League of Legends’ Patch 14.5 most notable changes were to the superstar of the League, Seraphine, attempting to bring her roles as a support and as an AP carry closer together with drastic changes to her abilities and stats. Many (especially Seraphine mains) worried the changes would kill Seraphine as a potential AP carry. We’ll analyze the impact of the changes, and how Seraphine can still be the influential AP carry on the Rift.

Waveclear Nerfs

Waveclear is often the determining factor of the viability of a champion’s laning ability. In the past, champions like Pyke received adjustments to their abilities around their damage to minions, to even outright removing the ability to hit multiple minions at once. These changes often remove the champion’s ability to control the lane through shoving and obtaining gold, weakening their ability to pressure the map.

The biggest nerfs for Seraphine come from the adjustment to both her passive, Stage Presence, and her Q, High Note.

Passive – Stage Presence

- Damage: 5/10/18/30 (+5% AP) (levels 1/6/11/16) ⇒ 4-25 (based on level, linear) (+4% AP)

- 300% minion damage modifier has been removed

Both the damage and scaling are decreased, but more importantly is the 300% damage modifier to minions. This was a particularly helpful tool for Seraphine to snag last hits and secure minions from a distance. The changes encourage Seraphine to use her passive more aggressively as a form of poke, as the effectiveness against minions makes it less efficient to use as a way to ensure last hits.

Q – High Note

- Damage amp no longer affects non-champions

- No longer prevents minions from dying to other minions while in flight

The key to her waveclear is the damage amplification, which allowed Seraphine to immediately clear both the ranged and melee minions after building her first item. Shoving waves is significant in giving carries agency, allowing them to both pressure out the opponent to stay under their tower and assist other parts of the map. If you can shove a wave, that time can be spent recalling, assisting your team, and generally building advantages across the map while your opponent spends time hitting their minions.

The other change is more of an adjustment to increase the difference in gold between skilled Seraphine players and lower ranked players. For Seraphine players, they will have to spend more time hitting the minions with their basic attacks and having the perfect setup on the minion health bars to guarantee they get gold. For the average player, they may lose gold from mistiming their High Note on the waves. Seraphine now struggles with instantly clearing both the melee and caster minions with her empowered High Note.

But deeper into this change is that Seraphine must commit more to clearing the wave. Previously, Seraphine could use her empowered High Note to fire two area of effect spells and instantly clear her wave. With these adjustments, Seraphine may have to use her other damaging ability, Beat Drop, in combination with High Note to fully clear the wave, as well as commit basic attacks. The changes force Seraphine to interact with the wave more, leaving her much more vulnerable to her laning opponent.

These changes particularly affect Seraphine’s ability to use Beat Drop aggressively. Without the ability to immediately clear the wave with only High Note, Seraphine loses opportunities to fish for hitting Beat Drop on her laning opponent, weakening her lane pressure. For opponents, it gives them the ability to sit on a different side of the lane away from their own minions, forcing the Seraphine player to hit either the wave with her E or the opponent. The change puts Seraphine in a similar place to champions like Orianna who often have to decide if they want to poke the opponent or commit their abilities for waveclear.

Base Stats

Base stats at a glance seem insignificant, especially when the numbers seem low. Players often made fun of champions losing 3 attack damage or 5 movement speed, demanding more changes and claiming that the stat changes do nothing. However, these kinds of changes hit the early game, a stage where many champions try to gain agency through pressuring their opponent and obtaining as much gold as they can. Professional players often prioritize champions like Renekton, who have great base stats and powerful laning tools to dominate their lane. Succeeding in early game is also significant in the ranked ladder, as it gives your team the ability to access objectives and pressure the map to set up for a win.

For Seraphine, her changes to base stats are as follows.

Movement speed: 325 ⇒ 330

Mana Growth: 50 ⇒ 25

Mana Regeneration: 0.4 ⇒ 0.95

Base AD: 55 ⇒ 50

Movement speed affects both AP carry Seraphine and support in different ways. Seraphine support uses the movement speed to roam around to plant wards and impact other lanes. However, AP carries also benefit from the speed increase as it influences their own roam timings and how fast they return to lane. With Seraphine’s weakened waveclear, it partially compensates as a way to allow Seraphine to reach where she wants to be faster.

The adjustment to mana growth and mana regeneration is strictly a buff to support and nerf to the more gold-reliant carry Seraphine. Supports typically go for the cheaper mana regeneration items, and the AP carry variant relies on the more expensive mana-heavy items. However, mana adjustments have two significant downsides for Seraphine carry.

During the laning phase and as you purchase items, it becomes more noticeable that Seraphine’s mana pool is smaller than before. It affects Seraphine’s ability to stay in lane without running out of mana, forcing her to return to base much more often. The mana changes limit Seraphine’s comfortable items to carry with, as now she may rely more on Archangel's Staff and items that build into Lost Chapter, weakening her options. Mana adjustments also weaken the interaction with Archangel's Staff. The bonus ability power is unaffected, but the shield is lowered with her base mana pool cut in half, weakening her ability to survive if Seraphine goes for the Archangel Staff route.

The mana changes also adjust Seraphine’s rune preferences. Seraphine becoming more mana-starved may make her want to take as much mana regeneration as possible, which limits her options for rune flexibility. It also affects the commonly favoured inspiration tree as a secondary for the Biscuit Delivery rune. Biscuit Delivery is often only used during the laning phase, and with lowered mana means she benefits far less from the rune than before.

Base AD is the least significant of the changes, but it does affect her ability to last hit minions and poke in lane.

What’s Good About the Changes for Carry Seraphine?

At first, all seems as if Seraphine is nerfed across the board as a carry in favour of support. However, Seraphine’s damage has increased on her main source of damage, High Note. With both the base damage and damage amplification increased, Seraphine’s ability to nuke squishy champions is better than it was before, especially in longer team fights. Beat Drop also received an increase in AP scaling, covering the loss of scaling to Seraphine’s ultimate Encore. As Seraphine’s passive ability allows her to cast the skill twice, the damage increase is far more significant than it appears at first. The tradeoff is an exchange of waveclearing ability for more power in teamfights through damage and increased crowd control duration from Beat Drop.

Conclusion

Riot’s goal to even the gap between support and carry Seraphine is relatively effective because support Seraphine gets quite a number of buffs, while carry Seraphine has better damage in the mid to late game. For the Seraphine players who love the late-game team fighting mage support, she still benefits a lot in the carry role as before, but with only a little more difficulty in obtaining the gold. Whether you play her as a carry or support, Seraphine still shines as a powerful pick for both damage and her supportive abilities.