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New champion reworks = missed opportunity

Raptamei·8/6/2015, 4:39:15 PM·1 votes·404 views

We all know Riot's new gimmicks. Skarner's crystals, Garen's villain, Morde's dragon, Fiora's sectors.

The problem with all of them is that they are tacked on. They do not define the champion's kit in a simple and straightforward manner. They're just more passives, and they have "designer wank" written all over them.

Anyone played Dota 2? Broodmother can spin webs over a lane and gradually expand their zone of coverage, like slowly growing indestructible zerg creep that gives invisibility. This, as well as her broodling pets, cements her role as a zone control and front door pusher hero. Simple, solid identity. Zagara in HotS is the same thing, except with actual creep, no invisibility but a global teleport ult for maximum rat hoto.

Skarner has crystals. Their only real impact on decision making is that sometimes you may want to zig instead of zag when running away so you run into a crystal aura, and the enemy will have a slight preference for ganking you away from them. You won't pick Skarner to create fortified turtle zones, you won't use those zones to creep your way into the enemy base. They lead to unique decision making, but not to unique strategy. Does Skarner have a niche now? No.

Morde's dragon rewards him for taking dragon. Does this allow teams to pick Morde and go for a dragon control strat, like you would pick Ursa in Dota 2 to go for a level 1 "baron" all in strat? Absolutely not, it's just a freebie. Again, perhaps you're a little bolder when trying to steal dragon, but does it give Morde a unique niche? No.

Garen. The villain mechanic doesn't exist in Dota, but it is not hard to imagine it on a dedicated anti-carry hero, the equivalent of Anti-Mage for ADCs. In League? It's just a fancy bonus that helps you kill the enemy ADC a little harder and rewards Garen for feeding his lane. Again, it affects your decision making in a unique way, but does it give Garen a unique niche? No.

Tl;dr none of the recent gimmicks have any strategic impact. They don't change the way you approach the match, they only affect relatively minor micro decisions. This is much less than it could have been.

1 Comments

Radnar the bold8/6/2015, 4:45:08 PM2 votes

Garen also got a nerf to his silence that only silences people for 1.5 seconds at all ranks, His E moves 20% slower when moving to champions, His W has to be scaled by kills but has max limit unlike sion, nasus, veigar, thresh, etc. And wow his ult is great if you can get the person, you could be attacking the villian and then pop the ult, right whent he villians changes to someone else. Garen and Morde bascially got changes that hurt them ( they made morde an adc? and they made garen slower when he is already slow)