Loki Deals Too Much Damage

I think Loki deals way, way too much damage than is appropriate for an assassin. Let me explain.

I have two problems with Loki's damage: His snowballing potential, and his late game damage.

First point: A fed Loki is nearly uncounterable. Actives are of minimal use when he can kill you with only his basic abilities (as well as having actives of his own and stacking cooldown reduction), and counterbuilding is not only difficult on certain gods (such as hunters), but also not very helpful when Loki is two levels or higher than you. In addition, in the early-mid game, grouping up is also not always possible.

And even with actives and such, doing so in the laning phase can be deadly (as you are essentially burning at least 300 gold while your opposing laners do not), and using them can make yourself exposed unnecessarily to the enemy team. And there's not much you can do if a competent enemy duo lane jumps onto you as they see Loki ganking.

And in solo queue, it is extraordinarily common to see a Loki get fed.

Basically, his snowballing potential is way too high.

Second point: Loki's late game scaling is ridiculous. At one point, I was an Isis with a full build, along with this Loki, who also had a full build. As in, both of us were buying power pots. The Loki in question has a noncrit all power/pen build.

Anyway, my point is, I got Breastplate of Valor and Magi's Blessing. He got Titan's Bane, Hydra's Lament, Heartseeker, Warrior Tabi, Deathbringer, and Jotunn's Wrath. He had to pop Girdle of Inner Power, but he still wiped about 3/4 of my health with all of his abilities, and I was forced to buy Aegis to mitigate the DoT and follow up basics. (Our tank Hades was busy splitpushing. All game. It was that kind of game.)

Loki deals INSTANT burst. He has the highest instant damage in the game, and that damage should not be wiping 3/4 of someone's health AFTER they buy two counterbuilding items (I guess the Girdle and power pots should alleviate some of that, but still).

tl;dr: My problem with Loki is that he snowballs way too easily (removing counterplay while doing so) and his damage scales way too well with gold. I want his snowballing potential to be reduced, along with his late game power.

Suggestion? Maybe rework a part of his damage to be more counterable, or change damage distribution away from his Aimed Strike and more into Vanish, or something. Maybe a simple damage contributions reduction. I'm not really sure.

Maybe reduce the damage on Aimed Strike but make it affected by Behind You!? He'll have the same level of damage but will be forced to go behind you every time.

Loki's already bad enough as it is, nerfing him further will completely eradicate viability. He already ONLY brings damage to the table. And let me point out - he did 3/4 of your health, and is now useless. So it's now a 4.25 vs 4.0

This isn't comparing if you position correctly to where he has no opportunity to get to you, warding up so you know he's coming (which many people in soloqueue don't know how to do), and simply timing things correctly.

Loki should be the last person on our mind for balancing right now. Late game, Loki does less in a teamfight than even Thanatos.

He brings 2 things to the table raven.

Damage and splitpush.

But Nerfing his damage would be bad, if something should be done to him (which IMO is unnecessary) it should be the split potential. That **** is so annoying, but it's also the fun part of playing him...

Although giving aimed strike backstab bonus with toned down damage is not a bad idea for a change :)

Then that makes him overspecialized. Nerf his damage, buff something else. Like you pointed, out, he's very weak outside of his niche, and I say in his niche, he's too strong and/or uncounterable. Those two statements aren't irreconcilable.

Why not change that?

I have no problem with that, you simply called for nerfs to him.

If we're going to change them, then that should be the discussion.

You basically called for him to be harder to play and do the exact same thing. If we're going to change him, then we can make this a full rework/mini-rework discussion

Well, at least I didn't say he was broken. :p

I think his Decoy could be toyed with. The main problem is that it is his current waveclear skill, which causes a few problems. We could make it a more utility and/or single target damage ability, but that removes him from solo or mid.

So, uh, should we go down that route? Remove his solo/mid ability for jungling potential?

Affecting his clear might weaken his splitpushing. Two birds with one stone, perhaps?

Loki in ZERO way needs nerfs, sorry.

I've said this for a long time on Smitefire folks. You can't just build against him, you have to PLAY against him.

Notice how there's some people who say LOKI OP and some people who say Loki is actually very weak?

It's the people who say he is very weak who actually know how to play against him.

You can't just build Breastplate and call it a day, you need to stick next to teammates who have cc (Or use your own ffs), AE silence him, ANY CC instantly kills Loki. There are so many abilities that completely kill any chance of Loki surviving, mostly AE silence/stun/mesz.

Who has that?

Ymir
Thanatos
Apollo
Hades
Athena
Bacchus
Chaac
Geb
Hun Batz
***bhkarna
Zhong Kui

Just to name a few. Loki is only OP if you allow him to get fed. This is no different than any other assassin.

Remember that all of his damage is single target. He is one of the best 1v1 gods in the game (except Thanatos), but if it's 2v1 he's screwed because he's so squishy.

Sorry, but no. There's a reason why Loki hasn't been nerfed recently, and that's cause he doesn't need one.

You have to learn to play against him, that's all.

If you are insistent on building against him, get Mystical Mail.

Physical protection and you can see where Loki is if he's near you.

I have been telling people for years that Loki is too good and very few people actually listen to me -_-

I don’t think that he is too good because he can bust down enemies in a couple of seconds, most assassins an ADC can do that as well. The reason why I think that Loki is op is because Assassinate is the most ridicules broken, cheap “press 4 to win” ability in Smite. I have looked at it from every angle and I come to the same conclusion.

Let’s talk assassins for a second. Unlike Mages and Hunters assassins have to getting close to their targets since they lack range, making good position what makes or breaks an assassin and is the reason I find assassins to be the hardest role to play in MOBAs. The absolute best position for an assassin is right next to a squishy target that is effected by some form of CC (preferably hard once), but getting there is easy said than done and you usually have to sacrifices your escape and/or CC in order to get there.

You see where I’m going with this? Assassinate puts Loki in the absolute best position he could want, but that’s not problem. The problem is that there is nothing you can do about it. There is no way to predict it since its instant and there is no way to juke it since there is no way to predict it. It’s like World Weaver meets Combat Blink!

Not to mention that he can combined Vanish with Assassinate, sure he doesn’t have any escapes afterwards but there is no way you can see him coming, even if you have wards it doesn’t matter since wards can’t see through stealth. If there is no way for you to see him coming, then there is no way to counter him.