(( Sorry for the late posts guys! I've had a deplorable case of food poisoning over the past two days and I'm just now well enough to leave my trusty toilet. ))
As with any patch, the forums have flooded with questions, comments, and concerns about the latest patch to hit the servers. Below is a collection of what I believe to be the most informative and helpful responses that the Riot staff have churned out in the wake of the Sejuani patch.
On the Mundo buffs and if they replace the long awaited "remake" of his kit...
Mundo remake is still in our backlog. We were just planning out today when we'd get to him (he's not up next). There are a few issues we'd like to address before hitting up Mundo. The minor buffs are here to help in the interim.
Some Shen players, particularly those who saw the other PTR changes hit live, are quite sad and have took to the forums to see where their faithful buffs have gone. Luckily Meddler stepped in to shed some light on the situation:
Shen's still in testing. He's not forgotten but we weren't ready to ship a set of changes for him. Vlad by contrast had already had some different changes tested, and then revised, before we settled on the ones in the coming patch.
Later on in the same thread, Meddler also commented on the rationale of not giving Udyr anything back after straight removing the dodge on his passive.
My understanding on Udyr was that he was due for a nerf at the time the live team were assessing dodge on champion kits. The decision was made to simply remove dodge from him as a result, rather than removing power from his abilities since abilities tend to be more interesting/offer more opportunity for player skill than stat passives, particularly since in Udyr's case you're stance dancing for AS/stance effects regardless.
On the strong handed nerfs to Vayne..
Vayne has been the dominant carry consistently for a long time - this is obvious. Her power is disallowing most other carries to even come into play right now.
I'm sure Shaco players were not very happy to see the 30 second nerf to the duration of Jack in the box, so it's a good thing FeralPony was ready to console them by offering up some well thought out commentary on the nerf and explaining how it was very targeted at the dreaded level 2 Shaco double buff gank.
This was a direct change to address the Shaco 2-minute double buff issue. Shaco still can jungle and can still deliver a powerful level 2 gank (stack boxes at lizard near insta kill then do your 2 minute gank w/red). The mentioned double buff issue was clearly abusive and it should come to no surprise that it was addressed. As for the nerf specifically it was the best approach to fix the abuse case without damaging the feel, style, or usage of boxes in the majority of use cases.
Live Team could have taken other more indirect approaches such as altering jungle mobs fundamentally in terms of leashing or some other mechanic (which could harm all junglers), lower box damage overall (nerfing ALL use cases of boxes), raise the mana cost through the roof on boxes (a fix for low level or un-runed summoners but ineffective in high-tier/geared play), make boxes deal less damage per consecutive strike (difficult to calculate actual damage dealt and destroys any possible dual box or mini nest strat killing AP shaco), or increase the cooldown drastically (offering significantly less fun and overall utility).
This was a very targeted nerf dealing the least damage to Shaco's overall feel, power, and utility. He is still very playable post-patch. This was hardly random and most Shaco players would agree the strategy was abusive and terrible for game health. I highly doubt it but if Shaco becomes "unviable" after this change Live Team will reassess the situation and consider buffs elsewhere on his kit.
And finally, I have a small ray of hope for you players who waiting patiently for the release of a new support champion..
Yes - one of our upcoming (not the next) champions is a support. We're playtesting it now.
Champions take about 12-16 weeks to go from an idea to release, if that helps
glad they continually reiterate!
ReplyDeleteAHHH Support champpppp
ReplyDeleteBut what about skarner? :(
ReplyDeleteDont duo with me and go mid if Im the jungler. Ill play skarner and hog the blue buff.