Changing Samira’s Ultimate to Open Her Path to Pro Play, Reduce Low Elo Frustration, and Increase Skill Expression
The core idea is simple: reduce the duration of Samira’s ultimate from 2.5 seconds to around 1–1.5 seconds, while increasing its DPS but lowering its total damage. Alternatively, some of that power could be shifted into the rest of her kit.
Right now, Samira is an extremely polarized champion when it comes to teamfights. In solo queue, whether she gets to play the game or not is often decided in champion select — especially in lower elo, where players are less coordinated and less likely to draft proper counterpicks. This is probably the biggest source of frustration when playing against Samira: if your team lacks reliable CC and she starts ulting in the middle of a fight, there’s often nothing you can realistically do.
On the other hand, in high elo, Samira frequently faces experienced players drafting specifically to shut her down. They save their CC for your engage and completely deny your ability to function no matter how well you play (hello Alistar). In many games, it feels like the champion’s success is determined less by the Samira player’s skill and more by whether the enemy team allows her to exist.
I think both of these problems could be addressed by changing her ultimate — making it less overwhelmingly destructive in a vacuum, while still keeping it rewarding and satisfying.
Reducing the channel duration while increasing the DPS would lower the amount of guaranteed counterplay against Samira without removing counterplay entirely. If you successfully lock Samira down, she’s still diving into the middle of your team and can still be focused and killed. But Samira herself would gain far more flexibility and decision-making in teamfights.
Instead of just pressing the standard combo, diving in, and hoping for the best, Samira players would need to continue executing well after pressing R. Landing Qs would matter more. Managing W properly would matter more. Right now, saving W after ulting is almost pointless — either you die during the channel, or everyone else dies first, and the fight is already over for you either way.
With a shorter ultimate, Samira could actually continue fighting afterward instead of treating R as the only button that matters. It could even create real incentives to cast multiple ultimates during extended fights.
Actual STYLE expression.
I really love Samira — I have almost 1.7 million mastery points on her — but in high elo, playing her often feels less “impossible” and more simply unpleasant. It constantly feels like a burden either on yourself or your team. I think changes like these would preserve her identity while increasing both her depth and her skill expression.
At the same time, it would remove a lot of frustration for both teams and make Samira feel fairer and less draft-dependent.
Thanks to anyone who read all of this.