Patch Day: Balance Update

Patch notes can only mean one thing, analysis!

First up we have a minor nerf to Cho'gath. His jungle sustain was a little high considering how strong his ganks were. While his passive is slightly better late game this is definitely a flat out nerf.

Diana got the nerf bat home run smackdown, and understandably so. She's been a fixture in every recent tournament, and is extremely hard to deal with when played well. Her base damage, range, and ease of landing skill shots all took substantial hits. She'll still be strong, but she won't be quite as overpoweringly so as before.

Master Yi get a few useful changes. His jungling will be significantly less like a lottery, which is helpful to both him and opposing teams. Regular Master Yi junglers will always remember that one clear where his Alpha Strike procced every single time and they shot out of the jungle in less than three minutes. A fun as that randomness was, it's gone in favor of actually being able to reliably clear the rest of the time. There's also a slight buff to Wuju Style, which will help Master Yi feel less crippled if he doesn't get his reset.

Some obvious nerfs hit Rengar. Anyone could have predicted that Rengar's W would drop in healing and damage. The addition of delay to his stealth is a similarly obvious change. Rengar's tankiness and ridiculous escape potential are thus nerfed, though he'll still be a beast.

Everyone's favorite Yordle to hate also got hit with the nerf bat. The base damage on Teemo's shrooms and the Ability Power ratio on his Toxic Shot were hit. Dropping 150 damage is really big, and it's likely we'll see a little less of him. A month later he'll return because his shrooms are still annoying as hell.

Zyra gets some nerfs largely targeting her ability to support. She'll still be effecting as both a carry and a support, but with slower roots and a weaker passive she won't dominate lanes quite so hard.

Black Cleaver got nailed for its stackability, and Riot tool some care to avoid repeating the mistake on other Armor Penetration items. No surprise there, though surely many a Kha'zix and Talon will weep for their glory days. Black Cleaver +  Last Whisper is still going to be painful anyway.

And now for the best change of all, Smite was buffed! It does substantially more damage at all levels, meaning substantially more healing for jungle Akali!

All in all it's a fairly straightforward balance patch. The obvious problems were hit hard, a few outlying issues of weakness were addressed, and maybe jungling will be slightly easier for everyone. Any huge shifts at this point are still going to be a result of the cataclysmic Season 3 changes, not these minor balance fixes.

Jungler: Diana

Having had the opportunity to jungle Diana I can declare, with the confidence and certainty of experience, that there is absolutely no reason to jungle Akali unless Diana is banned. As junglers, and arguably as champions, Diana is in every way superior to Akali.

Diana's superiority is not rooted in the ease of her jungling, but that is a notable attribute nonetheless. Starting with W at level 1 and maxing Q first, Diana clears quickly while taking little meaningful damage. After her first clear she practically auto-pilots through the jungle. She becomes so fast she could easily be played Udyr/Shyvana style, but that would be a waste of her considerable talents.

What makes Diana so much better than Akali is superior damage. Diana, without items, does more damage with her passive and W than Akali does with her passive and E (which is often unusable in teamfights and chases). On top of that Diana's Q and R are roughly equivalent in damage to Akali's. Diana simply does more damage with fewer items.

Essentially, Diana can afford to ride her high base damage into the mid-game and primarily build defensive items. For a champion based around jumping into the thick of things and going toe to toe with the enemy team's primary damage dealers, this is an incredibly important trait. You might try the same on Akali, but to significantly less effect.

Overall Diana is a very strong jungler. Possibly the strongest that's ever been released. I'm fairly certain she'll be nerfed significantly in the near future, at which point Akali may obtain a competitive edge. For now, Diana is simply the best at what she does without contest.

Thought: What Happens to Jungle Akali?

Over two years ago I started jungling Akali, and after a few months was confident enough to post my first guide. It was laughable, viable only in games with players as bad as I was, but as I grew and improved at the game my guide grew with me. Its current iteration is, in my conceited opinion, the definitive work on jungle Akali. The gravity of the situation should therefore be self-evident when I state that Diana, in all probability, makes jungle Akali obsolete.

I've long held that, given a different meta, jungle Akali would be a competitive option. For the past year the meta for junglers has changed several times, from early-gankers to fast-clearing farmers to tanky-cc. Akali, while an adept jungler, has never matched any of those paradigms and thus has remained in obscurity. Despite this it was still possible that arranged teams might break from the standard meta and use her. That possibility largely vanished with the introduction of Diana.

The problem is that Diana is essentially jungle Akali, only better. The draw of jungle Akali was largely her uniqueness as an AP jungler and assassin, in particular the power of her post-level-six ganks due to her extremely long range, gap-closing ultimate. While their ultimates are practically identical for the purposes of ganking Diana also can pull enemies to her and slow them, a form of crowd control many times more powerful than the slow on Akali's Twilight Shroud. Diana's ganks both before and after level six are significantly stronger.

In addition many of Akali's minor flaws are not shared with Diana. Akali is largely single target damage and her AoE ability is awkward when chasing down opponents. Diana is almost entirely AoE damage, ideal for jungling, and her AoE abilities have an integral role in how she chases. Diana also can reveal foes during ganks, making the brush in side lanes less of a safe haven. For all her viability as a jungler, Akali's skills are designed around laning more than jungling.

Akali does have a few notable advantages over Diana. Akali has built-in sustain, allowing her to enter the jungle and leave with significantly more health than she entered with, while Diana only has a shield. Akali also has a stealth ability, and despite being countered by Oracle's it has its advantages. Finally, Akali is mana-independent, meaning she doesn't have to itemize around mana or suffer when passing blue buff to an ally. These benefits don't make Akali better at jungling than Diana overall, but they are places where Akali is superior to her.

Those small advantages are possibly the saving grace for jungle Akali. Because many players will be trying out Diana in the jungle, some will possibly note the similarities between Diana and Akali and begin to consider Akali's viability. Perhaps jungle Akali can ride on Diana's coattails and break into the community mindscape. Someone cleverer than I might even demonstrate a niche for her that makes her more desirable than Diana. It might be wishful thinking, but it's not impossible.

For now Diana is, barring some critical flaw yet to be discovered, superior to jungle Akali. This won't stop me from keeping my guide updated or my skills sharp, but it's unlikely that my team will field my favorite ninja as a jungler anytime soon.

Patch Day: Early August/Diana

Today's patch comes with Diana to follow later. If the Zyra patch was any indication Diana will be released sometime this weekend or early next week. In the meantime, there are patch changes to analyze.

Amumu's changes dramatically reduce his damage when he builds AP. It was fairly common for Amumu to pick up at least one AP item when jungling, such as Abyssal, so this does have a significant effect. The mana cost reduction on Tantrum honestly isn't a big deal, hardly sufficient compensation for dropping 0.5 in AP ratios. However, it might be enough for Amumu to forgo Philosopher's stone and rush other items instead.

The change to Brand's ult should greatly reduce its randomness. Sometimes Brand would dominate due to lucky bounces, and sometimes he'd feel like he had no ult at all. I'd posit we'll see more Brands, but then the substantial Malzahar buffs didn't exactly bring him back to the forefront.

Cho'gath's changes are, like Brand and Malzahar before him, quality of life changes first and foremost. Cho'gath should be somewhat easier to use now that his delays and cast times are streamlined. Again, I'd guess we'd see more Cho'gaths, but quality of life changes are no guarantee of a lasting increase in popularity.

Continuing the theme of quality of life changes we have Eve. The shorter stealth fade time is fairly important, as it was a ridiculously long time before. Similarly her ult's cooldown was extremely long before, they literally shaved 30 seconds off it at rank 1. With these changes her play should feel smoother, particularly relating to stealth.

Finally we have Hecarim to round up the quality of life changes. E was previously fairly unresponsive, with its pushback going at odd angles and freezing Hecarim thereafter. If this is fixed it will make his ganks substantially easier, along with his greater initial velocity. Similarly faster fleeing targets will make his ultimate feel much stronger when placed well. Overall he should be far easier to use for the many players who have felt he was clunky and difficult.

Most of what remains are minor bug fixes and nerfs, but it's worth noting that Janna, Xin, and Yorick were nerfed due to overly strong laning phases. While small, their nerfs should make them easier to deal with. Also, the reversal of Urgot's nerf should make him competitive again (he had, as I suggested he would, fallen completely off the competitive ladder).

Overall this patch largely has quality of life changes, a few nerfs, and a few minor buffs. After the plethora of buffs and remakes last patch this is a welcome reprieve. I'll talk more about Diana later this week.