5 Reasons Why the Mid-Season Update Will Be Awesome, 5 Reasons Why it Will Suck

First of all, just so that you can get some context on what I'm talking about, here are some links: http://www.surrenderat20.net/2016/04/419-pbe-update.html http://www.surrenderat20.net/2016/04/419-pbe-update.html http://www.surrenderat20.net/2016/04/420-pbe-update.html http://www.surrenderat20.net/2016/04/421-pbe-update.html http://www.surrenderat20.net/2016/04/422-pbe-update.html http://www.surrenderat20.net/2016/04/425-pbe-update.html http://www.surrenderat20.net/2016/04/426-pbe-update.html http://www.surrenderat20.net/2016/04/427-pbe-update.html http://www.surrenderat20.net/2016/04/428-pbe-update.html

When the post about the upcoming changes first hit the boards, most people had bad opinions on it and were rightfully worried, since these changes are likely more massive than the preseason changes. But over the time some people also found the good aspects of it and grew to like it.

Instead of stating and explaining my own opinion ( initially only wanted to make 5 reasons why it's awesome ) I think it's fairer if I also name the arguments of the opposition so that you can form an opinion on your own, if you haven't looked that much into the list of changes yet.

So without further ado, let's get started:

5 Reasons Why the Midseason Update Will Be Awesome:

1: Better Mana Itemization for Mages While most people are criticising the removal of base mana regeneration from the mage classes and it getting limited to pretty much supports only, the new mana items give more options that are actual choices rather than going for Rod of Ages every game. Morellonomicon for example will be your average CDR-based item for champs with longer range ( Xerath, Ziggs, Vel, ... ) , Rod of Ages is more oriented towards mid-ranged bruisery mages ( Swain, Brand, Annie, ... ) and Archangel's Staff is for those who need a big manapool ( Cassiopeia, Anivia ). They also interact really good with each other, because all three give mana which will turn into AP with Archangel's Passive. And lastly, the manapool of mages now have more conditions attached to them. Back in the day when artillery mages were meta there was little counterplay to their long-ranged poke, because they would always rely on their manareg and never starve, if you remember Azir in his golden days for example or those who came before him. Now you can't just do that - with RoA you'll have to get into the fight, Tear must be stacked and Morellonomicon will refund 20% of your max mana - but only if you score kills or assists - which makes the mana situation overall more balanced.

2.Better CDR Itemization for AP Champions Right now the AP champions that are traditionally acquainted with synergizing with CDR are struggling to properly build it right now. Let's take TF for example. Since Morellonomicon is kind of a mediocre item right now you get RoA instead to cover your mana costs. But where do you get your CDR now? You can get 10% from Ionian boots, 10% with Lichbane and 15% from proper runes, and you will have to give up potential MR base, MRperlvl or APperlvl for that. Not only that, you will be 5% short of the CDR cap. If you buy Morellonomicon you are kinda wasting the Manareg portion of it because you already should have covered your mana costs with your RoA and Lichbane, it also doesn't really give good AP Values compared to other items. Just because it's that good of a stat on TF you will have to take it anyway - and you're stuck with a mediocre build. Now imagine TF after the changes to the current items and the addition of the new ones. Now you can safely go for a Morellonomicon first, because RoA is now a bruiser item and Morello got some pretty neat buffs - it's build path is pretty damn good with the new lost chapter passive and since you should score a lot of kills and assists with your ult you should also make good use of Morellonomicon's passive too. It willalso give a solid amount of AP now, being buffed to 100 from80. With Lichbane and 10% from either Ionian boots or from 6 CDRperlvl runes you will be able to cap out CDR again rather easily. And this is just one example of many - this goes for pretty much every AP champion who is struggling to cap out CDR right now, especially since Zhonya's and Abyssal now also give CDR.

3. AP Bruisers Will Finally Be Able to Build Actual AP If you take Gragas, Elise, Ekko or any other simular melee bruiser champion's kit and you'd know nothing about the current AP item situation, you'd assume they'd build a healthy mix of both AP and tank items. Well instead you are stuck with items that were intended to fill the role of damage-tank hybrid champions but they all ended up being used for other purposes. Abyssal Scepter is kind of okay, but you will miss out on some potential CDR and HP - it is instead better suited for assassins, who can buy this cheap item early on to make use of low enemy resistance values and snowball a game. Zhonya's is an item with both armor and AP but too much of it's gold value is invested into AP rather than armor which is bad for a bruiser, and bruisers do not make as much use of the active as squishy assassins and mages do. Rod of Ages is kind of okay aswell but still really expensive and it gives more AP and less HP than you might want from it. Liandry's is highly situational - and Rylai's is actually kinda good. If you compare that to the tank-damage hybrid item options their AD cousins got, you slowly see why AP bruisers are built as utility tanks rather than actual AP bruisers - they have amazing options like Black Cleaver, Sterak's Gage, Titanic Hydra and Maw of Malmortius who are all viable, just to name a few. Sure, Runic Echoes has kinda helped with the situation, but it alone was not able to really make the situation as good as the one that AD bruisers are in right now. But with the mid-season changes you have loads of new options to play with and make a proper AP bruiser build. Abyssal now gives more MR, less AP, it's pen scales with level and it has 10% CDR, a wet dream for any Gragas or Amumu main and pretty much the AP equivalent of Maw of Malmortius. RoA is focussed more towards giving a lot of HP early on and it's passive is just godlike. The best part is the new Rocketbelt, which will help a lot with closing gaps between you and your target and unloading your spellcomb at close range.

4. Guinsoo's and Sated Devourer Situation Will Finally be Balanced A change unnoticed by most, it will actually mean the most to everyone who hated being slashed up by Yi after he AFK farmed for half the game. With the stacking mechanic finally gone, the balance dilemma of it is gone too and champions like Shyvana and On-Hit Udyr will actually be able to make use of their early pressure instead of being forced to farm monsters all the time. Guinsoo's on the other hand always was a really weird item ever since it got reworked. It has an extremely strange build path that only the fewest could really make use of and that ended up being extremely cost unefficient. The complete item on the other hand is completely broken because you get 64% (!) attackspeed that you never actually paid for and an absurd on-hit with internal scaling, the 200% gold efficency of it when being fully stacked is completely irritating when you consider the gold inefficiency that it's components have. The new one will cost 800 gold more to combat it's high gold efficiency and they'll add a recurve bow to actually get you what you were paying for when you complete your item and to combat the gold inefficiency of its build path. It will now also actually have the theme of being an on-hit item first and foremost attached to it, because it will now have 15 magic on-hit damage flat and instead of having that weird scaling on-hit when fully stacked. Instead, you will get the phantom hit on every other attack that sated devourer has right now. Not only is it attached to more condition now ( it has to get stacked up first instead of having it permanently ) it will now also be available to toplaners like Irelia or Jax and marksmen like Kog'Maw and Vayne who always dreamed of having it. Overall a good change to balance out the absurd situation we have right now.

5: Towers Won't be Made of Paper Anymore: We have complained and complained month after month and Riot has finally listened. They will gift us with increased tankiness and damage ramp-up on towers and less gold for taking the inner towers, so that they can actually protect you from those annoying Nidalee dives. This will make toplane especially less of a stomp into one side's favour but a more even game where combacks are possible and you'll be able to farm up properly and in competitive we might see something else than tower trading pre-6 every game.

5 Reasons Why the Midseason Upate Will Suck:

1: Removal of Will of the Ancients While it always remained a niche stat it was still a nice option to have. You could see it sometimes on Bjerg's Azir and on a lot of Mordekaisers and certainly on every Vladimir - which Riot stated is the reason why they will remove it, it would always be OP on Vladimir whatever they did. Even so, I find this to be kind of lazy. The way spellvamp works made it bad on most champions, not only the fact that Vladimir existed. The 33% AOE mitigation was a rather weird approach to balance it. Sure, you can't have a Karthus heal for 1k HP after ulting but when fighting against only one person or even when fighting several enemies at once you get only 1/3 of the spellvamp you paid for if your spell is AOE, which is really confusing. Lifesteal on the other hand is allowed to be AOE with Runaan's and Ravenous Hydra which is kind of hypocritical. It could have instead been made to heal only for the nearest or first target hit by your spells, the same way lifesteal works with Yasuo's Q. And even with Vladimir existing, you could've just as easily made a personal debuff for him so that he profits less from spellvamp so that it can be allowed on all other champions. It's like giving Yasuo 100% crit damage instead of the 90% he has right now and nerfing all crit items in returm so that every Marksmen has to suffer for making Yasuo balanced.

3: The Balancing Outliers: When you look through the changes you can see a lot of potential outliers that will turn out to be permabans. Even though they might get compensation nerfs after they got into the spotlight because of item changes, they will exist in their status for up to several months if Riot takes it slowly and you might not have enough bans to cover them all and some will slip through and cause havoc. One of these examples is Zed. He already is pretty strong right now and frequently banned, but the removal of QSS will push him into top tier status rather easily. Sure, it will be a balancing anchor for future changes but having him in this status for so long is kind of controversial. Another Outlier will be the Kindred. They already are arguably the best Junglers in the game but they will get even better next patch. The rising in objective importance will make Kindred godlike because she can control them pretty well wiith her Ults in close quarters and all the %HP shred she gains from Bloodrazor and her passive. Bloodrazor will also increase a the item synergy she has with her jungle item by a ton. Right now she either has to pick Warrior, which kinda sucks because the Kindred have mediocre AD ratios and don't profit a lot from CDR. And while they can make use of the attackspeed and on-hit Devourer gives them, the fact that it is gimped for ranged champions also makes it arguably bad on them. Bloodrazor on the other hand does not have an annoying stacking mechanic attached to it and also isn't gimped for ranged champions. The last one I want to talk about is Ekko. His base damage got nerfed more and more over the last few patches but an important thing to note is that AP ratios got buffed incresingly too. As I pointed out above AP bruiser builds will be pretty strong which means that Ekko might terrorize toplane again. This time not with Sunfire and Frozen Gauntlet though, but with RoA and Abyssal Scepter and a few tank items mixed in. And these are only a few and you could speculate a lot more. The reworks of the mages are pretty hard to predict and some of them might be pretty insane, the PBE is not able to give us enough reilable information on that.

4: %Base Manareg Will be Practically Dead With 6.9 %base manareg will be pretty much removed for every class but supports. While making ability spam and manadraining more conditional is a good intent and it might even work out, taking out the safety that %base manaref granted you is a pretty dangerous move. It might end up messing up the mana situation completely so that a lot of patches will have to come out to balance it out again, since almost every mage is affected by it. I won't go much into detail because other people have talked about this enough already but if the predictions of the critics are true, we might have a balance dilemma that will take several months to fix.

5: Viktor's Rework Clunciness While not being announced at first during the Mid-Season Patch Preview, Viktor's Rework came pretty much out of nowhere and without any context it hit the PBE. Because of not being mentioned in the preview would imply that Viktor has no problems attached to his kit the sudden rework would imply otherwise. It also seems to mostly nerf him and give him less benefits than the other mage reworks, because his spells will hit really slow now. It is random to the extent that he's changed up almost every day right now and no one knows why because no context was given on it. It is hard to predict what his final state will be and if it will change him for better or worse, but considering the confusing things that are happening to him right now the worries of the community are definitely justified.

And this basically wraps it up. After reading through all of this I'm highly interested into what of an opinion most people actually have or what side they may have chosen to join now that they read this. So, here's a Poll:

EDIT: I actually skipped number 2 on bad things because I was tired. Sorry. I still think they are enough though.