f13.net

Abilities: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/volibear-thunder%E2%80%99s-roar-revealed

Not actually that interesting. Melee with a speed boost with cc/steroid/AOE, you don't say?

Patch notes: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/volibear-patch-notes

Sivir remake, GP new model/animations, Minions do less damage, HP potions do less, jungle gets totally changed

* all camps easier
* all camps provide a buff
* all camps provide less XP early, though this scales a bit.
* respawn timers knocked down
* red buff nerfed for melee

Interesting: two small Karthus nerfs: wall of pain down to 5 seconds, and more importantly, baron/dragon immune to armor/mr shred, which means his control of that goes way down.

Champ spotlight: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/champion-spotlight-volibear-thunders-roar

Another tanky/initiator/fighter type by the looks of things.

(http://filesmelt.com/dl/lolwuytatat.png)

Welcome to the League of Legends champion spotlight for Volibear: Another Tanky DPS. What we were trying to go for with this hero is that we're crunched for time, so we're throwing in another melee brute with a boring kit, so we can severely cut down on test time due to that hero category posing far less risk of creating really problematic lane combinations. As a result, the entire hero can be summarized as "He is good at walking up to people and auto-attacking them." He will also disappear from the game entirely after freeweek, like Shyvana the Half-Useful, unless we forget to keep him less useful than Udyr, despite pretty much being Udyr.

Anyway. Let's look at how to play Volibear. Volibear can be played as a tanky DPS, but I like to use him as a jungle. Like every other tanky DPS in a champion spotlight. Since this is another hero which doesn't really do much besides autoattacking well, we have a Soraka running in circles away from creeps for the purposes of demonstrating our abilities. Watch as frenzy COMPLETELY CRUSHES her health.

For my masteries and runes, I select "Udyr Masteries" and "Udyr Runes" from my masteries and runes pages. For items, I like to purchase whatever I purchased for Udyr. Tune in next week for Champion Spotlight as we preview "Beefy Hurt-Man: Literally Just A Walking Autoattack" and discuss how proud we are that literally over half the champion roster is now tanky DPS benchwarmers that usually cause your teammates to queue dodge whenever you select them in a game above 1400 ELO.

I love you.

But srsly, with the Red lizard nerf, yea, they can go fuck themselves.

Yeah. I am so doubtful about this jungle remake.

I'm all for crazy junglers, I'm all for removing rune dependence for jungling, but if it turns out that a viable strategy is just to have your jungler sit in their jungle  for 20 minutes, and then come out reasonably farmed up...that's just silly.

I don't even know how much testing they've done, but if they are making that big of a jungle change...I would bet they need to do more.

If they want to have make a big jungle change make another map call it S.R Mode and if they get postive reviews remove the old one. Otherwise this is reason 99 why I'm never buying riot points.

I'll definitely agree that releasing samey characters is hella boring, but I'm not getting this hysteria over jungle changes. As a level 23 player who plain cannot use some jungling routes/champs, I think it's far more likely the pros are going to outweigh the cons. At least I'll get to learn proper jungling for the 50 odd games until level 30.

As with most things I don't get the point of being hysterical until we actually get to properly try the changes out. I do have a lot of faith in Riot's game design though.

The problem is that the change is potentially permanent and doesn't just effect one champ. I mean when they fucked over dominion, it was rage worthy but we still have SR. We don't have another map if they fuck up SR. Combine that with the across the board nerf bat called the mastery "rework" , no observe mode, and yet another tanky, gap closer, cc, sustain champ that will probably occupy everyone's bans for a month? Does Riot hear the sound of Valve laughing from California?

What's wrong with Dominion? Also I find it weird that someone can be incensed that every character is somhow nerfed. It's a relative term, guys.

Made it slower so now when jax or akali get there early game kills its not a mountain climb to get repeatedly raped by them for 20 minutes, instead of 10 minutes to get the 1 or 2 items you need to counter them if you know. Basically

Old Dominion -> All early game advantages even out in 10 minutes (assuming you know how to build your champ) so ability to actually hold and cap mattered (you know the reason why dominion was fun)
New Dominion -> Pick carry, farm noobs for 15 minutes, profit.

I'd argue with Dl here, but I don't play dominion any more at all, nor do I know anyone who does. He's probably right.

Same for Twisted Treeline, was all hyped up the first few weeks and now it's rare I see anyone playing it.

I play both TT and Dominion more than SR, and never have to wait long in the queue.  If you're looking at your friends to see if they are playing either of those game, perhaps your sample is self-selecting.

Dominion is fine.  My patience for giving an hour of my life away, half of which is devoted to tedium, has ebbed.

I enjoy dominion, and if I could play 5s, I'd rather do it on Dominion than SR.

Since I hadn't ever played a MOBA until LoL and all I had ever read/seen about it was SR; SR is pretty much all LoL is to me.  Heh, I think the first couple weeks I played is when they introduced Dominion.  I haven't felt like playing that or Twisted Treeline. 

Jungle rework.. don't know how I think about it.  At the level I'm at, jungle clearing isn't difficult even without a decent leash, and you don't feel the need to just STAY in the jungle the entire time or fall behind.  My first few jungle attempts were pretty poor, however, and I don't have a good enough feel for ganking to be good at it.  Maybe when the changes go live, I'll just jungle on a smurf account until I perceive myself to not be terrible.  I'm still primarily just a top lane/solo mid player. 

Electo-bear seems dumb and annoying.  It's like "hey, we forgot to put good cc on dragonlady, so here's a double dose!".  Plus, he's extra-hard to kill.  Joy.

My main problem with Dominion, the more I play, is that it just doesn't feel very interesting.  If I just want to play a death match game I'll fire up a shooter of some kind.  They just do that better for me.   I play Twisted Treeline a few times a week with a couple of friends.  Its a decent enough mode, the map could do to be about 25% bigger I think, but its fun enough.

So champ spotlight up...and superboring.

Oh that FLING is going to get annoying as fuck.

Yes, I like how they show him playing with Singed in the champ spotlight.  That won't get annoying at all during free Singed week.  

edit: Watched some of him on a few streams.  Does look boring.

According to the spotlight Lolibear is an excellent jungler, tank, duelist and dps.  :uhrr:

For a week, anyway.

Watching some jungle streams:

slower to level 4 (one full clear does not get it anymore), slower to level 6. .

Mobility much more important: you spend more time running between camps.

There's definitely more viability for farm junglers.

Razors/Wriggles nerfed (proc damage went down), although it's unclear which junglers are going to stop taking it.

So the early feedback from people doing the math on reddit:

Your first clear will be slower and not get you to 4, although there are some new routes (wolves -> blue -> wraiths -> wolves -> golems -> red -> wraiths).

Junglers will have to burn less pots/not take cloth armor.

Your gold will be slightly less. Your XP will be a lot less (duo lane or worse).

Ganks are a lot riskier: waste time not farming your constantly respawning jungle and get nothing out of it? You're going to fall further back.

I think I'm going to practice my AD champs.

Sounds like they are turning jungle into more of a "grab buff on way back to your lane" than a viable strat for soloing.

I don't think so. I think the gains from jungle (mainly in more xp/gold for your top lane), still are too big, especially if the other team has a jungler and is taking your buffs.

It's just this awkward spot where the jungler is now going to fall behind without some early snowball.

I remember Riot acknowledging that SR favors passive defensive play too much, so what does riot do? Make the game even more about passively farmimg your lane! Way to go riot way to excite me about purchasing riot points.

-hate cellphone post

Why jungle then?  :uhrr:

One of the main advantages of jungling is that you gain a solo lane. With junglers able to clear the jungle with more health, hopefully ganks will become more prevalent.

But if you're a lower level with less gold your ganks will be worse and it's incentive to spend ALL of your time in the jungle getting xp so you don't fall further behind.

It looks the prevalent meta for my level tier remains unchanged then.  :awesome_for_real:

Unfortunately that's part of the jungle. You willl pretty much always be behind but you can ensure that your lanes are ahead. I would prefer it if they tweaked the exp, but I still think people will keep ganking; lane dominance is too big an advantage.

Yeah, a lower-level jungler doesn't mean the role instantly becomes useless. It does mean that junglers who need to be equal-level to help their teammates are presumably not as great. But I still remember the (brief?) phase in competitive DOTA where teams would run suicide-Techies for the sole purpose of non-stop ganking, frequently resulting in a team with like a 10-9-9-8-3 level distribution that were nonetheless dominating all their lanes and ultimately the game.

Yeah, but there are problems here:

* The definition of a successful gank has changed. Ganks where you waste a flash are just not worth it.
* A lot of the gank junglers have trouble speed clearing, I mean, yes, blitzcrank doesn't need that many levels to do his stuff, but he is just woeful at clearing camps fast enough to even come close.

I'm putting money on a hotfix.

I don't know how much this has really changed, honestly. Whether something is 'worth it' is relative, so what is the trade-off here? You gank primarily to help your teammate dominate their lane. Obviously, the value of the gank has not changed, just the value of the time you are trading for it. Now that time is worth -- if my impression of the changes are correct -- less xp compared to previously if the jungle is full, but more xp on average because the jungle is now empty less often. So there are less places for naturally low-cost ganks (i.e. when you are waiting for your creeps to respawn), but the rest of the time you are losing less because the jungle doesn't provide as much xp overall.

But my only point was that the question is really what missing the xp costs you. If you are rushing to level 6 (eg. Warwick, Nocturne, etc.) then the cost is greater, but if you gank effectively without your ultimate then the trade-off doesn't really seem any greater or less, because your overall xp gain has been fundamentally adjusted downwards anyways -- the thing you are missing out on (xp, gold from jungle creeps) is proportionately the same as it was before, given that you are jungling in the first place. This is especially true if the other team has a jungler as well.

In the end I think most teams would rather have a jungler who is lower level but is successfully ganking and pressuring lanes than a jungler who is absent until mid-game but is a level or two higher. Even a more extreme tradeoff could be worth it if the in-lane impact is high enough -- though not as much as in DOTA, since individual carries cannot carry quite as hard.

Thinking about it, if the respawn rate is really that much higher then it sounds like this will also open up room for much more complex use of the jungle and the jungler role, since in-lane champions can poach jungle creeps with less impact on the jungler (especially if they are ganking a lot, and so those respawn timers are going unused.) Jungling currently is pretty static, with an early leash and 'come get the blue' being the general extent of creep-sharing.

I think a meta-game where junglers move in and out of lane, or champions switch off to gank, in order to distribute the xp-risk and take full advantage of jungle timers sounds a lot more exciting. Of course, I doubt that will actually happen, but shaking things up to see what sort of new meta-game emerges is to my mind exactly the sort of thing to do to kick off a 'new' season, if you actually want it to feel new.

This hasn't changed the meta game. 2 Solo lanes is better than 1, unless you need to hard counter a nasus or udry lane by putting two top (which isn't even done most of the time since its almost garunteed that both sides will run meta). More incentives to stay in the jungle means less ganks on top and bottom and more faaaaaaaaaarrrming since its A. increase chance of interrupted pushing and B. unless its an already powerful ganker, anything coming around the corner is going to be underleveled. And the more times his gank is bitch slapped by wards, the further behind he becomes and the less his ganks will be effective since he'll hit 6 when everyone else is 8-9.

Well it's all speculation until we all see more of it first hand.  It could be possible that you can just run a strong 2 top and no jungler and win the lane and take tower early because their jungler won't be strong enough to gank you well.

Ok I just played it.
Before the change jungle pantheon was a decent jungler albeit not the fastest, but didn't need wriggles.
After the change? Fucking rage. Not playing a jungler again, the only way I even able to keep an even level with a feeding top lane was because I was able to help my top get fed. Otherwise, pain and misery and barely scrubbing the barrel eking out an existence from the assist I manage to earn.

I see they gave Gangplank a new character icon which is as always, terrible.

The last few patches feels like Riot has this amazing game they are sick of being so popular so they want to try and quietly start getting people to leave.  Or Valve is paying them off to help Dota 2 out when it launches.  :grin:

Just seems like they're trying to do too much too fast.  Have they always spit out new champs this fast along with reworks like this? 

Yes, champs are every few weeks, almost always, no matter what.  Doesn't mater if balance is bad, and champ is rushed and the game is full of bugs.  New champs comes out.  I think maybe once they delayed a champ like a week.  But people will just defend it with the same excuse as always "it's a different part of the team that designs champs".

Its more of an example of unintentional genius then anything done on purpose. They need to hire some ex-wow devs or riots in for some serious bleeding.

Needs more :CCP: IMO

On that note, I tried to play HoN in the LoL downtime last night - after 5 min of trying to get into a game I gave up.

If they increase the gold/exp of the mobs upon respawn I think this will prove to be a good change.

Hotfix on the way. Called it.

Details?

More gold/xp. Numbers tweaks to make ganking slightly less risky.

I recommend you folks check out the new Sivir. She has increased range and damage and an absolutely broken chase mechanic. Still awfully fragile, and no longer able to clean up minion waves in record time, but a considerably more capable killer.

Yeah, I was up against a new Sivir and a Sion in lane last night - I played Talon and had Soraka next to me. We got OWNED hard. The two playing them were good players, it appeared, but still, the number of times Sivir got me as I was running away was pretty bad.

You and half the rest of the playerbase.  :oh_i_see:
A couple of Pendragons Twitter posts were even -


Apparently even Riot realized it was a bad idea.

I think calling it a bad idea is overboard. Riot will probably tweak numbers here and there and things will end up working out ok.

I guess when I say bad idea, I'm thinking more dumping it right into live with what was obviously minimal testing if they are making changes this quickly.

It does seem like it could have used a bit more testing, but knowing Riot they figure the public makes the best test subjects.

They can't have tested it very much, hell they announced it 4 days before they patched it in. I didn't even know they were working on a jungle rework.

Jungle rework was announced months ago through dev posts.

New jungle's broken, I'm doing the most absurd shit mid lane with malzahar.

Push lane out, then leave lane and kill my ghouls with my Voidling cast, then get back into lane in time to pop a new wave. Jesus. HOTFIX IS GUARANTEED, AND EVEN THIS WILL NOT FIX THE JUNGLEFUCK

See, for me this is an improvement, in that it adds complexity to the game and to how champions interact with the jungle.

Right from the start? Because you could already do that with Brand some levels in.

2 creeps = wraiths  :awesome_for_real:

They respawn fast enough now so that you can do it often without disrupting your jungler.

Did a Jungle game with my Yi build last night. Mobs are certainly easier to kill. I managed to get in some decent ganks in the early to mid game, but my entire team seemed like monkeys randomly pounding on the keyboards for dingfizzleshineys. Had an Alistar/Sion duo that would randomly move from one lane to the other and never seemed focused on anything but dying or knocking the person I was about to gank out of my range with Alistar's charge. Pretty sad when I'm the 2nd best player on a team with a jungling Yi behind a Miss Fortune with a shitty attitude.

I think I did manage level 4 without a death, only 3 healing pots and one run to the red lizard. Jungling is much quicker now.

IDK, I carried my ranked game last night as jungle Udyr. It's different, not horrible but it's hard work to keep up...and this is coming from Phoenix Udyr which melts camps. Slight buff and I bet they call it good.

Yeah, I had a victory with phoenix udyr. I managed to keep up with standard placement (between solo and duo), but I had a lot less margin for doing stuff with the lanes and not falling behind.

Anyway, the hotfix is coming probably today: two changes.

1) more XP in general
2) the big mob in all camps  banks additional gold/xp starting one minute after it spawns (to some unidentified limit). While clearing as fast as possible does get more XP/gold, it means you can go gank and come back and get compensated for it. Also enables bigger counterjungles (if you know they've been ganking, you can steal their banks)

Seems reasonable to me. I'm sure in a week we'll all forget this ever happened.

So how is your Phoenix Udyr these days? You asked for help a while back, or was that someone else? Sorry I never got around to recording stuff....

How does phoenix udry work?

My phoenix is still pretty meh: I'm not having any problem with the general basic fat-fingering any more, I guess my sense of what to do with him is still a little off and when to gank/run in is still pretty bad. It's a lot easier with Skarner, where it's just like: "ult up? time for super gank!"

I'll record a game once I get my new compy, and see how that goes.

That said, I like Skarner enough that I may just forget Udyr.

I am going to start messing with jungle gragas. I think his ult will make for sick ganks, and his AOE is strong to really do some jungle clearing. Since he has a built in steriod/mana regen/health regen , I really think this could work. Then again, I did say that about my horrible jungle cho build :)

Don't fuck up your barrel, people will hate you.   Seems like your ganks outside of your ult being up would be a little weak.  Fatman slam does have a slow component, however.  But as the jungle scales up in HP late game, your AE won't be as impressive unless you can manage to stick to a pretty strict AP build.  

I'm skeptical, but give it a shot.  

edit: Then again, when I'm Grag I steal a lot of wraiths, get my own blue, and pump my own gas.

With the new jungle, you can't spend all day ganking. Without ult, I wouldn't even bother. He might actually be worth running Exhaust/Smite , since you have  a built in wall passing escape, and extra CC.

There's no jungle role in the late-game, really.