Some thoughts on new Galio from an Old Galio main.
Alright, I'm not gonna rage. I'm going to try and be thoughtful and helpful with this critique.
My first thoughts on new Galio is that old Galio was ignored. Between his dialogue, look, and the feel of his new kit. Old Galio always had this somber, thoughtful feel, that was cohesive between his dialogue and kit. New Galio has scrapped this feeling in favor of making new Galio feel more like a giant, dumb, brute. See quotes: "So, what do you people do when you're not fighting" "So many things to squash" "Fight me small warrior person" and "Smash." These dumber, more aggro quotes are in line with the feel that was attempted with new Galio, but that doesn't change that it doesn't feel like old Galio. New Galio feels more like he wants to go charging into battle, whereas old Galio felt like yes, he would fight, many of his quotes made it sound more like he didn't want to, but it was in retaliation. See quotes "A guardian is always prepared," "Justice will be done," "So be it," "I will protect," and "I will not fail." These aggro quotes were especially disappointing after reading his lore, and I feel like there were some key points missed, especially with the line "Old humans disappear, and new ones show up. Must be Magic." It was just disappointing to hear him saying dumb things like this, despite his lore saying that he had figured out what happened to the people disappearing, and I was hoping that he would potentially keep the melancholy, 'I will protect my people at all costs' feel I got from old Galio.
This complete difference in philosophy was carried over into the design of his kit. New Galio's Q is essentially a Frankenstein's monster of the most mediocre aspects of his old Q and E, with some Damage over Time for... no apparent reason. I will admit, I like the look of this attack. And getting all three hits can be satisfying. But I feel it's inferior to his old Q. His new Q can be just as hard to land, but it feels so much less rewarding, because you're most likely missing damage, because it's easy to walk out of. Old Q did a truckload of damage, all you had to do was land it, and there was a slow. It felt great to land, and it was a helpful ability.
His new W keeps... almost none of his old W. Yes the damage reduction is there. But only for Galio. When I played old Galio I found myself more often using this on carries getting focused, other tanks who were turret diving, or just using it on myself to get extra Q damage off of my passive, which I'll talk about next. I almost never used in on myself to give myself protection from damage. I do like the increased use of taunt though, since it is my favorite form of hard CC in this game. His passive shield off of it also makes almost no sense to me. We have no trouble putting shield from hard CC on passives like with Malz, and Morg can even toss them around freely. Why is Galio the only champ with a spell shield that doesn't stop CC?
His passive is nothing at all like his old passive. It's odd, and it feels like the reason this rework went in not the direction I probably would have taken it. His old passive was certainly nothing special, I will admit that. Just free AP off of MR. And any experienced Galio play will tell you you don't actually have to stack MR to play Galio well and deal damage. I found myself building things like ROA and Ninja's Tabi over items that give MR, because the matchup demanded it. His new passive is just a damage buff, and it feels like it's trying to make his auto attack relevant. It's just okay. It feels like Nautilus's passive but just... not as good.
His E. God I hate this ability. But I'm not gonna rage. I said I wouldn't rage. His new E tries to do what his old E did, get him in fights. But now it feels so awkward, what with the windup, the not going through walls even though we have how many abilities that just let people run through walls now? It's also super easy to just bodyblock the ability if you try and use it as an escape. The CC is a knockup, which I guess is okay, if you have a Yasuo on your team. Even then he can't use it because it's just a singe target knockup. You'd be better of with Alistar if you wanted Yas synergy. And then there's the matter of you can't charge your W while using it. If this ability could either run through walls, hit more than one champ, or let you charge your W while using it, it'd actually be an okay ability, but in its current state, it's hard to make it feel like a satisfying ability when it's so easy to miss and has such a limited use compared to similar abilities that can do so much more. I will admit, his old E wasn't exactly the best ability, and I am giving it a bit of a free pass just because I love it to death, despite how it hardly does any damage in exchange for a movespeed buff in a single direction. But how many champs actually give a buff to movement speed now that we got rid of enchantments on boots? There's Janna, and there's Sivir's ult. It was a rare type of buff and I'm sad to see it go.
His new ultimate. Okay, so the armor and MR buffs to the ally are nice. I'm glad he gets to keep that, even if it's on an ability that is as odd feeling as his ult. First off, there's the animation. It's so long, and it's so awkward to look at, especially if you don't have the camera locked on Galio and your camera just kinda zooms out all of the sudden and you're not looking at anything. But I will admit this animation looks cool, once. But after once it just grows tedious to watch. The amount of time this ability takes to go off is also a pain. It gives the enemy team plenty of time to reposition to fight somewhere where they aren't going to get hit by hard CC. It suffers from the same issues Tahm Kench ult does, it takes too long with too much telegraphed to the opponent to be useful in most situations, and has to be meticulously set up with the cooperation of your team. His old Ultimate was just his new W with some massive burst tacked onto the end that was really satisfying. I will miss the feeling of getting a flash ult that gets me a free triple.
All in all, my complaints about Galio are rather nitpicky, and come down to a few major points. New Galio is aggressive and dumb, while old Galio was somber and protective, and their kits each reflect those feelings very well. New Galio is fun to play, and his is a good champion. But he's not Galio. He's the reflection of Galio in a funhouse mirror right after Durand gave him a polish. With his new kit, Galio's fallen prey to make each champion feel incredibly unique, cool, and fun to play, at the cost of maintaining and sense of simplicity, and history has shown us that's not always for the better. His old kit had some incredibly unique aspects to it, with a buff to Armor and MR for allies, a movespeed buff for allies, and a massive taunt. Very few champs had this kind of thing available, and while Galio keeps some of them, they feel like they've been kept around solely because they were on the old Galio.
TL;DR: New Galio doesn't feel like old Galio.
