I haven’t done one of these in a couple weeks, mostly because the changes have been pretty lackluster. This week, though, Mordekaiser got nerfed, and it’s no secret that I loathe him like I loathe Seth Rogen, so let’s do a patch roundup, shall we?

Brand caught a range nerf on his Conflagration and a slight damage nerf on his Pillar of Flame. I think he was undernerfed on both accounts. Both spells will still be insanely easy to land, and it doesn’t change the fact that both skills proc his insane passive.

Garen caught a much-needed damage ratio nerf on his Decisive Strike and Judgement, as well as a damage-per-second nerf on Judgement. I’m not sure why he was buffed the way he was in the first place, but the forums seem to love him. I do love characters with high move speed, but I think we can all agree that Garen has had his day in the sun more than once. I was glad to see him knocked down a peg.

As Gameguy astutely pointed out, Garen’s AD scaling got buffed on Judgement, and for some reason I read “reduced from 1.5 to 1.1” instead of “1.5 to 1.4” This is an undernerf, plain and simple. Decisive hits way too hard early in the game, and Garen has that annoying mix of skills that make him way too easy to play well. Movespeed buff plus a silence at the end so that characters with a dash or even Flash can’t get away from the Judgement damage – it’s too much, especially with the way his damage is right now.

Kassadin got a pretty decent buff to his passive, which now soaks 15% of the magic damage he takes. He also got a damage buff to Nether Blade of all things. Will we see the rise of AD Kassadin as a result? No. No we won’t.

Mordekaiser. Oh, Mordekaiser. I’m so happy you won’t be the default pick for top solos everywhere. I’m so glad I’ll be seeing less of you. I’m so glad your shield generation got pounded this patch. Okay, enough gloating. Honestly, I can’t say that I think this is the right fix for Morde. I think the bigger problem is the ult that turns fights into 6v4s and is insanely easy to get a ghost from. I think there are other ways to balance him then making him quite so bad in lane. With no CC, he’s really going to fall off for a lot of players now.

Nidalee got some nice survivability buffs. I wouldn’t have minded waiting another patch or two on those, but since a certain top competitive player loves NIdalee, I suppose this was to be expected. I do think the stat change from dodge to resistances last patch is a very good one.

Orianna got a slight adjustment to her attack range and the mana cost and cast range on Command: Attack. I’m not sure it will solve all her problems. She’s still insanely survivable from mid to late game and she has a monstrous ult. Now, though, at least we’ll only be getting smashed by the good Orianna’s. The rest will just barely be beating us.

Rammus got some negligible adjustments and Shaco got some bug fixes. Shaco still needs quite a lot of help to be truly viable, but this is a step in the right direction.

Shen got some buffs to some very odd aspects of his gameplay. He now has better AP ratios, which makes very little sense to me. He’s not Amumu. The energy change to his ult is quite nice (it’s now free) but it certainly won’t save Shen. Vorpal Blade just isn’t a good skill in a world of tanks like Singed, Alistar, and Amumu.

Lastly, Sion got some tweaks that should make an AD build a bit easier for him. He also has a good bit more mana at level 1 and gains more mana per level, which should keep him in lane longer with more build varieties.

I’m going to be covering the Taric changes in another post, so that’ll do it for the patch. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to get a Riven post together today. I haven’t had enough time with her to do a proper writeup. Hopefully tomorrow.

Orianna’s playstyle is engaging enough that I’ve been spending a decent amount of time with her, enough to have some additional thoughts about her just a day after my impressions post. It’s tough to help myself – she’s just so much fun. The ball mechanic makes for an active and powerful lane phase that I find much more interesting than most of the characters in the game.

Orianna is a return to the poke style metagame, and I’ve actually had the most success with her when I can zone an enemy back to his turret. You’ll definitely need to have some regen, but using the ball to basically sweep the lane can keep an opponent at his turret while you stand outside the turret’s range. There is one limiting factor: mana.

I have huge mana problems on Orianna, which is why I think you pretty much have to run with RoA/Archangel’s. That build also has the added benefit of being very consistent. I’ve tried rolling with Soulstealer and it just doesn’t feel as good. Because Orianna’s base damage is a little on the low side, I feel like it’s necessary to do everything I possibly can to make sure she scales consistently.

This morning, the servers came up, bringing Orianna to live play. I certainly wasn’t expecting a patch, though it didn’t include anything other than her release. I haven’t really had a chance to play her much, so I’ll give some basic impressions and instead point you to the spotlight above.

I think Riot did an amazing job with her animations. She looks good, her spells all look fairly different (though I wouldn’t mind a bit more fanfare for her shield), and the animations are spot on for her basic movement. The voice acting is also excellent (definitely a little Portal-esque as a friend pointed out). To this point, though, I haven’t seen a lot from her in terms of damage.

The problem mostly seems to be with the base damage on her abilities. Granted, a portion of her damage has been allocated to her passive, but even with a load of AP, her auto attacks don’t seem to hit particularly hard. I think a good point of comparison is Lux, who deals significant damage with her abilities and then procs a nice chunk of damage if she can land one auto attack. Orianna might be great in situations where she is overfarmed and can stand and auto attack an enemy to stack up her passive, but with just an attack or two, it doesn’t feel like it does much.

The real joy of Orianna is her support skills. Dissonance is an awesome speed buff for allies and adds a nice slow to opponents, and her ult has that perfect reward feeling when it’s played right. Hopefully I have the time for a few more games with her today. Check back either today or tomorrow for my full impressions.