New Champions

[Typhon]

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.

[Prospero]

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.

[Kail]

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.

[Typhon]

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.

[Astorax]

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.

[Kail]

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.

[Chimpy]

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.

[Samprimary]

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.

[Dtrain]

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.

[Typhon]

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.

[Chimpy]

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.

[Samprimary]

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.

[Muffled]

... Our Lady of the Phaser Beam...

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.

[Hayduke]

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.

[Astorax]

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.

[DLRiley]

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.

[Chimpy]

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.

[DLRiley]

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.

[Kail]

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.

[Typhon]

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.

[Furiously]

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.

[Astorax]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Samprimary]

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.

[kaid]

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.

[Chimpy]

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.

[Typhon]

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.

[Prospero]

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.

[Astorax]

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.

[Typhon]

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?).

[Astorax]

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?

[Typhon]

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

:) thanks for the info

[Samprimary]

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)

[Thrawn]

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

Then she was 8-0-3 at 10 minutes. 

23-4 at game end.   

[Chimpy]

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

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

[Ozzu]

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.