Category: Champions (Page 15 of 43)

Champ of the Week: Early Malzahar impressions

May 31, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

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I got to play a few games over the holiday weekend with this week’s Champ of the Week, Malzahar, and I’ve been having a really good time. Malzahar is an incredible farmer, and when left alone for too long, he becomes an incredible pusher as well.

My basic strategy to this point has been simple: build enough survivability to get by and then stack up mass amounts of AP. In about half of the games I’ve picked up a Rod of Ages early (12 minutes in one case) and moved to Deathcap from there, but in others I’ve been less worried about the health stack and just picked up Catalyst before moving on. I’ve had roughly equal success both ways – the basic lesson seems to be ‘don’t overdue the survivability.’

I had sort of forgotten the massive buffs Malzahar received since his release. The last time I gave him any serious attention his ult could be Cleansed, it had a much shorter range, and it didn’t have the suppression bonus. Those changes have given Malzahar the ability to fight at great distance with devastating power.

If I’m having trouble with one thing, it’s remembering to keep my Malefic Visions up in team fights. The cooldown gets very short with a golem buff or enough CDR, making it totally feasible to have a couple spells ticking at the same time. I’m slowly improving on that, though.

I’m really curious where Deathfire Grasp could fit in a Malzahar build. I don’t know that it’s any more efficient than a raw AP stack, but the active and the extra cooldown reduction could be interesting with enough AP. I think I underuse Deathfire, even though it is one of my favorite items in the game. If I can get ahead of the enemy farm and pick one up, it’s an almost Veigar-style insurance that one of my enemies won’t get to participate.

Check back later in the week for more Malzahar impressions.

Champ of the Week, Champions, Editorial, league of legends

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Orianna skill list announced

May 27, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

Orianna’s “Champion Approaches” thread is up, which presumably means we’ll have another patch on Tuesday to bring her live. The thread also included the skill list, which looks significantly less like a pet class than may have been suggested in earlier threads. I’m actually glad for that. The other pet characters currently in League of Legends feel clumsy and unresponsive. Let’s put that aside for a moment and dig into the skills.

Passive – Clockwork Windup: Orianna’s autoattacks deal additional magic damage every hit, subsequent attacks on the same target within a few seconds will add more damage per hit. This bonus stacks up to three times.

Command – Attack: Orianna commands her ball to fly towards target location, dealing damage to targets hit but doing reduced damage for each additional target hit. Her ball remains behind at that location afterwards.

Command – Dissonance: Orianna commands her ball to emit a magnetic pulse, dealing damage to units around it. Afterwards, the ball leaves a field behind for a few seconds that speeds up allies and slows enemies.

Command – Protect
(Passive): The allied champion the ball is attached to gains bonus Armor and Magic Resistance.
(Active): Orianna commands her ball to fly to and attach onto an allied champion, dealing damage to enemies it passes through and shielding the allied champion when it arrives.

Command – Shockwave: Orianna commands her ball to emit a shockwave after a short delay, flinging affected enemies in the vicinity into the air a set distance towards, and possibly over, her ball.

I’ll start by saying I’m going to need a video to understand how her skills work. The Q is clear enough, and the W sounds like a version of Lux’s AoE slow, but in reverse – it slows after dealing damage. I’m not sure why her E is split into an active and passive component unless the ball just stays on the target indefinitely, which seems odd. Her ultimate sounds interesting, though I think its effectiveness will depend entirely on the size of the AoE and how easy it is to get the ball into position.

While I understand the idea behind her passive, I have to wonder how its going to work out. Few damage dealing passives really incentivize players to do things that are counterintuitive to the champion. Jarvan, for instance, has a damage modifier, but he also has a skillset designed around getting close to and staying close to the enemy. This passive sounds less like an imposed skill ceiling and more like a source of frustration. If it is too easy to use, she’ll have absolutely wild burst, but if it’s too tough there will be endless complaints that she is underpowered. Here’s hoping Riot struck a balance.

Champions, Development, league of legends, News

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Patch day passes without champion release

May 24, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

I’m happy to report that I wasn’t eaten by bears over the weekend. I did come back to a decent amount of work, though, and there is the usual catching up to do across various gaming forums and RSS feeds. I finally had a chance to check out today’s patch this afternoon and was a little surprised when there was no new champion.

I know the teaser post was made late in the week, and I’m guessing with the office move Riot didn’t have time to fully balance out a champion. With that in mind, I’m really glad we didn’t see a new champion today. In fact, it has made me wish champion releases were just a little further apart. I’ve mentioned that before, but it’s been a while since Riot has actually missed a release date, giving me some time to reflect on the difference.

It’s a nice breather to be able to focus on the other champion changes in today’s patch, even if those changes were pretty light. Annie got some minor buffs, as did Kog’Maw, and Vayne saw a few minor nerfs, but Alistar saw some pretty serious damage nerfs that could dramatically affect the way players build him. Irelia also got some significant changes – mostly to her ult – which I’m interested to test out a bit.

I am a little curious when we’ll see Orianna. I would love to see her put off another two weeks; I can’t imagine it makes financial sense to release her even mid-cycle and then give us another champ a week later. If anything, I suppose I could see pushing her back a week and then pushing the development cycle out a week from here forward.

What do you think? Is this a nice respite from the stream of champion releases or do you prefer to have someone new in champion select every two weeks?

Champions, Current Affairs, league of legends, News

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Champ of the Week: Nunu wrapup

May 20, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

I know it’s only Friday, but I took some friends up on a last minute camping trip so I’ll be gone until Monday. I didn’t want to leave you high and dry on the Champ of the Week, though, and I certainly played enough games with Nunu this week to throw together a conclusive wrapup.

My conclusions are essentially the same as they were a few days ago. Nunu is an absolute blast if you can stomach not being the guy with your name in lights. Not all the time, anyway. While most characters with Nunu’s brand of team buffing and enemy debuffing don’t have what it takes to blow up a target, Nunu’s ult offers him the chance to be the star here and there and that makes him feel even better.

There is one important facet of Nunu’s gameplay that I haven’t talked about and that I rarely cover on the blog: peeling. Peeling is getting in the way of enemies who are trying to get to your team’s carry, just as you are trying to get at the enemy carry. Teams need to be able to do this or else the carry gets burned down and suddenly you’ve come up short on damage. Since Ice Blast has a 60 percent slow at max rank, Nunu is great at peeling. He also has the added benefit of a movement speed buff to throw on the carry, hopefully offering enough of a gap for escape. Nunu can also plant himself between the enemy team and the carry, waiting to use his ult until the enemy overcommits.

In short, Nunu has all of the tools you could want from an allied jungler, so long as your team has enough damage in the lanes. Between your team buffs, your debuffs for your opponents, some very solid damage output and the extra dragon/Baron control offered by consume, Nunu can be the cornerstone of any competitive team.

Champ of the Week, Champions, league of legends

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Champ of the Week: Nunu

May 16, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

Nunu currently holds one of the strangest positions in League of Legends. Very few players know how to play him well but the ones that do use him to devastating results. One of the top teams in the world, Team SoloMid, has a player named TheOddOne who is known for his Nunu play. I’ve always enjoyed Nunu, mostly for his simplicity. Also, when I have the chance to charge up that ult in some brush before anyone arrives, I just about jump out of my seat with glee.

So this week I’ll be playing Nunu. My main goals are to learn to effectively counter jungle against a variety of opponents, to focus on a solid farm and assisting my carries with their kills, and to try to assess just how viable his ult really is. Check back later in the week for my impressions of the tankiest Yeti in town.