Explanation of Garen PBE changes
As you may have noticed, a few Garen changes were discovered in a recent PBE update. These changes reducing the damage of Judgment, increased it's cooldown, removed the ability to deactivate the spin early, and gave it a bonus change to critically strike. After being perceived as a harsh nerf for the ole Might of Demacia, the community became quite upset and took to the forums despite the PBE being a testing grounds for tentative changes.
CertainlyT stepped in to explain what was up with the changes, noting they were mistakenly put up earlier and without the rest of the intended changes. ( EXACTLY THE REASON THE PBE POSTS ARE SMOTHERED IN TENTATIVE / CONTEXT WARNINGS! )
"Hi MarineRevenge,Thanks for your comments. Your thoughts on where crit should be on the kit are especially interesting. I’ll keep them in mind going forward.
Three general points:
First, these changes to Garen are very nascent. To be honest, they went to the PBE because I accidentally placed them in the wrong folder. They are currently closer to the “Stuff a designer prototypes on his machine” level of completion than “Stuff we ship to Live.” Feedback is always welcome, but hyperbolic statements like “they’re ruining him” are not necessary and needlessly breed panic over changes that, when the dust settles, are almost certain to leave him stronger overall.
Second, since this was an accidental promotion, it also did not include all of the changes to Garen – in the version we are about to begin playtesting, his passive is dramatically improved during the later phases of the game (healing values up/cooldown down) and his base stats and stats per level are slightly different.
Third, you have misapprehended the direct effect of some of these changes. For example, Garen’s Judgment (Spin to Win) is not on a longer cooldown. Rather, the cooldown begins when you press the button rather than when you end your spin. This means that Garen scales better with cooldown reduction. For example, at 34% CDR (say, Black Cleaver + Spirit Visage + masteries) Garen would have 25% less downtime on Judgment compared to Live. At 0% CDR, the spell is unchanged from Live in max uptme.
What are these changes really about? Let’s consider the Garen on Live: As you’ve identified, he’s a lane bully who lacks a purpose in the lategame. You seem to believe this is all Garen can ever be. I disagree. Every champion should have a purpose, a clear and potent contribution they can offer their team, in the late game when the game’s focus is on team fights and objectives. The goal of these changes is to trade a small amount of lane strength for a fundamental re-think of Garen’s late game.
My vision for Garen is that he is a relatively low mobility fighter (unchanged) with low combat ranges (unchanged) who a) is more or less immune to poke damage, b) inflicts immense damage to anyone within his reach, and c) if forced out of a fight but not killed, will rapidly regenerate health to return to the fray for cleanup duty. Think of him as an inverted Mundo/Singed – lower in-combat sustain but dramatically higher out of combat sustain. Pre-fight, Garen should walk in front of Nidalee spears and /laugh.
Within fights, Garen should cleave a path through the mid-line, force the enemy ADC so far out of the fight that they cannot participate, turn and shut down the enemy mage or tank, execute the other while at 5% life himself, then solo dragon while his team takes an inhibitor.
As a final note, this isn’t just about Garen. We’re looking closely at our fighters as a class for season 4, individually and as a class with the goal of making the top lane experience more enjoyable – (while being in it and after emerging from it)."
He continued, dicussing his reasoning for removing Garen's ability ( within this set of changes that are still very much in flux / incomplete ) to end Judgment early.
"I don't want to dwell on specifics because, again, these are first draft changes that have not even been playtested once outside of the lane. The reasoning for the change though was to make casting E a major commitment. Again, not every change will make Garen stronger. Every change should open space for us to make Garen stronger in the right hands."To talk about the "not ready" changes even more, he noted that the Judgment crit chance on the PBE is also bugged:
"The ability on PBE is granting 1-3% due to a bug."
When asked about his comments on these changes and fighters as a class in S4, he elaborated that we'll see more about them in the coming weeks:
"We'll hopefully start talking publicly about that in 2-6 weeks! Then the plan is to iterate on thoughtful feedback/playtesting from the community and have a more enjoyable fighter class, and top lane/jungle experience (the three are inextriacbly linked) ready for season 4."
Thresh's Q too big?
Responding to complaints that Thresh's Q is "too big" and catches targets that it visually shouldn't, CertainlyT commented:
"I have heard this complaint from several people, though I tend to feel like Thresh's grab generally hits true. I'll take a peak at the missile from different cast positions and see if camera angle is contributing -- there are ways to minimize its impact.
For reference, here are some stats on similar spells:
Death Sentence -- CastTime=0.5 LineWidth=70.0000 MissileSpeed=1900.0000 CastRange=1100
Rocket Grab -- CastTime=0.25 LineWidth=70.0000 MissileSpeed=1800.0000 CastRange=1050.0000
Bandage Toss -- CastTime=0.433 LineWidth=80.0000 MissileSpeed=2000.0000 CastRange=1100.000
Anchor Drag -- CastTime=0.25 LineWidth=90.0000 MissileSpeed=2000.0000 CastRange=1100"
Dragonmaster Swain WHERE!?
In light of Ao Shin being announced and the word "dragon" floating around a lot, requests for Riot to produce the fan favorite "Dragonmaster Swain" skin have started popped up more than usual.
Meddler comments:
"Dragon Master Swain's on our list of skins we aim to do at some point. No firm timetable yet on when, can say not in the immediate future at the very least though."
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