League Of Legends

Ravishing

Uninspiring Title
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Vel Koz seems like a super-powered Lux imo. I just imagine if you can get off the knockup followed by laser ultimate on a cluster of enemies... holy shit. It's going to be a Lux Ult * 9000. The true damage is insane. Also seems comparable to Syndra except Syndra is single-target damage. Similar to Syndra is the fact this champ will be highly susceptible to mobility though.
 

Draegan_sl

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It used to work ok as a novelty pick, he had good sustain with his E and once you got his Q applied you could stick like glue to set up ganks. I actually recall HSGG playing him top in a tourney once. Without the sustain on E not sure now. He's still going to run into the same problem most mana-using champs do top: the mundo/shyv/renekton resource-less freight trains
Are those champs going to lose some of their freight train-ness with the mastery nerfs and soon to be Dorans Shield nerf? They are going to be losing a lot of hp5. I haven't really played much Leauge, let a lone top in the last week or so.
 

Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
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Yes.

Doran's Shield Nerfs coming to PBE
Here's Xypherous with a heads up on some nerfs to Doran's Shield that will be hitting the PBE soon.
"Just a quick note because this will hit PBE soon (Monday) and will probably require some decent scrutiny / input. I also wanted to provide a quick heads up to head off the storm of conjecture these kinds of things usually do.
Testing some fairly severe Doran's Shield nerfs - going kind of ham on the initial testing numbers to try to quickly find the point where it makes or breaks things.
Doran's Shield is warping the bottom lane matchups and pick structure right now fairly significantly. The relative power of the item has also dramatically increased due to the mastery / vision / support changes and so the item is just better in every respect this season compared to last.
What this means is that certain harass based characters are basically in a weird twilight state where they get stomped heavily and also have to pick up shield in order not to get counter bursted by the same ones using Doran's Shield.
Doran's Shield
100 Health --> 80 Health
10 HP/5 --> 5 HP/5
8 Block --> Unchanged
The idea behind hitting just the Health / HP/5 is to enable magic-based harassment still effective while also keeping Doran's Shield strong against ranged attacks (I.E. I am fighting Caitlyn and Lulu and I hate my life.)
We like the item's niche - but at the moment it's just too generically good against a wide array of matchups at the moment and shuts down both counterburst and harassment strategies a little too hard.
I suspect that the HP/5 nerf is a bit much and we'll have to reassess the strength of some mid-laners who rely on the item. As for 'Why do this now?' kind of issues - We're in the middle of some tier 0.5 item cleanup and Doran's Shield also kind of warps all of those issues, making tier 0.5 items kind of dance around the fact that they'll never compete."
Surrender at 20: Red Post Collection: PBE Doran's Shield Nerfs, Who is on the Relaunch team, Tournament Rules Beta, and more!
 

Arbitrary

Tranny Chaser
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What this means is that certain harass based characters are basically in a weird twilight state where they get stomped heavily and also have to pick up shield in order not to get counter bursted by the same ones using Doran's Shield.
Holy shit I'm on the same page with Xypherous. Time to buy a lottery ticket.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
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Skarner and Warwick on the same team with a thresh support. Initiate with Warwick ult then drag back with Skarner?
 

Draegan_sl

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Someone with time on their hands build Skarner with this in a bot game: Tforce, Rageblade, Hextech, Rabs, Nashors, Boots. I'm curious how fast you can get your spells off. I think that's like a 700HP shield on a 12s CD without the passive.

This build is so damn expensive it's hilarious.
 

Ravishing

Uninspiring Title
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I wonder if Gambit just didnt realize what patch they were playing on, this Skarner pick is bad, bad, bad.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
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Skarner + Warwick did not work out at all. SK Gaming looked good this week. Decisive wins over both Gambit and Fnatic.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
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WTF 70 minutes? I haven't watched many of the challenger games because they are usually boring and horribly lop sided. Guess I'll have to check that one out. These guys must be playing really timidly since its the finals and their spot in the LCS correct?
 

Xalara

Golden Squire
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What I don't get about the bot lane issues it that they barely did any balancing during the pre-season... Which is what the pre-season is for. With how slow issues are being addressed I wonder if Riot has some management issues or something that is slowing things down.
 

ronne

Nǐ hǎo, yǒu jīn zi ma?
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There's only really two explanations for their glacial patch/balance cycles. It's either gross incompetence, as in they have no idea how to fix certain bugs/balance certain things/make replays work/whatever, or it's Tencent/Riot themselves milking the golden goose for all it's worth and trying not to change anything TOO much for fear of it drying up.

Personally I think they are working on a new game and have a B-list team in maintenance mode on league at this point.
 

drtyrm

Lord Nagafen Raider
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Really? That's your two options?

How about this one: balancing and keeping the game interesting is not easy.

Have you ever had a corporate job? If you did, this sort of 'glacial' pace would make more sense to you.
 

Arbitrary

Tranny Chaser
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Many of us were playing this from the beta onward and the simple fact of the matter is that Riot did much more when they were much smaller. Balance patches take literally three times as long to come out and the patches are smaller. Do we really need to wait another month for the Doran's Shield changes to go live? And if that doesn't change up anything bot lane another six weeks after that to see another change? That item was too good long before it defined bot lane. It's absurd. We are still waiting on a gimmick map that allows six players and DotA 2 just added a random ability draft mode?

I think that their balance team is handcuffed by LCS and are unwilling to make small changes every other week because something something competitive play but I also think the larger problem is that League of Legends is making gigantic amounts of cash and their corporate masters in China want to ride it out as long as possible. I'm not saying I wouldn't do the same thing if I had a goose laying golden eggs but as a long time player I'm starting to look for the door. It's going to be fucking April before bot lane is anything but Doran's Shield support vs Doran's Shield support and then when everyone is still buying Doran's Shield and bot lane is still stagnant it's going to take another six weeks to see the second batch of changes that finally moves some things around.

So I look forward to playing again in June.