This change is a substantial nerf to her W build which is a nerf to Maiev’s already weak lategame and it removes the most interesting talent interaction of her kit while lowering the skill sealing of this playstyle by simplifying her combo.
The entire reason you would go W build in the first place was to get access to burst damage and solo kill potential after lvl 16. Contrary to what is written in the patch, Cruel Chain was arguably the most impactful talent in her entire kit(and one of the more interesting talents in the game imo) and marked pretty much Maiev’s only powerspike past 10.
Not only is the max damage bonus now reduced by 30%, the way in which you reach that maximum is also way more unreliable and doing so has less to do with skill and execution then it did previously. On top of that it now gives you zero bonus damage vs single targets, where before you could nearly one shot backliners.
This change also completely removes the interesting synergy that this build created between lvl 4 Blade Dance and lvl 7 Elune’s Wrath which you would pick to get the extra procs of damage for the increased Crule Chain bonus. Now in order to get the maximum burst you have to bind 5 people which is extremely unlikely to happen and not something you can realistically and reliably achieve.
This talent was also the most fun to play with because it increased Maiev’s already high skill ceiling even further, you had to think more about the ordering of your abilities and sometimes change the way in which you engage. It took a lot of practice and time to consistently use your abilities in the right way to get the full bonus damage, but the reward was potentially huge and you could decide games by executing it successfully.
But maybe the main reason for taking W build was that this combo was her best tool to have an impact in the lategame outside of her raw engage potential which always is completely depended on your team being able to follow up and in general is greatly diminished in the later stages of the game where the map is more open, there is less roaming, more 5-maning and the enemy likely has a lot more tools to deal with your engage.
This change makes one of Maiev’s biggest problem even worse, that your lategadme is very one dimensional and lackluster. Off the top of my head i now can’t think of any hero that has a less impactful 16 and 20 talent tier.
If the goal of this Change was to break the necessary combination of her level 4, 7, and 16 talents then i would argue that simply removing the synergy between them and simplifying her talent tree in the process is the wrong approach. instead maybe give more of her talents at 4 and 7 some form of additional damage proc, so that depending on the situation there are several combinations to choose from when you want to go for a Cruel Chain combo playstyle.
In any case, i really hope that we won’t be stuck with this new version.
much love