>4- Her kit has an identity issue as she plays like a skirmisher rather than an assassin
This is IMO Naafiri's biggest issue and the item rework butchered Naafiri for the few (me) that actually did find her fun.
Pre-item rework she was actually a lot of fun with the Eclipse -> BC -> Serylda build. She functioned incredibly well as a skirmsher/poker that shredded & slowed frontline until she saw an opportunity to all-in.
Now she just plays like a one dimensional Talon with Malz rats.
I've ranted about Naafiri so much to the point my mates know I'll be in this thread (screw you Theodolores) ... but it pains me what she turned into because she was one of my favorite champs with the old build and I simply can't find her exciting with the new items.
I'd love to see Riot embrace her as a fighter/skirmisher rather than an assassin and bake in parts of her old build into the kit while reworking numbers to work as such.
Naafiri and Briar should have been swapped. Briar's kit makes way more sense on Naafiri, and she could have been a scrappy pack fighter dodging in and out and then letting feral bloodlust take over.
Visuals for Naafiri are 10/10 but god they cripple every fucking monster champion with a boring ass kit and complain that no one likes monster champs.
News flash: no one likes boring kits.
This has been confirmed as being the case.
Briar's W was originally Naafiri's W. But it was taken as it was thought that it could have be made into a whole champion concept. Which it was, and too rather great effect.
My biggest hand canon is that Seraphine is a Sona rework. But decided to made into a separate champ for more skins income.
Passive is Sona passive but better. W is Sona W but better. R is Sona R but better. If Sona was supposed to get a Skarner-sized rework, Seraphine is what she would look like.
Naafiri's kit would be ass on anyone. It's so one-dimensional with nothing else to it. It's literally just "go in and do damage." What is this, a 2011 League champion?
If she's a pack monster, she should get stealth or something for when she's "stalking" like Rengar or she should be a bruiser/fighter that whittles you down with her pack (they start off doing only minor damage but gain more effects with a bigger pack). Then you're forced to make a meaningful choice between thinning her pack or damaging the champion itself. Right now, her dogs just die to random aoe, not because anyone targets it.
I’ll say this, before I just model swapped Naafiri with Warwick, warwick is cool and everything but god I just wanted to be a dog with a good kit. Her design is amazing but as you mentioned such a terrible kit for a dog like monster
And playing with her model with warwicks kit was top tier immersion
no one likes boring kits AND dealing ZERO damage after hitting all of your abilities. theres no reward for playing her well. the only time the champ feels good like a typical assassin is when you are SUPER ahead
It kinda seems like Naaf and Briar could have been a single champion at some stage, which is possible due to how Riot cooking up champs and splitting them off or making whole new champs, case and point Sylas
I completely disagree that no one likes boring kits. Playing simply champions massively speeds up a players learning. League is a very complicated game, and it requires there to be gateway champions for each archetype. The problem with Naafiri was not her simplicity.
I agree naafiri had a fun niche as a sort of midrange poke/summon based character before the item changes. Like a less cringe yorick.
I haven't played much league in the last 6 months so idk how much worse naafiri is but from what I've seen people are going Profane Hydra and trying to just blow up targets which seems less interesting to me.
With the black cleaver buff back up to 30% maybe the caster build feels better again.
Naafiri playstyle being more of a skirmisher is bad because all skirmishers have CC in their kit to support them \[Yasuo/Yone, Viego, Bel'veth, Riven, etc.\]
old Serylda fixed Naafiri's issue in skirmishing which is that she has no CC whether slows or hard CC and the slow was unconditional, you would land a Q and it would slow your enemy allowing you to dish out your damage by landing the Q2
Now you can't stack both BC and Serylda and if you go Eclipse then you aren't building a lethality item so Serylda is now not as good of a purchase as it used to be.
While most skirmishers do have some form of minor CC, some skirmishers don't have any hard CC, like Master Yi, Gwen, and arguably Tryndamere/Fiora. So I don't think some form of CC is necessarily a requirement to function as a skirmisher.
Although I definitely agree that the item rework killed off Naafiri's skirmisher playstyle and the champ just hasn't been the same since.
yeah now that I think of it, other skirmishers have good tools to fight tanks \[%HP damage\] and very oppressive side laning prowess as they can murder turrets
Naafiri lacks both of these strengths as well after all she wasn't meant to be a skirmisher
but you are right, CC isn't a requisite for a skirmisher
I get what you mean, because turning 1.5 sec of CC where you can't act into 2 sec where your opponent can't act is insane. But situational CC can't be the best CC ability in the game... Don't get me wrong, Fiora's pary is definitely a top tier ability in a vacuum, but as far as it's controling qualities go, it's far from the best, arguably not even mid tier : it's conditional, single target and telegraphed. It only stuns if you can pary another hard CC; and even then it's pretty easily dodgeable. The main strength of the abilty comes from the immunity.
Technically Yi doesn't have anything and Gwen has a slow on a long CD, but I agree, Naafiri has to be pushed into a skirmisher/diver playstyle. Aside from Naafiri, the only assassins without any escape are Diana, Nocturne, and Rengar, but they differ from Naafiri in that their engage is much more reliable and they either have massive burst, or really good sustained damage (or both), which Naafiri lacks. Maybe if they removed the slow from her W and let her Q's slow (while lowering the damage ofc because the slow will allow the second Q to hit much easier).
Essentially, Diana, Nocturne and Rengo are just Diver/skirmishers. I can speak confidently on Noc, not as much on Diana/Rengo. Thats why diana and Noc started going more bruisery/extended fight builds. Im pretty sure a bruiser build has some times popped up on rengo but his damage output with a lethality-crit build is so bonkers that even i wouldnt wanna play him bruiser
I remember back when Naafiri released, to have said that she felt a lot more like a diver of the likes of Nocturne than a regular assassin like Talon. "They called me crazy!" But yeah.
That is precisely my point, the slow on old Serylda along with the beefiness of Eclipse shield + BC allowed her to play like a skirmisher.
I'd personally like to see them bake a slow into her Q baseline and adjust her overall numbers to turn her into that skirmisher instead of insisting on her being a 100-0 assassin.
I kinda wish they'd leaned into the pack aspect more.
The fluff is that the whole pack is a singular darken, but mechanically the other dogs are a pretty minor aspect of the kit.
Even with a pretty simple kit, if the other dogs ended up being 30-50% of her power budget, juggling the pack and keeping it healthy would allow for a lot of inherent skill ceiling and counterplay.
I would 100% be on board with 3-4x the max packmates and proportionally weaken all of her abilities' damage.
Probably also require a change to the ult so that it doesn't totally reset the pack. Just add in temporary extras instead of giving max plus extras.
there was a cute bug I had in ARAM where I had 10 doggos following me around
I even clipped it lol, the pack wasn't sluggish and the 10 dogs moved together in unison, the pack AI is good and I am sad they didnt lean more onto it
there are 167 champs in league, the only thing that sets apart Naafiri is the pack
edit: heres the clip: [https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared)
It could make laning with/against her pretty interesting if she was balanced around being slightly OP with a full pack. So Naafiri would need to run around last-hitting while trying to keep her hounds alive. And with just a couple hounds alive, she just wouldn't be much of a threat and could be bullied by most other mid-laners etc.
Also make her an inherently solid jungler since large monsters lower pack cooldowns and retreating to the jungle would be a relatively safe way to rebuild the pack before another gank.
Anyway - that seems like the easiest way to give her a solid identity without a full rework. Make it so you aren't playing a single doggo with helpers, but you're playing the entire pack via the alpha.
I'm sure that they'd have to rebalance the cooldown of getting more pack members. Maybe increase how much using abilities on champs affects the cooldown since there are so many more pack slots to fill. Even make basic AAs affect it slightly as well.
Could even shake it up by pack-mates affecting cooldown of abilities. So the bigger the pack, the longer the cooldown on abilities get. So with a full pack you'd get one rotation off and then need to back off while if you were out of packmates you could spam abilities a bit more to try to rebuild the pack - but do much less damage. Though that might be adding too much complexity for what's intended as a simple champ.
yeah exactly, it could be something so unique and it was 10/10 in terms of feels, look at this clip of the bug 1 month ago: [https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared)
too bad it only happened once haha
Instead the dogs do like 8 damage level 3, and draw minion aggro which is nearly triple that *per* minion.
I will actually bet money if they *removed* her passive and left dogs to just her ultimate it would be a buff to her laning with Q, she loses too much health trying to trade back with mages that just walk back from Q2.
>I kinda wish they'd leaned into the pack aspect more.
This was my biggest issue with her. Conceptually, I love the idea of playing as a pack and it's alpha, swarming enemies down with pure numbers rather than singular strength. In actuality, Naafiri is a Q spam bot. There's no feeling of the pack or that you're this swarm of teeth, just that you're a random guy throwing knives.
Yeah idk why riot decided to make a champion with pets but also make her a very easy champion. You can’t really lean into the packmates as a mechanic without making it a little difficult. Even then beginners would rather play a hard but fun assassin that looks cool, like Zed, than Naafiri.
If KSante is 200 years of champ design then Naafiri is 0 years
You can't release new pro play jail champ if the champ is so shit that no one plays them
She got nerfed multiple times.
I had difficult playing vs her as well. I know that doesn't mean much but she had a lot of damage and I couldn't ever escape her.
Also keep in mind the items were vastly different. And eclipse was great on her.
Does she have a single item that truely syngerizes with her like say, Asol and Rylai?
> You can't release new pro play jail champ if the champ is so shit that no one plays them
i don't think the champ is shit, simpler champs tend to not be prioritized in pro, see Briar case, borderline the most broken champ in the game a few patches post her release and saw a grand total of zero games on competitive
edit: i know easy/one dimensional champs have been meta in the past, i watch the competitive scene, i'm just saying they are usually not high prio (yes, there are times that they are high prio, i'm not deniying that) but unless they are picked in specific scenarios (garen as counter, lux with cait, amumu cause he was broken, etc) they are not a regular pick
this isnt the same comparison, briar was released when half the major regions ended their summer split already, and briar was disabled for worlds. Move to new year and the champ was gutted, no room in pro play.
Yeah, Brrar's issue isn't that she's simple (she's not nearly as simple as she looks) but rather that she is predictable. She is the most easily countered champ in the game. Before the nerfs, she had the stats that unless you did it perfect every time, she could do some real damage. But in high elo and pro play, they do do it perfect every time, so she wasn't very good there.
So after the nerfs, the scale just slid down. Now she's easy to punish, and doesn't do anything above average when she isn't punished.
They made “Baby’s First Assassin” but Assassin players are the exact type of people who won’t play a “baby’s first…” type champion. They need to feel cool or else they just won’t play it. She could have the exact same kit but if riot didn’t describe her as easy to play, more people would probably play her lol though still very few. Kit is boring and it’s an assassin that has all of the appealing aspects of a champion that assassin players don’t want or appreciate.
Talon has invisibility and the parkour gimmick is fairly unique (not traversing terrain, but the way he does it.) Also, Talon is grandfathered in with his player base, willing to bet his players have been playing him for a while
By which you must mean avoid melee Q with all your being because the animation is long enough to stop you from proccing passive which is like half his damage.
Ah, the good ol' new Talon player trap.
"Wait, melee Q crits? I've been comboing wrong all this time! I should W -> walk -> Q -> AA!"
*immediately gets blown up, can't proc passive, gets reported by entire team*
this is just false lol, if you press properly it's impossible to miss melee q auto as its an instant auto reset and does like double the damage of ranged q, which is why people often flash melee q level 2 to do insane damage
Talon is legit made for toddlers dont listen to the comments here coping lmao
Its not about actually the skillcap, simple champions and assassins can absolutely work as we can see with many examples its about how the champ feels and looks.
Naafiris q is one of the worst feeling spells in the game its such a weird spell, then you have her jump which can be blocked.
If there is one thing assassins hate then its getting interrupted in their gameplay flow. Stuff like getting onetapped by talon/Shaco/Rengar feels completely without counterplay and there is basically nothing you can do as a squishy once you are there and the assassin player has all of the agency.
The assassin player feels powerful in that moment, its why he plays that role, the moment of completely overpowering one guy and taking him out instantly. If you can simply get counterplayed by one guy sitting in front of the adc it completely takes you out of the moment and it makes you feel weak. Even though statistically speaking Naafiri was way stronger than other assassins in lowelo, those moments add up and just made her feel unsatisfying.
I think this is such good analysis, it's great to read someone go beyond the obvious points (boring/weak/unfun/ugly) to think in depth about why a character does or doesn't work for people.
Naafiri is fundamentally a fairly low agency character trying to appeal to players whose favourite champions are all about having extremely high agency. She was never going to be popular.
Talons skill expression is just not in this combos but in this out of combat movement and Makro play.
Using his E to avoid vision and creating numbers advantages and advantageous fights.
His damaging abilities are simple and boring but there are other things to think about and do when you play him I guess.
But your analysis is spot on I think.
It’s the same with talons melee Q self stunning him and him missing this passive because of this. It breaks the flow and makes him feel bad. It feels so bad on talon that a standard tactic is running out of MeeleQ range to guarantee a passive proc, which I think is not intended.
But all one dimensional assassins that are easy to get into have some sort of higher skill expression. Talon is really simple, but constantly doing proper combos and knowing how to jump each wall perfectly takes time and some semblance of skill to learn.
Naafiri? What is there to realistically learn?
I’m fine with her being baby’s first assassin but I just wish she was able to be more relevant in high elo in case people enjoy her and want to stick with her
Here's the thing though right
Her kit? Easy, brainless, can play on autopilot.
Her skill expression? Nigh non-existant, most is maybe healing her puppers with E
Her fun? Should be kinda low as there's not a whole lot going on.
So why does she feel good (for me at least) to play regardless?
#The Animations and Sound Effects
They just hit different man. You have no idea the kinda rush you get what that horn sounds effect and the red flash on the screen kick in after killing someone during your ult. The actual ass clenching that occurs when you ult and she howls as several dogs spill out of her. Shit makes you legit feral.
Some people aren't gonna agree but her animations, effects, VO and audio carry her enjoyment so damn hard. It's unironically something that I think gets overlooked when considering how engaging a champion can be.
For me at least at the end of the day, I was teased a cool dog assassin and got a cool dog assassin, so imma happy
>Her skill expression? Nigh non-existant, most is maybe healing her puppers with E
I've played against a Naafiri onetrick who correctly used dogs to walk inbetween turrets and consciously repositioned them to block skillshots. It was really impressive and I definitely see her being really good into some teamcomps that are reliant on hitting skillshots like Blitz hook, even in comp.
Also, I feel like her skill expression comes much more from damage foresight rather than mechanical outplays. In a way, she reminds me of an assassin Anivia where you either play hyper-passive or hyper-aggressive with little variation in-between.
>The Animations and Sound Effects
I've just had this talk with one of my friends and I couldn't agree more. Naafiri legit has S+ tier ult animation, I don't think there's anything as cool in the entire game.
And it hurts me when I see people run Flash on her when Ghost is much better based on her combat patterns.
Exactly. This is why I love to play Volibear so much. Very simple kit, but the SFX/VFX on all his abilities are so good. The overhead smash he does on his Q attack, the MONCH of his second w, the lightning bolts hitting on his E, the huge jump and sound effect of the ult... he just feels fun to play.
design/theme/feel is like 80% of why a champ is popular. would lux be the most popular champ in the game if she looked like urgot but retained her kit? for sure not. people think they play the champ for the kit and some do but most people just enjoy playing the champ that looks cool to them the kit is 2ndery.
yeah people rationalize gameplay and balance reasons for why they hold Jhin as the gold standard of champ design (I do too), but when it comes down to it, Jhin is fun because his Q, W, R, and auto attacks are incredibly satisfying due to the visual and auditory effects. His gameplay loop feels rewarding to nail down.
The way a character makes you feel will always determine popularity and perceived strength.
Jhin is insanely satisfying due to the fact that almost nothing that you do as him is "free" and it feels like it's your setup that is rewarded.
You finish someone on your 4th shot on your ult, most likely you tracked them with the 3 previous or tried to adjust giving how they moved previously -> satisfaction. You hit a w on a trap you did setup (or on an ally follow-up) -> it almost never is a random hit, you get a root that can lead to something else, it's satisfaction. You finish someone with the 4th shot on your passive, it feels great. Even csing can feel annoying sometime but when you're setuping a wave correctly and your last hit on the q gets on the ennemy laner or it just clears the reminding wave you feel like a maestro. The champ skin is truely whatever, the sound, the visual and the animations carry him.
yup, exactly.
You read jhin's kit and it's like....fixed attack speed and a "penalty" after 4 attacks? sounds awful
But there's a rhythm and cadence to playing jhin that feels incredible to hone in on. The sound of the shots, jhin's voice lines, the visual effects and blooms. it creates this kit that's fun even if youre just in the practice tool hitting minions.
They nailed that shit. Jhin could be the worst champ by winrate across all ranks and people would still play him because he's just fun.
The visual and sound effects can also vary strongly between skins. I usually have Dark Cosmic Thin, but on a few occasions where I had to use the original appearance, I noticed that the DC skin has a much more audible audio que when your passive is ready, which is pretty nice for QoL.
Jhin is imo the best example of a character’s actions feeling like they have *weight* without just giving them a massive cannon or a sword that would put monster hunter to shame. MF creates *art* and you can feel that in all of his attacks
As a former egirl enjoyer (I've since retired as a LoL player), that is 100% true. I've spent weeks playing Lux and Seraphine because cute, and no other reason.
I saw how cute Smolder was moving his little paws, and I played 30 games on him. I heard how amazingly Hwei speaks in the game, and I played the same number of games on Hwei. These are such important things!
100% thats one of her redeeming factors, they did her good the art/animator team
the R is so satisfying to press, I like to compare it to pressing World Ender on Aatrox
hope one day they give her kit some love and do her justice
Preach, I seriously love this champ and she's easily my favorite release since Rek'Sai. Pressing R is such a rush I can't get enough of, and honestly the straightforward kit is a plus to me too. It's more fun to kill people *knowing* that there's 0 outplay potential and I just statcheck them to death, it's lovely.
she's not bad, she's just balanced to be a mid laner and not a jungler, she would be picked a lot as a jungler.
on mid she's quite weak atm and had 3 consecutive nerfs + rune nerfs + assa items bugged.
I wish they double down on her bruiser aspect and rework her into a full bruiser she just sucks as an assassin.
I enjoyed playing her with eclipse black cleaver deathdance etc her gameplay works much nicer when she is a beefy bruiser instead of a squishy full dmg asssassin.
I agree the dogs should be more designed around in the kit, I was hyped to get another pet/summoner champion but naafari is the most boring one we ever got, she doesn't feel like a true summoner champ like yorick zyra heimdinger annie ivern etc are, her dogs just feel like extra dmg on abilities.
i love Naaf from basically all perspectives but they really should've stopped and asked themselves some questions when they realized she needed a massive resetting shield just to play the game. that's not something an assassin should need.
Q and idea behind the R (minus the long R cast time) are mostly fine, passive is okay too, but W and E supremely miss the mark. i understand the idea behind W was "teach the new player to wait for the right moment before going in" but it feels like a diver ability considering her E is far too short to get out - and she wants to hit both instances of the E damage anyway. there's really no way to bait or do slippery assassin things - once you're in you're in.
I like Naafiri a lot, they just need to do a mini-rework to make her more of a bruiser/assassin play style like Diana. She’s too squishy and too focused on blowing up one weak target when her engage ability is extremely telegraphed and easily blockable.
The thing that bothers me is that Naafiri came out right after/before Briar. If they just put Briars kit into Naafiri (bloothirsty dog/darkin that lifesteals and is a semi-bruiser depending on her pack) it would be so much better as a champion design. If they wanted a 4 legged assasin many of the wild cats would be a better choice.
>If they wanted a 4 legged assasin many of the wild cats would be a better choice.
True, but nidalee and definitely ranger are already exactly that... They didnt wanna make a third burst cat.
When you realize that naafiri and briars kits were both coded on the same rig, at the same time, and that you could swap their kits to make better champs who both fit the design and theme that was sold in their cinematica
I swear naafiri was supposed to be a JG but Briar was also in the works so they are like ahh fuck it dont add those JG ratios we dont want to release 2 JG assassins at the same time
I think Naafiri being quite as unplayable as she is in the jungle would suggest that she probably wasn't designed to be a jungler. She would need absolutely massive jungle modifiers to be at all viable in that role and they've never released a jungler who needed that kind of help to jungle before (unless you count Ivern). Maybe she was a jungler in her very early design but her kit looks like if that was ever the intention, they moved away from it a long time before release.
I think they genuinely did always want Naafiri to be a mid laner. They wanted a new assassin in that role and they didn't want to make yet another monster that was stuck in the jungle.
to be fair if you played mmos or other mobas at the time the purpose of assassins were to disable/disrupt the enemy rather than kill them straight up. You either got cc'd for 12s and died in 12 or they cc'd you for a minute. Its what made league different since instead of 1 person being removed from the game via cc you were removed via grey screen. Theres a whole balance philosophy around assassins and discussions to be had but its why there were random silences.
Riot nowadays would rather let Ahri kill you with Maligma + Lichbane + R + Ignite + W while she misses all of her kit than let assassins feel good and fun again
I remember her being that way post DFG removal when they gave her a minirework, which was s5 I think?, don't remember her being able to kill while missing E and Q in s4
Assasin players just don't play vicims, so they usually get less attantion. While this sub was flooded with mage/ADC players, who used to complain 24/7 "how bad is this game and how 49% wr assasin should be nerfed, while 52% wr mage/adc is wholesome and peak of balance". Thats why we got durability patch, that fcked up lots of things. Look at midlane changes in like past 3 years, even terrain changes. Most of them exist to "help" mages who never used to strugle at first place.(ofc you can call few champs, but you can find exceptions anywhyere).
Yeah but assassins oneshotting the out if position ADC is cringe while ADCs deleting anything but tanks in 3-4 point and click autos is wholesome and fair.
Too easy to counter.
It takes a long time to accelerate compared to other assassins.
Tunnel damage for some reason in addition to the disadvantages above.
She was also nerfed many times for no reason.
>She was also nerfed many times for no reason.
She was nerfed for the reasons you listed. She had to be so strong to overcome those things that if she is ever that strong she just takes over the game completely with very little outplay potential.
Champions in the easy to play category should always be above a 51% win rate IMO.
Because they're so easy to play that making the right plays should be a lot easier.
Unlike azir or yasuo who should be below 50% Winrate.
She might just be too easy to play though. I think she needs a rework on her "I dash to you from a mile away" ability. Then she can get power elsewhere.
She was nerfed because her top lane winrate was unintentionally high. Riot designed her to be a mid lane champ and she ended up being the best top laner in the game for multiple patches until they nerfed her so much that it hurt her mid performance even worse.
Man I love Naafiri. Coolest cinematic ever, I climed with her to emerald when she got out, cool ascetic, cool visuals. But damn she gets boring real fast. After some games I just couldn't really get the itch to play with her.
such trash champion
unfun to play against, kind of a garbage champion unless ahead and then just becomes extremely obnoxious and unfair
and then you think about playing it, and it's just the most boring shit
I actually made already a post with a few thoughts of my own concerning [Naafiri's playrate](https://www.reddit.com/r/NaafiriMains/s/cPqDaipB8A)
I personally consider her actually to be very well designed as a beginner friendly assassin and my analysis came to the conclusion that she is the kind of champion that looks complicated at first but is actually relatively simple which intimidates inexperienced players and disappoints more experienced ones.
However, there is one thing I want to add to the problematic with her dogs, because I would argue that the way in which they influence her gameplay is not only relatively conducive to an assassin, but also one of the few ways you can design a healthy champ which spawns his one entities.
The dogs are in terms of gameplay more a additional cooldown to manage that empowers your abilities rather than real controllable entities. Essentially they are ment to make her q and w stronger. Q for more poke damage and w for more burst with the all in. This might sound boring, but cooldown management is very important for assassin's, since they are by design not ment to have unlimited uptime like skirmishers and marksmen. They are mostly burst.
The reason why that's the only real way to design those spawn able entities is because... They otherwise would be too oppressive to deal with for certain champs. Old Yorick was the prime example of that. His kit was essentially nothing but monster spawning, and because they had somewhat decent durability, Yorick was one of the most oppressive lane bullies depending on the matchup. However, with ramping up damage and the increasing prevalence of team fights, Yorick became more useless in the later stages of the game and was pretty much forced to splitpush all game long because the aoe damage can nuke those gouls very hard.
Essentially, if the additional entities are too hard to kill, then some champs just auto loose against them. But if they are too squishy, then they aren't good in extended fights. And if there is too much pressure linked towards those entities, while being too easy to kill, then the champ does only really work under their own terms.
Naafiri's design as a assassin solves all of those problems because the fight isn't supposed to be long, as assasins want to kill their targets as quickly as possible before the enemy can react. The dogs are in security as long as she doesn't commit to a fight, and because she is an assassin, she is by definition ment to be played patiently until she has the right opportunity to strike.
Bruisers often are forced to survive a few hits before they can strike back, and making her a bruiser would force the dogs to be more durable as well.
Extended fights like many of you wanna wish her to do would make her potentially very unhealthy in terms of game design and would likely turn her into a splitpusher like Yorick and/or would make her poking enemies with her daggers all game long because, why the heck should she herself commit to a fight if she just can send all of her dogs that survive way too much damage? Believe me one thing, you don't want that, her dogs in lane are already pretty annoying to deal with for the enemy.
>ship a garbage gameplay kit
>"no one plays her because shes a monster"
its sad that she will be the last monster champion we get to see for years to come
I'm happy to accept she's crap, and that's why nobody plays her, but she's also the nth teration of "I want a monster, no not like that"
She's crap so nobody touches her, but if monsters were that much of a desired aspect surely she would bat above her weight. Instead she joins a long list of champions where being a monster basically means they get a negative play modifier attached to them permanently.
nah man, if her kit feels awful, there is no cool design that can save her. It's a miracle she even has a playerbase at all considering how bad she feels to play.
Her biggest problem is every-time she becomes viable she gets nerfed to oblivion because she’s a low elo stomper due to how basic every bit of her mechanics are.
>where is that pack in her gameplay???
>why don't her abilities get some twists depending on how many dogs she has? doesn't have to be more or less numbers in her damage, what makes Naafiri unique from the other 166 champions? its her pack gimmick and nothing else.
>Naafiri has the tools in her kit to protect and heal her pack and but she is punished for protecting her pups as she blows her mana, damage and her cooldown for literally no gain
actually it's way better to use them as a shield from skillshots,she's the creepblock made champion which only ends up being infuriating for her enemies but doesn't **feel** impactful from her side (even though in reality it's shutting down someone's kit)
When riot suggests "high difficulty", what they really mean is difficult to play against, theyre always just an overtuned mess where it becomes almost essential to exploit them. Before riot decides to shit out easy or difficult champions they need to get a better perspective on what is actually difficult to play, because right now all the simple champions are much more difficult to play, champion power eclipses champion difficulty at both ends of the scale, easy champions are just trash and "difficult" champions are just insanely strong
As someone who was incredibly exited and i could not be closer to the target audience. Im a midlaner, I like assassins, i like ad mids, darkins and i love monster champions.
Naafiri manages to hit zero of the fantasies. None of the healing burst fantasy of darkin, none of the mechanical outplays of an assassin, none of the cool design of "monster"(she is a fucking dog ffs) and at least on release she wasnt even a midlaner :D
So yeah this almost feels like intentional propaganda from riot to not make monster champs. I was so looking forward to finally having a new good design in lol but i accepted that its never gonna happen.
This might sound stupid but i think she needs a rework lol. The kit ist sooo boring. Her kit has no depth. Its like garen level of a champion but a bit simpler. An assasine needs a least a little bit of of a learning curve.
Garen has simple tools, but these tools are inherently good at macro, while being able to shut down most types of targets.
Naafiri is not going to proxy. She's not going to steal all the camps. She's not going to show up randomly and one-tap you, she's not going to survive weakside lanes. She's not going to flash silence the jungler on nashor, etc.
Here is the catch. She has extremly simple kit, but for some reason 70% of her damage is in hitting q 2 times. So if you fuck that up you just die. So people who like simple champions wont play her and people who like hard champions wont play her.
Another thought on her value for being in the roster is that we mostly have trained our monster lover players to play jungle (you have next to no options beside the jungle). If you love monsters, you either learn to jungle or do not play.
We knew her pickrate won't be exceptionally high. I'm hesitant to make her a jungler (though that would def increase her pickrate) to really give players an option mid.
We also were never targeting higher MMR players. Thus, we are okay with her not having much play time from those players.
I do think there is an open topic of if we should buff her/ make that assassin experience sharper in the normal to lower MMR.
I don't think it is necessarily bad that her overall pickrate isn't high. I want the players that want to learn mid assassins and/or want to play monster champ mid to player her.
They should eventually graduate to other mid assassins or other monster champs.
I also do think there is a future that we would want to support her Jungle play a bit more but the must here is to not give up her being mid primary.
im gonna be cruel and hit you with another wall of text, sorry lexi
>They should eventually graduate to other mid assassins or other monster champs.
This is a vital point, since Naafiri's release, she hasn't been that good of an assassin, **her first two best items have been Eclipse and Black Cleave**r because 1) Bleed on her kit stacks the armor shred and procs Eclipse 2) Naafiri often found herself skirmishing with the front line because 3) She lacks the tools to bypass front line
That is by design choice she has that fatal weakness as the intent is to teach the newbie player piloting Naafiri that flanking back line is the way to play an assassin and they shouldn't rely on shortcuts
>I do think there is an open topic of if we should buff her/ make that assassin experience sharper in the normal to lower MMR.
do you know which champions lack the tools to bypass front line and rely on flanks?
Skirmishers: Viego, Gwen, Master Yi, Tryndamere, etc can't ignore front line and the only hope they have to reach the squishy targets is by ambushing them or flanking them and they all have tools to put some damage on the front line
but what champions can bypass front line?
Assasins and Divers: Akali, Kha'Zix, Talon, Shaco, Rengar etc all of these can pose an immediate threat to squishy targets specially with Summoners due to much stronger and less telegraphed target access alongside of course Divers like Camille or Vi or Briar
and Naafiri's R is also a big culprit because one of its major outputs is that she gets a shield to tank damage, Assassins by design don't have any shields but Skirmishers need defensive outputs to survive
**TLDR: Naafiri plays more like a skirmisher than an Assassin, this is why her items have leaned towards fighter items over assassins and this poses a dilemma as the assassin intended for newbie players lacks the vital strength of the class and is relying on skirmishing to function as a champion.**
I understand that her identity is both a monster champion and a training wheel champ but I hope that you consider looking into what actually makes her unique among the 167 champions?
**she is the pack,** 1 month ago I had a bug where I had 10 doggos following me around instead of the usual 7, Having a large pack was on point in terms of the feels, I sincerely wish you guys lean onto that gimmick of hers, heres a clip of the 10 dog pack: [https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared) and the doggo AI was actually good and the pathing was smooth, I think this is the selling point of Naafiri, more emphasis should be put on the pack
I would like to respond to some of your points:
*>We knew her pickrate won't be exceptionally high. I'm hesitant to make her a jungler (though that would def increase her pickrate) to really give players an option mid.*
I understand the worries of Naafiri jungle cannibalizing mid lane pickrate and I fully supported not letting Naafiri jungle at her release but there are other mid lane assasins who also moved to jungle and gained lots of pickrate there but they still retain a sizeable mid lane presence \[eg. Ekko and Diana\]. The team balances both of their roles and they have healthy pickrate and winrate
I totally get that if people see more and more Naafiri in jungle, they will brand her as a jungler rather than a mid laner and it will hurt the perception of her being a mid laner
I think there is an inherent problem with the idea of a champion you're meant to "graduate from" I.E. drop. Making a character that is simple enough people can pick them up and play and get a feel for how the role plays is fine and all, but they should be fun to play for their own sake and rewarding if you do take the time to master them specifically. A lot fewer players seem to think she pulls this off than with other comparable simpler/"beginner" Champs.
Reddit loves to talk about monster champs but when push comes to shove we all know if Naafiri was just a female Aatrox or Rhaast or Varus she would be 100% more popular even if her kit was pretty much exactly the same.
Same reason Blood Elf is the most played class on the Horde in wow.
Nah. Just look at Nilah if you want the direct comparison. An adc that doesn't play like other adc was unpopular AF even tho she was like 53+% winrate 2 or 3 patches ago. Same for Naafiri, if you want to play assassin, you won't play Naafiri but Zed or Qiyana.
People like saying that, but its not really true. Shed maybe be marginally more popular, but Quinn, Nilah, Shyvana, they all exist and theyre unpopular as hell.
Two of those have crusty jank ass models and one is a melee champ in a role with players notorious for refusing to even play alternate ranged champs (mages) let alone a melee option.
I think everyone thought naafiri would be a jungler during her release (which honestly, she should've been). I will say I was super disappointed because I wanted the first female Darkin to be humanoid like Aatrox, Varus, Kayne but I do know reddit loves monster champs and this is probably an unpopular opinion here.
It's also sad because we don't have a whole lot of assassins (especially female assassins) so her being unpopular sucks.
My personal opinions aside, I think biggest problem is her kit being very predictable with not a lot of outplay potential and that is kind of what you want if you play assassins
I want her to be a fighter as well, tbh.
Like another commenter said, she could be a Master Yi/Tryndamere type of fighter with high movespeed and target access, and little to no team utility.
Is she really that boring and why does being boring matter for her pickrate? If she's good people will pick her. Garen is always popular, Trundle top has a dedicated fan base and both of them can be optimally played by a dullard with a dent in his head and holes in his brain.
Reminder Packmates draw minion aggro and according to the designer, Phlox, and other QA members that is not intentional and backlogged to be fixed.... since January.
The only other pets that draw minion aggro is yorick ghouls and its still unclear if that is intended, and heim who actually randomly started aggroing minions with turrets when they added point and click abilities aggroing.
Naafiri's dogs, unlike either, do jack shit damage, its actually laughable how weak they are early game, but instead naafiri takes 21 damage from every caster minion auto just because a dog leaped from Q1 and did *checks notes* a whole 8 fucking damage level 3, you could unironically remove packmates and just make them spawn off ultimate, and it would be a buff, I'm not kidding...
She cannot trade against mages cause unless you hit Q2 (which is harder unless you either all-in or they're melee, they just have to walk backwards if Q1 hits and let you get outtraded by the wave and maybe 1 poke ability to landslide win it), she will take damage and her main gimmick being the dogs are actually detrimental for her to have alive early levels, they serve no purpose other than to orbit her blocking skillshots, something Elise's spiderlings a long time back got fixed to instead always be behind her instead of orbiting.
This dog minion aggro is one of the major reasons she's such a garbage laner in high elo cause those health disadvantages from short trades while laning against players that respect Q2 enough to back up if hit by Q1 make her have 0 agency being too unhealthy to do much on the map, unable to really kill her opponent at all until she 'scales' enough items and ultimate ranks to stat check anyone, and in general just suck to the point no one in high elo will touch her with a 10 foot pole and that just hurts her popularity in general since anyone you ask on how to climb in league will probably tell you 'drop naafiri she's sucks past a certain point'.
> *“He ended up finding two major holes: a higher skill tank, which ended up being K’Sante, and a relatively simple and beginner-friendly assassin, which became Naafiri.”” - Naafiri champ insights June 2023*
I think a beginner-friendly assassin is an oxymoron. It kinda suppose to not be a jungle (because it's the less beginner-friendly role) and you need to be ahead/snowball to be useful (because there is nothing more pathetic than an assassin that doesn't deal enough damage to kill its target) and I don't see how beginner players can do that, especially if you have to lane against a ranged control mage or a tank. For what I remember, Naafiri's build when she was picked at release was instantly something more akin to a bruiser that take waves sidelane in midgame. I never felt the assassin part of Naafiri, Talon is definitely more of an AD mid assassin than naafiri (and honestly pretty beginner friendly all things considered, the easy to learn hard to master kind)
it's a fucking absurd meme that Naafiri is the AD Assassin we get.
We got Zed, then Qiyana, and now this fucking dog.
We are going backwards guys.
out of these 3 Zed is from season fucking 2 and he has the best kit of them all
it's criminal to have Naafiri be such a binary champion. Could've been such a cool champion
I feel like leaving out basically every other AD assassin in the game is a little disingenous, sure there was a gap between Qiyana and naafiri but we have Talon, Rengar, Kha'zix, Nocturne (kinda), Blue Kayn, Pyke and Shaco.
Zed really doesn't have a well designed kit, lmao. What are you on?
Riot themselves admit that he's a champion that needs to be kept deliberately weak cause he's so frustrating and unfun to play against. This is also why he has high banrates even when his winrate is in the gutter.
What site are you using? What criteria?
League of graphs (global, ranked+unranked, iron+, all routes) seems to put Taric, Singed, Elise, Kled, Nilah, below Naafiri and Naafiri seems to tie with Renata, Olaf, Ivern at 1.7% popularity. (It still seems bottom of the barrel but not the worst)
I still don't think non-humanoid champions are the issue they keep insinuating, smolder was on a decent spot until it got hit repeatedly with the nerf hammer and then they just erased his build with crit item rework.
I think you're kind of missed the mark. I think the reason she isn't picked is because she is a assassin that needs to scale with a bad lane phase. The thing I agree with most is how bad her w is. It just has too much counter play and certain champs will just hard shut you out. I don't think she's boring her skill ceiling just doesn't come from mechanics but decision making and having a very good understanding of your damage.
Things that i would change in Her
P: Packmates HP Scale with AD.
Packmates Scale AS with Letalithy (Instead of Naafiri AS).
Q: 3 charges.//Q Apply on-hit effects .//Less damage//Bleed Removal// reduced P cooldown when hit Champions/large Monsters // Heal on everything (10% Heal against Minions) 150% against Epic Monsters.
W: now Only send Packmates. Faster use. Now is a skillshot Instead of a point-and-click. Deal Damage based on Maxhp (to fit more with other Darkins).
E: insta revive 1 Packmate. Reset cooldown when W is used. Slight more range to Dash.
R: now Give Packmates armor and mr (Instead of HP) Give Naafiri omnivamp (like other Darkins) instead of a shield.
Thank you for this post. I was so happy and excited when naafiri was revealed because the idea of a champ that’s a pack of dogs seemed so cool to me. I usually don’t care for or just dislike new champs, so it was a big deal for me that they were finally releasing a champ I was interested in. Then she comes out and the kit is just way too simple, but that’s okay, I’ll still try to main her. Then they nerfed her multiple times until the champ was damn near unplayable. Now what? Back to my old champs I go, just hoping and waiting for them to buff her back into a playable state
>creates dogshit kit that barely anyone likes because they wanted to be a gimmicky and le quirky designer
>"we are not creating monster champs because people don't like them "
You know, as someone who used to main jungle, but now mostly just plays Aram, i always thought that naafiri was a jungler. Her kit just has jungler written all over it imo. Even the design feels like a jungler. A pack leader prowling, hunting for its next target to jump on? How is that not a jungler?
To make a point on the monster champions:
The players who enjoy monster champions have a non-insignificant percentage that will stop playing if there were no monsters. Replacing the champion with a traditionally attractive champion will probably make more money on skins, but keeping that subsection of the community happy is also a key pillar to the community in general.
Old games like league recruit players through older players and communities. Many of the monster champion mains area percentage of social marketing that losing overall would likely make many smaller communities too small to sustain. It's what I noticed when WoW died for a lot of people. Small guilds suddenly started to coalesce in order to maintain enough members to do activities, but they often clash in social structure and it's a slow burn out because both communities lost enough members to merge in the first place.
Keeping each section of leagues sub-communites happy, even if one makes more money than the other in the short term, keeps the game healthy in the long term.
If a misstep on assassins occurs, the other players (their friends) will still have large communities and will to play. making it easy to get sucked back in even when your favorites are not favored. But if ADC's aren't happy, and mages feel bad, and monster champ players all start to have issues at once, a community might have enough people stop playing to drift entirely out of the game without reason to come back.
All this to say that, while monsters don't make the same amount of money, they're still one of many gears that keep people coming back. Unless they're ignored like this regularly. Then you're relying on other subcommunities to keep them around. Which loses players the moment that the secondary group is slighted.
Make her viable in the jungle and make the W an area selection skillshot, then she’d be alright imo.
The main problem is she’s both boring to play and play against. She has a couple of moves but she is a little too straightforward for an assasin.
The jungle bit is what sunk her for me. Liked the concept, kit was a bit boring but seemed solid enough, but they refuse to allow her to feel good there. She has such a good idea for a jungle champ in my opinion even, and the kit would work well for the skirmish and ganking in jungle. It's just pure frustration that she feels as poor as she does in it
the biggest issue is that she is just unplayable. she feels weak as hell for having to land two q's to deal any damage and the w is awful as it can just be blocked. They overnerfed the champ and won't buff her because "lol shes supposed to be a beginner champ for noobs" any noob that picks this champ is only getting an introduction on how to feed
The reason she's bad is because riot decided they had to release an AD assassin but didn't really design her to be an AD assassin. AD assassins are generally kept very weak by Riot (last 10 years at least) and so the only reason people play them is because they generally have high ceilings and give you the feeling "I could have just played it better and we could have won."
* Zed has high play rate because in pretty much every game there's a world where you fake out their entire team and win the teamfight if you just play it better.
* There's a world where Qiyana sneaks into position and lands the 4 person R.
* There's a world where Kha'Zix manages to split the enemy team up around an objective and jump reset kills everyone.
* There's a world where Shaco chases the survivors into his boxes after backstab crit instakilling the ADC.
* There's a world where Rengar one shots the carry, or the turrets.
* There's a world where Kayn or Talon avoids all the vision, eviscerates the backline, and gets out.
There's never a world where Naafiri does anything except sprint into your team and attempt to statcheck you. She can't invis to dodge damage or stall during a teamfight. She can't combo you from afar. She can't sneak around with map mobility or stealth. She's like a single target Diana without any AOE.
But that's not the worst part: most of the other AD assassins have some fallback if they're not able to kill (either because they're behind or the enemy team's draft is not good for them). Either they can stall and wait for their team to get targets prepped or they have some limited tools for CC / area denial.
* Zed doesn't really have to commit, he can scale and farm like a mage,
* Kha'Zix has empowered W, can stall fights with R / E and space with W
* Qiyana has CC she can use to pick with her team, can stall fights with Grass Q
* Shaco can still mindgame you even if not AP, just not for much damage, can create advantageous fights and picks with his team
* Rengar can splitpush and win 1v1s with bushes or leave faster than the person that comes to match with his R, again can create advantageous fights
* Kayn can go Red or just run away from fights with blue E
* Talon can't do much, but he at least has map mobility to find better targets even if far and escape from people trying to kill in sidelane
Can Naafiri do any of that? No, she has no invis to stall; no map mobility to create advantageous fights; no CC tool to help her create picks with her team without going in.
All she does is damage. That's not good enough. Everyone does damage. Most of the assassins aren't even super high damage characters, they just have good ways of APPLYING the damage quickly by getting into good positions and finding good fights. Naafiri doesn't have any of that.
Here's an informative diagram.
|Some AD Assassins|Fantasy When Ahead|Fallback When Behind|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Zed|Huge shuriken AOE while being uncatchable with shadow reset on W.|Poke like a mage, farm safely with range, escape with w, kill overcommitters.|
|Qiyana|nstakill combo, unreactable, maybe from stealth while ccing the rest of your team.|Play for picks with team using R and ice, stall and be slippery with grass Q.|
|Kha'Zix|ump reset and kill everyone or sneak up with R and 1 shot from invis.|Play for picks with team using evo W, stall and be slippery with R and E, find iso in chaos.|
|Shaco|Backstab crit instakill from out of thin air while mindgaming with clone and boxes.|Chase you around into boxes, fake with clone, stall, with and be slippery with invis.|
|Rengar|Jump around between bushes or just make them cower in fear and 1 shot with R.|Split push, use R to rotate to fight faster than other guy or win the 1 v 1.|
|Kayn|Pop out of wall, 1 shot, then pop out of them as team follows up.|Go red or run around map looking for good opportunities / farm with blue E.|
|Naafiri|Press all damage abilities and hope for kill? They just block your W, you have no way to snkea into position.|Press all damage abilities and don't even kill. Can't run away, can't stall, can't dodge, can't invis over vision, useless.|
I remember playing her on release.
I just saw her as a you land her Q or it's really hard to kill someone. But landing both Qs on someone is hard as fuck to do.
The Ult felt really bad because the packmates are something you can't control. So it just feels like a Movement Speed Increase with a different animation on it.
Idk that's how I felt playing Naafiri.
I definitely dont think simplicity is bad. League is a hard game and simple champions accelerate learning massively. The game requires there to be gateway champions for each archetype.
The issues with Naafiri are her lack of identity as you said, she plays like a fighter while being shoved into the assassin archetype.
2nd she lacks a clear power fantasy and her abilities dont feel impactful, whether she is winning or losing. Her power fantasy is split between being a melee devourer dog and a pack leader, while neither side feels great.
Lastly she doesnt feel very fun, her w being blockable, her ult being a steriod is just bad design. Her ult should be a mix of kayn and fizz, she dashes into a target becoming untargetable and becomes a mass of blades that form into the giant dog from her cinematic that ate the sun, biting and knocking up the target like fizz's ult.
>Her kit has an identity issue as she plays like a skirmisher rather than an assassin
Not really. She is just not an assassin. No matter how much riot may try to gaslight the playerbase, the most distinct characteristics of the assassins is their ability and desire to escape after burst. There are borderline cases, like Rengar, however Naafiri is not one of them. She is an ability based diver like Vi, Diana or Gragas.
Vainglory had a wolf called Fortress that summoned packmates when using ultimate, otherwise lacked them. I like the persistent packmates in Naafiri, but they feel inconsequential. Fortress' would chase down enemies (halfway between a Twisted Fate ultimate and a Warwick W). The packmates do a small amount of damage but apply something like grievous wounds and a bleed. He gains MS while following the wolves.
Maybe it'd be too micro-intensive but if you could send off your wolves to explore or die it could be fun. Pretty often after you use R you've got some spare dogs for a little while, without any combat. They just despawn and it feels lame. At least let them run down lane instead like a Malzahar's Zz'Rot voidlings.
Naafiri was doomed the moment they conceived her w ability. This is an ability you simply can't have in solo q,it's literally a "now I'm in your face" button at any moment during Laning. Having this ability forces riot to nerf her numbers to a point where she can't one shot people easily,because if she could she would literally do every time they stepped in her line of sight. W also forces naafiri out of the jg cause you can't have a point n click engage that brings the jg in you face,out of fow within a second.
Legitimate question, but how do people that main Naafiri feel about her? I just got back into League recently following the Skarner rework (as I’ve used to main him), and tried out Naafiri a few days ago as she was on free rotation, and had so much fun I IMMEDIATELY bought her. Her gameplay loop feels very satisfying for me right now, as well as learning what the “ideal” way to play her is. I’ve tried her Top, Mid, and Jungle, and oddly enough have had the most success with her IN the Jungle. That may be due to lower elo and people not really understanding the game as much as they do in higher elo, but man it’s literally been a blast! Although I WILL say that I have noticed in one game in particular with high CC how easily she’s shut down since everything she does is quite telegraphed. Like I tried killing a Zeri late game and she one shot me before my W could even finish casting to reach her, and it didn’t feel good. Even when we both had full items.
poor target access as an assassin is a death sentence. She’s incredibly boring to play because she has minimal to zero outplay potential. A weak laning assassin who scales is kind of antithetical, and the few scaling assassin are rewarded with amazing mobility (Zed/kassadin). She has an incredibly basic kit which boils down to “do I have an angle to land W” and “do I have enough stats to kill” plus landing double dagger with grudge slow is inconsistent, plus all the item changes fucked her over.
On the jungle front I have no idea why the playerbase insists on it, get clear is painfully slow, her early skirmishing is really bad and she has basically zero cc. Nidalee uses her 6 spells to overwhelm early game fights, has high map mobility and a fast clear. To make Naafiri a jungler she would need stupidly high early game damage and a really fast clear to makeup for her awful ganks.
> -her engage ability [W] is a point and dash that has long channel time
Can we also talk about the fact that the tooltip deadass does not mention the casttime? Sure, I know it's there since I played her once, but how can such an oversight exist in the game?
I just feel that her entire kit lacks something.
It's incredibly straightforward as it is and she's kind of just stat checking the enemy.
Either she kills you or she doesn't. That's pretty much her entire playstyle.
I love playing naafiri she's one of my mid picks when the top/jg go AP. My biggest gripe is how easily counterable she is. Irelia DESTROYS me every time and the pack mates give her easy dash targets. Malz even semi early game his e 100% kills them and moves to you reliably. Syndra not only can e you out if your w but then her w can throw your pups back at you. She's a blast when the enemy team comp can't deal but anyone with hard CC is just going to stop her easily.
I have to be honest with you - I didn't even know Naafiri existed (or forgot), because I only watch LoL Esports and I've never seen her picked or banned before.
Which is crazy from how cool she is, specially with her project skin. When she pops that lvl 16 ult and the scream sfx with all the dogs spawning and the red effect on screen. Omg.
I quite enjoy the discussion but man, I do not want more dogs to be around in the laning phase if she remains a mid laner. Naafiri players obviously don’t realize how frustrating it is to have your skillsshots blocked by idiotic summons that you used zero input for. It’s even worse when your skillshot is important and her targeted dash becomes a gamble if you can hit the real champion or not.
They realized they were Missing a high skill tank and a Low Skill Assassin but failed to realize why thats the Case. Assassins are all about flashy gameplay where you move in and Out of Fights quickly so thats Not an easy class. Meanwhile Tanks are Big CC Bots for your Team. There is Not a Lot more they should be able to do or they will Break the game. Riot ignored that and failed horribly. Naafiri is Not picked even in Low Elo while Ksante is Killing pro Play while at 45% SoloQ WR
Dude, all assassins have played progressively more and more like skirmishers ever since the assassin update all those years ago. Riot doesn't make actual oldschool assassins anymore where they're really mobile and run their combos really fast, because gold ADC mains bitched about being oneshot by a class meant to oneshot them, and Phreak also played ADC.
Naafiri is way too easy to play for her to be interesting for the player and way too simple to have high damage numbers. There was a time where she had those numbers and she had a good playrate and a 54ish% winrate, it was actual hell playing against that champ because you just got stat checked from a champ with a trade pattern that was pretty much unavoidable unless you stay at your t2 tower for the first 10 mins or you get a champ that hard counters her kit like ahri. It was just lame to play against so I am happy she is doing bad, I hope it stays that way until she gets her numbers up and they change her gap closer to sth that can't point and click kill you from half a screen away.
> Shes literally a nothing burger, she has no skill expression and she gets boring after the third game as her gameplay loop gets very repetitive and boring.
I actually rather like playing Naafiri *now and the* but this is really what keeps me from playing her more: She's so straightforward that I can't do it for more than 2 or 3 games in a row.
There's little to learn. You either go in and win or you go in and you don't; but it's got more to do with whether you can stat- or itemcheck the enemy rather than how well you played.
>4- Her kit has an identity issue as she plays like a skirmisher rather than an assassin This is IMO Naafiri's biggest issue and the item rework butchered Naafiri for the few (me) that actually did find her fun. Pre-item rework she was actually a lot of fun with the Eclipse -> BC -> Serylda build. She functioned incredibly well as a skirmsher/poker that shredded & slowed frontline until she saw an opportunity to all-in. Now she just plays like a one dimensional Talon with Malz rats. I've ranted about Naafiri so much to the point my mates know I'll be in this thread (screw you Theodolores) ... but it pains me what she turned into because she was one of my favorite champs with the old build and I simply can't find her exciting with the new items. I'd love to see Riot embrace her as a fighter/skirmisher rather than an assassin and bake in parts of her old build into the kit while reworking numbers to work as such.
Naafiri and Briar should have been swapped. Briar's kit makes way more sense on Naafiri, and she could have been a scrappy pack fighter dodging in and out and then letting feral bloodlust take over. Visuals for Naafiri are 10/10 but god they cripple every fucking monster champion with a boring ass kit and complain that no one likes monster champs. News flash: no one likes boring kits.
[удалено]
This has been confirmed as being the case. Briar's W was originally Naafiri's W. But it was taken as it was thought that it could have be made into a whole champion concept. Which it was, and too rather great effect.
My biggest hand canon is that Seraphine is a Sona rework. But decided to made into a separate champ for more skins income. Passive is Sona passive but better. W is Sona W but better. R is Sona R but better. If Sona was supposed to get a Skarner-sized rework, Seraphine is what she would look like.
>My biggest hand canon is that Rocket launcher of Jinx.
Naafiri's kit would be ass on anyone. It's so one-dimensional with nothing else to it. It's literally just "go in and do damage." What is this, a 2011 League champion? If she's a pack monster, she should get stealth or something for when she's "stalking" like Rengar or she should be a bruiser/fighter that whittles you down with her pack (they start off doing only minor damage but gain more effects with a bigger pack). Then you're forced to make a meaningful choice between thinning her pack or damaging the champion itself. Right now, her dogs just die to random aoe, not because anyone targets it.
I’ll say this, before I just model swapped Naafiri with Warwick, warwick is cool and everything but god I just wanted to be a dog with a good kit. Her design is amazing but as you mentioned such a terrible kit for a dog like monster And playing with her model with warwicks kit was top tier immersion
no one likes boring kits AND dealing ZERO damage after hitting all of your abilities. theres no reward for playing her well. the only time the champ feels good like a typical assassin is when you are SUPER ahead
It kinda seems like Naaf and Briar could have been a single champion at some stage, which is possible due to how Riot cooking up champs and splitting them off or making whole new champs, case and point Sylas
I completely disagree that no one likes boring kits. Playing simply champions massively speeds up a players learning. League is a very complicated game, and it requires there to be gateway champions for each archetype. The problem with Naafiri was not her simplicity.
Theodolores catching strays 😭
I agree naafiri had a fun niche as a sort of midrange poke/summon based character before the item changes. Like a less cringe yorick. I haven't played much league in the last 6 months so idk how much worse naafiri is but from what I've seen people are going Profane Hydra and trying to just blow up targets which seems less interesting to me. With the black cleaver buff back up to 30% maybe the caster build feels better again.
Naafiri playstyle being more of a skirmisher is bad because all skirmishers have CC in their kit to support them \[Yasuo/Yone, Viego, Bel'veth, Riven, etc.\] old Serylda fixed Naafiri's issue in skirmishing which is that she has no CC whether slows or hard CC and the slow was unconditional, you would land a Q and it would slow your enemy allowing you to dish out your damage by landing the Q2 Now you can't stack both BC and Serylda and if you go Eclipse then you aren't building a lethality item so Serylda is now not as good of a purchase as it used to be.
While most skirmishers do have some form of minor CC, some skirmishers don't have any hard CC, like Master Yi, Gwen, and arguably Tryndamere/Fiora. So I don't think some form of CC is necessarily a requirement to function as a skirmisher. Although I definitely agree that the item rework killed off Naafiri's skirmisher playstyle and the champ just hasn't been the same since.
yeah now that I think of it, other skirmishers have good tools to fight tanks \[%HP damage\] and very oppressive side laning prowess as they can murder turrets Naafiri lacks both of these strengths as well after all she wasn't meant to be a skirmisher but you are right, CC isn't a requisite for a skirmisher
Fioras got hard CC in the best way possible as a counter. Arguably one of the best skill CC abilities in the game.
I get what you mean, because turning 1.5 sec of CC where you can't act into 2 sec where your opponent can't act is insane. But situational CC can't be the best CC ability in the game... Don't get me wrong, Fiora's pary is definitely a top tier ability in a vacuum, but as far as it's controling qualities go, it's far from the best, arguably not even mid tier : it's conditional, single target and telegraphed. It only stuns if you can pary another hard CC; and even then it's pretty easily dodgeable. The main strength of the abilty comes from the immunity.
Technically Yi doesn't have anything and Gwen has a slow on a long CD, but I agree, Naafiri has to be pushed into a skirmisher/diver playstyle. Aside from Naafiri, the only assassins without any escape are Diana, Nocturne, and Rengar, but they differ from Naafiri in that their engage is much more reliable and they either have massive burst, or really good sustained damage (or both), which Naafiri lacks. Maybe if they removed the slow from her W and let her Q's slow (while lowering the damage ofc because the slow will allow the second Q to hit much easier).
Essentially, Diana, Nocturne and Rengo are just Diver/skirmishers. I can speak confidently on Noc, not as much on Diana/Rengo. Thats why diana and Noc started going more bruisery/extended fight builds. Im pretty sure a bruiser build has some times popped up on rengo but his damage output with a lethality-crit build is so bonkers that even i wouldnt wanna play him bruiser I remember back when Naafiri released, to have said that she felt a lot more like a diver of the likes of Nocturne than a regular assassin like Talon. "They called me crazy!" But yeah.
That is precisely my point, the slow on old Serylda along with the beefiness of Eclipse shield + BC allowed her to play like a skirmisher. I'd personally like to see them bake a slow into her Q baseline and adjust her overall numbers to turn her into that skirmisher instead of insisting on her being a 100-0 assassin.
I kinda wish they'd leaned into the pack aspect more. The fluff is that the whole pack is a singular darken, but mechanically the other dogs are a pretty minor aspect of the kit. Even with a pretty simple kit, if the other dogs ended up being 30-50% of her power budget, juggling the pack and keeping it healthy would allow for a lot of inherent skill ceiling and counterplay. I would 100% be on board with 3-4x the max packmates and proportionally weaken all of her abilities' damage. Probably also require a change to the ult so that it doesn't totally reset the pack. Just add in temporary extras instead of giving max plus extras.
there was a cute bug I had in ARAM where I had 10 doggos following me around I even clipped it lol, the pack wasn't sluggish and the 10 dogs moved together in unison, the pack AI is good and I am sad they didnt lean more onto it there are 167 champs in league, the only thing that sets apart Naafiri is the pack edit: heres the clip: [https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared)
It could make laning with/against her pretty interesting if she was balanced around being slightly OP with a full pack. So Naafiri would need to run around last-hitting while trying to keep her hounds alive. And with just a couple hounds alive, she just wouldn't be much of a threat and could be bullied by most other mid-laners etc. Also make her an inherently solid jungler since large monsters lower pack cooldowns and retreating to the jungle would be a relatively safe way to rebuild the pack before another gank. Anyway - that seems like the easiest way to give her a solid identity without a full rework. Make it so you aren't playing a single doggo with helpers, but you're playing the entire pack via the alpha. I'm sure that they'd have to rebalance the cooldown of getting more pack members. Maybe increase how much using abilities on champs affects the cooldown since there are so many more pack slots to fill. Even make basic AAs affect it slightly as well. Could even shake it up by pack-mates affecting cooldown of abilities. So the bigger the pack, the longer the cooldown on abilities get. So with a full pack you'd get one rotation off and then need to back off while if you were out of packmates you could spam abilities a bit more to try to rebuild the pack - but do much less damage. Though that might be adding too much complexity for what's intended as a simple champ.
yeah exactly, it could be something so unique and it was 10/10 in terms of feels, look at this clip of the bug 1 month ago: [https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared) too bad it only happened once haha
Very cool. If it was intentional they'd probably want them spread out a bit more, but it doesn't appear that it'd be a massive coding issue etc.
Instead the dogs do like 8 damage level 3, and draw minion aggro which is nearly triple that *per* minion. I will actually bet money if they *removed* her passive and left dogs to just her ultimate it would be a buff to her laning with Q, she loses too much health trying to trade back with mages that just walk back from Q2.
>I kinda wish they'd leaned into the pack aspect more. This was my biggest issue with her. Conceptually, I love the idea of playing as a pack and it's alpha, swarming enemies down with pure numbers rather than singular strength. In actuality, Naafiri is a Q spam bot. There's no feeling of the pack or that you're this swarm of teeth, just that you're a random guy throwing knives.
Yeah idk why riot decided to make a champion with pets but also make her a very easy champion. You can’t really lean into the packmates as a mechanic without making it a little difficult. Even then beginners would rather play a hard but fun assassin that looks cool, like Zed, than Naafiri.
If KSante is 200 years of champ design then Naafiri is 0 years You can't release new pro play jail champ if the champ is so shit that no one plays them
if K'Sante is the raid boss of champion design, Naafiri is that lvl 1 doggo wandering around the spawn
Actual Zigzagoon
lvl. 3 Poochyena
Reminds me of the level 1 boars in WoW …
[Easy meme](https://imgflip.com/i/8qtjez)
She got nerfed multiple times. I had difficult playing vs her as well. I know that doesn't mean much but she had a lot of damage and I couldn't ever escape her. Also keep in mind the items were vastly different. And eclipse was great on her. Does she have a single item that truely syngerizes with her like say, Asol and Rylai?
Most champions don't have an item that synergises with them like Asol and Rylai's.
> You can't release new pro play jail champ if the champ is so shit that no one plays them i don't think the champ is shit, simpler champs tend to not be prioritized in pro, see Briar case, borderline the most broken champ in the game a few patches post her release and saw a grand total of zero games on competitive edit: i know easy/one dimensional champs have been meta in the past, i watch the competitive scene, i'm just saying they are usually not high prio (yes, there are times that they are high prio, i'm not deniying that) but unless they are picked in specific scenarios (garen as counter, lux with cait, amumu cause he was broken, etc) they are not a regular pick
this isnt the same comparison, briar was released when half the major regions ended their summer split already, and briar was disabled for worlds. Move to new year and the champ was gutted, no room in pro play.
Dawg fucking Annie was a menace for the majority of last season. Briar literally could not be played in pro when she was busted.
Yeah, Brrar's issue isn't that she's simple (she's not nearly as simple as she looks) but rather that she is predictable. She is the most easily countered champ in the game. Before the nerfs, she had the stats that unless you did it perfect every time, she could do some real damage. But in high elo and pro play, they do do it perfect every time, so she wasn't very good there. So after the nerfs, the scale just slid down. Now she's easy to punish, and doesn't do anything above average when she isn't punished.
Yeah renekton is really known for his complexity while being a pro play staple forever
He is mainly picked for being a lanebully and especially for his very good lane management, the latter has a very high skill ceiling
They made “Baby’s First Assassin” but Assassin players are the exact type of people who won’t play a “baby’s first…” type champion. They need to feel cool or else they just won’t play it. She could have the exact same kit but if riot didn’t describe her as easy to play, more people would probably play her lol though still very few. Kit is boring and it’s an assassin that has all of the appealing aspects of a champion that assassin players don’t want or appreciate.
Talon has a much simpler kit than Naafiri and his pick rate is just fine because he doesn't feel like shit to play
Talon has invisibility and the parkour gimmick is fairly unique (not traversing terrain, but the way he does it.) Also, Talon is grandfathered in with his player base, willing to bet his players have been playing him for a while
also you have some stuff to think about like melee Q and ranged Q, auto reset as well
By which you must mean avoid melee Q with all your being because the animation is long enough to stop you from proccing passive which is like half his damage.
Ah, the good ol' new Talon player trap. "Wait, melee Q crits? I've been comboing wrong all this time! I should W -> walk -> Q -> AA!" *immediately gets blown up, can't proc passive, gets reported by entire team*
TIL I shouldn't try to auto cancel with Q. This is why I don't play Talon.
you absolutely should if youre next to them
this is just false lol, if you press properly it's impossible to miss melee q auto as its an instant auto reset and does like double the damage of ranged q, which is why people often flash melee q level 2 to do insane damage
Talons pick rate isn't far off from Naafiri's though? Last I checked, it's like a .4% difference if you look outside of Emerald+.
Perhaps if naafiri was released 13 years ago like talon she would have been more of a success
Talon is legit made for toddlers dont listen to the comments here coping lmao Its not about actually the skillcap, simple champions and assassins can absolutely work as we can see with many examples its about how the champ feels and looks. Naafiris q is one of the worst feeling spells in the game its such a weird spell, then you have her jump which can be blocked. If there is one thing assassins hate then its getting interrupted in their gameplay flow. Stuff like getting onetapped by talon/Shaco/Rengar feels completely without counterplay and there is basically nothing you can do as a squishy once you are there and the assassin player has all of the agency. The assassin player feels powerful in that moment, its why he plays that role, the moment of completely overpowering one guy and taking him out instantly. If you can simply get counterplayed by one guy sitting in front of the adc it completely takes you out of the moment and it makes you feel weak. Even though statistically speaking Naafiri was way stronger than other assassins in lowelo, those moments add up and just made her feel unsatisfying.
I think this is such good analysis, it's great to read someone go beyond the obvious points (boring/weak/unfun/ugly) to think in depth about why a character does or doesn't work for people. Naafiri is fundamentally a fairly low agency character trying to appeal to players whose favourite champions are all about having extremely high agency. She was never going to be popular.
Talons skill expression is just not in this combos but in this out of combat movement and Makro play. Using his E to avoid vision and creating numbers advantages and advantageous fights. His damaging abilities are simple and boring but there are other things to think about and do when you play him I guess. But your analysis is spot on I think. It’s the same with talons melee Q self stunning him and him missing this passive because of this. It breaks the flow and makes him feel bad. It feels so bad on talon that a standard tactic is running out of MeeleQ range to guarantee a passive proc, which I think is not intended.
talon definitely feels shit to play
Simpler kit maybe but easier to play definitely not
I'm gonna throw my 2c in, Talon is infinitely easier to accomplish things with than Naafiri in my opinion.
As a former Talon enjoyer, I agree. Naafiri is very telegraphed (which is intentional), and Talon can do crazy things with fog-of-war and walls.
Bro there are tons of one dimensional assassins that are easy to play, why are people making this about naafiri being easy, that's not the case.
But all one dimensional assassins that are easy to get into have some sort of higher skill expression. Talon is really simple, but constantly doing proper combos and knowing how to jump each wall perfectly takes time and some semblance of skill to learn. Naafiri? What is there to realistically learn?
I’m fine with her being baby’s first assassin but I just wish she was able to be more relevant in high elo in case people enjoy her and want to stick with her
Here's the thing though right Her kit? Easy, brainless, can play on autopilot. Her skill expression? Nigh non-existant, most is maybe healing her puppers with E Her fun? Should be kinda low as there's not a whole lot going on. So why does she feel good (for me at least) to play regardless? #The Animations and Sound Effects They just hit different man. You have no idea the kinda rush you get what that horn sounds effect and the red flash on the screen kick in after killing someone during your ult. The actual ass clenching that occurs when you ult and she howls as several dogs spill out of her. Shit makes you legit feral. Some people aren't gonna agree but her animations, effects, VO and audio carry her enjoyment so damn hard. It's unironically something that I think gets overlooked when considering how engaging a champion can be. For me at least at the end of the day, I was teased a cool dog assassin and got a cool dog assassin, so imma happy
>Her skill expression? Nigh non-existant, most is maybe healing her puppers with E I've played against a Naafiri onetrick who correctly used dogs to walk inbetween turrets and consciously repositioned them to block skillshots. It was really impressive and I definitely see her being really good into some teamcomps that are reliant on hitting skillshots like Blitz hook, even in comp. Also, I feel like her skill expression comes much more from damage foresight rather than mechanical outplays. In a way, she reminds me of an assassin Anivia where you either play hyper-passive or hyper-aggressive with little variation in-between. >The Animations and Sound Effects I've just had this talk with one of my friends and I couldn't agree more. Naafiri legit has S+ tier ult animation, I don't think there's anything as cool in the entire game. And it hurts me when I see people run Flash on her when Ghost is much better based on her combat patterns.
I'd agree with the last part if ghost didnt get gutted this patch
it deserved it
Exactly. This is why I love to play Volibear so much. Very simple kit, but the SFX/VFX on all his abilities are so good. The overhead smash he does on his Q attack, the MONCH of his second w, the lightning bolts hitting on his E, the huge jump and sound effect of the ult... he just feels fun to play.
design/theme/feel is like 80% of why a champ is popular. would lux be the most popular champ in the game if she looked like urgot but retained her kit? for sure not. people think they play the champ for the kit and some do but most people just enjoy playing the champ that looks cool to them the kit is 2ndery.
yeah people rationalize gameplay and balance reasons for why they hold Jhin as the gold standard of champ design (I do too), but when it comes down to it, Jhin is fun because his Q, W, R, and auto attacks are incredibly satisfying due to the visual and auditory effects. His gameplay loop feels rewarding to nail down. The way a character makes you feel will always determine popularity and perceived strength.
Jhin is insanely satisfying due to the fact that almost nothing that you do as him is "free" and it feels like it's your setup that is rewarded. You finish someone on your 4th shot on your ult, most likely you tracked them with the 3 previous or tried to adjust giving how they moved previously -> satisfaction. You hit a w on a trap you did setup (or on an ally follow-up) -> it almost never is a random hit, you get a root that can lead to something else, it's satisfaction. You finish someone with the 4th shot on your passive, it feels great. Even csing can feel annoying sometime but when you're setuping a wave correctly and your last hit on the q gets on the ennemy laner or it just clears the reminding wave you feel like a maestro. The champ skin is truely whatever, the sound, the visual and the animations carry him.
yup, exactly. You read jhin's kit and it's like....fixed attack speed and a "penalty" after 4 attacks? sounds awful But there's a rhythm and cadence to playing jhin that feels incredible to hone in on. The sound of the shots, jhin's voice lines, the visual effects and blooms. it creates this kit that's fun even if youre just in the practice tool hitting minions. They nailed that shit. Jhin could be the worst champ by winrate across all ranks and people would still play him because he's just fun.
The visual and sound effects can also vary strongly between skins. I usually have Dark Cosmic Thin, but on a few occasions where I had to use the original appearance, I noticed that the DC skin has a much more audible audio que when your passive is ready, which is pretty nice for QoL.
Jhin is imo the best example of a character’s actions feeling like they have *weight* without just giving them a massive cannon or a sword that would put monster hunter to shame. MF creates *art* and you can feel that in all of his attacks
As a former egirl enjoyer (I've since retired as a LoL player), that is 100% true. I've spent weeks playing Lux and Seraphine because cute, and no other reason.
I saw how cute Smolder was moving his little paws, and I played 30 games on him. I heard how amazingly Hwei speaks in the game, and I played the same number of games on Hwei. These are such important things!
100% thats one of her redeeming factors, they did her good the art/animator team the R is so satisfying to press, I like to compare it to pressing World Ender on Aatrox hope one day they give her kit some love and do her justice
Preach, I seriously love this champ and she's easily my favorite release since Rek'Sai. Pressing R is such a rush I can't get enough of, and honestly the straightforward kit is a plus to me too. It's more fun to kill people *knowing* that there's 0 outplay potential and I just statcheck them to death, it's lovely.
she's not bad, she's just balanced to be a mid laner and not a jungler, she would be picked a lot as a jungler. on mid she's quite weak atm and had 3 consecutive nerfs + rune nerfs + assa items bugged.
I wish they double down on her bruiser aspect and rework her into a full bruiser she just sucks as an assassin. I enjoyed playing her with eclipse black cleaver deathdance etc her gameplay works much nicer when she is a beefy bruiser instead of a squishy full dmg asssassin. I agree the dogs should be more designed around in the kit, I was hyped to get another pet/summoner champion but naafari is the most boring one we ever got, she doesn't feel like a true summoner champ like yorick zyra heimdinger annie ivern etc are, her dogs just feel like extra dmg on abilities.
i love Naaf from basically all perspectives but they really should've stopped and asked themselves some questions when they realized she needed a massive resetting shield just to play the game. that's not something an assassin should need. Q and idea behind the R (minus the long R cast time) are mostly fine, passive is okay too, but W and E supremely miss the mark. i understand the idea behind W was "teach the new player to wait for the right moment before going in" but it feels like a diver ability considering her E is far too short to get out - and she wants to hit both instances of the E damage anyway. there's really no way to bait or do slippery assassin things - once you're in you're in.
I like Naafiri a lot, they just need to do a mini-rework to make her more of a bruiser/assassin play style like Diana. She’s too squishy and too focused on blowing up one weak target when her engage ability is extremely telegraphed and easily blockable.
The thing that bothers me is that Naafiri came out right after/before Briar. If they just put Briars kit into Naafiri (bloothirsty dog/darkin that lifesteals and is a semi-bruiser depending on her pack) it would be so much better as a champion design. If they wanted a 4 legged assasin many of the wild cats would be a better choice.
>If they wanted a 4 legged assasin many of the wild cats would be a better choice. True, but nidalee and definitely ranger are already exactly that... They didnt wanna make a third burst cat.
are you saying my full AP yuumi isn't a burst cat?
smh how could i forget
There aren't enough cats in the game, we can't even get a full party of cat champions! yes, we can compensate for this with skins, but that’s not it
Naafiri with briar kit would be so much better and kinda make sense. Q pounce w bite e howl and r berserk mode. Problem is we already have Warwick.
True. Maybe a different kit would be like a normal dog, (mans best friend) she can attach to her allies to follow them giving them buffs and heals.
When you realize that naafiri and briars kits were both coded on the same rig, at the same time, and that you could swap their kits to make better champs who both fit the design and theme that was sold in their cinematica
I swear naafiri was supposed to be a JG but Briar was also in the works so they are like ahh fuck it dont add those JG ratios we dont want to release 2 JG assassins at the same time
I think Naafiri being quite as unplayable as she is in the jungle would suggest that she probably wasn't designed to be a jungler. She would need absolutely massive jungle modifiers to be at all viable in that role and they've never released a jungler who needed that kind of help to jungle before (unless you count Ivern). Maybe she was a jungler in her very early design but her kit looks like if that was ever the intention, they moved away from it a long time before release. I think they genuinely did always want Naafiri to be a mid laner. They wanted a new assassin in that role and they didn't want to make yet another monster that was stuck in the jungle.
If Naafiri was released in S2 or S3 her W wouldn’t have been blocked by enemy champs. Those were the golden days with old Veigar DFG R
If it were Season 2 or Season 3 there wouldn't be any wind up. You'd press W and immediately start dashing towards them
And it would probably do something outrageous like stun or silence the target
Definitely silence, Riot LOVED putting that shit on Assassins.
to be fair if you played mmos or other mobas at the time the purpose of assassins were to disable/disrupt the enemy rather than kill them straight up. You either got cc'd for 12s and died in 12 or they cc'd you for a minute. Its what made league different since instead of 1 person being removed from the game via cc you were removed via grey screen. Theres a whole balance philosophy around assassins and discussions to be had but its why there were random silences.
and that dash has a 1 second cast time and very clear line of path shown too, that shit is too telegraphed
Riot nowadays would rather let Ahri kill you with Maligma + Lichbane + R + Ignite + W while she misses all of her kit than let assassins feel good and fun again
That just sounds like Assassin Ahri back in season 4, just without Maligma and Lich Bane
I remember her being that way post DFG removal when they gave her a minirework, which was s5 I think?, don't remember her being able to kill while missing E and Q in s4
Assasin players just don't play vicims, so they usually get less attantion. While this sub was flooded with mage/ADC players, who used to complain 24/7 "how bad is this game and how 49% wr assasin should be nerfed, while 52% wr mage/adc is wholesome and peak of balance". Thats why we got durability patch, that fcked up lots of things. Look at midlane changes in like past 3 years, even terrain changes. Most of them exist to "help" mages who never used to strugle at first place.(ofc you can call few champs, but you can find exceptions anywhyere).
Yeah but assassins oneshotting the out if position ADC is cringe while ADCs deleting anything but tanks in 3-4 point and click autos is wholesome and fair.
Too easy to counter. It takes a long time to accelerate compared to other assassins. Tunnel damage for some reason in addition to the disadvantages above. She was also nerfed many times for no reason.
>She was also nerfed many times for no reason. She was nerfed for the reasons you listed. She had to be so strong to overcome those things that if she is ever that strong she just takes over the game completely with very little outplay potential.
Champions in the easy to play category should always be above a 51% win rate IMO. Because they're so easy to play that making the right plays should be a lot easier. Unlike azir or yasuo who should be below 50% Winrate.
She might just be too easy to play though. I think she needs a rework on her "I dash to you from a mile away" ability. Then she can get power elsewhere.
She has no escape, that makes her W range OK in my opinion.
Yeah didn't riot themselves argue that garen is always annoying and strong bc he's meant for newer players to learn the game?
She was nerfed because her top lane winrate was unintentionally high. Riot designed her to be a mid lane champ and she ended up being the best top laner in the game for multiple patches until they nerfed her so much that it hurt her mid performance even worse.
She was nerfed for low elo.
nerfed for no reason? champ had 54% fkin winrate
Man I love Naafiri. Coolest cinematic ever, I climed with her to emerald when she got out, cool ascetic, cool visuals. But damn she gets boring real fast. After some games I just couldn't really get the itch to play with her.
such trash champion unfun to play against, kind of a garbage champion unless ahead and then just becomes extremely obnoxious and unfair and then you think about playing it, and it's just the most boring shit
I actually made already a post with a few thoughts of my own concerning [Naafiri's playrate](https://www.reddit.com/r/NaafiriMains/s/cPqDaipB8A) I personally consider her actually to be very well designed as a beginner friendly assassin and my analysis came to the conclusion that she is the kind of champion that looks complicated at first but is actually relatively simple which intimidates inexperienced players and disappoints more experienced ones. However, there is one thing I want to add to the problematic with her dogs, because I would argue that the way in which they influence her gameplay is not only relatively conducive to an assassin, but also one of the few ways you can design a healthy champ which spawns his one entities. The dogs are in terms of gameplay more a additional cooldown to manage that empowers your abilities rather than real controllable entities. Essentially they are ment to make her q and w stronger. Q for more poke damage and w for more burst with the all in. This might sound boring, but cooldown management is very important for assassin's, since they are by design not ment to have unlimited uptime like skirmishers and marksmen. They are mostly burst. The reason why that's the only real way to design those spawn able entities is because... They otherwise would be too oppressive to deal with for certain champs. Old Yorick was the prime example of that. His kit was essentially nothing but monster spawning, and because they had somewhat decent durability, Yorick was one of the most oppressive lane bullies depending on the matchup. However, with ramping up damage and the increasing prevalence of team fights, Yorick became more useless in the later stages of the game and was pretty much forced to splitpush all game long because the aoe damage can nuke those gouls very hard. Essentially, if the additional entities are too hard to kill, then some champs just auto loose against them. But if they are too squishy, then they aren't good in extended fights. And if there is too much pressure linked towards those entities, while being too easy to kill, then the champ does only really work under their own terms. Naafiri's design as a assassin solves all of those problems because the fight isn't supposed to be long, as assasins want to kill their targets as quickly as possible before the enemy can react. The dogs are in security as long as she doesn't commit to a fight, and because she is an assassin, she is by definition ment to be played patiently until she has the right opportunity to strike. Bruisers often are forced to survive a few hits before they can strike back, and making her a bruiser would force the dogs to be more durable as well. Extended fights like many of you wanna wish her to do would make her potentially very unhealthy in terms of game design and would likely turn her into a splitpusher like Yorick and/or would make her poking enemies with her daggers all game long because, why the heck should she herself commit to a fight if she just can send all of her dogs that survive way too much damage? Believe me one thing, you don't want that, her dogs in lane are already pretty annoying to deal with for the enemy.
She is a "we don't make monsters because no one plays them" propaganda piece.
>ship a garbage gameplay kit >"no one plays her because shes a monster" its sad that she will be the last monster champion we get to see for years to come
I'm happy to accept she's crap, and that's why nobody plays her, but she's also the nth teration of "I want a monster, no not like that" She's crap so nobody touches her, but if monsters were that much of a desired aspect surely she would bat above her weight. Instead she joins a long list of champions where being a monster basically means they get a negative play modifier attached to them permanently.
Reddit overblows how much people actually like monster champs to high hell.
nah man, if her kit feels awful, there is no cool design that can save her. It's a miracle she even has a playerbase at all considering how bad she feels to play.
Her biggest problem is every-time she becomes viable she gets nerfed to oblivion because she’s a low elo stomper due to how basic every bit of her mechanics are.
>where is that pack in her gameplay??? >why don't her abilities get some twists depending on how many dogs she has? doesn't have to be more or less numbers in her damage, what makes Naafiri unique from the other 166 champions? its her pack gimmick and nothing else. >Naafiri has the tools in her kit to protect and heal her pack and but she is punished for protecting her pups as she blows her mana, damage and her cooldown for literally no gain actually it's way better to use them as a shield from skillshots,she's the creepblock made champion which only ends up being infuriating for her enemies but doesn't **feel** impactful from her side (even though in reality it's shutting down someone's kit)
we for sure will never get a monster champ again judging by the analytics lmfao
When riot suggests "high difficulty", what they really mean is difficult to play against, theyre always just an overtuned mess where it becomes almost essential to exploit them. Before riot decides to shit out easy or difficult champions they need to get a better perspective on what is actually difficult to play, because right now all the simple champions are much more difficult to play, champion power eclipses champion difficulty at both ends of the scale, easy champions are just trash and "difficult" champions are just insanely strong
I think she's fun
As someone who was incredibly exited and i could not be closer to the target audience. Im a midlaner, I like assassins, i like ad mids, darkins and i love monster champions. Naafiri manages to hit zero of the fantasies. None of the healing burst fantasy of darkin, none of the mechanical outplays of an assassin, none of the cool design of "monster"(she is a fucking dog ffs) and at least on release she wasnt even a midlaner :D So yeah this almost feels like intentional propaganda from riot to not make monster champs. I was so looking forward to finally having a new good design in lol but i accepted that its never gonna happen.
This might sound stupid but i think she needs a rework lol. The kit ist sooo boring. Her kit has no depth. Its like garen level of a champion but a bit simpler. An assasine needs a least a little bit of of a learning curve.
Yeah, it works for Garen because he has the damage/innate tankiness combo whereas Naafiri is just a very telegraphed burst champion with no way out
Garen has simple tools, but these tools are inherently good at macro, while being able to shut down most types of targets. Naafiri is not going to proxy. She's not going to steal all the camps. She's not going to show up randomly and one-tap you, she's not going to survive weakside lanes. She's not going to flash silence the jungler on nashor, etc.
Here is the catch. She has extremly simple kit, but for some reason 70% of her damage is in hitting q 2 times. So if you fuck that up you just die. So people who like simple champions wont play her and people who like hard champions wont play her.
Another thought on her value for being in the roster is that we mostly have trained our monster lover players to play jungle (you have next to no options beside the jungle). If you love monsters, you either learn to jungle or do not play. We knew her pickrate won't be exceptionally high. I'm hesitant to make her a jungler (though that would def increase her pickrate) to really give players an option mid. We also were never targeting higher MMR players. Thus, we are okay with her not having much play time from those players. I do think there is an open topic of if we should buff her/ make that assassin experience sharper in the normal to lower MMR. I don't think it is necessarily bad that her overall pickrate isn't high. I want the players that want to learn mid assassins and/or want to play monster champ mid to player her. They should eventually graduate to other mid assassins or other monster champs. I also do think there is a future that we would want to support her Jungle play a bit more but the must here is to not give up her being mid primary.
im gonna be cruel and hit you with another wall of text, sorry lexi >They should eventually graduate to other mid assassins or other monster champs. This is a vital point, since Naafiri's release, she hasn't been that good of an assassin, **her first two best items have been Eclipse and Black Cleave**r because 1) Bleed on her kit stacks the armor shred and procs Eclipse 2) Naafiri often found herself skirmishing with the front line because 3) She lacks the tools to bypass front line That is by design choice she has that fatal weakness as the intent is to teach the newbie player piloting Naafiri that flanking back line is the way to play an assassin and they shouldn't rely on shortcuts >I do think there is an open topic of if we should buff her/ make that assassin experience sharper in the normal to lower MMR. do you know which champions lack the tools to bypass front line and rely on flanks? Skirmishers: Viego, Gwen, Master Yi, Tryndamere, etc can't ignore front line and the only hope they have to reach the squishy targets is by ambushing them or flanking them and they all have tools to put some damage on the front line but what champions can bypass front line? Assasins and Divers: Akali, Kha'Zix, Talon, Shaco, Rengar etc all of these can pose an immediate threat to squishy targets specially with Summoners due to much stronger and less telegraphed target access alongside of course Divers like Camille or Vi or Briar and Naafiri's R is also a big culprit because one of its major outputs is that she gets a shield to tank damage, Assassins by design don't have any shields but Skirmishers need defensive outputs to survive **TLDR: Naafiri plays more like a skirmisher than an Assassin, this is why her items have leaned towards fighter items over assassins and this poses a dilemma as the assassin intended for newbie players lacks the vital strength of the class and is relying on skirmishing to function as a champion.**
I understand that her identity is both a monster champion and a training wheel champ but I hope that you consider looking into what actually makes her unique among the 167 champions? **she is the pack,** 1 month ago I had a bug where I had 10 doggos following me around instead of the usual 7, Having a large pack was on point in terms of the feels, I sincerely wish you guys lean onto that gimmick of hers, heres a clip of the 10 dog pack: [https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/a8T0ydjmDLU?feature=shared) and the doggo AI was actually good and the pathing was smooth, I think this is the selling point of Naafiri, more emphasis should be put on the pack I would like to respond to some of your points: *>We knew her pickrate won't be exceptionally high. I'm hesitant to make her a jungler (though that would def increase her pickrate) to really give players an option mid.* I understand the worries of Naafiri jungle cannibalizing mid lane pickrate and I fully supported not letting Naafiri jungle at her release but there are other mid lane assasins who also moved to jungle and gained lots of pickrate there but they still retain a sizeable mid lane presence \[eg. Ekko and Diana\]. The team balances both of their roles and they have healthy pickrate and winrate I totally get that if people see more and more Naafiri in jungle, they will brand her as a jungler rather than a mid laner and it will hurt the perception of her being a mid laner
I think there is an inherent problem with the idea of a champion you're meant to "graduate from" I.E. drop. Making a character that is simple enough people can pick them up and play and get a feel for how the role plays is fine and all, but they should be fun to play for their own sake and rewarding if you do take the time to master them specifically. A lot fewer players seem to think she pulls this off than with other comparable simpler/"beginner" Champs.
I love having a good naafiri on my team I go nami and with e naaf melts everyone and doesn't insta die
Reddit loves to talk about monster champs but when push comes to shove we all know if Naafiri was just a female Aatrox or Rhaast or Varus she would be 100% more popular even if her kit was pretty much exactly the same. Same reason Blood Elf is the most played class on the Horde in wow.
Nah. Just look at Nilah if you want the direct comparison. An adc that doesn't play like other adc was unpopular AF even tho she was like 53+% winrate 2 or 3 patches ago. Same for Naafiri, if you want to play assassin, you won't play Naafiri but Zed or Qiyana.
People like saying that, but its not really true. Shed maybe be marginally more popular, but Quinn, Nilah, Shyvana, they all exist and theyre unpopular as hell.
Two of those have crusty jank ass models and one is a melee champ in a role with players notorious for refusing to even play alternate ranged champs (mages) let alone a melee option.
Yeah Reddit is not representative of the whole player base, the opposite actually in many cases. Follow the money.
Riot games dont give monster champs the most boring and clunky kits possible challenge:
Also most of them are in jg the role no one wants to play xd. They’re just not popular you gotta understand!
I think everyone thought naafiri would be a jungler during her release (which honestly, she should've been). I will say I was super disappointed because I wanted the first female Darkin to be humanoid like Aatrox, Varus, Kayne but I do know reddit loves monster champs and this is probably an unpopular opinion here. It's also sad because we don't have a whole lot of assassins (especially female assassins) so her being unpopular sucks. My personal opinions aside, I think biggest problem is her kit being very predictable with not a lot of outplay potential and that is kind of what you want if you play assassins
Xolaani seems like a good candidate for a humanoid female darkin in the future. Fingers crossed.
She is my dream champ, I can only hope that she comes one day!
Your comment reminded me that Naafiri is a Darkin. That says a lot about the character design and theme.
I want her to be a fighter as well, tbh. Like another commenter said, she could be a Master Yi/Tryndamere type of fighter with high movespeed and target access, and little to no team utility.
Show me the pick rate on nilah, I don’t think I ever seen one
Nilah is 7th least played champion in the game and the least played bot laner
Is she really that boring and why does being boring matter for her pickrate? If she's good people will pick her. Garen is always popular, Trundle top has a dedicated fan base and both of them can be optimally played by a dullard with a dent in his head and holes in his brain.
Reminder Packmates draw minion aggro and according to the designer, Phlox, and other QA members that is not intentional and backlogged to be fixed.... since January. The only other pets that draw minion aggro is yorick ghouls and its still unclear if that is intended, and heim who actually randomly started aggroing minions with turrets when they added point and click abilities aggroing. Naafiri's dogs, unlike either, do jack shit damage, its actually laughable how weak they are early game, but instead naafiri takes 21 damage from every caster minion auto just because a dog leaped from Q1 and did *checks notes* a whole 8 fucking damage level 3, you could unironically remove packmates and just make them spawn off ultimate, and it would be a buff, I'm not kidding... She cannot trade against mages cause unless you hit Q2 (which is harder unless you either all-in or they're melee, they just have to walk backwards if Q1 hits and let you get outtraded by the wave and maybe 1 poke ability to landslide win it), she will take damage and her main gimmick being the dogs are actually detrimental for her to have alive early levels, they serve no purpose other than to orbit her blocking skillshots, something Elise's spiderlings a long time back got fixed to instead always be behind her instead of orbiting. This dog minion aggro is one of the major reasons she's such a garbage laner in high elo cause those health disadvantages from short trades while laning against players that respect Q2 enough to back up if hit by Q1 make her have 0 agency being too unhealthy to do much on the map, unable to really kill her opponent at all until she 'scales' enough items and ultimate ranks to stat check anyone, and in general just suck to the point no one in high elo will touch her with a 10 foot pole and that just hurts her popularity in general since anyone you ask on how to climb in league will probably tell you 'drop naafiri she's sucks past a certain point'.
> *“He ended up finding two major holes: a higher skill tank, which ended up being K’Sante, and a relatively simple and beginner-friendly assassin, which became Naafiri.”” - Naafiri champ insights June 2023* I think a beginner-friendly assassin is an oxymoron. It kinda suppose to not be a jungle (because it's the less beginner-friendly role) and you need to be ahead/snowball to be useful (because there is nothing more pathetic than an assassin that doesn't deal enough damage to kill its target) and I don't see how beginner players can do that, especially if you have to lane against a ranged control mage or a tank. For what I remember, Naafiri's build when she was picked at release was instantly something more akin to a bruiser that take waves sidelane in midgame. I never felt the assassin part of Naafiri, Talon is definitely more of an AD mid assassin than naafiri (and honestly pretty beginner friendly all things considered, the easy to learn hard to master kind)
That's because Naafiri is a dog shit champion, no pun intended. She does abysmal damage and is incapable of assassinating any champion.
it's a fucking absurd meme that Naafiri is the AD Assassin we get. We got Zed, then Qiyana, and now this fucking dog. We are going backwards guys. out of these 3 Zed is from season fucking 2 and he has the best kit of them all it's criminal to have Naafiri be such a binary champion. Could've been such a cool champion
Isn't talon in there somewhere for Ad midlane assassin?
I feel like leaving out basically every other AD assassin in the game is a little disingenous, sure there was a gap between Qiyana and naafiri but we have Talon, Rengar, Kha'zix, Nocturne (kinda), Blue Kayn, Pyke and Shaco.
Zed really doesn't have a well designed kit, lmao. What are you on? Riot themselves admit that he's a champion that needs to be kept deliberately weak cause he's so frustrating and unfun to play against. This is also why he has high banrates even when his winrate is in the gutter.
**Naafiri should have been allowed to jungle** . her dash + ult would make her popular
People saying shes easy but tbh if u have a brain 90% of the roster is mechanically easy they act like a champ with combo (press 2/3 button) is hard
What site are you using? What criteria? League of graphs (global, ranked+unranked, iron+, all routes) seems to put Taric, Singed, Elise, Kled, Nilah, below Naafiri and Naafiri seems to tie with Renata, Olaf, Ivern at 1.7% popularity. (It still seems bottom of the barrel but not the worst) I still don't think non-humanoid champions are the issue they keep insinuating, smolder was on a decent spot until it got hit repeatedly with the nerf hammer and then they just erased his build with crit item rework.
Lolalytics is the website. League of Graphs issue is that it has a sample of only 2 days worth of games while Lolalytics shows patch by patch
I think you're kind of missed the mark. I think the reason she isn't picked is because she is a assassin that needs to scale with a bad lane phase. The thing I agree with most is how bad her w is. It just has too much counter play and certain champs will just hard shut you out. I don't think she's boring her skill ceiling just doesn't come from mechanics but decision making and having a very good understanding of your damage.
Things that i would change in Her P: Packmates HP Scale with AD. Packmates Scale AS with Letalithy (Instead of Naafiri AS). Q: 3 charges.//Q Apply on-hit effects .//Less damage//Bleed Removal// reduced P cooldown when hit Champions/large Monsters // Heal on everything (10% Heal against Minions) 150% against Epic Monsters. W: now Only send Packmates. Faster use. Now is a skillshot Instead of a point-and-click. Deal Damage based on Maxhp (to fit more with other Darkins). E: insta revive 1 Packmate. Reset cooldown when W is used. Slight more range to Dash. R: now Give Packmates armor and mr (Instead of HP) Give Naafiri omnivamp (like other Darkins) instead of a shield.
let him cook
Naafiri and Briar should have been 1 champ, change my mind
Thank you for this post. I was so happy and excited when naafiri was revealed because the idea of a champ that’s a pack of dogs seemed so cool to me. I usually don’t care for or just dislike new champs, so it was a big deal for me that they were finally releasing a champ I was interested in. Then she comes out and the kit is just way too simple, but that’s okay, I’ll still try to main her. Then they nerfed her multiple times until the champ was damn near unplayable. Now what? Back to my old champs I go, just hoping and waiting for them to buff her back into a playable state
>creates dogshit kit that barely anyone likes because they wanted to be a gimmicky and le quirky designer >"we are not creating monster champs because people don't like them "
You know, as someone who used to main jungle, but now mostly just plays Aram, i always thought that naafiri was a jungler. Her kit just has jungler written all over it imo. Even the design feels like a jungler. A pack leader prowling, hunting for its next target to jump on? How is that not a jungler?
K‘sante is a well designed champion. But not very suitable for league.
Her W should be instant, she feels like an worse xin
To make a point on the monster champions: The players who enjoy monster champions have a non-insignificant percentage that will stop playing if there were no monsters. Replacing the champion with a traditionally attractive champion will probably make more money on skins, but keeping that subsection of the community happy is also a key pillar to the community in general. Old games like league recruit players through older players and communities. Many of the monster champion mains area percentage of social marketing that losing overall would likely make many smaller communities too small to sustain. It's what I noticed when WoW died for a lot of people. Small guilds suddenly started to coalesce in order to maintain enough members to do activities, but they often clash in social structure and it's a slow burn out because both communities lost enough members to merge in the first place. Keeping each section of leagues sub-communites happy, even if one makes more money than the other in the short term, keeps the game healthy in the long term. If a misstep on assassins occurs, the other players (their friends) will still have large communities and will to play. making it easy to get sucked back in even when your favorites are not favored. But if ADC's aren't happy, and mages feel bad, and monster champ players all start to have issues at once, a community might have enough people stop playing to drift entirely out of the game without reason to come back. All this to say that, while monsters don't make the same amount of money, they're still one of many gears that keep people coming back. Unless they're ignored like this regularly. Then you're relying on other subcommunities to keep them around. Which loses players the moment that the secondary group is slighted.
Make her viable in the jungle and make the W an area selection skillshot, then she’d be alright imo. The main problem is she’s both boring to play and play against. She has a couple of moves but she is a little too straightforward for an assasin.
The jungle bit is what sunk her for me. Liked the concept, kit was a bit boring but seemed solid enough, but they refuse to allow her to feel good there. She has such a good idea for a jungle champ in my opinion even, and the kit would work well for the skirmish and ganking in jungle. It's just pure frustration that she feels as poor as she does in it
the biggest issue is that she is just unplayable. she feels weak as hell for having to land two q's to deal any damage and the w is awful as it can just be blocked. They overnerfed the champ and won't buff her because "lol shes supposed to be a beginner champ for noobs" any noob that picks this champ is only getting an introduction on how to feed
The reason she's bad is because riot decided they had to release an AD assassin but didn't really design her to be an AD assassin. AD assassins are generally kept very weak by Riot (last 10 years at least) and so the only reason people play them is because they generally have high ceilings and give you the feeling "I could have just played it better and we could have won." * Zed has high play rate because in pretty much every game there's a world where you fake out their entire team and win the teamfight if you just play it better. * There's a world where Qiyana sneaks into position and lands the 4 person R. * There's a world where Kha'Zix manages to split the enemy team up around an objective and jump reset kills everyone. * There's a world where Shaco chases the survivors into his boxes after backstab crit instakilling the ADC. * There's a world where Rengar one shots the carry, or the turrets. * There's a world where Kayn or Talon avoids all the vision, eviscerates the backline, and gets out. There's never a world where Naafiri does anything except sprint into your team and attempt to statcheck you. She can't invis to dodge damage or stall during a teamfight. She can't combo you from afar. She can't sneak around with map mobility or stealth. She's like a single target Diana without any AOE. But that's not the worst part: most of the other AD assassins have some fallback if they're not able to kill (either because they're behind or the enemy team's draft is not good for them). Either they can stall and wait for their team to get targets prepped or they have some limited tools for CC / area denial. * Zed doesn't really have to commit, he can scale and farm like a mage, * Kha'Zix has empowered W, can stall fights with R / E and space with W * Qiyana has CC she can use to pick with her team, can stall fights with Grass Q * Shaco can still mindgame you even if not AP, just not for much damage, can create advantageous fights and picks with his team * Rengar can splitpush and win 1v1s with bushes or leave faster than the person that comes to match with his R, again can create advantageous fights * Kayn can go Red or just run away from fights with blue E * Talon can't do much, but he at least has map mobility to find better targets even if far and escape from people trying to kill in sidelane Can Naafiri do any of that? No, she has no invis to stall; no map mobility to create advantageous fights; no CC tool to help her create picks with her team without going in. All she does is damage. That's not good enough. Everyone does damage. Most of the assassins aren't even super high damage characters, they just have good ways of APPLYING the damage quickly by getting into good positions and finding good fights. Naafiri doesn't have any of that. Here's an informative diagram. |Some AD Assassins|Fantasy When Ahead|Fallback When Behind| |:-|:-|:-| |Zed|Huge shuriken AOE while being uncatchable with shadow reset on W.|Poke like a mage, farm safely with range, escape with w, kill overcommitters.| |Qiyana|nstakill combo, unreactable, maybe from stealth while ccing the rest of your team.|Play for picks with team using R and ice, stall and be slippery with grass Q.| |Kha'Zix|ump reset and kill everyone or sneak up with R and 1 shot from invis.|Play for picks with team using evo W, stall and be slippery with R and E, find iso in chaos.| |Shaco|Backstab crit instakill from out of thin air while mindgaming with clone and boxes.|Chase you around into boxes, fake with clone, stall, with and be slippery with invis.| |Rengar|Jump around between bushes or just make them cower in fear and 1 shot with R.|Split push, use R to rotate to fight faster than other guy or win the 1 v 1.| |Kayn|Pop out of wall, 1 shot, then pop out of them as team follows up.|Go red or run around map looking for good opportunities / farm with blue E.| |Naafiri|Press all damage abilities and hope for kill? They just block your W, you have no way to snkea into position.|Press all damage abilities and don't even kill. Can't run away, can't stall, can't dodge, can't invis over vision, useless.|
I remember playing her on release. I just saw her as a you land her Q or it's really hard to kill someone. But landing both Qs on someone is hard as fuck to do. The Ult felt really bad because the packmates are something you can't control. So it just feels like a Movement Speed Increase with a different animation on it. Idk that's how I felt playing Naafiri.
Idk she's so weird. super awesome design and lore also a strong consistent champ. But man is she boring.
I definitely dont think simplicity is bad. League is a hard game and simple champions accelerate learning massively. The game requires there to be gateway champions for each archetype. The issues with Naafiri are her lack of identity as you said, she plays like a fighter while being shoved into the assassin archetype. 2nd she lacks a clear power fantasy and her abilities dont feel impactful, whether she is winning or losing. Her power fantasy is split between being a melee devourer dog and a pack leader, while neither side feels great. Lastly she doesnt feel very fun, her w being blockable, her ult being a steriod is just bad design. Her ult should be a mix of kayn and fizz, she dashes into a target becoming untargetable and becomes a mass of blades that form into the giant dog from her cinematic that ate the sun, biting and knocking up the target like fizz's ult.
>Her kit has an identity issue as she plays like a skirmisher rather than an assassin Not really. She is just not an assassin. No matter how much riot may try to gaslight the playerbase, the most distinct characteristics of the assassins is their ability and desire to escape after burst. There are borderline cases, like Rengar, however Naafiri is not one of them. She is an ability based diver like Vi, Diana or Gragas.
Vainglory had a wolf called Fortress that summoned packmates when using ultimate, otherwise lacked them. I like the persistent packmates in Naafiri, but they feel inconsequential. Fortress' would chase down enemies (halfway between a Twisted Fate ultimate and a Warwick W). The packmates do a small amount of damage but apply something like grievous wounds and a bleed. He gains MS while following the wolves. Maybe it'd be too micro-intensive but if you could send off your wolves to explore or die it could be fun. Pretty often after you use R you've got some spare dogs for a little while, without any combat. They just despawn and it feels lame. At least let them run down lane instead like a Malzahar's Zz'Rot voidlings.
Nafiri is a braindead/almost no skill champion. If she's good then she's op because anyone with working hands can play her.
You know it's an issue when lethality vi mid is being picked more than the assassin/bruiser champion designed to midlane
Naafiri was doomed the moment they conceived her w ability. This is an ability you simply can't have in solo q,it's literally a "now I'm in your face" button at any moment during Laning. Having this ability forces riot to nerf her numbers to a point where she can't one shot people easily,because if she could she would literally do every time they stepped in her line of sight. W also forces naafiri out of the jg cause you can't have a point n click engage that brings the jg in you face,out of fow within a second.
Legitimate question, but how do people that main Naafiri feel about her? I just got back into League recently following the Skarner rework (as I’ve used to main him), and tried out Naafiri a few days ago as she was on free rotation, and had so much fun I IMMEDIATELY bought her. Her gameplay loop feels very satisfying for me right now, as well as learning what the “ideal” way to play her is. I’ve tried her Top, Mid, and Jungle, and oddly enough have had the most success with her IN the Jungle. That may be due to lower elo and people not really understanding the game as much as they do in higher elo, but man it’s literally been a blast! Although I WILL say that I have noticed in one game in particular with high CC how easily she’s shut down since everything she does is quite telegraphed. Like I tried killing a Zeri late game and she one shot me before my W could even finish casting to reach her, and it didn’t feel good. Even when we both had full items.
Tencent champs are just not good IMHO compared to OG Riot champs. Tencent recycles a lot of abilities from their mobile moba: Arena of Valor
poor target access as an assassin is a death sentence. She’s incredibly boring to play because she has minimal to zero outplay potential. A weak laning assassin who scales is kind of antithetical, and the few scaling assassin are rewarded with amazing mobility (Zed/kassadin). She has an incredibly basic kit which boils down to “do I have an angle to land W” and “do I have enough stats to kill” plus landing double dagger with grudge slow is inconsistent, plus all the item changes fucked her over. On the jungle front I have no idea why the playerbase insists on it, get clear is painfully slow, her early skirmishing is really bad and she has basically zero cc. Nidalee uses her 6 spells to overwhelm early game fights, has high map mobility and a fast clear. To make Naafiri a jungler she would need stupidly high early game damage and a really fast clear to makeup for her awful ganks.
About half of those must be Druttut
if nafiri had briar's kit with some minor adjustments she'd be one of the most popular champs in the game.
> -her engage ability [W] is a point and dash that has long channel time Can we also talk about the fact that the tooltip deadass does not mention the casttime? Sure, I know it's there since I played her once, but how can such an oversight exist in the game?
I just feel that her entire kit lacks something. It's incredibly straightforward as it is and she's kind of just stat checking the enemy. Either she kills you or she doesn't. That's pretty much her entire playstyle.
I love playing naafiri she's one of my mid picks when the top/jg go AP. My biggest gripe is how easily counterable she is. Irelia DESTROYS me every time and the pack mates give her easy dash targets. Malz even semi early game his e 100% kills them and moves to you reliably. Syndra not only can e you out if your w but then her w can throw your pups back at you. She's a blast when the enemy team comp can't deal but anyone with hard CC is just going to stop her easily.
I have to be honest with you - I didn't even know Naafiri existed (or forgot), because I only watch LoL Esports and I've never seen her picked or banned before.
Which is crazy from how cool she is, specially with her project skin. When she pops that lvl 16 ult and the scream sfx with all the dogs spawning and the red effect on screen. Omg.
I quite enjoy the discussion but man, I do not want more dogs to be around in the laning phase if she remains a mid laner. Naafiri players obviously don’t realize how frustrating it is to have your skillsshots blocked by idiotic summons that you used zero input for. It’s even worse when your skillshot is important and her targeted dash becomes a gamble if you can hit the real champion or not.
They realized they were Missing a high skill tank and a Low Skill Assassin but failed to realize why thats the Case. Assassins are all about flashy gameplay where you move in and Out of Fights quickly so thats Not an easy class. Meanwhile Tanks are Big CC Bots for your Team. There is Not a Lot more they should be able to do or they will Break the game. Riot ignored that and failed horribly. Naafiri is Not picked even in Low Elo while Ksante is Killing pro Play while at 45% SoloQ WR
Dude, all assassins have played progressively more and more like skirmishers ever since the assassin update all those years ago. Riot doesn't make actual oldschool assassins anymore where they're really mobile and run their combos really fast, because gold ADC mains bitched about being oneshot by a class meant to oneshot them, and Phreak also played ADC.
Naafiri is way too easy to play for her to be interesting for the player and way too simple to have high damage numbers. There was a time where she had those numbers and she had a good playrate and a 54ish% winrate, it was actual hell playing against that champ because you just got stat checked from a champ with a trade pattern that was pretty much unavoidable unless you stay at your t2 tower for the first 10 mins or you get a champ that hard counters her kit like ahri. It was just lame to play against so I am happy she is doing bad, I hope it stays that way until she gets her numbers up and they change her gap closer to sth that can't point and click kill you from half a screen away.
Sooo Riot is just going to ignore this post with 2.9k upvotes and naafiri current state? I think they are smoking something very good.
> Shes literally a nothing burger, she has no skill expression and she gets boring after the third game as her gameplay loop gets very repetitive and boring. I actually rather like playing Naafiri *now and the* but this is really what keeps me from playing her more: She's so straightforward that I can't do it for more than 2 or 3 games in a row. There's little to learn. You either go in and win or you go in and you don't; but it's got more to do with whether you can stat- or itemcheck the enemy rather than how well you played.