And speaking of my first sentence, in where you play, which characters rarely see the light of day? Like I said, before I bought him, I've never seen Galio like, ever.
I once saw a champion that looked like a crab, but I could've just been dreaming.
Ashe build: IE/PD/LW/Merc Scimitar/BoRK/Boots
Kog'Maw: BoRK/Ghostblade/Merc Scimitar/LW/Tri Force or IE/Boots
These carries are super terrifying when they can self-protect, and with three or four speed-up button presses (BoRK, Youmuus, Merc Scimitar, Heal), even these two are nearly impossible to actually run down and kill if you're at all careful positioning. Self-protecting Kog'Maw is terrifying.
Ashe build: IE/PD/LW/Merc Scimitar/BoRK/Boots
Kog'Maw: BoRK/Ghostblade/Merc Scimitar/LW/Tri Force or IE/Boots
These carries are super terrifying when they can self-protect, and with three or four speed-up button presses (BoRK, Youmuus, Merc Scimitar, Heal), even these two are nearly impossible to actually run down and kill if you're at all careful positioning. Self-protecting Kog'Maw is terrifying.
Not sure I like the Ghostblade on Kog. He does so much magic damage that the little bit of armor pen isn't as good on him, and the rest of the item only helps him peel. I much prefer it on someone like Twitch, who can sneak up on someone and get full use out of it, or maybe Draven if I'm really ahead. I think I'd prefer Tri-force early instead, and IE later on, instead of only one or the other.
*Edit: Holy crap, the changes to Maokai on the PBE have me drooling. By far my favorite jungler, and now he should end up usable again! The ult changes are going to be amazing...slightly worried about the nerf to the cast range of his root, but removing the cast time, lowering the CD, and improving the damage should help with that.
Just to be clear, I don't even care about the damage from Ghostblade, as long as it's 'good enough'. It's the mobility I'm after... I've gotten to late game twice building this way (I've tried it four times, two of them were: jungle rengar with 8 kills at 10 minutes on enemy team, and every lane but bot lost to the tune of a 20 to 3 score at 15 minutes, just regular bad luck) and I'm just unkillable while doing 90% of Kog'Maw's regular damage (which is still way higher than anyone else's).
Aaauurrghss!! I just read today about the changes.
They replaced Skarner's passive. So now he looks less set as potential beater and more of a tanky support only (and the damage reduction of his missile shot doesn't help).... Yeah, I noticed they bumped up his power level quite a bit these past few updates, making him one of my favorite choices for AP carry (crazy as it is), but now he's support a bit like Braum.....
I'm sad
On the other hand, they added/changed a few more items.... Life steal is slightly weakened, but I'd reckon they're still a must have any way. Who's stupid enough to go around Field of Justice without any healing anyway? That they bumped up Doran Sword's power level a wee (well, you need to have high AD for that to happen, but still...). Anyway, time to play and see what changes much now.
Pretty sure the new Skarner is MUCH stronger than the old one. I've even seen him banned a few times in ranked. He has some differences, but ultimately the differences tend to be things that make him mostly very strong, albeit more of a tank than a fighter now.
I was a huge fan of Skarner 1.0, never touched Skarner 2.0, and now tried Skarner 3.0 one game. Went 7-0 pretty much right away; the stun is amazing. Yay, Skarner is back! Seriously, a speed-up, a slow, and a stun - that's some really OP ganks.
You really just need to embrace the rage. I keep a small colony of hamsters next to my computer and every time I lose a match to mana screw I throw one against the wall.
Well, now that you said it, yes, it's true that his raw damage is mostly dampened (his skills now deal less damage), but there's no mention about reducing the CC effect, so that missile shot probably still causes heavy slow enough for you to catch up, then impale (and now Impale also gets a boost from the passive), not to mention that overall, all his skills have shorter cooldowns now, so the CD reduction from his old passive, in a way, gets incorporated immediately into the current skills. Ok, yeah, I kinda miss duelist Skarner, but now he does look like a scary utility ganker, not to mention that having shorter cooldown without having to risk his neck to reduce the CD is a good gesture. Gotta try him out again
Meanwhile, right after I complained here that Galio was never free where I play, they just made him free this week. The fudge. I guess it's true what they say: Everything you buy today will go on sale tomorrow
Meanwhile, right after I complained here that Galio was never free where I play, they just made him free this week. The fudge. I guess it's true what they say: Everything you buy today will go on sale tomorrow
And everything you want to try will be free the week you're out of town.
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I just played Maokai in ranked as a jungler.. and I can tell you.. it is total garbage now (W range nerfed from 650 to 525). All ranged champions out-range his ridiculously low Twisted Advance range everyone just walk out from the so called "gank" if Maokai enters the lane. I don't know about his laning capabilities but jungling is in history now. Who cares if other skills are slightly buffed because he is not going to ever have those true AP scales of +70%. Why is Riot doing this again...
I just played Maokai in ranked as a jungler.. and I can tell you.. it is total garbage now (W range nerfed from 650 to 525). All ranged champions out-range his ridiculously low Twisted Advance range everyone just walk out from the so called "gank" if Maokai enters the lane. I don't know about his laning capabilities but jungling is in history now. Who cares if other skills are slightly buffed because he is not going to ever have those true AP scales of +70%. Why is Riot doing this again...
One game isn't a good judge for what amounts to a nearly complete rework. It's going to take a bit to figure out the optimum way to play him now. I just saw Oddone play the tree, and he did fine on him.
Also, his W now is an old-DFG on a 9 second CD if you go AP Maokai. You lose some burst from the sapling's, but I'll take a W that hits for 35% of their max HP every 9-ish seconds.
I just played Maokai in ranked as a jungler.. and I can tell you.. it is total garbage now (W range nerfed from 650 to 525). All ranged champions out-range his ridiculously low Twisted Advance range everyone just walk out from the so called "gank" if Maokai enters the lane. I don't know about his laning capabilities but jungling is in history now. Who cares if other skills are slightly buffed because he is not going to ever have those true AP scales of +70%. Why is Riot doing this again...
I just played Maokai in ranked as a jungler.. and I can tell you.. it is total garbage now (W range nerfed from 650 to 525). All ranged champions out-range his ridiculously low Twisted Advance range everyone just walk out from the so called "gank" if Maokai enters the lane. I don't know about his laning capabilities but jungling is in history now. Who cares if other skills are slightly buffed because he is not going to ever have those true AP scales of +70%. Why is Riot doing this again...
Build boots of mobility or boots of swiftness?
To be fair mao used to pretty much always build mobos, that doesn't really compensate (and it wouldn't really anyway).
Maokai is my favorite champ in the game and when these changes were announced, I was arguing with everyone saying I thought they were nerfs. Haven't yet tried him out, though. My theory is that the w range nerf and q slow duration nerf are gigantic while the sapling slow addition and movable ult are relatively negligible (while mana cost reductions are totally negligible thanks to spirit stone). The main buff is probably actually the reduced cd on late levels of W.
The thing a lot of people seem to not realize about maokai ult is that in the past, maokai's teamfight positioning was dictated by his Q. Aside from tossing W to peel, you always wanted to be on as many priority targets as possible in order to Q them for disruption. Add that to his ult mitigation and his lategame teamfight was actually quite good (riot seems to think it was *****, it really wasn't). Truthfully it often was best to use this Q disruption for peel, but not reliably so. Now his positioning is going to be dictated by ult, and while being able to move it like that is nice, it's going to detract from his ability to be disruptive diver. Add in the Q slow duration nerfs and basically his Q got a pretty sizable nerf.
As for why sapling slow is pretty useless: there was never really a situation before the changes where you needed something like that. If you're running away from someone pretty far behind you I guess it's nice? Otherwise you have Q slow and W root. Not necessary. They effectively shifted a portion of his Q slow onto his E, and while if you add the two together it's a higher slow duration, the big problem is that old maokai style of Q max gave it a super short CD and made it almost a perma-slow in ganks and teamfights. No longer. I guess it's nice to be able to have ranged disruption in teamfights now that mao should probably always be played as a peeler first, but slows (especially with long ccs) are awful disruption. Q is really only good disruption because of the knockup.
Basically, they wanted to shift his power from gank initiation (w range nerf) to teamfighting through peeling/mitigation, but the E and Q changes don't fit in there anywhere and I think will soften the benefit of the intended teamfight buffs.
Anyway, I'm not even sure what's going to be best to max on him now, Q or W. It shouldn't be E. Q will still be king of clearing and consistent gank damage and slow, W will probably be best for small midgame fights. Maybe I'll do QEWQQRWWWWRQQEREEE.
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EDIT: Re: Maokai - his win rate is up somewhere between 5 and 6%. Considering a 55% win rate is "omgwtfhairisonfire" op in this game (no, he doesn't have a 55% win rate), that's an enormous, enormous swing.
First off something interesting I noticed about myself and League. On patches where ADCs are strong like with the past two patches I suffer, but when ADCs are weaker like in the patches before I seem to do much better. I attribute this mostly to I can't play ADC and the champs I like to play are the type that are strongly impacted by ADC strength. It was sort of interesting to go back and see these sort of changes affect me.
On the other hand it seems to be whichever team wins bot lane wins the game type meta again which is annoying.
On the other side with the Quill Coat item I think Jungle Taric can make a come back. I played against a Jungle Lee Sin as Jungle Taric last night, and despite him trying to invade me he couldn't do too much since I was too tanky, too sustained, and had Dazzle to stun him. Plus once you get Quill Coat you have no problems with clearing speed or mana. And there is nothing like point and click ganks. I would think he is probably one of the best Support-Ganker junglers right now, just because Quill Coat takes care of his biggest problem which was clearing speed.
I absolutely hate the quill coat itm in terms of what it builds into. SotAG was a great item because it allowed diversity in itemization. You either go balls deep damage with elder lizard or solid tank stats with ancient golem. There isn't any point to getting this item for those junglers that would choose either because the tenacity was one of the main selling points. Bonus health and easy clear is cute and all and it allows for certain junglers to make a resurgence but they're just nerfing the current jungler set by doing that. If they wanted to diversify the jungler picks, they should've added quill coat as a separate item and added another item building from quill coat which the effects of the current SotAG
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I once saw a champion that looked like a crab, but I could've just been dreaming.
Kog'Maw: BoRK/Ghostblade/Merc Scimitar/LW/Tri Force or IE/Boots
These carries are super terrifying when they can self-protect, and with three or four speed-up button presses (BoRK, Youmuus, Merc Scimitar, Heal), even these two are nearly impossible to actually run down and kill if you're at all careful positioning. Self-protecting Kog'Maw is terrifying.
Not sure I like the Ghostblade on Kog. He does so much magic damage that the little bit of armor pen isn't as good on him, and the rest of the item only helps him peel. I much prefer it on someone like Twitch, who can sneak up on someone and get full use out of it, or maybe Draven if I'm really ahead. I think I'd prefer Tri-force early instead, and IE later on, instead of only one or the other.
*Edit: Holy crap, the changes to Maokai on the PBE have me drooling. By far my favorite jungler, and now he should end up usable again! The ult changes are going to be amazing...slightly worried about the nerf to the cast range of his root, but removing the cast time, lowering the CD, and improving the damage should help with that.
They replaced Skarner's passive. So now he looks less set as potential beater and more of a tanky support only (and the damage reduction of his missile shot doesn't help).... Yeah, I noticed they bumped up his power level quite a bit these past few updates, making him one of my favorite choices for AP carry (crazy as it is), but now he's support a bit like Braum.....
I'm sad
On the other hand, they added/changed a few more items.... Life steal is slightly weakened, but I'd reckon they're still a must have any way. Who's stupid enough to go around Field of Justice without any healing anyway? That they bumped up Doran Sword's power level a wee (well, you need to have high AD for that to happen, but still...). Anyway, time to play and see what changes much now.
Meanwhile, right after I complained here that Galio was never free where I play, they just made him free this week. The fudge. I guess it's true what they say: Everything you buy today will go on sale tomorrow
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Modern
WUBRG
One game isn't a good judge for what amounts to a nearly complete rework. It's going to take a bit to figure out the optimum way to play him now. I just saw Oddone play the tree, and he did fine on him.
Also, his W now is an old-DFG on a 9 second CD if you go AP Maokai. You lose some burst from the sapling's, but I'll take a W that hits for 35% of their max HP every 9-ish seconds.
Build boots of mobility or boots of swiftness?
Maokai is my favorite champ in the game and when these changes were announced, I was arguing with everyone saying I thought they were nerfs. Haven't yet tried him out, though. My theory is that the w range nerf and q slow duration nerf are gigantic while the sapling slow addition and movable ult are relatively negligible (while mana cost reductions are totally negligible thanks to spirit stone). The main buff is probably actually the reduced cd on late levels of W.
The thing a lot of people seem to not realize about maokai ult is that in the past, maokai's teamfight positioning was dictated by his Q. Aside from tossing W to peel, you always wanted to be on as many priority targets as possible in order to Q them for disruption. Add that to his ult mitigation and his lategame teamfight was actually quite good (riot seems to think it was *****, it really wasn't). Truthfully it often was best to use this Q disruption for peel, but not reliably so. Now his positioning is going to be dictated by ult, and while being able to move it like that is nice, it's going to detract from his ability to be disruptive diver. Add in the Q slow duration nerfs and basically his Q got a pretty sizable nerf.
As for why sapling slow is pretty useless: there was never really a situation before the changes where you needed something like that. If you're running away from someone pretty far behind you I guess it's nice? Otherwise you have Q slow and W root. Not necessary. They effectively shifted a portion of his Q slow onto his E, and while if you add the two together it's a higher slow duration, the big problem is that old maokai style of Q max gave it a super short CD and made it almost a perma-slow in ganks and teamfights. No longer. I guess it's nice to be able to have ranged disruption in teamfights now that mao should probably always be played as a peeler first, but slows (especially with long ccs) are awful disruption. Q is really only good disruption because of the knockup.
Basically, they wanted to shift his power from gank initiation (w range nerf) to teamfighting through peeling/mitigation, but the E and Q changes don't fit in there anywhere and I think will soften the benefit of the intended teamfight buffs.
Anyway, I'm not even sure what's going to be best to max on him now, Q or W. It shouldn't be E. Q will still be king of clearing and consistent gank damage and slow, W will probably be best for small midgame fights. Maybe I'll do QEWQQRWWWWRQQEREEE.
The game that got me gold 2: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1442840057/36311243
EDIT: Re: Maokai - his win rate is up somewhere between 5 and 6%. Considering a 55% win rate is "omgwtfhairisonfire" op in this game (no, he doesn't have a 55% win rate), that's an enormous, enormous swing.
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Neat. My most recent victory was quite one-sided. The gold advantage of the game pretty much tells the whole story of the game.
I'm still trying to climb out of Silver 5.
On the other hand it seems to be whichever team wins bot lane wins the game type meta again which is annoying.
On the other side with the Quill Coat item I think Jungle Taric can make a come back. I played against a Jungle Lee Sin as Jungle Taric last night, and despite him trying to invade me he couldn't do too much since I was too tanky, too sustained, and had Dazzle to stun him. Plus once you get Quill Coat you have no problems with clearing speed or mana. And there is nothing like point and click ganks. I would think he is probably one of the best Support-Ganker junglers right now, just because Quill Coat takes care of his biggest problem which was clearing speed.