21.7.11

Inb4 Next Patch

Morello is doing talks about a "global teleport tech" which has been one of my ideas for a long time, limiting the range of global abilities. While I have supported the idea in the past, I think that adding a range to globals at this stage in the game could be detrimental to the heroes that it will be affecting. Why?

Well, there is the classic instance of Shen, where he is first picked/banned every single solo queue match. Then, a patch later (and a blog later where I predicted this would happen), Shen is seen to not be viable anymore, simply because what Riot did to him was change certain aspects that were not OP to compensate for the one thing that made him OP. They changed around stats and made his laning phase utterly terrible which was his weakness to begin with. This tilted the balance of the OP scale so much out of his favor that he was basically deleted out of the minds of a majority of the community.

While TF may be percieved as OP at the moment, I am not sure if adding a range to his ultimate would truely "balance" the hero. Without his ultimate, TF is very weak. We are already seeing a decline in TF bans in tournaments, and nerfing his ultimate by adding a range to it could be the final nail in the coffin of TF that will bury him alongside Eve and Twitch, and countless other heroes that have been nerfed out of viability. Adding a longer casting delay on his teleport (1-2 seconds) may be all that is needed to fix TF, rather than making his ultimate a ranged ability.

As for Pantheon, I see him to be a niche hero. He sacrifices laning dominance for having a global ultimate, one that I have seen to be very strong lately if used correctly even at 2200-2400 levels of solo queue play. I do not think that Pantheon changes are necessary, as his global has a huge casting delay that makes up for the overpowered global mechanic, balancing it out in effect. I think that Pantheon is in a great place, and bringing him back to where he used to be where he dominated lanes with little effort is not a direction I would like to see him go.
The most overpowered mechanic I see at the moment is teleport. Giving heroes a global mechanic that should not have them is detrimental, and this was seen at dreamhack. Having to farm at tower because the mid carry can instantly kill you if he leaves the map for 3-4 seconds is a mechanic that is seen as "anti-fun".

Giving you the ability to see the ward that the enemy is teleporting to was a very weak fix. I suggest making teleport only targettable on blue/purple minions (not player minions) and towers, which would be a very simple and correct fix. Teleport would still be strong, just not unavoidable to the point where you have to buy a level 6 oracles or you WILL be stuck at tower farming for the majority of the game.
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