I’ve always respected Shurelia for her community presence. She’s highly active in the forums and willing to admit when the community has offered up suggestions the Riot staff hasn’t considered. She’s started a thread in the General Discussion forums answering questions that typically get posted after a patch (why is so-and-so OP now, wtf are these changes, are you kidding me Riot, etc.).
Among the most notable of her answers are that Pantheon is fine, it’s just that he does extremely well against unorganized teams. There is talk of making him into more of a Spear Shot champion over Heartseeker, but from the sound of the post Heartseeker would still remain strong. I can’t really disagree more here. I think Heartseeker does way to much damage and is entirely too hard to avoid. Yes, it makes Pantheon vulnerable, but the only way to get away from it is Cleanse/sidestep or Flash. Other than that, you’re getting hit for half your health or more. It’s infuriating to lane against if you don’t have a hard stun or a silence, and even then it can be easy to stun too soon or too late.
Malzahar is also having a new mechanic built into his ult called suppression. Suppression keeps you from doing anything, including casting summoner spells. Shurelia says it will no longer stun, but you can’t move, cast, attack, or use summoner abilities. Sounds like a stun to me. It also sounds really crappy. I know it’s not fun to see your ult cleansed but it’s also pretty lame to go from full to dead in one ability (see Pantheon…). Quicksilver Sash will be the only way to get out of the ult. The same mechanic is being considered for Warwick. If this goes live, I hope to god they remake Quicksilver. It’s a decent item, but it’s way too expensive to justify in most situations for what it provides. The people who really need the item will be carries, who already have trouble scaling if they don’t get a good early farm. They’ll have to do something to balance this thing.
Last, Kayle’s ult will likely be going to an even shorter cooldown, but with a shorter duration as well. The reasoning is that it’s easier to CC a target for three seconds versus five, which is true, but if a carry takes Cleanse and has Kayle it will still be infuriating to play against. I don’t buy that 3 seconds is an easy CC even if the target has Cleanse as Shurelia suggests.
I know that many of you have probably seen this video, but it’s so good I had to share it. I’ve played most of my games over the past couple days with a guy named Everett and we’ve been winning a ton. We even took down a high-tier TakashiX/Elementz combo, albeit largely because the rest of their team lacked synergy. In the games that we’ve been able to lane together, we’ve done an absolutely brutal job of zoning our opponents with combinations like Sion/Ezreal. With so much nuking power and Ezreal’s extreme range, we have effectively shut our opponents out of early XP, making the rest of the game very difficult for them.
Zoning is basically using your skills and position to keep your enemy away from creep lines, thereby denying them XP while still farming yourself. It is a rough tactic, and though some champions can counter it, most will struggle if you can do it well. Shurelia does a great job explaining the various aspects of zoning so I’ll save you the trouble.
On a side note, I may start a weekly learning series, in which I cover some aspect of the game, much like this. If you have any questions or a topic you’d like to see covered, drop a note in the comments. I’d also be open to guides if you need help with a specific hero. As always, you can find me in game as “The Wiggin Boy.”
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.
