The Garen patch is finally upon us and with it comes a load of changes to both the client and the game system. On the whole, I think this will be one of the better patches for the game, even if Garen is a bit underwhelming.
For starters, we obviously need to cover the new champion, Garen. He’s going to run you 3150 IP or 585 RP so I hope you saved up. It’s a long, slow crawl to 3k for most people. His skill list remains essentially unchanged, which leaves him in a weird sort of melee DPS/hybrid role with very low utility. He’s still highly susceptible to hard CC (stuns/snares) but he does have a slow immunity, which will be nice for chasing. Unfortunately, chasing is usually a bad thing, unless you’re running cleanup after a teamfight, in which case its usually best to just push.
Healing got some massive nerfs this patch. Alistar now has greater self healing by 20 percent at all levels, but his allies will now only receive half the heal value. Ouch. Taric got cooldown and value buffs to his heal, but radiance no longer heals allies. Radiance also costs more mana for both startup and upkeep so you’ll probably have to break out that mana regen rune page if you still want to play him. Rally also got its ally heal removed, though the cooldown came down a full 90 seconds.
Katarina caught a big rework, giving her more base health and some survivability in the form of new Killer Instincts mechanics. The active Shunpo effect now reduces incoming damage by scaling percentage per level, giving her the durability to jump into a fight and ult when it’s actually useful instead of waiting until it’s over like she’s basically had to recently. Killer Instincts now adds a persistent damage buff and the damage ratio on her ultimate got a 10 percent buff. Overall, she should be decent now, though I doubt she’ll be great.
Morgana got some nice cooldown and mana efficiency buffs for her skills as well as the addition of a stacking MR debuff from Tormented Soil. Having played as her and also against her on the TR I can tell you she is truly horrifying. Just pray she doesn’t ever catch you alone.
Shen got reworked a bit, which will hopefully bring him out of the godlike tier on TT. The feint damage block will be excellent, but I think the cooldown increase, duration nerf, and nerf to damage blocked (now 180 at max rank) will be enough to keep him in line. AP Shen may be a bit more viable though. I’ll have to check on his AP ratios and relay what I can after some testing. Stand United also caught a nerf, bringing down the shield value, duration, and removing the refund if the ult is cancelled for some reason.
Other than that most of the changes were fairly small. Nunu got some buffs. Mordekaiser received some shield tweaks. Fiddlesticks got a long overdue nerf. Sion and Rammus got some small efficiency buffs. Tryndamere got a bit of a buff and Jax caught another small nerf (which still isn’t enough).
As for the game on the whole, there are two new items – one for tanks, one for physical damage dealers – and the assist system got a rework for debuffs on the target and buffs to the attacker. It should give support some much needed love. Matchmaking also received some changes to make things a little more smooth. Players should now be matched more appropriately by both level and ELO (it scares me that this wasn’t always the case) and full premades should be facing other premades more often (again, why wasn’t this happening or being discussed?).
Last but not least we got some skins. Garen gets the typical duo treatment, while we have yet another silly skin for Warwick (Grandma), a corresponding Annie skin (Red Riding Hood), and a skin for Sivir. I have to say, I hate Sivir – I think she is one of the most poorly designed toons in the entire game – but the Warrior Princess skin makes her look hotter (yeah, bangs are hot) and the extra armor makes her look kinda badass. If it didn’t cost 975 RP I would totally buy it and potentially right click my way to a huge winning streak with her.
Posted in: Development, league of legends
Tags: annie, buffs, garen, garen release, katarina, katarina buff, morgana, morgana buff, nerfs, nunu, patch, patch day, rammus, shen, sion, sivir, skins, warwick
As always, excellent analysis. Phreak’s video makes Garen seem godlike. Is this not the case when you’ve seen him on the test server? Here’s one observation… with all of these items with active abilities, how about a way to reorganize your inventory? Anyways, Garen can’t be any worse than Tryn or Kat. It looks like I’ll have to put some time in with Morgana 🙂
I haven’t seen Garen dominate a game that some other hero in the same player’s hands would not have also dominated (I hope that makes sense). I think he’ll be great in the right team – a team with a lot of other high priority targets – but against any decent ranged players he’s going to struggle. In the spotlight video, the first game features a very unskilled Morgana. She’s not paying any attention to zoning and brush control, instead allowing a champion with taunt (Shen) and a melee DPS (Garen) annihilate her. All she needs to do to prevent that is push creeps back early and move into the brush herself, using Dark Binding with its new super short cooldown to keep the two of them at bay. A well-placed tormented soil (with the new MR debuff) + alpha strike, as weak as it sounds, would be great early game harass to keep those two tanky toons away from her.
You are able to reorganize your inventory as long as the store is not open. Just drag and drop your items from one slot to another. In case you don’t know, the item slots are also bound to numbers 1-6 for hotkey access.
I’ve got to say I’m excited about the Morgana buffs. Tanks & support are what I usually enjoy playing (except for WW on TT…) and I need a break from Soraka, but I didn’t feel Morg was quite read yet. I’m looking forward to trying her soon.
I’ve just been getting into Shen (he’s more fun than I expected) and am curious to see if I will even notice the nerf.
3k does indeed take forever for casual gamers – I play 2-3 games a night at most (and don’t get me started on the matchmaker last night and not getting my 1st win double ip bonus 🙁 :(), so it’s a week or two at least. Lately I’ve just been spending 5 bucks or so every other week and grabbing a champ or sale skin kind of at random. Hence, Shen.
You missed the most important part IMO, the new assist system.
Uhh, scratch that. I missed a few words.
I really like the Nunu buff; although, I thought he was OP already. ^^ I also like a new assist system, since I’m a support-type of player. Lucky me, I already had 4k IP saved before the patch.
I feel a bit like I’m triple posting, but the new matchmaking system is incredible. I’ve played a good 5 games today, and I haven’t had a single one under 40 minutes. And it wasn’t just being dragged on, it was truly fun for those 40 minutes. Just finished one I was really proud of.. . Truly one of the more balanced and hardcore games I’ve been
in for a while.
I dunno about matchmaking. My friend is level 22 and last game we were paired with lvl 28 – 30 on TT. It didn’t help that our Lvl 30 Sivir was a noob either.
My last night’s games with Morgana:
• 8/12/16 (Gave Mid to noob Veigar and had to play support in a side lane); win
• 12/8/26 (Solo mid); loss
• 5/0/5 (Solo mid); win
• 8/3/16 (Solo mid); win
Now let’s see what the new patch does to her with lower cd, but lower dmg root, and changed ulti. Zhonya’s rushing becomes even more important to get those aces, so that one can survive long enough to get to the 2nd phase of the Soul Shackles.
P.S. She’s my best champ with about 200 games played.
Only had time for one game last night, and I gave Morgana a swing. It was hard fought, but a nice win.
I’m still getting the hang of timing and her ult though – it still feels weird to me for a squishy to have a melee oriented ult like that.
Oh, and I was unimpressed with Garen. Had one on both teams and I just kind of ignored him for the most part… when I wasn’t killing him.
Glad to hear it, Ryphon. My family’s in town so I’m off the game until Friday. I’m hoping I’ll have a decent amount of time to test things out then.
Anyone had the chance to play Kat after her buffs? I played four games last night with her and won them all. Most of the games I played I had over 20 kills and only 1 to 2 deaths. Definetly love the Kat changes myself.
I’m excited to give her some playtime. I think a lot of her strength comes from either people underestimating her or people with no CC. She’s so good at harassing and only got better with the KI buff. If you don’t have a stun you’re pretty much screwed if she ults on you. Used to be you could just burst her down through it but the KI -> Shunpo seems like it could keep her up through quite a lot.