Just a quick note for those of you who don’t spend much time on the forums. Patch maintenance has been extended, which is why everything is still down and the downloads haven’t started yet. I am a little concerned about the lack of download, though. I’ve been able to patch as far as four hours in advance, so we could be seeing, uh, extended extended maintenance today.
Month: July 2010 (Page 2 of 11)
It’s patch day once again folks, this time heralding the release of Vladimir, the League’s first true vampire champion (sorry, Eve, kicking people with spiked high heels makes you ridiculous, not vampiric). This patch is also highly anticipated because of the Xin Zhao nerf.
First things first, let’s talk about Vladimir. I am nervous as hell about his position in the game. Any time you give a toon the ability to increase multiple stats by buying one item, I’m concerned. That was (and to some extent continues to be) the problem with Jax, and it will almost definitely be a problem with Vladimir. If you haven’t seen his Champion Spotlight yet, you should. It’s a little unnerving to see how early he can ignore towers and just how much damage he can deal with literally zero ability power.
The other big news is the Xin Zhao nerf. His attack speed scaling is getting a serious reduction, the AOE on his slow has been significantly reduced as has the magnitude of the effect, and his ult got a 20 percent reduction in percent-based damage and a slight nerf to base damage. He’ll still be disgustingly strong, mostly because his mana costs are so low and the fact that his ult is always up from the Battle Cry synergy.
The rest of the champion changes are either bug fixes or very minor. Kog’Maw, of all champs, got a small range nerf to his Bio-Arcane Barrage and a bit of a buff to Caustic Spittle. Comparing him to someone like Xin Zhao it seems ridiculous that his mana costs are still so high. Heimer got a little grenade nerf and Shaco took a small Deceive CD nerf. I don’t think either change will be enough to bring them off the permaban list, but with Vladimir almost undoubtedly filling one of those spots we might see a little more variety.
Other than that this patch is pretty unremarkable. My guess is Riot wants to wait out Season One a little longer to see which champions need a shift.
It had been a few weeks and I was starting to lose interest in WoW. Well, I thought I was starting to lose interest. What was really happening is that I was only playing the few parts of the game I had yet to experience. I was running heroics – a lot of them – and kinda doing little else. I did go through a crafting spree, leveling jewelcrafting from 1-450 over the course of a few days, but I wasn’t doing all of the things I used to love about the game.
The crafting was a start, but one of the things I really enjoyed in WoW was the Auction House. It seems a little see, and frankly there are a lot of games in the world with in-game currency houses, but nothing has gripped me quite like WoW. I love digging around to find deals, trying to find the hottest items, figuring out where sellers are over and under charging. For whatever reason it feels like a safe way to feed that gambling itch everyone seems to have (at least everyone I know). I’ve made thousands of gold over the past few days alone, and sure, it’s just pixels on a screen, but it does provide a simple thrill of success I find truly enchanting.
There are other aspects of the game I’m slowly remembering to return to. More on that later.
Riot has posted the skins and bundles pack for the upcoming Vladimir patch, which usually means we’ll see it in the next day or two. Of course, I’m going out of town during a major patch again so my impressions of the actual gameplay may be a bit delayed.
His skins look surprisingly cool, though I think I like the clean, colonial looking getup the best. It also looks like he will be ranged, as many people have been wondering. Corki is also getting his one millionth skin in this patch. I don’t think Riot understands that more skins do not make people want to play a character more. In a way, it breeds a bit of animosity from Singed fans and the like – toons that only have one or two skins, basically.
Zilean also gets a new skin, epically themed for dropping his peace bombs on the heads of his enemies. Hopefully we’ll see patchnotes soon so I can cover the inevitable Xin Zhao nerf.
The latest in a string of culturally themed heroes is officially on release notice. Riot posted the “new champion approaches” post for Vladimir this afternoon, offering a cursory look at his skills and what looks to be his splash screen.
Here’s the ability list:
Transfusion: Vladimir drains the lifeforce of his target, dealing magic damage and healing himself for 25% of that amount.
Sanguine Pool: Vladimir sinks into a pool of blood for 2.5 seconds, becoming untargetable and slowing enemies above him. Vladmir deals magic damage to targets above him and heals himself for 15% of that amount.
Tides of Blood: Vladimir unleashes a torrent of blood, damaging surrounding enemies. Additionally, multiple Tides of Blood in a short period of time cause them to cost additional health and deal additional damage, and increases his healing and regeneration by 8%.
Hemoplague (Ultimate): Vladimir infects the target area with a virulent plague increases the damage they take for 5 seconds. After 5 seconds, infected enemies take magic damage.
Crimson Pact (Passive): Bonus health gives Vladimir bonus ability power, and every bonus ability power gives Vladimir bonus health (does not stack with itself).
Unlike my original assumption, Vladimir’s resource system is his health (no crazy new crap to deal with). I wish I had more impressions about his skill list but it’s so hard to say how he’ll play without numbers and costs and all that. I thought Xin Zhao would be fun, but I had no idea he would have such low mana costs and such ridiculous damage output.
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