Thread:Willbachbakal/@comment-1920550-20150512100119/@comment-1920550-20150514213121

I think this is where our rework notions differ substantially. I get the points of your version, and like you i've come to view Brand kit-wise as very generic. However to me his combo based mechanics, while the only interesting thing on him, but it's also one of the reasons why he's in such a bad state. His combo system is similar to LeBlanc's in that he needs to chain fire to get payload, however unlike her, he's an immobile mage who can't reposition, nor can he force enemies into unfavorbale positioning like Syndra with her E-Q combo...it makes it easy to avoid Brand altogether. Also unlike Syndra or LB, even if he chain-fires his spells he'll still lose half of the bonus effects because of how the first spell will be used as the catalyst and due to the random nature of Pyroclasm. Also because of the chain fire necessity of his spell combo and conflicting kit issues it can make Brand fall off late game like LB due to the fact that he needs to combo to get the actual damage off, which can make teams to try and more actively avoid his spells and kite him back. Also my Pyro analogy may have been a bit off, i'm sorry.

Your rework proposal, while sensitive and a clear step up to live Brand, maintains most of Brand's issues. Personally i don't like the fact that even when landing my entire spell combo, i'm still losing certain effects because of it. Also i've never been hit by a Brand W, like ever. Even Veigar's W has hit me once every blue moon, but for some reason Brand's W was always came up short. Also i think the generic nature of Brand's kit goes into the core of his spell workings. The skillshot Q, the W AOE, the E-R targeted spells. Sure every mage has this sort of combination one way or another, but in Brand's case this combination is the most vanilla in the game. So from my point of view i think the rework has to be more profound and push him into a more clear defined niche, which to me is a teamfighting AOE mage, the strongest one of the game, but at the cost making his 1v1 power much weaker. I'm picturing jungle teamfights around Baron and drake, his team initiates on the enemy team while he lays the W field and infernoes the enemy team, especially true in the more clustered places of the jungle. You said you disliked his R due to his Dark Wind-like random nature, however my version fixes that in how it gets stronger the more targets it hits before returning to the original one. Your passive, while a good point and certainly better than anything i had in mind (i think i caught Riot's infection for stacking passives and i wanna avoid it for this rework atleast)  is a too short in range in my opinion. Your E sounds cool in theory but it would be borderline impossible to land due to the delay and his W already has a sizable delay aswell so it becomes extremely difficult to set up a stun on the enemy for an E especially if were talking about hyper mobile assassins like Zed, Kata, LB, even the new Ekko. I do want Brand's spells to have interactions and be avoidable but i think 2 spells with such delays would create severe clunkyness to his spell rotation since the only thing you could use if your ultimate for the landing the initial debuff and that way you lose a good portion of your burst. However i did get an idea from your E which is to make Conflagration detonate the W field instead of being a targeted spell, consuming it, maybe even dealing %health damage to maintain his tank buster power and use it as a finisher of sorts and making the W a pure utility slow field.