I will be online for some games tonight starting at 9:30PM EST. If you’d like to get a few matches in with your fellow readers here, jump online and join the PvP.net chatroom “Fearless Gamer” around 9:15. We’ll get started shortly after as soon as we see how many are online.
Hope to see you there!
When I’ve queued for ranked games recently, I’ve often been one of the last two picks on my team. For me, that has meant being pigeon-holed into playing support, a role that I utterly loathe. What could be less interesting than standing around in lane and occasionally cast Clairvoyance and a heal? Not much. Not for me anyway. I know a lot of players share that sentiment, but there are players that enjoy support. One such player made a post defending the support playstyle (albeit, calling Riot out for not releasing more support champions), and I think RiotStatikk’s response was pretty interesting.
I’ll leave you to read through his post on your own, but his basic points are these. First, bottom lane lacks diversity. This one is sort of inarguable. The subset of champions that play in bottom lane is very small, and that needs to change. Second, supports do not make interesting item choices. As Statikk sees it, “Currently bottom lane Supports function purely off of how powerful the Gold per 10 passives are.” I actually take issue with this one, because we definitely can’t peg this all on the gold-per-10 items. There’s another serious problem that allows the gold-per-10 stack to work.
The reason support players stack the gold-per-10 items is two-fold. First, gold-per-10 gives them the cash to buy wards and elixirs, performing the role they were designed to play. Second, supports can perform their role without any items. This is the big one. The base values on support spells are simply too good. You may remember a while back that the scaling values on heals got dramatically reduced in favor of stronger base stats. I actually think Riot should have done the opposite: reduce the base stats, maybe even by a lot, but allow the spells to scale well with items. Why? Because it incentivizes support players to actually build items. In their current form, support players have no reason to buy items like Deathcap or Rod of Ages. The items don’t provide enough benefit for the cost and they starve the support of ward money.
What if support couldn’t be effective without a moderate farm? What if they needed a few items in order to really support their team? Would we still see ranged AD/support in bot lane? Probably not. Ranged AD characters are typically only successful when they have a big farm. If support takes some of that farm, the Ranged AD becomes much less effective. There are characters that can still function with a moderate farm: the Tanky DPS. That’s right, all those characters that typically hang out top and have cozy little farming competitions with one another can also perform fairly well without a monster farm. They do tend to get a big farm in top lane, but you’ll notice a lot of them also take a gold-per-10 item or two. The reasoning is pretty simple – they can generally farm and avoid dying without the help of powerful items.
I think aggressive support and Tanky DPS could make for some very interesting skirmishes in bottom lane. That combination could also open the door for double-stun combos, high-burst combos, and maybe even some push combinations. Driving ranged AD up to mid or top lanes also makes for more interesting matchups in those locations. Junglers have more susceptible gank targets and the lane matchups can be more varied. Ranged AD doesn’t typically play well against a bruiser, but there are all sorts of counters between the various assassins, ranged AD, and AP carries out there. Those matchups become a lot more interesting if we force the support champions to farm a bit and drive the Tanky DPS out of top lane.
I actually enjoy a number of the support champions in the game, I just really don’t like their playstyles. Sitting in bot lane and watching the enemy jungler run in circles is not interesting gameplay. Aggressive play with a focus on buying interesting items? That’s a playstyle I can totally support.
I’m not happy about the Gunblade nerf. It’s not that I don’t think the item should have been nerfed – it absolutely should have been – but rather that the item nerf didn’t solve the problems with champions that use Gunblade. The most obvious offender here is Akali.
Zileas posted on the forums this weekend, claiming that Akali “WAS toned back by gunblade nerf.” That could mean a lot of different things. It might mean Riot thinks her damage is now at a reasonable level. It might mean she’s being banned less and running away with fewer games. It might mean all of the above and more, I can’t really say. I will say that I disagree. I don’t even build Gunblade on Akali in most situations. She doesn’t need it in order to be successful. Plain and simple, it’s just bonus damage.
Zileas said a bit more about the nerf, and it’s his latest statements that really have me confused. Here’s the quote, answering the question, “Why did you decide to nerf gunblade instead of akali directly?”:
Because [Gunblade] when stacked was causing the majority of the problem due to the stats being of such high value relative to other items.
We believe in taking the minimal effort required to adjust for OP situations, and a number of OP situations were coming out of gunblade. Rather than get into the hazy territory of nerfing several of champions who would then use gunblade as a crutch, we just did that. Less undesirable side effects.
First of all, stacking Gunblades have absolutely nothing to do with Akali’s current state. Was it problematic on Dominion? I don’t know. I never saw it. But I have never seen a Gunblade stack on Summoner’s Rift on any champion other than Kat. Never.
And Gunblade is hardly a crutch for Akali. It’s more like the minigun that gets strapped onto War Machine in Iron Man 2. He already had a massive arsenal. Did he really need that minigun? Same goes for Gunblade on Akali.
Most importantly, though, I really dislike the whole “minimal effort required” when it comes to nerfs. I’m not saying “you guys aren’t trying,” because I know that they are. But to see a problem with multiple solutions and say, “which one is easiest?” is shoddy balance at best. This would be a fine approach if the easy solutions were actually solving problems, but they just aren’t. The Gunblade nerf is almost perfectly analogous to the age old “attacking a symptom instead of curing the disease.”
Akali is a plague on this game in her current state. I know she has counters. I know there are plenty of bad Akali players. But for every Akali I see play poorly or get countered I see another 20 run away with games they had no business running away with, securing double kills and triple kills with ease, and essentially ruining the game for at least five other people involved.
I understand you guys don’t want to disrupt the game too much, Riot, but an Akali nerf is long overdue. Her combination of burst, mobility, and survivability is just too high, even for an assassin. Stop doing the easy thing. Stop attacking the symptom. Cure the disease.
Summoner Spells have long been one of the hottest topics of debate, despite the fact that they rarely received significant changes. Back in the AoE and ranged harass meta days, Ghost/Cleanse or Flash/Cleanse was pretty much the gold standard. Flash still has its place these days, but Cleanse was one of few Summoner Spells to get significantly nerfed, to the point that I rarely see anyone take it today.
With the release of Season Two (nope, I don’t know when that will be), Riot will be making significant changes to the current Summoner Spell lineup.
Flash/Clairvoyance Nerfs & Heal/Cleanse Buffs
Here’s the word from Riot’s post today:
Flash will now have both reduced range and an increased cooldown to make summoners feel less obligated to select it. Clairvoyance will also be receiving an increased cooldown and reduced duration to make it require more tactical use and be less punishing to junglers.
Heal and Cleanse, on the other hand, will each be receiving buffs to make them more attractive selections. Heal will now scale much more strongly into late game, while Cleanse will now remove summoner spell effects such as Ignite and Exhaust.
Holy crap, a Flash nerf! I can’t believe it’s actually happening. Though the Flash nerf is long awaited for many players, I have to say, I think it’s actually the least exciting change on the docket. As long as Flash has a long enough range for players to jump over terrain, it’s still going to be a top pick, unless of course that cooldown nerf takes the CD up to something like 5 minutes.
I’m very happy to see a Clairvoyance nerf. I still maintain that jungling encourages passive laning, but jungling + clairvoyance encourages the mind-numbing farm-off we see in games today. I’ll wait to pass more judgement until I see some numbers on this one.
The buffs to Heal and Cleanse look interesting indeed. I couldn’t be happier about the return of Ignite-Cleansing. I think Ignite remains a highly toxic part of the game. Having an option to remove it will be fantastic. That said, the spell vamp situation could spiral quickly out of control without careful consideration from Riot. Certain champions (*AHEM* AKALI *AHEM*) already make devastating use of the spell vamp items available in game. If those same champions can now pack cleanse to avoid heal penalties, well, it’s going to be a scary Field of Justice out there.
I’ll be curious to see how the Heal buffs look. It could produce some sustain issues, but it might be nice to have that bait tool up my sleeve (keep it clean, perverts).
The Return of Promote
Also on the changelist for Season Two is the return of Promote to Summoner’s Rift. Promote is coming back in a form familiar to Dominion players. The spell will only work on cannon minions, so no promote stacking in one lane. That change is so simple I honestly can’t believe it took two years to get put back in the game. I’d like to think this could herald the return of push comps, but I’m honestly not sure if it will be enough.
The Demise of Rally/Fortify
Rally and Fortify are both going the way of the Dodo this season. Neither spell will be available for selection during Season Two. I’m not going to miss Rally a bit – let’s be honest, that spell sucked – but I do think Fortify could still have a place. If push comps do return, why not offer a way to protect and enhance the powers of turrets for a limited time.
Riot’s reasoning is this: “Having a summoner spell that promotes stagnant play by completely shutting down pushes, while also being unpopular, doesn’t mesh with our Season Two goals.” Here’s the thing – Fortify does not promote stagnant gameplay. It just doesn’t. It’s an excellent bait tool and yes, it’s good for stopping pushes, which will be really nice if push comps return. Strategically timed Fortifies can be the saving grace of a team that needs to farm versus a fed opponent.
If anything, I’d say the fragility of turrets promotes stagnant gameplay. There are two reasons the last-hit meta has become so popular. First, pushing a lane gives the enemy jungler an opportunity to gank. We don’t like fed enemy junglers so we try not to push our lanes. Second, dying in the early game is too punishing. Towers are soft enough that one death, even before the five minute mark, often means the end of that lane. In my experience, early downed towers do nothing for aggressive gameplay. They don’t often open new opportunities for ganks. Once a tower is down, players collapse into the jungles, hiding in brush and allowing wards and Clairvoyance to utterly dominate the game. That’s not “aggressive” gameplay. That is snowballing. When towers are up, though, players try to dive one another trading the high risk for the hope of a reward. They overextend in lane because they overestimate the safety a turret provides. They skirmish more in the lane because an early death doesn’t necessarily mean the end of their farming potential. I really hope Riot reconsiders Fortify as a spell and, more importantly, tower strength as a whole.
A New Spell: Surge
In place of Rally, Riot is adding a spell called Surge. Surge basically does the same thing Rally did – increasing the combat effectiveness of nearby teammates – but it does so as an aura on the caster not a flag on the ground. I think we’ll be seeing this one a lot on supports and tanks.
Conclusion
I’m excited about the changes to Summoner Spells. I’ll be curious to see actual hard numbers on some of the changes – especially Flash and Clairvoyance – but until Riot lets us in on the Season Two launch date it looks like we’ll have to wait.
We’re coming up on two months since the end of Season One, Riot. Better give us some indication of a release date for these changes before someone takes my 5-to-1 odds that S2 won’t start until 2012.
I titled this mid-week Olaf feature “Ragnarok” because it’s the skill that received his most significant buff in the last patch, but also because the change really didn’t do a whole lot for Olaf. I won’t lie, the Ragnarok change is nice, but realistically speaking, most Olaf players know when to ult and when to hold on to the skill. Now it basically serves as a way to soak a CC skill for teamfights or escapes.
Other than that, I really started to enjoy Olaf once I got out of the jungle. Olaf is a solid solo lane champion. He’s fairly durable, mostly because any respectable build involves some amount of health, he deals excellent damage with Reckless Swing, and 1v1 he is a pure terror, even for some ranged champions.
I will say this – Olaf does not get an exciting build. When I’ve taken him solo top this week, I’ve purchased two, sometimes three gold-per-5 items (Philo, HoG, Avarice). Those don’t make for massive damage increases, but they do allow for a huge late-game farm. During the early game I pretty much rely on Reckless Swing to carry me through.
I do wish Reckless Swing scaled into late game in some way. The true damage is amazing early on, but when I’m staring down a 3500 HP Jarvan, my 340 true damage looks pretty weak.
I’m an Olaf believer, provided he can get a solo lane. I’ve had a couple problematic matchups, but hopefully I can talk a little more about that in my final video. Check back this weekend for the wrapup!
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