Fixing Targon's Items

I'm all for supports having more gold income.  It's awesome for a support player like myself to be able to buy more items and not have to spend so much gold on wards.

But Relic Shield, Targon's Brace and Face of the Mountain shouldn't be so strong that they make jungling less preferable to a duo top after buffs.  ADCs shouldn't be getting it with regular consistency to make their supports have almost carry level income.

I don't think that the item should get nerfed by itself, it's a fun item and very interesting to use.  But getting two Taron's in lane shouldn't be a viable option.

So, I propose that if you have a Targon's item, you cannot benefit from the Spoils of War passive that Targon's have.

In other words change the item description from this:

UNIQUE - SPOILS OF WAR:  Basic attacks execute minions below 200 (+100% AD) health. This effect requires a nearby allied champion to trigger. Recharges every 30 seconds, up to a maximum of 2 charges. Killing a minion while Spoils of War is available heals the nearest allied champion for 2% of your maximum health and grants them gold equal to the kill plus 5.

To something like this:

UNIQUE - SPOILS OF WAR:  Basic attacks execute minions below 200 (+100% AD) health. This effect requires a nearby allied champion to trigger. Recharges every 30 seconds, up to a maximum of 2 charges. Killing a minion while Spoils of War is available heals the nearest allied champion that doesn't own a Relic Shield, Targon's Brace or Face of the Mountain for 2% of your maximum health and grants them gold equal to the kill plus 5.

This keeps Targon's items as a viable support option without making double Targon's lanes so strong, or even viable.

Cho'Gath Vorpal Spikes Tweak

I would like to make a small change to Vorpal Spikes.

Instead of this:

TOGGLE: Whenever Cho'Gath performs a basic attack, he will launch spikes dealing magic damage to enemies in a line in front of him.

I would like to change it to something like this:

TOGGLE: Whenever Cho'Gath performs a basic attack, he will deal on-hit magic damage and launch spikes dealing magic damage to other enemies in a line in front of him.

Essentially, I want Vorpal Spikes to do on-hit magic damage and the spikes launched to not affect the target that you are auto attacking.

I want to make this change because when CSing as Cho'Gath you can actually auto attack a minion that has low enough health to die to your auto attack and spikes but because there is a small window between the damage of your auto and the damage of your spikes, you can lose the CS to other sources such as your own minions.

While one could argue that this isn't a problem if you're careful, I think it's a pointless increase in skill required to CS as Cho such that there is a health level where you will lose the CS in between two ranges of health where you would get the CS.

This change won't affect his balance in any meaningful way.  It will mostly be a quality of life change for Cho players enabling less problematic CSing.

PSA: Janna Winrate

There are a lot of theories about why Janna's winrate is so good.  Some of them rely on random chance.  Some think Janna is strong.  Some rely on solo queue being a strange place where weird things happen.

Here's my take on Janna's winrate.

It all has to do with the role she plays and the algorithm that measures effectiveness in terms of skill.

(Nerdy math take at the bottom!!)

What do people play Janna as?  A support (except Zekent hue hue).

What is the least loved role?  Support.

What role is therefore played the most with the least emphasis and practice?  Support.

What I mean by this is that support is generally the least loved role and is therefore practiced the least by most league players.  This state of the game equates to a general lack of practice and therefore skill when it comes to the person playing the support role.  

So, support champions that have a low skill floor excel as supports overall in solo queue because there are a lot of people forced into playing support that don't practice the role.

It's the reason that Taric had such a high winrate before his nerfs and remake etc.  Taric has an incredibly low skill floor but his effectiveness was incredibly high.

And while Janna isn't nearly the same, the same idea applies to her.  Compared to other viable supports currently, the skill required to play Janna and get some effectiveness out of her is fairly low.

As a high elo support player once told me, being a good support is all about being less detrimental to your team than the other teams support.  And when it comes to solo queue, being less detrimental as Janna is simple in a lot of ways.

Janna is fast, her passive and her W let her move quickly.  This means you get caught less and feed kills less frequently, not to mention it's easy to re-position.

Her one skill shot is very wide and easy to hit when being pursued.  And while her ultimate can ruin games used incorrectly, as long as you sit next to your carry it's generally pretty easy to get some sort of good use from it.  Most of the time Janna ults gone wrong come from trying to make plays instead of just peel for your carry.

This is not to say that Janna has a low skill cap.  There are a ton of small things that separate good and bad Janna players like when to shield, using your ult to the optimal efficiency and maximizing tornado effectiveness.  But because Janna is a support these things matter much less towards her overall winrate because the nuances which make her harder to play aren't what the majority of supports using her have to worry about.  Because as long as you're shielding your carry and peeling for them to some extent (which is quite simple on Janna) you are doing quite a good job at your role already.  You might not be carrying your team but you are minimizing your detriment.  Essentially Janna is a good support to get carried as.

What I meant above about the algorithms:

f(x) = effectiveness and x = skill

Take a simple champion with a general lack of complexity but high return on low skill.  They might look something like this:

f(x) = x + 10

Now take a champion that is pretty much getting what you put in.  At lower levels you get less out but at higher levels you can get more.  That might look something like this:

f(x) = 5x

Now let's take a champion that without at least a good amount of skill isn't very effective but you get very high returns if you're skilled.

f(x) = x^2

So if we were to look at these three champions, the first would be most effective at a skill level of 1 or 2.  The second would be most effective at a skill level of 3 or 4.  The third would be on par with the second at 5 and superior at all other skill levels.