f13.net

Instead of creating a new thread for each new Champ, thought I'd create a "New Champions" thread to discuss the newest additions.

I played Swain last night and thought he was pretty effective.  I'm happy to have an alternative heavy-damage AP (hate Annie!).  I wouldn't say that he bursts as much as Annie, but it felt like he could do as much as Annie within the 4 seconds that Torment ticks down (if he lands all his abilities and doesn't cork off during that 4 second period of time).  I guess that still makes Annie the goto girl for AP damage, but I think that Swains controls abilities add a ton of value - a damage/slow (Q) and a AE damage/root (W).  W has about a second delay and doesn't have a huge radius (probably about 75% of Cho Goths spikes), but I didn't really have much trouble landing it (it's not a Cho Goth-level time delay).

Torment (E) is like having a second Ignite, which gives you many opportunities to sucker those new to Swain into letting their health get too low.  I got QWE as soon as possible.  I leveled E preferentially, followed by the root (W).  I might switch that up as: get QWE as soon as possible, then level E, Q, W.  E and Q have about the same mana cost (W is more expensive) and Q is just easier to use than W.

I went Ignite and Clarity on my games.  Need to give this some more thought, someone who is very good at last-hitting really shouldn't have mana issues, and having a ghost or blink would probably be more valuable.  You could do a great deal of early-game damage with Ignite, Torment and then Q - with both Ignite and Torment increasing the damage you do, but being a team player and getting tower defense or clairvoyance might be more beneficial.

His ultimate has a pretty low cool down and returns health as it does damage. (but burns an ever-increasing amount of mana the longer you leave it running).  I didn't really feel like I was every waiting for it to be back up. 

As mentioned, his passive boosts mana regen after a kill.  I think this is one of the better passives in the game.  I think this makes him something of a jungler (although not an early game jungler, which maybe is the definition of "jungler").

With mana not being an issue (I didn't have issues with it, anyway), that seems to make him a pure AP/Magic pen Champ, which is how I built him (sorc boots, Rylai's, void staff).  Was faced off against a good Nassus and managed to hold my own.

His root is brutal early game; without boots it's pretty hard get out in time. I laned against him and Mundo last night and it was very painful. I managed to stay alive but they pinned us against the tower in a big way.

Only played a few games with him (free unlocks FTW), but so far, I'm not really sold on him.

Laserbeak and Nevermove are both very unreliable against high mobility targets, leaving him with only his E DoT.  His damage is decent if he can land all three spells, but since it's mostly DoTs, that tends to result in more enemies escaping through potions/heals/shields than someone with frontloaded damage.  He seems kind of like Malhazar to me, in that he's got some decent moves but it's all avoidable because it's all DoTs or AoEs or on a delay or whatever.

The ult is nice for laning but it felt really weird to me on Swain, who's otherwise a mostly single target ranged caster kind of guy.  Using it for any length of time completely poofs your mana, and I can never find a great time to cast it.  You either stay on the edges of a fight and cast QWE, or you run into the middle of it with R.  Trying to to both at once eats too much mana, and reverting back to squishy caster mode with no mana in the middle of the enemy team is death.  Seems kind of like a gimpy version of Taric's ult, except it doesn't buff his team at all.

I also wasn't feeling the love for the passive.  It's nice for his standard abilities, but his ult just destroys his mana pool, and no amount of regen is going to come back from that.

I've been playing him some more, and think that my "mana isn't a problem" isn't correct.  I forgot that for that first game I started with the mana regen ring (doran's ring?).  The innate passive boost mana regen, and if you don't have some item that jacks it up a bit, it's definitely not enough of a boost.

The ult seems good in two cases:

1) You need some health back and you're in a lane with creeps.
2) You're chasing down a champ who's attempting to run from you and your other spells are on cooldown.  Pop ghost, your ult, and run along side them a la Singed with his poison trail.

It's SOMEWHAT decent in team fights as a keep me alive longer, but if you're in the middle of their team, you're doing it wrong anyway as you're still squishy, even with the lifegain from the ult.  Best time in team fights to use it is to get yourself back OUT of the middle of their team from what I've seen.

Gave Lux a spin, she seems like a high end, "organized team only" kind of champ.

Her passive I don't get.  An autoattack damage boost for a support caster?  Why?

Her Q is beautiful.  Double snare, mediocre damage, kind of a pain early on (keeps getting blocked by creeps) but nasty in teamfights if you can land it.   Her W is, I think, probably her most game changing move, but requires crazy luck or coordination to pull off well (you ideally want to be in line to hit everyone just as they start taking damage, which is very time and position dependant, and the cooldown is long enough that if you miss, it's probably down for the rest of the fight) which makes her a dicey choice for solo queue.  It seems almost custom designed to me to fuck up the "Sunfire Garen" kind of low burst, sustained AoE DPS champs.

Her E seems weak to me.  I hear it's supposed to be a spammable damage spell for her, but for some reason it never seemed to do much for me.  A mediocre slow on top of a mediocre damage AoE.  Good for farming with her passive, I guess?  Otherwise it just seems like a "might as well cast this one too" kind of ability.

Her ult I'm really liking.  Nice for farming, if you don't mind wasting the cooldown.  Easy to miss with normally, because of the big red warning beam, but if the enemy team is snared (or even distracted for a second) it can seriously mess things up.

I'm thinking of building for cooldown reduction on her, since her cooldowns seem really high to me.  Nashor's tooth or something, and them move on to AP/Mana items (Archangels, Zhonyas, maybe Rod of Ages)?

EDIT: It looks like Lichbane works really well with her passive, too.

Haven't played with a lux who had a clue yet. They make her look worse than swain, though she should be pretty damn good. Have played against 1 person who was good with her early, but we had 3 tanks and she is so squishy that anyone (even a shitty damage tank like taric) can bring her down pretty fast.

She seems to be the opposite of her "brother" garen: good sized learning curve, mediocre dmg, easy to kill especially later in the game.

Lux seems underwhelming to me so far. I'm never really afraid of her, even when she's played well. She makes excellent food for assassins, like Veigar from the old days.

She's like Morgana without the awesome. That having been said, my Rammus got shut down in lane harder than I can remember by a Lux and a Mordekaiser last night - her CC options and ranged attacks can zone a melee pretty damn well, as long as the fights stay 2v2. As well as they did in the lane, they fell apart entirely in the team fights, and I have to think it was at least partially from Lux not really contributing much once the scope of the combats opened up outside of the confinced space of the lane.

One of my threesome has been playing her and it feels like she contributes, I'm just not sure exactly how much.  His comment was, "she's really squishy, but if you do everything right it's satisfying".

Like Sam, I have no fear when she's on the other team.

Those two together lead me to believe she's a high-skill, middling-at-best champ.

I think she brings a lot to the table for a team of 5 who know what they are doing. She also needs to lane with a melee carry to keep her out of harm and to make good use of her stun/slow. Though she is still weaker than other options probably.

I keep getting teams of retards who don't get that a lane with Taric + Lux while you go lane garen + sion or Twitch + jax in another lane is dumb as shit.

I think they're going to up her survivability some and give her some better AP scaling, cause right now Our Lady of the Phaser Beam ain't hacking it.

I would find religion and convert to that church in a heartbeat.

I am a relative scrub at this game, but I played against a Lux/Poppy lane a couple of games ago and found it a fairly brutal combo.  Was Swain at the time.

She seems pretty strong in the laning phase.  But I'm not sure what she brings to teamfights.  I'm not sure what her niche except if you have carries with too many kills, because she's pretty good at killstealing.

Her shield is fucking amazing.  If you haven't had a Lux in team fights know when to toss her shield baton into the mix, then you haven't played with someone that gets Lux beyond "HOLY CRAP I HAVE THE CAREBEAR STARE!!"

Lux is better than morganna because she delivers a better immobilize (better dmg, and snares two, not one), a lane clear that does a little less dmg than soil, but also delivers a slow which helps on a number of levels (chasing/juking, keeping a wave of creeps off a tower for a little while longer, etc etc), a shield that's basically equivalent (can shield an entire team positioned right, and shield twice, vs. snare/stun immunity), and her ult doesn't require a relatively squishy character to enter melee range with one or more enemy champs...it's an instant cast nuke which late game does very good dmg when she's built right.

I like Lux a LOT, but I don't see very many that can tell their ass from their elbow.  A comp we've been running in 3s which has been a LOT of fun has been Lux/Sona/Mundo and it's been working pretty well.  Lux goes dmg, Sona goes full support.

Lux is a great caster. People like to wonder off alone with her and she isn't a 1v1 champ by any means like Morgana.

The problem is, most people don't understand 2 things in my experience with this game:

1) How to play a support character.
2) How to play with a support character on your team.

I have been playing Taric a lot lately, and the number of times I have died to a turret with it having less than 200 health because my teammates attack full health champ next to it and chase him as he runs away from the turret when I am tanking it with my ult up is ridiculous. Level 11+, Taric with ult+ 2 damage champs = dead turret in about 5-8 seconds. Of course, I pretty much only play solo-queue 5v5 so I get some fairly retarded people, even at lvl 22.

don't keep advancing levels thinking it gets better. In general i think you have one chance early on to get a 3:1 win lose ratio before your permanently filtered to the bottom of the barrel. Trust me there is no medium tier. Just good than really bad and than medicore players among the bad.

Just went a few rounds with LeBlanc, and I'm really liking her.  When I first saw her announcement, I wasn't planning on getting her ("Oh, look, ANOTHER AP carry/support, thank God they made another champ dressed like a hooker, there weren't nearly enough of those"), but she's actually a lot of fun.  Her moves are complex, and there are a bunch of neat tricks with them.   She seems like a great 1v1/skirmishy DPS, in a team brawl her role is a bit more limited, but she's still a lot of fun.

Her Q is decent damage, even without the silence.  Her W is pretty weird.  You can use it as a farming move, you can use it to face check bushes, you can use it as a dodge/chase, you can use it for team fight AoE even though the range is a bit short for that to be really safe.  It's crazy useful.  Her E chain thingy I'm less nuts about, because it's tricky to hit with and even tricker to stay in range for the duration, but at least it means she's got a slow/stun if she ever catches anyone alone.  Her ult is really nasty, though, mainly because of how much flexibility it gives her.  She can double dash and then nuke someone out of range, or dash and then double nuke, or reliably chain cast (hehe) her E to just keep snaring and stunning the opponent... it seems crazy useful.

Her passive I'm not as enthusiastic about.  I don't die much as her, so maybe it's super effective and I'm just not realizing it, but it seems kind of pointless.  Usually it's not tough to tell which is the real LeBlanc (the one running away) and which is the clone (the one standing there autoattacking), or just wait out the timer, and the clone can't really do much anyways.  Maybe it would be useful in tanking towers or something, but that's not really her forte.

But in general, I really like this champ.  She seems like she's got a lot of complexity to her, which to me suggests that she's headed for a nerf once the pros figure out how to rape face with her, but right now she's a lot of fun.

She is fun.  She is fragile.  She requires a greater degree of skill (I'm talking about after folks begin to realize how to counter her, right now she could seem OP if you are playing the wrong champ or are ignorant of what her strengths/weaknesses are).

I had problems when paired up against a champ with a quick stun or a similar jump-closer (e.g. Udyr, Pantheon, Xin Shao).  Very fluid/mobile playstyle though, so I like her.

I bought Miss Fortune last night got stomped the first two games, I think I went with the wrong itemization, third game I went like 11 and 4. Team still lost. Had a Shaco in the first game that was just owning and a Tristan in the second.

In a team role, her job is to silence whoever is most needing of being silenced mainly.  She's sort of a veigar ish character with a silence instead of a stun.  She puts out HUGE burst dps late game same as Veigar does.


Main use I've done for is to initiate, strangely enough.  Start in bush with team, W out into view, hit nearest champ with Q/ult combo for good starting dps, then flash back to bush.  There's no animation for the return flash, it just leaves the clone there, so now you have their team attacking your clone while you're safely back in the bush.  Rest of team comes out and they have a second or two advantage while their team takes down what they think is you.

She has this miraculously fun combo of escape mechanisms and snap/cc madness that, along with her good ranged attack, made everyone forget all about poor ol' Lux. Mostly.

I enjoy lux but she needs a few tweaks. Her shield thing needs to travel faster and shield for more. It lasts like 3 seconds and with as slow as it moves its really hard to shield more than one person consistenly in a team fight and even if you double bubble them its still pretty feeble.

Her damage is a bit low due to how its supposed to interact with her passive via auto attacks but I think it would work better if it worked with her spells as well as auto attacks.

Her cooldowns on all but her ult are a bit to high. I think a bit of trimming on some of her cool downs is warrented probably not for the double root but probably for the aoe snare. Its very common with lux to shoot your load and then have 10ish seconds before you can do anything else. One of her abilities when it was on test had some built in CDR and I think that probably needs to get baked back in somewhere.

Anyone played with Irelia?

I played against her once last night but we crushed that team and I have no real idea other than the spotlight what she can do.

Played with her a bit.  Skillset is new-style diverse - she has a nice toolbox of abilities.  Passive is good in theory, but seems underwhelming.  She has an obvious a combo that works about as well as you'd expect (Q to close, E to slow/stun, W to begin applying the true damage smackdown, R if it looks like escape or death is imminent).  I saw some folks crying that Q gets you killed, but, well, yeah.  Xin Zhou and Jax already have a jump closer - did anyone expect that folks would be surprised by another jump closer?

Struggling with how to build her.  Have tried AS, AD/AS, AS/Crit, Off Tank/AS.  Most luck with AD/AS and Soul Shroud builds.  She's fun to play.

Is she balanced?  I cannot decide as she doesn't really seem to fit an predefined role.  I guess she could be viewed as an anti-jungler.  I don't think she has enough burst to be considered a true assassin.  It's more like she has sustained burst (if that makes sense), with those bursts occurring about 10 seconds apart (when her W is up).  This is probably the best way to play her - build her beefy enough to survive a burst, stun with E, then use your R to recover health and dish damage, repeat W when it's up (Q on cooldown).

She benefits greatly from so many stats: AS, AD, Cooldown reduction, Tank, Crit.  (probably in that order, but like I said I'm still struggling with her build).

I mostly focus on Q and W, with a single point in E at the start of the game (for early game ganking).  If you prioritize on Q, get early AD.  If you prioritize on W, get AS.

Astorax and I played against one last night who was pretty remarkable. Her burst damage and ability to heal allow her tower dive with impunity. She can be hard to catch too once she can kill a minion in one jump. She seems like afairly worthy melee champ, although she suffers pretty much all of the normal melee champ problems.

To note...she destroyed us mid-game, then we destroyed her late-game.  Once we put even a little effort into focusing her, she was completely shut down.  her last 10 minutes of the game she went like, 3/14 I think.  Seems like she'll need a few tweaks to really stand up with the other melee carries.  She's missing that one "gimmick" that keeps melee characters going late-game (Trynd ult/escape, Jax health + immense attack speed, Xin attack speed + knockup, etc etc).  She was stealing something like 140 life per hit late game, which helped, but again, an exhaust and she was just done.

Sounds like a AD/AS build with more emphasis on AD?  Do y'all remember how she was built?

I had the same late-game experience, i.e. to get enough burst you had to go all-in on the AD, but this left you with your ass hanging out - easily focused with only a situationally-good way of escape (if there are minions around you can jump from minion to minion as long as your mana holds out). 

I know that some people are playing with an AP build due to the Lichbane + Q, but they would run into the same issues (although with something like the Rageblade they could have a bit of AS baked in).  Seems like an expensive way to go to end up with similar DPS (Q has a shorter cool down than E allowing for more sustained DPS, the Ult takes a "highest of AD or AP" approach, so hybrid AD/AP isn't helping that).

Also seeing people talking about multiple Sheens.  :|  Even if you were to build to multiple Triforce, it just seems like you'd benefit more from other items rather then stacking those (who can afford two Triforce?).

I THINK she had Infinite Edge, Triforce and Malady?  Maybe?

Sounds like everyone else - throwing weird stuff into her inventory to try to get an idea of what will work.

:) thanks for the info

She ain't half bad, in my opinion. I'm more wary of her because you can't conveniently sidestep her ult with flash like you can other heroes (MF, ashe, etc)

Found time to play a ranked last night where our first pick took Luxe and also took solo mid.  :ye_gods:

Then she was 8-0-3 at 10 minutes.  :uhrr:

23-4 at game end.   :awesome_for_real:

So I watched the spotlight video on the new troll guy.

I don't think I am going to like playing against him.

I played against him a few times today. He doesn't rape faces or anything, but he seems solid. It's another champ that's expected to jungle.

I played a match against him in my one of the day. He was actually not as bad as I expected. His big ass ground effect needs to be a lot easier to see though it blends in almost entirely on the halloween map.

He's pretty solid from what I could tell last night. He's a pretty fast jungler, tough to kill in a fight, and does great damage. i'm looking forward to seeing him and Anivia on the same team.

I see the nerf hammer coming.

Which aspect in particular? I don't disagree; I think his AoE slow/block brings way more utility to a team the other junglers, and he jungles just as well.

Lux is going to be considered OP some time in the next six months.  Bet it.  I plan to buy her once I can afford to not use the default skin which sucks all sorts of balls her snare is fucking amazing and if you ward for counter jungle she can steal dragon and a buff from bot lane with a little practice.

The US server has proven that it sucks at innovation.  How long was Corki good and nobody used him?  Why are there now Sivir is OP threads on GD because a team ran Sivir + Taric in the newegg wanfest tourny?  That combo has been good since forever but people forget it in favor of fotw Malphite top or Gragas doing anything or whatever fotw is.  How long did the tank meta not exist when it could have?  Garen was unchanged for months before people realized stack sunfire = win.

I think that some old champs are being overshadowed but people are so quick to think they know what is good and what isn't.  Fucking Swain can beast now, he's essentially an AP version of what Nasus was at his prime.

If someone hasn't recently posted a thread in General crying they are OP, they haven't been used to win a recent tournament, or they aren't listed as "Tier 1" on some forum star's list  the champion sucks.

At least thats how it seems most people judge how "good/bad" a character is.

At my level of play (scrub), Trundle is ... well, he's really good.  His ability to control a skirmish with E is annoying as fuck in the hands of someone that has been using him for only three games (granted, that person is pretty good with this sort of thing).  I shudder to think of what a top-level player can do with it.

Add to that the toughness and decent to very good damage output (depending on build) and the rest of his kit and, yeah, he's really good.

I agree with your Swain assessment Hoax.  He doesn't have burst, so folks immediately think he's not good because all AP should have burst.

Riot says it wants to balance for top play but what i suspect is happening is that they are nerfing in accordance with when the top tier play eventually trickles down to the bottom. For example dorans blade, the issue i was like rofl there are better items, and every "high level player" is using them in all the live streams. Guessed what the 1200's rank guys are using, doran blade stacks. Week later doran nerf.

Haven't we talked about this before?  For a jungler you really couldn't beat 360 health, 18 damage and 12% lifesteal for 1305 gold, especially the way that 435 gold fit into the jungling order so nicely.  Nothing else was even close.

I was talking about why balance happened not the item itself.

Gotcha.

I think it's more complicated then simply "anything that the high elo does will get nerfed".  I agree that they use the high elo as a filter - if a large percentage of the high elo does it, it's probably a sucessful strategy.

At that point they ask themselves if they feel like whatever strat/build/champ etc that is reaching "must have/must do" status is something they think is good for the game.  What they think is best for the game is if a wide variety of champs/items/builds/etc are competitive (let's call it 'diversity').  I also happen to think that is good for the game.  I think they've been pretty clear in wanting a game with a great deal of diversity. 

I like the way they tuned the Doran's items - they didn't hard-cap the number that you could have, so multiple Doran's builds are still possible.  They are just less optimal.  If you happen to die at a time when you could afford a Doran's, but nothing else, then it might still make sense to get one.

Its a trickle down effect. In the beta the high elo community couldn't be observed and the vast majority of players had only guess work and forums to determine what is effective.Tier list became popular during that time. Nerfs generally happened when what happens in the top tier of play started to show up in the lower tiers, like the 1200 ranks where the vast majority of the playerbase is stuck in. Which means that there is a huge lag between when a build becomes popular in the top rankings to when it gets nerfed. This lag is shortening because of live streams, but its not getting better because the game has a great volume of diversity (mostly due to the new champs being released almost biweekly) that shit literally disappears from the meta only to return with vengeance after people forgot how to counter it.

I've been playing unaltered since the adjustment to see what the change did. It's close, but not quite enough. It still enhances the curve too greatly for ranged carry, to the extent that if we still play the stack card, there's a 5-10 minute window where we will get an average of four kills and 2-3 towers.

It would be fine if this was a power progression gamble, leaving us at a significant enough risk of falling behind in power progression, but it's still just giving us a mid-game boost that comes at minimal cost overall, pays for itself in tower kills and ganks, so on, so forth.

I think they need to make the doran's items completely unstackable and stick with that.

Damnit, wtb delete button.

Still at work, so how is the new Snake Lady ?

Only played two games with her, so take this with a grain of salt, but she seems okay to me.  She didn't do well when I played against her in normal games, but in practice games she seems decent.  She's got incredibly good harassment during the laning phase, amazing farming (I'm tempted to try jungling with her, but she doesn't have any way to heal or avoid damage), very spammable spells with a solid amount of AoE DoT.  Her passive makes it easy for her to cast whatever she wants whenever she wants to cast it.  Her Q and W are both AoE poison spells, with W being targetted normally and Q going wherever the mouse cursor is (like Karthus' Reese's Pieces), which makes it easy for her to poison a lot of targets at once.  For CC she's got a minor slow and her ult, which is harder to position than something like Amumu's ult but still pretty effective (especially in smaller skirmishes) and it's got a more manageable cooldown.

On the negative side, range is a bit of an issue with her, I felt.  Her ult, especially, you have to be right up in the enemy's nose if you want to hit more than one or two of them.  Her AoEs have fairly small radii and if you miss with them, you're screwed until they come off cooldown.  Her burst is kind of flukey, too, it basically consists of casting her E over and over again and if your target is not poisoned when it hits, you're stuck with a long cooldown, which means you're clicking like a maniac trying to keep people poisoned with Q and W and nuke them with E on it's half second cooldown.  If you can pull this off, she looks like she'd be a beast, but I've yet to meet someone who can.

For items, the big one that jumps out at me would be Archangel's Staff, considering how spammy she is.  Might want to go Rod of Ages for mana and health too, but both of them together make a very late build so I dunno.  She's definitely got the farming skills for it, but so much of her effectiveness is from her early game harassment during the laning phase that it seems like she'd be a decent "take mid, rush soulstealer, gank side lanes for stacks" kind of champ.

I think Kail's assessment is good.

Only a couple things to add:

I read her ability descriptions and thought, ok, I want to focus on getting E up as much as possible as that will be my burst.  The write-up makes it sound as if her E cooldown is completely removed.  It's not, there is still a half second before it's good to go again.  While this doesn't sound like it's very long, E has a shorter range than Q or W.  If you aren't sure that you'll be able to finish someone off with two or three E's, trying to land it will get you killed (versus any champ with CC).

In practice I think that Q and W should receive the leveling priority.  A same-level Q does more significantly more damage than a same-level E.  If an enemy is stupid enough to be attacking someone else while you are in E range, they are probably dead due to their own stupidity anyway, and you are just trying to steal the kill from someone else.  A jack-up Q + W in concert with something like a Galio ult would be pretty nasty.  Follow it up with your ult, and a re-applicaiton of Q + W... yeah, that would be a lot of damage.

I built archangels, Rylai's, spirit visage, sorc boots.  I didn't really like this build, but I was able to spam like a madman and never run out, but as mentioned it took forever to come up to speed.

I'm thinking that she'd benefit greatly from cooldown reduction, so probably build the tear of the goddess, then switch over to deathfire grasp to give some initial burst and cooldown reduction.

She really doesn't need archangel's.  Her passive makes her pretty damn efficient, and Q is only 35 mana.

I played her last night a few times, and my favorite build for the night was for sure Rylai's into a Lich Bane, with a Majai's inbetween those if you're doing really well.

Masteries went 9/0/21 for max mana regen, with the magic pen.  Kept me from really needing to build any mana items hardly at all.  The slight mana boost from Sheen early on (Go Rylai's->Sheen->Majai's->Lich Bane), combined with my summoner spells (ghost/talented clarity) kept me in plenty of mana to do what needed to be done.  E is actually kinda weak, and has her worst AP ratio of her abilities (.5).  So I level Q/W first and do a more poison harass than straight burst.  Less kills probably than I could have been getting, but at the same time, lots of assists, and amazing harass as you don't have to get up in their grill to harass them hardly at all.  It's BRUTAL on melee champs as you can use W on the backside of their melee creeps and they can't get in close to last hit, and if they try, you can hit 'em with Q to harass.

Her ult felt more defensive to me honestly. Since it requires them all to be facing you to stun, if they're paying attention, you won't really hit many of them even in a team fight unless you're right up with your initiator, which means you'll probably get focused and die...much better to hang back, poison the group up, keep an eye out and when their main carry faces you, then use it to take them out of things.

The combo I really want to see, is a Vlad/Cass combo.  Hemoplague's extra dmg combined with your AoE poison should in theory be a total nightmare.

There is no way Karma isn't overpowered.

Is she (she?) getting patched in today ?

Should be.

Karma needs a buff. Too weak midgame. Crap endgame. RIDICULOUS EARLY GAME.

She's torn between being burst like Kass and support like Soraka.

Basically, she's a bad Janna.

Riot follows the age old traditional of making power = cup size.

wat

Never mind, I decoded it.

Missed talking about Renekton when he came out.  Been playing him over Olaf (and Udyr) and I like him a lot.  CDR is king, AD or tank depending on the game.  Just tremendous mobility.  Since the patch, Qx2 (for fury and health), max W, then max E.  W with 50% fury does good damage.  Need to play him a bunch to get a feel for where you can go with E, thick walls you will bounce off of.

I played him before the patch and, despite really wanting to like him (no mana + lifesteal + on-command stun sounds like a win) couldn't get him to do anything.  Got first and second blood in one match and then jack all for the whole rest of the game because I couldn't get past their tank.  Seemed like he was a character that needs a lot of farm, like Trynd, but with worse farming ability.  Q+E doesn't do enough to take out an entire minion wave, which makes him pretty slow at farming compared to a lot of other melee champs.  And his E was so damn short range (especially when there's no enemies nearby to proc dice) that I was having serious mobility problems with him.

Has the patch really improved him that much?  I want to like him, but I'm hesitant to try him again after my last debacle.

Ya I really dig Rene, but he's just not that good.

He's kinda stuck between a hard carry and a tank......and not in the 'oh sweet he's got the best of both worlds' seats, if you know what I mean.

Tank build are the only viable(ish) ones I've found. Him as a carry is just inferior to Yi, or Twitch, or Poppy, or Olaf, or most other melee carries.






As an aside, I've gone back to Poppy these days for a variety of reasons (okay it was rather pavlovian: my buddy had an Oscar fish that he named Poppy who would charge any other fish in the tank until they hit the glass.....she died recently, and playing Poppy reminds me of her.), and I've done okay with her. Anyone have any success stories with her as AP? AD?

No.  If you were struggling with him pre-patch, you'll struggle with him post-patch.  He's an intimidation character.  He has a strong mid-game, and you should take advantage of that to stomp some folks, so that by the end game they see you and want to kill you really badly, and you use your stun and speed to make that not happen while your ranged dps fucks them up.

Rene reminds me of udry when he was first released waaaaaay back in beta.

I picked up Karma since I had the IP for her.

I'm wishing I would have picked up someone else. Not a fan really.

She's so bad.

bad karma?

(truthposting: she bad)

16/2/3 with 6 buildings and 180 creeps killed with a 24 minute win is good right?

I fucking love Miss Fortune.

Played her for a bit, now that she's free. Excellent support actually, I don't know why people are complaining about here being bad.

Because they don't want her to be support, they want her to be a caster carry...which she isn't.

The thing is though, as support, she brings nothing to the table that another support doesn't do better than her.  She has a shield, Morganna's shield's better....hell, Lux's shield absorbs more.  The extra damage from it isn't really all that much and is situational and requires really good timing to be effective.  Her speed/slow is decent, but again, I'd take Morganna's skillshot or Lux's skillshot any day of the week.  Her cone attack does some okay dmg late game, but again, she's support, so her damage likely won't end up that high and for creeping, soil farms way better.  As for ults, she doesn't have one...she has an empowerment...WOOO, I'd rather have an ult.

Basically, she's a high skill champion to play well, but that negates her only advantage over the other caster support (skillshots requiring a higher skill level to land).  So if you already have a higher skilled player, play Lux or Morgana, they're better support casters in almost every way than Karma right now.

I disagree. I really don't see how she can be a carry, but I can see her as very good support. Her shield doesn't bounce magic like Morgana's, but it absorbs a comparable amount of raw damage, and can aoe as well. It scales with ap nicely too, so it's not completely useless lategame. The fan spray's damage is fairly eh, but it's a percentage heal with the Karma bonus, so it's lategame utility is amazing.

The snare is really good. Come on, Morgana's and Lux's snares are way harder to land and are both one-way use. Karma can speed boost teammates to chase or slow fleeing opponents and deal good damage (once again, the damage on the slow beam scales nicely as well) with good positioning, to multiple targets. Ok, so it doesn't actually stop people like a stun or a snare would, but you can't have everything.

 * Edit:

Also, holy hell, I just loaded the new lobby ui for the first time. What in the nine hells is this crap?  :uhrr:

Xerath Champion Spotlight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v5MmuMJ2qU&feature=feedu)

Tears incoming

He can nuke points in dominion from the speed boost areas....nope nothing wrong there.

That range is fucking ridiculous, especially with how short those cooldowns looked.

Plus he gets armor from AP?

At least this might mean that Rammus might lose his spot on the instant ban list for Dominion :D

He looks like another set piece caster, not a skirmisher.

Yeah, the ult looks like unmodified 40s CD at rank 3. So 24s at full CDR. Yikes.

Holy shit, that range is CRAZY.

Funny thing is kogs ult still has more range but watching some streams xerath looks pretty nifty. Less range than kog but his stun gives him a bit more reliable escape potential.

Three shots rather than one though, and it looks like you get fractionally less warning that you are about to be nuked with Xerath than Kog

Kog ult also takes a lot of mana to spam and since it is based on AP doesn't scale if you build Kog for auto-attack damage. By the end of the game most beefier chars can just completely ignore Kog ult.

Hm. Boring particle effects.

That's my primary thought so far as well, that and he is pretty weak. Giving up your solo AP caster slot to a guy who doesn't do huge burst and needs to hide somewhere and make himself immobile is a recipe for not seeing any play at higher levels would be my guess.

Also he looks very small in-game, puny and dumb, very disappointing after how cool his out of game art looked.

Actually, both AD and AP apply towards it:

I play Kog quite a bit, and only build AD/AS now.  I can confirm it scales well even in long games.

I haven't tried him in dominion but Xerith's abilities don't do alot of dmg. I played a SR and got a full combo off on an ashe (e stun enabler > Q lighting nuke > ulty three times) and she still got away with like half hp. Though I don't have a full set of ap caster runes yet so that could be it.

Kog'maw's Lion Dance skin looks fantastic though, and has great spell effects. Too bad it costs an arm and a leg, but it's my favorite legendary skin they've done.

His abilities are mostly AOE though no? Seems like proper positioning is going to be very important.

Yup all his abilities except the one that sets up the stun are AOE. In the games I played with him last night was not getting a ton of kills with him but he is an assist machine. I kept setting up triple kills for our anivia by letting lose of my combo and then she would flash in behind and ult to finish off their last few hp.

One thing about him is early on in the game he is pretty insanely mana hungry really needs a mana item pretty early. One interesting thing is I found it was not really necessary to spend much time in siege mode. Very handy for times when appropriate but not something you are locking yourself into constantly.

I agree, assist machine. Works really well if you save siege mode to kill off runners, picked up a few kills in a SR just from that. CDR all the way on this guy.