User blog comment:YourPrivateNightmare/Sejuani, the story, the problem, and the possible solution/@comment-8506165-20141105022519

Your blog seems... frankly a bit confused, you go from "SEJUANI IS SLEEPER OP" to "SEJUANI IS WEAK AND UNVIABLE" and back again a fair bit, and cap it off by asking for suggestions but saying it's going to get "ugly" if someone dares to question some of your conclusions by mentioning situations in which your logic is wrong... I'll assume you meant that people shouldn't just downplay any problems by saying "Yeah it sucks but you can't change it so shut up" and offer feedback accordingly.

"Sejuani is, by no means at all, a weak champion. Her kit is, for a tank, insanely loaded in terms of cc AND damage."

Hey, I agree.

"First of all, I didn't like her new splash..."

Aesthetic dislikes are unfortunate, but unfortunately Riot can't please everyone. I actually quite like it now that she's actually badass and armoured rather than wearing a bikini in the Freljord because fanservice - Sejuani is hardly a fanservicey sort of lady. But hey, maybe she'll get an updated splash before long, they seem to be doing everyone and their dog of late.

"Even tho her (sort of extremely broken) permaslow passive got removed"

Just taking a note of "sort of extremely broken". I have a funny feeling this admission will come in useful later.

"[complaints on Sejuani's passive, comparisons to other champs etc.]"

Sejuani's passive is certainly one of the less useful ones in the game, although hey, is the one of the highest winrate tanks consistently and his passive kind of sucks. Fair bit of AD late game, sure, but on a champion that doesn't build Crit, ArPen or even have any AD scalings. Sejuani's 25 armor does at least multiply her (presumably large) health pool against physical damage, so while it's a lower armor value than ' passive it actually does more for her in a lot of situations. But whatever. The passive is lacklustre, no denying that. But looking at abilities in isolation isn't that fantastic so let's examine the rest of Sejuani's abilities...

"Arctic Assault: received the msot significant change back then... This buff was amazing... made her lategame damage a lot more threatening..."

We like Q then. Good, we're in accord.

"Flail of the Northern Winds: This ability got VIOLATED"

I fear we've fallen into looking at abilities in isolation again, given that you already said her Q was a solid lategame damage buff and her W is a pure damage ability and nothing else (besides applying Frost, but old Sej's didn't do that). Still, let's assume Sejuani's damage is just lower for the sake of argument - she's been given a reliable gap-close-knock-up-%-health ability of DOOOM every 6.6 seconds late game with max CDR; is that more or less useful on a tank than raw damage, given a tank's role in the team? Sejuani's CC outside her ult used to just suck - it was entirely based on slows with no interrupts or moveblocks - is losing some damage to cover that weakness really that raw a deal? Particularly given that you yourself mentioned that her winrate was abhorrently high when her W damage was more comparable to pre-rework and that's why it got nerfed in the first place.

"Permafrost: ...Because of the duration reduction it was less effective in an early gank. That'S just a thing...a long, less intensive slow is always more effective then a short, strong one..."

Um... no, not unless we want to get into some modified Zeno's Paradox type thing whereby a slowed target will always lose ground no matter how strong the slow, and an unslowed target will always run away faster... but besides that: Sejuani has a knockup now. That's ~0.75-1s during which they're not moving at all, which you can't really argue doesn't make up for a 1.5s 30% slow, particularly seeing as they can't use any dashes or escapes while knocked up (and, indeed, if you're canny enough you can now interrupt those escape dashes whereas before you just had to watch them sail away). And then the slow after that is stronger to boot. And of course, there's the fact that, in your own words her permaslow passive was "sort of extremely broken". So I don't think you can really complain too much about its removal, hm?

"Glacial Prison: Finally, the one reason Sejuani has always been a hidden op champ."

...in a post requesting unambiguous Sejuani buffs, this seems a little out of place, but whatever...

"Honestly, they did quite a good job at balancing this thing."

Yeah, pretty sweet. It's actually better for AoE CC now if you hit it right because it applies the full stun to all targets, but you can't just throw it in the vague direction of the enemy now and expect a perfect engage.

So... what's the issue really? Sej has better CC than pre-rework, still has a "hidden OP" ult, and sure, slightly worse damage, but on a tank... where's the issue here with her abilities?

"And the problem with most tnak junglers is their weak early. Sure, tanks are supposed to start weak but scale with fairly cheap items into lategame....but if you want a tank to jungle you ebtter give him/her the tools to survive vs all the overly aggressive stuff that comes with it...and by that I mean the creep camps alone"

Ah. Sejuani's early clears. Well... Eh. It's a fairly easy lever to tune - you could have W deal increased damage to camps for instance, if you felt that she really couldn't clear well enough to be viable. That said, jungle Rengar could barely clear early on, pre-rework, and people still picked or banned him all the way up to Diamond elo, so I'm not sure that I buy a few sucky clears early on being the sole indicator of a champ's viability. Sure, Lee Sin will still kill you if he invades, but that's Lee Broken Sin for you. I'd argue the balance issue there wasn't with Sejuani, particularly seeing as Lee will kick almost any tank to the curb in a straight jungle fight early on. Also bear in mind that jungle overhaul changes coming up in preseason will just make any complaints about Quill Coat/Spirit items redundant.

And then your passive suggestions. Erk. Those, I feel, would kick Sejuani straight up to "broken" - she already does more damage than almost any other tank in the game (either with a full tank build or 1-2 tanky AP/pen options) with a ranged AoE stun engage and good consistent in-fight CC (compare Amumu for instance - Sejuani just wins in that regard) and you want to give her either sustain to match the likes of and, or a shield that scales off her health and basically makes people wonder why they'd ever pick  again, with a free Frozen Heart aura attached to boot. And you want her W damage buffed again. I'm really not convinced the road to Sejuani being a decent pick lies in making her so ridiculously strong she immediately gets slammed back down by the nerfhammer. If the early clears are a problem, there are easier levers to tune there. If you want her to be stronger in terms of damage or dueling, she has to give up some CC. If you want her to be tankier, you have to give up some tankiness. But seeing as you preceded this with a statement that Sejuani's not weak and actually awesome in a lot of ways, I think you really just want an answer to her bad early clears, with a bit of resentment towards the rework because you feel it made them worse. Well, I'd contend that the rework made Sejuani much more viable as a tank generally and the jungle clears are something that need to be fixed independently of her balance elsewhere, if they do need to be buffed to make her pick-worthy.

...and I've really delved into tl;dr territory here, so I'll leave it at that. Heh.