The servers are back up (and set to busy to throttle traffic) and Kog’Maw has finally made his way into the League of Legends store at a whopping 6300 IP. I’ve been dying to give this little monster a go and I’m hoping he’s a solid addition to the champion lineup. Healing has also gone through yet more changes so the game will hopefully feel a bit less like a kite fest.

As always, new champ first. Kog’Maw is really frackin cool. His skillset is actually pretty nice, and makes him extremely adept at tearing people down from great range. I think I really surprised the Veigar I faced in my first game when suddenly he was at 20% health at his turret and all of my damage had been done from extreme range. I have a feeling he will be infuriating to play against, much like a well played Ezreal. I’ll have a full impressions post up later today.

Ashe finally got her Hawkshot, so look forward to seeing her in even more of your games. I can’t imagine why they thought one of the strongest characters in the game needed to have the best map awareness in the game. It’s on a long cooldown, but it’s like having free wards with a huge radius. Her other skills did catch some minor nerfs, so hopefully it won’t be too ugly.

Gangplank got a bit of a buff. His Parley can no longer be dodged or blinded and his Raise Morale now grants additional attack damage instead of attack speed (though I’d imagine the active buff will still be speed). His ultimate has also been changed so that each individual cannon ball deals less damage but the radius (of the cannonballs, not the ult) has been increased so you should see more hit.

Pantheon’s Heartseeker Strike has been both fixed and modified. It should deal less damage in the early game but with itemization it could actually deal about the same, which seems fine. I never had a problem with it past level 11, it was the level one 400+ damage nuke that killed me. His spear also received a bit of a buff, which could make him just as scary in the early game.

Veigar is the last of the major reworks. He got a new passive, which is half of a Chalice for mana regen. He also now gains ability power for any champion killed by an ability. Event Horizon got some mana and cooldown tweaks, but the biggest change is to his ult. It no longer deals damage based on mana but instead takes the sum of his own AP plus the targets and deals 80 percent of that value in bonus damage. It also no longer refunds mana on kill.

Among other, smaller tweaks, Blitzcrank’s ultimate now silences for .5 seconds. I don’t know if that includes the passive, but certainly on active. Morgana’s Dark Binding now deals damage like a nuke, which should help with her damage output in the prevalence of Mercury’s Treads/Cleanse. Akali’s attack timing has been fixed and Corki should more consistently generate rockets and now has a counter to indicate the “Big One” rocket. Shaco’s Jack in the Boxes should also be fixed for targeting and the visibility bug. Kayle also caught a few damage nerfs but a reduction on her ultimate CD at level one and two down to 90 seconds.

As for healing, Soraka’s ult has been significantly nerfed, both in the amount healed and her AP ratio. Ezreal’s heal has been completely removed and his attack speed buff/debuff has been significantly reduced. It should bring him a bit more in-line, though he still has obscene attack range/harassment ability. Innervating locket also no longer heals minions.

I’m a little sad to see that Janna didn’t receive any significant changes. She is crazy out of line when it comes to kiting and harassing, and though her knockup has a 33 percent shorter duration, she still has too many escape tools to be considered truly balanced.

I’m sure you’ll see more posts throughout the week on this patch and the new champion. So far I’ve only had one game with him but it was a lot of fun.