Tag: patch (Page 4 of 6)

      LoL: Calm before the Garen patch storm

      April 19, 2010 /

      Eye of the hurricane.Sorry for the late post here today, readers. Between a couple new work projects and the iPhone 4G leak I was crazy busy today. Also, there hasn’t been much happening, but sometimes even that can be worth talking about.

      I do feel like the community has settled into a pre-patch lull over the past week or so. New champions have been coming in such a flurry that it’s nice to hit that break in between patches where there just isn’t a whole lot going on. It seems to be a result of a few things.

      First, Kennen appears to actually be in a good spot as I have suggested here and on the forums. Without many changes to the new hero people seem content to either ignore him or play him – kind of a perfect scenario. Second, Garen isn’t all that interesting. There was a lot of hype surrounding the other heroes and Garen just doesn’t have the same pizazz. I’m going to purchase him on launch and play him, mostly for my own curiosity and testing (and the fact that I have more than 10,000 IP banked and nothing to spend it on), but I doubt he’ll get a lot of playtime in my regular games. In my mind he’s a lot like Mordekaiser, with just a hair more utility from that silence. You know, I never realized how similar the two are until I wrote that (another post for the morning so be sure to check back).

      Above all, I think the calm before the inevitable storm comes from the game’s maturation. From what I’ve seen the servers have been a bit more stable over the past week or so, and I’ve actually seen my ping improve by quite a bit in some cases. I hate to make the call too early, but I think Riot may have finally hit its stride. That’s not to say the game wasn’t succeeding – it absolutely was – it’s just that the success was outpacing development for a while there and we might finally be approaching equilibrium.

      Development, league of legends

      LoL: Servers are up, store is down

      April 8, 2010 /

      Taric in the 5th Age.The servers are officially back online and staging games. I’m in one now to give a test to some of the new features, mostly the new store. I would love to say I’m giving Kennen a go, but the store is down and I haven’t been able to purchase him.

      Udyr’s running a thread on the forums to address the store maintenance. There is no ETA yet, but hopefully it will be fixed within the next hour.

      I neglected to mentioned a couple new skins in the patch. Pantheon got a 300-themed skin, all shirtless, rippling goodness, and Taric got a crazy-fabulous pink skin, dubbed the Armor of the 5th Age. I have no clue what that means, but it looks pretty incredible. Nothing quite like marching down towers in bright pink glory.

      Development, league of legends, News

      LoL: Patch day 04/08 (Kennen)

      April 8, 2010 /

      Deadly Kennen.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.

      Development, league of legends, News

      LoL: Patch day 3/24

      March 24, 2010 /

      Sub-Zero Shen.I’ll admit, this one snuck up on me. I woke up this morning to find patch notes in the Announcements forums for the Shen release. Yes, Shen went live today, along with a Heimerdinger rework I can hopefully try at some point this afternoon.

      From the looks of things (and some time on the test realm), Heimer could be quite strong. His new ultimate not only allows him to heal his turrets to full but gives those turrets a slow as well. There is still the fact that he relies on stationary targets for much of his damage output, but those targets take less time to set up and hit harder than before. I’m actually interested in trying a strange kind of support build, something potentially including Stark’s and maybe even some attack damage. It’s obviously not a high-tier build, but it could be kinda fun.

      I’ve already covered my thoughts on Shen. I’ll wait to pass much more judgement than that until we’ve actually seen him in action, but for now I still think he’s underwhelming.

      The rest of the patch is fairly minor – Udyr got a small mana buff, Ezreal got small buffs to each of his skills, including a much need 20% duration increase for Rising Spell Force. We also get Red Baron Corki in this batch, along with a new Mundo skin and two Shen skins that appear to be a tribute to Sub-Zero and Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.

      The one thing I’m shocked to see is no further Jax nerf. He’s still far too strong at every stage of the game.

      Development, league of legends

      LoL: The perfect storm

      March 17, 2010 /

      Server farm.I made a post yesterday about my patch day woes, specifically the fact that I had to do a complete reinstall for the patch. It was a long process, impeded by thousands of other players with the same problem. I was talking to a friend who said, “You know, I kinda wish this was a crappier game.” If the game weren’t so good, it would be easy to write off all the technical issues. The game is good, though, great even, so the technical issues are all the more frustrating.

      Once I got my game back up and running I hopped into a quick game over lunch. Everything was going splendidly until the other team’s Veigar ran up and dropped Event Horizon. Not typically a problem, but this time it stunned for eight seconds. Eight. Obviously I died, as most people would in an eight second stun. A hotfix came later in the day along with some more server downtime. I figured the worst was over.

      I jumped in a game this evening and, low and behold, the server crashed. A post on the forums reveals that a portion of the game servers experienced a power failure, brining matches down for a slew of players. Obviously I don’t blame Riot for this, but it can be hard to keep a level head when so much goes wrong in such a short period of time.

      On the one hand, I have to be sympathetic to these guys. They’ve made a great game, so great that they’re growing beyond their means. On the other, I really can’t wait for them to get the hiring process going.

      Development, league of legends

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