It’s been months after her release, Seraphine still struggles to find herself at where she was designed to.
After her release in Patch 10.22, Seraphine has become somewhat of a meme-champion over the communities. There could be two reasons for this.
First of all, it was her abilities are somewhat “ripped-off” from Sona. Though having a really good introduction with her own Twitter account, Seraphine made fans disappointed with the fact that she is just a “Sona 2.0” by having abilities and concept that is just too similar with Sona. Her lore and appearance in K/DA are not that convincing, either. While her lore is some kind of scrap-up stuff, it doesn’t seem to fit Piltover or the LoL Universe at all. Even at some points, the line teasing Skarner for the extinction of his kind is somewhat brutal.
The second reason is because of her disappointing gameplay. While being introduced as a “mid-lane mage support”, she has failed terribly as a mid-laner. And not yet to mention the concept of playing support going mid isn’t that exciting of an idea at all. Recently, a post on r/leagueoflegends by u/tredli has received a lot of upvotes and comments from the community.
“Per Lolalytics, Seraphine is picked 83,4% of the time as a support and only 14% of the time as a midlaner. Her winrate is also better as a support than as a midlaner (which probably has to do with the fact that I still am not sure what Seraphine is supposed to do in lane other than hug turret and scrape CS with Q).
According to Riot (Champion Roadmap: September 2020) Seraphine was supposed to be:
This leaves us with a mid-lane mage and a support to round out the year, which I’m happy to say we’re on track for (but as always, things could change).
Seraphine was intended to be a mid-lane mage, but a month after her release it’s honestly preposterous to pretend she’s not another enchanter-ish support. She didn’t even go the usual route of midlane -> nerfed -> played support, either, she was played more as a support from day one. And as time goes by I assume she’ll get her playerbase of support players which would be sad if she was moved mid. What do you think will happen to her?”
The post has pointed out some interesting things about her current stage right now. More particularly, it suggested that players have been finding Seraphine suits the role of a Support more than a Mage ever since. This could be explained because she has really low damage in laning phase compare to other Mages, as well as being too squishy for a mid lane champion.
Even before Preseason, Mid lane has long become a playground for Assasins in solo queue. The only place where Mage can actually rule Mid is in Professional matches or High elo ranks. With the complete overhaul of items in the Preseason, Assasins have been in the best state ever, with AP Assasins like Akali, Fizz, or Ekko finding success with currently too OP items like Lich Bane or Night Harvester, while Mages don’t have much decent build to play against these champions.
While the whole playstyle that Riot hopes Seraphiine could perform is: “A Mage-support who can constantly roam with Jungler or join fights and become most useful in team fights” is really cool, she might lack the tools to do so. Seraphine doesn’t actually have good wave clears with her abilities, plus the fact that she only has a really low base MS of 325 means she can’t roam that constantly and comeback. Provide with the fact that Mid is a playground for Assasins, who won’t hesitate to follow her in roams and solo kill her on her way to teammates since all of them can out-trade her easily, she is a case of good concept but actually bad playstyle.
While R and W are really strong team fight tools, they don’t seem to help her much in the lane. Moreover, Mages are in a very bad state of lacking mana items, Seraphine can’t wave clear and roams without running out all of her mana before actually showing at combats.
Long story short: Good concept; bad stats; doesn’t fit the Assasins meta; bad Mages state, everything leads to her being a completely failed mid laner at the current meta. Only when played as a Support does Seraphine found herself useful to the team. With her current situation, she is getting attention from Riot Games, moreover, she will receive a buff in Patch 10.25. What do you think about Seraphine? Should she become a Support or should she be played as her original position?