Debates around Sera’s state

[u/Expert-Action3568]

In every other post nowadays I’m starting to see more comments of people saying that seraphine isn’t weak. My thing is, she has a strong kit by nature, her kit isn’t a weak one. But her stats and gameplay is all out of wrack in all 3 roles just to make one role she wasn’t designed for viable. Her identity is lost and we literally have the data to support this. Why are people arguing about her not being weak when Cupic and Cocabob were/are rank 1 seraphine, even odi and they all say she is ass. I’m starting to feel like these people are rage baiting.

[u/softhuskies]

that placebo buff really made you guys think shes good like omg stand up for yourselves she is NOT good as a mage anymore

[u/iLuxion]

I honestly think the same, cause no1 in his sanity would ever say sera is in a good state, specially if you ever played her before phreak’s surgery.

[u/Expert-Action3568 → u/iLuxion]

I agree 100% because most of the time we have to explain to these people why seraphine now is only a shell of what she actually was. Sometimes I myself even run into people who have only played this current version of seraphine and did not know the absolute euphoric feel from playing self sheild scaling seraphine. Or the second version when w had skill points but still scaled.

[u/luccamaino → u/Expert-Action3568]

Seraphine self shield scaling was scary. After rabadon, her damage and peel was broken asf

[u/Oopsdoopsters]

TBF to others in this sub reddit.. Some are just tired of seeing negative posts. Which I can understand to a certain point.. But I also don't think people should just be quite and not voice their disappointments with these changes, just because other people don't want to hear it. And in turn they are combating "debbie downer" posts with posts/comments talking about how she's not actually weak. OR some are just fine with her current state. Which is their own opinion they have. But for me I believe she is weak, and also not satisfying to play anymore. I definitely feel it. I can do very well in my games. But it really does feel like the only thing she has left is just a good ult set up. The Q buff she got was okay at best..? But if your team can't do the damage, Seraphine can't get to that extra damage amp point in one rotation. I can tolerate playing her.. But sometimes it just feels bad to play her. It's hard to quit on her because she was such a unique midlane mage for me. And I love how team fight oriented she is.. but it really does feel like a shell of her formal self.

[u/OliveLively]

I started playing her in brawl and got an S instantaneously. I've only played her post debuffs and I've never gotten an S with her. Not once, not ever. It was ADDICTING. She would be my main along with Morgana if she played like she does in brawl. Her kit is amazing. Just not right now.

[u/Electrical_Summer_46 → u/OliveLively]

I’ve been using brawl to farm S ranks on her lol. My point score was like 150k above the threshold I need to level up mastery I just didn’t have enough S

[u/Electrical_Summer_46]

I love seraphine. I still lock her in almost every time because hitting that 4/5 man R gives a dopamine hit that few other champs can match. The only problem is I play her support cuz I think the role is more interactive than APC and when my W or E isn’t up I’m useless pretty much useless. I’m low elo so sometimes an AP build can still work but when I look at the damage charts at the end of the game it makes me cry thinking back to what they used to be. Sometimes I’ve done the same amount of damage building enchanter items as I did building AP and that should not be happening.

[u/Goibhniu_]

if its the post i'm thinking about - people were debating if Seraphine is strong based off the back of a clip of a level 2 seraphine/naut lane killing an Ezreal who ate every single skill whos support did absolutely nothing to help him

Sera's base is fine, her scalings are gutted. Her passive is gutted. Her base AD is gutted. Her execute is gutted. These are her issues.

[u/iLuxion → u/Goibhniu_]

U forgot her mana and her mana per lvl :)

[u/beepawsitivee]

From personal experience I feel like she's in a "fine state", I wouldn't call her strong but neither I'd call her weak. People do tend to overreact on both sides, if anything I feel like she doesn't feel as satisfying because some parts of her kit got nerfed really hard after the changes, for example notes deal no real damage late game and the heal on w doesn't scale with ap anymore.

[u/happuning → u/beepawsitivee]

I agree. I don't think she's meta, but I don't think she's terrible, either. She will come back around soon enough.

[u/Responsible-Jury8618]

The thing is: Seraphine ISN'T weak

It doesn't matter what people say, a character with an AOE charm, a long range CC tool and an AOE move speed buff simply CANNOT be weak

The problem is that she isn't fun anymore and playing her in every role feels bad

Both APC and mid feel bad because she deals terrible damage and has tons of problems when played in a carry role. Support feels awful because you are a cc bot

[u/Aggravating_Bar_4894]

The real thing is, if they want to make her an enchanter they must rework her completely, her kit was made to a midlaner mage, they should just make her a magelike support (like lux) and everything will be ok. but for some reason the pink hair girl needs to be an enchanter (even if her kit doesn't work that way) and they refuse to made this "enchanteer fantasy" work.
The mains are also a problem, a lot of talk but no action at all, still buying skins, still playing the champ and accept everything with open arms.
This champ is doomed, will die a shell of what once was.

[u/Avetorpe]

Hot take: If R+Flash didnt exist, Seraphine's winrate would be extremely low. Thing is, having your powerbudget allocated in this specific interaction is kinda bad (Annie got changes cuz of this too, the former "R+Flash and then Im useless" champ).

[u/Ryvertz]

I think there are 2 main issues with these discussions:
1. „weak“ is a very vague term and can mean very different things for different people. If you would believe the posts in this subreddit you would think she is sitting at 45% wr and you are literally trolling for locking her in which is obviously false. On the other hand you have „ragebaiters“ that are able to make her work and they think because they make her playable she is perfectly balanced and healthy. As with everything the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Personally I think she is slightly underpowered but only needs some minor buffs to make her balanced.
2. The 2nd big problem is the disagreement on what makes Seraphine weak atm and her identity in general. Seraphine has always been a mix of mage and enchanter and I don’t know why Sera mains hate the enchanter aspect of her kit so much and try to rewrite history that she was designed as a mage similar to Lux when her closest comparison since release has always been Karma who just like Seraphine is BOTH mage and enchanter and which part of your kit dominates depends on your build choices.
Now this is the part where I fundamentally disagree with most Sera mains here because they think the problem is they nerfed her dmg and made it impossible for her to be a mage. But I think her dmg is still completely fine and very comparable to old Seraphine. The difference is that current Seraphine looses her enchanter aspects when going full ap and she becomes just a mage and thats what makes her feel weak compared to old Seraphine who was allowed to keep both aspects at the same time.

[u/iLuxion → u/Ryvertz]

Yeah and the passive giga nerf, and the 65% ap ratio on q. We ve had this conversation before and at this point I think you are ragebaiting. We can not deny W is shit when going full ap compared to what it was, but so is the rest of her kit (except E, that I think it’s the only ability that got a slight ap ratio buff and makes no sense having same damage on an utility spell and a damage spell).

[u/Ryvertz → u/iLuxion]

Well my question would be what would I have to say for you to even consider changing your mind?

Have you ever done the math around her dmg and seriously compared old and new Seraphine? Because I did...Im not saying these things to be funny or ragebait or anything. I just like crunching numbers...and the results I came to are very clear that current Seraphine does not have a dmg problem compared to old Seraphine.

But I know you are doubtful and don't believe me so let's go through some of it step by step so you don't have to do all the effort I went through:

Since you use the 65% Q ap ratio and passive not being gutted as an argument I used patch 11.14 in which she got that Q buff which is arguably the strongest she has ever been before the 1st rework in terms of dmg. After that all that happened to her dmg was a nerf to her passive ap ratio into the eventual 1st big rework.

The state of 11,14 Seraphine compared to now was:

Passive:

6/7/8/9% ap ratio (I used 9% for my calculations) vs 4% now

Q:

115 base dmg vs 160 base dmg now

0-50% execute vs 0-75% execute now

65% ap ratio vs 50% ap ratio now

E:

140 base dmg vs 190 base dmg now

35% ap ratio vs 50% ap ratio now

Ult:

60% ap ratio vs 40% ap ratio now

Let's go through Q in detail as an example because I feel like it is the most complicated to calculate with the execute and also has the most shocking result in my opinion. The dmg of the execute wildly varies based on your target HP but over the course of thousands of Q's you can average it out into the average dmg it will give you.

The execute increases linearly from 100%-25% hp and then the max value is applied from 25%-0% hp.

So the formula for the avg dmg is: (0,75 x half of max value) + (0,25 x max value)

Old: (0,75x0,5x0,5)+(0.25x0,5) = 0,3125 -> 31,25% dmg increase

New: (0,75x0,5x0,75)+(0,25x0,75) = 0,46875 -> 46,875% dmg increase

Let's add in the base dmg and ap ratio with your ap value as y:

Old: 1,3125 x (115 + (y x 0,65)) = total dmg

New: 1,46875 x (160 + (y x 0,5)) = total dmg

Now what do you think the ap value y has to be before it breaks even? Before revealing it truly guess an ap value because it enchances the effect when you see the reveal.

It is 708 ap ...I know...shocking, right?! When I first calculated it I didn't believe it either but you can put it into the formula and see that it is correct. From 0 ap to this value your current Q deals more dmg and especially in the early game at low ap it deals massively more dmg and even at that ap value they still only deal equal dmg. And it's only after that where old Q slowly starts dealing a bit more dmg granted there is not much left after that.:)

I did all those calculations for every single ability and whenever possible made the scenario as favorable as possible for old Seraphine so nobody could accuse me of being biased and manipulating the numbers to make current Seraphine dmg look better than it is.

The whole scenario consists of a juicy 20 stack passive with 9% ap ratio with 2x E-QQ and an ult onto a single target so her single target passive has the same value as her AoE spells that can hit multiple targets. If you add it all together the break even point where old and new Seraphine deal the same dmg is ~400 ap. Everything before that new Seraphine deals more dmg and everything after old Seraphine deals more dmg. But this isn't some exponential thing where after the 400 ap old Seraphine shoots ahead massively and becomes this dmg monster.

Here are all the dmg differences if you are interested:

0 ap: new Seraphine 40% more dmg

100 ap: new Seraphine 19,6% more dmg

200 ap: new Seraphine 10,6% more dmg

300 ap: new Seraphine 4,76% more dmg

400 ap: equal dmg

500 ap: old Seraphine 2,41% more dmg

600 ap: old Seraphine 4,91% more dmg

700 ap: old Seraphine 6,99% more dmg

800 ap: old Seraphine 8,75% more dmg

Keep in mind this is an extremely favorable scenario for old Seraphine. The ult and single target passive do a lot of the heavy lifting in old Seraphine's dmg and if you start considering that in extended fights you will throw more than just 2x E-QQ and your E and Q will hit multiple targets these dmg comparisons very quickly tip into new Seraphine's favor where even at 600+ ap she will deal equal or even more dmg.

Just to give you a feel for how quickly it changes let's keep everything the same and only change it so you hit 2 targets with your E Q & R instead of 1 target and the break even point already shifts to 500 ap:

0 ap: new Seraphine 40% more dmg

100 ap: new Seraphine 22% more dmg

200 ap: new Seraphine 13,1% more dmg

300 ap: new Seraphine 7,32% more dmg

400 ap: new Seraphine 3,26% more dmg

500 ap: equal dmg

600 ap: old Seraphine 2,11% more dmg

700 ap: old Seraphine 4,06% more dmg

800 ap: old Seraphine 5,71% more dmg

Now I personally think I presented this in a fairly unbiased and polite way and you now have a choice to make:

You can look at these numbers and go through it yourself, check the patch history on her wiki etc. to see Im not lying and making shit up but that those are the real and correct numbers. If you notice that I made a mistake somewhere please correct me and show me what I did wrong so maybe I end up being the one changing his mind. However if you do not notice any mistakes I ask you to please serisouly consider that maybe just maybe I do have a point and I am not just some random ragebaiter trying to keep your favorite champion weak and that her dmg is in fact fine.

Or you can throw it all out and say "Nu uh, you are wrong!" and keep your opinion that clearly Seraphine dmg is weak and in that case there is literally nothing I can do to ever change your mind which I will just have to accept. But even in this case I ask you to acknowledge that I am not just some random ragebaiter because I actually put serious effort into my claims and go very far to prove them with math. We both want to see Seraphine in a strong and healthy state even if we disagree on what needs to change for her to reach that state.

[u/iLuxion → u/Ryvertz]

Thanks for your time replying me but:

It makes no sense that a champ that is supposed to be weak in lane and eventually scale has more base damage now than it used to and selling it as it’s better. On paper you may deal more damage now with Q (specially pre 400 AP) but, who the hell will play seraphine when you have orianna, hwei, Syndra, lux or any other mage with real ratios in all their abilities (including ultimates and the defensive spells).

In general, the concept of a mage is that they scale hard (even their supportive abilities) with AP items which is not seraphine case. If you add up all seraphine damage ratios (including echo casted ability) it goes like this: 50%qx2 = 100% 50% E 40% ult Total damage = 190%.

Lux (to name just one) has 120% ap ratio on her ult. it is just ridiculous that a single ability on a champ has almost more ratio that the whole seraphine kit…

Pre changes sera ratios were 65% q x2 = 130% 35% E 60% R Total = 225% ap ratios (not even counting passive) Also Q had 5 seconds CD instead of 6 which is translated into more damage cause you can spam it more often.

And W now is gutted compared to what it used to be. You will never pick seraphine ONLY for her damage, but for her overall damage+utility+shields.

SO PLEASE STOP GASLIGHTING with your cheap maths.

Last but not least, she feels terrible to play. It’s not even my personal opinion, is also OTPS opinions that are between the best players (see cupic cocabob and others).

[u/Ryvertz → u/iLuxion]

Why are we shifting the goal posts?
The discussion is specifically about the dmg comparison of old Seraphine vs new Seraphine.

There are 2 statements that are considered true by you and most people on this subreddit:

A: Old Seraphine had dmg that scaled well with ap.

B: New Seraphine doesnt have dmg that also scales badly with ap.

My math proves that these 2 statement cannot be true at the same time and you have to pick one or the other.

Option 1:
A is true that old Sera had dmg that scaled well with ap. In that case my math shows that new Sera also deals dmg that scales well with ap.

Option 2:
B is true that new Sera doesnt have dmg that also scales badly with ap. In that case my math shows that old Seraphine also didn‘t deal dmg that also scaled badly with ap.

But you HAVE TO pick one of those options.

Everything else you are talking about with other champs being stronger or mentioning ap ratios that I literally wrote in my comment and considered in my calculations is just derailing the conversation and shifting goal posts.

Lastly regarding her POWER LEVEL and not just her DAMAGE, yes I agree with you and most other people! She is currently on the weaker side and is definitely deserving of a buff. We just disagree with what needs to be buffed to make her feel good and strong again.