I guess I'll pick it back up with, we can talk about Darius, right?
To kind of kick us off, so...
Right, his changes are less heal per target, higher maximum heal
when you hit three targets, right? So bigger disparity
and scaling mana costs, right?
So when we play tested, still dunked his top lane, right?
Still felt like he was really strong, but actually kind of stalled out
in some mid game fights, right? Like when he wasn't hitting
the max people decimates and he was just kind of tossing
them out. That guy's mana is not very good and you don't
really build it actually.
Yeah, that's actually really big, I think the mana cost
is really, really easy to overlook, but it's actually a
massive, massive change. Alright, you max the first
so essentially, in essence what the patch notes said
the mana cost went up by 40 percent
cause for most intents and purposes that's what
happened actually, right?
Yeah.
Doesn't buy mana items. You actually very rarely go Flask
on him. You don't buy a Frozen Heart on the guy, because
the new itemization stuff. You used to back in the day, but
like there's not even room for Triforce anymore, because
you want attack damage so much.
Yeah, for me it just looked like, right?
Was nowhere near as dominate as it is right now
and especially, I think, there's interesting characters like Shen
people that can just sustain really well, that now
you can actually just outlast him, right?
Because at some point he is going to have to go back.
Well, and what's really cool is I actually, I think this fits
very well with my idea of Darius, which is that he is
supposed to be this super big lane bully
he is supposed to get ahead and he needs to use that
to win, you know, before the Fiora in our game
as the example, gets to her power spike or her, you know
her late game power spike and takes the game over
in the other direction.
Right.
And so I think that this change correctly, you know
pinpoints that. Where it says like, look you were 40 cs ahead
and a couple kills up, you now need to find a way to use that
Yeah.
To your advantage before the game gets to a point where
you can't sustain...
But Fiora eclipses you, because everyone does -Yeah, because scaling
So it feels like we kind of encapsulated Darius pretty well.
Feeney, I want you to tell me about the Mordekaiser ones
because of these, it's a lot harder to parse.
There's a lot of moving parts here, I mean with Darius
Wow, with Mordekaiser in general, so like tell me, use words.
I need to know.
People are still trying to figure out what
the best way to play him is and how to sort of, you know
work around him
Right.
And the big weakness that we chose to hit on this one
was sustain. So we hit sustain on, you know
basically a variety of layers, right? It's like
the number of minions that you can proc it off of
the overall damage went down, the health cost went up
which is basically just a flat you heal, you know
Less. -Yeah.
65 less than max range.
-use your combo you will have less health
than you did prior.
Exactly, so if your trying to run into characters that are
like, let's say you want to run a Caitlyn/Lulu lane
and you're like, let's poke him down
the hope is now you can actually do that.
Whereas before his base sustain values were high enough
that you could basically jus kind of bully
your way through any lane
and, you know, this character is not one that has
he has very, very stark weaknesses, which is
no cc, no mobility, and he just kind of like walks at you
and then hopefully can kill you.
Yeah, then moving right along, because I don't know
if we have anything else to add to that.
No, that's good.
Skarner, and Skarner is probably important to note
because he actually, he was played the most
of the juggernauts on 5.16 and seems to be one that
a lot of my conversations, both around here and with
pros is like, yeah. Skarner is at least a known quantity
heading into worlds. We don't have to think
Is he going to get picked?
It's more when he's going to get picked, right?
I want to add some context here on something, where
5.17, there was a change that was made to say like
Hey, his early game stats for his passive went down
significantly.
Yeah.
Later they end up evening out or being actually a little better.
So that was bugged. That didn't actually happen.
Instead, it actually made him pretty strong in those earlier
levels. So now that change is actually happening, so
not only is he losing his earlier slow
and it's just slow at all levels
he's actually losing these stats like he is just not gonna
scrap you anywhere near as hard in the early game
which seems pretty big for pro teams.
That 1 to 6 is very volatile, especially if you don't have
good ganks early.
Yeah, I feel like the scrapping doesn't happen as much.
I mean, i haven't seen a lot of pro games with Skarner
right? So like, invades, but it will slow his jungle clear down
and that to me is the bigger part, like if you lose
10 percent attack speed, then your jungle, for half your camps
that's very relevant. And so like, that's to me the biggest nerf.
I think the early slow is pretty relevant too.
-That's... oh yeah. The E for ganks.
exert lane pressure until 6, like once you hit 6
those ganks are deadly, but before that you don't have
a lot of influence.
Yeah.
After the rework, you actually had a lot of influence
you were actually a very, very powerful ganker
with the speed boost on Shield
with like the slow followed by the stun
even before 6 like, you throw a red buff on there
-That's solid
We have nerfs to Gangplank and Fiora, which have kind of
been almost more contentious in professional play, right?
And so my question is, are these enough, right?
Because I think the degree to which people believe
something like a Gangplank or a Fiora could or
kind of have taken over professional play is actually
pretty drastic at the moment.
Well, okay, I mean I'll start with Gangplank
which is that, you know, given the fact that we're reducing
some of the, you know, Armor Pen I hope
I hope it's enough, I mean that's the thing
I don't know if it's enough, it's definitely a step in the
right direction.
Yeah.
Let's also not forget the 5.17 changes as well, right?
So like, in 5.17, which no professional play
has been on yet, we did adjustments to basically
the reliability of Barrels as well, right?
With the increase cast time and so some of these sort of
like, really tricky almost like making barrels undodgeable
for a lot of people who are very skilled with Gangplank
which there's some cool barrel play around that
but let me get a little bit more fair
so 5.17 we sort of targeted the fairness
and then 5.18 we're sort of targeting the output.
And I think with those two combined
we should see some pretty noticeable results
but yeah, I agree with you currently that Gang...
on... if you're looking at 5.16, Gangplank
barrels are pretty nutty.
Right.
I mean, all that being said, Gangplanks prevalence does
somewhat beg for more aggressive early game
top laners to be played.
Yeah.
You play a Riven, don't let the Gangplank farm
and you can win the game off that, as oppose to
playing Shen, playing Maokai and saying, well I can't
do anything about the farming, so you're going to get the gold.
He's just killing me, what do I do?
It's like, well just stop just farming as well, right?
Yeah, Darius actually does really well against him
which I think is cool that some of the characters we introduce
like, Fiora beats Gangplank and, you know, you can kind of
build a rock paper scissors out of all the reworks
that just happened...
But, Fiora is still going to be, I think, Fiora late game
Yeah.
Now, the big difference is that in the early game
it's not going to be so much of a straight up stat check
going up against her, right?
Because the only thing that's changed here is base stats
Specifically for Fiora on base stats, like this is a known quantity
to some extent. We've seen the world where Fiora
did not have lots of base stats
like, that was right when she shipped on 5.15, she was terrible.
She's still scaled really well in the late game
she still murders people and her like, performance was
overall abyssmal, because of how early she got dominated
consistently.
We gave her a ton of base stats
Yeah.
And then we saw her go from a very unreliable early game
to a dominate late game, to a pretty reliable early game
to a very dominate late game still.
-which is a problem.
So, there is some middle ground there.
Yeah.
Right? Because we've seen both extremes
and so the goal here is
let's basically pull back on those things that we know
put her over the top and will get her basically
back to that middle ground.
And you can actually go back to
I'm going to bring up the Chinese Playoffs again
because we saw... this is the first time I've seen Fiora
and it was... I want to say it was Acorn.
First game, destroyed somebody and it was like, brutal.
He was like, against a Maokai or something.
Next game he was against a Lulu
and I think they lane swapped as well
and he never got off the ground.
Like, pro teams... and this is, you know
pro teams and solo que, those are very different environments
but like, pro teams are very good at making your top
laner be 0 and 4, then ending the game
before they get any gold back.
And let's not just isolate at top lane either, right?
Like, I'm talking about
early game sort of dominance of like, champions
we're doing some changes to the, you know
Warrior enchant on jungle and a lot of these, sort of
traditional like, really powerful early game characters
that can actually reliably shut down some of these characters.
Well, let's talk about that. How effective do you think
5 damage on Warrior is going to be? -I mean didn't you watch the nerf change this champion pool?
Like, so 5.5 AD on Warrior, really? [Laughter]
Are we going to start seeing all of the fighters again? -5 AD
I'm not so convinced and 2 armor on Jarvin, I mean
you know I know that the theory behind it is
with a little bit more armor, jungle clears aren't as
Yeah.
Devastating, right? You come out of...
You get like 20 to 50 more health, right?
Exactly, you come out of lane with 20 or 50 more health
maybe that 20 to 50 health
is an extra tower hit, gets you beyond that threshold
of an extra tower hit.
It could actually become pretty relevant.
Being... As a jungler being able to take an extra hit.
Yeah, so we've actually seen really like,
almost profound sort of adjustments to characters
with very, very... especially junglers, with very, very
small base stat changes.
The reason is, you hit these like, really concrete break points
where it's like, with an extra 50 health
am I going to want to gank or not, right?
A lot of times like, those decision points
it's like a huge tipping point, where it's like
you are going to make a play that could snowball lane
could snowball a game or you're just not going to try
and you're just going to recall back.
And 5 AD doesn't sound like it's going to
[Laughter]
Doesn't sound like it's going to do a whole lot...
But it did so much last time.
I know, but maybe it tips the scales into saying like
hey, maybe I'm a team that really wanted to play Rengar
well hey, 5 AD and squishier top laners, Maokai's going to
have his ult less up... up less often like
these tiny little things move and say, hey jungle
clears fast enough, that guy's going to take more damage
go for it. We think we're now ready to pull the trigger
on something we weren't ready to do before.
I want to ask kind of a lighter question.
What are you thinking is going to show up at Worlds
that we haven't really talked about?
If Renekton's in the mix, I kind of just want to see
the old like, Renekton/Jax teams that are like my god -Right, let them fight. The godzilla battle, yeah.
what's happening? You know?
Orianna's probably just going to be back, right?
Like, Azir and Viktor got hit pretty recently.
Well, Orianna and Corki, because it's Worlds.
Yeah, right.