Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 47 of 260)

      Champ of the Week: Tryndamere wrapup

      August 1, 2011 /

      I decided to post the video trailer for Demonblade Tryndamere here just in case any of you were looking to purchase him/the skin and wanted some context around the purchase. My week with Tryndamere was cut a bit short due to my traveling, but I still feel like I’ve had enough time with him to analyze his playstyle since his remake and the things he’s now up against. This is going to be kind of dense because Tryndamere is built around some complicated mechanics. Bear with me.

      I just got out of a game with a Tryndamere on my team who started the game 0-7. To be fair, he was not a great player, but I think Tryndamere’s freshly weakened early game had to be a partially contributing factor. Though I did jungle with Tryndamere a decent bit over the past week, I’m not going to cover that much here. Trynd is a seriously weak jungler – any jungler worth his salt knows that Tryndamere relies on losing health to make it through the jungle. He’s easily ganked, easily countered, easily shut down. It’s not a good thing.

      Let’s talk laning. Old Tryndamere was decent in lane for a couple reasons. First, if you got him below 50 percent HP and were standing next to him, he was going to crit your face off. His crit chance would skyrocket, which then added both damage and crit damage to each successive swing. Except when it didn’t. There were times when I was ready to scream at my computer because of missed crits or enemy Tryndamere players who landed several in a row at level 1. It was inconsistent, and while I understand the desire to level this out, I don’t think the remake really accomplished it. He hits less hard, which is fine when playing against him, but it has completely de-incentivized him to get into a fight during the early game. He doesn’t get the combat benefits fast enough any more, which is a big problem, and it extends to the late game.

      Old Tryndamere used to be able to get his most useful stats when he was at full HP: crit damage and additional damage. Though new Tryndamere has passive additional damage as part of Bloodlust, and a decent bit of it, he doesn’t get any additional damage until he starts to lose health. Instead, he gets crit chance, which is a pretty crappy stat. It doesn’t scale well, can be totally eclipsed late game by armor penetration and flat damage, and Tryndamere gets enough in an average build that the 35 percent from his Fury generation isn’t really all that helpful late in the game.

      Early, though, he’s totally reliant on that 35 percent crit if he’s forced to fight, but he’s much better off not engaging. Tryndamere has no decent lane harass if he can’t stay on top of creeps and stack up Fury, and he’ll take somewhere between 15 and 20 attacks to get full Fury in the early game. It’s ridiculously easy to counter for most solo champions. The nerf to the Spinning Slash cooldown also reduced his ability to get into and out of those early fights. Without a strong farm, Tryndamere is severely gimped, unable to contribute meaningfully in a fight.

      His one saving grace right now is his ultimate, which can allow him to creep back up the power scale, if only because he can stay involved in a fight long enough to hopefully last hit or grab a few assists. When he’s ahead, his ult feels like a decent way to prolong a fight, but with the nerf to the Bloodlust heal, it almost always feels like he’s just delaying the inevitable.

      That does it for last week’s champ of the week. I’ll have this week’s posted later today. Remember, no FG LoL Mondays tonight but, by all means, feel free to invite me for a game if you see me online this week.

      Champ of the Week, league of legends

      Riot considering permanent stealth for stealth characters

      July 30, 2011 /

      twitch_splash_2

      In the past two days, the forums have become a fountain of leaks about the long awaited stealth changes and remakes for the two primary stealth characters, Evelynn and Twitch. The changes are not final, and while Riot is definitely taking a risk by leaking these things before they are finalized, it’s very cool to have a little something to talk about while we wait for Season 2 and some other features to launch.

      Here’s a quick look at Xypherous’ proposed stealth changes:

      1. Evelynn and Twitch are permanently stealthed when they rank their level one stealth abilities. However, Evelynn and Twitch can be seen when they are within X units of an enemy champion (Slightly under vision range), or when they are within a true sight radius.

      If they attack, they are revealed briefly for 2 seconds before going back into stealth.

      This ‘X’ is being adjusted for feel between the two champions. ‘X’ is smaller than champion vision radius, so you can “stalk” an opposing champion, but it will be farther away.

      2. Evelynn and Twitch have a “sight gem” above opponent’s, telling them when the enemy can see them or not and whether they are “safe” (green sight gem), “warning – you are close to being seen, but still unseen” (yellow sight gem) or “being seen” (red sight gem.)

      So, once Twitch and Eve rank their stealth skills they become permanently stealthed unless attacking/casting. All other players now have limited true sight, allowing the stealthed characters to be seen if they are within a certain radius of the player. Stealthed players can determine their visibility to other players by looking for a “sight gem” on each player that will change color accordingly (probably utilizing tech from Orianna’s ball distance indicator).

      This is definitely the best idea I’ve seen so far for the stealth remake. I’m not a huge fan of stealth in general, but I think that was mostly related to the inability for a non-stealth player to know just how much benefit an enemy was providing to his team. The fact that a stealther could literally be standing under my feet without my knowledge was just ridiculous. This removes that element and forces a lot more careful planning and thought on the part of the stealther.

      That said, this system could be very painful for new players to learn, especially in conjunction with brush. The ability to get into brush unseen is very powerful, especially during the laning phase. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see a more active lane phase, but it worries me to think that the aggressive play could be so one-sided toward invisible units. This is all speculative, though, so I’ll wait on my critique for a more finalized build. For now, I like the idea, and I like the potential it creates for future stealth characters.

      Development, league of legends, News

      How hard did the ult nerf hit Twisted Fate?

      July 29, 2011 /

      cardmaster_splash_3

      I’ve only played one game as Twisted Fate since the ult nerf, but it seems to me that it hit him pretty hard. I’m also willing to say, though, that I probably need to spend a bit more time with him to figure out the magnitude of the nerf.

      Quick refresher: Twisted Fate’s ult used to be insanely powerful. It granted vision of enemy champions, slowed them all (if you don’t remember this, it was nightmarish), and allowed him to port, all on a pretty short cooldown. When he was reworked, the old Gate skill was combined with his ultimate and the slow on Destiny was removed, reducing some of the power but still not addressing the fact that global ults just stink, especially on damage dealing characters.

      Now his teleport has range a bit more like Nocturne’s paranoia, still with the vision functionality. For TF, though, that ultimate isn’t nearly as good. It works on Nocturne because Nocturne is a jungler, constantly roaming, invisible to the enemy team for the most part. TF is a lane champion, though, which means he’s hopefully getting called MIA when he leaves the lane. Now granted, he can go from MIA to behind you much faster than other champions, but if your mid lane is diligent, it should be easy enough to keep his early ganking power down. The fact that he can’t jump from base down a lane now also makes a big difference. It used to be that you could pretty much expect a TF ult every time he went back to base. Now he has to get into position long before casting Destiny.

      Don’t get me wrong, I think that’s a good thing, but I think at this point I think I’d rather see him get a full-fledged damage ultimate than have another teleport in the game. Either that, or reduce the range even further, remove the vision component, and reduce the cooldown by like half. As it stands, his kit is balanced around dropping on unsuspecting players, but as a lane player he can’t do that very well for the early game. He’s stuck farming in lane, typically against stronger 1v1 opponents who can burst him down at some point between levels 6 and 11 while he’s stuck running up and down river to get enough range for a proper gank.

      Champions, league of legends

      Kayle as a barometer of support changes

      July 28, 2011 /

      judicator_splash_3

      I played a normal game tonight that served as a painful reminder of just how toxic support currently is to League of Legends. I’ll spare you the long and drawn out replay and just say that my opponents had a healer and my team did not. Actually, scratch that. The things the healer allowed them to do were so utterly ridiculous that I need to explain.

      My team was losing the early game badly, but with some farm and a little map control we were able to regain our footing. We took baron twice, knocked down two inhibitors and I thought we had sealed the game. Not so. As we went to push the third lane, three of my teammates and I got caught in a well placed Orianna ult/Veigar cage combo. I made it out alive but three of my teammates died. The enemy team had five up, all chasing down Fiddle. There was no chance I could stop them so I tried to quickly backdoor bottom lane. I got the turret down in a hurry and moved on to the inhibitor. Pantheon was able to bring me down from the 25 percent HP I had survived with. Despite the fact that we had two lanes down, the enemy team of Tristana, Veigar, Soraka, and a very low Orianna were able to soak wave after wave of turret fire and super minion aggro, tearing down a lane turret, two nexus turrets and finally my nexus.

      It sucked, and they wouldn’t have been able to do it without the support. I know Riot has said support is going to get nerfed/changed, but I think we can take the Kayle remake and use it as a barometer for the change we’re likely to support over the next 3 months.

      Originally, the Kayle changes were supposed to be a serious remake, altering the way that she performs healing and shielding significantly. What we got in the end was a passive remake and some number tweaks. Though she does seem to deal damage a bit better than before, she certainly isn’t in a great position. She heals decently as ever, though, and her ultimate can still be incredibly frustrating to play against. In short, Riot decided to leave her role virtually unchanged, a role that contains some of the most problematic elements in the game.

      I think we’re going to see the same thing happen with the other support characters. Riot has agreed that healing is bad for the game, but I have yet to see even a suggested solution to the problem. Chances are, if Riot is going to do anything significant to healing it will happen to all the targeted healing in the game in one patch. Remaking one champion at a time doesn’t solve the problem, it just moves the other healers up the viability list. Unfortunately, I don’t think Riot can afford to significantly change the way support works. Tournament players are too used to it, and for the time being, tournament play is the most exciting thing happening in the LoL community.

      What’s more likely is that we’ll see a long string of number adjustments for the support characters in game, reducing heals and increasing the resistance buffs granted by their spells. Reducing the duration of shields and increasing mana costs. Until the launch of Season Two, I think support is going to stay as it is – frustrating the hell out of blind pick players and encouraging the passive tournament play that pretty much defines high tier these days.

      Current Affairs, Editorial, league of legends

      Legendary Tryndamere skin is on the way

      July 28, 2011 /

      Hot on the heels of the Tryndamere remake, Riot is teasing what I can only assume will be Tryndamere’s Legendary skin, Demonblade Tryndamere. The teaser comes in the form of a mock movie poster. It’s a neat little bit of marketing, but I’d like to see Riot really differentiate these things if they’re going to cost $15 or more. Players are still waiting on updates to Magnificent Twisted Fate and some even want Red Baron Corki to get a facelift.

      I’m happy with the legendary skins that I’ve purchased, but I’m a little bummed out to see so many good options available that have even gone on sale. Cottontail Teemo? That skin is just amazing.

      league of legends, News, Skins

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