With the beginning of another week comes the end of Morgana’s time in the limelight. I really enjoyed playing her for the Champ of the Week this week. She has great farm potential and a solid teamfighting kit. With the right team, she can be a real force on Summoner’s Rift.
I’m going to let the video do most of the explaining. I had a lot of solid play with Morgana this week. Most of my mistakes were related to either using Black Shield a little too early or missing my Dark Binding. It’s frustrating to have so much of her damage tied to such a slow skillshot. If you miss that shot, her Tormented Soil leaves a bit to be desired.
My Morgana Build
I take one of two build paths for Morgana – Doran’s Ring stack to Deathcap rush or Rod of Ages to Deathcap. I think in most cases I was better served by the RoA. She farms so well early in the game that RoA is easy to come by and useful all game. The Catalyst procs also saved my ass more than once. From there I was going with Rylais, the occasional Will of the Ancients, and Void Staff if the enemy team was stacking magic resistance. I tried a tanky Deathcap -> Glacial Shroud -> Banshee’s Veil build, but it just didn’t bring enough damage as a mid AP carry.
I also don’t take Zhonya’s. Unless my team has a Malphite or Amumu or even Wukong, I find it’s better to be able to move with whatever targets I’ve Soul Shackled that I consider to be important. That’s part of what makes her ult great – it deals initial damage and then allows Morgana to move toward the most important targets for a stun. You just have to hope your team follows along.
If I Could Change One Thing I’d be wary to change much about Morgana, mostly because she can be so hard to stop in mid. I think even a small change could help her deal more reliable champion damage. I would like to see Tormented Soil get the Spirit Fire treatment – give it half of the duration damage up front, and let the rest of the ticks debuff magic resist and deal the rest of the damage. I know I picked off an Ezreal with Tormented Soil in the video, but having the extra burst would be really nice.
That does it for this week’s Champ of the Week. I’m hoping things will get smoother as I continue with the videos. Subscribe to the channel on YouTube for updates as soon as the video goes live.
One of the primary things that prompted me to choose Morgana this week was how much trouble I had playing against her with Brand. I mean, it’s Brand. He’s an unstoppable force right now, but Morgana was still able to slam me up against my turret, which meant I had to focus on my farming and not on my harass. When the lane did push, I could never seem to stop her farm.
That experience remains basically the same on the other side of the coin. Morgana’s farm is seemingly impossible to stop, thanks to the damage on Tormented Soil. In mid, the lane is also small enough that my opponents have had to play very carefully to avoid slow attrition thanks to Tormented Soil ticks. I’ve also been able to withstand their attrition with the spell vamp from Morgana’s passive. It’s a nasty combo.
I think I played a game against a Malzahar earlier in the week, and he seemed to do okay. Like Morgana, his farm is nearly impossible to shut down, though Morgana can use Tormented Soil to keep him a bit low.
The only real problem I’ve had so far is landing Dark Binding. Some shots are no brainers, but it’s not a great skill for harassing when my target can see me. The particle is damn slow, which makes it damn easy to dodge. I actually remember commenting to a friend on Vent while playing against a Morgana that she couldn’t land a Dark Binding on me. Now I get it. I had forgotten how tight the hitbox is and how slowly the spell moves.
I was going to say that getting into a fight to cast Soul Shackles is a problem, but it’s so easy to farm that you should be durable enough to make this a non-issue. If you’re behind you’ll have to carefully consider when to jump in and drop the ult, but for the most part, I haven’t had any problems.
Check back this weekend for the Morgana Champ of the Week wrapup. I’ll be adding video to the post this week as well. In case you missed it, make sure you check out the Master Yi wrapup video on YouTube.
I know I haven’t yet posted the Master Yi wrapup, but that’s coming tomorrow in a new format. I didn’t want to delay the release of this week’s Champ of the Week any longer. This week I’ll be playing a champion that I’ve seen with increasing frequency over the past couple weeks, a champion that was in a surprising number of matches on my way to solo queue gold status. This week’s Champ of the Week is Morgana.
Morgana has had one of the most contentious careers in League of Legends. Anyone remember when Black Shield lasted for 8 seconds at max rank? When her Dark Binding seemed to hit the width of a lane? When Dark Binding dealt damage over time? What about the massive 3-second stun on her ultimate? Her power level has fluctuated quite a bit over the past two years, and though I didn’t see her for several months, I’m seeing her fairly often of late.
This week I’ll be playing the Fallen Angel, trying to see if I can’t make a little magic happen. I’ll say this for Morgana – she can farm as well as just about anyone in the game. I was ready to pull my hair out when playing against her as Brand. The player couldn’t land a Dark Binding to save his life, but the size and damage of Tormented Soil early in the game meant I was constantly up against my tower, desperately trying to last-hit minions. With such a massive farm, Morgana can be a devastating force in the early game, not to mention the power of a 5-second debuff shield as the game wears on.
If you have any up-to-date build advice or burning questions, drop them in the comments. As always, check back over the course of the week for my impressions of Morgana.
I’m ready to call today’s patch the biggest thing that has happened to the game since the release of Season One. Today, Riot finally took some steps the reds have been talking about on the forums for months, making changes that could have a significant impact on the metagame. It won’t change things entirely, but it will almost certainly start to shift things in a new direction.
This patch is focused upon the following main issues:
Area of Effect damage and disable spells being too powerful Area of Effect is taking a pretty large hit this patch, especially to the damage on Galio’s Idol of Durand, Morgana’s Soul Shackles and Vladimir’s Hemoplague. After seeing its effect on the game over a longer period of time, we’ve found something more akin to Annie’s Summon: Tibbers is a proper mix of area size, damage, and disable. We have several area-effect skills in the game that have snuck past this and we’re looking to bring these back to acceptable levels.
Strong supports are able to protect powerful ranged carries too well, cancelling their fragility too easily We’re starting with a duration nerf to Morgana’s Black Shield and Janna’s Eye of the Storm to reward better timing of the spell reactively and to raise the skill ceiling a bit on these spells. If this proves too little, we’ll evaluate the need for additional changes in a future patch.
Ranged carries, holistically, are too safe considering their damage output While we predict bigger changes will be required, our first adjustments are to lower the movement speeds of ranged carry-style champions to provide more of a tradeoff, and nerf Blessing of the Lizard Elder when used on ranged champions. We’d like to keep ranged carries “safer” than melee, while beginning to provide more tradeoffs that both give melee a place in the game and differentiate the roles of melee and ranged characters.
