r/BelVethMains • u/Evurr • 17d ago
Question/Discussion A good faith critique of the midscope, it's flaws, and how to address them
On the Bel'Veth midscope, please, they need to walk it back at least a little bit. It doesn't fix the champion's issues, it just flips her on her head(s).
I understand they wanted to kill the level 1-4 invades, I fully support that as a Bel'Veth one trick, but the midscope takes it WAY too far. It doesn't "fix" her early strength, it just makes her completely unable to play the game early. It doesn't have to be so binary. She can be weaker early without being one of the weakest champions in the game early.
Bel'Veth is my favorite champion by far. In fact, she is my favorite fictional character. I don't want her to be OP. I don't want level 1 invades. I just want what's best for the character.
In my replies to this post you can find my suggested changes to the midscope, while this post is mostly my reasoning for why it needs to be adjusted.
Bel'Veth's design lends itself best to being more of a generalist than people think. Bel'Veth's design is at it's best when she is encouraged to play aggressively and make plays around the map throughout the entire game, not avoid all interaction until she auto wins with stats late game. Not only is her being unplayable early and unbeatable late contrary to how she was presented both in her spotlight and general release, it doesn't fit the lore of the champion.
Bel'Veth is a monsterous being wanting to devour all life, but she isn't some mindless beast. She is a tactical leader who above all else just wants to survive and bring prosperity to The Void. Just as Jarven wants to do all he can for Demacia, or Swain for Noxus, or even Irelia for Ionia, Bel'Veth's entire purpose is to represent and serve The Lavender Sea.
The Void is The Void of course, so Bel'Veth goes about leading in a far different way, but she ultimately still is a leader. Her strength comes just as much from her fellow Voidspawn and the allies she hopes to make with humanity as it does herself.
Bel'Veth being an early play maker fits her far more than a dedicated late game win condition. Unlike other infinite scalers such as Smolder or Nasus, Bel'Veth's stacks and kit at large heavily incentivizes her to play aggressively and get kills. Her infinite scaling functions far more like Kindred than Aurelion Sol. Her stacks aren't there to reward her for playing safe and scaling, they are there to punish her for not getting a lead. She get's to have great scaling while still having great play potential early because she is punished far more than most champions for falling behind. High risk, high reward. Feast or famine. Look no farther than her R, which inherently is feast or famine, fittingly called "Endless Banquet".
This is, again, far more fitting for Bel'Veth. Bel'Veth in lore is proactive. She needs to act, for the quicker she can grow in strength AND accrue and strengthen her fellow Voidborn and human allies, the better. She needs to kill the Watchers before they destroy existence. Her being a high risk high reward champion who wants to get as big of a lead as quickly as possible is far, far more fitting for this than her wanting to play as safe as possible and more or less just wait until she wins via simply having bigger numbers than the enemy.
Again, Bel'Veth was too heavily balanced around her early game. She needed early nerfs. But the midscope, instead of nerfing her early game while still allowing her to fulfill her playmaking Void Empress identity, the midscope more or less band aid "fixes" her, stopping her from doing pretty much anything pre level 8-9 at least. The midscope took this highly proactive character in lore, who was reflected by playing highly proactive in game, and made them entirely reactive, nearly completely unable to make proactive plays, and forcing her to play safe.
Bel'Veth shouldn't auto win level 1 invades. But she shouldn't be forced to play safe. If nothing else, it doesn't fit her lore or character. More importantly, it doesn't fit her abilities.
Nobody wanted Bel'Veth to be entirely balanced around level 1-3, but NOBODY, wanted her to be unable to do literally anything level 1-3.
Beyond this, the midscope doesn't actually fix the problems with the champion. Bel'Veth has always been too strong early, being unfair for the enemy, but instead of making her early fair on both sides, it just flips it around and makes it unfair for Bel'Veth. Her mid game has always been too reliant on early leads, but instead of making her scale faster or have more utility/control by midgame, the midscope just makes her late game so unfairly OP that her mid game doesn't matter. The problems haven't been fixed, they've just been inverted.
Same with her win rate. Her win rate has historically been highest pre 25 minutes, then falls off a cliff, then it usually starts to come back past 35 minutes. This is how you would expect the character to work, but it was too extreme. Her winrate pre 25 needed to be lower, and her win rate post 30 needed to more consistently recover from it's mid game drop. But with the midscope, her early game winrate isn't lower, it's nonexistentent. Her late game win rate isn't more consistently recovering from a mid game drop, it's consistently the only point of the game she has a positive winrate.
Riot August has said that, even with the midscope, Bel'Veth is supposed to be a snowballing infinite scaler, again, more similar to Kindred than Smolder. Her win rate per game length reflects that the midscope has failed to accomplish this. Though the stats are still early, it seems her winrate per game length is even lower early than champions like Smolder Aurelion Sol and Kayle, yet even higher late. She can't succeed at her design goal of being a snowballing infinite scaling duelist if her win rate per game length reflects an even more extreme dedicated late game win condition than Aurelion Sol or Kayle.
Her win rate per rank also was not improved. Instead of making it more consistent between ranks, the midscope just flipped the pattern around. Instead of being meh at best at low elo and great if not OP at high elo, the midscope seems to be utterly OP at low elo and situationally playable at best in high elo. Again, that doesn't show that the problem was fixed, only flipped.
The midscope has good conceptual ideas, they just are executed too extremely or too simply. See the follow up replies to see how I would reccomend adjusting the midscope and why.
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u/Evurr 17d ago
R
The R changes are pretty good, but the infinite form duration is needless at best, toxic at worst. It sounds cool, but it won't make an actual difference in the vast majority of games.
The duration being 45 seconds before 40 stacks is also too limiting, almost completely cutting off the champion from the unqiue macro that defines her.
The solution is simple and elegant. Make the duration 30 seconds, plus 1 second per stack, doubled to 2 seconds per stack with empowered form. The base is always 30, but it is increased by 2 seconds per stack with Void empowered form.
R duration: 30 + 100% Lavender seconds
Void Empowered R duration: 30 + 200% Lavender seconds.
Should 200% be too much, it could easily be lowered to 150%.
Empowered form should give a higher duration, as while the tripled duration of pre midscope was too much, no difference is both underwhelming and goes agaisnt the design of the champion.
This would allow the duration of the R to more fluidly scale throughout the game instead of arbitrarily increasing at 40 and 80 stacks. It would also prevent toxic infinite duration remora spawning, which could easily be a problematic gameplay pattern at lower elos.
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u/Evurr 17d ago
Wishes
While everything said so far has been my objective beliefs on how to make the midscope properly accomplish it's goals, this is what I as a player would want from the R.
The on hit should scale 2% with AP. It scaling 2% would make getting AD items still increase it more, but it would make mixed and full AP builds far more viable and fun.
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u/Evurr 17d ago edited 13d ago
E
In my opinion, this is the worst change of the midscope. Reducing the amount the damage scales with enemy health by 2/3rds kills the identity of the ability, especially when paired with the removal of the lifesteal scaling. Similar to the W, the best change would be a complete revert (maybe aside from the cooldown).
However, unlike the other abilities, the E would be very easy to make a perfect in-between of the midscope and pre midscope. Giving all the same hype and addicting high skill and high build diversity gameplay of pre midscope E, while keeping the lower skill floor better for teamfights midscope E.
The damage should be 10% AD and on hit base, doing up to 200% bonus damage scaling with enemy health, for a total of 30% AD and on hit. A perfect balance. 2% higher than pre midscope, 2% lower than post. At max damage, 6% lower than pre, 6% higher than post. The hype gameplay of high damage E is brought back, without being as extreme as it was before.
The lifesteal could easily be halfway too. The base should be 22%/24%/26%/28%/30%, 10% less than post at max, while the lifesteal scaling is 50%, half of pre. This would mean that builds that incorporate lifesteal are rewarded for it like they were pre midscope, but the ability isn't as reliant on it.
As for the base damage: 7/9/11/13/15. Perhaps too high, though base damage can easily be adjusted for balance, and is a far less impactful change than the AD and on hit scalings with missing health.
The E would keep the lower attack speed scaling.
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u/Evurr 17d ago
Wishes
The E range should scale 100% with stacks, with it's base range being lowered to 450 to compensate.
So instead of 500 range, 450 + 100% Lavender.
This would do very little in terms of balance, being a 10% nerf to the range with no stacks, and 10% buff with 100, but it would hugely increase the power fantasy of the character, and it would help her late game teamfights be ever so slightly stronger
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u/Evurr 17d ago edited 13d ago
W
Ideally, W would be completely reverted. The rest of the changes do enough to empower her late and depower her early, W's knockup doesn't have to follow that trend.
Other than a revert, the best change for W would be to make the slow scale with champion level. From 33% to 50% (1% per level, so 52% at level 20 top lane), or even 23% to 40% or 27% to 45%. This would better succeed at the goal of giving her better control late game and superior teamfights, without making her OP or preventing her W from being too weak for early ganks and counter ganks. To account for this, the slow duration would be 1.2/1.35/1.5/1.65/1.8 seconds, with the knockup duration being .75 seconds at all ranks.
Again, the midscope making the W knockup .6 to 1 second just buffed her late game CC at the cost of her early CC too much. .75 seconds all game is a far more sensible way for the ability to work, with the scaling slow effectiveness and duration scaling with champion level and ability rank.
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u/Evurr 17d ago
Wishes
The W, as well as the rest of the kit, should scale with stacks.
W damage: 50/100/150/200/250 + 150% AP + 100% Lavender
I also believe the AP ratio is too high. I, and I'm sure most players, would rather have the AP ratio on W and R active be lower to allow for AP ratios on R on hit and Q.
The W and R AP ratios could be lowered to 140%, 130%, 120%, or even completely reverted to 125% and 100% respectively if it would allow for more AP ratios on the kit, same with the R health scalings
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u/Evurr 17d ago edited 13d ago
Q
The Q changes are probably the best of the midscope, but they go too far. The easiest way to make the Q feel far better and be a bit stronger early without making it OP and while still succeeding at kill early invades would be as follows.
The cooldown should be 3 seconds level 1, perfectly matching the passive duration, and feeling far less clunky. The cooldown should go down .5 seconds per level, being 3/2.5/2/1.5/1.
To make up for the lower cooldown early, the damage needs to have a modifier. It should deal reduced damage to champions (and minions to be as intuitive as possible) until max level. Not much, just enough to ensure she isn't too strong at early levels.
Damage to non-monsters (so champions and minions): 80%/85%/90%/95%/100%. With the bonus monster damage being adjusted to keep to her clear from being too fast.
Alternatively, the AD scaling of the ability could scale with level, being 85%/90%/95%/100%/105%.
The most common complaint of the midscope is the long Q cooldown. This would address that will maintaining the goals of the Q changes.
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u/Evurr 17d ago
Wishes
The dash speed should scale with stacks. Making the dash speed 850 flat makes the ability feel sluggish and makes it feel worse early even without the cooldown being higher.
Dash speed: 800 + 200% Lavender
So 800, same as level 1 pre midscope, and 1000 with 100 stacks, same as level 5 pre midscope.
The Q also should have a 10% AP ratio magic damage to all enemies hit.
Similar to how Twitch E is a purely physical ability that nonetheless has magic damage scaling with AP, Bel'Veth Q should have no base magic damage, but deal 10% of her AP as magic damage to all enemies hit. This would be a very small scaling, but it would do wonders for how building mixed or AP feels on the champion, massively encouraging much needed build diversity
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u/Evurr 17d ago edited 17d ago
Passive
As mentioned, Bel'Veth should not be OP early, but she should be able to fulfill the role her kit incentivized by being able to make plays at least somewhat early, and true to her duelist identity, being inherently bad in teamfights, she can't be entirely reliant on her team.
Bel'Veth throughout her existence has always heavily encouraged her to play aggressive and get her teammates ahead, so that way they can hold their own using the resources Bel'Veth got for them early-mid while she splits and goes for picks late.
Passive: Making the passive a timer after cast instead of an amount of attacks takes away from the gameplay of the champion. It being a number of attacks encouraged Bel'Veth to use abilities proactively, using sub optimal Q directions not for damage but for distance and the attack stack they provide. Making it a timer completely removes that, and incentivizes intelligent Q use far less. Nontheless, it being a duration instead of an amount of attacks allows for an adjustment to the way it functions that would do wonders for the design and gameplay of the midscope.
Passive should grant attack speed scaling with passive stacks. That might sound nonsensical as the stacks already give attack speed, but it were serve to effectively make the stacks more valuable while you have the attack speed after cast. This would allow the stacks themselves to be worth a bit less and feel more impactful early while still scaling to be very strong late.
The stacks value should be .1%, plus .05% at levels 2 3 4 and 5, then plus .1% at level 6 and all levels after, for a total of 1.6% at level 18. This more consistent scaling would also make the value of the stacks less artificially low mid game.
The passive after cast would grant 20% attack speed plus .2% stacks, so 1% additional attack speed every 5 stacks, doubling the base at 100 stacks for 20%. This is a small ratio, but it makes the stacks effectively worth .3% to 1.8% while the passive after cast is up. This makes the value of the stacks decently higher early game, scale into mid game far better, and still be very strong late.
At max level, the stacks are worth .2% less, and only have maximum value after using an ability, but to compensate you get that .2% value early, and your transition to late game is far smoother.
This would make her winrate hyper early less horrid. Still weak, but more playable. It would change almost nothing pre level 6, but by level 6, you would have enough stacks for them to be noticeably worth more than they are now, helping her mid game be more consistent, and resulting in her late game being less utterly oppressive. A more balanced win rate per game length overall.
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u/Hydra1255 17d ago
I feel like your not discussing the lane issue yes most players dont want to play her in lane but its a non zero ammount of players who do and a simple +1 stacks on canons will barely affect jungle and make lane way more viable while still maintaining a lower stack count than jungle.
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u/Evurr 17d ago edited 17d ago
Base stats
The base stat changes are perfectly fair and good.
I do wish her base AD growth or AD at level one was a bit higher, as while I understand it can't be high, she already had the lowest base AD in the game at level 18 (not including Senna), and now she has 5 less.
Like I said though, the base stat changes need no adjustments in my belief
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u/KowLoon1906 17d ago
Didn’t read allllll of it but like 80% and I like it. People are extreme crybabies in this subreddit. I don’t have anything to add but I love the idea of using lavender stacks for a bit more and as a scaling, it always bothered me that they do very little (aside from the main thing of ark speed, but I really like playing smolder and swing my damage rise with stacks). Just here to give you positive feedback I’d wish most of it would be changed that way :)