Leona’s mid-week release has been messing with my schedule a bit, but I’ve still been able to sneak in a few games with her here and there, enough at least to give you an impression post. Leona has all the skills necessary to be a powerful force in the game, there’s just one problem – she doesn’t have a lane.

The current metagame is focused around leveling an AP carry and either a high burst ranged carry (Corki, basically) or a bruiser in the mid and top lanes and allowing the pure ranged carry to farm bottom with a support. The support sustains the carry for a big farm so that the team can scale in to late game. Unfortunately, Leona isn’t very good in a solo lane. She doesn’t farm creeps well, she doesn’t harass well without another player with her, and she sure as shit can’t jungle. For competitive play, that leaves her one place to go – bottom lane – which means the carry is left without a healer, hoping to snag a few kills in the early game thanks to Leona’s crowd control. There’s one giant problem with that strategy, though.

Have you ever noticed how low the kill counts are in competitive matches? Competitive matches are about safety for the majority of the game – players ward, every team brings support, every team packs Clairvoyance – with a focus on objectives and the occasional teamfight. That’s not really where Leona shines. Leona is about having an aggressive lane and teamfighting often, using her low-cooldown CC skills to pick apart the enemy team. In a metagame that is essentially a farm-off, she doesn’t have a place.

That said, I’m hoping the metagame can make a shift some time in the near future, because Leona is a lot of fun when I can actually use her abilities. Leona is a tank in the purest sense of the word. She has a boatload of CC but fairly weak damage, especially compared to champions like Jarvan. Riot got so many things right about her kit I’m wondering if we’re about to see a very significant shift in the game’s design. She doesn’t do crazy damage, she doesn’t even do any kind of resistance debuff. She doesn’t push well, though she can occasionally set up a push with a tower dive. She doesn’t farm well. She’s only there to lock down targets so that the rest of her team can put together some kills.

I would love to see the game-extending support metagame die in favor of an action-creating CC/Carry lane on the bottom. I think Leona has the kind of kit to make that possible, but until the passive support game gets nerfed, I don’t think we’ll see Leona in a ton of games.

Looks like it’s time for me to eat a little crow. I didn’t think there was any way Riot would launch Leona until tomorrow, but they went ahead and set her live this afternoon. She’s available now in the store for 6300 IP or the usual 975 RP.

So far I’ve only had the chance to play one game with her but it went exceedingly well. She feels strong – lots of CC, responsive attack animations and spell animations, and enough damage from her skills and her passive combined – but not overpowered, at least not at first glance. She makes a devastating lane partner for anyone with a stun and I’ll be interested to see how she fares as a solo. If there’s one way she might be a little strong it’s that her shield can be up nearly all the time and it gives an amazing amount of resist (30 MR/armor at rank 1). Most importantly, though, she seems like a lot of fun to play. In the past I’ve said that when I should have been saying “this champ is OP,” but I’m hoping that’s not the case here.

I’ll give more impressions about her either later tonight or early tomorrow. What have you guys found so far?

It looks like Leona is going to blow past the mid-week release point, despite Riot’s plan to release her early this week. The European servers are scheduled to get Friday’s balance changes tomorrow morning. The patch will not include Leona, similar to the NA patch, due to stability concerns. Once Riot believes the servers are stable they’ll set Leona live on both realms.

It’s really been a bummer to see Leona delayed for so long. The game hasn’t changed in a significant way in quite some time, so champion releases are really what drive my interest in the game. Leona’s delay has definitely been a bit of a letdown.

I understand that stability has to be the number one concern, I just wish Riot could give us a little more detail. Leona doesn’t seem to have any new tech, so what about her impacts stability? Does she not interact well with other features that are being slowly patched in? Is this patch a preparation for something much bigger from Riot headquarters? Communication is key, especially now that we’re between seasons. I think Riot would do well to build hype for new features and communicate as much about any delays or problems as is possible. With several other MOBAs on the horizon, now is not the time to let the game and the player base go stagnant.

I haven’t been on the forums much over the weekend, mostly because of the sheer volume of rage threads since the Leona patch, so maybe someone already covered this. I played a ranked game earlier today and couldn’t help but notice that the pick/ban screen had undergone a small change. Bans are now listed under the respective team that chose the banned character. The portraits are also small enough to allow for more than four bans.

I can only think of one reason to make that kind of change – Spectator Mode. The old system was fine. It was easy enough to understand and it certainly wasn’t the sort of function I would expect Riot to bother changing unless it was tied to another feature. The only feature that could possibly tie to would be Spectator Mode.

I hate to make predictions about this, because Riot’s timing is known only to Riot, but it seems like Spectator Mode could be right around the corner. I can’t say I’m dying to get my hands on it – I think the cases are rare that I would want to spectate a game, but it will be great for the competitive scene. It also seems totally reasonable that replays could have been the technical problem that delayed Leona’s release.

The Leona patch was a bit of a botch job, as I’m sure everyone is well aware at this point. Not only did she not launch, the patch also brought down the servers, led to Yorick being pulled from live for a bit, and generally made people pretty unhappy. Riot has said that Leona will be going live this week, which could mean as early as tomorrow. I wouldn’t count on it, though.

Apparently Leona’s being held up due to some technical issues, which likely means Riot will need to spend at least a little bit of time assessing her effect on the servers now that the rest of the patch has been rolled out. I doubt that happened over the weekend. Riot will likely take the day tomorrow to do some final testing and we’ll see her on Tuesday.

To pass the time, I’ve been finishing up my Shaco games for the week and thinking about next week’s Champ of the Week. I’m still not sure who that will be – I might contrast him against another melee jungler just for kicks, but I wouldn’t mind getting back to the lane, either.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but since I’m not playing (and neither is anyone else) I might as well provide a little reading material for anyone that needs a fix. Today’s patch brings Leona, the Radiant Dawn into the League along with a decent number of balance changes. I’ll be covering Leona in separate posts, but there’s plenty to discuss with the other champion changes.

I’m pretty surprised to see Alistar catch such a nerf. I like the big cow. I like seeing him in games, whether he’s on my team or my opponent’s. He’s just such a pure toon – all CC and bull testosterone stomping down the lane. He’s a great ganker, but I don’t think he really tips the scales into invincibility since his last AP nerf. I’m sure plenty of people will be upset about this one.

The Ashe nerf is overdue and probably not enough, but maybe that’s just me. Personally, I’d like to see her ult go to a flat 90+ second cooldown at all levels. That, or cut the slow/stun duration by a third.

Despite the hate around Guinsoo’s Irelia nerf, she seems unscathed to me. Bladesurge mana cost went up ten at max rank? Yippee. Transcendent Blade got a minor nerf? Again, yippee. Her issue is that she is always at the advantage in a fight. She’s highly durable, incredibly bursty, high sustained damage, resistant to CC, and packing CC of her own. That’s to say nothing of how hard it is to shut down her early farm, which actually got more forgiving thanks to the mana buff on Bladesurge when it really counts – at the lowest ranks.

I’m happy to see Jarvan get continual tweaks. He still does way too much damage with a straight tank build, and likely still will, but it’s a steady step in the right direction. I’m also happy to see some Kog’Maw animation tweaks. He’s slow enough that he really needs those quick response times. Hopefully we’ll see him a bit more often in the carry position.

Both Warwick and Swain caught some sustainability nerfs in the lane, which is a good thing. I’m really surprised Udyr was left off the list, even more surprised than I was when he got the Phoenix buff. I still maintain that the champ is broken, even if it’s somewhat situational. The problem with balancing him lies in the fact that his skillset is totally unique and he can take several different build paths, all of which are pretty different from typical tank or jungle builds. I’ll be curious to see how Riot handles him in the future.

The Yorick buffs seem like they will definitely help him out, but I think his problem is in the pet design, not the numbers. His power level shifts dramatically from game to game, thanks to the percentages on his ghouls, his farm level, and the farm level of his potential revenants. Finding a “just right” point will be very tough – I’m actually not sure it’s possible.

The biggest surprise for me this patch was the lack of a Malzahar nerf. In fact, he got a bit of a buff with the Nether Grasp bug fix. I know he’s on the list of characters slated for some nerfing, so I’m surprised he didn’t get even a little number tweak. The Rabadon nerf will hurt him a little bit, but I would expect to see more Malzahar nerfs in the near future.

That pretty much does it for this patch. Check back tomorrow for some thoughts and impressions on Leona. I’ll probably play a couple games tonight – add me at “The Wiggin Boy” if you feel like playing.

I was more than a little surprised today when I woke up to find a patch preview from sometime yesterday evening. Then boom, servers were down and the game was patching. Leona was in! Then she was not. Then the servers were not in at all. Now we’re waiting out what is expected to be at least a three hour downtime. Bummer.

I’m really shocked Riot decided to release Leona at week’s end. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. As I’ve written before, players are used to the Tuesday patch system. To us, that is the rule. That is when this game is patched (as are many others). Why push for a release today? I know Riot couldn’t have anticipated the amount of downtime, but even assuming something goes wrong, Friday is kind of a bad day for it. Players are ready to dive into some games for the weekend, which for a lot of people won’t happen even hours after the servers come up. Once they’re live again we’ll definitely be looking at login queues, which are bound to scare off quite a few people. Waiting a day certainly isn’t the end of the world, but if I had my choice I’d be playing games without Leona rather than waiting to play games at all.

I think I would understand the decision to patch today if the changes were a little more interesting. Did Yorick need a buff? Definitely. Was Alistar due for a nerf? Yeah, probably. Did they need to happen as soon as possible? No, not really.

At the very least, this has let Riot make use of the forum feature that rolled out a couple weeks ago. The big red bar you see above appeared recently to alert players to current issues. It’s nice to have important information readily available regardless what subforum I’m viewing.

We knew a little bit about Leona thanks to Riot’s presence at E3, but most of that information was speculative, pending some internal playtesting. It looks like the League’s first female tank is nearing completion, so Riot has released a preview of her mechanics.

It sounds like Leona is going to be a crowd control bot – she has a low cooldown stun, a skillshot gap closer, and a defensive stance. She doesn’t have a traditional taunt or positioning skill like Alistar or Rammus, but apparently uses fairly sizable damage to encourage players to either get out of her way or focus skills on her in a fight.

Here’s the official word from Morello:

Leona does this by providing a low-cooldown, low-duration, single-target stun with a skillshot gap-closer to start. After she closes the gap to the enemy, she’ll be performing regular single-target stuns that really disrupt the fight or peel off a target from an ally once a fight has begun. Additionally, she has a defensive stance that allows her to soak up punishment pretty effectively and also discharges a wave of sunlight outward that causes significant damage. This mechanic acts as a sort of “soft taunt” that causes her to have some threat when she’s about to unleash a big chunk of damage, and makes her an attractive target.

Finally, her passive, Sunlight, causes all of Leona’s spells to debuff the target, causing the next attack from an ally to do additional damage. This really encourages Leona to mark high-priority targets and let her set up opportunities for her teammates. Her power increases with the length of the fight, a common tank trait (like Singed’s Poison Trail or Amumu’s Despair, for example).

I’m guessing her ultimate has some sort of channel component, something sort of like a Nunu ult, though maybe more mobile. It would encourage players to save a stun for her or stay out of her range, which pretty much achieves the taunt function. I’m definitely glad to see a pure tank instead of the tanky DPS that has been filling the role. I just hope she doesn’t deal too much damage.

Riot has graciously stepped onto the E3 news scene with its own explanations of the champions and features in development for League of Legends. Thank god. That Gamespot video just wasn’t cutting it.

The video rehashes a lot of the information I’ve put together on Yorick, Leona, and Skarner, though Paul Bellezza did expand on Skarner’s design direction a bit. In case there was any doubt, it looks like Tanky DPS is here to stay. Bellezza called Yorick a “tanky fighter” who can “pretty much tank down anyone.” Skarner is a “vicious and aggressive fighter tank” (the extent to which that’s different from a tanky fighter is unclear) who allows you to “focus on enemies and the more you attack them, the more you debuff them and are able to take them down.” Wedged in between these two is an archetypal tank with some crowd control abilities. If ever there was a bad time to be a squishy, July and August will surely top it.

I’m hoping that those releases will also come with some itemization/character updates that help deal with Tanky DPS. The idea behind tankier champions is a fine one – longer fights means you get to play the game more – but when it comes at the expense of so many characters and when so much of the playstyle revolves around skills like Jarvan’s passive, the gameplay isn’t very fun. This is the big reason I don’t play Tanky DPS toons – they aren’t enjoyable. It’s fun to get a ranged carry farmed up and burn through enemies. It’s fun to drop Tibbers on a group of opponents and see huge chunks of health fly off. If Riot can find a way to make these longer fights similarly enjoyable, I’ll gladly take the addition of more Tanky DPS champions to the League.

Riot has a small force at E3 this year, mostly there to show off Yorick and tease a few new champions leading up to Dreamhack. Among the champion teasers is Leona, the Radiant Dawn. Leona is a direct response to the community requests for a female champion. She sports a traditional sword and shield, though it sounds like she’ll harness the power of the sun to control her enemies.

Riot hasn’t said much about her skillset, other than a potential ultimate idea, which is that she would summon a beam of light on an area that sort of detonates after a couple seconds, stunning anyone still in the beam. If I heard correctly on the video from Gamespot, someone likened the skill to the Hammer of Dawn in Gears of War. Sounds like it will look really good, and probably function a bit like Amumu’s ult, which is one of the strongest in the game.

On the whole, Leona looks like a pretty cool champion. I like seeing more traditional tanks added to the game. It means good things for balance, or so we can hope.