Category: Champions (Page 29 of 43)

Cassiopeia is on release notice (skill list and impressions)

December 9, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Cassiopeia, the League’s newest champion, is on release notice as of today. We got the official “champion approaches” post, which included her final skill list. I think she sounds pretty cool, and she’ll likely be a very strong caster, even if she does fall in line with the AoE metagame.

Let’s have a look at the skills:
Noxious Blast: Cassiopeia blasts an area with a delayed high damage poison, granting her increased Movement Speed if she hits a champion.

Miasma: Cassiopeia releases a cloud of poison, lightly damaging and slowing any enemy that happens to pass through it.

Twin Fang: Cassiopeia lets loose a damaging attack at her target. If the target is poisoned the cooldown of this spell is refreshed.

Petrifying Gaze (Ultimate): Cassiopeia releases a swirl of magical energy from her eyes, stunning any enemies in front of her that are facing her and slowing any others with their back turned.

Deadly Cadence (Passive): After casting a spell any subsequent spellcasts will cost 10% less for 5 seconds. This ability stacks up to 5 times.

From her skill descriptions it sounds like she’ll have a cool poison playstyle without being terrible to play against. Teemo and Twitch can be really frustrating in lane because they get the damage of an auto attack and the benefit of poison for one action. With Cassiopeia, you’ll have to land some skill shots to get the benefit of her toxins, which is kinda cool.

Twin Fang sounds like it could be really brutal, especially when combined with her passive. Obviously her bread-and-butter will be a poison to Twin Fang barrage, relying on her passive to keep her mana cost down. It sounds like an interesting mechanic, though I have to wonder if it’s going to release either severely under- or overpowered. That’s exactly the kind of combo that, without very careful tuning, ends up getting out of control or remains completely underwhelming.

Her ult is borrowed from DotA’s Medusa, and should be very powerful in a team situation. A potential five-man stun on a caster is always huge. The size of the AoE will determine how strong this thing is.

I’m always interested to see how new champions change the game. I haven’t hardly seen Trundle since his patch. Where do you think Cassiopeia will fall?

Champions, Development, league of legends, News

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Heartseeker Strike may not have a balance point

December 3, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

One of the most fervently discussed issues for Pantheon players is the damage of Heartseeker Strike. When he launched it seemed to deal very respectable damage, then there was the period in which it could hit people for three quarters of their health at any point in the game. That was soon nerfed, to the point that most players didn’t bother ranking the skill past rank one, and then only to get the critical strike bonus. Well, it has been buffed again, this time at the cost of some Spear Shot base damage.

While it is nice for Pantheon to have the skill back to a level of usefulness, it’s also back to being extremely unfun to play against. The problem, in my mind, is that he has a targeted stun, which allows him to always land Heartseeker. With the new damage buff, he hits incredibly hard. As Shaco, I was getting hit yesterday for 700+ at level 15. With Aegis and Spear Shot in one rotation, that’s more than 900 completely unavoidable damage that comes, as is usually my problem, at very low skill cost. In my current game, I’m level 11 with nothing more than a BF Sword and Heartseeker hits for 700 damage on heroes. His ultimate does the same damage at that level and is infinitely more difficult to land.

I think Heartseeker is hard to balance for a couple reasons. One is that it basically stuns Pantheon, and during that time he can’t deal any auto attacks, so it has to feel ‘worth it’ to use the skill. Second, there’s the fact that it deals double damage to champions. I’m not sure why that has to be a part of the skill. Is Riot worried he’ll farm to well? That wouldn’t be as big an issue if Heartseeker didn’t hit so damn hard. Reduce the damage and remove the double damage component. Then he gets the gear to make the skill hit hard. The real problem to me, though, is that he can use it in conjunction with his stun. That’s why I don’t think there’s a point that it will feel okay to play against.

I think the guaranteed crit is kind of a cool mechanic, though, so I’d propose remaking the skill into more of a skill shot. What if Pantheon had a hook that was shorter range than Blitzcrank’s? The text might read as follows:

Pantheon attempts to impale an opponent on the tip of his spear, dealing attack damage and pulling the target back to his location. Pantheon’s next attack is guaranteed to be a critical strike and cannot be dodged.

I think you could even leave the current passive component in tact. It would definitely add some more flavor to his character and reduce the feeling that his damage is completely unavoidable. It would also give him some more tools to maximize his auto attacks, rather than encouraging a damage-only build.

Champions, Current Affairs, Editorial, league of legends

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Trundle spotlight looks fantastic

November 30, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

The Trundle champion spotlight is officially live and, I gotta say it, I’m really excited. His not only look good, they look fun, and fun without being clearly broken. There was no “Vlad moment” where Phreak explained how the champion was good at every single aspect of the game. It also wasn’t boring, like the Irelia spotlight was.

As an example, I made this YouTube Doubler video. I know that comparisons are somewhat odious, and not every champion has to have huge and glowing skills, but there’s definitely something to be said for producing cool graphics while also producing some solid game mechanics. Irelia doesn’t really have either of those things. When I watch those two videos side-by-side (turn the sound off, by the way, or your brain will explode as it tries to reach Phreak’s level), there’s no question which character I’d rather play.

Champions, league of legends, News, Patches

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Trundle pre-release ability impressions

November 29, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Trundle drops tomorrow, bringing the field up to a total of 65 champions. The announcement post confirmed the skill list that was leaked around his initial debut, a skillset that I think is among the more interesting in the game.

Trundle is, as far as I can tell, a debuffer. His skills seem to be aimed at breaking the tank/physical DPS metagame by stealing stats from those archetypes and providing support with an AoE slow. In all honesty, my first thought was, “Wow, this is what Mordekaiser should have been.”

Abilities:

Rabid Bite: Trundle bites his opponent, dealing damage and sapping some of their attack damage.

Contaminate: Trundle infects a target location with his curse, gaining attack speed, movement speed, and crowd control reduction while on it.

Pillar of Filth: Trundle creates a plagued beacon at a target location, which becomes impassable terrain and slows all nearby enemy units.

Agony (Ultimate): Trundle immediately steals his target’s health and a percentage of their armor and magic resistance. Over the next six seconds the amount of health, armor, and magic resistance stolen is doubled.

Decompose (Passive): Whenever an enemy unit near Trundle dies, he heals for a percentage of their maximum health.

Trundle is melee, and from the sound of things he’ll do very well with some sort of tanky attack speed build. That does make me a little wary, as it was my chief complaint with Irelia, but his passive is worlds better than hers and he has some additional utility that appears to be castable from range.

I’ll be most interested to see how his ultimate works out. The design seems much more interesting than Mordekaiser’s, to the point that I wish Kaiser had been released with this skillset instead of his own. It has a nice, short duration during which it will still provide a massive benefit to Trundle and a solid debuff on the target. It’s solid against tanks and carries alike, and it doesn’t have the ridiculous all-or-nothing pet system that Children of the Grave uses.

I don’t want to say much more, because his skills could go a lot of different directions. I could see his Pillar of Filth being either very useful or very situational. The same goes for Contiminate. In any case, you definitely will not want to fight him one on one. Check back tomorrow for my full impressions.

Champions, league of legends, News

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Champion sneak peek: Trundle

November 22, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

We’ve got another champion on the way, this time in the form of a troll. Named Trundle, all we know for certain is that he has a massive club. Of course, if you know how to use Google, you might find some potentially leaked patch notes with a skill list that sounds fairly interesting.

Here’s the official post:

Champions in the League of Legends come in all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re a fan of huge, hulking, stone giants; sinister, lithe femme fatales; awesome, mighty warriors; or aberrant, horrific creatures, we try to represent them all under one roof. And while we’re on the subject of aberrant, horrific creatures, allow me to give you a glimpse of our next champion. Meet Trundle, the Cursed Troll. He’s hideous, and very possibly diseased, so he wanted me to let you know that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Unless, of course, that cover is snarling and wielding a club. Then you might be onto something.

Look for him to launch after the holiday next week.