PBE Preview: Bringing The Hammer Down

So we all know Jayce. He's annoying to play against, and it could be just me, but I'm not even having fun playing him. There's been several issues with Jayce since he was released, and now that he's been so prominent in professional play, Riot has finally decided that it's die time - not do or die time. The last nerf they did was a nerf to his Acceleration Gate to increase its cooldown... which hardly did anything at all. It was all a little light-handed. Now, the Hammer is getting hammered. Keep in mind that all numbers are still tentative while the information is from the PBE, and they are subjext to change. Welcome to the PBE Preview.

First incoming changes are to his base statistics. His base health regen is getting nerfed across the board, dropping from 7 to 5 and the regen gained per level is dropping from 0.7 to 0.5. However, his mana regeneration figures are getting buffed, increasing from 7 to 10 and increasing the gain per level from 0.7 to 1.0. This is to put the emphasis on playing offensively in lane to achieve victory, rather than to sit back, heal back any damage done, and farm and damage from afar.

A combined effort to his "ultimate" and his passive. The Transform on his ultimate used to add effects onto his basic attacks after swapping stances, be it bonus magic damage into Hammer form, or a % resist shred on his Cannon form. Those are both being removed, and instead, his passive is gaining a little effect that activates upon swapping, in addition to his haste and negligible ignoring of unit collision. This is an amount of bonus magic damage on his next attack, which scales with level. A fairly simple change, but a good one nonetheless. The shred made Jayce too easy to play, ignoring way too much of his target's resistance - 25% plus 35% plus 8% is a lot of ignored armor - while dishing out unhealthy amounts of damage. On the flip side, the added magic damage from his shift to Hammer form was practically irrelevant, so they're making it a bit more prominent as a damage source. Additionally, his Ultimate has become a non-upgradeable skill like Karma's old Mantra ultimate. There are no points for it anymore, and all of his other abilities have 6 ranks; neat change, which kind of shifts his damage spikes to a bit later in the game.

So let's talk Hammer style.

To The Skies! is getting an early game buff but a late game nerf. The base damage of the skill is getting increased while the additional ratio from his bonus AD is getting dropped. This helps his pitiful damage in the early game without having to rely on flat AD. Additionally, the mana cost is getting decreased to a flat 30 making it less of an assault to the mana bar.

 

Static Field is going to become more impactful. The passive mana-gain per auto-attack has been removed. It was a lot of free mana for farming in a lane where he had enough range to scare enemies off. The damage is getting nerfed a bit into the late game, which is also kind of pointless since no-one really used it in a late-game Jayce engage. What is neat, though, is the addition of an on-hit damage per auto-attack for a short duration, which adds some gameplay to activating the skill and actually fighting for longer times instead of quicky bursting and running away.

Thundering Blow, one of the least interesting skills, is getting a pretty hard nerf. It was always a get-out-of-jail-free card and coupled with the low mana cost, this ability was just too strong at too low a cost. The change to its mana cost - ramping it up to 85 across all ranks - makes it so that using it really puts a dent in your mana bar and forces you to use it sparingly, both in engages and in disengages.

 

I'll take these in the same go, since they kind of go hand-in-hand. Shock Blast and Acceleration Gate are a nuisance to play against. It's a fast traveling, wide area high damage not-really-skill shot  But, with the coming changes, it's a far easier skill to dodge. Particle widths are decreased across the board to make it less of a big, un-dodgeable ball of doom (except for the traveling width of the Accelerated Blast, which meh, it kinda needed to be bigger if you're gonna accelerate it, c'mon. What's more, is that the Accelerated particle is getting an increase in base speed, but a drop as it goes along. This both encourages usage of Acceleration Gate AFTER Shock Blast to counter the increase in dodgeability, but also makes the skill is a bit more dodgeable, increasing the difference between low and high skill Jayce players. In addition, the mana cost on Acceleration Gate is dropping from a static 50 to a static 20. Having both a 'long' cooldown and a high mana cost is not really a good way to stick with an ability, especially after the previous nerfs, even though they were light-handed.

The changes to Hyper Charge are cool, and in my opinion, the only worthwhile changes of the entire rework. There's a small decrease in damage-per-shot, down to 120% from 135%, but oh well. The cooldown is getting decreased though, and with the addition of a 6th rank it's dropping to 4 seconds. With the timer starting AFTER the last shot is fired, he damage racks up quickly, especially if comboed well with Static Field's additional damage on-hit. And with this increase in damage, it's only fair that the mana cost be increased, making it scale 8 per level, up to 70 from a static 40 - which wasn't too high to begin with.

All in all, I'm looking forward to seeing how these changes affect Jayce. I hate the Acceleration Gate/Shock Blast combo, and I dislike the fact that it's not getting the damage increase nerfed at all, since roughly 400 base damage (+1.7 Bonus AD) really isn't cool on such a low cooldown, even after the 'nerfs' of the previous patch. But, oh well, I'm interested to see how it pans out.