The Test Realm caught an update today, and it first looked like just a couple tweaks for a short list of heroes. As it turns out, it’s the Akali patch. The last in the trio of ninjas has joined her brothers and she looks to be the most “ninja” of the bunch. Akali is a melee assassin who uses a short range throw, much like Shen, and has a stealth/slow mechanic similar to Rikimaru from DotA.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to test Akali before practice game creation was disabled around midnight. On the whole, she sounds interesting, though I think a lot of people will struggle to be successful with her. Her Q skill is like Vorpal Blade from what I can tell, but when attacked it consumes the mark effect to deal bonus damage. Her W is a smoke cloud that stealths her and slows enemies in the area. Her E skill is a splash damage effect and her ultimate seems to be like a rogue’s shadow step from WoW. The ult has a 2/1.5/1 second cooldown, though you need an Essence of Shadow to use it, which charges every 30/25/20 seconds, much like Corki’s Missile Barrage and the max is three instead of seven.

The only other things I can tell you is that the Test Realm champion info screen shows a “Bruce Lee Akali” skin, so you can dream about what that will look like. I’ll post more info as soon as I have it.

Another patch day is upon us, bringing another ninja to your summoner’s pane in the form of Kennen, the Heart of the Tempest. As with every patch, there’s a host of balance changes and tweaks along with the usual skin release and random audio updates.

First, let’s talk Kennen. I’m pretty excited about him, though he probably won’t hit his stride for a couple weeks. There was more active discussion on the test realm forums about his AP ratios and skillset than I’ve seen for any of the other recent heroes so I’ll be curious to see where he ends up. For now it seems he’s somewhere in the middle of the pack with regard to viability. His ult needs some considerable work to be truly powerful (personally I say drop the CD down to Ryze levels and he’s good).

Jax is finally catching a nerf, though not to his obscene survivability. His AP ratios have been lowered across the board, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, Ninja Tabi got a small buff to both armor and dodge and Phantom Dancer caught a dodge/movespeed buff as well. I see more scary AD Jax players in my immediate future.

Other than that things mostly remained the same. Anivia got a small movespeed buff, Ryze got a little nerf, and Janna caught some much-needed love with a slightly tweaked ult to include a slow for targets who reenter the heal and some mana efficiency improvements. The Item Shop UI has been tweaked and several items have been changed, perhaps the most significant of which is Haunting Guise, which now gives lifesteal on spell damage.

Overall I think this should be a pretty sweet patch. I’ve got 7300 IP banked for the Kennen purchase and 3900 RP to spend on some new skins. Hello, Swamp Master Yod…err…Kennen.

Curse got an exclusive announcement from Riot earlier today. It looks like we’ll be seeing Kennen, the next in the supposed trinity of ninja champions, very soon.

Kennen appears to be the caster of ninja trio, bringing an array of nukes with which to dispatch his opponents. From the description of his skills it seems he has a skill shot, a short range AOE nuke, a charge that includes a damage component, and a larger AOE nuke as his ult. His passive also grants a stun for every third ability hit on enemy targets. It does sound like he could potentially stun an entire team at once. Take a look at the ability list:

Thundering Shuriken: Kennen throws a lightning shuriken to a target location, dealing damage and adding a Mark of the Storm debuff to the first enemy it hits.

Electrical Surge: Passive: Kennen’s weapon becomes charged every few attacks, dealing extra damage and adding a Mark of the Storm debuff on his next attack.

Active: Kennen deals damage and adds another Mark of the Storm to all nearby enemies who currently have a Mark of the Storm debuff on them.

Lightning Rush: Kennen turns into a pulsating ball of lightning for several seconds, moving incredibly fast and gaining the ability to pass through units. Any enemy unit he touches in this form is dealt damage and receives a Mark of the Storm.

Slicing Maelstrom (ultimate): Kennen creates a storm of shurikens and lightning around himself, summoning down a powerful energy bolt to a nearby enemy champion every half of a second, dealing damage and adding a Mark of the Storm with each strike.

Mark of the Storm (passive): Kennen’s abilities add a Mark of the Storm debuff to enemies. Upon reaching 3 stacks of the Mark of the Storm debuff, the enemy is stunned and Kennen receives an energy boost.

Charge champions are obviously popular on Twisted Treeline and will likely continue to be because of mobility. Ignoring walls is just too sweet to pass up. I’ll be interested to see how the stun mechanic plays out. More news when he hits the TR.

A couple days before the latest patch went live I gave an overview of the ninja champ, Shen. At first glance he seemed as though he might suffer from confused design, and that his energy system wouldn’t scale well. I was reluctant to unlock him at first, but after seeing the way he changes a team fight, I decided to give him ago.

First, I think Shen is among the more balanced champions in the game, even though he dramatically changes the dynamic of any game he’s in. His ultimate gives him the ability to prevent ganks and sometimes turn them for a kill. It’s a unique skill, despite similar abilities in someone like Pantheon or TF because Shen shields his target, actually for quite a lot. At rank one, Shen’s ult is a 450 damage shield, more than enough to soak damage output of two heroes at level 6. Shen also shields himself for half that amount, giving you a serious advantage, particularly in what used to be an even fight.

Unfortunately that’s about it. Yes, his taunt can mess things up, but it’s short enough that it doesn’t drastically alter the course of a fight unless you’re near a tower. The rest of his skills are actually pretty boring, and that’s Shen’s biggest drawback. He’s boring. His ultimate has a fairly long cooldown – two minutes or more. The rest of the game seems to be a lot of running around waiting for a chance to use that ult.

Part of the problem is that his CC, the taunt, is so expensive. It takes most of your energy pool to cast, which is why I recommend building him with a Rylai’s. Vorpal Blade becomes a spammable slow, basically guaranteeing no one will get away from you. The chase is long because you do so little damage, but you’re durable enough that you should almost always get the kill.

I’ll be curious to see if he gets any changes in the next patch. The Ezreal buff surprised me, and though Shen hasn’t seen the same overwhleming negative outcry, I also haven’t seen many people singing his praises.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks so I’m a little behind on the news curve. I had some extra time today to catch up, though, which included logging some time on the Test Realm and playing as Shen, the Eye of Twilight. I was really excited with the initial Shen leak. He’s a freaking ninja! Unfortunately, his playstyle is anything but ninja-esque and he’s another “paradigm breaking” character that probably won’t fit well with most team comps.

Shen is different from other heroes in that he uses energy, much like rogues in WoW. It’s basically a low capacity mana bar that regens much more quickly than mana. I know I haven’t even finished describing his skills but this needs to be said: the energy system sucks. It puts an artificial cap on his ability to deal burst damage that cannot be lifted by items. Every other character in the game can get cooldown reduction, a larger mana pool, more health regen, whatever to improve and extend their ability to deal damage. Shen cannot augment his damage that way unless they implement some new items for him.

Take a look at his abilities:
Vorpal Blade: Hits a target enemy for magic damage, and marks the target for allies to see. Allied units that attack the marked enemy target get healed over several seconds. This is your basic damage dealer. It has a three-second cooldown, which means you can spam the hell out of it. Though the damage scales with AP, the healing does not. Late game the heal will be negligible, even if you’re casting it every 2 seconds with some CD reduction.

Feint: Shen defends against the next champion attack or spell, blocking much of the damage from it. This is yet another damage mitigating ability that scales with AP, which you probably won’t be getting on Shen. You’ll be able to soak 240 damage at the max level, which isn’t even a level four cast from most of the mages in the game. Granted, it can be toggled fairly often – every 2 seconds – but you’ll run into some energy issues early game and late game it won’t likely block enough damage to be highly effective.

Shadow Dash: Shen dashes towards target location, taunting enemies he passes through. Think Gragas‘ Body Slam when you think of this skill. It’s a targetable charge with a fairly short cooldown. For Shen, though, it’s extremely high cost – 120 energy out of his total 200. Granted, he gets 40 refunded if he hits an enemy champion, but if you miss you’ll be horribly short on energy to do much else.

Stand United: Places a shield on target ally which absorbs damage. After channeling for several seconds, Shen teleports to the target ally and shields himself as well. Obviously designed to break ganks, this can be great early in the game but it scales very poorly. It will be a crazy mechanic for the 3v3 game, but I think Shen lacks enough other viability to mostly ignore this skill. Best use would probably be to cast it on a tank as they rush in to a fight, shielding both of you to ease the load on the healer.

Ki Strike (passive): Every 10 seconds, Shen’s next attack deals bonus damage based on his max health. Being attacked by enemy champions makes this passive occur more frequently. This one sounds great, especially with that taunt, but the taunt starts at just .8 seconds, which is one hit from each hero, and I’m guessing the max you’ll get in most situations is three. That’s 6 second reduction once, meaning you have another 4 seconds before that bad boy procs again. It’s pretty terrible, and requires massive health to be very effective.

Overall I think Shen will suffer from a confused design. Three of his abilities scale with AP while his passive scales with health. That seems to point to a Rod of Ages build, maybe something a lot like you might do with Singed. Without Singed’s passive, which gives him additional health based on his mana, he can’t get tanky enough with a RoA build. Add to that the energy system and I think it will be a long time before we see someone play him really well.