Mark “Riot Scruffy” Yetter, Lead Gameplay Designer for League of Legends, tweeted Tuesday evening that Seraphine was getting some adjustments to her kit. The changes are meant to nerf Seraphine in the support role while also buffing her mid lane presence. According to Scruffy, Seraphine has skewed more towards the support role than intended. Scruffy added that the changes aren’t meant to totally kill support as a role for her. Instead, the nerfs are intended to bring her to a “reasonable state.”
Beat Drop (E) gets a poke nerf but does more against minions
From a glance, the League of Legends developers are largely adjusting the overall power of Seraphine’s E ability, Beat Drop. Instead of hitting for 60-85-110-135-160 damage (level 1 to 5), the ability will hit for 60-80-100-120-140 damage instead. At the same time, Beat Drop’s strength against minions received a buff. Instead of a ramping damage boost to minions, which ranged from 60% at level 1 to 100% at level 5, the ability will have a universal 100% damage buff against minions.
These changes should reduce Seraphine’s ability to harass with this skill, while greatly improving her wave clear throughout the game.
Stage Presence (Passive) does less damage early, more later
Seraphine’s passive ability, Stage Presence, gives her and her allies a “Note” buff for every ability she casts. Each champion can have up to four Notes at a time. Each Note adds 25 attack range and a scaling damage buff on the champion’s next basic attack. The multiplier of that damage is being changed from 7.5% at all levels to a scaling buff instead. Stage Presence will now add an AP multiplier of 6% at level 1, 7% at level 6, 8% at level 11, and 9% at level 16.
This once again shows how Riot is diverting strength to Seraphine’s mid lane. While the Stage Presence buff will be weaker early, it’ll be stronger later. As mid laners level up a lot faster than support champions, the upper tiers of Stage Presence’s damage will be accessible to a mid lane Seraphine a lot sooner, surpassing the previous version of the ability in strength at level 11.
High Note (Q) gets a big buff
While Stage Presence and Beat Drop are getting lateral adjustments, Seraphine’s Q, High Note, is getting a big buff across the board. Instead of hitting for 55-65-75-85-95 damage with a +55% AP scaling ratio, the ability now hits for 55-70-85-100-115 damage on a 60% AP multiplier instead. These are buffs to both the ability’s base damage and the damage multiplier.
Seraphine’s base mana regen also received a reduction, from 10 to 8.
Developer’s thoughts
The thought process behind these Seraphine changes is to push the distinction between her mid and support roles. Players picking her in the mid lane will be able to access higher-level ability buffs sooner, through faster leveling. Mid laners will also get a big quality of life buff from her greatly increased wave clear.
Support Seraphine won’t be able to access those higher damage boosts as quickly, but will still be able to prioritize maxing Beat Drop (E) for consistent crowd control.
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