Tag: new champ (Page 2 of 4)

Cassiopeia is on release notice (skill list and impressions)

December 9, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Cassiopeia, the League’s newest champion, is on release notice as of today. We got the official “champion approaches” post, which included her final skill list. I think she sounds pretty cool, and she’ll likely be a very strong caster, even if she does fall in line with the AoE metagame.

Let’s have a look at the skills:
Noxious Blast: Cassiopeia blasts an area with a delayed high damage poison, granting her increased Movement Speed if she hits a champion.

Miasma: Cassiopeia releases a cloud of poison, lightly damaging and slowing any enemy that happens to pass through it.

Twin Fang: Cassiopeia lets loose a damaging attack at her target. If the target is poisoned the cooldown of this spell is refreshed.

Petrifying Gaze (Ultimate): Cassiopeia releases a swirl of magical energy from her eyes, stunning any enemies in front of her that are facing her and slowing any others with their back turned.

Deadly Cadence (Passive): After casting a spell any subsequent spellcasts will cost 10% less for 5 seconds. This ability stacks up to 5 times.

From her skill descriptions it sounds like she’ll have a cool poison playstyle without being terrible to play against. Teemo and Twitch can be really frustrating in lane because they get the damage of an auto attack and the benefit of poison for one action. With Cassiopeia, you’ll have to land some skill shots to get the benefit of her toxins, which is kinda cool.

Twin Fang sounds like it could be really brutal, especially when combined with her passive. Obviously her bread-and-butter will be a poison to Twin Fang barrage, relying on her passive to keep her mana cost down. It sounds like an interesting mechanic, though I have to wonder if it’s going to release either severely under- or overpowered. That’s exactly the kind of combo that, without very careful tuning, ends up getting out of control or remains completely underwhelming.

Her ult is borrowed from DotA’s Medusa, and should be very powerful in a team situation. A potential five-man stun on a caster is always huge. The size of the AoE will determine how strong this thing is.

I’m always interested to see how new champions change the game. I haven’t hardly seen Trundle since his patch. Where do you think Cassiopeia will fall?

Champions, Development, league of legends, News

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Champion sneak peek: Trundle

November 22, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

We’ve got another champion on the way, this time in the form of a troll. Named Trundle, all we know for certain is that he has a massive club. Of course, if you know how to use Google, you might find some potentially leaked patch notes with a skill list that sounds fairly interesting.

Here’s the official post:

Champions in the League of Legends come in all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re a fan of huge, hulking, stone giants; sinister, lithe femme fatales; awesome, mighty warriors; or aberrant, horrific creatures, we try to represent them all under one roof. And while we’re on the subject of aberrant, horrific creatures, allow me to give you a glimpse of our next champion. Meet Trundle, the Cursed Troll. He’s hideous, and very possibly diseased, so he wanted me to let you know that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Unless, of course, that cover is snarling and wielding a club. Then you might be onto something.

Look for him to launch after the holiday next week.

Champions, Development, league of legends, News

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Patch Day 9/21 – The patch for support players

September 21, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

It’s patch day once again, this time bringing us Sona, the newest support toon to join the League. Other than Sona there aren’t many changes to the League’s champion lineup. The real changes this patch come to a couple of existing items and a new item, Shurelya’s Reverie.

I’ll let you read over the champion changes for yourself, but there are a few worth mentioning. Garen’s Courage got a small nerf, Kog’Maw’s attack speed bonuses were apparently multiplicative, so that was fixed, and Zilean’s Chronoshift now lasts 13 seconds instead of 15 and the cooldown is 180 seconds at all levels. Oh, Blitzcrank’s Power Fist now resets the auto attack timer as well. That’s really it as far as notable champion changes.

So let’s talk about the good stuff. Along with Sona, Riot’s remade Innervating Locket and added Shurelya’s Reverie to the list of support items. The new items are as follows:

Innervating Locket
Combine cost reduced to 450 from 850. New total cost is 2250.
+430 Health
+450 Mana
Unique Aura: Nearby allies gain 20 hp/5 and 9 mp/5.
Unique Passive: Reduces ability cooldowns by 10%
Unique Passive: When you cast a spell, you regenerate 50 health and 20 mana over 2 seconds. This effect has a 3 second cooldown and no longer affects allies.

Kindlegem
Recipe consists of Ruby Crystal + 425 gold
+200 Health
UNIQUE Passive: Reduces ability cooldowns by 10%

Shurelya’s Reverie
Recipe consists of Kindlegem + Philosopher’s Stone + 500 gold
+330 Health
+25 Health Regen per 5 sec
+12 Mana Regen per 5 sec
UNIQUE Passive: Reduces ability cooldowns by 15%
UNIQUE Active: Nearby champions gain 40% movement speed for 2 seconds (60 second cooldown)

The new Locket is really underwhelming. A slow regen aura? Not really really worth it for the minimal benefit it provides, to both allies and the bearer. It might be decent on Sona, but I doubt I’ll be using it. Shurelya’s Reverie, on the other hand, seems like a great item. I can’t imagine why someone would choose Locket over the new item, but maybe I’m missing something. The buff that Reverie grants is pretty huge, and could make for some tough initiation against a team that doesn’t have one. I’m also glad to see that Philosopher’s Stone has been given a new purpose. It needed something.

The other big change is that disconnected players run home if the automatic recall gets interrupted. Disconnected players also gain 1000 magic resist after a minute out of game, so no more Karthus killing level one or two players with his ult.

That’s about it. I’m hoping future patches bring some fixes to the client, but I’ll be writing more on that later.

Champions, league of legends, News, Patches

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Galio impressions

August 12, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

It’s no secret that the last several champion releases have been heavily overpowered. The working theory was that Riot was trying to encourage sales by releasing strong champions and then slowly nerfing them back to reasonable levels. There are a few obvious reasons that’s not the case. For starters, Xin Zhao and Vladimir have remained relatively unchanged and still sit at the top of their respective role lists. Then there’s Galio, who bucks the trend with a completely mediocre presence in game.

From the Champion Spotlight, you’d think Galio is meant to be a tank. His passive – converting a percentage of your magic resist to ability power – also points that direction, but only his shield skill is great for tanking. I find Galio a bit more like Morgana, though people have also called him Nunu 2.0. The big problem with Galio is that building as a tank means your damage output is minimal, even with his passive, and his ultimate is easily countered by stuns.

Galio feels just about right around the level 5-12 range. His Q and E skills hit hard enough to deal reasonable damage and the laning phase is just about perfect for his ultimate – not enough people to interrupt him. Beyond that point, though, he feels extremely vulnerable. His ult can actually be a bad thing. Consider your situation – you ult, causing 3-4 champions and whatever creeps are nearby to attack you. Granted, you get some beefed up resistances, but if you miss your shield or the shield wears off, you take a good bit of damage through there. If someone interrupts that ult, you have 3-4 people attacking you and there’s very little you can do about it. The speed boost is nice, but it’s not going to get you out of that situation.

As you cruise toward late game, you start to feel the pain of your MR stack. Your abilities aren’t doing much damage and they’re on a fairly long cooldown. By this point the people you taunt are blowing through your shield quickly and giving you some hefty damage for your trouble.

This isn’t to say Galio can’t be useful – he can. I think he’s best placed as a support character like Morgana. If you have a solid tank Galio can be good for getting your carries into position or even helping Amumu close the gap for bandage toss. Also, you don’t necessarily have to make use of your passive, even though it would be nice to. Galio has pretty solid AP ratios, so building for magic penetration could actually yield some interesting results.

Champions, league of legends

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Vladimir is on release notice

July 23, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

The latest in a string of culturally themed heroes is officially on release notice. Riot posted the “new champion approaches” post for Vladimir this afternoon, offering a cursory look at his skills and what looks to be his splash screen.

Here’s the ability list:
Transfusion: Vladimir drains the lifeforce of his target, dealing magic damage and healing himself for 25% of that amount.

Sanguine Pool: Vladimir sinks into a pool of blood for 2.5 seconds, becoming untargetable and slowing enemies above him. Vladmir deals magic damage to targets above him and heals himself for 15% of that amount.

Tides of Blood: Vladimir unleashes a torrent of blood, damaging surrounding enemies. Additionally, multiple Tides of Blood in a short period of time cause them to cost additional health and deal additional damage, and increases his healing and regeneration by 8%.

Hemoplague (Ultimate): Vladimir infects the target area with a virulent plague increases the damage they take for 5 seconds. After 5 seconds, infected enemies take magic damage.

Crimson Pact (Passive): Bonus health gives Vladimir bonus ability power, and every bonus ability power gives Vladimir bonus health (does not stack with itself).

Unlike my original assumption, Vladimir’s resource system is his health (no crazy new crap to deal with). I wish I had more impressions about his skill list but it’s so hard to say how he’ll play without numbers and costs and all that. I thought Xin Zhao would be fun, but I had no idea he would have such low mana costs and such ridiculous damage output.