Right when I was considering updating the 3s Tier List, Riot's ready to release a brand spanking new patch! Most of the changes in this buff are pretty much expected, with upgrades to Bard and Kassadin, coupled with nerfs to Hecarim and Nidalee. Check out the summary and full scope below!
Introduction
Right when I was considering updating the 3s Tier List, Riot's ready to release a brand spanking new patch! Most of the changes in this buff are pretty much expected, with upgrades to Bard and Kassadin, coupled with nerfs to Hecarim and Nidalee. Check out the summary and full scope below!Summary
Buffs: Bard, Darius, Evelynn, Garen, Kassadin, Quinn, Shen, Teemo, TristanaNerfs: Blitzcrank, Fizz, Hecarim, Maokai, Nidalee, Rek'Sai
Patch 5.7 notes
Greetings, Summoners.
Champion diversity. What a world.
Last patch we took a trip on the 5.6 buff barge sailing to the tune of Champion Diversity (can anyone find us some lyrics here?) and so far we've been pretty happy with the results. This patch, we're still sussing out the full landscape of the game but we already know it's not going to be a full-on party like previous occasions. That said, 5.7 could just be considered something of a change canoe (we're stretching this thing too far), drifting in the wake of the buff barge, picking up stragglers on both ends of the power spectrum.
How's that for imagery.
Anyway, this patch you'll see us bringing up a few dudes who've struggled to find their strategic niche within the game (oh dear Darius buffs), sharpening the strengths of others (tower-busting Tristana is totally a thing), or reducing the power of a few who've been on our radar for a while. Not much else to see here, especially as we tidy up a bit in the aftermath of Cinderhulk's tanky jungler rampage, so good luck out there on the Rift.
Change canoe.
Chris "Pwyff" Tom & 
Patrick "Scarizard" ScarboroughChampions
Ultra Rapid Fire changes still in effect
When you're living in the future, the present is your past.
Just a quick note before we get started that the champion balance changes specificallycalled out in the U.R.F. patch notes are still in effect for the game mode, completely unchanged. Everything else has been graciously accepted by our manatee overlord.
Bard
Base AD and Armor up. Chimes grant more mana, and meeps respawn faster. Q damage up.
Bard's laning relies heavily on two core patterns to function: playing meep-away with basic attacks and lay on the harrassment, which then opens him up to fulfil his cosmic duties by roaming and powering up through the collection of chimes. This patch we're targeting both of these with changes to his passive and base stats, focused at fine-tuning his flute-smacking in lane and making his roams more rewarding when you're all out of cosmic energies.
General
BASE ATTACK DAMAGE46 ⇒ 52
BASE ARMOR21 ⇒ 25
Passive - Traveler's Call
MEEP RESPAWN TIME12/11/10/9/8 seconds (with chimes) ⇒10/9/8/7/6 seconds (with chimes)
CHIME MANA RESTORE15 + 8% missing mana ⇒ 12% of Bard's maximum mana
Q - Cosmic Binding
BASE DAMAGE80/120/160/200/240 (+0.5 ability power) ⇒80/125/170/215/260 (+0.65 ability power)
Blitzcrank
W now gives a focused, high-speed burst that slows Blitzcrank after it's over.
Blitzcrank by nature is a champion all about risk vs. reward. Land Rocket Grab on a priority target and you've single (robot) handedly won an entire teamfight - miss, and you're out of a sizeable cooldown and inviting your opponents to a big ol' counter-attack party. For a champion so steeped in this mindset however, Overdrive's up-time mitigated Blitzcrank's risk a little too much, leaving enemies still fleeing in fear even after a grab gone wide. Shortening the windows 'Crank has to make his big plays while increasing his burst of speed pushes this dichotomy further, but beware running out of steam if you misplay the moment.
W - Overdrive
REMOVEDMOVEMENT SPEED16/20/24/28/32% movement speed over 8 seconds
NEWMOVEMENT SPEEDNow gains a burst of 70/75/80/85/90% movement speed, rapidly decaying over 5 seconds
YOUR STEAM IS ESCAPINGWhen Overdrive ends, Blitzcrank is slowed by 30% for 1.5 seconds
Darius
Dunking refunds mana. At max rank, R's cooldown resets on kill.
One of the most feared lane bullies of his day, Darius had only one natural predator: the late-game. As metas have shifted however, the once proud Hand of Noxus lost his luster amidst a sea of flighty assassins, tanky titans and mobile marksmen. Make no mistakes: his primary counters are still intact - a jumble of crowd control and sustained damage (often from range) will still shut him down - but now, failing to contain him using these tools will open him up to killing your entire team.
R - Noxian Guillotine
ATHENE'S UNHOLY DUNKRefunds 25/50/100 mana on kill
WITNESS TRUE STRENGTHAt rank 3 only, Noxian Guillotine's cooldown resets completely
Evelynn
Hate Spike damage up.
5.6's changes saw Evelynn stealthily making waves as games went on, but still suffering in early skirmishes. To turn that suffering onto her opponents, we're returning some of her combat power.
Q - Hate Spike
DAMAGE30/45/60/75/90 ⇒ 40/55/70/85/100
Fizz
Moving the execute damage back to W's passive DoT and putting the AP ratio back to W's active on-hit.
Back in 5.2 we made some changes to Fizz that reduced the amount of reliable damage he did with his in-and-out pattern, leaving him feeling a little less tricky (and certainly less playful) than usual. By switching the passive and active components once again, we're aiming to help Fizz's AP builds chum the waters of success by landing sharks and capitalizing at key moments. We'll continue to monitor Fizz's performance, but the hope is to have him back up to his old 'risky assassination tricks' and less 'building full tank and killing everybody'.
W - Seastone Trident
PASSIVE DAMAGE (OVER TIME)20/30/40/50/60 + (0.45 ability power) over 3 seconds ⇒ 20/30/40/50/60 (0.45 ability power) + 4/5/6/7/8% of target's missing health over 3 seconds
ACTIVE DAMAGE (ON-HIT)10/20/30/40/50 + 4/5/6/7/8% of target's missing health ⇒ 10/20/30/40/50 + (0.25 ability power)
Garen
GAREN'S R IT'S HAPPENING
Garen's gonna need more than this change to hit the bar on strategic diversity we've set out with our champion work, but making his ultimate less restricted should give him the courage to stand up to the ruffians and scoundrels in top lane more easily.
R - Demacian Justice
COOLDOWN160/120/80 seconds ⇒ 120/100/80 seconds
Hecarim
Base health and mana regeneration down.
Compared against other toplaners, having access to a strong self-heal and low mana costs is a pretty sweet deal - so we're toning down some of his innate staying power so it's easier to send Hecarim back to the stables.
General
BASE HEALTH REGEN9.26 ⇒ 7
BASE MANA REGEN7.5 ⇒ 6.5
Kassadin
R's stack lockout decreased.
With Kassadin's functionality as a constantly blinking must-answer threat late game still intact, we're looking to facilitate earlier aggressive roams by pulling the lever back a little on Riftwalk's lockout mechanic.
R - Riftwalk
EMPOWERED STACK DURATION20 seconds ⇒ 15 seconds
Maokai
Maokai's passive heal down at early levels.
Maokai's enjoyed a lengthy reign as one of the top Tops in the competitive scene for a while, and for good reason - he's a healthy baseline for what we expect from our Tank class. Despite this, his level of sustain can make it an uphill battle to uproot this twisted treant, so we're chopping down his passive's early effectiveness to open some room for other picks to grow.
Passive - Sap Magic
HEALTH RESTORE7% of maximum health ⇒ 5/6/7% of maximum health (upgrades at levels 7 and 13)
Morgana
Morgana's abilities have updated looks and sounds.
General
AUDIO & VISUALSMorgana's autoattack and ability SFX and VFX have been updated for her base and all skins! Check here for the full details.
ICONSMorgana has also received new ability icons!
Nidalee
Base health and health per level down.
Though it's tough to say Nidalee's gone untouched with the rise of the incredible Cinderhulks, she's still at the forefront of any conversation concerning jungle dominance. To keep her claws sharp and her hunting skills intact, we're doubling-down on the natural weakness of any in-and-out skirmisher: durability. While not the easiest to pin down, cutting her defenses makes pouncing in even more of a risk, as well as actually putting her in danger when she's the one getting pounced on.
General
BASE HEALTH541 ⇒ 511
HEALTH PER LEVEL90 ⇒ 80
Quinn
Blinds work intuitively.
Previously, Blinds would check your status when you began your attack. This meant that sometimes attacks that looked like they should have missed would land right on target. With this fix, you should feel a lot better about your tossing a bird into the eyes of enemy marksmen.
Q - Blinding Assault
NEWGOUGE 'EM VALORBlind 'miss' window changed from on-attack declaration to on-attack launch (For reference, 'attack launch' is when the missile is created for ranged champions, and the moment before an attack hits for melee champions)
Rek'Sai
Q damage down. Rek'Sai can use tunnels more often
High clear speeds, high damage, and the best tool for hunting enemies through the Fog of War - Rek'Sai has many, if not all the tools you'd want in a jungler (or a hungry void predator). As we've done in previous patches, we're taking the edge off of her bite in exchange for more end-game usability and tunnel-enabled mobility.
Q - Queen's Wrath
RATIO0.3 bonus attack damage ⇒ 0.2 bonus attack damage
E - Tunnel
COOLDOWN ON REUSING TUNNELS10 seconds ⇒ 10/9/8/7/6 seconds
Shen
SHEN'S R IT'S ALSO HAPPENING
Once hailed as the map presence pick in the toplane, Summoner Teleport steals some of Shen's identity when it comes to saving your teammates from the shadows (we never said he was a great ninja). Making Stand United more available for cross-map action, especially in the late-game should help Shen find his place among the Tanklords.
R - Stand United
COOLDOWN200/180/160 ⇒ 180/160/120
Singed
E's monster cap wasn't factoring in E's base damage.
Adding % damage to Fling last patch introduced a bug where the wholeability's damage was capped at 300 vs monsters instead of the %HP portion. Jungle Singed buffs!
E - Fling
ELBOW GREASEFixed a bug where the 300 damage cap to monsters was being applied improperly
Teemo
Blinds work intuitively.
Previously, Blinds would check your status when you began your attack. This meant that sometimes attacks that looked like they should have missed would land right on target. With this fix, you should feel a lot better about your tossing poisonous darts into the eyes of enemy marksmen.
Q - Blinding Dart
THAT'S GOTTA STINGBlind 'miss' window changed from on-attack declaration to on-attack launch (For reference, 'attack launch' is when the missile is created for ranged champions, and the moment before an attack hits for melee champions)
Tristana
E cooldown slightly increased. Q reduces E's cooldown when basic attacking.
The nature of Tristana's reliance on Rapid Fire and Explosive Charge mean that she doesn't scale as well as you'd expect from the traditional marksman builds. Adding further incentives for Cooldown Reduction (hint: ghostblade, y'all) gives her a different angle on itemization that enables her explosive potential.
Q - Rapid Fire
NEWULTRA RAPID FIREBasic attacks while Rapid Fire is active reduce the cooldown of Explosive Charge by 0.5 seconds (doubled against champions)
E - Explosive Charge
COOLDOWN16/15/14/13/12 ⇒ 16/15.5/15/14.5/14
Items
Enchantment - Cinderhulk
Health down, gold cost up to parity with other enchants.
Two nerfs, one very much intended (base health reduction), one technically a bug fix that's in line with what we want anyway (+50 gold cost). We don't think anyone should be surprised by these power reductions, but additional context goes like this: an item doesn't need to be a "one stop shop" of core stats for it to be ideal. It might seem counterintuitive that we're reducing Cinderhulk's tanky stats while saying we want to preserve its identity as a tanky jungler item, but that's because Cinderhulk incentivizes its wearers (users? holders?) tofurther itemize down an intended path (health for more scaling, tanky stats to stay in the battle longer, etc) so we can rely on those second, third, and fourth items to round out the build. Making an item that does everything just encourages off-role champions to pick it up because they get 'everything' they need rather than having to commit to a playstyle to support it.
This is a very long context to say that Cinderhulk doesn't kill champions, champions building the health to support Cinderhulk kill champions.
HEALTH350 ⇒ 300
COST2200 gold ⇒ 2250 gold
Tiamat
Tiamat's passive damage now scales linearly. Also affects Ravenous Hydra.
Previously, Tiamat's Cleave passive only had three 'stages' of damage based on whether you were 'close', 'close-ish', or 'kind of close' to the center of the proc. This led to some weird situations where targets that were visually farther away would still take damage as if they were closer. Now that Cleave scales linearly, you'll always take damage appropriate to how close/far you are from the target. Also affects Ravenous Hydra (we stole this part from the summary).
PASSIVE CLEAVE DAMAGEScales in three damage 'stages' ⇒ linearly with distance
Summoner's Rift
Gift of the Toadstool (Gromp Smite buff)
We know this is a pretty sizable damage reduction on Gromp buff for lategame tank junglers, but there were two reasons: first, this thing was getting a little bonkers against squishy auto-attacking marksmen (with little to no meaningful counterplay). Second - and more important - from a philosophical perspective no smite buff should be so insanely head and shoulders above any other, but Gromp buff was getting very close to that. We want all jungle buffs to have varying degrees of usefulness (based on the state of the game), but it's important there be at least some choice in the matter.
DAMAGE SCALING10% bonus health ⇒ 5% bonus health
Minion Spawn Animations
Minions are people too! ...Kind of.
NEWDO THEY HAVE HOMES?Minions now have a spawn animation!
End of Game Banners
LET'S TRY THIS AGAINAnimated Victory/Defeat banners have been re-enabled following resolution of a performance issue
Loading Screen Art
NEWA SCENIC VISTAThe loading screen for Summoner's Rift matches now has background art
FAT BORDERSLoading screen borders have been slightly thickened to maintain contrast against the new background
Twisted Treeline & Crystal Scar
NEWLuden's Echo
Is there an echo in here...?
Is there an echo in here...?
RECIPEBlasting Wand + Aether Wisp + 1090 gold (2800 gold total)
ABILITY POWER120 ⇒ 100
SOUND IS PURPLE?VFX for the proc effect have been updated!
Bugfixes
- Fixed the "ward hop crash". Special thanks to NA summoner Xaad for helping us squash this bug!
- Spirit Guard Udyr's champion interaction VO has been fixed
- Fixed a bug where Team Builder's minimap role icons were sometimes zoomed in too far
- Team Builder lobbies no longer occasionally forget to display the captain's minimap role icon
- Suggested Players now consistently prioritizes "Previous premade" over "Recently won a game" when deciding how to tag someone who fits both categories
Upcoming Skins
The following skins will be released at various times during patch 5.7:
Darius buffs? Welp, there goes top lane being enjoyable :[
ReplyDeleteWas top lane ever enjoyable? All the Rivens, Fioras, Roflcopter horses, unkillable rocks...and Teemo.
ReplyDeletehahaha roflcopter horses hahaha...
ReplyDeletetime for the demacia vs noxus ks fights
ReplyDeleteto the fields of justice~
Thoughts on the Blitzcrank W change as to why it's a nerf vs a buff? Just curious.
ReplyDeleteThey buffed the engage capacity of blitzcrank, but they nerfed his survivability. I thinks this change is a good thing, and it's more a nerf than a buff i htink, since the Move Speed rapidly decays.
ReplyDeleteThe slow at the end also prevents Blitz from using his W just to traverse the map faster as well.
ReplyDeleteand then there is yorick who laffs at the champions listed above.
ReplyDeletecept the broke pony, we need to break his legs.
Well is it the acutal nerf or buff on Lunden's Echo? It's cheaper and on e.g. Diana you can get it faster, and the source of dmg (stacks) is still there for u... thou u have less ap after all. However without any maths it seems to me more gold efficient.
ReplyDeleteWhat u think SSJ?
If I understood the patch notes correctly there exists now two version of the Luden's Echo:
ReplyDelete1) The 120AP-3800g version, which is available on Summoner's Rift (93.1% gold efficient without passive)
2) The 100AP-2800g version, which is available on Twisted Treeline and Crystal Scar (87.5% gold efficient without passive).
Hence it is neither a buff nor a nerf as Luden's Echo was previously not available on TT or CS.
I haven't patched my client yet so I cannot confirm this but you can easily check it yourself.
Well, i didn't quite nitoced it's about TT n/c:P
ReplyDeleteI love them giving all these tanks love... it's my time to climb
ReplyDeleteis ther any chance eve moves up a tier after the buff?
ReplyDeleteI don't really know if this is a nerf to the AD fizz (jg or top)
ReplyDeleteFor the ad fizz it is nerf. Basically fizz was strong as ad bc botrk (and tri-force) was procing really well with his w which had already health based dmg and in a meta where tanks rule, this was one of their most feared counters. Now that it is ap dot dmg,it has nothing special, as his clears will be again shitty(for jungle) and flat mr would decimate him(top lane).
ReplyDeleteShe should move up a bit, but still. none of the jungle items suit her kit right now.
ReplyDeleteDepends. Imo it's a buff, but he is certainly a little more difficult than he was b4, cuz now u need to time up ur w instead of spamming it mindlessly. But for a good blitz player it should be a buff.
ReplyDeleteLEAVE MY FREELO HECARIM ALONE!
ReplyDeleteNo more fizz juggler, thx rito
ReplyDeleteActually, that % dmg always was magic damage based. Now, isn't on hit, it's a dot. I don't know if that change from on-hit to the DoT can actually slow his clear times.
ReplyDeleteIt slows his clear times and destroys his atkspeed potential.
ReplyDeleteBefore the nerf it was full %dmg on EVERY HIT, which is why building attack speed (BoTRK, Devourer, Trinity) was viable on him. Now it's a DoT, so you don't deal massive damage on every attack, since each one refreshes the former, and so you won't get the full damage every time as he was doing.
basically for deal the same damage you have to wait 2-3 seconds(don't know the exact times),with a really high atk spd you're basically refershing the dot so with something like 2 atk spd you are dealing less than half the damage of ad fizz because you're just refreshing the dot everytime
ReplyDeletethis is noticeable later in the game where blitz was able to perma movespeed and escape everything
ReplyDeleteearlier is even a buff is some situations
pick a ranged champ with a decent escape and have fun raping darius(gnar works well)
ReplyDeleteThanks for explaining. I forgot about the DoT refreshing, so this actually is a major nerf. I don't really like the state of fizz, he is really average (or under that) as an AP champion, and not really viable now as an AD champ.
ReplyDelete