I covered the upcoming rune changes in a post the other day but neglected to provide a breakdown of the champion and mastery changes slated for the Ahri patch.

Twisted Fate is getting a little much-needed love. He’ll have better range in lane and his Pick-a-Card will now require target selection. I have to say, I’m excited to see TF again. I can’t help but miss him around this time of year. This is when I started playing LoL and he was the first champion I really loved. Granted, he was OP as all hell, but still fun.

Tryndamere is also getting a small nerf, though I honestly doubt it will be enough. His healing-per-stack on Bloodlust will be reduced in the coming patch. Really, though, Trynd is just too strong in a solo situation. The fact that he has a heal at all gives him more sustain than just about anyone he faces. With the Cleanse change, I think his kit is just too problematic.

Morello also mentioned bringing back Strength of Spirit for Utility mastery lovers. I’m honestly not sure how putting it deep in the tree will make things any better. The tree is just way too focused on a stat that no one really worries about any more: mana. Because of the way blue buff gets passed around, a mana-focused build is only relevant on Singed and Ryze. Beyond that, we don’t need the mana, and the rest of the utility tree is bad enough that even Ryze and Singed would be better off speccing defense.

I’ll be interested to see how the TF buff plays out, but beyond that, I don’t see this patch having much impact on the game.

It’s patch day again, boys and girls, and we can finally say it happened. That’s right, today we were given a major feature release. Well, sort of. The major feature from today’s patch, Co-op versus AI, won’t actually launch until later in the week. It is built into the client, though, so that’s a step in the right direction. And, of course, today also marks the Maokai release. He’s got some of the coolest champion art in the game and what looks to be a decent skillset. I’ll be covering him in a different post later this week. For now, let’s take a look at the rest of the champion changes.

Amumu got a buff, though it looks to be mostly to his jungling, which is odd. I’ve never had problems jungling with Amumu. I know he isn’t being played much these days, but that’s what happens when a champion is FotM for like five months straight. I’m sure people will be sick of playing Rammus soon too.

Anivia got the expected nerf. It seems pretty serious to me, but I don’t really think that’s a bad thing. I used to play Anivia quite a bit in the pre season one days. She is crazy strong, and when she’s got golem, which is virtually all the time if your teammates are smart, she’s an unstoppable force. I’m also glad they added a more discernible buff system for her ult. I’ve probably asked 10 times over the past two weeks “how do you know if her ult’s up again?”

Pantheon got another change to Heartseeker that I really like. It now takes the skill .5 seconds longer to deal full damage. That’s something I hadn’t considered in my post about Heartseeker balance. With the duration nerf to his stun and now this he might be a bit less frustrating to play against.

Rammus got a speed nerf to Powerball. As I mentioned before, I don’t think it’s enough. He’s still too good at chasing and too strong out of the jungle. I’d love to see them make Powerball more of a quick boost – make it reach full speed quickly and nerf the duration in a big way.

Ryze’s rework did make it live, but I’ll be covering that in another post.

The Vlad nerf is kind of underwhelming on paper, but I think it could play out well in game. His passive now grants 1 ability power per 40 health instead of 25. Sanguine Pool also no longer grants a speed boost and interacts properly with turrets. I still think it’s ridiculous to give a gold multiplier to a guy who farms extremely well, but we’ll see how things turn out.

That’s it for champion changes. EDIT: Just realized this didn’t post yesterday for some reason. I’ve got a slew of posts lined up for tomorrow afternoon. Check back for more on Ryze, Maokai, and the item changes for today’s patch.