I’ve been playing a few games with Garen recently and finally decided I would get him a skin. I’ve actually enjoyed him, though I wonder how good he’ll be once that silence only runs the proper 2.5 seconds (it’s currently bugged and sometimes hits for 5). I’m going with the Sanguine skin. I don’t really like the loading image – it makes him look like a goth punk – but it looks much cooler in game than Desert Trooper Garen.

Imagine my surprise when I logged in to the store and found Bird of Prey Anivia staring me in the face. Almost 1700 RP later and I’m the proud owner of Sanguine Garen, Bird of Prey Anivia, and Scuba Gragas. Hopefully I can get some screenshots posted here shortly.

UPDATE: I got a game in as Bird of Prey Anivia and Scuba Gragas and I really like both skins. The Anivia is a little black for my tastes – not sure why it isn’t more brown like the picture suggests. Gragas, though, is awesome. The tank on his belly wiggles with glee. If only they had changed the barrel skin to match the tank thing he’s holding. That would have been incredible.

When the Garen patch leaked, so did a whole slew of skins, only some of which were available when Garen went live. According to an official post on the announcement forums, the missing skins will be available soon.

Yes, we’ll finally get a chance to play as Scuba Gragas, Bird of Prey Anivia (worst name ever), and Tribal Ryze. I really like all three skins, so it looks like I’ll be plunking down the cash for a fresh flight of Riot Points. I’m glad to see a non-ice-themed Anivia skin. It could make me play her a bit more often. Scuba Gragas is pretty amazing as well, and though I don’t play Ryze much, I’m a big fan of that skin.

Now, if Riot would just give me an IP option for buying skins (I don’t care if they cost 50,000 IP) I could finally spend the IP I have sitting around.

A few weeks ago I wasn’t seeing Gragas at all. Even after the buff he was beyond rare, relegated to nearly Katarina levels of nonexistence. Since then, though, he’s shown up more and more often, and since he’s free this week I thought it would be appropriate to run a State of the Hero analysis on the rabble rouser.

Gragas is a very deceiving toon. Most new Gragas players think AP is the best way to go, especially when they see how hard barrels can hit early in the game. Think of those things like a small nuke, though, and you’ll be fine. Attack damage Gragas is much stronger, mostly because of the low cooldown on Body Slam. Think of Gragas like Blitzcrank – plenty of skills to proc Sheen for tower pushing and a nice set of attack skills for laying down some burst damage.

The only time Gragas really has problems is at the end of the game. If you haven’t been playing strong – by strong I mean at least 2:1 for your K/D ratio – you’ll find it hard to blow through an opponent without some help. For the rest of the game, though, Gragas feels just fine. If you have some health regen runes you should find it easy to stay in lane with a little help from your passive.

The one thing I find problematic about Gragas is that it’s almost necessary to have Clarity. Without it you will have serious mana problems if you want your damage to scale relatively quickly. I would love to see a little buff to Drunken Rage, but it already provides so many buffs that it would be hard to justify increasing any one of them without decreasing another.

If you’ve not played Gragas, this a great time to give him a shot. Stick to your lane, pick your fights wisely and you’ll probably have a lot of fun. Who doesn’t want to be a big fat guy throwing around wine barrels for fun?

In my post about today’s patch I neglected to mention the big changes made to Gragas. The barrel-tossing brute hasn’t been in many of my games since his release. The ones in which he’s appeared have typically resulted in a loss for his summoner’s record. He simply doesn’t cut it. Today, Riot tried to rectify that situation.

Gragas got a round of buffs and bug fixes to help him get his groove back. He now attacks faster, scales better, moves faster in Body Slam, his barrels roll faster, and his ultimate casts farther and hits a larger radius than before. Granted, it was just patch day, but I have yet to see him once.

I’ll admit, I’ve never played Gragas. I’m willing to bet, though, that his unpopularity comes from his feel. His spells aren’t very interesting, and for thick casters you can do a lot better. I’ll keep an eye out for Gragas sightings over the next few days but I’m willing to bet the buffs weren’t enough.

If you’ve played any games as Gragas you’ve probably felt pretty underwhelmed. I know I have. Generally, I like to give a new toon a chance to shine, but Gragas really can’t, and it comes down to his lack of internal synergy.

I realize that sounds like something from a Six Sigma retreat on 30 Rock so I’ll try to clarify. Gragas suffers because his skills are a weird mix of AP and physical damage. While some at Riot contend that he does best with a health/physica DPS build, the player community is frustrated with where that puts his AP scaling skills, most notably Barrel Roll and his ultimate.

Luckily, Riot has seen the light. Gragas will soon be receiving a buff per red posts on the forums. I’ll be interested to see how much, though. As it stands I think he’s fine for the early game, but he really suffers mid to late. Buff him the wrong way and suddenly he’s too big early and starts to feel just right late.

For what they got wrong with Gragas, they got completely right with Pantheon. I am completely in love with that Spartan bastard.

If you’ve been anxiously logging in every twenty minutes to check the servers you can stop your wait. Everything’s back up and running with the reported changes in place. As of this writing the store isn’t functioning, so I haven’t been able to pick up Pantheon just yet.

I am looking forward to a lot of the changes, though. As a Gangplank player I was glad to see the change to Parrrley in that it now applies Grog Soaked Wound. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve crit someone to a sliver of health just to watch him run off. There is a strange bug in his attack animation wherein every few attacks he points his gun at the target and it clicks as though you’ve tried to fire Parrrley and it didn’t go off.

I will miss that 10% extra crit damage from my runes, though it’s not a terrible nerf. I’m looking forward to giving it a go on Pantheon. I’ve got a feeling that Heartseeker Strike will be a crazy opener most people won’t expect for a few days.

And then there’s Gragas. I’ve not played him yet so I don’t have much to say other than this: he’s HUGE. His skills seem to be balanced just about right for a tank – nice control with just enough damage to overbalance a fight. I’ll have to experiment with some builds later in the day.