Morgana

[Amethyst]

LoL-thread; non-players can safely move along.

So it's six thirty six in the morning before I have to get up early for the holiday and I can't sleep because Mashew is a jerk and showed me that Riot is opening applications for their internship this summer. I laid down to sleep about an hour ago, and now here I am because in my attempting to get to sleep I decided I would muse about what I might include with my application. Riot says- if you see game design in your future, wow us with an analysis of our current game- or something like that. While considering various things, I began to get less tired and more excited as I imagined what I feel very confident in as an analysis and argument for my application.

I feel very confident in my ability to analyze the kinetic, thematic and gameplay interactions of champions. Thus, I decided I should choose a specific champion to analyze and offer insight on. I considered which champions I know well, and which champions I feel are lacking in the experience of playing them- specifically in attaining Riot's fabled 'end-game fantasy' status, and one in particular has called out to me.

Of course, this topic title has already given it away.

Morgana is one of my favorite champions- in fact, I originally joined the game to play her because I am slightly obsessed with the dark angel archetype. Unfortunately, I've shied away from playing her for almost the entirety of the past season because of her current state. Below is a summation of my analysis of her current issues, followed by my proposed solution.

The problem:

There are several core issues that hurt Morgana's place in the game. Firstly, the sustain offered by her passive makes for a boring laning phase with no significant benefit later. Secondly, the unreliable nature of her damage output and her prevailing strategy makes few stats choice purchases on her. Thirdly, her lack of end-game power (partly due to the second issue) results in the nullification of any sense of fantasy or thematic strength.

Let's talk about her sustain first. Morgana's passive currently offers her 10/15% spell vamp in the laning phase of the game and an unremarkable 20% in the late-game. The fact that she has this 'free' spell vamp stat does not offer anything valuable in terms of gameplay; on the contrary, diminishes it. Morgana's kit is already adept at punishing aggressive enemies- her CC and shield means all-inning (or even ganking) her is often useless- so the only other option is to avoid her damage (easily done by an attentive opponent) and poke her down. However because of the sustain from her passive, it's frustratingly difficult to accrue significant damage on her over time. Even roaming, her opponents are easily punished by her W's push. In short, her lane opponents are left with no practical option but to try and out-farm her until they're more useful than she is. This is neither fun nor engaging for anyone involved.

Later in the game, the effects of her 20% spell-vamp are almost entirely negligible as the stat itself is less useful on a kit that has 'unreliable damage'.

This brings us to the second point- there are very few stats that feel good to build on Morgana. With a slow-moving Q and a W that can usually be walked right off of, Morgana's only dependable source of damage is her ultimate. Meanwhile in the mid and late-game, getting hit by a Dark Binding usually spells death for its victim even aside from its (or her) own damage. Her ultimate does significant damage on a substantial cooldown, but the damage is not enough to burst a target in the late-game. In fact, even assuming a perfect scenario in which her entire kit is expended with a very high AP build, there's a very small chance it will kill even a squishy target. For these reasons, building AP on Morgana can often feel like a waste of gold.

The other alternative is building defensively. Indeed, Morgana's ultimate is best suited to keeping her in the middle of a fight, however with the inclusion of Zhonya's, she is invulnerable for all but half a second of her ultimate's tether time. With her shield mitigating the typically magic-based burst damage, there is almost no chance that she will be killed in the ~1sec window in which she is vulnerable while ulting, even when building next to no survivability. The ensuing stun enables her to expend her other cooldowns and exit the fray to wait for ten seconds at minimum for her next ability. During this time, she is, again, un-threatened (and again, gaining nothing from her passive) thus making defensive items aside from Zhonya's and Randuins a rather poor choice for her.

As such, the only stat that her kit really excels with is Cooldown Reduction. And as a cheap stat capped at 40%, there is only so much of that she can get. The lack of valuable options for her to build results in her having a pitiful late-game and becoming dependent on her team's success even when she herself has excelled throughout the game. This is perhaps the singular most frustrating aspect of playing Morgana.

The focus on CDR and lack of useful stats almost seems to relegate her to a support role. Aside from even that position now also being diminished with preseason changes that increase gold flow (she can get Zhonya's as a support much easier now- but then what? She has received no benefits that other supports have), the role is also extremely counter-productive to her character. Morgana is presented as a fallen angel, and through all of her quotes, she is out for pain and revenge. Although Thresh is also crafted as a 'sadistic support' it makes less sense for a character like Morgana who is portrayed as much more of a lone-wolf. In short, the support role is counter productive to her theme, but she has no strength in a carry position.

Considering, also, the concept of an End-game fantasy, something Riot has stated they believe every player should be able to work towards attaining, Morgana is extremely lacking. Her kit is themed on revenge and punishment- which suggests her action and moment coming -after- someone else's, however her peak of power is in the early-mid game; entirely opposite of what it perhaps should be. Her low power and occasionally even mediocre impact entirely dilutes any enjoyment from the theme of her end-game fantasy, almost effectively ruining her as a champion.

However, all of these problems have a unified solution...

The solution:

A new passive. This passive will be intended to solve three problems: First, add counter-play to her in-lane sustain. Second, add a new source of damage to make her output more reliable, and make the purchase of AP 'feel' better. Third, add thematic cohesion to her kit.

I will address the third goal first, by asking this question: What is the strength of her present kit? I argue that her strength lies in control. This includes applying CC in the form of her Q and R, and removing it with her E. Unfortunately, her passive and W are both rather disconnected presently. However, the theme of gaining/denying control does suit her dominant personality; her will is her own, and those who do not abide by it will be punished. Thus, the passive can be changed to enforce the goal of maintaining control while also adding unity to her kit, both in terms of theme and gameplay.

The new passive would work something like this: Any time Morgana successfully impairs the movement of an enemy champion, or shields the CC of an enemy champion*, the champion is afflicted with a debuff. For working purposes, I'll call this debuff a Mark of the Fallen. *-Perhaps the shield wouldn't bestow a mark from slows or re-applying slows, but that can be tweaked as necessary.

Her other abilities will then need to be modified to accommodate the new passive. This synchronizes it with her Q, E and R, but what of her W?

Her W can be changed to, instead of applying the Mark like all of her other abilities, proc it. In doing so, her whole kit is brought into unity- every ability suddenly synchronizes with the passive and W. Now, the concept of applying a mark and then procing it oneself might sound familiar- It is Lux's passive. This is, of course, a thematic boon as the going concept is that Spellthief Lux stole her abilities from Morgana. The main difference between them, ults aside, is the passive. By changing Morgana's passive to a similar system, this connection between them is only reinforced, strengthening both Morgana and Lux's characters.

As for the actual effect of procing the Mark of the Fallen, it is as was outlined before- it should firstly, instantly damage the opponent with scaling based on AP. The scope of the damage should be low early so as to not overload her power in lane, but very significant late so as to reinforce the dominant theme of her vengeance. Secondly, it should restore a portion of the damage dealt as health to her (not as spell vamp). This should also include an animation moving from the target to Morgana, so as to suggest, "I am taking this from you." Thus, is the theme of her vengeance and punishment visually represented and replicated within the actual gameplay.

The gameplay benefits of this dynamic are as follows: Firstly, Morgana retains an aspect of her in-lane sustain but is now forced to interact with the opposing champion in order to use it. This offers counterplay potential for the opponent, as Morgana must now choose to use her W to push, or to aggrieve, in that she no longer has free, infinite sustain, and further reinforces the necessity of dodging the Q-W combo. It also offers choices for Morgana in the aforementioned push-or-poke option, as well as the ability for her to use her shield offensively. Should she risk the shield's cooldown to bait the opposing Annie into stunning her so that she can deal quick damage with her W?

In teamfights there are further considerations- her ult (assuming completion) will apply the Mark twice- once for the slow, once for the stun. Should she focus her cooldowns on a single target to capitalize on that damage potential and try to proc it twice with one W? Or should she cast her W where the team is clumped to deal additional AoE damage to the multiple targets affected by the slow's Mark? She also has further opportunity to damage when using her shield on allies- Suppose she shields the friendly Draven as Sejuani charges to knock him up; Sejuani now has a mark and can be damaged by the passive with a W under her, snared, and damaged by the second proc of the passive applied from Q. It also adds meaning to the zoning potential offered by her W. Presently enemies will run straight over it- since they aren't standing there they don't take significant damage; but what if a fleeing Brand's stun was blocked by Shield- he now has a Mark; he tries to flee and Morgana lays the tormented soil in front of him. Does he risk taking the time to run around it, potentially allowing his pursuers to catch him? Or does he bite the bullet and hope the extra damage from the passive doesn't do him in?

In short, replacing her old, stagnant free-stat passive with a dynamic ability-interaction based passive helps strengthen her thematically while also offering tons of new options and considerations for the Morgana player and her opponent, while also solidifying her role in the game. Of course, the numbers and cooldowns should be adjusted accordingly to compensate for any gain in overall power, but the added meaning in gameplay interaction is itself invaluable.

So there's that. Again, this would be for my application so it's not like I'm just going to be posting this on their forum- although I certainly hope they would consider actualizing this change anyway. But, I feel really confident in the value of the idea, and n it meriting further candidacy for the intern position. Of course, I'll have to edit my explanation for length- this is just to get some feedback from you all.

Here are my questions:

As players against Morgana, and as playing her yourself, do you disagree with my analysis of her current flaws? Why?

I haven't kept up with the pro-scene; has she been picked or banned in any recent tournaments... ever?

As a Morgana player, how would you feel about the suggest changes?

As someone playing against a Morgana, how would you feel about those changes?

Is there anything I've overlooked conceptually that might make these changes broken? Obviously we're not working with any numbers here, and her current ratios, cooldowns, etc would need to be tweaked- but perhaps I'm missing a consideration.

feed back much appreciated very thank for time

[Mashew]

bbygurl you know I love you. I believe in you reach for da stars. <3

[The Fush]

...hmmmm....

Black Shield can be used on your allies aswell, right? Would the successful blocking of a CC on your ally apply to your proposed passive aswell? If so, what strategies could this open up, and does it affect the balance of Morgana?

That aside, your passive seems like a great proposal. The first thing that came to mind is the fact that she will no longer have an innate source of sustain, though. Would that affect how she plays? How much of a negative effect would it have on her earlygame? Stuff like that.

Anyway, Ame, I wish your luck in your appliance for the internship! If you're still going through with it.

[Bullet]

My thoughts as a former Morgana main(it was quite a while ago, but she really hasn't changed significantly in terms of her abilities)

I'm not sure I see the problem with her passive. If a champion has high innate sustain, then they will be difficult to wear down with damage over the course of a lane; but is that a reason to not design champions with high innate sustain? The fact that she can only do significant damage by either using her bind or walking up and ulting means that most mage champions can simply make favorable trades taking out say 20% or so of her health repeatedly essentially for free as long as they dodge the bind; if she takes the initiative to use a bind and misses, she also opens up an opportunity to be punished. As a result, she typically cannot do much except farm until she feels the need to all-in or hit a lucky bind. While i dislike the centralization of her gameplay around landing a bind, I feel it's fine where it is now.

In my opinion the truly large flaw in her design as a whole is her ultimate; it really needs to trigger the second portion on at least a person or two for her to be effective late game, but it really just lends itself to people saving their flashes or built in dashes/blinks and basically invalidating her ultimate as just a single use nuke. This problem is also a huge contributor to her reliance on her Dark Binding later in the game to function at an acceptable efficiency. The most recent tweak to her that gave her Tormented Soil % damage is a good step to reducing her need to consistently hit bindings, which is good for making her it more balanced.

I've personally found building AP very rewarding on her, though I do admit if you runt he numbers it's probably less efficient than many other mage champions. But I think that's really not an easy issue to address.

For your passive proposition, I really like the flavor aspects you considered in making it. Considering my personal experiences with Morgana, I think while it would be nice for lower levels to allow her to fight and have more dynamic gameplay, it murders her laning phase at higher levels of play, where against a good 90% of players or so you will never land a bind on anyone who is not either under crowd control already or cannot see you and is reasonably close to you. As a result her laning, not considering the presence of junglers, is entirely dependent on farming with Tormented Soil and reaping the benefits of spell vamp simultaneously. Forcing her to trade with enemy champions adds damage to her all-in, but turns her into an all or nothing champion as she will not be able to trade damage favorably against most champions.

tired have to get ready for thanksgiving things more thoughts later maybe kbye

[Ysera]

[REDACTED]

I don't know enough about the game to contribute to this discussion, when something as big as Ame's goal depends on it.

[Maelstrom]

Place saver for my own thoughts on this later. But thought of the moment: the other game I played, our team was completely carried by Morgana.

[Vermillion]

Glad to see someone else striving for the same thing I am! I've been writing my thoughts about Galio, Maokai, and General Lore / Game Feel.

Hope we both make it, and I'll throw in my thoughts about Morg soon to try and help you out. Cheers!

[Amethyst]

Responding now because I know that people have a tendency to not edit things later even when they mean to >>

Black Shield can be used on your allies aswell, right? Would the successful blocking of a CC on your ally apply to your proposed passive aswell? If so, what strategies could this open up, and does it affect the balance of Morgana?

That aside, your passive seems like a great proposal. The first thing that came to mind is the fact that she will no longer have an innate source of sustain, though. Would that affect how she plays? How much of a negative effect would it have on her earlygame? Stuff like that.

I think you missed a bit in the post- I do mention some applications of using the shield on an ally instead. However it should be noted that balance is an entirely separate consideration from this; we're dealing with the underlying structure behind the kit and what interactions it offers. Numbers can and will be tweaked separately.

Additionally, as I say in the post, she does still have some sustain from the passive; it's just based on the opposing champion now. However, Bullet answers your other questions.

More importantly:

I'm not sure I see the problem with her passive. If a champion has high innate sustain, then they will be difficult to wear down with damage over the course of a lane; but is that a reason to not design champions with high innate sustain?

The difficulty or innate-ness isn't the problem; the problem is that it discourages interaction. Especially in the early game when most mid-laners will be severely limited in how many spells they can cast by their manapool, throwing damage at a target that's just going to heal it back effectively passively contributes nothing to the actual 'fun' of the game.

As a side note, Nasus's passive is less problematic because he has to at least be up to the minion wave and actively AAing to use it- by contrast a low-health Morgana can cast W from 900 range and then hang back and soak up the regen from complete and total safety for the next five seconds (granted she's missing last-hits, so the opponent does still gain something from this but the interaction is not as valuable as it could be.)

In my opinion the truly large flaw in her design as a whole is her ultimate; it really needs to trigger the second portion on at least a person or two for her to be effective late game, but it really just lends itself to people saving their flashes or built in dashes/blinks and basically invalidating her ultimate as just a single use nuke. This problem is also a huge contributor to her reliance on her Dark Binding later in the game to function at an acceptable efficiency.

About R:

Don't you dare tell me this spell isn't absurdly huge in a teamfight/skirmish. If the enemy has no flash/ghost or relocating spells like blinks and dashes, They're in for a LOT of damage and CC that's likely to end up killing them in the long run.

I agree that the ult does currently contribute to over-centralizing her to landing Q's however I think that the ability is still a good ult- possibly Morgana's best-designed ability, in that it has a very clear effect with a wide range of counterplay on the opponent's part (and trade-offs: if they save their dashes, etc for that then they don't have them for other purposes) and both Morgana and her opponents always aware of it and ready to respond to each other.

Further, my proposed changes do help to reduce reliability on Q because they add another source of damage- the mark triggered by the slow; even if they break the tether range there's still the additional chance for damage from the Mark of the Fallen if she can toss a W down onto them first/after

I've personally found building AP very rewarding on her, though I do admit if you runt he numbers it's probably less efficient than many other mage champions. But I think that's really not an easy issue to address.

" In fact, even assuming a perfect scenario in which her entire kit is expended with a very high AP build, there's a very small chance it will kill even a squishy target"

This, to me, makes no sense. In a perfect Scenario in which her entire kit is expended with a high ability power build, considering Morgana's really high AP scalings, would have a really, really high chance of killing the target, should he be an AD or AP carry, for those are the ones that normally stay squishy in all stages of the game.

"but the damage is not enough to burst a target in the late-game"

Because that's not what Morgana's supposed to do, since she's not an assassin. To me, Morgana's W and E are kind of like being the bass player in a band - Most of the times, you're not the one people will be focusing on, even though you're making a very substantial difference in that song, while her Q and R are the amazing bass solos that people notice and really cheer for. Not all champions are made for surgical killing in teamfights like the DFG buyers are, and neither are all champions made for sustained AoE damage, and are likely to purchase Liandry/Rylai or combos of the sort. I think Morgana stands fine having a strong laning phase like she does and having that fight-breaking ultimate riot's equipped her with, but I don't think there will be any other changes to her until she gets a Visual Update.

So, I did make kind of a mistake here and was basing my assertion on her old W's effect. I just ran the numbers for the new one and her single-rotation damage is now actually quite high (although as it is largely damage-over-time, this is appropriate). I will restructure my argument accordingly.

However, I disagree with the argument the implications of the final quoted paragraph. If we're assuming she's in a carry position- and she should be for thematic reasons I've already discussed- then she needs to be able to do substantial AP damage. "Burst" was a very poor word choice on my part, however. The fact that her ultimate is presently mainly useful for scrambling the opponent team (its utility) is what is relegating her more commonly to a support role currently. If it's going to apply the proposed passive's debuff, then that adds further value to it in her role as a carry.

As a result, she typically cannot do much except farm until she feels the need to all-in or hit a lucky bind. While i dislike the centralization of her gameplay around landing a bind, I feel it's fine where it is now.

Considering my personal experiences with Morgana, I think while it would be nice for lower levels to allow her to fight and have more dynamic gameplay, it murders her laning phase at higher levels of play, where against a good 90% of players or so you will never land a bind on anyone who is not either under crowd control already or cannot see you and is reasonably close to you. As a result her laning, not considering the presence of junglers, is entirely dependent on farming with Tormented Soil and reaping the benefits of spell vamp simultaneously. Forcing her to trade with enemy champions adds damage to her all-in, but turns her into an all or nothing champion as she will not be able to trade damage favorably against most champions.

This is extremely feedback valuable to me; thank you.

So, in conjunction with my above concession regarding her damage, then I have to revise my assessment of her second core issue:

Her Q is unreliable, making her damage output the same.

Changing the passive decentralizes the Q for damage in team fights but does nothing for her laning against high-level opponents. Ultimately, the problem remains that she has no practical offense in-lane. Even with my shield/passive proposition that still relies on the enemy aggression (and thereby contributes further to the anti-aggression problem she has in the first place.)

Context: This change is more of a modernization of Morgana and her Tormented Soil by rewarding her for being continuously aggressive with landing her Dark Bindings. Specifically, we wanted to reinforce Morgana's standard damage combo of Dark Binding to Tormented Soil, rather than the "ideal" combo of using Tormented Soil's magic resistance reduction to make Dark Binding deal more damage.

Taken from the patch notes of her previous changes; Riot says they would like her to be more aggressive. Thus, the Q is going to have to be changed too.

I have thoughts based on what I've been comparing all day, which I'll post separately- but I've had this window open for about eight hours while I, too, got distracted, so I want to uh, not lose my comments.

[Ysera]

[REDACTED]

[Amethyst]

The thing is, defining what "carrying" means is hard, because there are so many things one can do to effectively "carry", and dealing a high amount of damage is only one of them. Securing objectives, securing vision on important spots, calling shots, making rotations, executing priority targets, setting up and coordinating teamfights... All of those and more are ways one could "carry" a game.

So this begs the question, what kind of carry should Morgana be? For a dark lone-wolf angel extracting revenge, it doesn't make thematic sense for her to be carrying the game by holding her opponents in place for her team to kill.

As for my other points...

1. I feel that if there should be a change to the passive, It should NOT affect Black Shield. It is already way too strong of an ability, protecting the target from CC and an essential part of a magic damage burst. Buffing it with a passive interaction would be overkill enough to bring her back, but I feel it wouldn't solve much. Into the example : Morgana can already use a clutch Black Shield to negate a Tibbers/Desintegrate/Incinerate Stun from Annie as an offensive move getting close enough not to have much trouble hitting Dark Binding, use her ultimate and tormented soil at the place she's about to be stunned on just a bit before she receives the CC, and light the kid up. In my opinion, the "offensive Black Shield" engage makes sense considering the "Vengeance and suffering" theme. Morgana's coming for you. She'll have her revenge no matter what feeble attempts you made at stopping her, and I understand the thought of giving it a passive interaction, but imo, it's already very very strong.

Indeed, it's a great ability as is. I was trying to avoid going into to much detail on changes to her non-passive abilities, but I imagine this shield would be changed to have a lower duration. As it is she can pop it and just kind of walk around for three years with it- if we give it an offensive component the duration should be changed to something in between Sivir spellshield and Kayle ult where she still has to bait her opponents into attacking her with it on.

I get that you want to bring more versatility and options to Morgana, but I think you're going a little overboard here (My opinion.). Yes, you did say numbers would have to be tweaked, but having both the Shield and the abilities apply the passive, dealing damage AND healing Morgana back, does much more than that, and I can't estimate the amount of balancing it would need not to be a REALLY significant raise in power. Elaborating on your motives for the passive change...

Again I'd like to reiterate- the structure of a kit is not the same as its power. The goal of my passive change is not to buff her, but to add a few more 'levers' with which to balance her.

So, it'd kinda be Spell Vamp but like, not Spell Vamp?

Well, I think I've seen this thinking before with Ahri's Essence Theft....

Are you sure about this one though? I understand a lot of your decisions are based on Morgana's theme and that lane sustain was already part of her kit, but with Mark of the Fallen having that innate heal would give Morgana both dueling capability and MORE laning phase strength, for while the opponent is getting melted down gradually, Morgana's health's coming back.

The goal is definitely to give her more dueling capability- As mentioned in the context notes I posted previously, Riot wants that lane to be aggressive, rather than passive. As it is, her Q and W are her only means to damage an opponent in early game. One of those you'll never land and the other one can be walked right out of. Adding a third damage option, and discouraging her passive wave-healing would hopefully incite action in the lane (except for the high-level concern Bullet posted which I'm having severe trouble accounting for).

As for lane strength, it's not to increase her lane strength but to shift it from just pushing to actually interacting with the opponent. Currently she excels in laying down W and soaking up the free exp, gold and health, which is not very exciting. In order to use this passive, even off of a shield Mark, she has to trade using the W to push to poke her opponent instead (and with poke damage that actually matters now).

As for the scope of the heal, I think it would be best if it healed a flat value than scaling like Essence Theft. I've tried to avoid listing specific numbers because that's part of balance, but to give an idea of the scope I had in mind it might be like 50/100/150 (level 1/7/13) health restored per proc of the passive. The goal here isn't necessarily to to make her have great sustain, nor become a team-fight regen machine like Swain, but still some health recovered to help her win trades in lane. Remember this recovery a one-time proc limited entirely by the 10 +sec cool down of her W. The point is less the sustain itself and more the thematic aspect of taking. So I don't think there's a huge risk of the regen portion being necessarily overpowered.

Sorry, I need a little clarification on that one. I think Mark of the fallen gives her plenty of reason and means to be aggresive...

With these changes, ideally Morgana would definitely be more aggressive! However, the opponent can still position to avoid Q, and if the opponent throws no CC at Morgana then they can avoid the shield's Mark, so it's still possible to shut all interaction out of the lane just by hiding behind one's minions and doing nothing (except maybe poke with non-CC abilities). That wouldn't be as fun.

[Lunaethetic]

I really like your analysis on her thematic design and how it applies to her kit, but I kind of disagree with what you're saying with her passive. While I understand that you're of the mindset that the innate spell vamp promotes a lack of interaction between the laners, you must also keep in mind that Morgana's passive is entirely reliant on her build path in particular, meaning that while her sustain does not necessarily promote interaction, it does attempt to promote her to build more damage, to further utilize the passive. As someone who has watched and played Morgana since her golden days in Season 1, I will say that Morgana's kit is somewhat dated, in that it attempts to achieve certain things that are no longer relegated to champions in the midlane; in other words, her utility is not worth using over what many other midlaners offer in damage. This focus on utility in Morgana's kit is somewhat undermined by the fact that her passive does promote building heavy AP, while the rest of her kit (outside of W), is more utility based. Therefore, I think perhaps the best path of action would be to merge Morgana's utility with a more damage based overall goal within her kit, particularly in the area of her ultimate.

To achieve this, I believe a possibility would be to make the ultimate generate a field around Morgana (I'm thinking about the range of Zyra ultimate, but I don't know the actual range number), in which enemy minions/champions would have a slow applied to them as long as they are within the field Morgana is generating. The field could last around ~5-7 seconds, and while in this field, champions hit with Morgana's spells could have additional debuffs applied. For instance, Q could also apply a slow after the champion is hit, W could shred MR the longer the target stands on it, and E could be used offensively, against the enemy target, to apply some sort of damage multiplier that would effect magic damage taken by the target (i.e. Ahri Charm). However, once a target is hit with any of these abilities, the field/aura around Morgana would shrink, or even go away entirely. Alternatively, one could also have the option to retrigger the ultimate near the end of the duration of the effect to have a similar effect to her current ultimate, which would give the Morgana player the option to either amplify her own damage through the use of her abilities, or use the utility. I believe this also apply thematically, in that Morgana, when using her abilities during the ultimate, is essentially dragging her opponents down, exposing weaknesses and displaying Morgana's vengeance against those who cross her path. In turn, retriggering the ultimate is representing Morgana's decision to fight against all of those around her, or possibly allowing her, the lone wolf, to escape. These changes would also give Morgana players more incentive to be aggressive, as she would have further capabilities of ganking, and doing sizable damage, if not killing, her target.

I'm sorry, I think I may have gotten off track a tad, but I -think- I have effectively put in my two cents. Best of luck!

EDIT: Also, in terms of taking a more support oriented role, don't forget about Frozen Heart! It has tremendous synergy with her kit!

Edited November 30, 2013 by Lunaethetic

[Soysauce]

Allow me to wish you good luck first, it'd be really awesome if you could get that internship!

I'm not really an old LoL player (it's been a bit more than a yeah since the day i played my first game), so I didn't really see the Morgana FOTM time or the farm-focus meta. I really like your suggestion, but what Bullet says is true; even if she gets that new proc passive in mid lane, it doesn't allow her to trade well in lane if her opponent dodges the Q.

However, such a new passive is a straight buff support-wise because she doen't use spellvamp at all in a duo lane (or at least it's pretty negligeable). But then you don't build that much AP immediately.

One of the main problem of Morgana (and Kennen to some extend) is her reliance on Zhonya. If you don't get it, you do peanuts in teamfights. And that item is not of the the easiest things to build; in fact you need 1.6k gold for one of its component. So, when you got that cheeky snare and killed your mid lane, you have 1k gold and you know teamfights are coming soon, you still can't spend that gold. Hence some situations where you find your damage pretty weak. But contrary to Kennen, she's immobile if she doesn't have flash, and she needs to land that snare. The camp is too binary in her current state until it comes to large fights.

Thing is, you also have to consider the champion in the current metagame. You don't see Anivia for the same reason as Morgana: pushing and farming from a mid to long range for the sake of gold is not what we're looking for today. Today we clear to kill lanes to kill people. To make plays at their buffs, etc. Roaming to bot as Morgana is rewarding if you can land your Q, but for that you have to be very good with skillshots, or you have to somehow surprise them to get a good shot. So, if you want to farm then roam, there are better champions with slightly weaker farming but better roaming and flexibility, like Zed, Diana.

But if the meta shifts (for some reason) to a more farm focus game, then yes you'll see her, Anivia, and other farming champs more often because she's really good at it while having a huge impact in end game, she's really good at it in her current state.

So, the problem here is, you have to wait end game to USE the gold you got, but even then it's a bit tedious, and you put yourself at risk by making plays (get closer to ult, flash flash flash flash, what if they dodge Q, do I hang on to my W until Q hits something; if Q hits something I don't want to W, do I still use W?). In mid game: yeah OK it's fine but my ult doesn't have the feeling of "omg optimal ult" yet. In early game? Farming didn't have an impact yet.

One thing I'd like to point out with the new passive; the passive will have to be strong enough to reward you if you get a Q, or massive E off. But then you feel even weaker if you don't hit Q because you can't spellvamp of your minion wave anymore, this is especially true versus mobility based champs. Also, if you pull of, say, a 4- man ult, they will have have Marks right? While it should be game winning, you can't rationally proc the Marks yourself with only one W and your auto attacks, so you might have the feeling " well my passive is good, but sometimes i don't get to use it ot its full extend". If you allow teamates to proc it, then it'd be a bit too strong imo, and make Leona players pretty sad.

So yeah, just my two cents, hope I can help you!

N.B: No, don't go for Frozen Heart on her if you have Zhonya already. Not stat efficient if you already have Zhonya. If you don't have Zhonya but you're still going melee range for FH you're either really fed (then you don't go for FH!) or you want to draw attention and get killed immediately, FH won't help you withstand a whole team.

Edited November 30, 2013 by Soysauce

[Lunaethetic]

N.B: No, don't go for Frozen Heart on her if you have Zhonya already. Not stat efficient if you already have Zhonya. If you don't have Zhonya but you're still going melee range for FH you're either really fed (then you don't go for FH!) or you want to draw attention and get killed immediately, FH won't help you withstand a whole team.

This was in reference if she was playing support. MB, should have made that more clear.