So, anyone playing League of Legends?

Hmm, Draven looks hard to play. Noobs will be jugling axes and will get caught in the process.

 

So, as always, Phage is the master prophet. A .1 scaling reduction on Darius' passive is a slap on the wrist, and it'll hopefully be enough to get the QQ bandwagon to stop and the general derpulage to forget about him.


Anyways here's my quick rundown on this patch for Grunker and Juul to rage about:


Ahri changes are for the better... kind of... makes it harder for her to abuse her all in at level 6, but overall it feels like Riot is just throwing darts at how to make this champion less tournament omnipresent.

Massive nerf to Amumu.

Almost pointless Ezreal buff.

Pointless Galio nerf, his Q's damage isn't really an issue...

Also, if you are decent at landing buckshot (lol) that's a buff to Graves' damage, though the smokescreen reduction is a nerf through and through.

Much needed nerf to Jax but not really enough.

Kog'maw needs nerfs too (or buffs to the rest of the carries) but this isn't really... what was needed.

Decent nerf to Naut's lategame, probably for the best since lately I've been feeling like Nautilus is the best pick overall for a team .

Not too sure if that's the nerf that Nocturne needed (if any). Guess it makes him a little less safe to use.

Looks like Riot finally learned that Armor pen = late game power (as evidenced by Darius' E). Good buff to Renekton.

Not too sure why Riot keeps nerfing Shen's damage by tiny bits here and there when its his damage reduction and global presence that's a real issue.

Swain to god tier. Ok, not really, but I've always felt that Swain was actually in a decent enough place and any buffs/nerfs to a mage's range on their spells is pretty huge.

I hope riot doesn't really think that reducing such a small amount of Urgot's survivability will stop him from being first pick/ban in every tournament game lately...



Pretty boring patch, imo. Though, to be fair, the past few patches have all been quite boring.

 

How big are the buffs to Swains auto attack range/laser bird anyway? I never was any good at figuring out those numbers.

 

ICE BURN

Agree.

OMG FUCK U RIOT

Indeed.

His Q's damage is, in part, what allows him the early lane dominance (from 5-9 especially). If he dominates lane because of it, his farm will allow him to stack it even more. And currently it is one of the most damaging abilities in the game. However, if they feel it is out of control, I'm not sure how a 0.1 decrease in scaling will resolve that issue... It makes little difference from level 5-9, it might later, I dunno.

I'm glad they're not nerfing him to the ground because people QQ about him though, but I'm biased as fuck.

Yep, but I like that. He can burst like a motherfucker if he wants to commit, in my mind. The current problem with Graves is the fact that he deals so much damage from afar.

Seems they want to be really conservative with how they nerf, currently.

This nerf is like when they nerfed Morg's ulti with a 0.1 scaling. Just... lol.

His early and mid game are what really, really shine though. He deals very little damage late. So this nerf seems to me like it does nothing.

Huh? Why nerf Nocturne?

Agree, this is pretty sweet. @Mjuul will like this.

I *think* they realize killing the damage reduction and global presence will kill the champion, as before... So they're trying to make him easier to lane against. Problem here is that he can still passively lane-farm as a minimum.

This won't make him god tier I think, but I love Swain (even though I don't play him very well) and would like to see more of him as a counterpick or pick against specific teams. We haven't seen him much at all lately.

Remains to be seen.

Boring can be good though. I am a fan of them not slamming the desk with the ban/nerf hammer whenever a slight problem occurs.

 

It's pretty major. I recall playing Sivir right after her range buff (from 500 to 525 IIRC) and it was surprisingly noticeable.

 

Excellent. I've been polishing my Swain play as of late, and the results have been significant. This patch should do wonders for my poke strategy.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

Them spinning axes on Draven look a bit counter-intuitive. From the looks of it, their only use will be lane harass, as around mid-late he'll prob average much more damage just standing still and autoattacking instead of wasting time to run around catching an axe after each throw. Will remain to be seen tho.

 

The skill itself adds +85% damage on your attack damage though. Hell, that's like getting a free crit innit? Better yet: THAT SKILL CAN CRIT. So either way you're looking at it you get the best of your auto attacks (crit, life steal etc) with 85% extra damage.

What's not to like?

 

It also automatically triggers his DoT passive, so yeah, good skill.

 

I guess RIOT hasn't sold enough legendary Galio skins to bring out the nerf bat jsut yet. give it 2-3 months.

I've always felt that .1 ratio nerfs to an ability is RIOTs way of saying "[Champion] is fine. L2P noobs."

I think this is the wrong way to go about it. RIOT were on the right track when they decreased his ulti range on the test realm. The problem with all these pointless mini-nerfs is that they will make Shen completely unviable if they ever fix the glaring issues with his kit.

I'll say this for RIOT. As far as balancing a game goes they're pretty damn good at providing continued support and trying to keep things playable while juggling hundreds of variables.

 

My sentiments exactly.

 

Cooldown/base damage nerfs are generally harsher than ratio nerfs since ratio alterations don't kick in noticably during laning.

 

Disagree with Ulm - the Shen nerf is the same and your troll is appropriate. However I still disagree with Riot.

Notice that some of the 0.1 scaling nerfed champs are not a problem at high-high ELO - Morgana for instance.

 

This just in, hextech revolver on karthus is a bad item choice.True story bros.

I swear if qunsk didn't have all the free farm bot as kog that game would have looked grim. Or if fiddle jungled with smite.

 

Those no-smite junglers always crack me up

In other news, Brian Mitsoda is Morello.

 

Yeah, dat Riven

"LOL HEXTECH KARTHUS OMG THIS TEAM"

Qunsk went 1/4 but then Kog got to late-game, and the rest was history.

 

3/10/8, Best Draven EUNE!

 

I've seen loads of horribad DRAAAAAVENS today.... but thankfully my team had a good Swain on their side to save the day.

(Except for that one game where a shitty bot lane Lee Sin and jungle Nasus ragequit and left Draven, Darius and Tyrant Swain to defend the purple nexus for the glory of Noxus. We lasted longer than I, or the enemy team, had anticipated. )

 

I agree with almost everything you said. My opinion on Shen is not quite the same, but I think that's all. Oh, and I think the Ez buff means some to his kill potential at 6, but as to why they felt the need to reduce the mana, I have no idea.

Attack range buffs mean a whole lot bot lane and mid, as being able to trade autos, or even auto without being in range of retaliation is sick deeps for early mid, and whole lane for bot.

 

So on the eve on me breaking my highest Elo, I finally found out that Lichbane does not have the exact some proc as Sheen.


Edit: On an even greater note, I can now call Darth Roxor a low Elo potato scrub who can only win with OP characters like Shen. But I won't, because I'm nice like that.

 

Oh btw, something that has popped up here again and I want to address (yup, it's Shen talk again!)

The damage reduction. I can understand people raging over global presence, but how exactly is the damage reduction on shadow dash SO OP!!!! ? If you look at the big picture, Shen has 0 tanking steroids (except a completely pitiful shield), compare that to Leona or Rammus who get unconditional 70/120 armour and mres if they just hit an awesome button. Moreover, the damage reduction works ONLY on taunted targets and ONLY for a whole total of 1.5 seconds (1 against anyone with tenacity), which means that you get 50% reduced damage from autoattacks, and like a total of 1-3 depending on the target, whoopdeedoo. You only really profit from the DR if you dash into a fed carry or something, and that's still only for the course of 3 or so autoattacks if they stack phantom dancers (which most likely won't matter that much because the carry will prob be more focused on shooping the enemies that AREN'T meatshields, and will return to that the moment the taunt is down). That damage reduction will not help you the tiniest bit if you are getting focus fired, running away, about to initiate or missing the dash itself.

 

Shen's global presence is quite possibly the most annoying thing in the game at the moment apart from shaco's derpy blink+stealth and nidalee's thermonuclear spears. But at least the latter don't fuck up perfectly good dive/gank attempts if you have shit warded and know exactly where everybody is.

In other news I find jungle fiora insanely fun even if my playing experience is ruined by random retards feeding in every lane or pushing like hell. But that's the usual solo queue jungle experience as any champion so you kind of expect it at this point. Still better than retards on my team running away every time I flash+ult the enemy carry as jungle skarner. I just need to remember to tower dive with her less and let others initiate team fights. I'm too used to playing tankier junglers.

 

Dunno if a jungle fiora can complain about random retards

 

Yeah there are better picks out there, but fuck me if I'm at least trying to do good, ward and pay attention to the damn map unlike the rest of my team. That and I'm only jungling with her in blind normals anyway.

Unless you think we should all play fotm champs all the fucking time like sheep, even in blind normals solo queue.