I know it’s only been one day since the patch but the servers were up so quickly I’d imagine people were able to play a number of games yesterday. So, how are the new tenacity items treating you? Have you been buying them or just sticking to your trusty Merc Treads?
I think I’ve only purchased the Cloak and Dagger in any of my games so far, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I really like that it offers an opportunity to buy Ninja Tabi or the cooldown boots, which are really the only boots I tend to use on my DPS characters. Occasionally I’ll get ‘Zerker’s Greaves but that’s rare.
So far, I think the new items will mostly be for niche uses, like Gangplank. He gets a lot of benefit from Cloak and Dagger, where other champions would probably do better to spend the cash on more damage. I am a little worried that some of the tankier toons will benefit from it as well. I’ve already seen more Warwicks in Sorcerer’s Boots than I care to.
Tomorrow’s patch includes some very welcome changes to CC-reduction, which I’ve covered in another post, but also some unexpected changes to champions. Shen’s getting a damage tweak, Karthus is getting a small nerf, as are Jarvan and Nocturne, while Gangplank is getting a buff. Along with the champion changes, Sunfire is getting a nerf and Wit’s End is catching what I can only consider a buff.
I’m not sure why Riot thinks Shen, or any tank for that matter, needs to be able to carry games, but that’s the context given for Shen’s upcoming damage tweak. Vorpal Blade and Ki Strike are getting an initial nerf but will now scale better to “let Shen carry but not deal a ton of damage without trying.” I get that with the Vorpal Blade change, but Ki Strike scales with his HP, something he’s likely to itemize for in most any situation. Like I said, I don’t get the change, but I’m hoping the Vorpal reduction will be enough to counterbalance what could be a very strong late game Ki Strike.
Karthus is getting a basic AP ratio nerf to his ult and a duration nerf on his passive. Essentially, killing him will actually reduce some of the damage he does, though not by a ton. I don’t see Karthus much these days, but I know he’s made it into a few high-level matches recently. I’m guessing the changes are coming as a result of his presence there.
Jarvan’s getting a much needed damage nerf to hopefully force him to build for damage before dishing out crazy burst. I’m curious to see how the numbers will work on this one, so I’m not gonna say too much about it. Nocturne is getting the same treatment – damage nerfs to his highest ranks of Duskbringer and Paranoia, which will hopefully tone him down a bit.
Gangplank is getting stat per level buffs to both his attack speed and armor along with an attack range buff. His Remove Scurvy and his Ultimate are getting cooldown reductions, and his ult will now have a better slow at early ranks. All of this is good news, but I wonder if it will really be enough to make him enjoyable to play. He still has low base health and his ult’s radius is too small for the way the cannonballs hit. It’s still unclear why Riot hasn’t just made it a larger version of MF’s Make It Rain at this point. I’ve seen a couple people say they don’t want it to be a global snipe, but making it unpredictable isn’t necessarily a more favorable situation. The guy who gets sniped by it won’t be consoled knowing that Gangplank’s next two ults didn’t work in other games.
Sunfire and Wit’s End are both getting some tweaks, though the Wit’s End changes are much more significant than Sunfire. Sunfire remains the same, just with a 5 damage per second reduction on the burn. Wit’s End has lost the mana burn, though it still deals the 42 magic damage per hit. In place of the burn, the item also grants the bearer 5 magic resistance on attack for 5 seconds, stacking up to 4 times. I think we’ll start to see Wit’s End much more often with the change.
I’m looking forward to testing the changes tomorrow. Check back for impressions and, as always, you can add me at “The Wiggin Boy” if you’re looking for some games.
The preview for tomorrow’s patch is now live, bringing with it some very interesting news regarding the future of crowd control in League of Legends. As I mentioned in a recent post, crowd control is more prevalent than ever and in need of more counter-itemization than just Mercury Treads. Tomorrow’s patch delivers just that, introducing three new items that reduce crowd control under a new name, Tenacity.
Tenacity works just like the old Mercury Treads CC-reduction, reducing the duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, and snares by a percentage equal to the amount of Tenacity (at least I’m assuming so). Tenacity now also includes blind and silence reduction but the effect cannot stack with other Tenacity items.
It’s also worth noting that Tenacity is no longer a percentage value, likely so it can be assessed for potential diminishing returns should Riot decide to let Tenacity stack. I’m glad to see that sort of mathematical conversion. It goes against some of the design simplicity of LoL and the “burden of knowledge” design standard, but the game has been complicated enough that I think this kind of thing will be necessary.
You can see the new items in the picture at right. Notice how cheap they are? Obviously the items are meant to be an early game Mercury Treads replacement, so the cost is fairly similar. Cloak and Dagger is 1450g, Moonflair Spellblade is 1290g, and Eleisa’s Miracle is 1200g, the same price as Treads. These items will allow players to do a couple things.
First, we can now get the defensive benefits of treads while building offensive/support stats. This is huge, especially because there is no tanky version of these items. The bruisers in the game rarely itemize for AP or attack speed/critical strike, with the possible exception of Rumble. Essentially, the lower health champions should see some enhanced survivability in with a little early game damage.
Second, the items allow for different boots. This is really a secondary benefit because the other boots currently in play aren’t very good, at least not for physical carries. We’ll probably see quite a few carries with Ninja Tabi for the extra survivability, but against AP heavy teams, Merc Treads are still probably the best option. They get better CC reduction than any of the new items and they also add magic resistance. This will be a somewhat nicer buff for the AP/support toons out there, since magic penetration can be hard to come by if you don’t roll Void Staff. Early Sorcerer’s Boots with the Spellblade/Miracle will make AP/support both durable and deadly.
This is such a big mechanic change that I’m going to hold off calling it one way or the other. For now, I think it’s a step in the right direction. My guess is that the numbers will need tweaking, and I think there’s a very good chance we’ll see stacking Tenacity in the near future. The 25 percent reduction offered by the new items might fall short of what’s necessary for players to see a real benefit from the item.
Posts are going up unexpectedly late tonight – I’ve been working on two longer articles today and unfortunately they just aren’t done. Keep an eye out for those early next week. In the meantime, let’s talk about the Gangplank nerf.
Yes, I said nerf, because that’s just the most accurate term. Gangplank was already a bit of a niche character, occasionally effective in his ability to deny experience in his lane and set up jungle ganks. He struggled in teamfights from both an unreliable ultimate and his lack of mobility tools, especially when there weren’t creeps in the vicinity. His damage output was also typically unpredictable – occasionally through the roof but rarely consistent thanks to Parrrley. This rework did very little to address his biggest problems.
Raise Morale has lost its ability to deny creep experience, an admittedly broken mechanic when only one character in the game can do it. Removing that facet of the ability also meant Gangplank lost his ability to effectively lane. Because Parrrley grants bonus gold on kill, it’s best used every time it’s off cooldown, resulting in a lane push. Raise Morale gave Gangplank, who has low mobility compared to all the dashers in the game, the ability to lane against highly mobile teams by hanging back at his turret. For interested parties, Gangplank is one of three melee champions in the game to have neither a dash nor CC (slow/stun/fear – the terrible slow on his ult does not count). The other two champions are Mordekaiser and Garen, two of the most poorly designed characters in the game in my opinion. As far as laning goes, both these guys absolutely rock Gangplank, though Kaiser might push a little too hard.
The changes to Gangplank’s ult might be the most embarrassing part of his “rework.” The AoE is smaller, the slow is half as effective, and the random damage element is still there, though worse than before because the area of effect is so much smaller. Now, I’m no fan of global ults, but the fact that GP could blanket a lane with this bad boy every couple minutes was pretty nice. It could be fired quickly without a ton of regard for placement, a simplicity countered by the fact that it might not do so much damage. Now it has to be carefully placed, still does unreliable, often pathetic damage, and hardly slows the target. Gangplank has plenty of trouble getting to his intended target – he didn’t need a slow nerf to make things worse.
Gangplank needs a remake, not this rework crap. His ultimate is terrible, Parrrley is poorly conceived, and Raise Morale doesn’t give him the boost he needs when he needs it. His one good skill, Remove Scurvy, remains the only skill in the game that can break suppression, a feature that will likely be removed someday for the same reasons his deny was removed. I won’t be touching Gangplank again until he gets his remake.
One of the big changes this patch was a minor Fiddlesticks rework. I say minor because he doesn’t play entirely differently, he just feels a lot better. I’ve played a few games with him so far and been impressed with the changes, mostly the difference in Dark Wind.
Prior to the changes, I had a really hard time prioritizing Fiddle’s skill levels. He needed the utility of a bouncing silence, the power of Drain, and the fear in order to really lock down a target. When Dark Wind only bounced twice, it was difficult to get all that out of a gank, especially early on. Now Dark Wind is strong enough early on that multiple ranks aren’t totally necessary.
As good as Dark Wind is for early game jungling and ganking, you can feel it start to slow down by the late game. As weak as Fiddle used to be in the early game, his late game has the same potential to fail if you don’t get an early start. Fiddle is now heavily reliant on high AP builds, so it’s important to keep your cash generation up.
On the whole, I think Fiddle just feels a whole lot better. I would like to see Dark Wind get a little AP boost so it’s a touch stronger in the late game, but for the most part he feels much better. I pulled a quad with him today – something I haven’t done in a long, long time.
