User blog comment:Commander Marko/CB1: Zero, the Collector/@comment-4290320-20150329111300/@comment-533780-20150329151448

Those changes were all improvements, definitely; I like how E now interacts with the snare from R especially. On first read, I thought it interacted with the restraint from Q, but then realised it was the snare from R. I'm not sure which of the two I preferred, probably the Q interaction tbh, if only because it will be relevant more often and there's more synergy between Q and E than between R and E.

I'm not really getting his ult, the double-knockback feels like an escape, but the snare (and its new E interaction) feels like it's supposed to be aggressive, yet the knockback makes it hard to capitalize on - I don't think he could even get back in range to land the E before the snare faded, especially at level 6. The damage is so low it feels more like a poke than a coup de grace, yet it reduces cooldown if it kills. In terms of straight damage output, you're much better off just autoattacking than pressing R, excepting that it has a marginally higher range. So all in all, it feels confused and confusing and I don't understand what to use it for other than as a Buster Shot + Caitlyn-net escape move - making the snare and the E interaction and the cooldown reduction all just confusing/tacked-on. And then it resets W cooldown too, and I have no idea why. It's a real jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none move.

The new style Q is a big improvement I think because the interaction is more interesting, and the debuff is less annoying, but I think it's kind of a no-brainer that you break it if you can. For anyone other than the carry, there is no downside to breaking it as it has no flat damage amount, and for the carry the cost of not breaking it (i.e. no autoattacks for 4 seconds) is just too high. Flavour-wise, I'm also not sure why shooting someone would break the mechanism.

I think the new passive numbers are probably right, they're back in the realm of solid rather than exceptional. I think the nerf to Q's movement speed slow was unnecesary as it wasn't a huge slow anyway. If anything it could have done with a buff, especially at low ranks. If it were 40-80 *%*, that would be one thing, but as a flat reduction, it's like a 10-25% slow, which is pretty mild. This combined with the low cost / inevitability of breaking it really makes the Q 'decision' sort of pointless. There is no rock, and the place isn't even that hard.

The halving of W's damage reduction is welcome, but tbh it should just be scrapped altogether I think, it's still very strong and I don't know what numbers if any would be the sweet spot between pointless and overpowered. The damage that it deals was possibly just about fair as it was (given the skill-shot style execution - I'd love to know the speed and width of those projectiles and hope they're fairly dodgable), and it's probably fine now too (though you don't say what percentage of his AD it deals, I'm assuming it's like 10% or so), and I think it should be decoupled from the damage reduction entirely. Mobility plus reactive damage is a nice little move, there's no need for the damage shield in my opinion.

I really like that you're tying his abilities together to create some synergies, but I think they're a little forced at the moment rather than being natural and comfortable.