Vladimir has been a hot topic of discussion since release. Even today, when I rarely see him picked, there are still forum threads on a near daily basis wondering when he’ll be buffed, when he’ll return to viability, why he isn’t viable now, and so on. I know CC is all the rage these days, especially when it comes to AP carries, so where is Vlad’s place?
I still occasionally see Vlad do well when his team has enough crowd control to make up for his own shortcomings. He has to be careful, though. Against a strong AP with a stun, Vlad is susceptible to ganks, despite his pool. If he can be forced to burn his Flash early, Vlad’s health costs work against him early, leaving him open for ganks.
As many Rioters have pointed out, many of the solutions to Vlad’s problems are problems in themselves. Fixing health costs may improve his early game, but give him more damage or survivability and we could be rushing back toward the old days of Vlad.
For now, it looks like Vlad fans will have to settle for a legendary skin. Honestly, I can’t say I’ll mind seeing Vlad in a few games sometime soon. Sure beats Morgana.
Riot’s gone all out for Halloween this year, bringing us a boatload of new skins to celebrate the League of Legends equivalent to our spookiest holiday, The Harrowing. Just take a look at these skins compared to, say, the Olympic skins from earlier in the year. Remember Vancouver Amumu? Team Spirit Anivia? Now look at that Poppy skin and tell me you don’t want it. Even the Ryze skin looks badass.
All told, we have the following: – Nosferatu Vladimir – Lollipoppy – Zombie Ryze – Pumpkinhead Fiddlesticks – Mundo Mundo
That’s in addition to the Sorceress and Spellthief Lux skins that will be in the store once the servers are up. I’m going to spend a lot of money today.
Miss Fortune’s introduction to the League has caused a bit of an imbalance. She has one of the better passives in the game, and it’s a passive that vexes Teemo fans. Teemo has an entire skill dedicated to a passive movespeed buff, and Miss Fortune’s is just better. I went back through the existing champions to see who was in dire need of a passive rework and the list is long. So long, in fact, that I’ll be splitting this feature into parts to make it easier to follow.
Alistar (deals 20/40/60 percent additional damage to turrets) – Once the pinnacle of pure tank power, Alistar now appears in almost none of my ranked matches. The Sheen nerf hit him really hard, particularly in conjunction with his passive. With an excruciatingly slow base attack speed, his passive gives him almost nothing. Also, when you’re at a turret, either you’re taking it uncontested or, as Alistar, you should be disrupting your opponent, not whacking away at the turret.
Ashe (While out of combat, Ashe’s critical strike chance increases by 3/6/9/12/15/18% every 3 seconds, removed after next attack)- On the whole, Ashe is a pretty strong toon. She farms well, has a permaslow, a free CV, and a great ult. So why this crappy passive? It essentially allows you to open the fight with a crit, which is really not much of a damage increase for a carry. You’ll probably crit anyway quite a bit as a carry.
Fiddlesticks (Nearby enemy champions have their Magic Resist reduced by 10) – First thing you’ll notice is that it doesn’t scale. Granted, it reduces everyone’s MR, but not by nearly enough. Since the string of Fiddle nerfs, he could really use a new passive.
Heimerdinger (Heimerdinger gives nearby allied Turrets and Champions 6 / 12 / 16 / 22 health regen per 5) – Heimer has officially been nerfed off most ban lists, and as such, I think it’s time he gets a new passive. The regen is nice for turrets, but since the Heimer nerf, very few teams stand and poke a turret down slowly, so this isn’t really relevant. It won’t ever serve to save you or your allies or even your greatly nerfed turrets.
Janna (Increases the Movement Speed of all allied champions by 3%) – I’ve never liked Janna’s passive and I may be one of the few. Three percent movespeed is hardly noticeable, especially when so many toons these days have their own speed boost or a gap closer of some kind.
Kassadin (Kassadin takes 15% reduced damage from abilities and transforms this damage into bonus attack speed) – The damage reduction is nice, but transforms it to attack speed? There’s a reason you don’t see people playing attack damage Kassadin. He’s also so soft that even the 15 percent reduction rarely saves him.
Nasus (Nasus drains his foe’s spiritual energy, giving him a natural 10/15/20% Lifesteal) – Lifesteal on a tank toon – need I say more? If it scaled in some way with his HP gain, this might be a different story, but most of Nasus’ damage comes from his ult in combination with Spirit Fire. Very few players play Nasus for Siphoning Strike, and even if they do, this passive relies heavily on players staying close to you. You know what happens when Nasus ults, I know you do. People scatter. Goodbye, passive.
There are a few runners-up from this category that I’ll just mention briefly. Eve takes 50 percent reduced damage from minions but she needs remade in full, so she didn’t make the list. Gangplank’s passive (a healing debuff/slight poison) isn’t great, and makes no use of his primary skills – Parrley and his ult – but it is a healing debuff, which puts him well above the others on this list. I think Karthus could use a rework in full. His ult is cool, and his passive allows you to get the ult off when you otherwise didn’t, but any passive based on dying first seems a little dumb to me. Still, there are far worse, and his passive at least synergizes with his skill set to a degree.
Stay tuned for more passive remake candidates. I thought up a better name for this feature just after posting so I renamed it.
I had a pretty stellar game this afternoon as Kog’Maw. Granted, that’s not so tough these days, but I was rocking a significantly positive K/D/A ratio (22/7/7) in spite of a team of four negative K/D/As. I was playing with a friend who actually said over Skype, “You are the sole reason we are winning this game.” That’s a pretty great feeling, and it doesn’t happen very often.
More often my “carry” games are more subtle, and tell a small part of what can only be considered a team victory. I have been trying to pick champions that allow me to contribute in a big way, lately, and I think it has helped my rating. The key, to me anyway, is to pick someone that can really dish out the love. I am great at ganking, so playing gank toons allows me to maximize that part of my playstyle. I really like Vlad because he farms minions well for the entire game and his ultimate is a boon to any team. Kog’Maw is great if you have the space to farm (i.e. not laning against good harassment/stuns) and a team to distract people. Ezreal is an amazing comeback toon if your team starts down. I also like to play characters like Xin Zhao and Shaco, who can close the gap without risking too much in the process. As you all know, I’ve also been playing a lot of Master Yi recently, though I rarely feel like I carry with him. He’s often more like an annoying swarm of hornets – it hurts like hell and you can never pin them down enough to stop the pain.
So who do you use when you want to carry? I know a couple of mean Udyr players who really seem to turn games, and it’s always fun to have a pro Zilean or Morgana on your team. Drop your best carries in the comments (with a fun story if you have one)!
PS – Thanks for the pic, Miku! Front page of Google Images for Kog’maw so I linked back to your post.
Though today is just barely slower than yesterday in terms of work and moving responsibilities, I can’t hold back on my patch impressions any longer. Yesterday’s patch had some sweeping impact on the state of the game. Urgot brings another new skill type to the game with his swap, but maybe more importantly, both Heimerdinger and Shaco caught significant nerfs – nerfs that could drop them off most players’ ban lists.
I’ll put together a complete Urgot review a bit later today, but for now I’ll say that he seems to have been designed as an Ezreal counter. The stun/swap combo means Arcane Shift only takes Ezreal back to the front of the battle, instead of outside harm’s way. He’s also extremely mana efficient as he harasses, so it’s easy to see him taking mid against a lot of the squishier carries.
The Heimerdinger and Shaco nerfs will be getting a dedicated post as well because they are so big. Riot has always said that it would trickle nerf, but in my mind they should have considered both toons for significant remake if they were planning to nerf this hard.
On to the less significant changes. Kog’Maw caught a rework to his Caustic Spittle, which now provides passive attack speed bonus in addition to the armor penetration active. Kennen also got most of the proposed changes. He now gains armor and magic resistance while in Lightning Rush, Maelstrom can hit more people, and Surge got an AP buff. In my mind it makes him highly desirable. Vladimir was only half nerfed – his Transfusion has a slightly smaller range but his Tides of Blood is larger.
Malphite also got some nice changes. He should be more mana efficient, and his Brutal Strikes now also grants bonus armor, synergizing with Ground Slam and providing some nice staying power, especially in the jungle. Lastly, Soraka got a small tweak in that her Infuse provides half mana to the target and half to her (Soraka gets the full amount on self-casts). Mana cost on her heal has also been marginally increased.
The last change that is actually very cool is that elixirs can be purchased when you have six full slots and will auto-activate. No more selling and repurchasing items.
That’s about it for the patch. The other posts I mentioned here will be up in short order (especially now that the servers are set to ‘busy’).
