Season 3 Checkpoint: Things To Look Out For

[LazaHorse]

So now that we've had a couple weeks or so now to really try out all these new items, masteries, and reworks, I think it's a good time to go over a small evaluation of the season 3 (preseason) changes and what they will likely mean for the game at-large. While I don't think we can know everything about season 3 just yet (Riot is still balancing items and champions), I think there are a few marked gems in the rough that can and should be focused on as the meta progresses. Now I will add this disclaimer: I do not believe any change so far will likely do much toward changing or shifting the meta away from the current double bruiser/double AP base. Still, there are a few items and a few champions who have become so drastically different from season 2 to season 3 (or are completely new) that they are worth mentioning in relation to possible meta shifts. Here are a few things to just keep your eye out for in terms of watching the meta:

 

Liandry's Torment

If you have so much as logged into League of Legends in the past week, chances are you've seen this item at least once or twice. It provides an upgrade to Haunting Guise that is frankly not all that much of an improvement on the 1400 cost item. It does not add any more spell penetration but does add a bit more AP and a bonus burn damage to all your spells. Problem is, this burn damage is fairly insignificant on champions who do not have either their own Damage over Time (DoT) spells or spammable spells. Examples of such champions who work wonders with this item are Teemo, Akali, Swain, Vladimir, Katarina, and Brand. However, I have seen it bought on a number of champions who really do not benefit much from its stats or effect much at all such as Anivia, Ahri, Veigar, Lux, and Twisted Fate. The item is a strong edition to the game in the right hands and adds some strength to APs who were once lacking in the damage department, but it is quite simply not for everyone.

 

Iceborn Gauntlet AKA Frozen Fist AKA Fist of Tebigong

This item has provided tanky DPS champions an alternative to Trinity Force that provides them not only with good anti-AD tankiness but more reliability and utility. While the slowing effect of Trinity Force is randomly decided by a number generator, the slowing effect of Iceborn Gauntlet is attached to its controllable spellblade effect. As such, champions like Irelia, Jax, and Wukong who excel at spacing out abilities between auto attacks can manipulate the slow of the item to ensure kills and dominate team fights. The item simply fits the tanky DPS niche far more than Trinity Force and is a welcome edition as far as I (a top lane bruiser player) am concerned. It does seem to be a bit overpowered though simply by the raw stats that it offers, but at such a high gold cost that can be somewhat expected. Expect some nerfs to this goliath of a Shen Gong Wu in the near future a la Black Cleaver (which I'm not even going to discuss since it has been nerfed back into the ground).

 

Muramana

The community complained that Manamune was a noob trap item that offered awkwardly dispersed stats and little of what any AD champion really wanted. As an answer, RIot introduced the Muramana, an absolutely broken FREE UPGRADE from Manamune for champions who are adept at spamming AD-scaling skills. To be frank, the item has no downside. You can turn off its toggle when farming creep and then immediately toggle it on if a chance to trade or a teamfight occurs in a pinch. The damage on it is absolutely nasty especially for champions who have spammable AD-scaling single-target skills (there's one in particular that I will get into later). Overall the item seems a bit too strong from what it used to offer as just the Manamune, and I would understand if the damage ratio was nerfed from 3% of current mana to 2.5%.

 

Sightstone, Ruby Sightstone, Oracle's Elixir Nerf, and Jungle/Support Balance

In as few words as possible, Jungling is a bitch in Season 3. Supports are now incentivised to spend gold on wards early because their need for potions has been fulfilled by the replenishing Crystalline Flask. They also no longer need to buy boots early now with the increase to base movement speed across the board. Finally, Philosopher's stone now costs 100 less gold and offers more mana regen (the more preferred stat for more supports) than it used to, allowing supports to go for trades and kills in lane more often than before. All this adds up to a very fast 1400 gold for supports and a very early Philosopher's Stone and Sightstone. Wards are everywhere in season 3. Sightstone's free wards for supports and the lack of a permanent oracles make setting up map dominance much more expensive and risky than it used to be. As a result junglers now who depended on ganks to get levels and gold early (Maokai, Shaco, and Rengar) are being replaced by junglers who can just sit in the jungle and farm up or counter jungle the gold needed to scale into mid game (Mundo, Jax, Lee Sin, Master Yi, and Olaf being the primary culprits of this passive jungle play). Jungling to set up ganks is far more difficult than it used to be, and jungling to passively farm into mid game is far more rewarding than it once was. It's boring and frankly I don't like it much.

 

Spirit Stone

I could take hours describing how important the implementation of Spirit Stone and its resulting items are toward the diversification of junglers in season 3. Spirit Stone opens the jungle back up to APs like Fiddlesticks and Diana who were shafted in the crippling of the jungle in season 2. It provides a great mix of damage and sustain that has made it a worthwhile choice even on junglers like Olaf and Riven who once HAD to get wriggles to clear properly. Its upgrades further add to the power of these different junglers, espeically the Spirit of the Ancient Golem which allows tanks and tanky DPS to build NInja Tabi, Boots of Mobility, and Boots of Swiftness rather than the typical Mercury's Treads. I like the new item and love its upgrades, though I think they are all a bit on the strong side (maybe not so much with the Spectral Wraith).

 

 

Alongside these potentially game-changing additions to the game are a number of tweaks and shifts that I believe should be closely looked at when evaluating the current meta:

 

AD Carry Builds in regards to Runaan's Hurricane, Zephyr, Mercurial Scimitar, and Guardian Angel

Riot seems to have finally realized that AD carry builds were the most stagnant and frankly boring of any role in the game. If you were playing any AD carry and did not have a six item build of Greaves, IE, BT, PD, LW, and GA/QSS, you were playing the game incorrectly. To address this lack of diversity, they introduced two new items, added one new upgrade, and severely nerfed the Guardian Angel. The problem is that Runaan's Hurricane is a horrible item that does not provide enough of the stats an AD Carry needs to function properly (namely crit chance) to warrant replacing a Phantom Dancer or Statikk Shiv in your main build. Riot should have learned from Ionic Spark, Wit's End, and Sword of the Divine that AD Carries will never function properly with items that give ONLY attack speed. On the other hand, Zephyr is simply too all-over-the-place for any focused AD carry build to include it as a serious option. It may be an okay filler item for champions like Jax and Wukong who can utilize all the stats (though the price is fairly steep), but for an AD carry, tenacity is simply not a focus (positioning should free you of the need for tenacity). Next is the Mercurial Scimitar, an upgrade that in effect removes from Quicksilver Sash its only drawback and turning it into a staple item for AD carries. You used to buy Quicksilver Sash if crowd control was tearing you up, and in doing so gave up the raw defensive boosts of GA or the damage of Last Whisper. Now, you can get both the defense of QSS AND the offense of another BF sword item all in one (at a fairly high cost). QSS no longer forces the AD carry to choose despite the opportunity cost of not having more damage by allowing the AD carry to have the best of both worlds.

I say all this to note that I don't believe ANY of Riot's changes will have to great of an impact on AD carry builds. What I can say though is that Statikk Shiv seems to have replaced Phantom Dancer in the builds of many AD carries. Similarly, Black Cleaver has for most cases replaced Last Whisper (though arguably Last Whisper is still the more efficient buy). Yet the final build for AD carries is still just as stagnant as ever:

Greaves, IE, BT, PD/Statikk Shiv/Trinity Force, LW/BC, and Mercurial Scimitar/Guardian Angel. The item builds are barely any different, and I don't foresee them changing much in the near future.

 

Urgot and AD Casters in General (Talon, Riven, and Pantheon)

The final important piece of the season 3 preseason that I wanted to address is the role of AD Casters in the current meta. In Season 2, AD casters were either seen as counter picks to burst AP Carries at mid (Talon and Pantheon) or Tanky DPS hybrids that sought to dominate their opponents with pure damage at top lane (Urgot, Riven, and Jayce). Season 3 saw the addition of a number of items devoted to helping out this awkwardly difficult to balance role such as the Black Cleaver, Blade of the Ruined King, Ravenous Hydra, Muramana, and Iceborn Gauntlet. However, for most AD Casters, the reliance on Black Cleaver's broken passives before its nerf has made it difficult to pinpoint just which items are optimal in actual 6-item builds (most Rivens, Talons, and Pantheons were just building Black Cleavers, Bloodthirster, and a Guardian Angel for defense). That being said, I believe Urgot has found a definite build using a number of these new items and has now become quite a beast in the mid and top lanes as an AD caster as opposed to AD carry. Muramana gives him insane damage in both his auto attacks and tracking Qs. Iceborn Gauntlet synergizes with his W by adding extra slow to his auto attacks (also lets him farm waves faster with the AoE damage of his E). Black Cleaver synergizes with his E which already reduces armor by adding an extra stack of armor reduction with each tick of his E grenade (because the AoE skill applies a PHYSICAL DoT to all targets hit). Finally, Mercurial Scimitar allows Urgot to be tanky to magic damage dealers and make some amazing plays with his ultimate by shrugging off impending crowd control. Urgot, with this final build of Mercury's Treads, Muramana, Iceborn, Cleaver, Scimitar, and Bveil/Fheart/Guardian Angel, is a terror to be reckoned with in season 3, a much better state than his horrific lack of damage and survivability back in season 2.

 

 

These are just a few things to look out for as the preseason goes on and we enter into the official third season of League of Legends. If you have any questions about any new items, any reworked items, or any champions in the midst of these changes, please let me know and I'll try to address your questions. Keep an eye out for nerfs to Iceborn and Muramana, hopefully a rebuff to Oracle's and Tanky DPS, and possibility a shift in the meta to better incorporate AD Casters as mid lane champions. I hope you enjoyed my write-up and please let me know if there's anything else you'd like to know about the season 3 changes.