The more I play League of Legends lately the more I’ve fallen in love with AP characters. There’s something so satisfying about using a skillset to melt opponents that doesn’t quite translate in the auto attack kills of physical carries. Every team in the Dreamhack qualifiers relied on an AP champion for the utility, control and incredible burst potential those champions offer. This week, I’ll be playing a champion that has long frustrated me as an opponent, one that I have rarely played at length, and a champion that many believe to be underrepresented This week, I’ll be playing Malzahar for my Champ of the Week.

I’ve always been frustrated to play against Malzahar, largely because it’s so hard to shut down his farm. He’s not particularly deadly at early levels, he’s just super deadly to minions and has nearly infinite mana thanks to the kill bonus on Malefic Visions. Malzahar can also melt champions like no other, thanks to the percentage based damage of Null Zone. When coupled with AoE CC like Amumu or even Jarvan, Null Zone absolutely shreds the enemy. To round out the kit, Malz has an AoE silence and a pet for extra damage. Malzahar punishes enemy mistakes with devastating efficiency and provides both push and anti-push to his own team. In short, he’s a great pick.

I’ll be focusing on build order, Summoner Spell selection, and relative power on low-CC teams. Obviously Malzahar shines when his targets are held in place, but how well can he perform in less than ideal circumstances? My guess is extremely well. I think it’s safe to say that the only caster I fear more than Malzahar is Anivia.

Orianna’s “Champion Approaches” thread is up, which presumably means we’ll have another patch on Tuesday to bring her live. The thread also included the skill list, which looks significantly less like a pet class than may have been suggested in earlier threads. I’m actually glad for that. The other pet characters currently in League of Legends feel clumsy and unresponsive. Let’s put that aside for a moment and dig into the skills.

Passive – Clockwork Windup: Orianna’s autoattacks deal additional magic damage every hit, subsequent attacks on the same target within a few seconds will add more damage per hit. This bonus stacks up to three times.

Command – Attack: Orianna commands her ball to fly towards target location, dealing damage to targets hit but doing reduced damage for each additional target hit. Her ball remains behind at that location afterwards.

Command – Dissonance: Orianna commands her ball to emit a magnetic pulse, dealing damage to units around it. Afterwards, the ball leaves a field behind for a few seconds that speeds up allies and slows enemies.

Command – Protect
(Passive): The allied champion the ball is attached to gains bonus Armor and Magic Resistance.
(Active): Orianna commands her ball to fly to and attach onto an allied champion, dealing damage to enemies it passes through and shielding the allied champion when it arrives.

Command – Shockwave: Orianna commands her ball to emit a shockwave after a short delay, flinging affected enemies in the vicinity into the air a set distance towards, and possibly over, her ball.

I’ll start by saying I’m going to need a video to understand how her skills work. The Q is clear enough, and the W sounds like a version of Lux’s AoE slow, but in reverse – it slows after dealing damage. I’m not sure why her E is split into an active and passive component unless the ball just stays on the target indefinitely, which seems odd. Her ultimate sounds interesting, though I think its effectiveness will depend entirely on the size of the AoE and how easy it is to get the ball into position.

While I understand the idea behind her passive, I have to wonder how its going to work out. Few damage dealing passives really incentivize players to do things that are counterintuitive to the champion. Jarvan, for instance, has a damage modifier, but he also has a skillset designed around getting close to and staying close to the enemy. This passive sounds less like an imposed skill ceiling and more like a source of frustration. If it is too easy to use, she’ll have absolutely wild burst, but if it’s too tough there will be endless complaints that she is underpowered. Here’s hoping Riot struck a balance.

I’m starting up a new column, mostly because League of Legends is pretty slow during non-patch weeks, not counting the new champion ability posts. I really like writing about League of Legends but I needed a new focus so here we are. I’ll be choosing one champion each week as my Champ of the Week and playing that character significantly more than others and reporting on the experience. After my Cassiopeia post, I thought she would be a good place to start.

I’ll let you read through most of my initial thoughts there – no sense rehashing them. After a few games with her, my biggest problem is that her W is easy to land but low damage and her Q is difficult to land but really big damage, especially with a bit of AP. I know it makes sense – the higher damage should be harder to land – but it’s tough to know which spell to prioritize. Do I go for the cast with the highest potential damage or the reliable, albeit smaller damage?

For now, I’m rocking W after Twin Fang, just to get some reliable burst out of that combo. Later in the week I’m planning to try a build that relies very little on Twin Fang for damage. Hopefully my Noxious Blast skills will be to the point that I can make some use of them.

Check back throughout the week for more on Cassiopeia and in coming weeks for more Champ of the Week profiles.

Among the changes this patch were a couple buffs to Cassiopeia. I was kind of excited because I’ve always like the idea behind Cass, I just couldn’t seem to get the hang of her. After playing with the changes I gotta say…not much has changed.

A little disclaimer: I did much better in one game with Cassiopeia than I have ever done, but it still didn’t feel quite right. You might say the buffs worked, and to some extent I think they did. The Twin Fang cast speed increase was a good thing, same for her ult. Her ult also seems a bit more reliable now, which is good.

The thing I still can get, though, is all the different ways she has to cast. She just requires a crazy amount of mouse movement to land all her different spells at the same time. I think the big problem is Noxious Blast, which is on a mouseover cast. I understand the thinking – it has a relatively short cooldown so it needs to be easy to cast. That’s all well and good until your target starts moving. And then that target starts casting spells. Spells that you need to dodge. Maybe I’m just lazy, but this equates to a massive number of clicks to land a couple spells.

This becomes a bigger and bigger problem as Cassiopeia’s opponents get more and more bursty. If Brand can blow me up in 3 spells but it takes me 5 or 6 to do the same thing, chances are he’ll fare better in most fights. I think Brand is a good counter example because both he and Cassiopeia are high energy combo casters. When you land that combo it feels amazing. With Cass, though, I feel like I’m much more taxed to land a somewhat inherently difficult combo.

That would be a fine thing if it felt like a skill ceiling but it feels more like a click ceiling. Is there something I’m missing here?

I spent a lot of my post on the caster item changes trying not to say anything definitive. This post is different. For this post, I know exactly how I feel and what needs to be said. The Ionian Boots of Lucidity are way too damn good for their cost. Period.

My philosophy on AP used to be pretty simple; build spell penetration before AP. It was a more effective way to increase your damage output and the spell pen items were cheaper, in most cases, than the high-tier AP items. Basically, building a caster was always some sort of tradeoff, just like an AD toon. Instead of attack speed, damage, and armor pen, you want CD reduction, AP, and magic pen. Some people would say that the boots just balance out casters against AD toons, but I really think they’re too strong.

The casters in the game have been balanced around the difficulty of obtaining cooldown reduction for a long time. Most of the CDR items were niche tools, designed to help against certain comps but not so great against others. The bread and butter of a CDR build used to be Frozen Heart, but it was only good against AD-heavy teams. Soul Shroud is a support item and wastes a lot of stat points for most casters, and Deathfire Grasp could typically be bypassed for a better AP item. Most casters I saw sat around 20-30 percent CDR and stacked AP. Now, I can have 30 percent CDR as soon as I make 900 gold, which can be as early as level four or five.

For any champion who relies on a rotation of spells – Annie, Ryze, Zilean, to name a few – the boots are insanely good. If CDR is to AP what attack speed is to AD, then these boots are supposed to be equivalent to Berserker’s Greaves. The difference is that mages are built for a big burst and then a period where they don’t do a whole lot of damage before that big burst comes back up. Physical damage dealers rely on individual attacks for nearly all of their damage. Early in the game when their damage is low, Berserker’s Greaves don’t do so much. The Boots of Lucidity, on the other hand, do a lot.

The changes to high-tier caster items already brought the mages in LoL in line with the AD carries for the most part. There are still a couple AD carries with kiting abilities that a mage can’t quite match, but for the most part, a mage’s damage output is just fine without giving them cheap access to cooldown reduction. I’ve lost one game as Zilean since the new boots released, and even in that loss I was better than 2:1 on my K:D ratio.

I’ve been hesitating to write this post for a couple days now. I keep waiting for inspiration, some sort of clarity, but it never comes. There’s a lot to say about this patch, but I’m not sure I can derive any kind of coherent point about it all. Things are different. The game is different, and it’s different in ways I definitely didn’t see coming.

I’m going to completely ignore the champion changes. The significant buffs are all reverts of former nerfs or changes everything knew was coming. Also, the real game changes are in the items.

Zhonya’s is gone, as I’m sure you noticed. In it’s place we have Zhonya’s Hourglass, an AP item with armor and the old Zhonya’s invulnerability, and Rabadon’s Deathcap, the mother of all, rush-this-first-with-every-AP-toon monster of an AP item. It grants 155 AP plus a 30 percent AP boost for 3300 gold. I realize the old Zhonya’s wasn’t wildly more expensive, but 3300 gold for what becomes 200 AP and that 30 precent boost is UN…REAL. I don’t really want to talk much about what this will do to balance because frankly it’s too early to tell, but I can tell you I have seen a huge increase in the number of casters on the board in any given game.

I do have a few bits of anecdotal evidence that I think deserve some airtime. First, I saw a Veigar at level 14 with more than 1000 AP the day the patch came out. Second, the Deathcap is way too good on Vladimir – his passive gets way too much out of it when added to core items like Rylai’s. Rylai’s plus Deathcap is like 500 AP for him. Lichbane tower pushing is insanely good right now. Lichbane in general is insanely good right now. Lastly, if a caster gets ahead of you, well, be prepared to die a LOT.

All that said, I kind of like the changes. Deathcap needs to be toned down in some way, but it’s really refreshing to see people mix up their choices a bit. It’s not 3 tanks a support and a carry anymore, and that’s a good thing. The downside is that a sweeping change like this is like pressing a reset button on the metagame, mid season no less. Some would say that’s a great thing, but it’s a strange move in a game that’s trying to make a name for itself on the competitive scene. I’m fine with changing things up in the middle of a season, but make the changes small. The big picture stuff is good – the metagame is changing, different champions are being played, different builds hitting the drawing board – but the game has changed so much in the last two months that it’s starting to feel a bit like a beta test.

You can find evidence of the dramatic change in the pace of the game. Over the past week both the length of the game and the victor at any moment has varied dramatically. I had my first 60-minute game in ages earlier this week. I also had at least one that was over in 20 minutes. I saw kill counts swing between teams more heavily than I have seen since well before season one launched. Again, these aren’t bad things per se, but to have them all happening at once, all in the middle of a season, all in big bursts is probably not the best thing for the game.

The most definitive thing I can say about the changes is this: I think Riot started to feel the pressure of a restless player base and made radical changes as a stopgap until Magma Chamber and more game features could be released. Again, this is not to say I think the changes are all bad – some of this stuff may have been on the test docket for quite some time – rather, all of the changes at once is too much strain on an experienced player base. As much as people cry for change, it’s a fact of life humans will always resist. We are creatures of habit, and when you mess with the habit too much we tend to freak out.

I still remember the game that made me unlock Fiddlesticks. I had just played against him and seen how devastating his ult could be against a team. I was still new to the game, probably no higher than level 14, but I knew from my time spent in DotA that any ultimate with that much team-slaying potential is worth having around.

Fast forward to today. Well, yesterday, actually. I decided to play Fiddle in a ranked match just to see how he would do. I was excited to see his name in the patch notes, but his changes may as well not have have happened. I’ve given up on my “rules for maintaining ELO” again, mostly because I really like the draft system versus the free for all rules in normal, so any champ is on the board for me. I started in the jungle like I normally do and all was well. I was farming fairly quickly, picked up dragon at level four, and all seemed well. Then the teamfights started.

At first it was okay – I was showing up just a little late so my ult could deal some real damage without much threat to my well being. We did lose one fight, though, and it was all downhill from there. Although Fiddle is a solid farmer in the jungle, he is terrible in lane, so once the laning phase is over, he’s pretty much screwed as far as cashflow is concerned. If you aren’t winning teamfights, you’re going to be hurting for some gold right when you need your damage to scale quickly.

I think he could be helped in a couple ways. One, change Dark Wind. It used to be his bread and butter damage spell, but it’s been nerfed beyond usefulness. Fiddle needs a solid nuke outside his ult. Something that can’t be as easily interrupted as Drain. Something to help him produce a little bit of cash in lane. Another thing that could help would be giving his fear some sort of secondary component, like passive cooldown reduction, and making it a static 1.5 or 2 second fear. That deprioritizes the skill as he levels, giving him room to build more points into his damage skills.

I’d really love to see Fiddle return to some form of viability as a caster, and I don’t think it would take much to get him there.

Here’s what I could gather about her skills from around the web:

Illumination (passive): Lux’s damaging spells illuminate the target for 6 seconds. Lux’s next attack ignites the debuff, dealing 20-180 (depending on Lux’s level) magic damage to the target.

Light Binding (Q): Fires a ball of light towards a target location, binding the units hit for 2 seconds. The units take 80 magic damage. Can hit up to 2 targets with the 2nd target receiving 50 percent effect.

Lucent Singularity (W): Creates a zone that slows enemy units by 13 percent (zone lasts 5 seconds). Can be detonated to damage enemies in the area for 60 magic damage.

Prismatic Wave (E): Passive: Lux’s cooldowns are reduced by 3 percent. Active: Fires a wave to the target location and back, instantly stealthing any allied champions for 3 seconds. Lux is also struck by the wave upon return.

Final Sparkling (R): After a short delay, Lux fires a laser pulse in front of her dealing 250 damage to all enemy units in the area.

Let me just say, this is the most creative champion release in a long time. Invisibility for a whole team? Granted, it’s only three seconds, and it’s a skillshot buff, but it’s one of the most innovative things we’ve seen. The slow orb is also pretty interesting – think of it like a Gragas barrel with an AoE slow effect. On the whole, she sounds much better off than Swain, mostly because she can use all of her abilities from a safe distance.

Playing a mage well requires you to plan further ahead than any other toon in the game. You should have a constant awareness of how much damage your skills will do by the number, not just how much you think you can pull off you enemy’s health bar. A Malphite at half health is very different from a Tristana at half health. For Malph, you have to break his shield before he actually takes damage. Trist, on the other hand, can jump away in most cases. Whichever you choose, you better be confident your spells can either take them down or hurt them badly enough that they’ll run. Part of being a mage is putting yourself into compromising positions for kills. If the kill doesn’t go off, be assured that you’re the next target.

If you’ve come up through the ranks playing mostly physical DPS toons or tanks, I would highly recommend making a smurf account to learn your mages. The playstyle is radically different from the other champions in the game, and learning at a high ELO can be difficult. Once you have a general feel for being the squishiest thing on the map, pick up a few games with friends before heading into the solo queue. The extra experience will give you the edge necessary to enjoy early success