Category: Patches (Page 22 of 23)

      Miss Fortune Impressions

      September 10, 2010 /

      Cowgirl Miss Fortune.

      Miss Fortune joins Gangplank among the pirate champions of LoL, but after playing her, I feel like that cowgirl skin should be her default. Not only is it the hottest of the three skins, but she has a run-and-gun feel to her that makes me think of games like Sunset Riders. She’s a ton of fun to play, but that may be because she is so strong.

      If you were ever into Gangplank, you’ll probably find Miss Fortune really enjoyable. She has all the great things about him – a cannon ball slow, a “wtf just hit me” shot, anti-healing, a fun ult, and very high move speed – and she has the added benefit of farming from range. She doesn’t have his free cleanse, but her range and her passive more than make up for it.

      As far as build goes, it seems like AD is the way to be. I’ve personally been starting with Manamune and moving straight to Infinity because her farm is nearly unstoppable. Bloodthirster is also a good rush item, though I think you’ll realize how much she needs mana early on. The key, though, is keeping up that farm. With her movespeed you should always be near creeps, always last hitting everything you can see.

      As far as playing against her, you better bring a lot of stuns. Because she has no inherent escape mechanism, I think you’ll see a lot of Miss Fortune players running Flash/Ghost for summoner skills, which means you need to lock her down fast. As a mid player, you may want to think about taking a cloth armor first with a bunch of health pots. It will mitigate some of her Double Up damage, which is where she gets most of her harass, and force her to use more mana to get you as low as she’d like, which means she won’t have tons of mana for that big ult. If you’re playing a carry, Flash is almost a must. Her ult hits so hard so fast that you need to get out of there within a half second. With a minimal farm she can hit you for 800 damage at level 16, which is a LOT on a carry. Add in a 300-400 damage Double Up and you’re looking at some fountain time.

      I would not be surprised to see her nerfed next patch. Despite some of the posts in the forums calling her “useless” and “way underpowered,” she has that mix of magic and physical damage that both scale off of her attack damage. It allows her to provide a heavy mix of damage that is very difficult to build against. I would love to see Riot introduce another hybrid mitigation item like Aegis of the Legion. Players need an item to help against toons like Ezreal, Miss Fortune, and even Kog’Maw, who can all provide a mix of damage in huge waves.

      Champions, Editorial, league of legends, Patches

      Patch Day 9/8 – Welcome to Rootstown

      September 8, 2010 /

      Waterloo Miss Fortune.

      While we’re all patiently waiting for the servers to go live, I figure it’s time to cover the patch notes for today’s update. There are only a few serious character updates, and even those go out to mostly underplayed champions. The biggest change is the root mechanic update, which is why this post has the title it does (Rootstown is also a place near my hometown, so I chose it over Rootsville).

      Mechanics
      So let’s talk roots. Ever landed a Dark Binding on an Ezreal only to watch him Arcane Shift away the second it hits? Sure, he’s stuck for the duration, but he’s stuck off your Tormented Soil and closer to safety. It was a frustrating mechanic, but it can’t happen anymore. Every character with some sort of dash or self-hook (Bandage Toss, for instance) has been updated so that the skills cannot be cast when rooted. It’s not a huge nerf for those characters, but it is a fairly high-grade buff for characters like Morgana and, in particular, Amumu. He’s already at the top of most ban lists, due to his severe magic resist debuff and the strength of his ultimate in a team setting. That ult just got a little stronger, and when used in conjunction with an AOE like Tibbers or Kennen’s ult, or Miss Fortune’s wave of pain, you’re really going to feel that root buff.

      This patch also added suppression, so you won’t be able to avoid the full brunt of Malzahar, Warwick, or Urgot when they ult you. Suppression prevents the target from casting or using Summoner Spells, which means your only recourse is a Quicksilver Sash or Black Shield/Banshee’s Veil. It’s a big buff for those toons, but could become a pain in the ass for everyone else. Is it fun to have your ult cleansed? No. But it’s equally unfun to feel like a character like Malzahar gets to one-shot a player of your team whenever his ult is up. I’ll wait to pass too much judgement on this, but for now I don’t like it.

      Champions
      Like I said above, there aren’t many champion changes, despite those for some of the underplayed characters. My guess is that Riot wants to see how the root change affects the game before messing with too many champions.

      Corki caught a buff across the board. His attack range was increased 10 percent, his attack speed per level gains got a nice buff and the Missile Barrage reload time is down to 10 seconds from 14. It might not sound like much, but I’ve always maintained that Corki is strong (and super fun to play), so this should make him an excellent pick.

      Dr. Mundo got some longevity buffs that could help him scale a bit better. His cleaver now costs more to cast but he heals half the cost when it lands. It’s basically pushing people away from free brush checker and forcing them to use it a little more wisely. Burning Agony costs slightly less to maintain and Masochism now costs more HP at low ranks and less at higher ranks. Sadism also got changed to return 40/55/70 percent health instead of a flat 50 percent at all levels. Again, nice late game buff.

      The big news, though, is Ezreal. He received damage nerfs to nearly all of his skills and his base damage. It looks a little something like this:
      -Base damage reduced to 45 from 47.6
      -Damage per level reduced to 2.6 from 3
      -Attack Speed per level reduced to 2.8 from 3.22
      -Mystic Shot damage reduced to 35/55/75/95/115 from 40/65/90/115/140

      Hopefully it brings him more in line with other carries, though the fact that he can still deal scaling damage to you while exhausted and has excellent escapability makes him very strong. Manamune will also be a great damage source for the emo cartographer.

      Malzahar got buffed – Another range buff on his ult, up to 750. Null Zone is more mana efficient at lower ranks, Call of the Void got a slight CD buff and his Voidlings now attack his most recent Malefic Visions target. With all of these buffs, along with the suppression buff, Malzahar is going to be one annoying bastard on the field. I really think the ult buff is way out of hand if he gets suppression. He should at least be put at marginal risk when he casts it if it completely disables his target (I know, it does disable him too).

      The rest of the changes are small, so I’ll leave you to read those for yourself. The one thing you may have noticed is that Garen isn’t on that list. I was expecting some significant changes for him, but all we got was a little reduction on the passive component of Courage. So he now gets slightly less amor and magic resistance from killing creeps but it still blocks big damage when activated, and his hybrid of magic and physical damage when wearing Sunfire Cape is still too high for me to feel comfortable with him as an opponent. You may have heard Phreak say in the Miss Fortune spotlight that Garen should never be focused. It’s true, but he doesn’t have any trouble rushing your carries/casters, and a Decisive Strike -> Judgement -> Ignite -> Demacian Justice is typically way more than a squishy toon can handle. Hopefully the next page will have a little more in store for Garen. Same for Kog’Maw – he remains unchanged and could use a slight nerf to either the damage from Bio-Arcane Barrage or the attack speed buff from Caustic Spittle.

      That does it for the patch. I’ve written a short post covering the new item, Manamune, and I’ll be posting my Miss Fortune impressions as soon as I have a chance to play her.

      Champions, league of legends, News, Patches

      Patch Day 9/8 – Manamune

      September 8, 2010 /

      manamune-tooltipToday’s patch brought another new item to the table in the form of Manamune, an Archangel’s staff for physical damage dealers. You can see the stats in the screenshot here (I think this is the same version that went live) and as far as champions are concerned, I’d bet a lot of people are going to love this thing. I played against a Janna today, for instance, who got both this and Archangel’s. She lost, but it was still interesting, and she hit pretty hard.

      I think we’ll see just about every Ezreal player get this, and likely a lot of Kog’Maws as well. It could be good for just about any hybrid damage dealer, but I think most of the carries will avoid it. it doesn’t suit the high damage/high attack speed build that most carries favor. The one exception might be someone like Corki, but even with him, the benefits of casting diminish quickly as his auto attacks become stronger.

      league of legends, News, Patches

      Draft mode gets a swap feature

      September 8, 2010 /

      fair-trade-certified

      It’s one of the shortest lines in this week’s patch notes, but one of the sweetest. I actually reread this three times late last night when I was browsing the notes – “You can now request a trade with other players at the end of Draft Mode.” Say hello to the best feature since Season One launched. this is a big deal, especially for premade teams. You no longer have to have your Morgana/Amumu/Vlad player create the game.

      This could also help a lot of solo queue players, depending on the community reaction. In DotA, swap was huge, and players were pretty cool about trading if they didn’t want to play a given champion but had the coveted first pick. Other players don’t like having first pick, and might use trade to barter a later pick slot with other players.

      I’m more excited about this than I am about anything else in this game right now.

      league of legends, News, Patches

      The great Shaco nerf

      August 25, 2010 /

      Shaco.

      This most recent patch brought with it the bane of Shaco players everywhere – nerfs that warrant pulling him off your ban list. Before we get into the nerfs, though, let’s take a look at some history.

      For a long time, Shaco was one of the most feared champions at any tier of the game. If a player had invested IP in crit damage runes, you could bet he was going to two-shot the closest caster, thanks in part to strong fortitude elixirs and the bug that allowed his Deceive to hit as a crit plus a mountain of bonus damage.

      Once that Shaco disappeared, we started to see the emergence of something a bit closer to today’s Shaco. It was usually Madred’s, though the occasional Sheen/Infinity Shaco still popped up. Players were relying on Shaco’s clone to provide a lot of their damage during a gank or teamfight, so Sunfire Shaco seemed to also do well. Much of Shaco’s strength lies in his ability to get behind players undetected, get a kill, and get out. Riot nerfed his Deceive several patches ago to help with this, but apparently it wasn’t enough.

      Yesterday’s Shaco nerf was a nerf across the board. Deceive has a longer cooldown, doesn’t last as long, and breaks any time you cast anything, including Jack in the Box. Two Shiv Poison no longer puts a partial blind on the target, his passive bonus damage is down to 20 percent from 25, and his ultimate caught a massive nerf. Hallucinate now has a 33 percent longer cooldown at max rank and lasts 60 percent as long as it previously has. If it sounds like a lot, that’s because it is.

      While some people might argue that he’s more in line with other melee, remember that position is the most important part of playing Shaco. Shaco has very poor base stats, so you need to make sure you’re behind your target with a box in place in order to do the best damage. The Deceive nerf makes this hard, but the Jack in the Box nerf makes it harder. It’s very easy to walk away from JitBs as they are placed, and almost laughable to avoid them mid fight. There’s also very little now to keep players from just blowing you up when you pop out. While I do think the partial blind on Shaco’s attacks was a bit much, why not leave it on the active. That would at least give him some damage mitigation after he’s visible.

      The bright light in all of this is that Shaco will still be an excellent jungler. Despite the fat nerf, his JitBs still fear creeps, providing a nice damage buffer when you need to get lizard. When thinking about Shaco as a jungler, it does seem that he is being balanced around having both buffs at all times. While I understand the idea (because it is so easy for him to get buffs), it’s going to be very frustrating for Shaco players who fall behind or those whose team falls behind.

      Champions, league of legends, Patches

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