What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
So Riot confirmed that tanks are the very next class update, and we know for a fact
that the tank update will be launching during the mid season, but we haven’t had much
specific information about the direction they are going with each of the tanks they decided
to cover.
That’s now changed, with Riot Solcrushed sharing some information about Sejuani that
has given us a really good idea of what we can expect to change with her in the upcoming
tank update.
So sit back and relax, as we talk the current issues with tanks, how they tie in with Sejuani
and what the future rework is going to look like!
And if you enjoy the video definitely hit that like button because if this video hits,
let’s say ratings, then I’m gonna .
We’ll go over the core focus of the tank update pretty quickly because we should definitely
touch on it since it explains what’s going on with Sejuani.
So Riot have locked down three main goals for the tanks, although they aren’t the
same for EVERY tank, it’s a good generalization.
First up, they want to give tanks more skill expression, which essentially means they should
have more interesting mechanical decisions to make, and there should be more opportunities
to counter those things for players on the enemy team.
This also means increasing the skill ceiling on tanks, because right now once you have
the basics down, you’re pretty much at the limit when it comes to improving with a tank
champion.
Giving them new mechanics should reward players that keep dedicating time to learning them,
so you can actually feel like you’re mastering that champion.
The next point to hit on is that tanks are dealing too much reliable damage to a fight.
We’ve seen this in the form of the tank meta, where the huge base damage of tanks
meant they could deal huge damage while building pure tank items, making them super hard to
deal with.
Tanks are supposed to be picked for their defensive and crowd control abilities, so
it’s safe to assume tanks are going to lose out on the damage they used to have, but they
will also be set apart from their offensive counterparts and actually start behaving like
actual TANKS.
The last thing is uniqueness - you probably guessed this one because it’s been a huge
part of every rework so far.
Vanguards are the initiating tanks of League of Legends, and right now they are all really
similar.
They jump into a fight, CC people with an AoE ability, and then wander around trying
to be useful for the rest of the fight.
It’s likely that this is going to change, although it’s likely that their non-initiating
abilities will be the focal point for these changes.
Okay, so with that out of the way let’s focus on Sejuani’s issues in particular,
and what Riot could do to address them.
It’s not exactly a case of ‘potential of archetype’ for Sejuani, but she definitely
has an insanely cool thematic fantasy.
Her background is that of a barbarian warchief, and she rides a boar.
That’s actually pretty damn cool, but only one of her abilities does anything that interacts
with her mount, and nothing to do with her gameplay reflects the fact that she’s a
tribe leader - she should be boosting the morale of her army, not trying to do everything
solo.
The fixes for this issue are actually pretty simple, because it’s just a case of giving
her new abilities that tie into her theme a bit more.
That means she’s likely to get even more mobile and ready to rush into a fight thanks
to her trusty boar, and Riot confirmed that there will be moments where Sejuani feels
like she is leading and inspiring her allies.
There’s a few cool ways to do this, for example Riot could implement something like
the old Captain Boots enchantment on her Q, so that after Sejuani charges forwards, her
team gains something like bonus movement speed buff if they follow her into the fight.
This would also give teams with Sejuani extra value when she’s correctly used to initiate
a teamfight, while not really affecting anything if Sejuani is trying to do everything alone.
Another big problem with Sejuani is that she’s picked pretty exclusively for her Ultimate,
and for good reason.
Right now Glacial Prison is up there as one of the most powerful abilities in the game,
but that’s actually a really bad thing because it takes up most of her power budget, which
results in the rest of Sejuani’s kit suffering.
There’s only so much power Riot can put on a champion - like how Blitzcrank can’t
have a strong Ultimate because his Q is so much, whereas Sejuani’s power is weighted
towards her Ultimate.
That does kinda sound like it’s just Riot saying they are going to nerf her Ultimate,
but if that means she can become a more interesting champion through her basic abilities, that
might not necessarily be a bad thing.
Keep in mind that Sejuani is a vanguard champion, so she needs a way to initiate a fight and
help lock people down.
That means she’ll definitely keep some version of her Q gap closer, and she’ll likely keep
some form of CC on her Ultimate too - it will just be less obnoxious and require Sejuani
to use some of the other tools at her disposal rather than just relying on landing an Ultimate
every teamfight.
This ties in pretty well with our last point about Sejuani not acting like a warchief - if
she’s going to lose power on her Ultimate, then Riot needs to shift some of that power
elsewhere.
They did actually mention that they don’t want to just give Sejuani one big catch-all
buff to her allies in order to get the war leader feeling down, instead she’ll have
the ability to benefit specific allies in ways that help aid her fantasy as a barbarian.
That might mean it only gives an AD buff that only AD champions can really use, since AD
abilities tend to be a lot more visceral and in line with that you’d expect from barbarians,
but we’d guess that Riot has some cooler ideas than that.
One of Riot’s biggest issues with Sejuani lines up really well with one of the primary
goals of the tank update as a whole; that they just aren’t all that interesting to
play.
This is especially true with Sejuani, with Riot describing one of her abilities as essentially
a glorified Sunfire Cape.
It’s not that Sunfire Cape is a bad item, but ambient AoE damage is a huge weakness
in terms of interesting gameplay for a lot of tank champions.
For Sejuani, that probably means Flail of the Northern Winds will be removed or changed
to something completely different, and the same will probably go for other champions
like Amumu with the same kinda thing with his Despair ability.
There’s just no need for ambient AoE damage on tanks - they aren’t there to deal damage,
they are there to be tanky and give utility to their teams.
It might be a bit ambitious of us to guess that all these abilities will be removed,
but if Riot want to re-focus the tank class and make them more interesting to play, this
would be a really good place to start.
Removing Flail of the Northern Winds would open a huge space in Sejuani’s design that
would give Riot an easy way to make her a more fun champion.
Taking power away from her Ultimate means they want her basic abilities to be more engaging
and actually have some kind of mastery curve attached to it.
Although she’ll definitely be losing out on damage compared to her current state, they
want her abilities to remain impactful - which probably means more CC or utility for her
trouble, making her even deadlier than before as long as she picks her engagements correctly
and coordinates with her team.
Something we haven’t mentioned so far is her passive, which Riot have confirmed is
likely to change.
Right now Frost Armor isn’t actually all that bad since it does increase her armor
and slow resistance which is a very tank-specific passive, but there’s two big issues with
it right now.
Firstly, it’s activated by Sejuani dealing damage, which should never be her core consideration.
Next is the fact that it’s yet another ice-themed ability.
When you think about Sejuani, you should think about an epic barbarian chief riding a boar
with ice-related powers because of her Freljordian origin.
Instead of that, the barbarian chief and boar parts are pretty much negligible - she’s
just a big brute with ice powers.
Riot is likely to cut down on the ice focus at least a little bit, just to make more space
for the rest of her fantasy to come out of her backstory and become a part of her actual
design in game.
Riot have said that all tanks, Sejuani included, need to put more focus on their defensive
abilities rather than their ambient damage - which.
That leads us to believe that her new passive will be some kind of interactive defensive
mechanic - one that both Sejuani and her enemies can play around.
A good example of an ability like this is Malphite’s Granite Shield, giving him a
shield that refreshes if not broken after a certain period of time.
Malphite can plan his engagements around when his shield is up, and enemy players can try
poke it down before committing to an engagement.
Obviously Sejuani’s passive isn’t going to be a copy-paste of Malphite’s since they
need separate identities, but this is the kind of interactive and defensive focus that
we’re expecting to see on Sejuani’s new passive.
Anyway that’s just about everything for today on Sejuani’s upcoming rework in the
mid season tank update, there’s quite a lot of fresh information here that has really
helped us understand what Riot actually has planned for her, so hopefully you guys found
it just as interesting as we did.
Make sure you leave us a comment and let us know what you’d like to see Riot change
with Sejuani, or share your thoughts on the confirmed changes and whether or not you actually
agree with Riot!
And it looks like that’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like,
subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time.