The Garen patch is finally upon us and with it comes a load of changes to both the client and the game system. On the whole, I think this will be one of the better patches for the game, even if Garen is a bit underwhelming.

For starters, we obviously need to cover the new champion, Garen. He’s going to run you 3150 IP or 585 RP so I hope you saved up. It’s a long, slow crawl to 3k for most people. His skill list remains essentially unchanged, which leaves him in a weird sort of melee DPS/hybrid role with very low utility. He’s still highly susceptible to hard CC (stuns/snares) but he does have a slow immunity, which will be nice for chasing. Unfortunately, chasing is usually a bad thing, unless you’re running cleanup after a teamfight, in which case its usually best to just push.

Healing got some massive nerfs this patch. Alistar now has greater self healing by 20 percent at all levels, but his allies will now only receive half the heal value. Ouch. Taric got cooldown and value buffs to his heal, but radiance no longer heals allies. Radiance also costs more mana for both startup and upkeep so you’ll probably have to break out that mana regen rune page if you still want to play him. Rally also got its ally heal removed, though the cooldown came down a full 90 seconds.

Katarina caught a big rework, giving her more base health and some survivability in the form of new Killer Instincts mechanics. The active Shunpo effect now reduces incoming damage by scaling percentage per level, giving her the durability to jump into a fight and ult when it’s actually useful instead of waiting until it’s over like she’s basically had to recently. Killer Instincts now adds a persistent damage buff and the damage ratio on her ultimate got a 10 percent buff. Overall, she should be decent now, though I doubt she’ll be great.

Morgana got some nice cooldown and mana efficiency buffs for her skills as well as the addition of a stacking MR debuff from Tormented Soil. Having played as her and also against her on the TR I can tell you she is truly horrifying. Just pray she doesn’t ever catch you alone.

Shen got reworked a bit, which will hopefully bring him out of the godlike tier on TT. The feint damage block will be excellent, but I think the cooldown increase, duration nerf, and nerf to damage blocked (now 180 at max rank) will be enough to keep him in line. AP Shen may be a bit more viable though. I’ll have to check on his AP ratios and relay what I can after some testing. Stand United also caught a nerf, bringing down the shield value, duration, and removing the refund if the ult is cancelled for some reason.

Other than that most of the changes were fairly small. Nunu got some buffs. Mordekaiser received some shield tweaks. Fiddlesticks got a long overdue nerf. Sion and Rammus got some small efficiency buffs. Tryndamere got a bit of a buff and Jax caught another small nerf (which still isn’t enough).

As for the game on the whole, there are two new items – one for tanks, one for physical damage dealers – and the assist system got a rework for debuffs on the target and buffs to the attacker. It should give support some much needed love. Matchmaking also received some changes to make things a little more smooth. Players should now be matched more appropriately by both level and ELO (it scares me that this wasn’t always the case) and full premades should be facing other premades more often (again, why wasn’t this happening or being discussed?).

Last but not least we got some skins. Garen gets the typical duo treatment, while we have yet another silly skin for Warwick (Grandma), a corresponding Annie skin (Red Riding Hood), and a skin for Sivir. I have to say, I hate Sivir – I think she is one of the most poorly designed toons in the entire game – but the Warrior Princess skin makes her look hotter (yeah, bangs are hot) and the extra armor makes her look kinda badass. If it didn’t cost 975 RP I would totally buy it and potentially right click my way to a huge winning streak with her.

Shurelia hosted another PTR Friday earlier in the evening to give the TR players a chance to give feedback on the latest patch, which includes Garen, and participate in a Q&A session after the games. Though I didn’t get in on any games, I was around for the discussion and it went much better than the Garen reveal. There were still some pretty weak questions, but the smaller group made it easier to push some good ones through.

A lot of discussion focused on Katarina. The new changes look like a significant buff, though it doesn’t change her playstyle enough to make her truly interesting in my mind. It’s nice to have some damage reduction, but that doesn’t change the fact that her ult is incredibly easy to interrupt/avoid.

They are talking about reducing the damage Shen blocks with Feint to 150 or so. If you haven’t seen, the new Feint reduces all incoming damage from non turret sources by 200 at max level. That doesn’t mean it blocks 200 and wears off. It lasts two seconds and for those two seconds anything that hits Shen deals 200 less damage than it would have otherwise. If Ryze casts Overload for 350 and Ashe shoots him twice for 140 and a crit for 280, he’ll take 150 from Overload, zero damage from the normal shot and 80 damage from the crit. I think you can probably see why this might need nerfed.

Several people asked for new info about Akali. Here’s what Shurelia said – Akali spoiler: Akali is a ninja.

One player asked what Ashe’s E skill would be remade to and when we would see it. Shurelia said she would push for it in the next patch and that it will synergize with Enchanted Crystal Arrow in some way. Sounds at least interesting.

The last bit of news is that there will be another PTR Friday next week. I’d say that means its entirely possible that we’ll see Akali hit the PTR next week, but it could be to test out some additional tweaks, like the Katarina buffs.

A couple days before the latest patch went live I gave an overview of the ninja champ, Shen. At first glance he seemed as though he might suffer from confused design, and that his energy system wouldn’t scale well. I was reluctant to unlock him at first, but after seeing the way he changes a team fight, I decided to give him ago.

First, I think Shen is among the more balanced champions in the game, even though he dramatically changes the dynamic of any game he’s in. His ultimate gives him the ability to prevent ganks and sometimes turn them for a kill. It’s a unique skill, despite similar abilities in someone like Pantheon or TF because Shen shields his target, actually for quite a lot. At rank one, Shen’s ult is a 450 damage shield, more than enough to soak damage output of two heroes at level 6. Shen also shields himself for half that amount, giving you a serious advantage, particularly in what used to be an even fight.

Unfortunately that’s about it. Yes, his taunt can mess things up, but it’s short enough that it doesn’t drastically alter the course of a fight unless you’re near a tower. The rest of his skills are actually pretty boring, and that’s Shen’s biggest drawback. He’s boring. His ultimate has a fairly long cooldown – two minutes or more. The rest of the game seems to be a lot of running around waiting for a chance to use that ult.

Part of the problem is that his CC, the taunt, is so expensive. It takes most of your energy pool to cast, which is why I recommend building him with a Rylai’s. Vorpal Blade becomes a spammable slow, basically guaranteeing no one will get away from you. The chase is long because you do so little damage, but you’re durable enough that you should almost always get the kill.

I’ll be curious to see if he gets any changes in the next patch. The Ezreal buff surprised me, and though Shen hasn’t seen the same overwhleming negative outcry, I also haven’t seen many people singing his praises.

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.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks so I’m a little behind on the news curve. I had some extra time today to catch up, though, which included logging some time on the Test Realm and playing as Shen, the Eye of Twilight. I was really excited with the initial Shen leak. He’s a freaking ninja! Unfortunately, his playstyle is anything but ninja-esque and he’s another “paradigm breaking” character that probably won’t fit well with most team comps.

Shen is different from other heroes in that he uses energy, much like rogues in WoW. It’s basically a low capacity mana bar that regens much more quickly than mana. I know I haven’t even finished describing his skills but this needs to be said: the energy system sucks. It puts an artificial cap on his ability to deal burst damage that cannot be lifted by items. Every other character in the game can get cooldown reduction, a larger mana pool, more health regen, whatever to improve and extend their ability to deal damage. Shen cannot augment his damage that way unless they implement some new items for him.

Take a look at his abilities:
Vorpal Blade: Hits a target enemy for magic damage, and marks the target for allies to see. Allied units that attack the marked enemy target get healed over several seconds. This is your basic damage dealer. It has a three-second cooldown, which means you can spam the hell out of it. Though the damage scales with AP, the healing does not. Late game the heal will be negligible, even if you’re casting it every 2 seconds with some CD reduction.

Feint: Shen defends against the next champion attack or spell, blocking much of the damage from it. This is yet another damage mitigating ability that scales with AP, which you probably won’t be getting on Shen. You’ll be able to soak 240 damage at the max level, which isn’t even a level four cast from most of the mages in the game. Granted, it can be toggled fairly often – every 2 seconds – but you’ll run into some energy issues early game and late game it won’t likely block enough damage to be highly effective.

Shadow Dash: Shen dashes towards target location, taunting enemies he passes through. Think Gragas‘ Body Slam when you think of this skill. It’s a targetable charge with a fairly short cooldown. For Shen, though, it’s extremely high cost – 120 energy out of his total 200. Granted, he gets 40 refunded if he hits an enemy champion, but if you miss you’ll be horribly short on energy to do much else.

Stand United: Places a shield on target ally which absorbs damage. After channeling for several seconds, Shen teleports to the target ally and shields himself as well. Obviously designed to break ganks, this can be great early in the game but it scales very poorly. It will be a crazy mechanic for the 3v3 game, but I think Shen lacks enough other viability to mostly ignore this skill. Best use would probably be to cast it on a tank as they rush in to a fight, shielding both of you to ease the load on the healer.

Ki Strike (passive): Every 10 seconds, Shen’s next attack deals bonus damage based on his max health. Being attacked by enemy champions makes this passive occur more frequently. This one sounds great, especially with that taunt, but the taunt starts at just .8 seconds, which is one hit from each hero, and I’m guessing the max you’ll get in most situations is three. That’s 6 second reduction once, meaning you have another 4 seconds before that bad boy procs again. It’s pretty terrible, and requires massive health to be very effective.

Overall I think Shen will suffer from a confused design. Three of his abilities scale with AP while his passive scales with health. That seems to point to a Rod of Ages build, maybe something a lot like you might do with Singed. Without Singed’s passive, which gives him additional health based on his mana, he can’t get tanky enough with a RoA build. Add to that the energy system and I think it will be a long time before we see someone play him really well.