I feel there are two core problems with Aphelios, that if fixed, could make him a less oppressive ADC
Aphelios is a weird champ by design. He can do a variety of things with certain comboes, which means his identity is switching fairly often. It makes it somewhat hard to predict, and if he can catch you off guard, it can potentially be destructive. There's nothing wrong with this kind of play, and imo riot has done as much as they can in order to improve visibility of his guns.
With that being said, there are two distinct problems with Aphelios that need correcting:
- Too much value out of Runaan's Hurricane for both Severum and Infernum (being nerfed).
Runaan's Hurricane gives both Severum and Infernum far too much value. In the case of Infernum, it allows his to hit 4-5 minions and/or champs with one auto, which is quite insane. It allows him to push waves unbelievably fast, while also making it hard to avoid any part of the Infernum damage, meaning you can potentially be hit numerous times from a single auto. This is already being addressed in the next patch.
Severum gains a lot of value from its healing, which at about 2-3 items, allows him to heal for about 100HP per auto in a minion wave with Runaan's. This is unbelievably strong, and makes it so that he will always win duels in even 1v1 matchups, purely because no one can outheal him. The item becomes even more insane with Runaan's, which is why I propose a nerf from 4-15% healing. His healing will feel a bit less oppressive while also retaining its identity.
- Certain weapon comboes being impossible to fight against.
Fundamentally, I refer to Severum + Chakram, but honestly, any gun paired with Severum is devastatingly powerful. This speaks to how much value Severum provides him, having an auto steroid with movement speed, while also applying on-hit effects can become very very strong. In this vein, I'd nerf the amount of autos that Severum does, to 4 + (2 per 100% bonus attack speed). As a compensation bonus, increase on-hit damage to 30% from 25%.
I understand that this is a long read, please provide any feedback about this behaviour, including any suggestions or particular parts of his kit that you feel are simply too oppressive without good counterplay.
tl;dr nerf Severum healing, nerf Severum Q to attack less, and deal slightly more damage as compensation.
Posted Jul 17, 2020, 3:39 AM UTC · edited
I actually like that there are weapons you simply can’t fight him with when he has them.
He always feels complex but it’s pretty straight forward when he’s weak and when he’s strong
You like when a champion has a window, where you almost can't touch him? Like where if you start a temfight when he has that combo you autolose because you can't outdamage/ outheal him, so you have to concede lategame objective?
Having to play around weaknesses of specific champions is OK, but ADC who has slow/snare, AOE, long range, stupid heal, turrets hitting with other weapon+arguably strongest 1v1 tool in the game (choose 2) is dumb. Problem of Aphelios is that most of his guns work too well with eachother. His kit is too synergistic.
You can always play twitch against him. Once both of you get to 3 items, you are just a better adc than he is
Yes. It makes counterplay opportunities very clear and the few champions that have these CLEAR windows when you can't touch them tend to be rather easy to understand.
Just look at Illaoi for example. She has a window where you can't really touch her. Its not a huge issue though.
I agree that Aphelios guns work very well together, I disagree its too synergistic. I do think that the shakram gun is too strong and likely needs a nerf (and its getting one right?) but besides that he has very clear weaknesses that we see abused rather frequently in pro play or even solo queue streams.
I think the biggest issue people have with aphelios is that they don't understand him well enough (for solo queue). For pro play he is surely a little strong (due to white gun) but even there we see the counterpicks doing well in punishing him
The thing about Illaoi is that she uses her ult once and you can just walk away and re-engage like 10 seconds later. Another thing is Illaoi doesn't have engage and is immobile, so you can kite her around. If you walk away from Aphelios, he keeps his guns indefinitely. You have to somehow waste his OP gun combo before the teamfight and even then he might have second strong combo prepared.
I don't think he is OP in the current state, but I don't like his kit. He just has too many tools for too many situations.
I get what you are saying and maybe even agree a little when comparing him to other ADC champions. Yet I think this is more an issue of some ADCs being way too one dimensional in these times.
If he is that easy just play him
I hope you are joking. I never said Aphelios is easy. I don't like Aphelios. Your post was meaningless and not funny.