His playmaking potential alone is probably going to make him broken in competitive at some point if not immediately. Similar situation to gnar, though probably with a less impactful early game.
The possible setups and denials with ult alone are insane. Can easily see a single bard ult win a competitive game.
On the flip side, a slightly misplaced Bard ult could lose a competitive game. There is some serious power behind that ability.
I myself will just sit it out first until he's available for free play. But he looks like a heavy support (hee hee, heavy), so maybe I won't be a fan of him as I prefer blowing stuffs up.
For solo queue, he's pretty bad. His lane presence isn't that good, and you can't always trust your adc to handle a 1v2 while you roam, or your team to be able to coordinate with your gate and ult.
He'll be pretty decent in competitive I think though. The 1v2 lane swaps really play into his strengths, and his kit is amazing for rotating your team around the map.
Haven't played ranked, but I've been messing around in normal draft. Has anyone tried bruiser-Fizz top yet? With the change to his W, his trades top are pretty solid. He reminds me of a squishier, more slippery Irelia or Jax. Still trying to figure out runes/masteries for him, but it seems to be a lot better than trying to force him to work as an AP now.
So what you're saying is Kabum did better in at least one entire aspect of the game than everyone else in their group at the world championships, but that they aren't actually good at it?
I agree 100% with and was thinking of everything else you said in that post, but it's silly to say their picks and bans aren't good. They've been consistently very good.
Being cautious =/= skill.
Kabum was cautious (as well as they should be) based on previous match's where ALL has won which is why they banned the Irelia and Lee Sin. Every other team that lost a game to Alliance had let one or both through to be picked. I'd certainly attribute that to underestimating because there's no way in hell those other teams didn't do their research. The rest of ALL vs Kabum draft revealed that in fact Alliance was cocky because of the last pick Fizz into the fully revealed Kabum team. Honestly, Kabum didn't do anything wrong but they also didn't show any strategic pick/ban skill and Alliance screwed up hard. A good strategic pick ban phase for Kabum would've been to first pick Irelia to deny Wickd's favorite champion and pick the rest of the comp they had because the Irelia has equal to better pick potential with LEP's first pick Ryze. They should know or at least have an educated guess that Wickd would take Kayle and work around that fact by either straight up banning it to force Wickd on a uncomfortable champion or to pick a comp favorable against Kayle
Picking Irelia into Wickd is a death sentence. You don't pick someone's main into them, because they know exactly how to beat it, when their power spikes are, etc. Forcing Wickd onto Kayle was a great move, because his record on Kayle has been absolutely awful. I have no idea why he even picked it, I haven't seen him play it even at a high solo-queue level, let alone good enough for Worlds.
I just found that without some form of damage he's too lackluster compared to when he does build some. I think boomerang cd is low enough (if you catch it) that you can generally get a lot of procs off as mini Gnar, which works well with the kite and poke with autos playstyle he's got, and Mega Gnar I'd say gets a lot of benefit out of the movespeed (he's like the slowest champ in the game, or tied for that), and is just a lot scarier with the extra damage.
Course that's my opinion after only a few games of him, but my thoughts on him going full tank is kinda why would I pick him for that over something more reliable that does more damage, at the cost of a bit less disruption? I think he definitely wants one or two damage items to differentiate enough from say, Shyvana, as it gives him the power to burst people a lot harder than the other tanks.
Although I do think he could do with some faster animations when Mega on his Q and W. The W in particular is the clunkiest thing ever to use.
The builds I've seen have gotten a Brutalizer ---> black cleaver at some point for damage. I think that auto-q-auto will proc your passive, which does really solid damage, and makes you a pretty good mixed damage source. I just think that Trinity is far too expensive for what it gives you.
I honestly think Gnar is going to seem a lot less powerful than he actually can be for a while, until people learn how to properly manipulate his rage bar and how to teamfight/engage well with him. Mega Gnar is absurdly powerful used well in a teamfight, but being in the right spot at the right time with the right amount of rage is tricky.
Also, after trying him out for a few games, I'm pretty certain the best build is basically to channel Jax. Triforce and/or bork -> tank items gives him a LOT of damage and surviveability. If you skip the damage items then he lacks the punch to do anything more than be a nuisance/disruption (mini Gnar does like no damage when building tank, and Mega Gnar benefits so much from being able to really spike an adc/mage out). Laning is pretty interesting, he gets trashed by stuff that can do decent damage from his range or longer (a Zed wrecked me), but he does surprisingly well aginst stuff that has to run/dash at him (was able to slug it out with a Riven).
I think the transparancy of his transformations is fine, you can use an imminent Mega Gnar to zone people quite well, and for engages you probably want to flank from fog of war so you can jump on top of a squishy and utterly destroy them before they can start kiting you (Mega Gnar is SO DAMN SLOW). Mini Gnar is good at kiting anyways, so you can keep them off you while you wait for your rage to refill without a huge amount of difficulty.
The builds that are doing the best for him are going pretty much pure tank with a bit of CDR as well. I really don't think that T-force is that good on him. His CD's are decently long, so he can't really proc the spellblade passive that much. It also doesn't give him much for when he goes into Mega form. I don't know, I've not been impressed with him too much. Maybe after the buffs he'll be in a better spot though.
I said the same thing 2 days after release. The benefits of having a Gnar on your team just aren't high enough to sacrifice any of the other top lane picks. We'll see if these buffs help him reach a more comfortable spot.
Getting attacked/using skills/last hitting is also going to charge the meter, and the time it takes to cooldown is quite some time. His transformation isn't very controllable if you want to stay in lane, especially because his late game is lackluster, so you NEED to get ahead in lane. I just don't think he's strong at all right now, not with the way the meta is.
Do you think the champion looks fun/viable? Do you think that the skin is of sufficient quality to spend money on? If the answers to these questions are yes, then yeah, it's worth it. If either is no, then it's not.
Personally, he's a fun champ to play, but I really don't think he's viable right now. Skin is freaking adorable, plus, you know, Reptar and all. I don't regret buying it.
My favorite card of all time is Balduvian Horde. It was the first decent rare I got when I started playing Magic during the transition from 5th-6th edition. Something about the screaming barbarians really did it for me, and I got hooked into the game.
On the flip side, a slightly misplaced Bard ult could lose a competitive game. There is some serious power behind that ability.
For solo queue, he's pretty bad. His lane presence isn't that good, and you can't always trust your adc to handle a 1v2 while you roam, or your team to be able to coordinate with your gate and ult.
He'll be pretty decent in competitive I think though. The 1v2 lane swaps really play into his strengths, and his kit is amazing for rotating your team around the map.
Picking Irelia into Wickd is a death sentence. You don't pick someone's main into them, because they know exactly how to beat it, when their power spikes are, etc. Forcing Wickd onto Kayle was a great move, because his record on Kayle has been absolutely awful. I have no idea why he even picked it, I haven't seen him play it even at a high solo-queue level, let alone good enough for Worlds.
New Viktor with Lich Bane blows people up. That Q damage on next auto is absurd.
The builds I've seen have gotten a Brutalizer ---> black cleaver at some point for damage. I think that auto-q-auto will proc your passive, which does really solid damage, and makes you a pretty good mixed damage source. I just think that Trinity is far too expensive for what it gives you.
The builds that are doing the best for him are going pretty much pure tank with a bit of CDR as well. I really don't think that T-force is that good on him. His CD's are decently long, so he can't really proc the spellblade passive that much. It also doesn't give him much for when he goes into Mega form. I don't know, I've not been impressed with him too much. Maybe after the buffs he'll be in a better spot though.
Do you think the champion looks fun/viable? Do you think that the skin is of sufficient quality to spend money on? If the answers to these questions are yes, then yeah, it's worth it. If either is no, then it's not.
Personally, he's a fun champ to play, but I really don't think he's viable right now. Skin is freaking adorable, plus, you know, Reptar and all. I don't regret buying it.