Since Dominion launched I’ve found myself drawn more and more to Talon, the newest assassin to join the League. I had a hard time loving him when he first launched, but I’m really starting to understand his strengths, even in a duo lane, which can often be frustrating as a melee champion.

I’ve been playing him here and there, but mostly in solo queue ranked. As it currently stands, I’m 8-0 and headed into my 9th game. I’m not sure what to take away from the experience so far. Right now my ranking is somewhere around 1300, so it’s not like I’m playing a marginal champ and succeeding at high ELOs. Still, I am succeeding, and usually pretty wildly.

I think the bigger lesson for me has been that there are champions that just take a little time to learn, and when they click, they really click. I originally thought Talon was meant to be a highly mobile melee champion, using his ultimate for escaping teamfights or stealthing in for the attack. I’m actually having the most success playing him as an almost Akali-like teamfighter – running straight for targets, making them very dead, and then following up with a whole load of AoE damage. Talon isn’t particularly mobile or survivable, but he can easily kill a target before the target can kill him, and that’s what an assassin should be about.

I decided to post the video trailer for Demonblade Tryndamere here just in case any of you were looking to purchase him/the skin and wanted some context around the purchase. My week with Tryndamere was cut a bit short due to my traveling, but I still feel like I’ve had enough time with him to analyze his playstyle since his remake and the things he’s now up against. This is going to be kind of dense because Tryndamere is built around some complicated mechanics. Bear with me.

I just got out of a game with a Tryndamere on my team who started the game 0-7. To be fair, he was not a great player, but I think Tryndamere’s freshly weakened early game had to be a partially contributing factor. Though I did jungle with Tryndamere a decent bit over the past week, I’m not going to cover that much here. Trynd is a seriously weak jungler – any jungler worth his salt knows that Tryndamere relies on losing health to make it through the jungle. He’s easily ganked, easily countered, easily shut down. It’s not a good thing.

Let’s talk laning. Old Tryndamere was decent in lane for a couple reasons. First, if you got him below 50 percent HP and were standing next to him, he was going to crit your face off. His crit chance would skyrocket, which then added both damage and crit damage to each successive swing. Except when it didn’t. There were times when I was ready to scream at my computer because of missed crits or enemy Tryndamere players who landed several in a row at level 1. It was inconsistent, and while I understand the desire to level this out, I don’t think the remake really accomplished it. He hits less hard, which is fine when playing against him, but it has completely de-incentivized him to get into a fight during the early game. He doesn’t get the combat benefits fast enough any more, which is a big problem, and it extends to the late game.

Old Tryndamere used to be able to get his most useful stats when he was at full HP: crit damage and additional damage. Though new Tryndamere has passive additional damage as part of Bloodlust, and a decent bit of it, he doesn’t get any additional damage until he starts to lose health. Instead, he gets crit chance, which is a pretty crappy stat. It doesn’t scale well, can be totally eclipsed late game by armor penetration and flat damage, and Tryndamere gets enough in an average build that the 35 percent from his Fury generation isn’t really all that helpful late in the game.

Early, though, he’s totally reliant on that 35 percent crit if he’s forced to fight, but he’s much better off not engaging. Tryndamere has no decent lane harass if he can’t stay on top of creeps and stack up Fury, and he’ll take somewhere between 15 and 20 attacks to get full Fury in the early game. It’s ridiculously easy to counter for most solo champions. The nerf to the Spinning Slash cooldown also reduced his ability to get into and out of those early fights. Without a strong farm, Tryndamere is severely gimped, unable to contribute meaningfully in a fight.

His one saving grace right now is his ultimate, which can allow him to creep back up the power scale, if only because he can stay involved in a fight long enough to hopefully last hit or grab a few assists. When he’s ahead, his ult feels like a decent way to prolong a fight, but with the nerf to the Bloodlust heal, it almost always feels like he’s just delaying the inevitable.

That does it for last week’s champ of the week. I’ll have this week’s posted later today. Remember, no FG LoL Mondays tonight but, by all means, feel free to invite me for a game if you see me online this week.

Well, unfortunately I’m going to have to push back some of the upcoming changes I have to the Champ of the Week feature, but that doesn’t have to delay this week’s Champ any longer. This week I’ll be playing Tryndamere.

If you check my recent games list, you can see that I’ve already played a decent number of games with the Barbarian King. I made sure to sneak in a few before the remake so I could assess what the changes have given to or taken from his viability. First, let’s talk some history.

Tryndamere has posed some fairly unique problems to the League in the past. For a while it was Cleanse that gave him some ridiculous killing power, back when it could clear Ignite and offered CC immunity. I remember some of my earliest games against Tryndamere being more frustrating than even old Eve games. Even after the Cleanse nerfs, though, Tryndamere has enjoyed insane power creep. He remains the one champion that has allowed me to come back from a game in which all of my buildings were down but the nexus. I got to a point quickly enough in that game that I simply could not be killed and I was able to 2-3 shot most of my opponents.

Tryndamere’s basic design issue is that he gets exponentially stronger as he loses health, but can remain at one health point – his strongest point in the game – for an extended duration thanks to his ult. The old Tryndamere gained crit chance as his health went down. As he crit targets, he gained stacks of Bloodlust that improved his crit damage and could also be spent for a sizable heal.

He caught a remake today that changed all that. Tryndamere is now a Fury champion, which means he gains Fury from attacking targets. Bloodlust has been reworked to give Tryndamere flat damage as his health decreases instead of the old critical damage but still allowing consumption of the resource for a heal. His passive no longer grants crit chance based on health missing, but requires Fury to give the benefit. The change has created a strange tension between his skills. For one thing, he’s heavily reliant on having creeps nearby to buildup Fury before a fight, especially in the early game. The Fury gives him extra crit chance, but in order to heal, he has to sacrifice all of it. Without extra crit chance he has a hard time generating Fury, especially 1v1.

The old Tryndamere could sacrifice his crit damage for a heal, but even sacrificing all the crit damage from Bloodlust, he would still have some crit chance thanks to missing health, which would in turn allow him to build more Bloodlust stacks. The new system is complicated, and not entirely clear, especially to newer players. As much as Riot wanted to make his power level transparent, Tryndamere actually still gains better damage from losing health than he does gaining Fury, which is a little bit silly.

I’ll be spending the week looking at how the changes have impacted his build, his jungle, and his lane presence. For now, I think the new Tryndamere has an unnecessarily complicated damage system that fails to address what Riot was really after, but I’ll save that determination for the end of the week.

In preparation for the Monkey King’s release, Riot put together a preview video of his abilities and mechanics. Wukong is a melee DPS that looks as though he’ll be most effective building tanky. He also has enough mobility that I could see him working well as a straight damage dealer. Before I get into too much discussion about his skills let’s take a look at his kit.

Stone Skin: Wukong gains armor and magic resistance the more enemies are nearby .

Crushing Blow: On next hit, Wukong deals extra damage and decreases the armor of his target.

Decoy: Wukong goes invisible and leaves a decoy in his place. After a short delay, the decoy spins, dealing damage to nearby targets.

Nimbus Strike: Wukong dashes to an enemy champion and deals damage. If there are multiple targets in the area, Wukong will make up to two decoys that will also dash to nearby targets.

Cyclone: Wukong spins to win, dealing damage in an AoE and knocking up enemy units caught in the cyclone.

I’m not sure what it is, but I’m having a serious case of champion fatigue with Wukong. He doesn’t seem to bring anything that the League really needs and I think he has the potential to be brutally overpowered. Leona was exciting because she looked like a return to sanity with regard to tanks. Wukong looks like just about every other melee DPS out there. Dash? Check. Armor Debuff? Check. Knockup or stun? Check, and some invisibility for good measure.

In all seriousness, I think his kit poses some pretty serious laning problems. The dash -> invisibility combo will allow him to harass from range without any personal risk. If Nimbus Strike deals decent damage, it could also give him the ability to withstand 2v1 lanes without any trouble. I’m also curious to see whether his ult can knock targets in the air multiple times or just once. My guess is just once.

I think it’s odd that they would give a persistent damage ult to a melee character with a dash skill. When the enemy has Flash up, it will probably often feel like a wasted ult. If their Flash is down, though, he’s going to be impossible to avoid, which poses some real balance problems. Garen’s spin remains somewhat balanced only because he has to run to get to you, and even then it can deal a frustrating amount of damage. With Wukong, the spin will probably be on a much longer cooldown, which probably means it will deal significant damage. If that damage is balanced around the thought that some ticks will miss, I think we’ll see a lot of Wukong QQ on his release.

Last night IGN released the first gameplay footage of Nocturne. The footage is basically a champion spotlight, without all the detail devoted to showing the champion’s individual skills. It’s a nice look at what he can do. I really love the fear tether idea. It’s not entirely new – just a remake of Leblanc’s Ethereal Chains – but it adds nice flavor to the character. Check the video and, as always, let me know what you think about Nocturne in the comments.

I know I’ve been on a mini-hiatus the past couple days, but I have had a chance to catch a game here and there and I think I’ve seen enough of Irelia to put together an impression post. I’ve found her to be incredibly underwhelming and disappointing to play. The things she can do can typically be done better by other champions. That sort of design works when a toon does a lot of different things, but Irelia is just melee DPS, nothing else. It’s not like Morgana, who shields and deals damage and CCs (and still does most of these things better than other characters).

I’m always a little way when Riot releases a melee champion, I think for good reason. Melee is very difficult to balance in this game if you don’t give them a very particular set of skills. They need to be able to close the gap on ranged toons to prevent kiting, they need some sort of defensive ability to keep them alive, and they need to do enough damage to rip up a mage or squishy target as quickly as that target can return the favor.

On the surface, it looks like Irelia has these things. Her passive gives her some CC reduction, she has a dash, and she has two lifesteal skills to keep her alive. With a closer look, though, you can see that her skills don’t work well with one another and lead to confused builds that don’t ultimately scale very well.

Start with her passive – with three enemies on you, Irelia gets 40 percent CC reduction. That’s all well and good, but players still get stunlocked with Mercury Treads, which is essentially what you get from the skill. In short, her passive sucks, and it doesn’t provide the CC she needs. If she was impossible to CC when four or five enemies were nearby, that would be interesting. Obviously you would have to scale down her damage, but it makes the passive actually useful.

Her dash has another issue. While it is good for moving to a target, Irelia has no way to get away from a threat, and her dash can leave her stranded in the middle of a fight. Once there, she doesn’t have a lot of options. Her passive won’t help her get away much, and she can’t leech back enough health in most cases to keep her up.

Her stun is a problem, if only because it’s so conditional. The fact that she has to be lower health than her target suggests that you allow Irelia to get low (lower than her target anyhow), stun, and then leech back your health with her passive lifesteal from both her W skill and her ultimate. That’s fine against one target, but in the midst of a teamfight, she feels very exposed.

Then there’s her W. It grants true damage and fixed lifesteal. The fixed part is very important because it means she doesn’t scale well as a lifesteal champion without buying a lot of lifesteal, instead of buying damage. This prioritizes Bloodthirster for her over Infinity Edge, which is where she would get burst. The true damage is great, but that requires you have a lot of attack speed to make the best of it. Attack speed doesn’t scale very well with the rest of her skills, though. She’s yet another toon that has a complicated and confused item prioritization that ultimately makes every build feel like it’s missing something.

You can see from Phreak’s spotlight how hard a time melee has with attack speed. There are several instances in which he might have had a kill if he didn’t get slowed or stunned by another champion. Irelia’s dash is on such a long cooldown if not used for a killing blow that it doesn’t make for good chasing, and without a good way to her target close at hand, she never gets to make use of all that attack speed. A champion like Tryndamere actually does very well because he can both get into and out of the fight using Spinning Slash and he can slow a group of targets from range. Irelia can only get in on one target, and once in, she can get shut down just like any other melee toon. Her passive just isn’t enough.

Another excellent community post has been floating on or near the front page for a little more than a week, this time with regard to the relative power of ranged carries versus melee DPS and mages, and the way that Exhaust and Banshee’s Veil augment that disparity. Again, I’ll let you read through the post on your own, but I’ll cover some of the major points.

The basic idea behind the post is that by late game, almost every carry in the game will have a Banshee’s Veil, dramatically reducing the opponent’s chance at killing that carry. Because ranged toons can already kite other toons, giving them a free CC block or blocking one spell in a rotation from a mage means that character will probably remain free to stand back and wreak havoc. I think it’s a really good point, and I like the solution he offers: make BV block one CC spell, but no damage. It can still increase your magic resistance, but don’t allow it to completely nullify a spell.

The author also points to exhaust as a big problem for melee DPS, mostly because it has too small a range to get on your average Flash/Ghost-equipped carry. When players can’t reach the carry, they exhaust the melee DPS, slowing those characters and negating their auto attacks when those champions don’t have a way to get out of the mix.

I think it’s interesting to note that ranged carries are often the characters with skills to break Banshee’s Veil from ranged. Ashe’s volley breaks it. Ezreal has three low-cooldown spells to pop it. I’m pretty sure Tristana’s explosive shot proc from killing a minion will pop it. Obviously Corki has skills to pop it. MF can use Double Up. Kog’Maw, enough said. All of these characters can break veils from range, allowing them to deal magic and physical damage and exposing enemy tanks and melee DPS to their own tanks and mages.

In short, I would love to see some mechanics altered to increase the prevalence of melee DPS. I love a lot of the melee characters, but without getting overfarmed or unique use of Flash (enemy players don’t have it), melee DPS is woefully susceptible to control mechanics and kiting.

Here’s what Phreak had to say:

Melee DPS poops on kids in Treeline. It’s going into matchmaking soon. Melee DPS being underpowered is simply a function of 5 people being able to burst down 1 melee DPS super quickly. Champions like Udyr, Tynda (sic), and Mundo are able to kite in and out and heal or shield themselves, ignoring a lot of the burst out there. Yi can do similar things with meditate, I suppose.

Mostly, I feel like melee DPS does really well in small battles, and then in the larger ones seems to require a good support champ like Morgana or Kayle to keep him alive vs 5 champions. Otherwise you need to use supreme discretion to get in and out. Generally you should grab Cleanse. Ghost isn’t a bad option either. IMO it’s a different playstyle.

I agree with him for the most part. Melee toons have to choose their battles very carefully, which is why a full melee team rarely succeeds. But played well, I think melee is just as viable as any ranged. Most ranged suffer, in fact, from a reduced health pool or slightly lower damage. I’ve had some excellent games with Nasus, a toon with no escape to speak of, simply through smart play and the Ghost/Cleanse combo. It’s all about picking your battles, and making sure your teammates can help support you on your way to close the gap.