As many of you know, I currently call Wilmington, NC home. Yes, that’s the same Wilmington that meteorlogists have been saying could soon be wiped off the map by Hurricane Irene. Alright, things aren’t that dire just yet, but I’ve left town just the same to bunk up with some friends in Durham. As such, I won’t be online in League for the next couple days and updates here might be a little sporadic.
I’ve been playing Brand this week for my Champ of the Week, a champion with incredible harass and bursting power capable of easy kills as early as level three. It’s been a lot of fun, but I can’t help but think that he’s a little OP, a problem that gets exacerbated by the use of Ignite. I run Flash/Ignite on Brand as I do on just about every AP carry in the game. It adds a little extra burst to his rotation and gives me the power necessary to get through healers, lifestealers, and spell vampers (vampires?). As with any “must-have” skill, I can’t help but wonder if Ignite isn’t a little bit broken, at least from a damage perspective, so I bring the question to you. Does Ignite need a damage nerf?
One of the big problems with Ignite is that it scales with level and is typically carried by characters in solo lanes. As a result, characters with a level advantage further the gap above duo lanes and junglers with that increased damage. I was playing a game the other day as Lee Sin in which a Cho’Gath, who had 3 levels on me, hit a Rupture, Ignite, and Feast for 100% of my HP. Ignite accounted for nearly 300 damage. I think I was level 10. Doesn’t that seem a bit excessive? He already has a huge advantage in level, so why give him additional free damage? I think one possible solution would be to tone down the damage-gain-per-level a bit and make Ignite deal damage based on the target’s level, not the level of the caster.
I don’t think we can get rid of Ignite altogether. Characters like Mordekaiser, Akali, Udyr, Lee Sin, and Nasus all justify the existence of the skill, to say nothing of healers. Ignite is also incredibly useful for getting through the Tanky DPS in the game. Unfortunately, Ignite is almost necessary to bring down the tankier characters, but that necessity makes the skill too effective against characters without a 3000+ health pool. Take Talon – he’s a melee assassin that has no way to escape a fight without Flash. Once he ults, he’s done, and being that his ult is his best offensive skill, it doesn’t make sense to burn it for escape. He’s already more susceptible to the kinds of AoE damage we see from Annie, Brand, Malzahar, and their kind. Ignite unnecessarily amplifies his vulnerability, making him an easy kill in most situations.
Now that you have the case against Ignite, at least in its current form, what do you think? Does Ignite damage need a rework or is it just fine where it is?
I’ve tried to avoid putting much stock in my ranked ELO in the past. While it is fun to try to climb the ranks, it can also be maddening, and I just don’t have that special sauce that helps people jump past the 1500 barrier and continue to climb. When I found out there were some summoner profile perks, though, I though it might be cool to try to snag at least a silver rating. As you can see in the picture above, I’ve managed to secure silver in both 3v3 and solo 5v5. Silver summoner profile frame, here I come.
Alright, it’s not that exciting. I would love to hit gold status, but that feels pretty much out of my grasp, if I’m honest. I’ve been stricken with the typical trolls and ragers in much of my solo experience lately, so I think I might just stick to silver.
I know some of you sitting pretty at gold status, ready to rock your fancy Jarvan skin. Anyone out there going for platinum? Any of you close to reaching one of the status benchmarks? If you haven’t heard, you can find out more about the different status levels on the official forums. You better start playing some ranked, though. Season One will be officially capped off at the next downtime.
The Talon patch is finally live (so is the champion), bringing us the latest champion along with some prep work for the Dominion launch. It looks like Dominion is damn close to being ready, which I’m really excited about. This patch also brought a host of client changes. It’s cleaned up information in some places but feels a little cluttered in others.
The picture in this post is the new post-game summary screen. You’ll notice the addition of some information, including gold earned during the game and team score totals. Obviously the screen has been rearranged to make the actual game content much larger, with less unused space.
The other UI changes include a rework of the in-game score screen, which I find a lot less effective than the post-game screen. It feels cluttered and a bit busy, I think mostly because every element on each line is a different size. The numbers are smaller than the item icons. The letters are smaller than the numbers. The summoner spell icons are somewhere in between.
There’s also the new death callout system, which I really like. The announcer sometimes can’t keep up with the action, so the callouts provide some extra, easy-to-digest information.
And obviously the landing page has been reworked, though for me it only takes up something like 2/3 of the screen. I don’t know if that’s intentional and there’s more content coming or if it’s just formatted for 4:3 screen ratios. Again, that one looks a little cluttered to me. This way you can keep your friends list open at all times. Why it isn’t opened for you at all times is beyond me, but at least it isn’t covering anything up now.
What do you think. Are you liking the new UI elements or did you prefer the old?
You may have been surprised, as I was, to have no patch today. It’s strange to me that we get a warning about the size of the patch, but not when it will release. Ah well, I don’t set the schedules. We’ll be getting Talon tomorrow, adding a melee assassin to the host of champions available in League of Legends.
When I first saw the Talon mechanics preview, I was ambivalent. His skills didn’t sound all that exciting and, frankly, it looked like there were some other champions that already outperformed him. After his spotlight, though, I’m pretty pumped to try him out. I might have to snag that Crimson Elite skin too. It looks pretty awesome.
I think most of Talon’s flavor comes from his two blade abilities: Rake and Shadow Assault. His other skills seem a little less inspired, but the blade stuff definitely looks cool. I also like that he seems to be focused on picking off a target, disappearing, and then showing back up for cleanup. If there’s one thing I’d worry about, it’s that he’s sort of forced to pick up at least a Phage, if not the Frozen Mallet Phreak suggests. That’s a damn expensive item (the mallet) for a character that seems very farm dependent.
I’ll be playing Talon as much as possible tomorrow and bringing my full impressions soon after. Are you interested in the Blade’s Shadow?
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