League of Legends: Patch Preview 1.0.0.111

Hello again! Frist I must apologize for my absence in the last few weeks. I’ve had a lot of personal issues as well as school project deadlines to meet. Which left me with little blogging time. But I have written a bit here and there and am almost finished with 2-3 posts that are long over due.

Moving on to this weeks Patch Preview, I must say that I’m not very happy with what looks like a big Vladimir nerf, but at the same time I’m extremely happy with the new changes coming to my 3rd favorite caster in the game RYZE.

Here’s the low-down

“Summoners!

We’re taking a short break from the regularly scheduled Patch Preview video series, but we will definitely be resuming the series with some improvements in the near future! Still, we wanted to give you a preview of what the upcoming patch will bring to League of Legends. It’s important to note that this preview doesn’t reflect all of the changes coming with this update, but it does address the larger items.

Survivability and Items

For this patch, we’re taking a look at survivability items that provide a ton of cooldown reduction. Due to the higher base damages of bruiser-style characters, this combination of CDR and damage mitigation was particularly powerful. We ultimately found that many items had excessively inexpensive CDR. With this in mind, we took a swipe at Spirit Visage, Frozen Heart, Glacial Shroud and Soul Shroud to bring these values more in line. This isn’t the only change to tanky DPS that we have in mind, and you can expect more comprehensive adjustments for a future patch. BOOOO!! I love the CDR on Vladimir with Spirit Visage and new boots, he caps out with Transfusion at 1.3 sec or close to that and it really helps out his mid game. Other than that, this doesn’t really concern me as I almost never get CDR items on champions. The CDR glyphs for my rune page give me enough to focus on other stats.

Champions Changes

Vladimir remains a problematic champion who — while not explicitly overpowered — nullifies a lot of meaningful interactions between players and tends to snowball more heavily than others due to the gold value multiplier of his passive. We reduced this value, along with making Sanguine Pool a little less of a “get-out-of-gank-free” card, while retaining its anti-focus-fire mechanic. This included some long-awaited bug-fixes to Sanguine Pool, which should affect his pre-level 6 tower diving.

Also, while we’d done some smaller nerfs to Rammus over the last couple patches, we decided to hit the speed on powerball by 15% in order to make his chase/CC combination a little bit less of a sure thing. We’ll be keeping an eye on this change over the course of the patch, and evaluating it to see if this has the intended impact. This might be too much, I mean three patches in-a-row now. Rammus is going to be suffering after this patch; I have already noticed a huge decrease in people playing him, as well as his game play when played.

Anivia’s lane harass was proving too easy to pull off for too high of a reward. To address this, we increased the mana cost of pulsing (quickly activating and deactivating) Glacial Storm and lessening the slow duration. This will reward leaving it down longer a little more, but make her R-to-E lane harassment less of a free-be. HAIL! The long-awaited Anivia nerf!! Yes, this is one of the most annoying champs to fight against. In the past Anivia has been a power house because her abilities cost very little mana, but do incredible amounts of magic damage.

Ryze: A Legend Reborn

Finally, we took time to give Ryze a needed overhaul, updating his design to make his gameplay more unique.

Ryze has always had a ton of burst damage potential, along with a repeatable, single-target. However even with a very powerful ultimate and a substantial amount of AoE damage he wasn’t reliable enough as a champion. Players didn’t have an incentive to select Ryze when alternatives such as Annie have a stronger upfront burst.

With Ryze we decided to attempt a new type of champion design: a ranged, caster-carry. We worked to turn him into a champion that dished out sustained DPS and has a powercurve similar to a standard ranged physical carry. In essence, Ryze would become the Ashe of magic.

In order to achieve this, we started by dropping the base damage of Ryze’s spells across the board. To compensate, we added scaling along a stat that increases with each level (in this case mana), since champions don’t gain ability power with level. Next, we reduced his cooldowns significantly, turning him into a sort of spell machine gun. Finally, we increased the range on his abilities in order to give him better options for kiting strategy.

Ultimately, we wanted to create a character that would thrill those players looking for a high skill-cap champion with an active, fast-paced play style.” (League of Legends.com)

So with this next patch, we should see a fair amount of balance coming to champions that have been long overlooked. Also we should see the release of Maokai, the Twisted Treant.

Lore:

The twisting magical energies unleashed by mages during the Rune Wars caused an incredible amount of devastation to the natural world. The League was established to control the use of this magic by confining it to the Fields of Justice. By limiting its use to there, they thought that they could prevent it from doing further harm to the environment. It seemed that they were successful until Maokai came into being. During a League match on The Twisted Treeline, Maokai, an ancient oak that stood above the upper jungle, spontaneously roared to life. Ripped from the natural balance by arcane forces, his sentience was forged in chaos. Before the Adjudicators of the League could step in and suppress him, he slew all six champions participating in the match. The scholars of the Arcanum Majoris took a keen interest in him, as they were eager to discover the secrets of his animation.

Maokai was furious, however. He abhorred the existence that was thrust upon him; he felt it was a corruption of nature. He learned to communicate with people in hopes of finding a way to be returned to his former, true state. Seizing the opportunity, the League offered a trade. They would research a way to revert him so long as he agreed to fight in the League of Legends. Maokai was indifferent to verdicts rendered by the League, but he was eager to punish summoners for their wanton use of magic. He agreed to the terms under one condition: once they learned how to turn him back, they would never animate another tree again. He wears a lantern on the Fields of Justice to set him apart from the other trees, and as a warning to the “animals” that would do him harm.

“I will use this power until I am free of it.” –Maokai

Abilities:

Arcane Smash: Maokai slams the ground, the force of which knocks nearby enemies back and sends an arcane shockwave forward damaging and slowing his enemies.

Twisted Advance: Maokai dissolves into a cloud of arcane energies. He regrows near a target enemy, dealing damage and rooting it in place.

Sapling Toss: Maokai hurls a sapling, dealing damage on impact. The sapling becomes implanted in the ground warding a nearby area. When enemies approach, the sapling attacks, exploding in an arcane blast that damages enemies.

Vengeful Maelstrom (Ultimate): Maokai shields his allies by drawing power from hostile spells and attacks, reducing non-tower damage done to allied champions in the area. Maokai can prolong the effect as long as he has mana to spend on it. When the effect ends, Maokai unleashes the absorbed energy to deal damage to enemies within the vortex.

Sap Magic (Passive): Each time a champion near Maokai casts a spell, he gains a charge of Magical Sap. When he has 5 charges, his next melee attack drains energy from his target, healing Maokai for a percentage of his maximum HP

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