Once again, I spent much of my Champ of the Week playtime early in the week, knocking out quite a few Nocturne games with very poor results. One of the problems with strong, popular champions, at least as it pertains to this feature, is that I can rarely get them in ranked. These champions will be banned often, which means reverting to normal games for testing. That’s not all bad, but if I can say one thing for ranked it’s that teams attempt to put together a decent comp at least 50 percent of the time. I can’t say the same for normal, which is why my early Nocturne games ended so poorly. Nocturne is definitely not the kind of champion that can just flat out carry anything. The bruisers are still too strong when played en masse, especially if Nocturne’s teammates are all as squishy as he is.

That said, it still happened. I still had a couple games with solid team composition and in those games I was dominant. I was particularly thrilled to have a game last night in which I was paired up with a Twisted Fate. Our combined ganking power was just too much for our opponents. Nocturne’s ult is a big part of what makes him strong. He doesn’t have to worry about positioning for teamfights. All he has to do is get within the general vicinity of a fight before ulting onto anyone in vision. I would often wait until fights were virtually over before heading in, making sure the enemy team had burned summoner spells and ultimates and cutting up low-hp targets.

That’s really where Nocturne excels; he absolutely trashes low health, low armor targets. He is slated to catch some nerfs tomorrow, but he will retain the damage steroid on Duskbringer, despite the nuke nerf. I’m not sure I need to say much more about the champion than what I’ve said in other posts – his kit is just too overwhelming for most champions to handle.

As for the one thing I would change, I think it would be his ultimate. It just needs to be changed, completely. The rest of his kit is strong enough on its own – he doesn’t need a global vision reduction along with a huge radius dash for positioning. Give him a weakness. Make the people playing him actually think about their positioning.

Tomorrow’s patch includes some very welcome changes to CC-reduction, which I’ve covered in another post, but also some unexpected changes to champions. Shen’s getting a damage tweak, Karthus is getting a small nerf, as are Jarvan and Nocturne, while Gangplank is getting a buff. Along with the champion changes, Sunfire is getting a nerf and Wit’s End is catching what I can only consider a buff.

I’m not sure why Riot thinks Shen, or any tank for that matter, needs to be able to carry games, but that’s the context given for Shen’s upcoming damage tweak. Vorpal Blade and Ki Strike are getting an initial nerf but will now scale better to “let Shen carry but not deal a ton of damage without trying.” I get that with the Vorpal Blade change, but Ki Strike scales with his HP, something he’s likely to itemize for in most any situation. Like I said, I don’t get the change, but I’m hoping the Vorpal reduction will be enough to counterbalance what could be a very strong late game Ki Strike.

Karthus is getting a basic AP ratio nerf to his ult and a duration nerf on his passive. Essentially, killing him will actually reduce some of the damage he does, though not by a ton. I don’t see Karthus much these days, but I know he’s made it into a few high-level matches recently. I’m guessing the changes are coming as a result of his presence there.

Jarvan’s getting a much needed damage nerf to hopefully force him to build for damage before dishing out crazy burst. I’m curious to see how the numbers will work on this one, so I’m not gonna say too much about it. Nocturne is getting the same treatment – damage nerfs to his highest ranks of Duskbringer and Paranoia, which will hopefully tone him down a bit.

Gangplank is getting stat per level buffs to both his attack speed and armor along with an attack range buff. His Remove Scurvy and his Ultimate are getting cooldown reductions, and his ult will now have a better slow at early ranks. All of this is good news, but I wonder if it will really be enough to make him enjoyable to play. He still has low base health and his ult’s radius is too small for the way the cannonballs hit. It’s still unclear why Riot hasn’t just made it a larger version of MF’s Make It Rain at this point. I’ve seen a couple people say they don’t want it to be a global snipe, but making it unpredictable isn’t necessarily a more favorable situation. The guy who gets sniped by it won’t be consoled knowing that Gangplank’s next two ults didn’t work in other games.

Sunfire and Wit’s End are both getting some tweaks, though the Wit’s End changes are much more significant than Sunfire. Sunfire remains the same, just with a 5 damage per second reduction on the burn. Wit’s End has lost the mana burn, though it still deals the 42 magic damage per hit. In place of the burn, the item also grants the bearer 5 magic resistance on attack for 5 seconds, stacking up to 4 times. I think we’ll start to see Wit’s End much more often with the change.

I’m looking forward to testing the changes tomorrow. Check back for impressions and, as always, you can add me at “The Wiggin Boy” if you’re looking for some games.