The servers are up and running but, for those of you stuck at work or away from your gaming machine, the Caitlyn spotlight is also available. Her skill set seems strangely defensive, although to be honest, I haven’t had a chance to play her yet. My impressions should be up later today or early tomorrow.
Category: league of legends (Page 86 of 163)
The official Caitlyn bundles and champion skins included in her patch have been announced. For the Sheriff of Piltover you’ll be able to purchase Sheriff Cait…wait, what? Yes, the Sheriff has a purchasable Sheriff Caitlyn skin. It’s a good looking skin, but why on earth isn’t that her default? Her second skin is Resistance Caitlyn, which also looks really nice.
We finally get to see Surgeon Shen and, at his side, looking sexy as ever, Nurse Akali. A short note on that – Look at Nurse Akali’s outfit. It’s hot, and yet her nipples aren’t on the verge of springing loose from her top. Riot, pay attention when the artist responsible for that skin has ideas on other champions. Caitlyn seriously looks like you chopped off Sona’s top half and pasted it onto a different pair of legs.
If I had to pick one thing I love about Riot, it wouldn’t be the frequent champion releases, the skin sales, the contests, the fact that they provide a free game, the commitment to not sell power, or the long overdue Garen nerf (I am really happy about that last one, though). Out of all the things Riot does to give us a great game, the thing I love above all else is community involvement.
Of all the developers I’ve seen, I can comfortably say that Riot does the best job of staying involved with the community and using the forums to quickly and consistently address player concerns as soon as they’re on the radar. Sure, there are a few places the Riot staff has dropped the ball, and the occasional trolling still upsets me, but by and large, Riot’s pretty great about keeping the player base informed about the design that goes into a game.
The reason I decided to write this post today is actually because of Cataclysm. I know not many of you are playing, so I’ll try to cover the issue as briefly as possible. Blizzard made some major adjustments to the PvP system, most notably the way that you progress and earn gear. The honor system still exists but, unlike every other number system in the game, there has been point deflation. Items that used to cost tens of thousands of honor now cost 2200, max. A five-piece set of PvP gear now runs a total of 9900 honor. Obviously, battleground rewards have been scaled back, so players are earning less total honor, but about the same percentage related to gear as was the case in Wrath.
Cataclysm also introduced another world PvP zone named Tol Barad. Like Wintergrasp before it, Tol Barad offers raid access to the faction that controls it, a fight for which is waged every two and a half hours. When it launched, the defending team had a massive advantage and was able to win nearly 100 percent of the battles. To counteract the issue, Blizzard increased the reward for successfully attacking Tol Barad by a factor of 10, literally. The assaulting faction now receives 1800 honor (more than the cost of several of the pieces of gear) for a victory instead of 180. It’s a big problem because it has artificially inflated the gear level for a lot of PvP players and made running battlegrounds seem paltry by comparison.
The design issues this change raises belong to another post. The interesting part for the purposes of this post is that Blizzard hasn’t responded to the change at all, despite the fact that it just went live this past Tuesday. The latest blue posts are a full two and a half days old, one of which says we should look for a blog post after the new year discussing the design direction for Tol Barad. I realize two and half days isn’t that long, but this is prime playing time for a lot of people with the holidays in full swing and this change has already had major impact on the game, an impact that might be compounded if the fix is to re-nerf the rewards. It basically nullifies the gear reset for anyone who makes it to 85 after the change gets reverted.
I have never wished Phreak was a Blizzard employee until now.
We’re now more than two weeks past the Cassiopeia release date, which puts Caitlyn outside the normal release window. Though I’ve been excited to see her launch, I’ve actually enjoyed the extra time. That’s a little silly to say since I haven’t been playing much LoL lately, but it’s nice that I’ve been able to indulge in some other games without worrying that I’ll be falling behind in my understanding of new champions and mechanics.
I’d really like to see Riot stick to a three or even four week release schedule, and instead focus patch weight on champion changes and balance tweaks. There is still a lot to be done for the game, and though I know Riot says balance and new champion design are two different departments, I’m sure the two processes are similar enough to reallocate some manpower.
Evelynn still hasn’t received her oft-rumored remake, and several designers have been quoted recently as saying jungle Eve puts too much stress on the enemy team. That’s something that needs addressed fairly quickly in my mind, even if there aren’t many Eve players out there. Gangplank has also been slated for a review/remake for some time, yet he remains unchanged.
I’m guessing we’ll see a return to the champion-every-two-weeks model of development once the holidays have passed, but sometimes it’s nice to dream a bit.
Here it is, folks. Caitlyn’s skill list has been announced via the usual ‘Champion Approaches‘ post, giving us a look at her abilities and her artwork. From the sound of things, her skills are indeed a good bit different from Miss Fortune’s, but I’m still not impressed by her art design. She’s a sheriff, right? So why is she wearing a costume dress with a crinoline poking out underneath? Maybe she’s the sheriff of the circus. I’m not trying to play the feminism card here, but why not put her in a duster and a wide-brim hat and make the skin shown a purchasable skin? My two cents, as always. On to the skill list.
Piltover Peacemaker: Caitlyn revs up her rifle for 1 second to unleash a penetrating shot which deals physical damage (deals less damage to subsequent targets).
Yordle Snap Trap: Caitlyn sets a trap to reveal sneaky yordles. When sprung, the trap immobilizes the champion and deals magic damage over 1.5 seconds.
90 Caliber Net: Caitlyn fires a heavy net to slow her target. The recoil knocks Caitlyn back.
Ace in the Hole (Ultimate): Caitlyn takes time to line up the perfect shot, dealing massive damage to a single target at a huge range. Enemy champions can intercept the bullet for their ally.
Headshot (Passive): Every 8 attacks (attacks while in brush count as 2), Caitlyn will fire a headshot, dealing either 150% damage to a champion or 250% damage to a minion.
Wait, she has a skill called Ace in the Hole? Is she TF’s lover? Wasn’t it the burglar she couldn’t catch that was leaving the playing cards
? So many questions for the design department on this one. Okay, back to the skills. I promise.
She definitely sounds like an interesting control champion, and it looks like she’ll be able to play as both AP and AD, which is nice. It sounds like her Q is a bit like Mystic Shot on Ezreal, just that it goes through units. That should give her some good farming capability, but might make harassment a little too easy. We’ll have to see what the range is like.
If you look at one of the screenshots I’ve linked, you can see that she has two traps down at golem at once. Granted, she could have run away after setting one, but that seems like an odd thing for Riot to put into a screenshot. I’m guessing traps have a fairly short CD, maybe low enough to let her jungle?
The net sounds like it could be good for running away, but not so much for chasing. It makes me wonder again about the cooldown. The only reason I could see for the knockback would be so that she can’t chain snares on you, but that seems strange.
I always loved Dwarven Sniper from Dota, so I’m excited about her ult, even if it is poorly named (there was a blog that thought her ult might be named ‘The Long Arm,’ which seems more appropriate). I like that Riot has taken away some of the frustration of playing against Sniper by allowing allies to block the shot. I don’t know how often that will be a good idea, but at least it gives a teammate the option to save you.
That’s it for now. As always, I’ll be playing her on release (actually might have to buy her – I’m running low on IP since the Cataclysm release) and posting my play impressions shortly after launch. It’s not clear when we’ll actually see her, but I would guess Thursday. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll show up a day early.
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