This patch included a lot of changes, so I’ve been taking my time playing through the various champion tweaks and remakes to get a good sense of where everyone stands.
Outside Kog’Maw, I’ve spent most of my post-patch game time on Ashe, getting a feel for just how much Hawkshot would change the game. It will. A lot. I can’t believe she gets a free CV on a 60 second cooldown. Just unbelievable.
I’ve also been playing a bit of Morgana to test out the Dark Binding changes. I really like having the damage upfront. It doesn’t change the fact that her ult is totally cleansable, which sucks, but it’s nice to have a bit of burst for a last hit and some lane damage.
I played one game as Gangplank and remembered right away what I don’t like about a lot of melee toons – they have no way to close the gap. Toons like Jax and Pantheon have leaps to get on top of the target. Hell, even Yi has Alpha Strike. Without a similar skill, melee just takes an eternity to farm to the point that they can be useful. Even with the Raise Morale changes I found it extremely difficult to contribute against Kog’Maw, Ezreal, Pantheon, Kaiser, and Shaco.
Pantheon is still crazy strong, as I mentioned in a post about Shurelia’s Q&A. Heartseeker damage is so high and so hard to avoid that it’s easy to get him rolling early. From there you just need to pick your battles wisely and it’s pretty easy to get a win. He still struggles against tanky teams because his DPS won’t outscale their health in the late game, but if you get a good enough farm in the first 20 minutes or so, the game won’t be lasting much longer.
The only major rework I haven’t messed with is Veigar. He’s still ultra-squishy with low mobility, putting him about the bottom of my barrel.
Posted in: league of legends
Tags: gangplank, jax, kog'maw patch, melee, pantheon, patch, patch impressions, yi
Pantheon is my favorite toon by far. The ability to intervene and decide the outcome of a battle is restricted to 3 characters, and his skills presents a solid toolkit for most situations.
Prior to the patch, Guinsoo had posted on a thread; later in the thread, one of the people I had just played said that he played against an enemy Panth that finished with 28-0-0, including a penta-kill, and was killing him even while he was standing right next to his tower. What happened was I kept killing their squishies; whenever I saw on Teemo on the map, I jumped. He was fine solo mid, but never reacted fast enough to get out of the way. Whenever he appeared on the map, I two-shotted him. Shen’s ult is annoying because it prevents enemy kills. I see it serving a similar function; against unorganized teams – or even organized ones, if you get any sort of farm in you can rest assured that 1. your allies will probably survive and 2. someone on their team will need to respawn.
That said, I don’t notice that much of a difference even post-patch. It used to be “pokes” with spear until lvl 3 or 4; cleanse and flash does wonders for getting in the element of surprise, followed by a stun+heartseeker. After that it’s just a matter of pumping AD and survivability.
I think the problem is not so much HS as it is that it’s hard to isolate him as a priority kill. He can pick at the weakest link until he’s ready to take apart the tanks.
*intervene from the fountain.
Of note though, it HAS gotten harder since the patch to get early kills.