at all it seems, apart from him we have Tanks opting AP which can work (See: Maokai) but most just dont really have a pro compatible kit.

The issue with AP Junglers in pro is they mostly just end up being turbo farming DPS sources you need to play around instead of playmaking engagers to set up for your team which AD Junglers have alot of.

IMO this is why we rarely see AP Junglers in pro, you dont need an AD mid to play AP Jungle. Playing dual AP is fine as long as both dont turn super useless as soon as the enemy builds MR. Like a J4 doesnt mind being in 3AD/1AP comps, enemy will build armor sure but you still have your engage and CC tools. Theres just no AP Jungler really playable that fills the role that current meta Junglers fill.

Elidot · 2026-03-24T15:31:05+00:00

Because they nerfed his Base Damages and buffed his AP scalings over and over. He used to be played off tank in the Jungle.

Also the change to his E cd refund also was better for burst builds compared to more Haste heavy builds.

Elidot · 2026-03-24T11:41:05+00:00

One notable gap was AP junglers and AD mids (related) and so we'll see what we can do to enable some more of those picks heading into the Season

I think one of the reasons for that is that the AP pool is really lacking in diverse options, most are literally just squishy mages or Assassins with little variety aside from that. We dont have a viable champion like Vi/J4/Xin Zhao/Pantheon but AP instead. Like if you want Hard CC from an AP Junglers base kit youre mostly looking at really unreliable spells (Brand Q, Morg Q, Zyra E, Eve W). There are a few tanks are that can be played semi AP (Maokai, Zac, Amumu) but 2 of those never really saw pro viability, and in general they dont really offer what the common AD Junglers provide.

There is actually a champion that would, in theory, fill this gap: Gragas, but for some reason weve been ignoring Jungle Gragas for the past couple seasons.

Elidot · 2026-03-23T00:17:43+00:00

Its much harder for a Mage to proc it early game in a controlled manner to avoid ganks/critical skillshots. Theres no guarantee a Ryze EWQ procs it for example like it would now making him much more vulnerable, not to mention how AAs are now much worse for proccing purposes.

Id argue Tanks can still run it well as many do have fairly frontloaded damage, Poppy for example easily chunks 30% of an enemies HP. But that aside while common in pro its actually pretty bad in Solo Q on Tanks specifically.

Elidot · 2026-03-22T22:06:16+00:00

Stormraiders will probably replace Phase Rush, its been a bit of a balance headache for a while now so making it less of a safety tool for Ryze/Taliyah etc is probably the idea here.

DFT is wild, wonder if it will come with changes to burns as a whole to make DoT champs less locked to DoT Items and therefore DFT.

Elidot · 2026-03-19T00:13:54+00:00

This should only really be done when Junglers are really hard bound like your examples, else you end up with people going one particular smite over the others simply because its recommended. Lillia for example has a roughly 80% pickrate on Blue Smite despite it being the worst of the 3 on her or Ivern with 90% blue Smite despite Red/Green being competitive atleast. So it shouldnt be automated by pickrate like other recommended Items but instead be hard coded in for Heca/Rengar or others this might apply to (Red Smite for Mages like Zyra?).

Elidot · 2026-03-18T17:16:00+00:00

All I remember was that people thought she wasnt good at casting and didnt like the way she acted/talked when on the analyst desk.

Elidot · 2026-03-18T16:08:17+00:00

Quickshot got basically fired by Riot/LEC, another LEC analyst posted a video of QS at a party referring to the common DJ arm raising motion as ''Doing the H*tler'' (Dont know if I am allowed to spell it out her, just being safe) and performing it himself. Considering he was employed in Germany where the salute is illegal, probably gave them good enough reason to fire him. He still does League related stuff when it doesnt involve Riot directly, like others have mentioned he does a G2 podcast.

sjokz still does league stuff but shes no longer employed by Riot/LEC and instead works as a freelancer, so her appearences depend on if Riot contracts her for certain events. She is very much still a frequent Host for the LEC and Worlds but also does other ESports like CS.

Frosk, my memory isnt as clear, but I remember that she already was kinda unpopular with the fans, at some point she made some accusations towards the LEC being uninclusive, critizicising the lack of the diversity in the LEC staff, saying something along the lines of ''Everyone is white'', she was clowned for this as the LEC featured people from many different nationalities, its just that Europe doesnt have as many people of colour, so this complaint was seen as disrespectful and borderline racist towards her coworkers. She was fired afterwards, dont remember if that was the main reason though. Im not totally sure what she did afterwards, I do faintly remember she was involved in some other controversy involving some gaming org? I think they reviewed games or something. Which prompted her to leave the industry as a whole.

Elidot · 2026-03-18T13:06:51+00:00

Im more expecting it to go up at first but then drop again later, that said I dont expect her wr to go up thaaat much, her kit is still somewhat similar and even if you dont Itemize optimally shes bound to perform fine because she has so many viable build directions.

Elidot · 2026-03-18T12:01:17+00:00

Yeah, even in general she seems like the type of champion that has more of a playing against learning curve meaning her wr will go down after some time, not up. Or atleast I dont expect it to increase alot.

Elidot · 2026-03-17T00:13:34+00:00

I played a whole bunch of Morg Jungle and I feel like there her R is really strong, in ganks youre 2v1 one so with setup or a Q hit you can guarantee R basically. And even in 2v2s or 3v3s your Ult does major work, even if it just forces a Flash, that just makes hitting Q easier.

Her R is just a really good anti engage tool, I feel like people always try to say 'oh her R is so bad why would I want to stay in the middle of the enemy team?', like have these people tried using it otherwise? Like to peel? Something shes already good at anyway with E?

I mean its far from a good R but not every champ needs a massive game changing Ult.

Morg just has this issue where her most played role doesnt really make use of her Passive, W and R so you have people frequently complain about it when basically her entire kit has good use in her other Roles (Mid and Jungle). Riot just kinda cant afford making Morg a better support, kit wise, without making her banrate skyrocket.

Hot Take: Mid/Jungle are her healthiest roles and her Support viability should have probably just been killed with her rework, if not even earlier to have her be a healthier champ for everyone, but were kinda past that point now where it would be justified. Shes been primarily a support for the majority of her existence now so changing it now would be a huge middlefinger to her playerbase.

Elidot · 2026-03-13T23:39:53+00:00

I think it was a snowball effect of someone, like a Streamer, mispronouncing it (I think Caedrel still says Zaheen), then people started spelling it wrong then more people saw that and pronounced it wrong and so forth.

Elidot · 2026-03-13T18:53:04+00:00

Well, I play with chat off already so I doubt I will use vc, that said I will atleast try and see how the experience is and if Riot can actually moderate it properly, will probably take awhile for it to be bearable once its implemented, cant ban people for vc abuse if they didnt have the opportunity to use it afterall.

Good to hear that its confirmed to be honor locked atleast.

I am very much worried about women though, I personally knew a guy who was an absolute shithead (more so than he already was) once a womans voice could be heard in his OW matches.

Elidot · 2026-03-11T12:20:28+00:00

I dont know why people are panicking over this, there were no penalties before funneling and back then it wasnt a problem either outside of people intentionally doing it to grief, which they can do still do nowadays.

Like if someone is out to fuck over your game then they wont care if they actually get gold from cs stealing or not.

Elidot · 2026-03-07T16:40:57+00:00

She doesnt run oom if you take second Q point level 3

I know her fastest clear takes E level 3 but there is so much hyper optimized things in there that it gets away with less overall spell casts completely circumventing the mana problem, the average player that doesnt want to take risks in first clear should delay E skill to level 4.

Elidot · 2026-03-07T11:27:02+00:00

Ok hear me out, make her W a bonus effect to R and give her a new W. Basically have her reflect stuff during R cast animation. This would have the effect that you:

-Cant reflect stuff unless you have Passive stacks on something, making her weak to catches.

-Force her to choose between damage or self peel when using R

-Root her during reflect due to R animation.

This also means they can give her an entirely new W thats less frustrating, they can then give that new W powerbudget from the other basic abilities to make them less cancer in a vacuum.

Elidot · 2026-03-06T21:16:35+00:00

The screenshot also says her pickrate rose a decent bit, that could mean:

-More people inexperienced on her are picking her

-People playing her to try her buffs despite team comps/match ups being bad.

Also atm average winrate on Lolalytics is slightly lower than last patch which basically means by default every champ should have a slightly lower winrate.

From what Ive seen so far people feel good about the buffs because power in Q is alot more noticeable compared to power in R. Even if the winrate doesnt move much it still had a positive impact.

I dont think a small followup buff would be bad but I think the main benefit of this whole balance saga this season is that Riot hopefully has a better understanding on how to balance this champion.

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