User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Rework) Rumble, the Mechanized Menace/@comment-5663427-20160911174731/@comment-5663427-20160912165511

Hm, perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough (I had a much longer post prepared but wikia decided it'll be funnier to randomly delete all the text when I tried to upload), so let me elaborate.

First of all, I really dislike the overall impression of the kit you've made up here, mostly because you've pretty much took pretty much the basic mechanic that a Rumble player usually has to practice for months before they can truly feel comfortable with him. That is: '''The control over the minion wave. '''

The whole reasoning you gave behind replacing autoattacks with flamespitter and making it permament is (excuse me for my language) probably one of the dumbest statements I have ever heard. Following this logic, technically you could give Yasuo a knockup on his every third regular AA as well, since he just mashes Q like a psycho anyway, or replace Darius' autoattacks with his Q, since he only goes in for a trade when it's off cooldown anyway. I legimately can't think of a situation where having a permament flamespitter as a replacement for AAs would be any good in any situation, and given that it's obviously weaker than the live one (like, a lot weaker), with that little damage, much lower range, no way of reliably finishing off minions (even Aurelion Sol has a mini execute on minions on his stars, and he is both ranged and has actual AAs), and pretty much no control other than facing away from the wave (which is still kinda meh because in this kit, this freaking passive is essentially your only way of dealing damage), this version of Rumble is doomed to fail from the start, because in best case scenario you'll be behind by a ton of CS compared to your opponent, and since this whole new kit is way too feast or famine (essentially no level powerspikes other than lvl 6 and very slow damage scaling on Q), that makes it a heavily flawed design. In case however, if you want to go agressively and you do want to push the wave, realistically, you still don't get that much cs because again, you can't reliably last hit, you'll find yourself under enemy tower rather quickly because of constant barrage of damage from both yourself and your minions, however due to laughably low range your opponent won't really get hit by it and will stay fairly healthy for most of the time, and you still make for an easy target to gank. Not to mention that this whole new laning pattern is overall abusable by pretty much anyone who has half a brain. Hell, I could even justify Malphite and Nasus being a top tier counters to this version of Rumble. (just because you slap a "Juggernaut" name tag on a champion who clearly isn't a Juggernaut, reduce his MS by 20 (!) and buff max hp by 100 at lvl 18 isn't going to magically make it as if this new Rumble was supposed to be the king of top lane out of nowhere).

This reminds me of that new Q, which you seem to just increbly glorify as if this abillity was supposed to save Rumble from all his problems related to being all-ined/ganked. Well no. Even if you think that kiting appreantly doesn't play that big of a role when playing Rumble (which is completely wrong), taking away all of Rumble's gentle manuverability, base MS, and replacing it with basically walking in a straight line doesn't really cut it I'd say. Yes, ~90 bonus MS for a few seconds might be helpful from time to time, but don't forget the fact that when chasing someone you can easily overshoot the distance you want to go (and due to reduced turn rate might end up in places you don't want to get to), and while escaping pretty much any from of even a slightest slow leads to your demise, since you have no way of both dealing damage and kiting your opponent (which current Q and E allow to but I'll get on that later), this iteration is basically hoping your opponent can't hit their cc, or hoping they're actually dumb enough to stand in your tiny petty Flamespitter without even thinking about fighting back, no middle ground, no turnarounds, no meaningful decision making, you either walk around in circles around people or walk away from them in a straight line. (why did you think that turning Rumble into a failed version of Singed would be a good idea)

W is pretty much the only functional abillity here, but only because of how stat-checky it is and how much power it brings at the very little cost, while offering little to no room to play around for your opponent. Live version of Rumble's W may not be too imaginative either, but it actually offers some room to play around for your opponent, thanks to its cooldown, while at the same time a good Rumble player will try to use it as effectively as possible, to both block a bit of damage and get a few extra Q ticks in. Here in the laning phase it basically comes down to stacking up a big shield, and since your heat decays much quicker, you can effectively space out your W casts to keep a ~24-40% hp shield at pretty much all the time, making it feel unrewarding to try and damage Rumble, since his health doesn't go down all that much and he has this big shield ready at all the times, so why would you even poke him. That doesn't change the fact that his laning phase is still pretty pitful due to the problems I've pointed out earlier, but you get what I mean, this ability make the laning experience unpleasant for both players rather than just Rumble.

This iteration of E is pretty much a joke, even if it is a permaslow because it doesn't have any cooldown, you've implemented this change at the cost of: Slow stacking, Range, Slow duration, Damage. So basically, since it doesn't deal damage here, you can't last hit effectively (and due to the lack of AAs), you can't reliably poke your opponent, and trying to actually catch up to someone with just the E doesn't make sense because you might as well just use the Q toggles all the time. Sure, while you're at someone's face you could use E to keep them in place, but 30% slow at levels 1-13 (I can't imagine any scenario where maxing this ability first or second would be a good idea), is pretty much meh, and it still can't be dodged, or your opponent can just dash out of it (or you know, they can just burst you down because in actual combat W spamming will just postpone your death since just Flamespitter's damage simply isn't enough). Thanks to this many flaws Rylai would simply become a first item to rush on Rumble to reliably keep people in range of him, which I'd be geniuenly pissed off about because this item on Rumble is an overpriced crap that works only as a luxury item. But hey, Protobelt doesn't give you enough stats to support your pitful scalings (and you've essentially made Hextech Revolver powerspike completely irrelevant), Sunfire cape is rather situational even here, so is any MR starting item, Liandry might be an option, but you still can't even really keep people in range of your abillities anyway so what's the point, so Rylai's is a must have in such a case.

And now, I'd say one of the more controversial part of this rework, being the fact that you kept Rumble's current ult, which by no means fits into this whole "walk in a straight line and hope your enemies are complete potatoes"-fantasy. Let's get to the basics: Rumble is a mid-range/melee mage. He's technically melee, and can excel at melee fights (and is quite effective at that), but he works best at whittiling down his opponent from mid-length ranges, which are much more dangerous in the top lane given most of the champions there can only fight at an effective melee range (125~175, for comparision, current Rumble's Q range is 600), and it makes the Equalizer fit completely fine, it adds to the versatility of Rumble and in how many different ways he can approach a fight (and gives him quite a big relevancy in teamfights which most of the toplaners would kill for). The Equalizer appearing here doesn't solidify his identity as a previously mentioned mid-range/melee mage, it soldifies his identity as the "that one ability hotkey bot", just like how Elise is a "stun bot", or Rengar with his "kill one person" identity, with the pitful kit that you gave to Rumble, he pretty much went down to this mentality. Press one button -> Hope it works -> Be useless for the rest of the fight. Given how much mechanics and tools you took away from Rumble, that's all he's left with to be actually effective at any point in the game. And besides the number adjustments were just completely missed here, it's already a strong early game abillity, it already falls short a lot come late game, and increasing the scaling won't really do anything since going the usual full ap would be nigh impossible (essentially no real reason to build AP + the fact that you need to become a 5k hp walking meat shield to be any relevant + problematic gold income, the rest you should figure out yourself).

Now, I don't want to be a dick but, this whole rework idea feels like you've watched some people play Rumble, saw them use Q a lot and thought "well, he uses that abillity often anyway so replacing his autos with it won't make that big of a difference lol". This is why I think that you've missed the point of what Rumble is supposed to be. The whole idea why Rumble should become a Juggernaut feels really forced here, since Rumble already has a well defined, unique identity, that like you've mentioned, attracted quite a few people to actually pick him up and play him for longer that 20 minutes. I'll agree, Rumble could use a few tweaks, but I'd rather reduce them to simple number changes on his current kit, perhaps introduction of a few new mechanics like a grounded debuff or have danger zone grant some other buffs than just % increase (side note: I can't believe you dropped danger zone completely and pretty much gave nothing in return), but not turn him into some hideous love child of D.Va and Singed with an Equalizer and a "Juggernaut" tag slapped on its face.