Prognostication: Preseason Recap

So Season 3 hit, and it's time to examine all of my predictions to see how well I did.

Items:

So it turns out that Lord Van Damm's Pillager did not get ported to Summoner's Rift and was, in fact, removed from the game entirely. Instead, Blade of the Ruined King arrived on the Rift. Infinity Edge, meanwhile, is alive and well. Whoops.

I was half right in my third prediction, Haunting Guise did get an upgrade path. However, Spirit Visage was simply made a more powerful (and expensive) item in its own right. Not bad as far as predictions go, but not great.

My most accurate prediction was regarding Tenacity items. They were, in fact, very significantly rebalanced. However, I refuse to claim full credit because I did not anticipate the addition of new Tenacity items nor the removal of existing ones.

Jungle:

My jungle predictions were thrown out of whack by the unanticipated addition of Hunter's Machete. I could claim partial credit for identifying that a 300g item would be necessary to clear the jungle, but that's a stretch. Moreover, my prediction for the cost of new jungle items was off by a factor of two, so no credit there.

The value of the jungle didn't exactly increase by 10-20%, at least not initially. It's actually very difficult to measure this against the game as Riot primarily increased the scaling of the jungle, and only modified base values insofar as necessary to adjust for the changes to ambient gold and to take some value away from Wraiths and distribute it elsewhere. I'll take half credit for this one.

I was incontrovertibly correct on spawn timers. Score one for Montegomery.

Masteries:

My Movement Speed prediction could be interpreted in different ways. Initiator was removed entirely, but one could argue it was replaced with Nimble in the utility tree. Swiftness was replaced with Wanderer and move up a tier rather than down. While Movement Speed in general is harder to come by, I'll only claim half-credit for this.

Strength of Spirit was buffed significantly. However, I was very vague as to the nature of the buffs, so this isn't exactly a great victory. Havoc still remains, in defiance of my final prediction of this category. I shake my fist angrily.

Summoner Spells:

Unfortunately while I was correct that Flash and Ignites cooldowns would increase, I was off on magnitude. Flash increased by 35 seconds, and Ignite by 30 seconds. Failure.

Heal is most definitely not single-target. Fail.

Revive's cooldown wasn't directly decreased, but you can now decrease it using an item. The speed boost was not changed. Partial credit, but another near miss.

Clarity does not restore Energy, fail.

Champions:

As of yet Riot has not released another AP jungler. They may do so in the future, but for now I appear to have been wrong.




In the end, I was generally very successful in identifying the areas that would be changing, but when it came to accurately hitting the targets themselves I was rarely accurate, only coming close to a bull's eye on one or two predictions. I did, however, do remarkably better than my jungle prognostications.

I'll do another of these sometime in the future, but for now I'll send my crystal ball to the cleaners because obviously everything was its fault and not my own.

Prognostication: Preseason Updates

Morello posted some information regarding many upcoming changes. It's all very exciting and good conversation fodder, but the analytically minded will notice the absence of something important: numbers.

As much as it may tickle the mind to consider the implications of further jungle changes, alterations to masteries, new items, and modified summoner spells, lacking any hard data distinctly reduces the accuracy of any analysis. Because all of the information provided is generalized, analysis can only be done in wide strokes with a great many "ifs" and "buts".

What better time for another prognostication?

Measurement should be largely trivial, as most of my predictions will only require a quick comparison to actual patch notes. Without further ado, here are my predictions in topical order:

Items:

• Van Damm's Pillager will be ported to Summoner's Rift.
• Infinity Edge will be unmade.
• Spirit Visage and Haunting Guise will be given upgrade paths.
• Tenacity items (i.e. Moonflare Spellblade, Cloak and Dagger, Eliesa's Miracle) will be significantly rebalanced.

Jungle:

• Most junglers will need to start Cloth Armor in order to have enough health to gank.
• The new Jungler items will cost 1100-1300g, and be built from Cloth Armor.
• The experience and gold value of the jungle will increase by 10-20%.
• Spawn timers will not be changed.

Masteries:

• Movement speed masteries will be moved deeper into their respective trees, but will increase in potency.
• Strength of Spirit will be buffed.
• Havoc is going to be replaced by a mastery which increases ability damage specifically by a larger margin, and moved deeper into the tree.

Summoner Spells:

• Flash and Ignite's cooldowns will only increase by 15-25 seconds.
• Heal will be a single target, ally-targeted spell.
• Revive's cooldown will be decreased by a full minute, and the speed boost will last slightly longer.
• Clarity will also restore Energy.

Other:

• Riot will release another champion designed to be an AP jungler, only to have them be overpowered mid. 

We'll see how I do in the days ahead.

Prognostication: Recap

It's been three months since I made my predictions regarding junglers, so it's time to see how well I did. The answer, not so well.

Amumu: While he did become much more popular, it was nowhere near to the extent of the now permanently banned Alistar and Malphite. If they weren't banned, he might not have become popular at all.

Hecarim: My prediction was completely off. While the community now recognizes Hecarim as a good jungler, Skarner has reentered the scene with a vengeance. Skarner is in the top 25 most played champions, while Hecarim barely makes the top 80.

Shen and Kayle: While I'm technically correct that they didn't become dominant forces in the jungle, it's a heck of lot easier to predict what won't become popular than what will. I award myself no points for these.

Sejuani: Riot hasn't given her any buffs my prediction here was fairly meaningless. She has seen a slight uptick in use, but nothing else. I maintain that if she's buffed she'll easily become a top pick.

In the end, my predictions were mostly failures. I will probably take another stab at it in the near future, but not until after I've nursed my poor ego's bruises and wounds.

Prognostication: Junglers

Everyone loves predicting which champions will be overpowered in the future, including me. In the wake of MLG I'd like to predict which junglers will soon become popular/overpowered, and why.

Amumu: He brings incredible CC and damage scaling for a jungler, and isn't as mana-dependent as people assume. His clear speeds are also phenomenal. When Nautilus is inevitably nerfed Amumu is going to be the next big tanky jungler.

Hecarim: Junglers who can both clear fast and gank well dominated MLG. Hecarim fits the bill, and brings incredible teamfighting to the table as well. Once people stop derping his skill order/item build he'll be a force to be reckoned with.

Those are the two junglers I believe we'll see dominate the scene in the future, but there are others I think are good but not that good.

Kayle: While her ultimate is always super good and her worst case scenario is she becomes a half-decent support, Kayle shines when she can have lane farm (e.g. top). She's not a bad jungle pick, but situational enough that she won't become popular.

Shen: The ability to instantly gank or counter-gank any lane is strong, but Shen is still inhibited by his slow clear times. He, like Kayle, is a good but situational pick.

Finally, one jungler who will become insane if Riot makes the mistake of overbuffing her.

Sejuani: Unlike Nautilus her CC is largely soft in nature, and she's significantly more mana-dependent. However, a few ill-conceived tweaks could easily make her and her built-in red buff super strong.

The time limit is three months, at which point we'll see how well I did (though there may be updates in the meantime). I'll gauge my success based on forum discussions, pro opinions, and tournament matches. This is the true test of a would-be analyst, one's ability to predict the future and then hem and haw when it doesn't work out the way you thought it would.