I got a chance to spend some decent time with Rumble today, as did many of my opponents, so I feel comfortable laying out my impressions a bit early. Though Rumble is certainly different than I expected, the end result is about the same. He’s yet another in a long list of champions best built as a pseudo-tank.

It’s getting kinda tough to asses these tanky characters because so many other people are playing tanky toons as well. When I’m in lane against Alistar/Taric, Rumble’s damage seems completely underwhelming, even if he can take a beating. Against Ryze, though, he seems perfectly fine (at least in the early game). This is one of the biggest problems with the tanky meta – it skews the balance of power in very big ways. Where I would typically expect tanks to be fairly low damage but high survivability against squishy champs, this new crop of tanky guys deals big damage on soft targets and remains difficult to bring down. I know you’re tired of reading that – trust me, I’m tired of writing it – but it’s important to keep in mind when thinking about a champion like Rumble.

Rumble’s lane presence against soft champions can be overwhelming in the early game. His Flame Spitter is nearly always up, giving him solid harass and the simple ability to push people off their own creeps. It is particularly effective with another CC in the lane. If I’m perfectly honest, I don’t like the way the skill functions. Skills that require facing frustrate the hell out of me, and Flame Spitter is no different.

Scrap Shield is just about as silly a skill concept as Riot has ever conceived. A shield with a decent AP ratio plus a speed boost on a short (5 second) cooldown. Give me a break. This skill saved my ass repeatedly in my Rumble games without requiring a millisecond of thought. If it was up, I was hitting it, and that seemed to work out just fine. The shield certainly isn’t huge, but it’s plenty when it runs on such a short cooldown.

Rumble’s harpoon is easily his worst skill. It seems to do nearly no damage and can be difficult to land at times. The slow is solid when you can land it, especially if you’re in the Danger Zone, but I never found myself thinking, ‘I’m so glad I just landed that harpoon.’

To say that Rumble’s ultimate is difficult to cast would be a huge understatement. I know it’s probably just going to take some getting used to, but the mouse movements required in a frantic gank situation are a little nutty. The damage on the skill is pretty awesome, though, which can be a lot of fun against squishier targets. The ult also has great range, giving you plenty of time to cast, shield boost your way into range, and tear down a target.

On the whole, I think Rumble’s balance is just fine in the current metagame, which is to say I think his design is terrible and that Riot needs to stop putting free damage shields on champions. I’m sure we’ll see some frustratingly good Rumble players over the next few days, but likely plenty more frustratingly bad ones. Expect some slight buffs on him next patch.

The Rumble spotlight went live last night and, though I really wanted to dump all of my impressions out at midnight, I decided to wait until today to hopefully give a more balanced look at the League’s new champion. I’m not sure it worked. Rumble seems like the worst parts of the tanky meta all rolled into one little bundle.

First of all, the shield thing has got to stop. Rumble not only gets a damage shield, which likely scales with AP, he also gets a movement speed boost with it, and it’s on a crazy short cooldown. At level 7 Phreak’s shield had a 5 second cooldown. Granted, it didn’t look like it shielded much, but 5 seconds? Yuck.

Rumble also appears to be able to abuse the minion aggro AI in lane because he can cast so often. Minions typically don’t aggro on champions if they’re using spells on one another, an issue typically balanced by the fact that lane casters are fairly squishy. Still, you already know some frustrating exceptions to this rule. Mordekaiser, for instance, can dish out a lot of champion damage without taking aggro from minions because he’s dealing spell damage. The same seems to be true for Rumble, which will be extremely frustrating for the softer characters in lane.

I’ll be interested to see how he actually plays in game. For right now, I’m worried Riot has added yet another bruiser class character to the game, even if he relies on spell damage to bring down opponents.