5.22 Patch notes: First impressions + discussion (long post)

DISCLAIMER: These are just my first impressions on reading the patch notes. I haven't played at all on this patch yet, and theory crafting is just out of my depth with so many simultaneous changes. Discuss below in the comments at your leisure.

>Deliberately make Graves (and several other ADC's) dogshit at sieging and encourage him to skirmish/teamfight >Multiple tower and minion changes so that sieging for global gold is the optimal way to win the game

Hm. Okay let's move on. By the way, the minion changes are 100% unacceptable.

>Bilgewater Cutlass now 1650g (+250g) for just +2% lifesteal >BotRK now 3400g (+200g), and gets +2% lifesteal (inherited from Bilge), +5% AS (inherited from Recurve Bow), and -2% currentHP damage.

Bye Vayne.

>"We hate invisible power and randomness!" >Introduces crit, crit everywhere.

So many things have to do with crit now. Crit on more items. More items that had crit have more crit. Shit scales with crit all over the place now. How much did RNGsus pay the balance team? Find out on the next episode of Dragon Ball Z. Also, be ready to see a shitload (more) of Yasuo, probably top lane.

>Somebody brought this up on the boards about 2 weeks ago, but Irelia + Giant Slayer = instagibs anything? More at 11 about how Irelia will probably become an unstoppable split pusher with some of the new items.

>BT now more expensive, involves more ingredients, and gives fewer stat bonuses. Nice. Literally a straight nerf. Way to go. KappaPride

>Almost all AP items universally nerfed, either by cost increase, stat reduction, or both.

Riot's doing that thing again where instead of elevating a weak party to be able to compete with dominant parties, they elevate the weak party and lower the dominant party. Hooray. Curiously, WotA and Nashor's Tooth received small buffs. Maybe Riot just wants us to play Vlad/Azir every game.

>Sword of the Occult removed, but not Mejai's. In fact, Mejai's made somewhat more viable.

This probably has to do with the fact that Sword of the Occult would play a little too nice with all the fancy new AD items (which Riot calls "Marksman items", by the way; we'll get into that in a hot second).

>Almost all defensive items universally nerfed, either by cost increase, stat reduction, or both.

I'm seeing a pattern here.

>Hunter's Machete monster DoT/regen removed, 8% monster-exclusive lifesteal implemented instead. >AP jungling-geared Hunter's Talisman implemented instead.

I guess that's nice for AP junglers, but I wonder how much Elise will benefit.

>Removed Poacher's Knife, replaced with Wriggle's Lantern Tracker's Knife.

Will probably become the standard in competitive jungling, since you don't have to bitch out on combat stats (or do you?) to get second item Sightstone anymore. We'll see.

>Jungle enchantments no longer of equal total cost. Runeglaive > Cindrehulk = Warrior > Devourer

Heavy disagreement. This is blatant favouring of certain jungler types over others (read: AP's got shafted again). Keep in mind that AP and Def items were almost universally nerfed, while AD's get a host of new items to play with.

>ROFL Talisman CD nerf. About time. 30s Talisman CD was obnoxious as hell. >Fat buff to Frost Queen's Claim. Poke support meta? >"By removing 'safe' vision from the map (invisible wards) and placing the other vision resources on meaningful cooldowns, teams will have to think a lot more about where they light up the map, rather than ward coverage being a function of team gold advantage."

Well that only took 6 seasons to realise. Possibly the only good thing to come out of this patch so far. The new "Eyestones" are actually also surprisingly nice.

>Scrying Orb line of trinkets removed with no context provided.

Scrying Orb occupied a very necessary space in the vision game. There was a reason that it became the standard trinket on ADC's. You simply can't afford to risk the facecheck every time you want vision of a bush that was 1000+ range from you as an ADC. A needless and bad item removal IMO; will further remove ADC's from the vision game. The garbo blue trinket that plops a 1 HP ward down is still there as an optional upgrade at Level 9, but that's a long time to wait. Also not sure if it reveals like the old blue orb did.

>Removal of True Sight on Oracle's Lens.

As if stealth had too much counterplay. Hah. Also, "SIZE: Increased by about 50%." About? Tell me how much it was and how much it is now.

>New "Cull" starting item is like starting with a better-but-smaller Avarice Blade. More on this + refillable pots in a second.

>Random buff to Boots of Swiftness? LOL >Ionian Boots now reduce Summoner Spell CD's by 10%. Oh boy get ready for Riven players Flash+Igniting you every two seconds. >Merc Tread tenacity down, Ninja Tabi armour up. I wonder if it has anything to do with mage/tank nerfs + AD buffs.

>Death's Dance: Lifesteals off all physical damage, converts damage taken into a delayed damage-over-time effect. Did we mention it gives as much damage as the new IE, as well as 10%---it's cheaper, too!

WUHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO RIVEN PLAYERS. RIVEN PLAYERS FUCKIN' EVERYWHERE.

>"With Marksman (sic) getting a host of new toys, we're refocusing Ghostblade as a much-needed buy for Assassins." Ghostblade now has no crit (-15%), but has 65 AD (+35 and equal to the new IE)

Yeah man. As if Marksman couldn't buy Youmuu's and Assassins couldn't buy all the new AD items. Or are you compartmentalising the store now?

>Guinsoo's actually quite good now; still has garbage Season 1 item icon. Looks like a god-tier Kog'maw item. >Whines about Ohmwrecker never being bought, makes Ohmwrecker 50g more expensive for no reason. Nice.

>"We hate invisible power!" Overhauls Masteries to give massive benefits. At least the scoreboard shows you what Keystones everyone has, so it's not really invisible, right? Right? Right.

Then again, in Season 2 Riot was adamant that there was not a meta and that the game shouldn't be dictated by a meta. They also didn't want junglers becoming a permanent thing, and look where we are now. It's a meta-locked game if I've ever seen one, and the jungle position largely dictates the flow of the early game. Maybe we shouldn't take Riot's sweeping statements seriously.

Alright, so what does all this mean? Cumulatively, I'm pretty sure the new meta is gonna look something like this: >Bruiser/carry top laner split pushing all fuckin' day, meaning Juggernauts and their peers (eg Fiora) will transition smoothly and have a load of new items to play with. Gee, that's gonna be fun. Big names to watch out for will be Riven, Yasuo, Fiora, Darius, Irelia (off the top of my head).

>Tank jungler, since Cindrehulk is tied with Warrior for second-cheapest jungle item but scales way better. Still a shit choice, though, since so much bonus armour shred and health shred is being introduced with the new AD items. Junglers will continue to be the second-to-bottom- bitch of the team, behind only the supports. Expect all the Cindrehulk-era junglers to come back, except weaker. Either that, or we go full YoloQ and see a bunch of Rengars, Lee Sins, and the like with a 65-AD Ghostblade in hand.

>Safe control mage mid. Same old song and dance that we've been seeing for the past 10 patches. Unless you want a full AD comp (or you want to draft Corki), mids don't get to play with the new AD items much. Sorry, Zed. The familiar crop of Lulu, Orianna, and Co. should be extending their stay throughout the preseason.

>Powerful, scaling, sieging AD carry. What with the way towers and minion advantage works now, it's in everybody's best interest to play Chinese League of Legends and scramble for the global gold from outer turrets and then scale/slowly push and farm your lead until you can smash the base. Power picks will probably be Kog, Trist, Cait, Jinx.

>Sustain/poke support to keep your AD carry happy, healthy, and farming all through lane to stack that Cull. Nami will probably be god-tier this patch.