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Champion Sneak Peek: Nocturne, the Eternal Nightmare

Nocturne, the Eternal Nightmare.

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.

Legendary Blitz skin is here

Blitzcrank fans have a reason to celebrate today – Piltover Customs Blitzcrank was added to the store today, as was Samurai Master Yi. As an added bonus, Chosen Yi is now down to 520 RP, permanently. The Crank skin is indeed his legendary, pricing out at 1820 RP.

Personally, I’ll be passing on the Blitz skin. I really like Boom Boom Blitzcrank – been waiting for a sale on that one (I think I missed the last). The hotrod theme just doesn’t do it for me, personally. I might get the Yi skin on a sale day, but I love my Chosen Yi and I always have Assassin Yi as a backup. We’ll see.

Minion changes to be altered next patch

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It took less than a week for Riot to see that the minion changes do not directly accomplish the goals of ending games more quickly. I don’t want to bag on them too much – there’s no way they can match the thousands and thousands of player hours logged on patch day in playtesting – but still, this should have been pretty obvious. It’s good to know that there is already some brainstorming going on for a fix. Morello dropped by the forums today to lay some knowledge on us.

Basically, minions are too strong, too early, allowing strong pushers like Master Yi, Sivir, or TF to painfully exploit exposed lanes. Granted, the reduced respawn timers actually help with that (even if they’re otherwise bad for the game), but with a well-timed teleport, it’s possible to rock your way down the lane in a very short period of time.

The next patch will move the additional cannon minions to the 40-45 minute range, up from 20, and reducing the cannon minion resistances a bit. While I think the changes will likely be good, I really don’t want this to turn into a trial and error situation. While I think it’s cool that Riot is trying different things to manage pacing, I can’t help but wonder if minions are really the solution. What about the fact that average champion durability on release has gone way up in the past several months? If it takes too long to kill champions at towers, the game becomes more and more defensive as the tower advantage is what really decides the outcome of a fight.

The fact that Riot is turning to minions makes me wonder what the development team thinks about the current field of champions. Do they like where the metagame is at? For now, all signs point to yes. Personally, I think the tanky meta has more than run its course, but maybe that’s just me.

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