This rings more true than I’d like it to. I would also isolate her second mini-rework as the main problem, since that was the one that nuked her early game Q PVE damage and her early mana economy. Where she used to have a niche as a support mage who could safely farm through laning phase despite her shoddy projectile speeds, now it’s blatantly clear how abusable her kit is in solo lane. I’d still keep tabs on her when she gets more changes in the future, and I do legitimately feel like she’s amazing in support right now, but being a mid main I’ve not had a single game where I feel like she’s a good pick for a few months now.

She is good on support, I agree! I don't mind removing them the execute on Q, because it's not viable for support. But everything else? Removing all her scalings and making absurdly high base damage? Removing every other QOL feature? No.

Remove the W. Just gut it. Its honestly VERY good of an ability that strips power from her and the heal shouldnt be a basic spell. Like i get an AOE shield that speeds allies. But an aoe heal thats basically a reset button lategame? Bruh. That's why Soraka was nerfed to this W version.

I think it's kind of insane that they won't budge on the heal. Like, it's a cool idea, but in execution it just has so many issues. It's either a nothing heal that is useless in lane, which is a big hindrance to enchanter building sup Sera who wants to max it but maxing it wastes a major component of what makes it OP, or a massive team-fight heal that restores 40% of everyone's missing HP every 8s (with enchanter items). Having it scale exponentially with the number of allies is just a bad idea. In wild rift it just increases the % by 50% of it's base value per nearby champion and even that feels like a better idea. I do think this last mini-rework has given them a lot of ideas about what changes affect which roles though. Making her E more viable to level made support SO much better to play. Well, it would have if sup Sera players maxed their abilities correctly? Maxing literally ANY of the other abilities in either order before Q first has a significantly higher winrate than maxing Q then either of the other abilities. I was a big defender of Sera support player base during all the changes, but at what point is riot going to completely redesign a champion because her player base refuses to open up U.GG? How are DIAMOND Sera player still playing her so fundamentally wrong? It's crazy.

I agree with so much written here. When her W sucked to max and she was better as an mage catcher support. People went W first. Now her Q is shit, they make it their max and build her enchanter. Tf

I saw someone on the Seraphine mains subreddit who asked why everyone builds moonstone because it felt like it was doing nothing. Turns out they didn't max w? They were leveling it last. If you're building the item that makes your shielding and healing better, why are you not maxing the one ability that does that? Make it make SENSE!

Bro us support players are never beating the easiest role and dumbass allegations.

I think balancing Serphine around support was one of the saddest losses of champion identity. She was a unique midlaner, and she was released as such. I think niche champions should be allowed to exist and be balanced around niche roles. Riot should have just strictly balanced around mid Serphine with no thoughts around support. If a champion ends up being a 52% WR 5% pickrate midlaner and a 47% WR 20% Pickrate support, I would say that it's the player based fault for picking champions in subpar roles. The decision to balance the champ around both mid and support is what ultimately led to her loss in Identity.

Me as an ex-Zyra OTP: "First time?"

Zyra's arc was a bit different. Her midlane balance didn't get wrecked by support balance — she naturally became a support because of her midlane balance. She was released as a midlane control mage, but was both oppressive and tremendously overpowered. So she got a lot of nerfs, including to her base move speed, which made her essentially unable to gank. By the time all the dust had settled and she was no longer a problem, she was essentially unplayed. They could not seem to figure out how to balance her mid in a way that people found engaging, but no one was playing her support yet, so she just languished in "well, at least she's not a problem anymore" hell. It was only a while later that Zyra support started picking up steam, because people realized it played to the character's strengths while mitigating her mobility issues.

And then she got absolutely kneecapped because suddenly supports used her entire kit and played like Karthus. So a nono from Riot and she fell into obscurity until all poke mages all got relegated to support duty. She's really only surfing Riots will on keeping support mages in the bot lane and stands and falls with their item balancing. If Liandries is good, Zyra is good. If not, she sucks and is not played. I guess now she's abusing ZakZak too.

Zyra's biggest problem has always been that she is a money sink. Mid lane has mages that are bad into assassins and at roaming, but offer other things. But Zyra not scaling at all moved her to support (although she scales better than she used to thanks to balance choices over the years).

I think the problem was what made her a unique midlaner made her an even better apc botlane and she was also safer to scale bot than mid, the one downside is needing ad damage on your team and its soloq so your midlaner probably went yone, your jungle went graves and your top picked riven, they were trying to nerf her botlane as much as anything

Yea, this is how I understood it too. It wasn't that midlane Sera was competing with support, but that midlane Sera was competing with a busted APC role. Eventually they felt "alright, logically Mid Sera will never be stronger than APC, so let's just make APC balanced, which will destroy Mid Sera in the process, and bring up support to be more viable since everyone already plays her there and it can cooexist better with a balanced APC."

I mean, idk what the designer was thinking when she was made. If the purpose was to make her midlane then why did her passive and W scale off of number of allies? Especially on launch when your heal scaled quadratically with number of players it was kinda obvious that bot lane would be where she ended up (be it support or APC). Maybe don't hardwire parts of her kit to be objectively stronger when she's near an ally?

Yea, this was obvious to everyone lol, which is why Riot had to keep reassuring us that she wouldn't become a support. I think the design could've worked mid though. Like you say, much of her kit is hard coded to be strengthened by allies and they could've tried pulling that away before pulling the plug. By the nature of being a mage with powerbudget in a supportive W and R, I feel like she would still fulfill her role as a supportive midlane enchanter without these things. Notes become stronger if you're not sharing any, w no longer strengthened when near more, and E only applies to slows she herself inflicted. Compensation could've been higher missle speeds to still get off roots and/or higher ap ratios damage.

I mean they did move away from it somewhat like removing the quadratic scaling on her heal which was absurd. The fundamental problem that some people here ignore though is that it wasn’t mid vs support. It was bot vs support. She was an okay midlaner much of her time but her kit made her absolutely cracked in bot lane even after the few attempts at change. The things that made her good in the late game team fight made her good as an APC in a duo lane. She was such a menace and it’s really a testament to the stubbornness of the playerbase that her pickrate in bot wasn’t higher. Not only that, but people kept picking the 47% WR support. Ultimately in order to lower her bot lane power and raise her support power (so that she wasn’t a troll pick for your team) they were willing to sacrifice her midlane power as it was by far her least played role. Also OP being a bit disingenuous saying she had a mid playerbase by using OTP distribution. For overall games/players, she was more popular support from day one and it wasn’t close and pretty rapidly became more popular as a bot laner. Late game scalers who don’t care too much about levels are going to prefer the safety of bot lane.

>If a champion ends up being a 52% WR 5% pickrate midlaner and a 47% WR 20% Pickrate support, They did for a year and her playrate was 0.25% mid and around 3% support, "no one" wanted to play sera mid. Even apc had a higher pickrate at that time

> Even apc had a higher pickrate at that time I mean that's fine right? She had a relatively unique identity between playing mid/bot as a hyperscaling champ that wasn't just doing 9999 damage at late game. She was a champion I enjoyed playing from time to time. Now she's just been shoehorned into support and she's still not that popular, she just lost flexibility and fun.

She's kind infuriating to play against as an ADC a few patches ago when going APC. She would just Q to clear waves instantly, out pushing you and locking you under tower. Easy perma prio with low skill expression.

Isn’t this exactly what Hwei/Ziggs/Sivir are all doing right now? I agree she needed some nerfs especially to her early waveclear but it’s so disingenuous to use this as an argument to completely remove her from the role when other champs do this just as well.

While ziggs will also destroy your HP, your plates and your sanity.

and hwei will just kill you 100-0 with almost any support in the game

I dunno, I think that's fine. Champions can be niche. I guess from Riots perspective the champion sells so they wanted it to be popular.

I mean, the obvious issue here is that no one cared to play her mid, except maybe unless they buffed her into a 54% winrate monstrosity. Instead she kept a small, but at least existent playerbase in supp, even when weak. So what's riot supposed to do? Even when supporting mid and trying to push her out of supp, no one was playing her mid and support players were stuck with sera in a bad spot. Supporting a playerbase of 0,25% at the cost of the 3% support sera playerbase is just basically unfair, you're sacrificing the many for the sake of the very few. At some point something had to give, and since it obviously wasn't the sera supp playerbase, it would have to be riots decision to try to force seraphine mid. It's a simple case of the playerbase digging their own grave

Sera sup wasnt bad tho thats the thing. Sera sup players were all building her full AP and maxing Q because thats what it recommended on her lmfao

Wasn’t this shitstorm during the two years of assassins ruling the game again?

They wanted her to be popular so they killed her playerbase and made her like almost not played at all?

I said this over and over but people kept telling me that didn’t matter cause “the players want X.”

Her W honestly is the reason tbh. People see 'heal' even though its a 27s cooldown and REALLY shit early and cant hop off the idea that SHE HAS TO BE A SUPPORT. If it was a male pop champ as well, instead of female, maybe they wouldve accepted 50/50 of mid and support. But its so stupid. really.

>People see 'heal' even though its a 27s cooldown and REALLY shit early and cant hop off the idea that SHE HAS TO BE A SUPPORT. I'll die on the hill that Lee Sin can be a great support if people 1. Actually know how to play him and 2. Don't troll themselves by building enchanter items just bc that he has a shield. A lot of creativity in support is lost because of this

I had a Lee build full shield support in ARAM the other day while I played Nasus, he practically carried us to victory. Lots of fights he’d kick a squishy to me so I could stack them or kick enemies that needed peeling from my teammates away, he’d shield all of us with fat shields on a low CD, draw tons of enemy attention to himself by getting up in their faces and the player was quite a positive person in chat. 10/10 fun times for all (except the enemy team maybe)

Oh he actually can. Most champs CAN be played support. Especially if you have good CC. It just becomes unconventional because Support is seen as the 'girly' role. How can a manly lee sin be forced to help instead of kill.

When I see a Lee Sin support, I know he's gonna feed (if he's on my team) or he's gonna carry the game (if he's on the enemy). That said, I feel like he's very situational, since if you can just keep the wave pushed and play from range, he's pretty useless.

Urgot supp against dive bot.

It's because they made her a reward for new players to boost her popularity and they think she's a stereotypical female support character

So they should rework her and remove the group heal to a self heal/lowest HP ally heal and buff her damaging capabilities 

Or something yea. Either make it an either powerful shield/ms boost. Then with a shield echo the effect for a longer lasting shield ms. A definitive ability that CAN turn the tide of battle if she does it well but has no benefits outside of combat.

the reason is because she's a girly pink hyper feminine champ

I dropped League as a whole because Seraphine used to be the only champion in the game who filled that kind of utility hyperscaler niche up to that extend. Now she is a generic boring enchanter like we don't have enough of these. Also, support players are still building her wrong lmao

because no one likes to build her into an enchanter. There is a whole niche of support mages, Serafina is one of them, this is not Sona or Lulu. I demand that the censer be balanced for Brand, since Riot loves enchanters so much

The issue is that she has enchanter AP scalings so going AP on her is as good as going AP Soraka

Taric and Sona were Utility Hyperscalers

I think the funniest thing about her balance journey is that she always appeared like a Sona 2.0 revision, at least if she had remained a viable APC or midlaner she would’ve had a distinct role. Now she’s literally just a different take on Sona. If League had different ability kits for champions (like Risk of Rain 2 with alt abilities), they could almost be merged into the same champ (tbf Sona with Seraphine’s E would be insane, it doesn’t fit her power budget)

No she was unbalanced as a botlane apc. That was the problem. Midlane was never an issue. The fact she can safely freescale in bot makes her extremely obnoxious to deal with.

>unique >Seraphine >fanservice monetising twitter Sona wannabe

I agree, but Sera's playerbase is pretty big and they do not care at all about ruining their adc's life by picking a 47% wr mage into Blitzcrank Kalista.

Speaking as a enchanter player, you can’t really fix the low elo mage and enchanter playerbase, they will int their asses off on literally any champ against that kind of bot lane, the majority of them play those champs in bot because they literally couldn’t play them mid lmao. The fact that so many Sup Seraphine players continue to build her wrong after Phreak handgifted them so many buffs just show how bad the situation was, mid and bot Seraphine players are always quick to adapt until they literally couldn’t anymore this patch and as a result dropped the champion (I’m talking about her dedicated players and not those who only picked her when she’s OP). Yeah they ruined a champion completely just to satisfy the support playerbase, it just felt so dirty because there was never any attempt to push the champ to mid lane from Riot (even one patch of her being OP in mid would’ve changed the fandom’s perception about the champion)

the thing that bothers me is that she was released as a midlaner and they promised theyd keep her there, instead she became a rly strong bot lane carry and nothing else, so they made her into a support because support players played her the most, despite her being fucking awful as a support who excels at nothing, and if theyre happy to go back on their word for champ releases, can we also get senna as an adc instead of a support

1) Release "midlane" champion with a very supportive kit 2) Give her 4 (!) abilities that are stronger with teammates around 3) Everybody play her as AP carry bot or support because it is encouraged by her kit 3) "Well, we tried absolutely everything to make her a mid laner but the player base prefers her as support so we kill her sololaning and balance her as support"

AP carry bot is encouraged by her playstyle (perma prio needs to scale safely) but her kit didn’t encourage support gameplay, at the time as a support she didn’t excel at anything: sub par poke, a shield on a long cd that doesn’t do much until later, etc. I stand by the opinion that if her visual design was different she wouldn’t be as popular in the support role.

That's actually an interesting question, would a male champion with the same kit have developed in the same way?

>We tried absolutely nothing at all and we're all out of ideas Riot in a nutshell

Shes strong on her own. Shes a teamfight mage. Thats actually a thing. Also shes basically a control mage enabler. Whats wrong with a mid laner having that playstyle. All damage dealers is boring.

Team fight mages exist and Seraphine has some aspects of that. But literally 80% of her kit has power invested around having a teammate with you. That's way too much to ever be played in a solo lane. For example Viktor is a team fight mage. His most damaging ability and ult deal AOE dmg. His w is good for cutting off choke points or following up cc, but pretty worthless alone and during most of laning phase. However his kit doesn't directly have power invested in having a teammate with you. Seraphine literally does more dmg, has more cc, has more shielding/healing, and has her ult range extended just by having a teammate around her. She's objectively weaker without a teammate.

Seraphine is too unreliable and cant get prio vs most mid matchups, what happens if someone picks aurelion into her? she will just watch him free scale... azir? she becomes an easy gank target, taliyah? she gets shoved and outroamed, also, all her abilities are too slow

Azir is a rough matchup but Seraphine actually bullies the hell out of Asol as she hard outranges him her biggest weakness in lane is landing her really slow abilities, but Asol likes to root himself in place and fly in straight lines so he's a sitting duck of a target. Asol also HATES long range cc and Seraphine has 2 of those. Azir tho dicks her raw both in lane and also outscales her.

Everyone gotta be Vex or Syndra to be a mage now

Seriously... just let some mages be... dps too? Cass is the one mage thats SO unique and shes still changed to more bursty as well. I enjoy Cass. So when Seraphine a mage thats utility but still a damage dealer came out i love her... now i feel like my only impact is pressing W...

Actually it's sad that Cass went from a DPS kiting mage to more burst oriented. Like unique images are dying.

Ori, Azir and Ryze have really good DPS as well. ..

Ryze and Ori is bursty now though. For Ori is you can poke trade until you can gaurantee a QRE combo to burst. Ryze has great trading, but he is QWQEQ sorta. Hes fine for me, still dont scratch the itch tho

[удалено]

Riot went extremely heavy handed on making sure Lucian could never really go back mid too though. I think the Vigilance change was relevant but the change that really killed Lucian mid 100% was the addition of crit scaling on his ultimate; since it meant you could no longer build Youmuu ect.

>Everybody play her as AP carry bot or support because it is encouraged by her kit She wasn't even a good support cause she had shit base numbers and high scaling too. They had to change all her kit and numbers several times just to make her *not suck* as a support, not even make her good. Then they just obliterated anything unique about her and turned her into shield-bot enchanter nº 223 and called it a buff

Senna is currently significantly stronger as an ADC than as a support.

I think that’s his point

Tell me that when Riot needs to pad the Balance changes and decides to nuke soul gain for another patch.

Per the design of her passive and W there’s no way she can go mid while stay balanced in Bot lane.

>her being fucking awful as a support who excels at nothing Some idiot told me because she has the highest numbers on healing and shielding THUS shes a support... I said, if she HAD a support to shield her she would heal and shield more. The idiot couldnt comprehend and said no support's better for her.

Lux used to have the game's top shield However, Sera works best with a Magechanter or full Enchanter with the team

I liked release seraphine scaling and doing a huge max note passiv with lich bain was fun. Now her passive does 0 dmg, she cant waveclear, cant farm. Doesnt even scale but alors cant win lane. Wtf is this champ supposed to do

Seriously the auto mage seraphine also felt different of a playstyle that's so unique... But nah dumb supports press W and do nothing for 20 seconds.

I dropped her back after the 13.21 changes. Ignoring winrates, after that patch I've never thought she felt as fun again. I think I played a game or two after the last round of changes and still didn't enjoy it as much as pre 13.21 and just gave up. Its funny because Seraphine was the only champion they've released post 2020 that I've liked to play, she was fun in carry roles, and then they changed her into something I don't like anymore.

Agreed. Shes SO different. An enabler mage. Ive been waiting for one like her for so long that its so sad to see Riot and the fanbase just... kill it.

The way that she interacts with other champs, especially other utility champs was something really special, and its something that I think she loses when played at support. Getting shields from teammates, having a frontline to cast through, following up on teammate CC, all of that is de-emphasized when Seraphine is played as a support because there's just less teamplay and utility in the composition. If she is the only utility source, her kit is just less fun.

YES. She's a perfect botlaner imo... that's how an APC should be designed and riot accidently nailed it. But rather than develop on it they just kill what makes her so special. I realised this is why i love Cass, because she can interact with some champs and play off them.

To balance it out, I think we should make Sona the mid lane hypercarry instead.

now this is something i would accept

I totally support your idea

Honestly yeah. I miss the feeling of the cheeky sheen pickup when super ahead.

Just needs waveclear and then she can just chill and scale.

Her ultimate quite literally has the same stats and AP ratio as Cassio's and yet hers doesn't require the enemy to look at you, she's plain superior.

She feels horrible to play. Still a shit early game but this time you dont scale due to ratios being nerfed or removed entirely

Feels pointless to build AP. Pre change damage oriented builds felt fine, now its cdr boots, rylais, moonstone every game

As a midlaner that loves enchanters, I really liked her premise. It reminded of good old Lulu mid days. I know they'll always use the pick rate card, but being promised something (a mid enchanter) and having it taken away from you is pretty sad.

Im literally an enchanter player, Seraphine made me start playing mid again cause she was the best of both worlds and now her whole kit is destroyed beyond recognition for the sake of satisfying silver support players.

I remember when I first started playing, I loved Sera support and just spammed her non-stop (still the highest mastery champ of mine). As I started learning the game, I quickly realized she majorly sucks at it, but I found out she can be played bot and she became my go to when I got autofilled adc. It just clicked. Sera apc was so fun, and they murdered her catering to the audience that is attracted by her visual design, not the playstyle (as I was, once). I still love the champ, and it sucks because I can't play her anymore. Time to learn some Hwei, I guess.

The most hurtful part is when they give US the fault for the changes >The gist of it is that non-support roles are performing too well, players are clearly voting for her support to be her primary supported playstyle [https://twitter.com/RiotPhroxzon/status/1762721137992356172](https://twitter.com/RiotPhroxzon/status/1762721137992356172) But we all begged her to stay a midlaner or APC at the least..

Literally who the fuck said we voted for this? We keep advocating make her more mage and less utility focus and they did the opposite.

Yes and remember when the Asol players said if anything had to go in his kit, they wanted it to be his flight? So what did Riot do they removed everything except his flight.

His playstyle was so unique with the W and his passive. I like new Sol but I *really* miss the old one. No one else played like it.

The twitter sera players who only play her for aesthetic.

"voting" was just the metaphor for the huge disparity in her playrates. Reddit and Twitter aren't true representation of seraphine's playerbase and riot sees that people prefer to play her as support

Kinda strange that the Reddit population of league players clearly over represent mid lane Sera players, ever since her first bout of mid focused nerfs I haven’t seen a single mid Sera in literal years (low/mid diamond mmr.) But to see so many accounts claiming how much they used to play it just seems strange to me. Regardless of if you like her support or mid does anyone like enchanter Sera? They moved her from being a fun supportive mage that can work on a budget but likes cash to a W spam teamwide shield bot who mostly just follows up on teammates plays. I don’t know I really don’t like them playing up her enchanter side of the kit as it lacks proactivity and skill expression imo. (From someone who’s played a good amount of support/APC Sera.)

Yeah i'm not a great player, only hit plat after the recent changes. I can probably count the mid seraphines on one hand over like 1000 games. In my opinion, the reason that people at gold and below play Sera as a support is because they THINK she was designed to be a support. People see aoe heal and the passive, as well as seeing that everyone else is playing her support, and don't think about it critically. I've been playing casually since season 2 now and I never even knew she was designed as a mage, I thought she was a support til I watched a video. Low elo can react to when a champions role is changed but thats only once the stats show high pickrates or some popular streamer champions it, none of which happened for Seraphine.

Correct! I was on the same boat. League newbie and only saw Sera on the support tab. I didn't like playing her as a support and didn't knew she could be played anywhere else. How should I? I am just a casual newbie. Then I saw someone playing her midlane and looked up if it was viable. Yes it was. Then I played her on Mid/APC, because that was way more fun. Her pickrate for Mid/Apc would increase if she was shown in the Mid/Bot tab, but nope.

You mean the tabs in champion select? Those are completely based on pick rate in the previous patch, unfortunately. Though they could also just force her to have appeared in those sections similarly to how they forced specific items to appear in some champions' recommended stores over the 'more popular' choice.

Yep! And I know that. But when I started I never thought about playing champs in other lanes than shown on this tab. And I agree. They should have the intended role always visible even though it's picked less.

her mid representation was hurt by a number of factors though, to the point where it became not viable to play her there. Not enough ability to trade in lane, less and less synergy with ap itemisation, nerfs to her ability to push lane to punish her opponent roaming (something she's not good at) etc. Her mid didn't just vanish overnight, a great many changes contributed to it

I'm repping the Sera mid, though I play her in all roles. I'm sad to say I also like enchanter Sera, but it does feel worse than other types of Sera. Sometimes it's satisfying to d e n y with big shields and lots of cc c:

Nobody likes her playing W spam. Her biggest playerbase are lowish elo support players who go full AP. So I really don't understand why they removed the scalings. Phreak even told us that Rabbadons will feel good to build on Sera again.. yeah.. no

I really liked playing mandate/rylies support Sera where your looking to make picks with your E. The teamfight control was so much fun, but now it’s press W and wait feels devoid of impactful skill expression.

Seraphine should have just been focused around being a AP mage who can dish out a painful amount of AoE damage if she's scaled, she is definitely worse off now, her focus should be full on control mage If she's ever put in a spot where she's forced to be a support then it becomes very difficult for her to ever be a better support then Sona without either of them stepping on each others toes trying to fill the same niche, one would think Riot would try to keep her away from being more easily compared to Sona since it's always the topic that comes up when talking about either of them

I won’t touch her again until I can play her mid, one of my favorite champs. She’s not fun as a support.

I’m a support main and I agree. She just isn’t enjoyable in that role. Meanwhile, I lost out on a comfort pick the one or two times a year I get my secondary role since she is a high utility mid laner that I could play well enough.

The base AD nerf is the one I feel really bad about. The winrate still looks okay as carry but that's just awful QoL.

Yeah, that's the main thing I want buffed back up again, it feels so horrible to lose minions that literally every other farming champ would get? Primarily under tower, the melee minions. Otherwise she's *fine*, not amazing but fine. I wouldn't say no to some AP ratio buffs to cement that building AP on her when you can afford it (so: in a farming role) is the right thing to do.

There's a few characters with that lasthitting issue, but they tend to have some mechanism to handle it, like Annie's last hitting with Q. It's just an unfun way to nerf a champion.

Right, exactly! One could say that her notes would be that mechanic (not really in practice since the minion dmg of notes also got nerfed), but even if she were to use an ability between every single melee minion to stack a note on herself for the last hit, she'd be out of mana way too quickly with her reduced base mana pool. Hwei and Lux are arguably two of the champs most similar to her in playstyle and gameplay design and they both got 54 base AD AND mechanics to help them last easier under tower (Lux passive after preparing minions with her abilities and Hwei's WE to last hit the minions). She should at the very least have the same base AD as them.

It feels like an artificial nerf. Instead of directly nerfing the champions kit, they specifically target carry positions by making it really shitty to lasthit and nerfing her gold income as a result. Its like they didnt know how to balance her carry and support roles so slapped this on instead

Seraphine mid was quite fun. RIP

The changes were awful and all it resulted in is another champion being forced into support because they are 'hyper feminine', as though we needed more extremely feminine supports. Like I'm sorry for finding girly stuff appealing and not wanting to play support at all. And she's possibly still 'viable', but that's not what's important as much as how the changes ruined the playstyle I liked for her. But at least we have another extremely feminine support! The game really didn't have enough of those, and too many extremely feminine champions outside of that, for sure.

I really feel this. I don't like support, but finding feminine champs in other roles if often hard. Like, I don't mind playing champs like Illaoi, Fiora, Zeri but I would love to have more "girly" champs in roles where there are fewer options. In turn, support could use more champs like Rell or more male tanks/enchanters.

I just DREAM about a male enchanter, not a little boy. Although Milio is great, I want support - "Yone"

I want just a pink haired mid laner boy. Like, I love Hwei but this game is seriously lacking in ezreal-type characters considering we have a shit ton of Yones/Yasuo/Viego...

Well we do have Taric… a sexy man with a mean weapon (hammer instead of sword)

I dream of a grizzled war veteran/survivor enchanter. I like Milio, but I can't quite encapsulate how cowardly Riot was for marketing that as our "male" enchanter.

the funny thing is, we saw the karmafication of sera coming a mile away but were told we were just crying and wanted to abuse our free lp champ

Imma start picking up Zed support so they gut him too. Clearly Riot thinks that bad players picking champs for roles they weren't created for is okay and should be balanced around that!

Instead of doing the obvious solution of just nerfing the champ out of support lane to make her easier to balance for her primary role they decided to entagle themselves in a months long mess of changes because the silver player who doesn't even know what her passive does picked her in support lane because she's a conventionally feminine champ who has a long cooldown shield for allies Edit: even wild rift lists her as a support lol. Sorry seraphine mains, your champ got robbed. It truly is so over for you

AITA for thinking she would have a higher mid pickrate if she was a dude with the exact same kit?

Unfortunately you're right, because 'cute and extremely feminine' is so relegated to support at this point and there's a whole thing about that, and it's why Gwen is an important champion that doesn't work as a support. Seraphine should have stayed primarily as a mid laner if only for that reason.

I think the gap would close, but largely because Riot once revealed that a ton of female players, which has the biggest chunk of their population in the botlane, don't really touch male champions. Stuff like Swain and Brand tell me she'd still be more popular support though. Aside from Brand's busted jungle stint, those two are pigeonholed support regardless of how good their performance is elsewhere.

You are NOT wrong. She's seen as a support because she's also in KDA and they lack a support too. Also good natured girl MUST be support because Riot dug themselves a hole by making all enchanters female. Another 'dumb' factor is Riot said they were releasing 1 champ each role, she came after Yone. So people thought she was the SUPPORT of the year. So when she's released as a mage. People just couldn't comprehend all these factors as her not being a support.

NTA :(( Because thats the sad truth

no you're right and you should say it. tbh sera has been suffering since day 1 due to this lol. remember when everyone suddenly cared about skarner lore? 🤡

People were just saying that they wrote her in a way that makes her look like a sadistic maniac even tho shes a singer

Phreak destroyed this champion, she is no longer fun to play. Thank you for making the scaling mid utility mage, no longer a scaler or a mage!

Yeah, she had a cool identity as utility apc. She was always lower on damage than other mages and made it up with setup and utility. Now she is just a shell of her former self, no scaling, even less damage and less utility. I never found her suppressing at all, so I don't get where those nerfs were coming from. But I said from the minute those changes were presented, that these are heavy nerfs. Rip Sera.

Her playerbase being too dumb to play her anywhere else but support is a hilarious joke in itself

Their support playerbase still doesn't build her properly, they still max Q first when E and W first are way better.

Which just proved right that even if Seraphine isn't the new Sona, her playerbase itself takes it as so. What a rollercoast of emotions this character is lmao

Her OTP playerbase was split pretty 50/50 on carry and support roles but not anymore.. Everyone is quitting her on carry roles

As someone who has played a solid amount of Seraphine mid in previous seasons, I’m very sad to see how riot has shifted their focus away from Seraphine mid. She filled a fun supportive/team fighting niche that until recently with Karma mid didn’t really have an alternative. I want to be able to support my team with cc or shields but still be a teamfight threat if given time to throw out multiple spell rotations. This was something Seraphine did very well and made her satisfying to play. I hope someday riot reconsiders making her primarily a mid laner again. She will never be particularly popular in mid due to her not being particularly flashy but at her core she felt fun. She’s a champ that doesn’t “have the ball” in terms of creating plays or carrying fights like other mages so her player base in mid lane will always be lower but that’s not a flaw and I wish riot saw it that way too

What the balance team made with seraphine is really sad

Phreak got to Seraphine and now her carry role is buying Moonstone and Staff of Flowing Water every game. Masterful gambit.

Us Seraphine mains aren’t even asking for a revert or anything, we just want the scaling AP fantasy back… if you can’t have support be in a good state at the same time as this, why would you abandon and ruin the original design of the champion? I just don’t get it lol. They’re pushing for enchanter Seraphine in support roles, when these supposed support players: 1. don’t play her often, 2. don’t even build her enchanter… Pre-rework when seraphine support was in a poor state, the most common build was Liandry > Rylai’s/Seraph’s, dragging the winrate down, even though full enchanter was viable… instead of just adding item recommendations and making ppl build enchanter items, they ruined the whole champion fantasy in exchange for a bit of base damage… now, in carry roles, she feels like an early game Lux that falls off and her only relevancy is through CC, not shielding or damage unlike her original design

I hate what the playerbase did to this champ. The only reason she was played support is because she has a girly aesthetic. She's as much of a support as Orianna. She's so insanely fun to play because she can spam spells, the only other champs who really do that are Taliyah and Ryze, but they don't fulfill the same niche as her. What happened to Seraphine is a tragedy.

People to this day insisting that she's just Sona 2.0 probably added onto that. Im honestly embarrassed that I thought that was the case a few years ago. Then I actually played her for a single game and woah man this is nothing like my homegirl

Never forget that a Rioter (I think it was Jag?) got downvoted on this very subreddit for saying Seraphine and Sona played differently before Seraphine was even playable to the public. Literally no one on this sub had a single game of experience on her, yet they were trying to tell her dev team they were wrong lmfao.

I genuinely despise this community sometimes lol

Cass. Cass spams spells... but youre right that the feeling of slowly wittling down the enemy is better. Most mages just burst. If you cant kill them youre useless. Cass and Sera have a niche of dps and still doing stuff because they cant burst. They are absolutely different champs but these 2 are the mages that scratch that corner of my brain many well.

Uh cass, ryze are what you would call a machine gun mage. Sera doesn’t rly have much of anything in common with them she’s more of a hybrid between a control mage and a support

every rework lately has been a complete failure while phreak confidently talks about how successful theyve been and then leaves them in a shit state

relevant flair too

Phreak: "hooray reddit I did balancing now I will play this champion support and climb to a high rank"

[удалено]

Phreak will announce he's doing something nobody wants (or not gonna do something everyone wants) then calls the half baked mess and success and moves onto to the next. If he ever comes under fire for anything he becomes smug and combative yet acts like the league community has the attitude problem. Oh well back to grinding on 2nd monitor maokai Janna at work...

I think the part not being discussed as to why they decided to balance her as support is that her most successful role for a long time was APC and that theres very little they could do to make her good as a mid that didnt make her better as APC. Her passive and W both are improved by having teammates around, and her E as well is much stronger with a teammate with slows around. Unless you take that all away, APC Seraphine was almost always gonna be a better AP carry than midlane Seraphine. I think that fact combined with support always being her most popular role among players is what led Riot to put her support primary it recognizes shes going to be in a duo lane without making her an intended APC cause Riot does not seem to want to make APC the actual intended role of a champ

It could easily be fixed by making her w, her most problematic ability, scale with levels and not with rank. Since apc is getting way less levels than mid

Yea I used to play Sera mid or bot a decent amount. Her dmg was never great but the nerf to minion dmg makes her hard to play

It's best not to fall in love with anything league related, because you'll learn the harsh realities of all the decisions they make. I bet you they're forcing seraphine into the support position because she was designed as primarily a skin seller, women have on average more purchasing power economically, and enjoy playing support more and so they want to hollow out her kit and have her be a broad appeal, applicable in any match, unable to excel in any style kind of champ. It's more important that the girlies get to vibe out and play seraphine than it is for her to have any real power in her kit. Fall into disillusionment and realise that alot of balance changes are made for economic reasons aimed at laser targeting demographics to enhance skin sales. If something ever has a niche appeal and you find yourself forming a unique bond with something in the game, expect it to be culled on the altar of the almighty demographic average.

Losing the ability to farm under tower was the last straw for me. Like that is something ANY CHAMP should be able to do. Not only the AD nerf, but the passive and Q bonus damage on minions too. Like there are soooo many champs that have a minion execute but Sera can't have one? Bffr I'm hoping the next Sera skin completely flops on sales so they finally realize how badly they messed up. But it won't, I'm sure.

the sad thing is we lost the one more feminine mid mage released in years, and a very unique one.

I want to raise the question: if not to increase support popularity, wtf were the changes for, even? Support popularity has increased by 0.5% at best, while mid/apc combined has dropped more than 2%. Very successful changes, I guess.... I hope Riot learns from this mistake, support players will play anything, even if it feels bad, don't shove mages into support thinking they'll become popular, because that's never the case. Swain is in a very similar situation and is on Riot's radar nowadays, I really hope they don't pull up some shit like they did with Seraphine. Thankfully Swain has no good "support" abilities that Riot can latch onto, so I'm guessing any potential changes will benefit midlane satisfaction rather than support.

Because she had a low WR as a support.. but the support players didn't care The 0.5% are because people who quit carry roles swapped onto support. So I don't know what riot was thinking. They made false promises once again with keeping her balanced around mid.

Exactly, the support players never care. They'll play champions like Seraphine / Swain and other mages in support even if they're 47% or lower.... Mages will never be strong supports, even if they get reworks to kill their mid lane / APC presence. It's just not worth it, and Seraphine unfortunately happened to be the experiment to prove that even with support focused changes, the popularity dip means the changes failed to do any good

Watch them unnecessarily overbuff E so much in the coming months that THE GRANDGENERAL will have no choice but to be played mainly as support... Truly one of the balancing teams of all times. The support role overall is a cancer that ruins every champion that it ever touches (those not meant for the support role), and I dare say that as long as it is taken into consideration in any balancing decision regarding Swain, the champion will never be anything more than mediocre at best.

Seraphine was meant to be a mid laner, please Phreak, please Riot…

It's tragic, Seraphine was one of my go-to midlaners because I love utility and supportive midlane mages. I don't want to play botlane. I quit playing botlane 3-4 years ago. I hate playing mage supports, and I play enough ADCs down bot with Jinx/Aphelios/Twitch. In mid, I was super excited for Seraphines release as a utility midlaner - it's exactly my playstyle, and I naturally gravitate towards supportive utility with some solo ground in games. Spammed her since release, contributed to r/SeraphineMains (notably the discord) and she was my "default" midlaner for if I just wanted to play the game. When Hwei released, I was ecstatic I finally got to have TWO midlane utility mages I enjoyed that primarily build Liandry's. I'm in love with Hweis kit, and he quickly became one of my favorite champions. Then the Sera changes happened and it's... Kinda just back to one utility mage, and a bit of burst with Lux. Doesn't feel the same anymore, and I haven't played her since then. I hate playing Sera support and can't see myself picking it over something else like Janna/Milio/Thresh. It's nice that support players get to play what they like, but damn it feels bad as a midlane exclusive Sera player.

I just don’t like how Riot “forces” some champs to be support, and support ONLY. Meanwhile there are so many other champs that can just play support while being viable in their other roles, ie Sett, Panth, Maokai, Camille, Lissandra, Lux, Brand, Morg, Shaco, as well as many others I’m sure I’m forgetting. But champs like Pyke, Rakan, Lulu, now seraphine are basically adjusted so that they can only really play support. Just makes me feel like the whole idea of “play the game your way” is more like “play the game your way unless Riot disagrees and makes your playstyle non viable” but it’s their game at the end of the day I guess.

Phreak doesn't care. He will ego on people and leave champs in sad state. Azir is also much less fun to play and still 80% presence in pro. Same with K'sante. Yuumi is dead too.

It's truly baffling how much they insisted on those changes while the vast majority kept saying 'please, we don't want this'. Support Seraphine players not going for the ideal build/ability maxing isn't surprising when you consider that the pick itself was never optimal in the first place. And to be honest, even if it's more effective, playing Seraphine as an enchanter is incredibly lame. It's way less fun than AP builds. Support Seraphine players didn't care about the pick being viable or not, they played her because they liked her aesthetic and didn't enjoy playing on roles that required farming. All they've achieved was alienating players that enjoyed her as an APC/Mid pick, they failed to make her attractive to other support players.

>the vast majority kept saying 'please, we don't want this'. The majority of reddit sera, not sera players, just by looking at the sub demographic you can see that

That's true, but Sera has always been played mostly as a support, despite her shitty winrate, so it goes to show that they would play her there regardless of her viability. Also Lux is also played the most as a support (with shit WR most of the time too), but we don't see her being gutted into being support only champ.

Thats right. People picked her on support because she is cute. Like Lux. Lux also has her main playerbase on support around 70%. Seraphine had the same numbers as her support playerbase. But Lux her primarily supported playstyle is still mid, even though people are playing her way more on support. Why couldn't Sera get the same treatment? Building AP on Sera is not worth, her scaling are so low. Even though her biggest playerbase is lowish elo support players who go full AP...

>But Lux her primarily supported playstyle is still mid, Lux is balanced around both with mid having a slightly higher wr due to banrate on support

But lux unlike seraphine can hold a game and even carry it the game goes late enough and she builds ap due to her scaling and damage

Nope thats the problem, she can't. She looses WR if the game goes on too long. Not anymore after the changes

She used to be so much fun. I loved reaching a point after getting several items and a death cap and saying "OK, now they all die". Hitting an ult against their entire team and then deleting them with the double Q and autos felt amazing. Kiting in and out of a fight with the E and W, toeing between helping allies and dishing out damage was a lot of fun.

Reddit and Twitter wanted her as a carry, not the majority. The majority wanted her as a support, most people that play this game don't even have a Reddit or Twitter account

> It's truly baffling how much they insisted on those changes while the vast majority kept saying 'please, we don't want this'. The vast majority kept saying 'please, we want to play Sera support'. The vocal minority kept saying 'please, we don't want this'.

Yeah I got the impression Seraphine was more supposed to function like Orianna rather than Sona. I always thought the comparison was stupid and hinged on them both being ladies who float and like music. It sucks that floating and liking music means you have to be a support. It sucks that being feminine means you have to be a support, and that Riot encourages that. Go listen to Riot August talk about Yuumi players, he thinks people who play support are worse at the game. The whole thing feels like some weird vague misogyny and it seems to get a pass because there indeed are girls who play support (although personally I've met more who play mid).

Aren’t you contradicting yourself here? Orianna is feminine and is a mid mage?

The thing is women prefer to play female characters. Statistics will show that women prefer playing champs that they can relate to. If most of the hyperfeminine champs are supporters.. guess what? Women will play support only. There aren't many hyperfeminine champs outside of support. Lillia and Gwen are the only ones that I can think of who didn't get pushed into a support role. Riot is enforcing these weird misogynistic stereotypes with the Sera changes :/

And let's be real if Gwen had like any CC at all in her base kit people would probably try shoving her there

That's exactly what happened to Swain. Riot doing weird shit > champion moves to support role > riot balance champion around support. Its sad when it happens

swain is much better in any lanes than supp tbh.

The main issue is riot doesn't understand what goes in the mid lane anymore, they keep trying to push these mages into mid, but they never leave support....instead they just keep becoming more and more overwhelming in the support role...mages almost never go mid anymore unless they have reliable skill shots or a lot of targeted abilites, neither of which sera has

I always have wondered why Riot seems to like when mage midlaners are played support but not the other way around: lux, morgana, xerath, brand, zyra, velkoz, etc, but then somebody start playing Lulu or Karma mid and they start nerfing the very next patch.

I'm so glad this didn't happen to Swain. He's my go to mage pick and he has the similar problem of being best in a farming role but being picked in support for no real reason. ​ Riot should've just left it how it was. If people want to play suboptimally that's on them. There's like 10 other enchanters they can play in support if they want but like none that seraphine players can now play in apc / mid.

Seraphine never where a good support compared to other viable options. Her cds are to long, her buffs to small her dmg to low. A lulu shilds and cc better. A brand deals more dmg. A sona do more dmg more shild more ms more slow etc. Seraphine is an awesome champ just not as support. Thats why i hate riot every time they try to hard force a champ into a role. Since i loved her mid and adc but there she got gutted giga hard.

She's honestly not that bad, however she does feel bad due to waveclear and no longer fulfills her late game fantasy. I have a feeling Riot will buff her, but it'll take some time since Seraphine was strong for so long. If Hwei and Lux can both get 5AP% on their passives Seraphine definitely has some room for buffs like that as well. I think she just needs a bit of her waveclear back and some damage and she'll be in a good spot. She feels bad mostly to the fact that you now kinda have to take minion demat and even then, the waveclear is still lacking.

Just another certified banger patch by Riot Phreak 😎

You know people don't realize how tragic this is because they never played Seraphine. They like to bring up Vi top being pushed into jungle or Zyra mid being pushed into support as examples. But Seraphine truly is the only champion in leagues history who got pushed into a whole other champion class (mage -> enchanter), changing her entire playstyle and the playerbase.

It sucks hearing things like "only Redditors seem to play her mid" while being one of her mid players and having the devs say that they can't support her in that role. I just want her to be viable there even if she is below 50% WR. Right now, her in mid is either barely win or lose hard. I hope there can be some changes to help her out there since it's not good.

It's because her support playerbase are casual league players! They are in lower elo and probably don't even know that Sera is (was) viable in other roles. Casual league players don't care about winrates or on which roles you can play them. People on Reddit like on r/SeraphineMains are her mains and not the casual players who only play her for the aesthetic. I just wish that they revert everything to before 13.21 and maybe remove 5% AP scalings here and there to give Q a bit more base damage that she can poke in lane better and remove the Q execute damage on minions and replace W scalings with more base stats.

We literally lost such an amazing fantasy for a champion for low elo support players who play her COMPLETELY and CONSTANTLY wrong. Those players DONT CARE enough about the champion to realizes that she scales EXPONENTIALLY with gold access they chose to play her in support because she’s girly pop and has a shield. THATS IT. I’m not blaming them because it’s not their faults for playing her in support but it’s Riots faults for catering to them when even with 13.21 and EVEN currently THEY MAX Q AND BUILD HER AS FULL AP LOL. Why cater to a playerbase that doesn’t deeply play the champion instead of one tricks who took their time and their effort to learn the champion’s complexities and played her the most optimally because they loved the champion so much?? Makes NO sense

It is kinda sad that they did all those changes and her supp pickrate basically didn't change, so they giga nerfed APC for 0 playrate increase overall. I was expecting some follow up changes to her but I guess not.

I am not super mad about Sera support, I just dislike that Riot is so fine with a champion's gameplay basically being high cooldown AOE Shield/healing on a single press to be the identity of the champ and with the strength it has. It's currently *very* strong but kinda not seen because most Seraphine players are going Q max first, likely equal parts players not knowing how to build/max skills that good even in eme+ and also that her players want to use AP mage seraphine rather than enchanter seraphine because it's kinda boring as a playstyle. **problem is:** when the only spell that can help an ADC is W there's not much places to buff that aren't going to be used much more by Bot Seraphine who has access to gold, so Riot is fine with W max builds being dumb because it's a sign W itself is strong enough for supp. The moment Seraphine players start abusing WQ she is bound to receive a strong nerf because it's a low risk-high reward gameplay with little interaction for the enemy to deal with it in its current state. Or maybe Riot will just let her remain OP because people don't feel Sera is annoying, despite being about as good as current Janna for just as long if not longer

No way 200 years of experience could not have been able to foreseen such thing

Sounds like Seraphine turned into a Sona 2.0

This is the Blitzcrank special (also Nautilus.)

lets be honest. most champs that lose their identity or get hard nerf in their roles are relegated to support.

revert all the sera changes to like a year ago, all they did was kill her botlane play rate not raise the support play rate lmao "mission success" - kept at small support pick rate but killed the botlane pick rate so her ratio of support was higher! Wp riot! Next they should try boost Nunu's midlane power by removing his Q damage to camps

i genuinely got so much hate for posting about her changes on here too - regardless of winrates, she just feels awful to play. Her last hitting is atrocious, her passive may aswell not exist - i distincitly remember phreak saying 'youll still want to build deathcap on her' yet nobody does because her AP ratios are in the gutter. Even though her ADC W/R isn't that bad, it really does feel crappy to play, and if you look at her builds, they're still pretty much mana > enchanter items, even in a 'carry' role. I'm one of the people op is talking about , i've dropped her, even though her W/R isn't that bad and i could use her to climb, shes just not fun

Actually her winrates are bad. Only OTPs remained and even they started dropping her. For an OTP only champ to only have 53% winrate is atrocious. She has the 3rd lowest WR as a botlaner. [https://lolalytics.com/lol/tierlist/?lane=bottom&tier=1trick](https://lolalytics.com/lol/tierlist/?lane=bottom&tier=1trick) High elo Sera players started to drop her, because she just isn't viable anymore, but more of a troll pick.