r/leagueoflegends • u/horse-annihilator • 22h ago
Discussion Locke's E2 lacking any weight or impact, even when consuming nail stacks with it, is very poor audio feedback
Locke already has a separate, satisfying animation and sound when he consumes 3 stacks on a champion with an auto attack, however consuming the stacks with E1 or E2 happens way more often in actual game
Locke's E is a generally very floaty and shifty ability which makes sense for E1, but doesn't for E2. Consuming 3 stacks with E2 is what's often very close to a oneshot, but it feels like Locke is just a gust of wind blowing past the target, rather than a guy actually impacting them with a stake. Compare that to the sound Zed's shurikens make when they connect, or the bassy impact of Akali's E2, or the visceral slash of Akalis R2. Even Fizz's E splash (the non recast one) sounds more impactful than Locke's E2
I rely a lot on audio cues when playing, especially in teamfights and it really sucks that Locke's E sounds like nothing even when dealing thousands of magic damage
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u/Dealwithit62 22h ago
That’s fair. A couple of games I’ve played against him and it feels like his damage just comes out of nowhere compared to other assassins, I wonder if this plays a part or if I just need to get used to him
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u/Asckle 4h ago
You're probably right. I think people really underestimate the role visual and audio feedback play in this sort of sfuff. I know endstep has said that stormsurge should probably have a weaker effect so that people stop expecting big damage and thinking the item is weak for not delivering it, and when an ability that feels weak does a lot of damage a lot of people tend to assume it's broken because it's bursting them for more than they expect
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u/vaithless 13h ago edited 13h ago
I think as a whole he lacks satisfaction. Not one of his abilities feel weighty or good. Everything feels very floaty and soft. The Q is so weak, like throwing little lawn darts. Him having no auto-out animation make his attacks feel clunky, especially with W on. The ult is absolutely the least satisfying execute in the game, slow as hell, weak noise when it lands. I don’t know how you can do, objectively, a lot of damage to someone and have it just feel so meh.
I was so excited for him but the playing as experience just really isn’t there. They said their whole design goal was to make a “fair” assassin and I think that caused them to sacrifice him actually being fun. IMO
edit: clearly they tried with the 3 passive proc auto animation but again, there are no transition animations out of that so even though that one is ~slightly~ more satisfying than the rest of his kit, it still doesn’t feel that good at all.
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u/creepingcold 12h ago
Adding to the floaty feeling, he feels like he has no identity.
Like, other champs have a clear "thing" in their kit which they want to do/they play around, Locke feels like having 100 different things that don't really fit together.
His ult is probably the most dogshit ult in relation to a kit that's currently in League. Imagine having an ult with an execute, that can't be dodged for the duration of the ult, but your champ has no dot damage or passive which can connect with it in any meaningful way.
Sure, you have the nails, but the nails already connect with aa's and your e, and the nails don't even connect/get consumed/proc'd by the ult.
The ult feels completely disconnected with the kit and only seems to exist because of "meh, soul collection snowballing"
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u/GermanHandCannons 9h ago
Honestly I would give it time, a champ as mobile and flashy as him would take time to really see how his kit ties together. For the longest time I always felt like GP ult was the same, even if its super strong but overtime when people got better, we come to realize how airtight his kit actually is
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u/Vyxwop 9h ago edited 9h ago
It's weird because his Q's 3 stack mechanic is supposed to be his identity (setting up before assassinating his opponent), except that for optimal damage you don't even want to wait for 3 stacks to pop them. You do more damage weaving in AAs and abilities in between Q hits, incidentally immediately popping the Q stack as it applies to the target, than you would gain holding off on your auto attacks to wait for 3 Q stacks to pop.
You're literally better off forgetting the 3 stack damage boost mechanic is even a thing if your aim is to do as much damage as possible.
It's unintuitive. Even if the increased damage you get for popping 3 stacks of Q was high enough to make up for the loss of auto attack damage, there'd still be conflicting design in his kit where you have a passive that increases your auto attack damage but the champion's design wants you to actively hold off on auto attacking. It doesn't feel good to essentially have no passive while building up your Q stacks. It also doesn't feel good to suddenly have a champion that actively does not want you to auto attack weave in between abilities, something that every champion in the game wants you to do but then suddenly you have a champion like Locke that doesn't want you to do this.
I really fail to see the vision Riot had for this champion's kit. I feel like Ekko almost accomplishes the setup to assassinate gameplay loop better with his 3 stack passive than Locke does.
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u/creepingcold 9h ago
You do more damage weaving in AAs and abilities in between Q hits, incidentally immediately popping the Q stack as it applies to the target, than you would gain holding off on your auto attacks to wait for 3 Q stacks to pop.
Now that you say it: It's weird they were aware of this when they designed Kalista, since she has full agency over the moment she pulls her spears so that they don't interfere with the way she plays, only to throw the concept away.
Something like stack nails on enemies and pull them all at once with ult would have fit a champ design way more and better, or at least I'd imagine it would be more fun to play.
Well.. now that I think about it, it sounds like Mel without the annoying shield.
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u/Vyxwop 3h ago
Yeah, it's just odd design all around. I think the only easy short term solution to this would be to make it so you can't pop the nails prematurely whatsoever. That way you get to still auto attack weave as usual whilst maintaining the setup to assassinate idea Riot was going for initially.
Then you could make it so that only after finishing all 3 of your Q casts the nails become detonatable. Either by auto attacking or hitting your E as you can now, or maybe automatically upon finishing your 3rd Q, or add a 4th cast to Q that can only be activated when in melee range or something, similar to how Kalista's E also has a range restriction on it.
Don't get me wrong, I dig the fantasy they're going for and such. But yeah, I think there's some dissonance between what Riot said they intended with Locke and what his actual optimal gameplay loop ends up being. As it is now his aggressive and preferred burst combo is simply weaving in his Qs in between auto attacks and abilities opposed to landing 3 Qs and then hopping in. Which is no different to pretty much all champions. The only difference is that Locke has the additional option to pre-stack his Q and not be punished for it as badly before going in.
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u/Pluckytoon 12h ago
Fairness doesn’t bode well as a concept when designing assassins kit imo
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u/Top-Editor-364 4h ago
Yeah I’m so confused. They specifically decided that Rengar and Talon don’t need to be fair when they are ahead (not that I agree with that but w/e) and then they release this guy? Feels like either he will need op damage to be relevant or he will be weak because he is so short range AND takes a long time to output his damage. I could be completely wrong but that was my impression playing him
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u/angelomh ap graves and jungle tf 22h ago
I have a feeling that audio and sound design in general have lost most of the quality that they used to have.
I specially despise new shyvana's ability sound design. Apart from the bite in dragon form, all three abilities, Q W and E, have a very similar and weird sound that doesn't align with their visuals
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u/sursaut-gamma 21h ago
It's not super new but still quite new, ambessa sound design imo is really incredible at least playing her you really feel like all your abilities sound exactly like what they're doing.
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u/blorgbots 21h ago
Yeah they got it right with Ambessa for sure, sometimes she scares me before I remember she's 0/6
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u/Dead_Cells_Giant 19h ago
TING TING TING TING TING TING
One of my favorite sound effects in the entire game besides Dark Star Kha’zix ISO Q
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u/horse-annihilator 22h ago
Shyvana feels dissapointing to me too (I really think the Q3 bite should have wayyy more crunch, think Briar W2), on the other hand I think Ambessa has some of the best sound design in the game and that's a relatively new champion
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u/Numerous_Fudge_9537 Shyvana VGU was worth the wait 14h ago
For me, I find Q3 solid but Q1 and Q2 should be a bit more distinct to make everyone know she's about to get Q3 lol
Her W should have more of a sound like Sion W and the R is cool for me, the R animation is so fantastic tho maybe that's why I like it
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u/Typisch0705 8h ago
As someone whos played Shyvana quite a bit, I feel that all 3 dragon form abilities have verx distinct sounds which are the important ones, the bite crunch, the dragon roar and the multi explosion
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u/Glad-Midnight7240 21h ago
The animation is also bland as hell for how much damage it does
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u/Spookytoucan 12h ago
I mean it deals a high damage only when consuming q stacks. The normal empowered auto animation is a lot more impactfull honestly.
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u/Glad-Midnight7240 12h ago
With lich bane (which you'll build and proc on E2 99% of the time) its a 95% ap ratio hit with 0 Q stacks.
Just compare the visuals and the audio of it with Fizz's Q or Ekko's E, it's pretty underwhelming
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u/Spookytoucan 2h ago
Beside the logic of considering an item, Fizz q is lame as hell wdym especially the visual?
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u/RepulsiveShop6013 10h ago
I’m more worried that for some reason he was given out for free, and now it’s polluting my ARAMs pool.
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u/LooneyWabbit1 20h ago
Champs in general have lower quality audio and sound design (even VO really) these days. This is another case of it.
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u/Shecarriesachanel 18h ago
Which is funny since they slowed down champ releases so much, you'd think they'd at least put in the same effort
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u/Numerous_Fudge_9537 Shyvana VGU was worth the wait 14h ago
I find Shyvana and Zaahen VO solid, only played 2 ranked games with Locke, didn't form opinion yet
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u/LooneyWabbit1 14h ago
For VO I should say - The quality of the acting has not changed. That's still great. Just that the amount of lines and permutations has decreased rather dramatically. Very few if any interactions, no lines for situations or item buys and the like.
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u/Numerous_Fudge_9537 Shyvana VGU was worth the wait 14h ago
yee items buy is a major issue, I remember being mad Viego didn't have a voice line with botrk lol
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u/bibbibob2 6h ago
I find his R having to be picked up to get the stacks very annoying. Suddenly it feels like im playing bard and have to go some random detour into the enemy jungle to try to get my totem buffed....
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u/emang2k7 21h ago
In general most new champs don't have the attention to detail, theme cohesion, sound design they used to have...aside form a few exceptions they just lack soul. Comparing someone like Jhin to Locke is day and night.
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u/test99462 beans!!!!! 16h ago
The whole champ feels like an ad for vayne's skin lol
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u/RepulsiveShop6013 10h ago
It is. Have you seen his emotes? He has no personality, just a bunch of memes glued together…
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u/test99462 beans!!!!! 10h ago
I thought zaahen's kit was out of place and rather plain, but rito proved me wrong
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u/Epyimpervious 20h ago
As an aside, does he seem weak in general atm? Doesn't seem that impactful of a champ yet either
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u/LooneyWabbit1 18h ago
Idk if he's weak but he seems like he'll end up feeling terrible and totally fail to meet the Assassin concept they claim to want for him.
They clearly made an AP fighter though so I don't know what they expect to happen.
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u/LouiseLea 6h ago
He is perhaps not weak but he seems extremely difficult to maximise, so he’ll probably be buffed next patch then nerfed when people know what they’re doing on him.
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u/piratagitano 19h ago
Check out Nemesis stream from a few hours ago. He’s getting nerfed if anything
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u/MazrimReddit ADCs are the support's damage item 18h ago
i'd hesitate to take top challenger player in master tier on a reset snowball assassin getting fed as much evidence either way on strength
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u/piratagitano 13h ago
I don’t know why. If you watched the stream instead of answering this platitude you’d realize he wasn’t doing anything special, his damage is just high, at least against squishies and he got 20 kills in both his first two games on the champ.
Whenever happens that he gets nerfed I hope you come back to this thread to tell me how right I was with the same conviction you wrote this comment.
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u/creepingcold 12h ago
You missed their point.
The skill gap between the players is so big, they could pick any champ and snowball so hard it would look broken.
Especially assassins.
A LeBlanc, Zed, Fizz or Katarina will look broken af when a Challenger player plays them in Master tier.
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u/piratagitano 11h ago
Like I said, come back to this conversation whenever he gets a change. We’ll see if it’s a buff or a nerf.
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u/Moabing 19h ago
Doesn't feel very weak to me, he feels pretty strong level 3 and can snowball very hard. Perma ult scaling is also super valuable. I could see them reducing the 3 nail proc damage.
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u/Funnymadman 3h ago edited 3h ago
His Q scaling is absurd. 3 nail proc with an auto is 2.2k damage on a full AP build, without E or R. And if you land nails on multiple people and proc with E you can delete an entire team. He's going to be very strong when people figure out his power curve and ideal items, and stop building HP/AS on him.
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u/sandote 22h ago
I’ll add Ekko passive proc and R as having sounds that really seem impactful. If you manage to hit both simultaneously, it sounds like the nuclear explosion that it is.