Last night IGN released the first gameplay footage of Nocturne. The footage is basically a champion spotlight, without all the detail devoted to showing the champion’s individual skills. It’s a nice look at what he can do. I really love the fear tether idea. It’s not entirely new – just a remake of Leblanc’s Ethereal Chains – but it adds nice flavor to the character. Check the video and, as always, let me know what you think about Nocturne in the comments.
Category: Champions (Page 22 of 43)
Riot revealed Nocturne’s skill list today, just a few hours before players will have a chance to guide him on the Fields of Justice at PAX East. I’m bummed I wasn’t able to secure a media badge to the event this year, but hopefully I’ll get out to some other conferences in 2011 and meet up with the Riot crew. All that aside, let’s check out the Nocturne skill set.
Nocturne looks like he’ll play a lot like Mercurial Spectre from DotA. He has a very similar dagger effect and his ultimate offers the same teleportation skill, though with a more limited range. Here’s the official list:
Duskbringer: Nocturne throws a shadow blade which deals damage, leaves a Dusk Trail, and causes champions to leave a Dusk Trail. While on the trail, Nocturne ignores unit collision and has increased Movement Speed.
Shroud of Darkness: Nocturne empowers his blades, passively gaining attack speed. Activating Shroud of Darkness allows Nocturne fades into the shadows, creating a magical barrier which blocks a single enemy spell and doubles his passive attack speed if successful.
Unspeakable Horror: Nocturne plants a nightmare into his target’s mind, dealing damage each second and fearing the target if they do not get out of range by the end of the duration.
Paranoia (Ultimate): Nocturne reduces the sight radius of all enemy champions and removes their ally vision in the process. He can then launch himself at a nearby enemy champion.
Umbra Blades (Passive): Every 10 seconds, Nocturne’s next attack strikes surrounding enemies for physical damage and heals himself for each target hit. Nocturne’s physical attacks reduce this cooldown by 1 second.
He’s looking like a pretty cool assassin-style toon, something like Master Yi with some interesting mobility tools. It looks like he’ll also be a pretty solid jungler with that passive, although I said the same thing about Renekton and his jungling hasn’t been excellent.
Riot has released the official sneak peek for next week’s champion, Nocturne, the Eternal Nightmare. He looks to be some sort of wraith with armblades, which unfortunately suggests melee.
Here’s the official blurb:
Have you ever taken in a horror film only to go to bed with your eyes wide open on the lookout for things that go thump in the night? Well while we’re on the topic of things akin to ghosts, goblins, phantoms, specters, apparitions, poltergeists and very possibly the boogeyman, allow me to be the first to introduce you to Nocturne, the Eternal Nightmare. But don’t worry! While he might feature prominently in the next thriller you decide to take in, you probably won’t find him hiding under your bed or in your closet. Or will you?! Don’t be paranoid!
Most of the speculation about Nocturne so far is that he’s some sort of stealther. A community member made a champion suggestion back in June for “Nocturnos, the Shadow Stalker.” It would seem Riot is at least taking inspiration from his themes, though it’s tough to say whether the skillset will be similar. I’ll let you read through the skills on your own, but there’s stealth, a new resource system, and a very interesting ultimate. I’d be surprised to see much of it go live, but who knows.
When I first started with Jarvan I was convinced he was awful. I was having trouble landing Demacian Standard, his Dragon Strike combo felt clumsy, and his ultimate screwed my teammates as often as it helped them. I’m not willing to say I’ve sorted out all of those issues, but things have definitely gotten better.
For starters, I’d encourage anyone to ignore Phreak’s build. If you’re going to lane, it’s important that you be able to harass, and harassment is much easier with a reliable skill. Most players are fairly active in lane, so his Demacian standard can be tough to land. For that reason, I take one rank of Standard and his shield and focus on leveling Dragon Strike. The damage is pretty solid, but more importantly, it’s easy to land. With a good lanemate or careful play in a solo lane I was typically able to snag a few kills.
That said, the Standard/Dragon Strike combo still feels very clumsy. It is possible in some cases to cast Standard and then Dragon Strike before Standard lands. Also, Standard has a fairly long cooldown. If it doesn’t land in the right spot, you might be stuck wishing it was off cooldown.
My opinion on his ult is basically the same as it has always been. I think it’s a bad idea. It’s situational at best, the damage is negligible, it is easily countered with Flash or any of the dash skills, and it is fairly buggy around terrain. I actually watched my character walk over the Cataclysm from the outside and get stuck inside the ring earlier today because pathing wouldn’t let me walk elsewhere.
On the whole, I think there were some interesting ideas for Jarvan, but most of them don’t work in practical application. He’s not bad but he’s also not great and the clumsiness of his main combo and his ult mean I’ll probably leave him on the shelf.
The Jarvan spotlight went live last night, giving us the first look at Jarvan’s skills in action. He does indeed look a lot like Xin Zhao – Riot even used Xin’s in-game badges as stand-ins for Jarvan’s own. I’m not thrilled to see yet another tanky DPS added to the game – the playstyle for those individual champions is usually fun, but I don’t really like what it does to the metagame.
There are a few interesting moments in the spotlight that I think are worth pointing out, just so you can get a sense of what to expect from Jarvan today. Take a look at the 2:12 mark, where Phreak goes after Morgana solo. Morgana ults with plenty of mana to land a Binding/Soil combo when her stun goes off but…her stun doesn’t go off. Phreak casts Cataclysm just as Soul Shackle should stun him and he negates the stun, picking up a kill. I can’t say whether or not this is intended, but it seems Cataclysm takes you out of targetable space for a moment, and that’s not a good thing.
Phreak showcases another frustrating Jarvan encounter roughly 30 seconds later as Warwick, Singed, and Morgana attempt to gank him. He uses the Demacian Standard/Dragon Strike combo to break Warwick’s ultimate. Granted, I think it was mostly luck here. There’s no way he could have known the moment Warwick would ult to properly time Dragon Strike, especially considering how close Warwick got before ulting, but it is interesting that the knockup can be used in that way.
Also, let’s consider for a second the types of skills Jarvan has at his disposal. He’s got a dash (non-targeted, which means it can be used for initiation and escape), a knockup, a passive armor/attack speed buff, an active armor/attack speed buff, a shield, an AOE slow, and a second dash combined with an AOE cage. None of those skills has a particularly long cooldown, either. Honestly, I think he has way too many mechanics at his disposal.
Servers are up – get to playing and let me know what you think.
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