Source
r/leagueoflegends•
czartaylor

Tahm and Senna's win rates have spiked heavily since the implementation of zCS Senna/Tahm in solo queue.

With 3000 games played (which while still on the small side is enough of a sample), Tahm Kench is now the highest win rate support in the game at a whooping 54.46%. This is a nearly 6% rise in win rate since last patch despite literally no changes being made to Tahm Kench, and his play rate nearly doubling (which would usually actually mean a drop in win rate). Actually, since zCS senna showed up last patch (meaning that last patch is a mix of both zCS and regular support tahm), looking at the patch before that (again no tahm changes), tahm's win rate is up more than 10% over 2 patches (with 2 patches ago being the last time he was played exclusively traditional support), almost exclusively because of zCS strategies with Senna.

The reason why we know this is is the fault of zCS Senna is because of the change in the highest win rate starting item on tahm, starting support items (not zCS) has a win rate roughly equal to tahm's overall win rate (45% ish) as of two patches ago, but last patch tahm's win rate went up 3% overall with a 56% win rate on Doran's shield (which signals zCS strat), and this patch Doran's start is up to 59% win rate with a nearly 55% win rate overall.

Meanwhile, Senna in the ADC position's win rate has increased to nearly 56% with 8000 games played. Her win rate as an adc is higher now than it was before she was nerfed the last time.

The only factor that's changed is the implementation of the zCS strategy on Senna. Last patch, the highest win rate starting item on senna was Doran's Blade with a 53% overall win rate. This patch, it's Spectral Sickle with a 57.55% win rate. The story is the same as tahm too, her win rate has spiked heavily in the last 2 patches (2 patches ago being pre-zCS) although not as much since it was already high, with last patch her best item win rate being Sickle at a 59% win rate. It was spiking last patch, and now it's become more of the norm and her win rates are truly out of control.

This isn't even discussing the pro play issue where traditional adc senna has a even 50% win rate, but support senna (which includes both traditional support and zCS) has a 77% win rate, with only one of the losses being zCS, all the rest were with senna on a traditional support with an ADC. This isn't like funneling where it's purely a solo queue problem, this is demonstrably the way to play in pro play too, and the trickle down into solo queue shows that it's just as insane there.

And just on the off chance that people want to argue about boosting through low elo and being worse the more disorganized people are, both Senna and Kench's win rates actually increase the higher elo you go, up to 56.61% in masters for kench and 56.95% for Senna. It's only in challenger+ where the sample size gets truly puny that their win rates start to become even semi-reasonable (and by reasonable it means never drop below 53% win rate).

Some additional speculative numbers for your consideration: tahm is being played as zCS with Senna roughly 50% of the time. We know that his win rate previous to zCS was about 46%, and because nothing has changed to traditional tahm support, we can assume that it is still 46%. Since it's about a 50/50 split play rate wise on zCS/traditional, we should be able to average the win rates to get the real win rate of zCS. It gives us an actual 62% win rate for zCS kench.

The stats speak for themselves at this point, Senna's win rate has always been almost unacceptably high but has reached truly insane proportions, and Kench whose win rate as a support has been in the toilet for literal years and has spiked 10% over the course of 2 patches solely because of zCS abuse. Either u.gg's stats are fucked up horribly again, or to be honest, this is well within hotfix territory. This is completely out of control, and to be honest, I expect it to go nowhere but up as more and more people pick up the strat and the regular tahms/sennas are filtered out. I normally argue against using solo queue strats and especially not this early into patch, but both of them already have fairly reasonable sample sizes, and it's clearly a problem in both pro play and now solo queue, and those numbers speak for themselves. I know you guys are busy complaining about eternals, but this is a real problem at this point. The advantage for playing Senna/tahm in a duo is insane at this point, it has none of the risks that make funneling bad in high elo/pro play, and has a similar effect on the game.

All stats generated using u.gg at plat+ for solo queue unless otherwise noted, and gamesoflegends for pro play stats.

for some context:

zCS senna is basically playing senna as the adc, but she takes the support gold item and doesn't take much cs. Her support is the one csing, not her. the difference between that and traditional support senna is that she's still being pair with a support (almost exclusively tahm kench) and is still functionally the adc, but her support has way higher income than their support, and she keeps up well with the enemy adc

tl;dr if you're duoing play zCS senna/tahm and get the lp while it's hot.

Posted Mar 5, 2020, 3:43 AM UTC · edited

4965
KappaCucumberz:urgot:•

As a former tahm kench one trick, the only possible way to solve this is to nerf kench. That win rate is obviously way too high :^)

53
Deadtoads:yuumi: Meow :yuumi:•

Knowing Riot they're already pushing out those Kench nerfs.

18
nikolateslafanboy:singed: GAS GAS GAS I’M GONNA STEP ON THE GAS :singed:•

Just rework his W into his ultimate already. I just want to unbench the kench for heaven’s sake.

9
Baloomf•

IDK why they didn't make it so hard CCing Kench spots the champ back out

2
Warbags:tahmkench:Pengu Highlord•

The busted thing is cleansing an already cced adc. That is not the problem imo.

I just want to play my kench top in piece, take away eating teammates altogether

0
Xyltin:vi::leona:•

They want to rework him anyways. Especially the W and R.

5
KappaCucumberz:urgot:•

Then just do it so that I can have an actual champion please. It's been this way for so long

8
The_curtain_feather:camille:•

I miss tahm top.

-1
League_acct:yorick:•

I sure as fuck don't.

3
profirix:chogath:•

100% chance Tahm nerfs on their way despite the champ being worse than trash outside of pro play.

1
KappaCucumberz:urgot:•

Bruh look at that winrate, obviously tahm kench adc is absolutely broken. Needs to be nerfed.

Im just so fuckin sad, any champ i play they just destroy then ignore

1
profirix:chogath:•

Tahm Kench isnt the issue. TK + Senna is. Being an ADC that doesnt need as much gold to succeed is a huge issue for balance.

1
KappaCucumberz:urgot:•

I am obviously joking, I'm not completely blind I'm also a depressed kench top onetrick.

2
S7EFEN:taliyah:•

the problem with stats like these is that theyre a bit misleading.

duoq on its own has a pretty inflated winrate, so combos which are only ran by duos, or mostly ran by duos get inflated by this.

47
czartaylorOP•

thing is unless that you accept that in fully half of the games that tahm is being played in he's a duo (with a higher pick rate than last patch), it's not just duo abuse. On top of that, Tahm's play rate has more than tripled since 2 patches ago (when this was completely unknown)

for a comparison, yi/taric (the mainly known duoing strat) has a pick rate of about 1%, 1/3rd of tahms overall pick rate and still lower than the games he's played as zCS (which is about 1.5%). And the thing is, this requires almost no changes from playing normally. Yi/taric requires specific strats for funneling, senna/tahm's laning pattern is largely unchanged other than tahm being the one to last hit instead of the adc. There's no required organization ahead of time, you can reasonably make this happen with a random in high elo without prep ahead of time.

0†
mazrim_lol:katarina:•

It's really something that vastly more likely to be coordinated as duoq, even in high elo demanding the support plays tahm and farm is not going to be popular, it is just a vastly different play style

6
kthnxbai123•

I’d imagine that the percent of duo queue for this strategy is much higher, probably close to all. It’s a relatively new strategy so not everyone even knows about it and I find it difficult to believe that you can convince someone to both pick TK and change their play style in solo queue (or vice versa with Senna). You see people counterpicking themselves all the time, which shows that plenty of people just want to play the game their way rather than what’s optimal.

1
TheMegaInFamous:darius:•

This is gonna sound real dumb but, wtf is zCS?

13
theWhinja:ruuol:•

Zero CS. Basically playing Senna as a soul bot instead of a farming AD. Usually paired with tankier/safer supports like Tahm

24
Devourer_of_HP:zed:•

Basically support senna that supports a tanky sup, senna plays like a sup but builds like ADC while the tanky sup plays normally.

3
czartaylorOP•

zCS senna is basically playing senna as the adc, but she takes the support gold item and doesn't take much cs. Her support is the one csing, not her.

the difference between that and traditional support senna is that she's still being pair with a support (almost exclusively tahm kench) and is still functionally the adc, but her support has way higher income than their support, and she still is comparable to their adcs from passive stacks. It makes senna nearly impossible to kill (because of how support items work with gold) and gives them overwhelming lane dominance that they shouldn't have (because they functionally have 2 full gold earning members in a lane that's balanced around 1 person getting full gold and 1 person getting partial).

It completely invalidates the intended weaknesses of both senna and her support. She still gets the stats to carry from her passive and support gold items,and the peel of a support except it's actually better than normal because the support has so much more gold, and they get way more gold than they were ever intended to have.

It's mainly played with tahm because he scales better with gold than almost any other support. Not only is he a real damage threat with items, but increased hp/resists make him even better at his job of saving adcs, and it makes locket of the iron solari totally insane on him because of his additional health.

-4†
BrianC_•

Less hyperbole would be nice.

Saying it's 2 full gold earning members is extremely disingenuous when it's just factually not. It's just a Senna support lane income except your ADC is a peeling support champion instead.

And Senna is not "nearly impossible to kill (because of how support items work with gold)." She is hard to kill because TK negates any CC or engage that you land on Senna with Devour. And the "overwhelming lane dominance that they shouldn't have" they'd have in any advantageous match-up where a Senna support gets to freely harass what is essentially a naked ADC 1v1 or even 2v1 regardless of her ADC. We've seen her in non-TK support pairings in professional play and guess what? Her lanes have priority.

It has nothing to do with gold. It has to do with the stylistic difference between ADC Senna and support Senna. ADC Senna still has to CS and thus she can't poke aggressively -- especially with her terrible wave-clear. Any aggression in the lane is largely dictated by her support and because she's typically paired with a defensive support, the lane is usually pretty passive. Support Senna gets to focus fully on poking so the lane is pretty aggressive -- especially in match-ups where she wins trades.

Jesus, man. I get you have a bias, but if you're trying to be taken seriously, be objective.

22
[deleted]•

[deleted]

-19
BrianC_•

i grant you it's a little hyperbolic but not necessarily inaccurate. I just used round numbers because it's less wordy

No, it's very hyperbolic and you just continued it more.

The net income is overall greater in terms of effective stats because of senna's base stat income on top of full income for support. Her passive means that she's still maintaining relative stat parity with the enemy adc but tahm is vastly out striping the gold of their support.

No, it does not. It just factually does not. Between the lower gold income from a no-farm Senna when converted to relative item value compared to a full farming ADC, Senna's lack of innate AD growth from leveling, and her lower value itemization from poor AS and crit scaling, what is essentially just support Senna does not have the same gold income as a conventional ADC.

There have been pretty detailed topics regarding this posted all over this reddit and they've universally concluded that you get more gold from just CSing.

Again, it's not different from a regular Senna support lane except she is getting funneled the kills you get. That is not changing the total gold income of the lane, it is simply transferring it to Senna instead.

again no, but it's substantially harder than any other support in the game because tahm gets so much more power to invest in items.

No, it's substantially harder because it's Tahm. Even before this strat emerged, Senna ADC + Tahm support was a staple pairing in pro play and she was extremely hard to kill.

Is she a bit harder to kill now that the TK is getting fed? Sure. But make no mistake, the overwhelming majority of that strength is coming from TK's peeling ability, not his gold.

gold not necessarily, it has everything to do with stats. Senna is allowed to keep up with her opponent adc in stats because of her passive regardless of her lack of gold compared to them, while tahm far outstrips the enemy support in terms of both gold and stats.

Wrong. Again, Senna does not keep up with her opposing ADC in stats. It's just mathematically untrue.

For the last time, the reason why this strat is strong is because it is essentially a meta hard-counter to tank / engage supports or passive defensive supports. In those match-ups, due to the lack of counter pressure or trading strength, Senna is totally free to harass unpunished and even overextend at will because the TK can cover her. She's completing her support item extremely quickly and building up souls at a very fast rate.

12
ru7ger:bard: Let's collect shinies :Senna:•

The net income is overall greater in terms of effective stats (as well as actual gold income) because of senna's base stat income on top of full income for support and her passive gold generation.

Im sorry but net income means actual gold, not theoretical gold earned from picking up souls. So if you want to talk net income difference, you can only compare support item and the +3 gold on soul pick-up. The support item stacking doesnt mean that senna stacks it quicker than her opponent, as you don't know what you're laning against.

On top of that, he's hitting his items spikes ahead of the enemy support and is a credible damage threat because of his hp scaling (whereas say braum on support income is not in any world). That's where the dominance comes in, both senna and tahm are hitting their item spikes ahead of their opponent.

This is a very bold statement to make and is (more in solo Q than competitive) not true. Since senna is going support item you no longer can compare senna vs enemy adc and tahm vs enemy support, since one farms and the other doesnt. Therefore item spikes must be compared between adc enemy team vs your tahm. Knowin this makes it that tahm and senna dnt necessarily hit their spikes before their opponents (DMT (2900g) vs essence reaver (3300g) or stormrazor (3200g)). Sure thats a 300g difference, but you will get bullied out of lane vs the right bottomlane matchup into them.

Again, i agree with you that Senna tahm as a whole is rlly strong, maybe too strong. But this isn't due to the fact that they are impossible to lane against. People just don't know the easiest answer to it: Pyke. Pyke shits on both INCREDIBLY hard. So the truth of the matter is no longer the safety and how broken tahm + senna is, it's that people dont know which lane matchup counters them so hard than senna has trouble getting those stacks. That senna has trouble getting souls from poking. That senna has trouble healing and healing without being oom.

TLDR: Pick the right matchup into them, figure out ways to hard counter what they want to accomplish. It isn't all that hard tbh

4
shaunika:sylas:•

Doublelift on suicide watch

4
ru7ger:bard: Let's collect shinies :Senna:•

Just pick Pyke into it with any aggressive, CC-heavy or/and farming laner and you beat that combo. Agreed that it's really strong, and as a duo it's even stronger ... but Pyke is the true answer to counter the strat

2
Chao_Zu_Kang:kassadin:•

Pyke Zyra. Pyke kills through TK shield, Zyra deals the dps. Think even double support item should be viable (not sure, but the support items on 2 members should work together, right?). You miss like 47 of max CS score possible IF you'd CS perfectly - and usually you don't anyways because you focus on pressuring the lane, so the difference will be even smaller.

2
BrianC_•

I don't think you need to go with something so off-meta. Literally any conventional ADC with a bit more range + a support who can actually trade against Senna evenly or better means you should win lane.

We've seen a lot of TK + Senna at the pro level already. The games are all the same. We've seen poor Rakan and Taric stand there helplessly as their ADC gets the shit poked out of them by Senna. And, if they even attempt to step up, Senna just switches to them and pokes the shit out of them instead.

We've seen Yuumi picks that are equally bad because she is also just hopelessly watching her ADC get bullied as she just occasionally tries to poke with a Q that Senna just sustains through with her Q.

We've seen a strange Ziggs ADC pick into her as an attempt to out-poke her but it didn't matter because his support was a Nautilus that couldn't do shit because TK would peel any attempt to engage and the Senna would otherwise poke from inside the minion wave.

The idea is really simple. Instead of just letting them play their game as an aggressive poke duo, you just draft a superior poke / sustain duo and make it so that Senna cannot poke without taking a losing trade. Without Senna there to pressure back the opposing laners by winning the poke battle, TK won't be able to CS because a melee ADC trying to CS against a poke lane is suicide.

2
The_curtain_feather:camille:•

in the LCK they just played Varus and yumi. Perma shoved. Yumi sustained up all of senna's poke, Varus was able to harass [taric in this case] and the lane was pretty much over. After lane yumi went and carried the game like she always does with her superior engage, sustain, and poke.

2
areyouactuallyseriou:zed:•

This will not work vs TK. TK can play super aggressive early game so if you get hit by one slow especially as an immobile adc you will die or have to use summoners to get away.

1
ru7ger:bard: Let's collect shinies :Senna:•

Nah, you want 1 support item. But yeah Pyke Zyra would probably work. In LCK they already showcased a potential counter (even though they lost the game in the end, but the idea was there) by going Morg (farming) + Pyke

1
Chao_Zu_Kang:kassadin:•

Depends on your gameplan, e.g. your jungler can gank and take some farm so the support items ends up being free vision. I'm just not sure wether the execute counts as CSing for the other person. Cause if it does, 2 items make no sense.

1
ru7ger:bard: Let's collect shinies :Senna:•

That would mean your jungler stays bot 3vs2 24/7. Which then opens the map for the enemy around mid + top + enemy jungle as well. Don't think thats worth and you're better off giving the farm to 1 of the laners.

1
Zeravor•

I'm a supp main but what does it say about adc's when botlane it's 2 supps vs 2 supps lol

1
Chao_Zu_Kang:kassadin:•

Nothing. Because you pick it as a counter to an ADC with support item.

1
The_curtain_feather:camille:•

you really dont need anything crazy like this. Varus and caitlyn can both out range senna or at least be range neutral and all you need is a raka or a yumi to keep up with the sustain. At the end of lane phase you come out with less utility because youre not running two supports, but raka and yumi are broken hyper carries and varus and caitlyn do way more damage in team fights than senna and are better objective takers.

The problem in soloq is you need your jungler to keep an eye on the lane because you are vulnerable to ganks where the tahm/senna are not. Most junglers below diamond 2 just aimlessly wander around the rift.

2
cenzala•

Maybe riot needs a new approach to making champions... everything they've released and reworked since zoe (2017) had to be nerfed hard, REALLY problematic to balance.

The list by release order: Zoe, Kai'sa, Pyke, Neeko, Yuumi, Qiyana, Senna, Aphelios and Sett.

Reworks: Irelia, Akali, Ryze, Ryze, Ryze, and ryze

2†
JFZephyr:natl:•

Well a lot of those champions were actually in a fine place, or in a bad place, other than in proplay.

Zoe got nerfed because her damages were far too high. They added skill expression and reduced the simple burst from Q, forcing you to rely on her other tools to deal damage. She suffered in SoloQ, but still dominated and still dominates proplay.

Kai'Sa was overtuned. Toned down and left alone. She's pretty much out of meta or third tier.

Pyke also got gutted because of proplay, particularly solo lane Pyke. Pretty bad SoloQ champion up until his ult gold was increased.

Neeko was meant to be a control mage, but they screwed up her AS numbers which allowed on-hit to dominate along with her W, particularly in pro. It was nerfed and she barely sees any play.

Akali was strong, then nerfed to the ground. Still too good in pro-play so she was curbstomped a few more times. Now she's irrelevant unless used as a counterpick in pro, and pretty bad in SoloQ.

Yuumi has an issue of requiring too little skill. Initially looked awful but once the proper build was found she ran rampant until both healing and poke were nerfed. Re-buffed due to little usage, and once again broken. Likely needs to be re-worked to be balanced without breaking the champion's legs entirely already.

Qiyana was also generally just a problem in pro and high elo play. She was heavily nerfed for it. Limited usage now, once again unless entirely drafted around or counterpicked. Still fine in SoloQ but loses most every lane.

Senna was overtuned and still is. Waiting to see the solution to this.

Aphelios is too complicated for lower elos. He also outputted tons of damage. He's already a lot less powerful than he was, and will likely still be nerfed further due to pro presence.

Sett is pretty simple to deal with, but his stats are more the problem than his kit. Once they find the right level for his stats he should be a fairly fine champion, but he's currently a stat-check machine similar to Garen when he was powerful.

Irelia was also too good in pro, so was further nerfed after already poor performance in SoloQ once initial nerfs rolled out.

Ryze was never that strong in SoloQ. Fairly good at higher elos, but once again dominant in pro because of a team oriented ultimate as well as an unintended interaction (R+Zhonya's) that made him untargetable in sidelanes. He's still not even that good, and has generally been removed from pro other than certain players and matchups.

1
StarSpliter:pyke::velkoz:•

Garen and Yi are still popping off in solo Q though. (Ik you didn't mention yi but he's similar, maybe a little more skill oriented with dodging cc and absorbing dmg with meditate)

1
JFZephyr:natl:•

I don't think Yi can ever really be balanced without a rework. Same as Garen. If they're good, anyone can abuse them. Same as champions like Sona, Taric and Soraka. There's so little room to actually outplay these champions when they're good.

There's so little skill expression involved. Both kits revolve around popping a speedup and running people down with enough true damage that you cannot do anything about it. True damage in general is unhealthy, but the way it functions for these two is at to high of a level. There's not much counterplay to a Yi popping ult and running your entire team down. He can Q to evade any of the few forms of CC that can work on him. Garen can Q and W and suddenly he can no longer be kited or killed.

You've got similar champions like Darius, Kayle and Sett, but these champions have very clear weaknesses that can be exploited (kiting, early game, kiting again), but Yi and Garen don't have that issue. Yi is a hyper-scaling champion that can duel at any point in the game and likely win. Once he gets items you need a full team to kill him. If he has a supportive champion with him you just lose. Garen is nearly impossible to kill at any point in the game, especially 1v1, and outputs as much damage as most scaling champions.

2
xGreenie:ezreal:•

I just really hope they can nerf zCS without shitting on normal ADC Senna, I feel like after the soul changes she gets already adequately nerfed/brought more in line when having to CS. Would be a shame for her to get gutted as a traditional ADC because a semi support abuse case is out of hand.

1
Degenerate_Gremlins:eug2::yuumi: WTB Rekkles tears•

She's already proven to be nearly unbalanceable as both adc and supp.

And since they've said that they'll prioritize supp > adc they'll probably fuck her over.

7
xGreenie:ezreal:•

Sadly true. I wish we stopped having Uber damage supports because I really enjoy her playstyle as an adc...

2
Xyltin:vi::leona:•

I don't this this is the case. You can balance her for both.

  1. Nerf soul drops to 20% again down from 25%

  2. Increase soul from CS drop from 1.67% to 2%

  3. Nerf AD scalings. Q healing down to 0.3 fr 0.4, W dmg down to 0.5 from 0.7

  4. Add AP scalings to Q dmg and W dmg.

  5. Replace soul scaling on the R shield with AP sclaing.

Athenes support senna would get a decent boost like that making up for the lost souls. ADC zCS senna would drop decently hard while ADC Senna would likely be a bit weak (souls drop chance let CS likely a bit up if it has to be)

Riot just has to kill zCS AD Senna and move the support onto AP and the ADC onto AD.

0
ZambieDR:jhin:•

the will bench the kench later.

1
OfficialBeetroot•

Very balanced champ Senna is. Very cool. They must test only vs beginner bots at this point there's no excuse.

1
Lord_Drizzy:koskt: I love Faker until my last breath:natl:•

I know every new champ is supposed to be OP and what not but Senna is just disgustingly over loaded, like just nerf this shit already lol

1
Abryssle•

They keep trying to make Supports that play like other roles... who invariably end up basically just playing in the other role, but they don’t need the gold.

It’s almost like supports conventionally developed into the playstyle niche they had because that playstyle niche was gold requirement minimal and when you staple power to a champ so they can be an ADC/Assassin without gold they become a balance nightmare.

1
kuburas:lulu: Lulu Main :lulu:•

I wonder if the exact same strat would work with Pyke. He has the same grey health thing, scales really nicely with items early on, and can do a lot of damage.

Kench has a safer style, but i feel like Pyke could be a pretty good alternative if they decide to change Kench.

1
PersonalSherpa:kaisa: Genndy Did it Wrong•

Not just Kench. Not necessarily better but certainly more fun to take a melee solo lane champ instead like Zeyzal did in the LCS. Senna/Renekton is pretty hype

1
mbr4life1•

Senna Melee I’ve played it it just feels very strong as it negates her weaknesses. Then couple that with umbral glaive being broken it just makes it too strong.

1
Panthaero-•

ADC - item reliant high damage scaling champ

Support - utility focused and powerful with minimal gold investment.

Rito Banditos - Monkeys that keep pushing out overloaded balance issues.

1
[deleted]•

[removed]

1
Draconilian•

Maybe a champion with good right click damage, hard CC, a heal, and permanent caitlyn+ range is fundamentally unbalanced? I called this back when her passive was revealed

-1
Unholysinner•

Just gut Senna... make it so you need like 100 stacks to get extra range.

Remove stuff like the ability to q towers or wards.

Make it so there’s a limit on her w in terms of people hidden.

-1