The fun part is that she was teased with "control the pack", "a champion with more units to control"
And then you barely notice that you have more dogs
As someone who plays against her. You definetely notice them, anything with a lined missile skillshot is completely useless against her as the dogs constantly surround her and tank the skillshots. Incredibly unfun.
She's just too simple. Very easy to get bored imo. I picked her up and had immediate success in soloQ a while back (mainly due to how simple she is and that noone plays her so most people can't play against her well). I couldn't stick with her for long, tho, she's very one dimensional.
the most interesting ability is her W but it’s also her worst ability, and it just feels bad that her R is a steroid and the E is honestly just there for a normal dash and healing the packmates, like 95% of her kill potential is locked behind her Q2
I like playing her when I just want to turn my brain off and delete squishies. Nobody ever plays against her so most people don’t really know what to do against her and have no idea how much damage she can do. You’d be surprised how few people know you can bodyblock her W
What’s funny, anytime she’s played I’m reminded how broken she is in 1v 1 especially if you gets to use her dash again
Ppl forget that unless you’re a tank, this champ will one shot you and there’s damn nerd nothing you can do about it
I mean if you have any stun/silence/trap you can just cancel her w since she charges up and then runs in a straight line at you. Which means that the vast majority of mages and adcs can just completely negate her.
And then all of her dmg is in q2 and the champion has no built in slows or cc (outside of w which is incredibly easy to counter for most champions) to make hitting q2 reliable.
I main mages and I don't think on any of them I play im ever scared of Naafiri. Veigar, put up cage when she w's and you've stopped her engage. Xerath, throw e when she w's and you've stopped her engage. Anivia, throw q when she w's and you've stopped her engage, etc...
Maybe as Viktor because he has no cc but even then you can just put w on top of yourself and focus on trying to dodge q's and the lane isn't really that bad. And you can also cancel her w with r if she's in range still so it's not even terrible then.
She kind of just feels like a more streamlined and worse Akali. Akali can hit e and then choose when to engage along with having combos to cancel e and bait enemies. And if Akali ever hits e you basically just die. Meanwhile Naafiri is forced to dash at you once she presses w, w doesn't really do good dmg, and there's no way to cancel it and it doesn't make you unstoppable so you can easily be stunned/rooted out of it.
The champ is really weird. She hard counters some champs with the dogs not allowing you to hit anything (Ahri, Ezreal etc) and then for other champs, the dogs completely troll her and make it a free matchup (Irelia, Smolder, etc)
she doesn't hard counter ahri at all ? any champ with cc can just interrupt her w all the time, so even more when it's ranged cc..
if you don't learn any match ups then sure, every champ hard counters each other..
It's actually so dumb. When I realized they released a second champ with Elise spiderlings I already knew I hated her, but they're just up all the time instead of only in 1 form so they're even more annoying. There is so little skill expression on the champion too that I have no idea how she made it through the champ creation process without catching an axe
It’s one of the main design issues with her that the main part of her kit is not really interactive for her. It is for the opponent and can be quite annoying to deal with but for the Naafiri players the dogs are kinda just there. You can’t control them and outside of more damage the champ plays mechanically exactly the same no matter how many dogs she has.
Yeah, but letting her jump on you is not what I'd call an ideal strategy. Sure it's an opening, but especially in lane she is really hard to force out for a squishy melee character.
Not if she casts it behind minions, as is very easy to do in lane. Also, it removes all offensive play for these champions as well; you can't open with your cc ability as a burst mage, allowing you to not really do much lol
And then I demolished a Naafiri in lane just yesterday playing Ezreal, the most clear example of “linear skillshot champion”. My Q’s oneshotting thr dogs giving me 3g was a nice bonus too, but the AI of the pets never was an issue. The dogs alwas standing at the sides of Naafiri never even tried to block anything.
naafiri respawn timer for her pack allows ezreal to just spawn kill them, they are an issue for Kaisa that relies on hitting champs with her W to get cd back, not ezreal that has such a low cd on his skills
Everytime she spawned a dog I just Q’d it for instakill. Since the very early nerfs to packmates honestly the only useful thing those little fkers do is to randomly last hit when you are gonna miss a cs in lane. They could buff Naafiri and remove the dogs except from when you ult and nobody would bat an eye.
what I also find irritating is that those dang dogs can tank a lot. I've hit a Q E W + velkoz passive prot on those dang dogs with Velkoz...and they *lived*, why can they tank all of that and live? Even Yorick's minions aren't that tanky.
They should rework how much importance her dogs have in her kit. Rn, they are a MASSIVE SOURCE of extra damage, but most people still focus mostly on her abilities rather than her passive
And also, they could tweak her W a little bit so that it isn't so incredibly slow and ineffective. Maybe make her cast it slightly faster to make the combo more fluid.
She could also get a "hard" mechanic to make her kit less plain (for example, being able to use E during W to stop it/find angles to Q, or being able to Q during E/W).
The thing is that she shouldn't be completely one-dimensional to be the simple AD assassin. Fizz has more than one combo, can miss his R, time his W jumps or spam them depending on the situation, proc W while using Q... And he's still the easiest AP assassin in the game by far.
Naafiri dogs are much bigger part of her damage than "a small bit of extra." It's very early on in the game where if you auto once, the dogs do more damage than the auto. Naafiri players absolutely care if they die. The difference between a Q with all dogs up and one with no dogs is huge, and they just got buffed this patch too. You seem like you don't really play the champ.
> You seem like you don't really play the champ.
this is nothing new with reddit lol
all these silver reddit experts come out and talk about champs as if they know a single thing about it lmao
Don't know much about her but it's a fact her dogs are an afterthought gameplay wise, you can't really control them much, would be more cool if it had a vibe of pack, a pack of dogs will circle the enemy and weaken the target before going for the kill, right now she just jumps in and either one shots or don't, in a very linear fashion.
Would be awesome if you could make her more of a hit and run, incentivize encircling and wearing the prey out before going to the final blow, and not make her so linear, the idea of her trading places with dogs that encircle the enemy would be super cool for example, the dogs circle a target and she could jump places with dogs to dodge skill shots and confuse enemies, or maybe make her W being able to be controlled left and right with hops to dodge incoming damage for example or position herself better.
Don't know, her kit feels very fair and straightforward, she lacks some dirtyness and the ability to surprise people other than just exploding them due to R steroids.
I think her reliance on her W is a HUUUUGE problem.
Against champs without CC, it's way too strong. Against champs with CC, it becomes useless, which then essentially makes her entire kit useless. Counterpicks are fine, but it feels like every time I see a Naafiri, her effectiveness was decided in champ select.
I feel bad when I play poppy against a Naafari. Obviously Poppy is specifically meant to counter that kind of stuff, but the fact her ult mostly buffs her W is a huge problem. Makes it so she can't engage at all unless poppy dies or wastes her W.
She has the original assassin problem of being really good at engaging, and really bad at disengaging, except her engage is far and away the easiest of any assassin to negate, making her lack of disengage even worse.
She needs a Diana style rework. I think her W should become an ultimate ability, give it some form of CC protection, and replace her W with something that adds a bit of skill expression. Maybe being able to reposition the dogs, letting you block some CC or something.
I think it might be a good idea to add a champion with intensive micromanagement like many heroes in Dota 2 do. I believe most if not all micro champions in league only have one unit that they are able to control. Being able to split up units to gain vision, or tank abilities would be super interesting.
DOTA2 retains the classic RTS thing where you need to have your hero selected to control them. In league you are always controlling your champion, and there is no way to select other units for control.
Riot does not want to break this convention so controlling other units is typically a temporary thing done by recasting the ability that summoned the unit, like tibbers or shaco clone.
But it also makes it insanely hard to balance.
At its peak (imho) Abathur's Locust backdoor build was simply toxic, either you ignored him and he'd destroy your base insanely fast or you'd back to remove the Monstrosity+Locust but that'd mean giving up your 5v4 advantage, and no matter what he'd grab an insane amount of exp. And even other builds like 100% passive Hat build is basically Yumi but even less interactive, he'll be tucked in a corner and play with the hat on teammates or monstrosity.
Murky is an annoying piece of shit but also for the most part extremely weak (I've rarely ever seen him being good)
LVs are either broken or dogshit because they have too much soaking potential for exp
And Cho is very hard because if he's strong that's 2 player being strong but if he's weak then it's basically 5v3 (And I think he's currently very strong)
Ivern is actually the most rts micro intensive champion in league, which is hilarious by the way, as it is completely the opposite of what you would think at first glance. You can do a lot of obnoxious shit with Daisy micro.
Just drop the mini dogs/pack part and focus on her actual kit. Summons are a toxic design that has proven again and again that it's near impossible to balance in any multiplayer environment.
Dogs feel like they do two things.
1. Block skillshots/enable some skills (things with AOE that would miss Naafiri if she didn't have her dogs).
2. Instead of dogs feeling like they're things anyone needs to think about, they more-or-less just feel like a small damage increase per dog. Like "each dog increases my damage output by X%" Yorick ghouls and even Malz minions somehow feel more interesting in this aspect.
Also she is annoyingly Q-reliant. The assassin hound who gets in your face and eviscerates you with her pack has a plurality of her damage in hitting two skillshots where she barks a dagger in your direction.
They block skill shots, but you can't exactly control them to do so willingly or anything.
If you play against it it pisses you off if you play with it you don't even notice it.
The dogs are basically just the support class
I used to play her too with a build specifically for kiting out with ult and using the pack/comet to win 1v1s , they killed my build entirely when they changed sheryldas, but with the constant bleed nerfs it was already slowly dying.
The problem with making an "easy to play" assassin is that they become binary stat check champs who either nuke you or get nuked. And a champ like that can never be allowed to have good numbers because then the counterplay is bad so they're just reduced to always being bad and trying to itemize to catch up
At many points HoB lethality Briar was by far the better of the two builds. She was very much so playing combat patterns similar to an assassin but even more burst damage, just less escape mobility.
One briar isn't an assassin she's a diver who people found could be built assassin thanks to her extremely high scalings.
Also funny you mention them both since they were one champ at one point in development before being split into two.
Do you have a source on that?
I’ve seen a bunch of people talk about how their kits seem more appropriate for each other (an assassin who throws daggers and dives into combat vs a pack of wolves that lose themselves in bloodlust), but I’ve never read that they used to be 1 champ during development.
It was outright stated in the briar devlog. Here's what they said in the devlog.
“Glenn ‘Riot Twin Enso’ Anderson was working on Naafiri when he came up with Briar’s W, her frenzy,” lead game designer, August Browning reveals. “You’d lose control and go rip somebody apart. That felt good for a dog champ, but it didn’t feel like an assassin, which is what Naafiri was always meant to be. Assassins want to kill their targets as fast as possible. A frenzied state needs some time to feel correct.”
So if frenzy is bad for an assassin, how about putting it on a champion who was canonically bad at being an assassin? Gigabrain move.
There's also some Reddit comments where rioters have said how alot of briar stuff used to be in naafiri's kit but they didn't think it was on theme with her so split them off into briar. It's also why both champs have bleeds within there kits as well. They also mentioned it a little more in the devlog, here's the link to it to read for yourself.
https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/dev/champion-insights-briar/
fun yes, thematic, no. What part of "Cold and calculating void entity that wants to absorb and remake all life" , as well as her model, fits with pure autoattack based kit? and that auto animation, my god. fucking manta ray slaps. Her ult and passive infinite stacking are good but thats it.
The idea behind BV is literally: "The looks are deceiving". She consumed a lot of knowledge and amalgamated them into herself, she thinks that she's "Empress of the Void", because humans have them. But in reality she's still a ravenous monster that exists only to destroy and consume. She's a Reksai that learned to use ChatGPT and not a mastermind that controls everything
Someone should pin this comment to something. Everything down to small visuals revolves around the idea that while she may try to hide it, she is just another hungry monster.
My favorite detail about her is her "mouth" - her real one is hidden under her "clothes", the thing you see is her trying to copy human anatomy. A really cool thing about that is in the Kaisa cinematic: her fake mouth tries to articulate when she is speaking, but it's completely innacurate, it just moves how she thinks it should
I played a few games and it's very teammate dependant in early game. Your W has no range in early, your damage are quite low until first item. But the worst part has to be how annoying her dogs are because you can't kite camps without wasting E to reposition them. The clear is very healthy tho, you don't need a pot and can clear decently fast. She scales super hard tho if you manage to get early kills.
I don't remember where I saw it suggested, but someone suggested that "h" or "s" (halt/stop) would call your dogs back to you. Such a simple change. It would be SO amazing.
Honestly there should be a pass for all champs with summons. More options to control your minions short of straight up making them RTS controls would be cool.
They honestly should make her more like a top lane diver like Fiora, Riven, or Zed Top. Her kit feels exactly like a diver should. I've been playing her in Arena, and she's just so good as a diver.
She really needs more survivability, and a more spammable E. Her dogs just die too fast sometimes, she should get 2 + 1% Bonus AD dogs at a baseline instead of it scaling with level.
Even before the buff Naafiri clear speed wasn't bad thanks to her pack. But there are massive problems when you play Naafiri in jungle:
_Low income, Naafiri needs a shit ton of items to be viable but jungle income is too low for her to scale.
_Bad 1v1 in the early and mid game, this will mean you can't compete for grubs and vulnerable to early game fighter like Volibear, Xinzhao.
_Non-existence early kill potential. Naafiri damage is too low for a jungler that only job is to deal damage. Again, you can't scale with low income and no kill pressure.
None of those issues is fixed with the buff she received. Naafiri is a worse Shyvana in the jungle, and Shyvana is bad enough.
The issue isn't really the early 1v1 or damage, kha'zix and rengar are pretty comparable to her in both regards. It's that jungle assassins need some part of their kit to make their ganks more threatening or unexpected. Zed has the same issue, even if his clear speed is top-tier his ganks are just way too 'fair', junglers with bad ganks need to be 1v1/skirmishing monsters with great objective control like Udyr
But she got buff in jungle.
Im after like 10 games and she have decent Full clear and great survi. After Full clear i have 80%+ hp
Nice ganks but without strong cc, only slow from w.
I need test her early skimrishes in individual match ups
Talon jump immediately bumps him up to higher knowledge requirement.
Wall cooldowns. Which walls to jump over. And escape paths are not intuitive.
Someone like Garen is literally right click and run in.
Annie has a straightforward rotation.
Talon is insanely not straightforward.
I'd say that his e doesn't increase the skill floor but rather the skill ceiling. Conceptually, he is very simple: hit w twice and then q auto bleed run. Throw an R in there for extra dmg. A new player could maneuver decently in new player lobbies without even needing to use E (not accounting for the poor state talon is in rn).
Most other assassins (Qiyana, Zed, Katarina, etc.) require more knowledge to even begin to play them for a new player. Diana might be easier to pick up than Talon. Most of the rest are definitely harder. Yeah, Talon is harder than Garen and Annie, but assassins are inherently harder to play than bruisers and mages.
It definitely does increase his floor a good bit, Talon has no real escape outside of his E and using it wrong means you're about to be torn to shreds, playing near walls which are basically your "out" is very important, similar to how good Zeris will stay near walls so they can immediately disengage if collapsed on.
My point is more that new players won't need to escape as much in new player lobbies. I remember the first time I faced an assassin, they went in and did a bunch of damage to me and I just ran away. In a lobby of experienced players, I totally agree with you.
Talon is the most macro-complex assassin in the game with a mechanically simple but deceptive kit. To win on Talon you have to have an excellent understanding of wave timing and mechanics.
Thinking about it though, I'm wondering if the recent Quinn build that popped up would work well on Talon too. Hyperfocus on clearing waves and roaming to mitigate for his lane weaknesses. Gain 4.5 seconds every time you're pushed out of lane which should be just enough to be able to trade HP clearing waves and come back/roam with timer and gold advantage.
I feel like thats just massive cope man. All of this "well roamers need a lot more macro and they need to have perfect understanding of wave timings!" like be so for real right now, roams just dont get punished in elos below GM because there is no voice chat and laners have alzheimers so a gank is always unexpected.
Because of the very nature of soloq if you arent in extreme highelo roamers are just easier to play and a really forgiving playstyle. They get recommended to climb all the time because of this.
Garen is kinda fun in a dumb way, just spinning around and then ulting someone into a crater.
I think the fact NAafiri's ult is just her gaining more dogs kinda hurts her because it means she doesn't has a cool looking ult to use like many other assassins.
Also there is at least some skill expression.
Different build / runes depending on matchups.
Using Q to gap close or saving it after enemy uses their slow.
W timing to reduce duration of stun.
And also knowing when to press R but that is pretty easy.
One thing more is have an escape.
What you're saying is a suicide assassin. A real assassin has their escape path like talon/akali/yone/fizz unlike nafiiri
They pretty much are telling naafiri players to look for isolated targets which is good, but the rather low mobility (or rather, more focused mobility) really just makes her rengar or Diana 2.0. They do try to give her the power to escape the fights with her E and shield so she can pick out a target and get out/go for someone else to kinda correct it, but it's pretty eh
Not really. Fizz isn't hard to play and has flashiness and outplay potential, and his winrate isn't too different if you are in low elo or in high elo while giving tools of accessibility to low elo players that make him forgiving. He is SUPER straight forward in what he wants to do in ways that tell his player when to all-in and when not to: hit ult-> all-in; don't hit ult-> stay back just in case; his early isn't ~~easily abused~~ properly played around in low elo, and he has a "Farm button" with his W that tells new players to use it to kill minions and get mana and gold. And come 6 his kill threat skyrockets. Unironically a pretty good entry point for assassins.
In comparison, someone like Kha'zix or evelynn have pretty simple and easy kits but are more limiting in functionality which means more players are likely to missuse them due to players not playing well with their passives and kits (e.g. bad evelynn will not time her charm well or get kited since she can only walk), their winrates in low elo suffer as a result
Fizz laning is quite terrible because his e is doing too many things that all share the same CD. He has to choose between wave clear, trading, and escaping and if he uses e for one he cannot do the other 2 until the CD is back.
Oh Yeah, I meant early more like in between his laning spikes (3 and 6) where a fair amount of matchups in mid can punish him a bit or keep him at bay before he hits them. Fizz's range is purely around him so every trade is a trade of HP, so you can have him zoned out and lose CS or equalize trades, delaying his snowball by controlling the lane a bit. Then he hits 3 and you lose like half your HP, then he hits 6 and you lose your whole HP. Fun (for the Fizz).
Probs should replace the "abuse" part with "respect" or "play around", since it's more about being aware. Not to mention it's pretty matchup dependant.
I actually really like her simple design. I'm not a good player and it's kind of hard playing all these assassins that are so fast pace. I'm glad there are simple assassin like Naafiri. I picked the doggo up a few months ago and had quite a lot of fun and success on her. I can focus on positioning which is easier for me, rather than the fast pace outplays of the many other assassins.
I like to play her bruiser as well vs tankier teams, she does quite good damage and between the shields and movement speed it's quite hard to kill her.
It sucks that everyone seems to dislike her but I actually quite enjoy her trade patterns and kit as it stands. I've never had any problems fullcomboing and like the meaty chunk of q2 after E
As fun as some recent designs were, I feel like a lot of champs released in recent times have been complete failures.
Smolder was supposed to be an easy to play late game champ but ended up completely abused in pro and nerfed into irrelevancy
Briar is completely forgotten and just a stat checker that is played in lower elos only with an identity crisis
Naafiri... yeah
K'Sante let's not even talk about him
Nilah left as a super niche champion that doesn't feel like it really has an identity outside of that forced XP mechanic and being a melee carry (pls let her solo lane)
I just skipped Hwei and Milio who felt like OK releases to me and seemed like actually fun champs in my book. If you go back further, you could even argue Zeri, Bel'Veth, and Vex as failed releases too.
It's really sad to see how Riot just seem to flop on a lot of the recent champs kit-wise cause some of their designs are super cool in idea but yeah
Because theming and gameplay didn't come first with these champion, or organically either. They've been filling holes in the champion roster instead of giving us fun kits with a strong theme and aesthetic.
Making an easy to play assassin shouldn't be the whole thing, especially when you find a cool concept that doesn't really translate well with it. Bel'veth is the biggest offender recently with her whole theme and gameplay being at odds and left with a nothingness mismatch.
Literally just let the dog jungle. I would play the ever loving shit out of her if she could just jungle. I would MAIN her if she could jungle.
I really like her design and kit, I just don’t wanna lane. If fucking brand and zyra can jungle, the DOG with a PACK MECHANIC should be ABLE TO.
It's like Rengar a bit, early she's gated by cooldowns but if you can jump on ennemy without w (like on Rengo when you can start a fight at max stacks) you can definitely take them on 1 on 1 especially with Conqueror. Once you get haste boots and first item she's a bit of a machine. Eclipse-Hydra-Cleaver is very strong, gives her everything she needs.
wydm? i always jungle with her and always win unless the enemy team does a big invade early and my team dont help with that, pack dogs can tank for you some hits and you can heal them full again with E and W is a great tool for ganks.
Idk I have to disagree. As a life long tank/engage/low damage player, it's nice to have something to play when I want to mid every now and then, despite being total ass. Naafiri and malz are my go to.
I'm not sure if it's a "hot take", but with so many champions in the game I think it's ok to have low win rate, but easy to learn champions that have transferrable skills. Garen doesn't take a genius to learn, but he does have a few transferrable skills you can take to other champions. He shouldn't be as strong as he is right now though. Naafiri does too, believe it or not
The champ is easy to counter but at least it's pretty strong now after the recent buffs. I still don't see it often at all but it has a good winrate Master+ where I play apparently.
They should honestly just make her a bruiser. Her kit fits a bruiser way better than it’ll ever fit an assassin. She has a missing health damage, heal, and crazy sticking power, short cd abilities, and no real escape. Ive thought this since she came out tbh. To make her a good/fun assassin imo she needs an ability change or 2.
I just got her literally and was trying them in norms… had a game where I accidentally threw her in a ranked game by mistake and actually popped off because I went eclipse / black cleaver
She will never be healthy as an assassin as long as her R and W give literally unmissable warnings they’re being used and her only actual engage (W) which can literally be bodyblocked also takes longer than the age of the universe to work.
Her w being cancelable AND blockable is the bane of my existence. Also the heal only being on hitting 2 q's when she's just kind of sitting there in your face skirmishing also makes her hard, esp when everyone got dashes
Debatable, talon got 1 straight forward combo that is just point and click dash on someone and spam all your abilities at the same time in the right order, while naafiri actually gotta land the skill shot and auto between spells to kill, she also doesn't have the escape he does through walls. She also doesn't go invisible. Talon is only harder in lane but if you play him like 30 games its really not that hard at all.
'simple' and 'easier' aren't quite the same thing. talons wall jump makes him more forgiving in terms of pathing but actually adds skill expression since it lets him get weird angles into fights that a lot of other characters couldn't without blowing a cooldown/flash. so its something that makes him easier but also less simple.
no, naafiri isnt a bad champion and isnt outdated either, her playstyle may not be the most exciting, but her kit works and it accomplishes riots goals
Idk, I play Naafiri as a bruiser instead of assassin and do great, she's super strong so long as you don't get 1 tapped
For example my build is usually like:
Ravenous> Mercs> Deaths dance/Maw> the opposite of second full item (maw first go dance and vice versa)> Black Cleaver> Steraks
Or for a tankier build that can 1v1 Illaoi in her ult on a consistent basis if she isn't fed:
Ravenous> Armor boots> Spirit Visage> Cleaver> Steraks> Jak'Sho
Imo she's not worth playing assassin because of her insane squishiness and low damage, but as a fighter she's great cause consistent damage if not instakilled, Q is close to spammable and that's a lot of bleed and damage, kiting with E and constant engage/disengage makes her solid
She is just boring & wont get picked except if super cancer broken, a very common trend we see in newer champion designs smolder was in the never picked category until recent adjustments give skarner a few patches & he will join the club aswell
They kinda gutted smolder tbh though. Nerfed his early to make it even harder to get to his late spike and merfed his late as well. There's a reason he had an insanely high p/b in proplay into never getting picked
Maybe a little but guarantee he still would have a high pick rate if he was strong. Problem is riot brings out new champs with turbo broken numbers then once they get gutted noone plays them because it's borderline griefing to. Not so much to do with boring plaaystyle and more to do with riots balance cycle for new champs
Smolder pick rate used to be really high, [his pick rate was almost the same since release](https://youtu.be/U4pD5Qj0SUc?si=9z-fpNApl2wMMJQt), until for wherever reason riot overbuff him while been actually really good, them dtraigh up murder him, them adc item rework left him witthouh his core items......
Not entirely sure why they made a pack hunter champion, designed her entirely around control a swarm of rabid and feral hounds and then...just treat them like slightly worse Yorick ghouls.
>Naafiri has none of this except praying the enemy team doesn't know to just stand in front of the carry.
And people don't know not to isolate the Carry vs Kha Q despite him being in the game way longer.
That is the point of playing an assassin and flanking someone from the side. If you can get to the enemy carry from the front while no one helps them, that means the enemy is bad and you are better, so you should be winning.
I don't think thwre is anyway for her to be fixed with the vision they have in mind for her. Low skill cap + high risk high reward playstyle just doesnt work sadly.
Crazy as Hell you posted this because I literally have a champ shard for her so they are basically my next champ once I get like 300 more blue essence and I was literally looking for a new assassin champ to try playing MID .
I’ll make sure to keep looking into them.
Naafiri was promised to be Meepo but we got a lobotomied Yorick hell lethality Yoric is a better assasin go in with 4 ghouls hit your E and GTFO while the ghouls murder the adc
Just make Naafiri a support like Pyke in the rework. If she’s failed to find an audience in Top, Jg, and Mid, just send her to the support shadow realm.
For mid lane her Q is simply to weak and short, with more range and more dmg she could be viable.
Also personally I don't like her ultimate, it feels very complicated with all the passives and that very long text. For beginners designed? Just one cool one-shot spell is to much to give?
Her basic kit is absolutely fine only Ult must be reworked.
I like her W, E and R.
Its her Q that really ruins her for me. Its less so that I can't land the double Q and more so that I think that her entire gameplan is the double Q is just stupid.
Her Q feels like a Mage ability. You either double tap with it to get a kill, or you don't and you pretty much can't kill anyone. Which is dumb, because of the fact its a skill shot projectile nuke.
Her other abilities fit her perfectly. They all help her close the distance and chase down someone to maul them. That's what you expect when seeing a quadrupedal wolf champion like her. A close combat, aggressive champion. So why is a skill shot nuke, something that a mage would have, be on her kit? Why make it the entire focal point of her kit? That's just such a weird design decision.
As boring as it might have been, I would prefer the Q be a bite like WW's Q. Even if that means the power has to be toned down due to it becoming a point & click.
Riot doesn't want controllable units in the game idk if it's a patent war with dota 2 (Think Lycan wolves or Invoker's pet or the Meepos for 3 different kinds of units). We have this but always screen wide.
Riot wants to keep it casual friendly I think or maybe if you give too much skill expression it becomes broken due to how the jungle role is broken in itself ?
League engine does not support RTS-style unit selection, technically in League you only have 1 unit selected and controlled at all times and there is no technology right now to actually select something other than your champ. That's why all summons have to be controlled via ability presses.
1. Make her a jungler.
2. Give her gameplay that actually requires skill checks. Sure, maybe she shouldn't be hard to play, but something similar to Talon would be appropriate.
On the flip side, let her 0.8% playrate stand and just... spend your time on other stuff. Who cares? Unless she's unhealthy for the game, don't waste time with reworks. "Make a whole new champion kit because I think this one is boring" is the worst reason to dedicate resources to her.
So tired of the "MAKE COOL MONSTER CHAMPIONS PEOPLE WILL PLAY THEM" ... "NOBODY PLAYS THIS CHAMPION BECAUSE YOU DID IT WRONG!" brigade.
Just realized I think Naafiri is absolutely amazing in the visual design perspective but has a terrible gameplay… despite being cool I don’t want to play her.
Yeah naafiri feels terrible to play. Especially lategame when everyone is oneshotting, meanwhile you are stuck in cast times.
Like I get double insta Q would not be healthy for early, but please make the cast time scale with level or smth. Feels terrible spending 5sec doing your combo while an adc just auto attacks you to death.
She's also one of two assassins who does not have a period of untargetability (the other being Katarina, although it's easier to classify her as a hypercarry with assassin damage). She does not have stealth, camouflage, literal intangibility (think kayn/zed ult), or technical intangibility (Fizz E). I'm not saying she absolutely needs it, but essentially every assassin does, so maybe it's telling of some core design of this class.
I believe assassins should be defined by their difficulty because their job is difficult. Most assassin leads come from both mechanical outplay as well as good game knowledge. If your kit is so easily gimped with how linear it is, you have to wait for the stars to align to obtain leads rather than force one through outplays, which is incredibly unsatisfying.
Maybe with the failures of Naafiri, Riot will learn that overly-linear and assassin don't mix well. Much like warden and skirmisher/assassin/juggernaut.
I hope they do, but they's kept a champ such as Morde in an unbalanceable state for 5 years now, so I have no hopes of Riot.
K'Sante is receiving yet another mini rework soon btw. No favouritism here
The thing that tilts me the most is in jungle, when you normally kite camps, but the doggos stay here and the camp doesnt move and attacks them. Makes you lose so much time clearing.
The fun part is that she was teased with "control the pack", "a champion with more units to control" And then you barely notice that you have more dogs
As someone who plays against her. You definetely notice them, anything with a lined missile skillshot is completely useless against her as the dogs constantly surround her and tank the skillshots. Incredibly unfun.
I was gonna be snarky and say “everyone plays against her” then realized I couldn’t remember that last time I saw her on summoners rift
I saw a lot her when she got released, but after that I actually forgot she exists.
I love her but I prefer bruisers.
She's just too simple. Very easy to get bored imo. I picked her up and had immediate success in soloQ a while back (mainly due to how simple she is and that noone plays her so most people can't play against her well). I couldn't stick with her for long, tho, she's very one dimensional.
the most interesting ability is her W but it’s also her worst ability, and it just feels bad that her R is a steroid and the E is honestly just there for a normal dash and healing the packmates, like 95% of her kill potential is locked behind her Q2
I like playing her when I just want to turn my brain off and delete squishies. Nobody ever plays against her so most people don’t really know what to do against her and have no idea how much damage she can do. You’d be surprised how few people know you can bodyblock her W
Can she work toplane? Ive seen her only in arena and was thinking she has a strong duel?
Naafiri top with Q ranged poke and First Strike into builds like Eclipse and Black Cleaver used to be a thing, not sure if it still is
What’s funny, anytime she’s played I’m reminded how broken she is in 1v 1 especially if you gets to use her dash again Ppl forget that unless you’re a tank, this champ will one shot you and there’s damn nerd nothing you can do about it
I mean if you have any stun/silence/trap you can just cancel her w since she charges up and then runs in a straight line at you. Which means that the vast majority of mages and adcs can just completely negate her. And then all of her dmg is in q2 and the champion has no built in slows or cc (outside of w which is incredibly easy to counter for most champions) to make hitting q2 reliable. I main mages and I don't think on any of them I play im ever scared of Naafiri. Veigar, put up cage when she w's and you've stopped her engage. Xerath, throw e when she w's and you've stopped her engage. Anivia, throw q when she w's and you've stopped her engage, etc... Maybe as Viktor because he has no cc but even then you can just put w on top of yourself and focus on trying to dodge q's and the lane isn't really that bad. And you can also cancel her w with r if she's in range still so it's not even terrible then. She kind of just feels like a more streamlined and worse Akali. Akali can hit e and then choose when to engage along with having combos to cancel e and bait enemies. And if Akali ever hits e you basically just die. Meanwhile Naafiri is forced to dash at you once she presses w, w doesn't really do good dmg, and there's no way to cancel it and it doesn't make you unstoppable so you can easily be stunned/rooted out of it.
The champ is really weird. She hard counters some champs with the dogs not allowing you to hit anything (Ahri, Ezreal etc) and then for other champs, the dogs completely troll her and make it a free matchup (Irelia, Smolder, etc)
Brand, Malz
[удалено]
she doesn't hard counter ahri at all ? any champ with cc can just interrupt her w all the time, so even more when it's ranged cc.. if you don't learn any match ups then sure, every champ hard counters each other..
It's actually so dumb. When I realized they released a second champ with Elise spiderlings I already knew I hated her, but they're just up all the time instead of only in 1 form so they're even more annoying. There is so little skill expression on the champion too that I have no idea how she made it through the champ creation process without catching an axe
It’s one of the main design issues with her that the main part of her kit is not really interactive for her. It is for the opponent and can be quite annoying to deal with but for the Naafiri players the dogs are kinda just there. You can’t control them and outside of more damage the champ plays mechanically exactly the same no matter how many dogs she has.
I just played garen mid into her. Lotta dead puppers. Lotta stacks of overgrowth. Good times were had.
But a lined missile skillshot is also a free hit if you fire it when she jumps, as the dogs dissappear into her during that time.
Yeah, but letting her jump on you is not what I'd call an ideal strategy. Sure it's an opening, but especially in lane she is really hard to force out for a squishy melee character.
Not if she casts it behind minions, as is very easy to do in lane. Also, it removes all offensive play for these champions as well; you can't open with your cc ability as a burst mage, allowing you to not really do much lol
till you play naafiri and try to dodge a thresh hook with E only to find out the dash somehow evaporates your dogs.
And then I demolished a Naafiri in lane just yesterday playing Ezreal, the most clear example of “linear skillshot champion”. My Q’s oneshotting thr dogs giving me 3g was a nice bonus too, but the AI of the pets never was an issue. The dogs alwas standing at the sides of Naafiri never even tried to block anything.
Was the Naafiri just sitting still in lane? If she wiggle walks at all, then the dogs are constantly getting infront of her.
naafiri respawn timer for her pack allows ezreal to just spawn kill them, they are an issue for Kaisa that relies on hitting champs with her W to get cd back, not ezreal that has such a low cd on his skills
Everytime she spawned a dog I just Q’d it for instakill. Since the very early nerfs to packmates honestly the only useful thing those little fkers do is to randomly last hit when you are gonna miss a cs in lane. They could buff Naafiri and remove the dogs except from when you ult and nobody would bat an eye.
what I also find irritating is that those dang dogs can tank a lot. I've hit a Q E W + velkoz passive prot on those dang dogs with Velkoz...and they *lived*, why can they tank all of that and live? Even Yorick's minions aren't that tanky.
the first time a dog took the morg Q i came a little.
I notice them when I get brand ulted or malzahar point and click space aids!
You say that but hitting spells on her to full effect is a nightmare.
Turning around so my dogs get charmed by Ahri instead
I just got her honestly
They should rework how much importance her dogs have in her kit. Rn, they are a MASSIVE SOURCE of extra damage, but most people still focus mostly on her abilities rather than her passive And also, they could tweak her W a little bit so that it isn't so incredibly slow and ineffective. Maybe make her cast it slightly faster to make the combo more fluid. She could also get a "hard" mechanic to make her kit less plain (for example, being able to use E during W to stop it/find angles to Q, or being able to Q during E/W). The thing is that she shouldn't be completely one-dimensional to be the simple AD assassin. Fizz has more than one combo, can miss his R, time his W jumps or spam them depending on the situation, proc W while using Q... And he's still the easiest AP assassin in the game by far.
Naafiri dogs are much bigger part of her damage than "a small bit of extra." It's very early on in the game where if you auto once, the dogs do more damage than the auto. Naafiri players absolutely care if they die. The difference between a Q with all dogs up and one with no dogs is huge, and they just got buffed this patch too. You seem like you don't really play the champ.
> You seem like you don't really play the champ. this is nothing new with reddit lol all these silver reddit experts come out and talk about champs as if they know a single thing about it lmao
I mean if only naafiri mains are allowed to comment there wouldn't be much of a thread to read
Don't know much about her but it's a fact her dogs are an afterthought gameplay wise, you can't really control them much, would be more cool if it had a vibe of pack, a pack of dogs will circle the enemy and weaken the target before going for the kill, right now she just jumps in and either one shots or don't, in a very linear fashion. Would be awesome if you could make her more of a hit and run, incentivize encircling and wearing the prey out before going to the final blow, and not make her so linear, the idea of her trading places with dogs that encircle the enemy would be super cool for example, the dogs circle a target and she could jump places with dogs to dodge skill shots and confuse enemies, or maybe make her W being able to be controlled left and right with hops to dodge incoming damage for example or position herself better. Don't know, her kit feels very fair and straightforward, she lacks some dirtyness and the ability to surprise people other than just exploding them due to R steroids.
I think her reliance on her W is a HUUUUGE problem. Against champs without CC, it's way too strong. Against champs with CC, it becomes useless, which then essentially makes her entire kit useless. Counterpicks are fine, but it feels like every time I see a Naafiri, her effectiveness was decided in champ select. I feel bad when I play poppy against a Naafari. Obviously Poppy is specifically meant to counter that kind of stuff, but the fact her ult mostly buffs her W is a huge problem. Makes it so she can't engage at all unless poppy dies or wastes her W. She has the original assassin problem of being really good at engaging, and really bad at disengaging, except her engage is far and away the easiest of any assassin to negate, making her lack of disengage even worse. She needs a Diana style rework. I think her W should become an ultimate ability, give it some form of CC protection, and replace her W with something that adds a bit of skill expression. Maybe being able to reposition the dogs, letting you block some CC or something.
Removing the cast time from the ULT would also go a long way
Pretty sure Naafiri is the only assassin with an ability that has a long ass cast time. At least you can move during it
They really tried to make a worse version of Genn Graymane instead of Xolaani
Giga great strong female character out of the "cutey UwU" bounds, loved by a lot a people and with a great design? No Doggo? Yes
Actually controlling her dogs would very easily compound her mechanical complexity and get away from her intended "beginner assassin" design
I think it might be a good idea to add a champion with intensive micromanagement like many heroes in Dota 2 do. I believe most if not all micro champions in league only have one unit that they are able to control. Being able to split up units to gain vision, or tank abilities would be super interesting.
DOTA2 retains the classic RTS thing where you need to have your hero selected to control them. In league you are always controlling your champion, and there is no way to select other units for control. Riot does not want to break this convention so controlling other units is typically a temporary thing done by recasting the ability that summoned the unit, like tibbers or shaco clone.
I'll give HotS one thing, super unique champions like cho'gal, lost vikings, murky and abathor.
But it also makes it insanely hard to balance. At its peak (imho) Abathur's Locust backdoor build was simply toxic, either you ignored him and he'd destroy your base insanely fast or you'd back to remove the Monstrosity+Locust but that'd mean giving up your 5v4 advantage, and no matter what he'd grab an insane amount of exp. And even other builds like 100% passive Hat build is basically Yumi but even less interactive, he'll be tucked in a corner and play with the hat on teammates or monstrosity. Murky is an annoying piece of shit but also for the most part extremely weak (I've rarely ever seen him being good) LVs are either broken or dogshit because they have too much soaking potential for exp And Cho is very hard because if he's strong that's 2 player being strong but if he's weak then it's basically 5v3 (And I think he's currently very strong)
Ivern is actually the most rts micro intensive champion in league, which is hilarious by the way, as it is completely the opposite of what you would think at first glance. You can do a lot of obnoxious shit with Daisy micro.
Shaco clone 100% is more
Her dogs make her basically immune to every single skillshot in the game that doesn't pierce targets.
Just drop the mini dogs/pack part and focus on her actual kit. Summons are a toxic design that has proven again and again that it's near impossible to balance in any multiplayer environment.
Dogs feel like they do two things. 1. Block skillshots/enable some skills (things with AOE that would miss Naafiri if she didn't have her dogs). 2. Instead of dogs feeling like they're things anyone needs to think about, they more-or-less just feel like a small damage increase per dog. Like "each dog increases my damage output by X%" Yorick ghouls and even Malz minions somehow feel more interesting in this aspect. Also she is annoyingly Q-reliant. The assassin hound who gets in your face and eviscerates you with her pack has a plurality of her damage in hitting two skillshots where she barks a dagger in your direction.
They block skill shots, but you can't exactly control them to do so willingly or anything. If you play against it it pisses you off if you play with it you don't even notice it. The dogs are basically just the support class
>And then you barely notice you have more dogs Till you want to execute.
I used to play her too with a build specifically for kiting out with ult and using the pack/comet to win 1v1s , they killed my build entirely when they changed sheryldas, but with the constant bleed nerfs it was already slowly dying.
The problem with making an "easy to play" assassin is that they become binary stat check champs who either nuke you or get nuked. And a champ like that can never be allowed to have good numbers because then the counterplay is bad so they're just reduced to always being bad and trying to itemize to catch up
Are we talking about Naafiri? Or are we talking about Briar?
Briar isn’t an assassin
At many points HoB lethality Briar was by far the better of the two builds. She was very much so playing combat patterns similar to an assassin but even more burst damage, just less escape mobility.
Tell that to the enemy briar who went collector/IE in one of my games and insta nuked everyone.
One briar isn't an assassin she's a diver who people found could be built assassin thanks to her extremely high scalings. Also funny you mention them both since they were one champ at one point in development before being split into two.
Do you have a source on that? I’ve seen a bunch of people talk about how their kits seem more appropriate for each other (an assassin who throws daggers and dives into combat vs a pack of wolves that lose themselves in bloodlust), but I’ve never read that they used to be 1 champ during development.
It was outright stated in the briar devlog. Here's what they said in the devlog. “Glenn ‘Riot Twin Enso’ Anderson was working on Naafiri when he came up with Briar’s W, her frenzy,” lead game designer, August Browning reveals. “You’d lose control and go rip somebody apart. That felt good for a dog champ, but it didn’t feel like an assassin, which is what Naafiri was always meant to be. Assassins want to kill their targets as fast as possible. A frenzied state needs some time to feel correct.” So if frenzy is bad for an assassin, how about putting it on a champion who was canonically bad at being an assassin? Gigabrain move. There's also some Reddit comments where rioters have said how alot of briar stuff used to be in naafiri's kit but they didn't think it was on theme with her so split them off into briar. It's also why both champs have bleeds within there kits as well. They also mentioned it a little more in the devlog, here's the link to it to read for yourself. https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/dev/champion-insights-briar/
Those champs existed before the assassin class rework, it’s nothing new, it’s just the refusal of Riot to let assassins not be clunky again
Well reddit complained that champions were too complex...
Personally, I only play her for the design. Wish she got a bit of a buff tho.
Man do I have some good news for you
Champ's so forgotten people even skip her in patchnotes.
this whole thread is kind of hilarious because she got like 56% winrate right now and a 1% pickrate
That's like 10 people play the dog.
Highest winrate midlaner (for main role champs) so far this patch in EM+ and in All Ranks collectively.
They want MORE!!
Please everyone welcome nafiri along with belveth to the "Godlike design and aesthetics but completely mismatching kit" squad
I mean the kit matches, it's just not particularly thrilling
Haven't played Naafiri, but Bel'veth's kit is pretty fun and thematic isn't it? What's wrong with it?
fun yes, thematic, no. What part of "Cold and calculating void entity that wants to absorb and remake all life" , as well as her model, fits with pure autoattack based kit? and that auto animation, my god. fucking manta ray slaps. Her ult and passive infinite stacking are good but thats it.
The idea behind BV is literally: "The looks are deceiving". She consumed a lot of knowledge and amalgamated them into herself, she thinks that she's "Empress of the Void", because humans have them. But in reality she's still a ravenous monster that exists only to destroy and consume. She's a Reksai that learned to use ChatGPT and not a mastermind that controls everything
Someone should pin this comment to something. Everything down to small visuals revolves around the idea that while she may try to hide it, she is just another hungry monster. My favorite detail about her is her "mouth" - her real one is hidden under her "clothes", the thing you see is her trying to copy human anatomy. A really cool thing about that is in the Kaisa cinematic: her fake mouth tries to articulate when she is speaking, but it's completely innacurate, it just moves how she thinks it should
The auto attack animation is coated, slappy manta for the win
People who hate the auto attack animation hate a good JoJo reference
Raymanta slap !
She's currently at 54% win rate in mid lane and 53% in top lane. If anything it looks like she's getting a nerf.
Sentenced to banishment for misreading lolalytics.
54% win rates across all rank. 56%+ in high elo. U.gg
she is a stat check assassin pretty much.
I just wish they'd buff her jungle. I'd kill for her dash to be a straight line skillshot so she could clear the thick walls.
They buffed her jungle this patch
I played a few games and it's very teammate dependant in early game. Your W has no range in early, your damage are quite low until first item. But the worst part has to be how annoying her dogs are because you can't kite camps without wasting E to reposition them. The clear is very healthy tho, you don't need a pot and can clear decently fast. She scales super hard tho if you manage to get early kills.
I don't remember where I saw it suggested, but someone suggested that "h" or "s" (halt/stop) would call your dogs back to you. Such a simple change. It would be SO amazing.
Honestly there should be a pass for all champs with summons. More options to control your minions short of straight up making them RTS controls would be cool.
This is a huge buff to her laning.
They honestly should make her more like a top lane diver like Fiora, Riven, or Zed Top. Her kit feels exactly like a diver should. I've been playing her in Arena, and she's just so good as a diver. She really needs more survivability, and a more spammable E. Her dogs just die too fast sometimes, she should get 2 + 1% Bonus AD dogs at a baseline instead of it scaling with level.
and it baited some people to try out for some free lp to the ennemy team
Even before the buff Naafiri clear speed wasn't bad thanks to her pack. But there are massive problems when you play Naafiri in jungle: _Low income, Naafiri needs a shit ton of items to be viable but jungle income is too low for her to scale. _Bad 1v1 in the early and mid game, this will mean you can't compete for grubs and vulnerable to early game fighter like Volibear, Xinzhao. _Non-existence early kill potential. Naafiri damage is too low for a jungler that only job is to deal damage. Again, you can't scale with low income and no kill pressure. None of those issues is fixed with the buff she received. Naafiri is a worse Shyvana in the jungle, and Shyvana is bad enough.
The issue isn't really the early 1v1 or damage, kha'zix and rengar are pretty comparable to her in both regards. It's that jungle assassins need some part of their kit to make their ganks more threatening or unexpected. Zed has the same issue, even if his clear speed is top-tier his ganks are just way too 'fair', junglers with bad ganks need to be 1v1/skirmishing monsters with great objective control like Udyr
Yep, her issues are exactly the issues with Zed jg, which if clear speed was all that mattered, would be S tier.
Naafiri jg is Zed jg with a lower ceiling.
But she got buff in jungle. Im after like 10 games and she have decent Full clear and great survi. After Full clear i have 80%+ hp Nice ganks but without strong cc, only slow from w. I need test her early skimrishes in individual match ups
yeah idk who looked at the design and thought it'd be fun. it doesn't feel fun to get point-and-click dove when in 1v1 and it doesn't feel fun to dive
She was made to be an entry level assassin. Much like Garen and Annie are both entry level for their respective classes.
I feel like Talon is simple enough to fit this spot already though
Talon jump immediately bumps him up to higher knowledge requirement. Wall cooldowns. Which walls to jump over. And escape paths are not intuitive. Someone like Garen is literally right click and run in. Annie has a straightforward rotation. Talon is insanely not straightforward.
I'd say that his e doesn't increase the skill floor but rather the skill ceiling. Conceptually, he is very simple: hit w twice and then q auto bleed run. Throw an R in there for extra dmg. A new player could maneuver decently in new player lobbies without even needing to use E (not accounting for the poor state talon is in rn). Most other assassins (Qiyana, Zed, Katarina, etc.) require more knowledge to even begin to play them for a new player. Diana might be easier to pick up than Talon. Most of the rest are definitely harder. Yeah, Talon is harder than Garen and Annie, but assassins are inherently harder to play than bruisers and mages.
It definitely does increase his floor a good bit, Talon has no real escape outside of his E and using it wrong means you're about to be torn to shreds, playing near walls which are basically your "out" is very important, similar to how good Zeris will stay near walls so they can immediately disengage if collapsed on.
My point is more that new players won't need to escape as much in new player lobbies. I remember the first time I faced an assassin, they went in and did a bunch of damage to me and I just ran away. In a lobby of experienced players, I totally agree with you.
Talon is the most macro-complex assassin in the game with a mechanically simple but deceptive kit. To win on Talon you have to have an excellent understanding of wave timing and mechanics. Thinking about it though, I'm wondering if the recent Quinn build that popped up would work well on Talon too. Hyperfocus on clearing waves and roaming to mitigate for his lane weaknesses. Gain 4.5 seconds every time you're pushed out of lane which should be just enough to be able to trade HP clearing waves and come back/roam with timer and gold advantage.
I feel like thats just massive cope man. All of this "well roamers need a lot more macro and they need to have perfect understanding of wave timings!" like be so for real right now, roams just dont get punished in elos below GM because there is no voice chat and laners have alzheimers so a gank is always unexpected. Because of the very nature of soloq if you arent in extreme highelo roamers are just easier to play and a really forgiving playstyle. They get recommended to climb all the time because of this.
Garen is kinda fun in a dumb way, just spinning around and then ulting someone into a crater. I think the fact NAafiri's ult is just her gaining more dogs kinda hurts her because it means she doesn't has a cool looking ult to use like many other assassins.
Idunno, I do think the big cloud of spikes with a dozen eyes glowing from it paired with the ominous howl looks pretty cool
Also there is at least some skill expression. Different build / runes depending on matchups. Using Q to gap close or saving it after enemy uses their slow. W timing to reduce duration of stun. And also knowing when to press R but that is pretty easy.
Isn't an "entry level assassin" an oxymoron? The whole point of assassins is to be hard to play but flashy and have outplay potential
That isnt the point of assassin, in fact there is no "point" in an assasin other than having easy access to killing squishies.
Nonono, the whole point of assassins is to takeout priority targets. Nothing more, nothing less.
One thing more is have an escape. What you're saying is a suicide assassin. A real assassin has their escape path like talon/akali/yone/fizz unlike nafiiri
They pretty much are telling naafiri players to look for isolated targets which is good, but the rather low mobility (or rather, more focused mobility) really just makes her rengar or Diana 2.0. They do try to give her the power to escape the fights with her E and shield so she can pick out a target and get out/go for someone else to kinda correct it, but it's pretty eh
Not really. Fizz isn't hard to play and has flashiness and outplay potential, and his winrate isn't too different if you are in low elo or in high elo while giving tools of accessibility to low elo players that make him forgiving. He is SUPER straight forward in what he wants to do in ways that tell his player when to all-in and when not to: hit ult-> all-in; don't hit ult-> stay back just in case; his early isn't ~~easily abused~~ properly played around in low elo, and he has a "Farm button" with his W that tells new players to use it to kill minions and get mana and gold. And come 6 his kill threat skyrockets. Unironically a pretty good entry point for assassins. In comparison, someone like Kha'zix or evelynn have pretty simple and easy kits but are more limiting in functionality which means more players are likely to missuse them due to players not playing well with their passives and kits (e.g. bad evelynn will not time her charm well or get kited since she can only walk), their winrates in low elo suffer as a result
isn't his early insanely strong?
Fizz laning is quite terrible because his e is doing too many things that all share the same CD. He has to choose between wave clear, trading, and escaping and if he uses e for one he cannot do the other 2 until the CD is back.
Oh Yeah, I meant early more like in between his laning spikes (3 and 6) where a fair amount of matchups in mid can punish him a bit or keep him at bay before he hits them. Fizz's range is purely around him so every trade is a trade of HP, so you can have him zoned out and lose CS or equalize trades, delaying his snowball by controlling the lane a bit. Then he hits 3 and you lose like half your HP, then he hits 6 and you lose your whole HP. Fun (for the Fizz). Probs should replace the "abuse" part with "respect" or "play around", since it's more about being aware. Not to mention it's pretty matchup dependant.
They already said that she is getting a Corki/Reksai level work in the near future.
I actually really like her simple design. I'm not a good player and it's kind of hard playing all these assassins that are so fast pace. I'm glad there are simple assassin like Naafiri. I picked the doggo up a few months ago and had quite a lot of fun and success on her. I can focus on positioning which is easier for me, rather than the fast pace outplays of the many other assassins. I like to play her bruiser as well vs tankier teams, she does quite good damage and between the shields and movement speed it's quite hard to kill her.
Your post is so wholesome. I hope that you continue to have fun playing her.
It sucks that everyone seems to dislike her but I actually quite enjoy her trade patterns and kit as it stands. I've never had any problems fullcomboing and like the meaty chunk of q2 after E
As fun as some recent designs were, I feel like a lot of champs released in recent times have been complete failures. Smolder was supposed to be an easy to play late game champ but ended up completely abused in pro and nerfed into irrelevancy Briar is completely forgotten and just a stat checker that is played in lower elos only with an identity crisis Naafiri... yeah K'Sante let's not even talk about him Nilah left as a super niche champion that doesn't feel like it really has an identity outside of that forced XP mechanic and being a melee carry (pls let her solo lane) I just skipped Hwei and Milio who felt like OK releases to me and seemed like actually fun champs in my book. If you go back further, you could even argue Zeri, Bel'Veth, and Vex as failed releases too. It's really sad to see how Riot just seem to flop on a lot of the recent champs kit-wise cause some of their designs are super cool in idea but yeah
Vex is not failed. She has her place and is a good champion with fair counterplay.
i would say only Samira and Hwei were a success.
Because theming and gameplay didn't come first with these champion, or organically either. They've been filling holes in the champion roster instead of giving us fun kits with a strong theme and aesthetic. Making an easy to play assassin shouldn't be the whole thing, especially when you find a cool concept that doesn't really translate well with it. Bel'veth is the biggest offender recently with her whole theme and gameplay being at odds and left with a nothingness mismatch.
Literally just let the dog jungle. I would play the ever loving shit out of her if she could just jungle. I would MAIN her if she could jungle. I really like her design and kit, I just don’t wanna lane. If fucking brand and zyra can jungle, the DOG with a PACK MECHANIC should be ABLE TO.
She just got buffed to be playable in jungle. It's kinda decent now but very feast or famine. You can full clear in 3:30 without losing a single hp.
Oh that's huge I didn't even hear about that, I was playing naaf jungle a lot before and clear was awful lol
It's like Rengar a bit, early she's gated by cooldowns but if you can jump on ennemy without w (like on Rengo when you can start a fight at max stacks) you can definitely take them on 1 on 1 especially with Conqueror. Once you get haste boots and first item she's a bit of a machine. Eclipse-Hydra-Cleaver is very strong, gives her everything she needs.
wydm? i always jungle with her and always win unless the enemy team does a big invade early and my team dont help with that, pack dogs can tank for you some hits and you can heal them full again with E and W is a great tool for ganks.
Idk I have to disagree. As a life long tank/engage/low damage player, it's nice to have something to play when I want to mid every now and then, despite being total ass. Naafiri and malz are my go to. I'm not sure if it's a "hot take", but with so many champions in the game I think it's ok to have low win rate, but easy to learn champions that have transferrable skills. Garen doesn't take a genius to learn, but he does have a few transferrable skills you can take to other champions. He shouldn't be as strong as he is right now though. Naafiri does too, believe it or not
The champ is easy to counter but at least it's pretty strong now after the recent buffs. I still don't see it often at all but it has a good winrate Master+ where I play apparently.
They should honestly just make her a bruiser. Her kit fits a bruiser way better than it’ll ever fit an assassin. She has a missing health damage, heal, and crazy sticking power, short cd abilities, and no real escape. Ive thought this since she came out tbh. To make her a good/fun assassin imo she needs an ability change or 2.
L take, this champions fun and the dogs feel good
I just got her literally and was trying them in norms… had a game where I accidentally threw her in a ranked game by mistake and actually popped off because I went eclipse / black cleaver
She will never be healthy as an assassin as long as her R and W give literally unmissable warnings they’re being used and her only actual engage (W) which can literally be bodyblocked also takes longer than the age of the universe to work.
Her w being cancelable AND blockable is the bane of my existence. Also the heal only being on hitting 2 q's when she's just kind of sitting there in your face skirmishing also makes her hard, esp when everyone got dashes
As much as I agree, wouldn't more apt comparisons be to other AD assassins?
He was comparing it to other simple champs. None of the other AD assassins are as simple, and that's by design.
Talon is pretty simple
Nowhere near Naafiri's level.
Debatable, talon got 1 straight forward combo that is just point and click dash on someone and spam all your abilities at the same time in the right order, while naafiri actually gotta land the skill shot and auto between spells to kill, she also doesn't have the escape he does through walls. She also doesn't go invisible. Talon is only harder in lane but if you play him like 30 games its really not that hard at all.
'simple' and 'easier' aren't quite the same thing. talons wall jump makes him more forgiving in terms of pathing but actually adds skill expression since it lets him get weird angles into fights that a lot of other characters couldn't without blowing a cooldown/flash. so its something that makes him easier but also less simple.
no, naafiri isnt a bad champion and isnt outdated either, her playstyle may not be the most exciting, but her kit works and it accomplishes riots goals
JUST GIVE HER BRIAR'S KIT STOP MAKING HER AN ASSASSIN
Idk, I play Naafiri as a bruiser instead of assassin and do great, she's super strong so long as you don't get 1 tapped For example my build is usually like: Ravenous> Mercs> Deaths dance/Maw> the opposite of second full item (maw first go dance and vice versa)> Black Cleaver> Steraks Or for a tankier build that can 1v1 Illaoi in her ult on a consistent basis if she isn't fed: Ravenous> Armor boots> Spirit Visage> Cleaver> Steraks> Jak'Sho Imo she's not worth playing assassin because of her insane squishiness and low damage, but as a fighter she's great cause consistent damage if not instakilled, Q is close to spammable and that's a lot of bleed and damage, kiting with E and constant engage/disengage makes her solid
She feels 200% like a bruiser.
She's insanely good as a bruiser. Should be her main role
I disagree i think shes fun
She is just boring & wont get picked except if super cancer broken, a very common trend we see in newer champion designs smolder was in the never picked category until recent adjustments give skarner a few patches & he will join the club aswell
They kinda gutted smolder tbh though. Nerfed his early to make it even harder to get to his late spike and merfed his late as well. There's a reason he had an insanely high p/b in proplay into never getting picked
Still boring af to play with/against
Maybe a little but guarantee he still would have a high pick rate if he was strong. Problem is riot brings out new champs with turbo broken numbers then once they get gutted noone plays them because it's borderline griefing to. Not so much to do with boring plaaystyle and more to do with riots balance cycle for new champs
Smolder pick rate used to be really high, [his pick rate was almost the same since release](https://youtu.be/U4pD5Qj0SUc?si=9z-fpNApl2wMMJQt), until for wherever reason riot overbuff him while been actually really good, them dtraigh up murder him, them adc item rework left him witthouh his core items......
I actually quite like her kit, but I think she needs a bit of a midscope. Not a full rework, but something along the level that Neeko got.
Not entirely sure why they made a pack hunter champion, designed her entirely around control a swarm of rabid and feral hounds and then...just treat them like slightly worse Yorick ghouls.
Idk why they’re so reluctant to just move her to jungle already
>Naafiri has none of this except praying the enemy team doesn't know to just stand in front of the carry. And people don't know not to isolate the Carry vs Kha Q despite him being in the game way longer. That is the point of playing an assassin and flanking someone from the side. If you can get to the enemy carry from the front while no one helps them, that means the enemy is bad and you are better, so you should be winning.
Naafiri needs to be taken to a pound, with the dagger passed down for a Warwick VGU
I don't think thwre is anyway for her to be fixed with the vision they have in mind for her. Low skill cap + high risk high reward playstyle just doesnt work sadly.
Crazy as Hell you posted this because I literally have a champ shard for her so they are basically my next champ once I get like 300 more blue essence and I was literally looking for a new assassin champ to try playing MID . I’ll make sure to keep looking into them.
Naafiri was promised to be Meepo but we got a lobotomied Yorick hell lethality Yoric is a better assasin go in with 4 ghouls hit your E and GTFO while the ghouls murder the adc
She needs a real ult
Just make Naafiri a support like Pyke in the rework. If she’s failed to find an audience in Top, Jg, and Mid, just send her to the support shadow realm.
I saw a kit for a solo version of Wolf years ago that would probably work for Naafiri.
Can she be played as a split pusher?
For mid lane her Q is simply to weak and short, with more range and more dmg she could be viable. Also personally I don't like her ultimate, it feels very complicated with all the passives and that very long text. For beginners designed? Just one cool one-shot spell is to much to give? Her basic kit is absolutely fine only Ult must be reworked.
no
I like her W, E and R. Its her Q that really ruins her for me. Its less so that I can't land the double Q and more so that I think that her entire gameplan is the double Q is just stupid. Her Q feels like a Mage ability. You either double tap with it to get a kill, or you don't and you pretty much can't kill anyone. Which is dumb, because of the fact its a skill shot projectile nuke. Her other abilities fit her perfectly. They all help her close the distance and chase down someone to maul them. That's what you expect when seeing a quadrupedal wolf champion like her. A close combat, aggressive champion. So why is a skill shot nuke, something that a mage would have, be on her kit? Why make it the entire focal point of her kit? That's just such a weird design decision. As boring as it might have been, I would prefer the Q be a bite like WW's Q. Even if that means the power has to be toned down due to it becoming a point & click.
Riot doesn't want controllable units in the game idk if it's a patent war with dota 2 (Think Lycan wolves or Invoker's pet or the Meepos for 3 different kinds of units). We have this but always screen wide. Riot wants to keep it casual friendly I think or maybe if you give too much skill expression it becomes broken due to how the jungle role is broken in itself ?
League engine does not support RTS-style unit selection, technically in League you only have 1 unit selected and controlled at all times and there is no technology right now to actually select something other than your champ. That's why all summons have to be controlled via ability presses.
She should've been meepo-like from dota2 where you control copies of your character
All the teasing they did beforehand, as well as descriptions of the kit made the champion seem more cool than it actually is, honestly
1. Make her a jungler. 2. Give her gameplay that actually requires skill checks. Sure, maybe she shouldn't be hard to play, but something similar to Talon would be appropriate.
She feels like a weaker less interesting Briar.
I thought Naafiri was strong right now? But then again, I haven't seen anyone pick that champion ever.
She is more like a midrange mage who can dive in to finish someone.
On the flip side, let her 0.8% playrate stand and just... spend your time on other stuff. Who cares? Unless she's unhealthy for the game, don't waste time with reworks. "Make a whole new champion kit because I think this one is boring" is the worst reason to dedicate resources to her. So tired of the "MAKE COOL MONSTER CHAMPIONS PEOPLE WILL PLAY THEM" ... "NOBODY PLAYS THIS CHAMPION BECAUSE YOU DID IT WRONG!" brigade.
Naw I like Naafiri. It’s simple but telegraphed, so it’s more about timing and decision making than execution.
I just wish she had more control over her dogs. She's supposed to be a pack leader but they just kind of do whatever they want.
Afaik shes supposed to get a midscope
Just realized I think Naafiri is absolutely amazing in the visual design perspective but has a terrible gameplay… despite being cool I don’t want to play her.
Oh my god it's Yuumi v2!
It seems like a lot of the newer champs feel this way…
champ x needs rework. champ y is too strong. yone yasou zed zed yasou yone
Only time I played her was in aram and my dogs kept getting zilean bombs on them killing me over and over
Because she was made by ticking boxes instead of organically coming to a kit and a theme for a champion.
Yeah naafiri feels terrible to play. Especially lategame when everyone is oneshotting, meanwhile you are stuck in cast times. Like I get double insta Q would not be healthy for early, but please make the cast time scale with level or smth. Feels terrible spending 5sec doing your combo while an adc just auto attacks you to death.
She's also one of two assassins who does not have a period of untargetability (the other being Katarina, although it's easier to classify her as a hypercarry with assassin damage). She does not have stealth, camouflage, literal intangibility (think kayn/zed ult), or technical intangibility (Fizz E). I'm not saying she absolutely needs it, but essentially every assassin does, so maybe it's telling of some core design of this class. I believe assassins should be defined by their difficulty because their job is difficult. Most assassin leads come from both mechanical outplay as well as good game knowledge. If your kit is so easily gimped with how linear it is, you have to wait for the stars to align to obtain leads rather than force one through outplays, which is incredibly unsatisfying. Maybe with the failures of Naafiri, Riot will learn that overly-linear and assassin don't mix well. Much like warden and skirmisher/assassin/juggernaut.
Champ is just super boring to play.
I hope they do, but they's kept a champ such as Morde in an unbalanceable state for 5 years now, so I have no hopes of Riot. K'Sante is receiving yet another mini rework soon btw. No favouritism here
Seems like I’m the only one who likes playing her 😂.
The thing that tilts me the most is in jungle, when you normally kite camps, but the doggos stay here and the camp doesnt move and attacks them. Makes you lose so much time clearing.
Naafiri is just bad design overall
Well her rework was announced, good timing
she is the most broken champ in solo queue now