Patch Day 08/10 – We can stop banning Soraka now
Today’s patch brings a new champion in the form of Galio, the great blue gargoyle. Aside from the new champion, the game hasn’t changed a ton. A few characters received some significant attention, but things remained largely the same.
The most notable change in my mind is Soraka, who received a string of small nerfs that should amount to a significant difference in her staying power. Her mana heal now has a longer cooldown and heals slightly less mana, and her global heal got a 20 second cooldown increase at all levels. That could be enough to bring her off some ban lists in favor of other champions (please start banning Amumu, people).
Heimer’s turrets caught a little nerf – they no longer increase damage based on number of hits and the AP coefficient was reduced. They do have slightly higher base damage, but definitely nothing on the order of the old hit method.
Malzahar got some nice tweaks, bumping his movement speed, increasing the range of his ult and Malefic Visions, and reducing the cooldown on Malefic Visions (which already felt very short to me).
Ryze got a little bit of a rework as well, adding a passive cooldown reduction to his Overload skill. To compensate, Desperate Power now has a longer CD. Rune Prison now lasts longer at early ranks and deals damage in DoT form. It’s basically Morgana’s old Dark Binding, which is odd.
Vladimir’s Sanguine Pool got a small CD nerf but his Tides of Blood now costs less HP, Blitzcrank got some CD reductions, Nunu got a Consume buff, and Garen got his attack timer reset on Decisive Strike back. Other than those small changes, there’s not a whole lot to report in the way of champions.
For items, the newer items all got buffs. Wriggle’s Lantern now costs less, which is just what it needed. The Gunblade and Cutlass got damage buffs without a cost increase.
Lots of little paragraphs in here, which should give you an idea of how many small changes came in this patch. I’ll have a Galio impression list up later today. Spoiler Alert: he’s underwhelming.
Posted in: Reviews
Tags: galio, galio patch, new patch, patch changes, patch day, patch notes
All in all the rune pages are the most exciting part of this patch. That said I will be buying the new patch since Amumu has been getting banned occasionally.
The only other change I really care about is Nunu’s consume. I’m still not sold on his viability end-game since all you can really do is spam snowball every 4 seconds and make sure BB is on your carry. We all know his ult won’t land unless you have an Amumu ult (or maybe morgana).
As a tank he is eminently ignorable, as straight AP you snowball alone doesn’t provide quite enough burst and carry Nunu is just avoiding his strengths. I’ve been trying to make a hybrid build (Veil / Nashors / Rageblade / whatever ) work but I’ve been in terrible games lately that just don’t last long enough to try this. My biggest complaint is that if there isn’t a heimer his ‘q’ is often useless in teamfights since you can’t count on minions being around.
yeah my impression is he’s underwhelming as well, and that it’s intended to break a growing, and bad-for-business suspicion that they’re “selling power” by releasing new heroes as must-buy-cuz-they’re-game-breaking. xin and vlad were exceptionally strong and difficult to counter.
zeb, speaking of nunu, galio feels very similar. their ults? easily interruptible… somehow, smaller radius, and the guys are headed the other direction. his q is similar to snowball, except aoe, slow missile speed and easily sidestepped. his e does almost no damage but is really good for haste. I think his primary role is not tank but support; his w is incredlbe – can turn anyone into a tank, which is necessary bc if he stacks magic rez instead of ap, he can be ignored if his ult is down. I’m still not sure how to build him; vlad was obvious, with goliath, I can’t decide between a very low dps tank or a high dps mage that’s ult will get him killed
sorry bout ranting, just less than thrilled about spending 6.3k ip on him when nunu is 0.4k ip. should’ve gotten another run page.
eh I rather like Galio, but I’m low elo and can get away with some worse champs. I do agree that he’s more support than tank (but can tank in a pinch) however I must say that while I love abyssal scepter in general, it really shines on Galio (mpen, AP and MR for more AP yum yum); stack some health with that and enjoy.
dunno. maybe I was annoyed that he seems, at least to me, like just a nunu remake. with unoriginal, uninspired, recolored skins.
@slam: I’ve found his e excellent for harassing and farming. Mid-game q+e generally wipes out a creep wave.
I’ve only played a half dozen games as him so far, but I’m pretty please as far as balance goes. We won the last game last night by me tower-diving to taunt with him=>me dead + 4 enemies dead-> insta-surrender.
I’ve found that thornmail works pretty darn good on him, as does the standard sunfire. I’ve been going with the “default” chalice->merc treads=>situational (either thornmail or a MR item), and the games tend to end after that.
I think of him more like an Amu with a bit of burst than a nunu. Gal feels much sturdier to me.
re: Nunu: After another game or two, I’m leaning towards the Nashors+Merc treads to start build. I found the attack speed really helped charge up my passive & take out towers. Still not sure what my 2nd item is. I think I grabbed a late RoA last time.
onefinemess,
care to share how you specced Nunu out with runes and masteries? I’ve been running mpen/MP5 lvl / CDR /flat health and varying between 9/21/0 and 9/0/21. The defense is better endgame but the utility is very nice early game (exp + meditation).
That’s very close to me. 9/0/21, mpen/mp5lvl/cdr/2 hp quints + 1 move quint.
I’ll try and get in a couple more games with him tonight. I tried Starks for kicks the other night just to see if it would help his jungling :P. (Answer: Nashor’s was better for me.)