Blogs
The State of Quinn Coming Into 2018
Quinn one of my favorite champs in the entire game of League. I picked her up way before the marksman update was announced back in Season 5. Her kit was mostly unchanged, like her P, Q, W, E, but her R before the rework was honestly one of the best parts of playing her. She used to be able to transform into Valor and smack enemies until they died, it was great. She was the first champion I got to mastery 6 and 7 with. Now after Runes Reforged, lethality nerfs, and an everchanging meta, where is she sitting in the meta coming into 2018?
Quinn is an interesting champ indeed. She's the split-pushing/roaming Queen, being able to use her ult to quickly return to lane or gank an allied lane. She has a lot of damage potential early and late game, utilizing her passive and unique Q blind and E properties. Her Q is great for poking early game (sometime level 1-2 is a good time to pick it up by the way), and her E's dash catches unsuspecting toplaners off guard, especially if you get it to follow a Flash or dash. Her W gives you free vision for a few seconds... and that's Quinn's kit in a nutshell. With lots of waveclear, pushing potential, and great roaming pressure, it's surprising Quinn's fallen off in playrate compared to other top laners.
The meta right now favors champions along the lines of tanks, bruisers, or divers, not really marksman anymore. Most team comps prefer to shift damage to the mid and botlane, leaving jungle, support, and toplane to take a moderately-tanky to tanky champion instead, which is totally fine. A good argument to that is "then why not take Quinn into the botlane?" Well, she's not really that good of an AD carry, but that's just an opinion. Her Q is great for dealing more single target damage, than small AoE (area of effect) damage, but after her Q and E are exhausted, she doesn't really hold up to other AD carries in the botlane with almost no mobility after the fact. Jhin still has his 4th shot, Vayne has her 3 proc W passive, and the list goes on.
But that isn't saying Quinn is staying a bad champ, she isn't bad at all. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure we're working with an Ornn situation, where she's been buffed before, but because no one is playing her as much, the power that she can deal is unknown and hidden. So how can Riot, or the meta, fix Quinn's issue? There are a few things that can help bring Quinn back to the #1 top laner on champion.gg.
1. Tanky junglers and supports (together in the same game) become more common, allowing Quinn to take a damaging spot in the toplane.
2. A slight buff to toplane-oriented marksman, like Quinn, Graves
3. (Extremely unlikely) Riot could remove all tanks from the game. Every. Single. One.
So in all, Quinn isn't a bad toplaner, she's just extremely underplayed in favor of other, tankier options. With maybe a few tweaks to her kit and a slight shift in meta, Quinn can go back to flying around the rift, killing as many squishy targets as she wants. Who knows, maybe one day we'll see Demacia's wings fly once more.
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