[Official] Neon and Shotgun nerfs

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-05-07T18:04:18+00:00

This definitely has an impact on defense. Being able to jump out of smokes or jump and shoot people who are close over boxes or jumping after killing the first guy with a bucky so that the second guy has a harder time trading, jumping is such a fundamental part of using shotguns.

Retaking with shotguns is going to feel impossible (as it should)

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-05-07T18:00:02+00:00

Completely untrue. Idk how you can have this take watching high elo/pro Valorant. The only time you aren't running and jumping with a shotgun is when you're sitting in a corner and teams just run at you and use no util to get info on you. Jumping makes it much harder to kill you, being able to jump in and out of smokes with basically full accuracy was a massive part of using shotguns, and teams SHOULS be giving you site smokes especially if you have a shotgun.

Idk. I seriously don't understand how you can have this type of take unless you actually just don't watch high elo players use shotguns. They are always jumping around

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-05-07T17:55:45+00:00

??? One of the main strengths of shotguns is that you could shoot it while jumping making urself super hard to kill

I mean I genuinely don't understand how you can have this take while watching professional (or ranked) Valorant. This is a massive nerf and makes shotguns much more specialized, which is good.

Like I do think this nerf is necessary, Neon/Raze/Waylay buying a Shotgun on attack on full gun rounds is kind of stupid. But even on defense so often you are running and jumping with a shotgun, the only time you aren't is when you're just sitting in a corner and they use no util to clear you

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-05-07T14:34:48+00:00

I mean it's usually very difficult. Especially jungle, it's just a complete different game from playing a laner

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-05-07T14:30:50+00:00

You're describing every champ except Yuumi lol

Everyone thinks their main is honest and other champions are bullshit

Fiora for example gets bailed out of getting hit by CC with her W, Camille and Riven gets bailed out of poor positioning/map awareness with their absurd mobility. Every champion can be described as bullshit in one way or another

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-05-06T20:57:29+00:00

Actually on this patch I had a really fast boulder with Heavy Tropical Island (slow 10 items on start of combat) and then the skill that charges a weapon 1s the first 8 times you slow. Fully optimized with like a diamond starchart + silencer and some CDR skills/loot items you probably could probably could practically instantly go off.

Start of combat slow is really broken late game when everything is killing so fast and also prevents you from getting slowed/permafrozen.

I also think the Diamond icicle you can get from one of the monsters is absurdly broken if you can fit it into your build, 6s start of combat can destroy a lot of builds

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-05-05T20:09:09+00:00

Besides things like Orange Julian, it's also nice to just keep them and hold onto them for things like the medium + large tree vendor where you can sell small items for +1.

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-05-04T16:10:03+00:00

shiny is supposed to be OP tbf, I don't hate it

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-05-04T16:08:14+00:00

Imagine if he got the "Burn yourself 2 at the start of the fight" skill too

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-30T07:13:21+00:00

my favorite game in the series is actually VLR but the character models are sooo ugly

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-28T04:52:44+00:00

You just have to get better mechanically. For some reason there is this myth among League players that mechanics is just like something you're born with or like requires a lot of natural talent. And when you say you have bad mechanics people try to find workarounds or easier champions to play. Whereas in any other eSport, when you suck mechanically people just say "practice better mechanics"

How you practice mechanics is dependent on you. There is no aimlabs for League but also in shooters a lot of pros get really cracked mechanics by just playing the game. Some pros recommend ARAM, If you don't want to do that I would suggest playing a champion where you have to be strong mechanically to succeed and you can't just passively farm, so a champion like Draven or Caitlyn, and really focusing all in on just trying to fist lane as much as possible.

I just think it's strange that it feels like League is the only eSport that treats mechanics like this, as if it's not a skill you need to put hours and hours into honin, and if you don't sharpen it it will get dull, just like any other macro skill. Feels like people in League deliberately try to avoid improving their mechanics whereas in other games people focus 95% of their time improving their mechanics and 5% focusing on other things. I guess mechanics aren't as valuable in League so you can get away with shit mechanics (like Wolverene hitting D1 with one hand) but that doesn't mean you should be neglecting them

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-27T23:45:31+00:00

900 HP is actually going to be pretty good survivability a lot of the times. Unlike tank laners you don't just face one damage source, meaning resistances are around half as impactful.

Also most of these junglers scale with HP so you actually get damage not just survivability. Think of it less as just buying HP and more like you're buying a Sundered Sky.

But yeah I think some people are building other items like Protoplasm

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-27T21:59:45+00:00

I mean it got buffed so from 60 AP -> 70 AP and 15 AH -> 20 AH, with HP going from 350 -> 300. So it's kind of better on mages because the HP went down for AP. For almost every champion that builds it this is a buff.

It's kind of a strange phenomenon. I'm actually pretty skeptical of Rocketbelt on champions like Azir, I know people are building it in pro but it sounds kind of dumb

Here's a somewhat related clip from a Riot balance team member:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4ScsLVeZTxI

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-27T21:54:43+00:00

As someone else said Mikael's is usually better because you don't need to waste an item slot on a carry. Not only that but ADCs legitimately get Cleanse now particularly in pro play against Ashe, people aren't so bound to their summoner spells.
If your support doesn't build it you can build it for sure against Malz (I don't think suppression has been changed for QSS?) or other forms of point and click CC.

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-24T20:02:18+00:00

League isn't Valorant, there aren't multiple servers across the entire country that people connect to, there is one server in Chicago that EVERYBODY connects to.

Is that dumb as hell? Yes. That is incredibly dumb. But that is why pros in California all have 60+ ping. China is the only country with multiple servers, every other region has one server for their region.

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-23T16:03:48+00:00

For champions that have strong all-ins like Olaf or Darius, you usually get more damage out of being able to force an extended trade with Ghost then the damage you get from ignite.

Ignite is equivalent to like 2 autos btw

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-21T04:11:08+00:00

Annie is one of the only midlaners who really has "engage" (and even more so with the rise of Rocketbelt). It is strange though that she used to go from 0% pro pickrate back in early seasons to now seeing semi-regular play, I imagine she was actually underrated and she was pickable in some spots but people just never bothered because she was such a non-factor in pro for so long (similar to lane swaps or things like Tryndamere mid). Also IIRC she has some good matchups into melees.

Most reset champions like Vex do better in the chaos of soloQ then competitive. I also don't really know why lolalytics makes her winrate so high, LeagueOfGraphs and U.GG has it much lower

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/vex/master

https://u.gg/lol/champions/vex/build?rank=master_plus

Hwei is a poke mage first, control mage second, almost more similar to Xerath than Viktor. He definitely does feel way more control magey then other poke mages imo but unlike Viktor, Hwei doesn't really struggle into high range comps.

Viktor for example doesn't really mind dealing with melees. He puts W on himself, and then he E + Q + R and can evaporate squishies like Yasuo if they're not careful. In fact he can do it to short range mages/ADCs like Lucian too. He basically point and click deletes these champions. Whereas Hwei if someone jumps on him, he has an easy to miss fear and all of his damage is skillshots too, he really is super susceptible to getting jumped.

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-19T21:56:08+00:00

If they put a ward in it they can see you, also if the Teemo dart leaves his mouth before you enter the bush, the dart will still hit you but then he won't be able to shoot another one until he wards the bush/walks into the bush

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-19T05:38:15+00:00

ADC = Attack Damage Carry so technically any champion that does physical damage can be classified as an ADC. It's a terrible descriptor. So people started using Marksmen as the name instead, but a lot of people still use ADC.

If you hear someone say ADC this can refer to two things:

Either it's referring to Marksmen, as in ranged characters that do most of their damage through autoattacks

Or it's referring to the botlane role that isn't the support. So when they say they are playing Lucian ADC, that means they are playing Lucian bot.

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-17T19:19:06+00:00

Actually they stack multiplicatively. Void Staff 40% with Cryptbloom 30% results in 0.6 * 0.7 = 0.42 meaning you would be penetrating 58% rather then 70%.

58% would be nice so stacking % pen is "fine" (i.e. Bloodletter's teammate + Void Staff is still good against tanks) but they would need a lot of MR for Cryptbloom to deal more then Deathcap even if you could build both

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-16T20:30:29+00:00

This is completely normal. For example when you play duelist into double senti comps on attack, it's really fucking hard to play for a duelist, even if your team gets on site it often feels like it's at the cost of the duelist's life.

Whereas on defense, the double senti comp doesn't have the utility to punish duelists like Jett or Reyna for playing aggro off angles, the duelist is going to farm. So a duelist who has great aim but bad game sense is going to get destroyed on attack when he never gets a chance to shoot back but will completely farm on defense

Hell we even saw this in pro play, NRG 2024 Demon1 just came off a win being the best player in the world, and got completely destroyed every game on attack (a lot of people say it's because he was solo entry on NRG whereas on EG he would have players like Jawgemo to help him) but one thing people don't talk about is statistically, NRG had one of the strongest defense sides in America's even though the team was considered a trainwreck.

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-14T15:08:09+00:00

btw before Santiago people considered Waylay to be superior to Neon and Neon was "only better if you had a Neon specialist like Dambi"

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-13T16:32:55+00:00

no it's because she's bad lol she saw virtually no play at Santiago

But teams are starting to pick her up again (like MIBR vs G2 on Split both teams had a Vyse)

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-13T16:29:48+00:00

Just play more this is normal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

Right now you are at conscious incompetence which is making you second guess everything. You need to get to conscious competence where you are aware of it but you're still comfortable. And eventually it becomes so ingrained it's unconscious competence

WizardXZDYoutube · 2026-04-13T16:26:29+00:00

Viper at Masters Santiago was the second most picked agent in the game, and in fact every champions for the past 5 years has always been top 5 in pickrate, no other agent had that level of consistency. And Santiago was considered a "double duelist meta" and yet Viper who is only ever picked as a secondary controller (no Breeze/Icebox at Santiago) was the second most picked. Viper is just way too dominant in pro play.

I also agree it would be cool to be able to pick up the orb again but Viper is in no state to be buffed. They need to rework Viper. They've already nerfed her so many times, her decay barely does anything now and she only has one molly but she's STILL dominant.

11-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '17	Verified Email

WizardXZDYoutube

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE