League of Legends XL: Season on Hold 'til Morello gets Gold

[ex cathedra]

Shen is so massively OP.

Also, is it just me, or does he counter Garen in lane thanks to his Q?

Shen doesn't really have any hard counters in lane, and he has a ton of favorable matchups. He gets outpaced by Jax and Irelia once they get a couple thousand gold down. His toughest lane is probably Jayce, though Darius and Olaf can be trouble.

[Eldariel]

...I turned the LoL gameplay data in to a service, basically.

Oh. That's...massively useful, especially applications there-of. It'll be much faster to figure everything out now. And maybe the site won't be a patch behind regularly

Shen doesn't really have any hard counters in lane, and he has a ton of favorable matchups. He gets outpaced by Jax and Irelia once they get a couple thousand gold down. His toughest lane is probably Jayce, though Darius and Olaf can be trouble.

Speaking of Olaf, Last Whisper Olaf looks crazy now. Armor? What Armor?

[Nadevoc]

WW's Q massively beats Poppy's in trades through the laning phase. It costs more mana, but he's got a larger mana pool and a vastly higher mana regen rate. That plus the lifesteal in his passive gives him better sustain, and hence much better lane pressure and zoning power. The last time I took Poppy laning against Warwick, I got utterly destroyed. That was a while ago, granted, and I didn't have masteries/runes worth a darn back then, but it was still one of the worst times I've ever had in lane.

The only way WW can spam Q is if he picks up Chalice. Which, admittedly, Lanewick often does. It does outscale Poppy's Q, but it also very quickly starts running into her passive, thus letting Poppy's Q outscale it. She should actually win trades by level five or so, but not necessarily by enough to outscale WW's farm.

But the main thing isn't trading. It's that WW is a sustain champ, and doesn't have a lot of killing power. Poppy probably shouldn't go into lane and say, "Okay, I'm'a kill this WW!" She should instead say, "Okay, I've got possibly the most OP passive in the game. I've got some regen. I'm grabbing MR boots pretty early. I can mostly deal with his harass. This is going to be a farm lane. And guess who that favors? Me!"

[Godskook]

Shen doesn't really have any hard counters in lane, and he has a ton of favorable matchups. He gets outpaced by Jax and Irelia once they get a couple thousand gold down. His toughest lane is probably Jayce, though Darius and Olaf can be trouble.

I was under the impression that the best way to counter Shen is to play someone who can easily destroy his tower the moment he ults(Admittedly, most of the champs you mentioned eat towers rather easily).

[Silverraptor]

Dunno. I like to think that most itemization is just common sense, and that once you understand why certain stats are valuable in certain combinations there's nothing more to learn. To be fair, lots of people have hang-ups like "item X is just bad" that aren't particularly well supported, but still. Stats still have roughly similar value, so if you understood why good S2 items were good you shouldn't have much trouble adjusting.

If you memorized item builds, though... you might have a problem for a couple of days until someone comes along to spoon-feed you knowledge.

*Prepares High-Chair*

*Ties on Bib*

*Makes motions to get someone to spoonfeed him*



Though to be honest, I'm not that bad. While I do mainly memorize builds, I do have a basic understanding on why I need and want certain items over others. But this is still a warning on those I play with often, I will be asking alot of questions.

Edit:

Okay, putting thoughts of some items in this spoiler for those of you to see my reaction.

Spoiler

Show

-Seraph's Embrace: Why do I feel a lot of blitzcranks are going to get this item?
-Phantom Dancer: Did they make this an "F U Hecarim!"
-Guardian Angel: WHAIFRNISOFJSHDILAOEJDILMAODDOJSAPYA!!!!!! Did you really just give the item you nerfed its original stats on reviving?! WHAT?!
-Sword of Divine: IT RETURNS!!!
-Boots of Swiftness: So they give the item something that might make it purchasable?
-Warmogs: HOLY HELL!
-Deathfire: HOLY HELL!
-Morello: F U Volibear.

Wow. Just... wow.

[ex cathedra]

I was under the impression that the best way to counter Shen is to play someone who can easily destroy his tower the moment he ults(Admittedly, most of the champs you mentioned eat towers rather easily).

That alone doesn't counter him; Shen ulting bottom lane, securing some combination of one/two/three kills plus dragon and/or bot tower is a huge gold swing, and while taking his tower can mitigate that it doesn't do anything to prevent the massive pressure he puts on the entire map throughout every post-6 phase of the game.

Speaking of Olaf, Last Whisper Olaf looks crazy now. Armor? What Armor?

Look out guys, Olaf is dealing true damage. Let's see. Aegis upgrade would be ridiculous on, like, everyone. So there's that. I wonder if anything will replace his CDR core of Shurelya's + FH. Everything after that is just a bonus, to be fair. Lizard Elder Spirit is 50 AD and turns Reckless Swings into a 406 true damage nuke. It's cute how it has a 3 second DoT and 40% CDR Champion Smite has a 3 second cooldown.

Zeke's gives AD now, which is cool. It's a much better bruiser item in most cases, I think, but the non-CDR stats are a bit on the low side. Why do defensive auras get to be efficient (Aegis, FH) while offensive auras are so unimpressive? Almost everyone wants defense, so Aegis is buildable on like everyone and FH is staple for like 40% of the champion roster.

OH MY GOD BLACK CLEAVER OLAF. None of BC's stats are unique. I want to buy two of themmmm

[dgnslyr]

Well, the only thing that could possibly replace Frozen Heart on Olaf is the Frozen Fist, or whatever it's called now. Tankiness, CDR, and even the damage/slow effect, it all looks pretty strong, though it's more of a snowballing item than the more defensive Frozen Heart. Or why not both? Didn't Shurelia's get its CDR nerfed a bit? So the extra CDR and tankiness won't go to waste, and with the not-insignificant GA nerfs, it could be a replacement worth considering.

[ChaosOS]

GA's combine cost is absurd now, 1480 is so long to wait, it's almost a BF sword. Sure, the revive is decently strong now, but remember late game ADC maybe has 2200 HP, so the revive is doing less HP and mana is a non-issue/about the same. And 18 less AR and 8 less MR is going to hurt. On the other hand, Bulwark vs. GA is going to be a serious choice on frontliners, with some preferring Bulwark (Hecarim for one), while mumu will stick with GA to get a second chance at his ult.

Also, still hecarim will be silly since his W applies Spirit of the Elder Lizard. Expect massive damage hecarims with (boots) Iceborn Gauntlet, Spirit Visage, and Spirit of the Elder Lizard, then floating around with Bulwark and Shurelyas or Black Cleaver depending on the need for more damage or utility to cap off CDR.

[ChaosOS]

Well, the only thing that could possibly replace Frozen Heart on Olaf is the Frozen Fist, or whatever it's called now. Tankiness, CDR, and even the damage/slow effect, it all looks pretty strong, though it's more of a snowballing item than the more defensive Frozen Heart. Or why not both? Didn't Shurelia's get its CDR nerfed a bit? So the extra CDR and tankiness won't go to waste, and with the not-insignificant GA nerfs, it could be a replacement worth considering.

It's called Iceborn Gauntlet, and Axe Spam gives decent slow, but yeah Shurelyas is down to 10% CDR.

[Godskook]

GA's combine cost is absurd now, 1480 is so long to wait, it's almost a BF sword. Sure, the revive is decently strong now, but remember late game ADC maybe has 2200 HP, so the revive is doing less HP and mana is a non-issue/about the same. And 18 less AR and 8 less MR is going to hurt. On the other hand, Bulwark vs. GA is going to be a serious choice on frontliners, with some preferring Bulwark (Hecarim for one), while mumu will stick with GA to get a second chance at his ult.

1.GA's overall cost remained static. The change you're seeing is that they pulled a cloth armor out of the recipe, Chain Vest got 20g more expensive, and the other 280g went into the combine cost.

2.Amumu is....like one of the single *BEST* examples of someone who should be building Bulwark over GA*. He should be ulting to start fights, and thus, GA won't help with that. (*Don't start the debate of AP over support on mummy, that's entirely tangential to my point).

-------------

Is it me, or does spirit stone look really strong compared to razors? The Hp5 cleanly compensates for the lack of armor, while the Mp5 means more map presence on most champions. Combined with the fact that Maim only scales with AS, while butcher scales with everything, and I don't see wriggles being built very often on junglers in S3(Shyvana is an obvious exception, for instance).

[McDouggal]

AAAAnd the servers go down as I'm stomping with Shen

[Winterwind]

-Phantom Dancer: Did they make this an "F U Hecarim!"

Well, if you mean it in the sense that it turns people into Hecarim, kinda. If you mean that they made it useless for Hecarim, it was extremely useless for him anyway.
(seriously, I cringe every time I see people build it on him. He doesn't benefit from the attack speed because of Rampage, and he doesn't really need the crit chance, either; his passive doesn't justify paying 3k gold for a little bit more movement speed!)

Also, still hecarim will be silly since his W applies Spirit of the Elder Lizard. Expect massive damage hecarims with (boots) Iceborn Gauntlet, Spirit Visage, and Spirit of the Elder Lizard, then floating around with Bulwark and Shurelyas or Black Cleaver depending on the need for more damage or utility to cap off CDR.

On the other hand, tankiness is usually more valuable on Hecarim than damage. While Spirit of the Elder Lizard looks awesome on him, I can't help but wonder if Spirit of the Ancient Golem wouldn't be better on him nonetheless.

One (Hecarim-related) thing that irritates me about the new items is that they will make it very difficult to justify building movement speed on Hecarim. Iceborn Gauntlet seems too much superior to Trinity Force on him to justify building Trinity Force anymore, and with Force of Nature gone, there's no longer a defensive item that gives movement speed. None of the new items that give movement speed have stats Hecarim really wants (most of them being primarly about attack speed), so... yeah.

[ex cathedra]

his passive doesn't justify paying 3k gold for a little bit more movement speed!)

Hecarim's passive doesn't really justify buying any movespeed whatsoever.

[Winterwind]

Hecarim's passive doesn't really justify buying any movespeed whatsoever.

It doesn't per se, but movement speed itself is a pretty useful stat for him - making it easier to stay on top of the enemy squishies, initiate fights with less chance for the enemy to react, get behind people and E them towards his team, etc. Getting extra stat points out of something you want anyway is a nice bonus. The problem is that he doesn't quite want it to the point where it turns otherwise sub-optimal items into a sensible choice for him, and with the new items, the few items that gave movement speed yet were also useful on him otherwise (TF, FoN) are removed or supplanted by new, better choices.

[Eldariel]

Look out guys, Olaf is dealing true damage. Let's see. Aegis upgrade would be ridiculous on, like, everyone. So there's that. I wonder if anything will replace his CDR core of Shurelya's + FH. Everything after that is just a bonus, to be fair. Lizard Elder Spirit is 50 AD and turns Reckless Swings into a 406 true damage nuke. It's cute how it has a 3 second DoT and 40% CDR Champion Smite has a 3 second cooldown.

Zeke's gives AD now, which is cool. It's a much better bruiser item in most cases, I think, but the non-CDR stats are a bit on the low side. Why do defensive auras get to be efficient (Aegis, FH) while offensive auras are so unimpressive? Almost everyone wants defense, so Aegis is buildable on like everyone and FH is staple for like 40% of the champion roster.

OH MY GOD BLACK CLEAVER OLAF. None of BC's stats are unique. I want to buy two of themmmm

I still don't know if you want any offensive stats on him since his defensive scaling is so ridiculously good as is his base damage. I think one offensive item tops; so it'd be either Cleaver or LW. Cleaver has CDR, which is nice but IDK.

Iceborn Gauntlet is indeed interesting but it gives no health and competes with Randuin's for a spot (you want FH anyways since 20% CDR, the mana to back it up and a ton of Armor alongside an amazing Aura for a tanky frontliner) so I'm not quite sold on that yet.

Either way, I'm liking the wider itemization options here. But having inherent flat ArPen, masterying ArPen and then getting 40% percentile on top of that alongside the 8% mastery means "oops".


Btw, one thing I don't like about the new masteries; the opportunity cost of getting MPen is now much higher since you need to take the AP/Level Mastery for it. Previously, everybody could take the CDR and it was useful so you could run it on champs like Darius, Corki & co. but now you need some decent AP scaling to go down that road.

On the flipside, Frenzy is still really, really bad and now you don't need it for the ArPen mastery so the opportunity cost of getting the CDR is heavily diminished.

[LordShotGun]

I wanna play the new patch but I am too busy with Farcry 3 (excellent game)....First World Problems indeed.

Edit: I know!!! I will play farcry while watching Chaox on my tethered cell phone

[ex cathedra]

FH + Shurelya's is ****ing impeccable, as always, but the Shurelya's nerf leaves you 10% short of CDR cap and you don't get CDR from the defensive tree anymore. BC fills in that gap perfectly and the additional Q damage helps lategame. The high-AoE, low-CD nature of Undertow spreads stacks quickly, and 30% armor reduction is kind of a big deal.

[toasty]

If you memorized item builds, though... you might have a problem for a couple of days until someone comes along to spoon-feed you knowledge.

Yeah in the Patch preview Morello was talking about how he wanted people not to build the same cookie-cutter build and there I was saying "But... I never do... my builds are different every game." But then I remember my low elo friend who last year was like "don't worry, I wrote down a build for this hero."

Patching now. Have classes from 11-3:30. Then I will probably play for a few hours before spending the entire night... writing a paper about Theology and Religion (because I'm a theology major).

Why couldn't they patch... you know... not the week before finals?

[Reynard]

Also, still hecarim will be silly since his W applies Spirit of the Elder Lizard. Expect massive damage hecarims with (boots) Iceborn Gauntlet, Spirit Visage, and Spirit of the Elder Lizard, then floating around with Bulwark and Shurelyas or Black Cleaver depending on the need for more damage or utility to cap off CDR.

No, his W doesn't apply it, being technically 'periodic damage'. His Q does, however. And before you ask if I am sure, Yes.

[PersonMan]

That alone doesn't counter him; Shen ulting bottom lane, securing some combination of one/two/three kills plus dragon and/or bot tower is a huge gold swing, and while taking his tower can mitigate that it doesn't do anything to prevent the massive pressure he puts on the entire map throughout every post-6 phase of the game.

Aye. Honestly, I'd say someone with some on-call hard CC is perfect for this. Darius is really fun.

"Wanted to save someone? Nope! Also I'm now attacking you."

It's especially good against people who ult bot lane, then stop looking at the minimap and then go "ohcrap why do I only have 300 HP-OHHH I DIED".

[Maeglin_Dubh]

Eldariel, when you say Frenzy, do you mean Fury, the ASpd mastery? What makes it so bad?

[Eldariel]

Eldariel, when you say Frenzy, do you mean Fury, the ASpd mastery? What makes it so bad?

Fury, yeah, that one. It's simply 1% ASpd isn't worth very much; 1% CDR is likely much higher impact. I mean, just look at Berserker Greaves vs. Ionians; Greaves are much cheaper and give 25% ASpd while Ionians give 15% CDR. You can still run it but I know I'll be preferring 4% CDR to 4% ASpd every day simply because it's more bang for my mastery points; it's kinda like Brute Force vs. Mental Force in season 2. Mental Force gives AP, Brute Force gives AD, both give the same amount so Brute Force was just far more valuable and thus I ran it on everybody who had any chance of using it (then again, Havoc was even worse so on mages I usually ran Mental Force over Havoc).

[Forrestfire]

I went into a custom game to test stuff and oh god everything is different XD

[Mtg_player_zach]

I think my least favorite thing is tying the mpen to AP. I can't really take the mpen on Mundo or Shyvana or any of my junglers that would enjoy that. This blows.

[NineThePuma]

Mundo can use SOME ap, it's just not optimal to load him up with it. But Haunting Guise and it's upgrade offers AP, MPen, and health.

[ex cathedra]

Health isn't significantly more valuable on Mundo than it is on most champions, though, and Liandy's is a HUGE gold investment for mediocre return.

Also, I secondary max E on Shyvana and it has like a .6 or .8 ratio. It's not like you're Darius or anything. Old Shyvana had to get 4% CDR to get her MPen and she literally has the worst CDR scaling in the entire game. She really isn't any worse off after the swap.

[Eldariel]

Also, I secondary max E on Shyvana and it has like a .6 or .8 ratio. It's not like you're Darius or anything. Old Shyvana had to get 4% CDR to get her MPen and she literally has the worst CDR scaling in the entire game. She really isn't any worse off after the swap.

Whuh? A no-resource champion constantly spamming all her abilities with a self-reducing cooldown; surely someone like Akali, Katarina or Kennen makes far, far worse use of CDR?

[ex cathedra]

Akali and Kennen have Energy-generation mechanics that are CDR-based, and I think that both of them use blue buff better than most mana mages past 40 minutes.

Kat benefits from CDR a) in lane and b) situationally with zhonya's, so she's definitely in a similar league with Shyv and Rumble.

Frankly, though, Burnout is negligibly affected by CDR, her ult almost doesn't interact with it at all, and her E just... isn't that important. It's a good ability that interacts with her kit, yeah, but CDR doesn't make it way way better like it does Terrify, PAC, Final Sparkle, or Undertow. She has one skill that really appreciates it, her Q, and even that has an alternative mechanic. Having Nashor's and (old) Zeke's as her only source of hybrid AS/CDR itemization didn't help and she was better off with a couple of recurve bows.

[Tychris1]

Urgh, played my first day with the new items. Went 2/7 (Well, primarily from Orianna failing hard at mid and feeding). Really need to get someone to help me along the way, or atleast someone else to blunder at bot lane with me so that I can better learn what items don't and do work.

[Eldariel]

Frankly, though, Burnout is negligibly affected by CDR, her ult almost doesn't interact with it at all, and her E just... isn't that important. It's a good ability that interacts with her kit, yeah, but CDR doesn't make it way way better like it does Terrify, PAC, Final Sparkle, or Undertow. She has one skill that really appreciates it, her Q, and even that has an alternative mechanic. Having Nashor's and (old) Zeke's as her only source of hybrid AS/CDR itemization didn't help and she was better off with a couple of recurve bows.

I'm surprised you'd say Burnout is negligibly affected by CDR; in long chases and escapes you pop it whenever it's off cooldown and CDR with it increases your average speed substantially. And yes, Q also scales by ASpd and quite well indeed but ideally you'd want both.

E's real nice for maintaining the on-hit damage bonus constantly. Ult's pretty useless, granted, but meh. And yeah, Kennen and Akali can utilize bluebuff but when thinking CDR itemization they generally should not build any simply 'cause their energy is barely sufficient for their normal rotation. Their inherent energy restoration is far outpaced by the increased costs of lower cooldowns.


She doesn't have the best CDR scaling kit but when it comes down to it, all her abilities are useful throughout the game, 1 has very good CDR scaling and the other 2 are okay only leaving her ult out. Her CDR scaling isn't amazing but to say it's awful, I can't but disagree. The amount of ASpd needed to gain similar Q scaling you get with CDR is much higher.

Not that you should actually go out of your way to build CDR on her, of course, but any incidental CDR you can get helps a lot; I haven't went through S3 items in great detail yet (kinda busy right now and it's not live on EUW in any case) but if there are some CDR items that have other stats going well with her kits I could see building CDR on her.