League of Legends LXV: What threads are mine to make, little Lamb? All, dear Wolf.

[Olinser]

Rageblade Koggy is actually pretty dang good if you can get through his (IMO) now weaker laning phase. It's really stupidly strong once you get it; if your opponents don't have flash and your support isn't a potato, when you show back up to lane if you stack it up you can easily 100-0 one enemy inside 4 seconds. And it's fairly easy to get stacked up.

Getting BotRK after Rageblade makes you into even more of a tankbuster. You can pretty much build to taste otherwise. I personally like going LW into the tankbuster upgrade, then picking up some crit.

The problem is that with the new tissue paper towers Kog very rarely GETS to late game because he loses lane so badly against everybody and towers just get absolutely destroyed. Previously you could at least farm under turrets in a weak lane. Now towers just die in a couple waves.

Right now Kog's highest win rate matchup is against Twitch - and that's still only a 46% win rate. Kog is just so weak in a fight before 2+ items, and his R is now almost totally useless for harass. So he can't fight any other ADC 1v1, and he can't land any appreciable harass on them without emptying his mana pool. AP Kog is just as bad. In fact, I think in the entire history of the game I think this is the first time that 2 totally different builds of the same champion have been the worst and 2nd worst win rates in the game at champion.gg. Even Urgot never locked down both bottom slots that I saw.

Kog's rework has to be the worst thought out rework EVER put in place on a champion.

[McDouggal]

The problem is that with the new tissue paper towers Kog very rarely GETS to late game because he loses lane so badly against everybody and towers just get absolutely destroyed. Previously you could at least farm under turrets in a weak lane. Now towers just die in a couple waves.

Right now Kog's highest win rate matchup is against Twitch - and that's still only a 46% win rate. Kog is just so weak in a fight before 2+ items, and his R is now almost totally useless for harass. So he can't fight any other ADC 1v1, and he can't land any appreciable harass on them without emptying his mana pool. AP Kog is just as bad. In fact, I think in the entire history of the game I think this is the first time that 2 totally different builds of the same champion have been the worst and 2nd worst win rates in the game at champion.gg. Even Urgot never locked down both bottom slots that I saw.

Kog's rework has to be the worst thought out rework EVER put in place on a champion.

Olinser, where are you getting this data from?

I have a pet theory. A lot of people are still leveling W first on kog, which is completely wrong. If whatever tools you use can tell you what the skill order winrate is, that would be actually useful.

The fact that I can shred a fed Garen to half health in 6 seconds with only a Rageblade and a cutlass tells me that his autos are perfectly fine once you get an item under your belt. And yes, this Garen did have tank items, he wasn't just going full damage.

I also disagree with your assessment that this is a terrible rework. I don't think he'll ever be a solo-queue powerhouse because he requires a bit of investment by your team to keep the squishy alive. For this reason, I shudder to think of what a Braum/Kog lane would look like. Giving an artillery piece a shield from incoming fire is really scary.

[thracian]

6 seconds is a long-ass time dude.

I think people are still building Kog poorly, mostly, but I think he's undertuned as well. It will be difficult to say where he should be balanced numbers-wise until people learn to play him in his new form, so giving some time is probably best.

[Ashen Lilies]

AP Kog (and Marksman Kog, imo, but I haven't played him enough because bot-lane assassin Tristana is so much fun) is much more hurt by the faster meta than his rework (though the numbers were definitely a little on the low side pre-hotfix, and still might be). I've played a few games with the 'traditional' AP Kog build, and it's still capable of outputting obscene amounts of damage when you reach that 2.5 item mark.

The loss of base damage on his R hurts a little, but the combination of Luden's and Liandry's procs are still enough to put some poke damage on full-health targets (Deathfire Touch is a really valuable mastery on any Liandry's user), and then once people start dropping below that half-health mark he's an obscene clean-up threat (think Darius but with 8x the range). He's a great addition to a team that already has some poke or burst that gets people close to or under his execute threshold, and of course taking Baron is always going to be a dicey proposition against him if you end up tanking a little too hard and he blasts you straight back to the fountain from the other side of the wall.

Once the tower changes next patch come through that slow the meta down a bit, I see Kog definitely coming back as a better pick. He was apparently OP on the PBE and got preemptively nerfed (too much) before coming on to live, so there theoretically should exist some space in between there where he's decent.

[JayceSL]

Just got into LoL after a few months' worth of abscence. Jesus, I have no idea what's going on.

[shadow_archmagi]

Just got into LoL after a few months' worth of abscence. Jesus, I have no idea what's going on.

All the items are different and half the champs have had dramatic reworks.

Only Poppy is untouched.

[lord_khaine]

Is it just me who are bad at searching, or are there no videos of the IEM matches on the IEM site?

[JayceSL]

All the items are different and half the champs have had dramatic reworks.

Only Poppy is untouched.

Also there's some blocky weird dude where Baron should be.

[Ivellius]

Also there's some blocky weird dude where Baron should be.

That's Harold, Nashor's younger cousin. If you kill him he buffs minions in your lane, but he hits like a truck.

[McDouggal]

6 seconds is a long-ass time dude.

I think people are still building Kog poorly, mostly, but I think he's undertuned as well. It will be difficult to say where he should be balanced numbers-wise until people learn to play him in his new form, so giving some time is probably best.

Said Garen had Black Cleaver, Dead Man's Plate, and Thornmail. 6 seconds to half-health that? I'd say that's actually pretty dang good.

[Grytorm]

Also there's some blocky weird dude where Baron should be.

And if you get someone behind him you can do a lot of damage when the eye is open.

[Artanis]

The problem is that with the new tissue paper towers Kog very rarely GETS to late game because he loses lane so badly against everybody and towers just get absolutely destroyed. Previously you could at least farm under turrets in a weak lane. Now towers just die in a couple waves.

Right now Kog's highest win rate matchup is against Twitch - and that's still only a 46% win rate. Kog is just so weak in a fight before 2+ items, and his R is now almost totally useless for harass. So he can't fight any other ADC 1v1, and he can't land any appreciable harass on them without emptying his mana pool. AP Kog is just as bad. In fact, I think in the entire history of the game I think this is the first time that 2 totally different builds of the same champion have been the worst and 2nd worst win rates in the game at champion.gg. Even Urgot never locked down both bottom slots that I saw.

Kog's rework has to be the worst thought out rework EVER put in place on a champion.

Poorly executed =/= poorly thought out.

[Lethologica]

Is it just me who are bad at searching, or are there no videos of the IEM matches on the IEM site?

First-party esports websites are invariably badly organized and/or unable to show you videos without spoiling everything, so I wouldn't be surprised. Reddit and Youtube are your friends.

[Olinser]

Olinser, where are you getting this data from?

I have a pet theory. A lot of people are still leveling W first on kog, which is completely wrong. If whatever tools you use can tell you what the skill order winrate is, that would be actually useful.

The fact that I can shred a fed Garen to half health in 6 seconds with only a Rageblade and a cutlass tells me that his autos are perfectly fine once you get an item under your belt. And yes, this Garen did have tank items, he wasn't just going full damage.

I also disagree with your assessment that this is a terrible rework. I don't think he'll ever be a solo-queue powerhouse because he requires a bit of investment by your team to keep the squishy alive. For this reason, I shudder to think of what a Braum/Kog lane would look like. Giving an artillery piece a shield from incoming fire is really scary.

champion.gg has platinum+ statistics and is the best because it actually separates out win rates of different lanes and has statistics available for win rate vs # games played on a champ, win rate by game time, and so on. And yes, it does give you the highest win rate builds. WQEQQRQ is his highest win rate and still has a pathetic 44%.

lolking tabulates all games of all ranks, which skews the statistics towards pubstompers and makes it harder to differentiate between win rates of different builds on champions because they only have 1 win rate for a champion (Kog is still lowest win rate ADC by a wide margin).

He doesn't just 'require an investment'. It means that you are committing to being behind for a very long time and losing multiple towers in the meantime. Kog simply isn't good enough to come back from his unbelievably poor laning phase, especially since Riot seems to be committed to making games faster.

Also dude.... that's not very good against Garen. 6 seconds you got him to half health. In that 6 seconds he's gotten off the full duration of his spin, killed you, and has gone on to bigger and better things.

[Olinser]

AP Kog (and Marksman Kog, imo, but I haven't played him enough because bot-lane assassin Tristana is so much fun) is much more hurt by the faster meta than his rework (though the numbers were definitely a little on the low side pre-hotfix, and still might be). I've played a few games with the 'traditional' AP Kog build, and it's still capable of outputting obscene amounts of damage when you reach that 2.5 item mark.

The loss of base damage on his R hurts a little, but the combination of Luden's and Liandry's procs are still enough to put some poke damage on full-health targets (Deathfire Touch is a really valuable mastery on any Liandry's user), and then once people start dropping below that half-health mark he's an obscene clean-up threat (think Darius but with 8x the range). He's a great addition to a team that already has some poke or burst that gets people close to or under his execute threshold, and of course taking Baron is always going to be a dicey proposition against him if you end up tanking a little too hard and he blasts you straight back to the fountain from the other side of the wall.

Once the tower changes next patch come through that slow the meta down a bit, I see Kog definitely coming back as a better pick. He was apparently OP on the PBE and got preemptively nerfed (too much) before coming on to live, so there theoretically should exist some space in between there where he's decent.

AP Kog has fallen all the way from #10 of 52 in win rate mid to #52/52 mid. That's not him being hurt by the meta. That's the rework being utterly terrible for the build.

Not really. Sure he was a bit weak early, but AP Kog became a terror as soon as he finished Luden's (base tear - Luden's gives you a big power spike just as most teams are looking for teamfights).

I mained AP Kog mid in solo que in S5. Liandry's was crap on him, btw, and still is. Luden gave you a huge power spike at 1 item, and with just Luden you forced opponents to either commit to a teamfight or get poked down to the point they couldn't fight. 2nd item Rylai meant you had pretty respectable peel and utterly amazing pursuit. Luden-Rylai-Void and you are a terror on the battlefield. Liandry just doesn't do enough damage to warrant sacrificing the 'LOL NO RUNNING' and survivability that Rylai gives. Hit a squishy with a single spell when you have Rylai and without some variety of cooldown or intervention they are dead as long as you have mana.

The loss of base damage on his R was only part of it. He already did 100% bonus damage to champions with his R before. At below 50% health he's now doing the same damage he was already doing, and you have to get them below 25 to see increased damage (in which case they were dead anyway, a bit more damage on R doesn't really help).

The much bigger nerf was from 6 seconds to 10 seconds on his mana cost reset, AND the mana cost increase. So you do significantly lower damage when using it to poke before fights, it costs significantly more after just a couple shots, AND you have to wait on a cooldown nearly twice as long to poke more without burning through mana.

The loss of poke damage hurts far more than you gain by the increase to somebody generally about to die anyway.

[Olinser]

New patch notes.

2 big changes - minion snowballing and Homeguard. Everybody should have already been aware of the minion changes now its just a question of whether they are going to be as bad as most people expect at forcing snowballs even harder. If I am reading the notes right it looks like the buff only takes place when you have a team-wide 1.0 level advantage or higher (so if one person pings first it doesn't buff minions). They need some kind of global tracker for this so you can tell at a glance whether one side has minion buff or not - hopefully a visual effect on minions will show it.

Removal of Homeguard enchant and replacement as a weaker permanent defensive feature is a little... weird. It's nice not to have to shell out the gold for defenses but this removes any Homeguard - TP potential plays (Hecarim is a saaaaaad pony )

Other than that a lot of small fiddling changes to a lot of champs and items.

Bit of nerf to MF and Lucian... and they don't touch Graves? WTF?

Nearly worthless HP buff to turrets (a little under a 15% increase in health). They still have 0 armor and are tissue paper to any team that is ahead enough to push for an inner and inhib turret.

Guinsoo is still OP and costs slightly more.

If I am reading this right... jungle monsters now have NEGATIVE MR?



So overall, turrets are still tissue paper and now minions are going to make snowballs even harder. Graves is still permabanned. Guinsoo is still dumb but costs slightly more.

[mrcarter11]

{scrubbed}

[One Step Two]

New patch notes.

2 big changes - minion snowballing and Homeguard. Everybody should have already been aware of the minion changes now its just a question of whether they are going to be as bad as most people expect at forcing snowballs even harder. If I am reading the notes right it looks like the buff only takes place when you have a team-wide 1.0 level advantage or higher (so if one person pings first it doesn't buff minions). They need some kind of global tracker for this so you can tell at a glance whether one side has minion buff or not - hopefully a visual effect on minions will show it.

Removal of Homeguard enchant and replacement as a weaker permanent defensive feature is a little... weird. It's nice not to have to shell out the gold for defenses but this removes any Homeguard - TP potential plays (Hecarim is a saaaaaad pony )

Other than that a lot of small fiddling changes to a lot of champs and items.

Bit of nerf to MF and Lucian... and they don't touch Graves? WTF?

Nearly worthless HP buff to turrets (a little under a 15% increase in health). They still have 0 armor and are tissue paper to any team that is ahead enough to push for an inner and inhib turret.

Guinsoo is still OP and costs slightly more.

If I am reading this right... jungle monsters now have NEGATIVE MR?



So overall, turrets are still tissue paper and now minions are going to make snowballs even harder. Graves is still permabanned. Guinsoo is still dumb but costs slightly more.

Hecarim still has his TP plays, but he's just gotta wait till 20+ mins. I'm really interested to see how else these changes to minions and base defence plays out, but I agree with the lack of resilience on the towers. 500hp isn't as meaningful as other defences.

Poor Lucian, he got some power back initially, and has been defanged again, I havent seen enough MF to know how her changes will play out. As for graves... he got a mid-patch hotfix, and while still pretty strong, not as OP as before.

As for guinsoo, that thing is a nerf waiting to happen, more gold just slows it down. I think they want to measure how much of a power spike it is, coming online later might give other champs a chance to have defences or counters in place.

And while odd, I really like the Negative MR idea. It gives AP junglers more damage on the target, and lets their auto-attacks matter, without having to worry about AD junglers benefiting too much from a health change, and an armor buff hurting both.

[ex cathedra]

jungle minions have had negative mr for a long, long time

[thracian]

jungle minions have had negative mr for a long, long time

Super Minions, too.

[McDouggal]

WOOHOO 0 RP BOYS whitetextexcitement

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[TechnOkami]

WOOHOO 0 RP BOYS whitetextexcitement

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Reina, you know what to do.

[RoyVG]

All the items are different and half the champs have had dramatic reworks.

Only Poppy is untouched.

Speaking of which...

Liking the changes, especially aesthetically. The ult looks really fun and the changes to her other abilities look fun to use, especially how her new W interactis with dashes.

Also the first time they update all the splash arts for all the skins, something I believe was a thing Riot aimed to do when Nidalee had her visual update...3 years ago.

For those wondering about the Legacy skins, it already has been confirmed that all skins will be available when the rework launches.

[McDouggal]

Cheesus christ on a cracker, Poppy W looks really good. I wonder what effect it'll have on Flash.

HOLY HELL THAT ULT IS <redacted> HILARIOUS LOOKING.

EDIT: New LollyPoppy splash art still scary.

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EDIT 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: and then there's IronStylus.

[RoyVG]

Cheesus christ on a cracker, Poppy W looks really good. I wonder what effect it'll have on Flash

RiotScruffy on Twitter mentioned that it only works with dashes, not with Blinks like Flash. So Lucian and Graves cannot enter, but Kassadin and Ezreal can. I wonder if the ability can also be used in reverse, to keep an enemy from escaping? Kalista is going to have a bad time kiting a poppy if she gets in range.

PBE was just updated, data is being gathered about the abilities as we speak (damage and ratios I mean).

also

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EDIT: Voiceover, quite a bit more cheerful compared to the old one. Liking the refernece to the old joke at 2:31

[McDouggal]

Kalista is going to have a bad time kiting a poppy if she gets in range.

Oh god, I didn't even think of that. With Kalista's Passive, she can't even kite normally.

[Olinser]

Speaking of which...

Liking the changes, especially aesthetically. The ult looks really fun and the changes to her other abilities look fun to use, especially how her new W interactis with dashes.

Also the first time they update all the splash arts for all the skins, something I believe was a thing Riot aimed to do when Nidalee had her visual update...3 years ago.

For those wondering about the Legacy skins, it already has been confirmed that all skins will be available when the rework launches.

Ult looks terrible to me. Per the description it goes from 'knockup' to 'total fight ejection' in a very short period of time, which means if your opponent evades it even for 1 second after you activate it then you can't use it. Quite frankly I'd prefer it does LESS damage, down to zero, as it charges and the knockup gets bigger to prevent people from thinking ZOMG I CAN GET TEH KILLZ. Sounds interesting to eject a bruiser diving, but we'll have to see how big a distance it actually is.

The 'block dashes' sounds okay on paper but is a really stupid idea to put in place. It becomes a toxic counter to assassins that rely on dive to actually get in and deal damage (LeBlanc, Fizz, Diana), since all of them move slowly enough that you could trigger it while they are in midair. Diana in particular will be utterly useless if Poppy is in the game because she can't get ult resets if she doesn't hit her target. Having counters that hard for champions is not a good state for a game to be in. If Poppy is good it means that those champions will never be picked, if Poppy isn't good then she'll only be picked in response to them. That's REALLY not a good design philosophy for a champion.

Wonder how is her shield going to interact with champions like Fizz that become invulnerable during their hops - obviously it will block his dash, but what about the trollpole.

[Maryring]

Poppy's Ult looks really funky, and though it's no longer the same "I ignore everyone but you" mechanic, I think I like it. Maybe.

What I do love though is her new voice-pack and her new visual design. It's a whole lot prettier than the old one, and her new jokes are adrable, making her adorable.

[McDouggal]

The 'block dashes' sounds okay on paper but is a really stupid idea to put in place. It becomes a toxic counter to assassins that rely on dive to actually get in and deal damage (LeBlanc, Fizz, Diana), since all of them move slowly enough that you could trigger it while they are in midair. Diana in particular will be utterly useless if Poppy is in the game because she can't get ult resets if she doesn't hit her target. Having counters that hard for champions is not a good state for a game to be in. If Poppy is good it means that those champions will never be picked, if Poppy isn't good then she'll only be picked in response to them. That's REALLY not a good design philosophy for a champion.

I'd actually argue that this is a good change in that it's finally doing something about mobility creep. That being said, rank 1 (which is all that's up on Surrender@20 at time of writing) has a 24 second base CD with a 2.5 second time to last.

Her new ult also makes enemies untargetable when they're hit by it. So no Yasuo wombos.

[EternalMelon]

EDIT: Voiceover, quite a bit more cheerful compared to the old one. Liking the refernece to the old joke at 2:31

And yet still better at jokes than me.

But yeah, she looks neat, And I love her Item purchase lines. Especially this one.