League of Legends Flame Friday: Why Qiyana is unhealthy for the game

Welcome to Flame Friday. Today, we will discuss everything that is wrong with the most recently introduced League of Legends champion, Qiyana.

Her Kit

Alright so before we get to flame her and the balance team, let’s briefly take a look at what she actually provides to the game. For our full spotlight click here.

Passive – Royal Privilege

• Her first attack or ability hitting an enemy deals bonus physical damage
• Has a per-target cooldown
• Resets after different weapon enchantment

Q – Edge of Ixtal / Elemental Wrath

• Swing weapon forward, enchantment resets the cooldown
• Enchantment provides either crowd control, bonus damage or stealth

W – Terrashape

• Target river, bush or wall to dash and enchant your weapon
• While enchanted, gain 20% attack speed, 6.25% movement speed, and bonus magic damage

E – Audacity

• Dash a fixed distance to a target and deal damage

R – Supreme Display of Talent

• Create a non-damaging shockwave that knocks back enemies and stops when it hits a wall
  Any river, bush or wall hit by it explodes to deal physical damage and stun them
  (I recommend watching this trailer if you have not yet, brief explanations can be quite confusing)

When I first watched the trailer I was honestly amazed by the creativity they put into her, Riot does truly not disappoint with design ideas. Seeing her dashes, though, instantly made me think of Akali – which is not good.

While I do enjoy flashy champions, things like dashes or stealth are only fun to a certain extent. Riot definitely pushed the limit with Akali but tuning down her Twilight Shroud (kind of) helped. Now they released Qiyana and honestly, things are even worse this time.

Firstly, I believe Qiyana has way too many resets within her kit, especially in the meta we are in right now where basically everybody has maximum CDR during the mid-game. This way, she will be able to mindlessly spam abilities and probably not even get punished for it since she can either dash out of danger, get invisible or, if things are really rough, press R to knock everybody back.

Speaking of it, her ability to provide lots of crowd control is actually busted. Elemental Wrath can stun champions in a small area – but keep in mind it can be reset. Imagine an Akali dashing around and every 2 seconds or so her Q stuns you for a second, people would go insane.

On top of that, her ultimate has the potential to completely dictate a skirmish in the Baron/Dragon pit as it stuns every enemy nearby the wall.

Possible solutions

Frankly, I consider mobile champions good for the game. They are fun to play, fun to watch and that is basically all you need to keep a game going. Despite that, though, there are simply too many champions who will not be able to keep up with her.

Similar to Akali (yes, I have to refer to her and her only), people do enjoy watching and playing her but when having to deal with her as a rather immobile tank or bruiser, the game quickly becomes unpleasant.

We either need tons of reworks like the recent Mordekaiser one or, a more realistic approach, tune down the mobility from new champs or reduce their provided crowd control. Having both is simply unfair compared to the old champions in League of Legends.

What is your opinion of the newly released champion? Let us know in the comments.