u/NonTokenisableFungi

She’s eating a nerf next patch despite being a non factor bot lane. Ranged top is just resented too much that bot players are paying for their sins

How would you address the issue (if you believe there to be one)?

For me personally I would like to rework the passive to something that becomes intrinsically more effective in duo lane skirmishes and team fights in general, and nerf her duelling capacity pre 6

Something like:

Night Hunter
Vayne gains 20 bonus movement speed while facing a nearby visible enemy champion, increased by 10 for each additional visible enemy champion. This is increased to 90 while under the effects of Final Hour.

Another issue is that Vayne is extremely sharp and vulnerable to certain counter picks top lane (sub 40% winrate matchups such as Malphite and Teemo) though arguably this is no issue and some may contend that she should not be blind pickable top. How to address this if at all I have no idea

There is a positive correlation for all champs between strength/performance and pick rate. What varies is the steepness of that correlation

For most champs anything that breaks into overpowered territory will see a surge in pick rate and then a second surge by the next patch when it has had time to pick up in visibility

Then there are other champs that can stand perpetually at 53%+ win rate in a given role and still be relatively inelastic with their low pick

The one that comes to mind to me always is Nilah. Even during patches where she had to be immediately hotfixed for numerical reasons she never sees even an average pick rate for a role with the smallest pool of intended champions in the game (her only viable role no less due to her passive)

She just feels clunky to play, her design is not super inspiring (she had some very compelling concept art so this is a shame IMO), and she’s a melee laning into frequently double ranged matchups except she scales harder than any ranged character meaning the asymmetric lane bullied melee/ranged experience is further aggravated for her. Her kit also doesn’t feel intuitive and it feels overloaded for the sake of shoehorning her into the role rather than organically leaning into being a bot laner

Another champ in this position is Zilean, specifically though for mid lane (in solo queue). He’s a relic and I wouldn’t even say his design warrants change, his audience is pretty die hard about the nature of his kit. But he is just antithetical to everything solo laners enjoy about solo laning (arguably you can have a better time and your opponent a worse time if you take him top)

What other champs feel uniquely bad to play? What champs can’t have pick rate ‘bought’ with power alone? In my opinion some of these champs who cannot even see usage in their main roles should see additional mid scopes if not outright reworks.

With Peyz picking up Sylas in EWC to prove the point, Sylas could be argued now to be legitimately viable in every role.

Brand is also playable in all 5 positions with respectable winrates everywhere, as is Teemo.

I think Malphite is also capable of flexing all roles.

Are there any other champs in this category?

LONG READ AHEAD (TL;DR: at the bottom)

Just browsing through his support page on lolalytics and playing the pick myself a couple times, a few things are clear:

A) This champ is way underoptimised in many games as far as itemisation goes

B) This champ is way underoptimised in many games as far as rune page goes

C) This champ is way underoptimised in most games as far as skill order goes

https://lolalytics.com/lol/jax/build/?lane=support&tier=all&patch=16.13

22k game sample size

On point A)

1. Bloodsong is strictly better than Celestial Opposition. There is an argument to be made for picking Solstice Sleigh situationally but Celestial Opposition eats up too much pick rate and drops the winrate despite being low value. The reason is that Jax Support especially only engages with E available, meaning he doesn't synergise well with the damage reduction from Celestial Opposition. You already reduce most upfront burst very often. Additionally Jax is a really strong sheen user as is, and he also sets up his team well for follow up damage. Solstice Sleigh is probably a strong choice too because he is as reliable at setting it up as many of the supports its already designed to with, and it allows him to follow up with his solid HoB + W damage well also

2. Never build Triforce or DnD. Again Bloodsong already provides Sheen and secondarily the objective of Support Jax is less damage oriented and more centred around providing crowd control, engage and a frontline. His two best options here for 1st item really are Sundered Sky and Zeke's Convergence. Sundered has a positive winrate even when Jax supports are lowering his winrate with countless other suboptimal build choices. Sundered is particularly good because it's such a strong group fighting item and Support Jax will be fighting group fights far more than Top Jax.

On point B)

1. Hail of Blades should be taken every game, invariably. You don't have the durability of Top Jax to look for sustained fights with Lethal Tempo nor Conqueror. Definitely not Grasp either because you can't really disengage after short trades without taking too much poke in return, because you don't have peel on the way out like say a Tahm Kench can. It's the strongest burst keystone in the game for melee champs, the way it enables Support Camille it enables you also. It also has really strong minor runes for Jax specifically: Sudden Impact, Deep Ward is amazing on supports like Jax, Pyke who can invade and ward deep relatively safely and both Treasure Hunter and Relentless Hunter are solid, ultimately it depends on whether you think the game is going to be roam heavy or not (not meaningful winrate difference either way).

2. Bone Plating is pretty suboptimal on Jax, for the same reason as A1 - you don't really walk up to engage in the absence of your E and if you are engaging with E the damage reduction is moot or wasted often. Secondary page I actually think Inspiration is going to be a better bet for most games, with Footwear and JOAT being a really strong pairing. JOAT on Jax is excellent because your support item already provides 4 stacks and he builds Sundered, Zhonya's, support items - long sword 1st back gives you 5 stacks already, completing Sundered gives you 6, either defensive boots will give you 2 (or 3, with Merc's) more stacks on top of that, Zhonya's gives you 10 with Merc's and otherwise buying 1 Null Magic will complete it for Plated. Biscuits is fine too into poke heavy, mage lanes.

3. Minor but noticeable choice. Flat +65 health is far superior to scaling health. Supports already benefit least from level scaling health rune, and Jax being a roam heavy support suffers even further being further behind in HP for much of the game. He also is committal by design as a melee with no immediate disengage early in the game when Q CD is still too high, so he values the early game strength far more than say a Lux or Brand.

On point C)

1. The clear underoptimisation point here is the W maxing that is occurring in more than half of games. W max for the pure damage is a necessity and a relic of Top Jax build path bleeding autopilot into Support Jax when you far undervalue the W damage in contrast to reduced CDs and damage on Q and E on this role instead. E is your CC and peel and frontline, Q is your engage and disengage and mobility to roam throughout the map and initiate plays, invades, wards, and escapes. Also, you can make such good use of Q in this role because you get 4 wards for free on every back, on top of 40 g Control wards. IMO E max --> Q max --> W last every game.

TL;DR: Literally everything is being built wrong on Jax Support very often, and yet he is sitting at >47% WR. Noticeably his winrate has increased steadily from 16.11 onwards as people have started building him somewhat more correctly over time, but for the most part players are still losing out everywhere.

Autopilot build:

Runes

Hail of Blades

Sudden Impact

Deep Ward

Relentless Hunter

Magical Footwear/Biscuit Delivery

Jack of All Trades

Attack Speed - Adaptive Force - Flat Health

Item order

Bloodsong

Sundered Sky

Zeke's Convergence

Zhonya's Hourglass

Locket of the Iron Solari

Skill Max

E --> Q --> W

I want to see fewer non interactive mages

I don't enjoy laning against Ziggs, Mel, Seraphine, Lux type champs for similar reasons as to why I don't enjoy laning against Sivir or Lethality Varus (and in those instances those champs still generally engage more in auto attack range by virtue of it being better backed into their power budget. There's the same attempt by Riot to coax that kind of interactive counterplay with the same passive auto attack procs but still to a lesser extent innately)

Poke that outranges you, tp summ resets, strongly early game skewed power curves (from 1st recall onwards which is easily enabled with aforementioned tp), wave clear to deny any wave management/shut out snowball potential, strong self peel into marksmen class which generally has both weak engage and follow up is not that fun to face

I like laning into Cassiopeia as much as I like laning into most marksmen. Most marksmen are also annoying in some way but there is generally a sense of parity and give or take. Her counterplay is obvious and always existent

I like laning into Karthus more than most mage bot lanes, again it's more interactive and generally getting poked by Karthus generally means I have the opportunity to return fire

These champs with more comparable sustained damage play patterns to ADCs tend to be less egregious to versus even when they are strong, comparatively Mel is awful in solo queue yet a brutally worse experience to face with her current kit shape

I would like to see more interactive melee bot lane picks. I don't feel bad about losing to Yasuo, he forfeits lane control from level 1 and he generally doesn't just auto win/nullify lane by virtue of his kit shape, not when even, ahead and certainly not from behind. I don't mind laning into Fiora ADC, for similar reasons + even if I lose it feels earned, it's clear I could've played better and had all the chances to but got outplayed.

Only melee bot pick I've seen which I have despised versusing is the mythical Malphite APC, but they are a rare and low skill demand breed

I like the increased diversity of bot, all lanes should have some flexibility, I just don't like the direction of the majority of the ones that are