devtrackers.gg
So, I know many people on this sub are scared about pre-season, worried that damage is too high because of mythics or whatever. I also saw someone complain that healing is too high? which I find weird af, so I'm posting this to clear things up for those of you who don't play.
Liandry's Torment + Demonic Embrace is not OP.
Someone posted about this already, but I'd like to reiterate his point. Outside a couple champions (specifically Malzahar and good Brands), this item combination isn't actually that OP. It's certainly strong, but the passive itself is only 0.5% hp/s higher than current Liandry's Torment alone (given CC, which should always be the case). There's the added 1 second duration, but it honestly doesn't change too much. The real power of this combo comes from magic resistance shred - which squishies should not be too concerned about.
Other mage specific changes:
You have less flat magic pen than live if you build anything but Luden's or Protobelt (which no one buys): You go from 33 magic pen every game to 18 without Luden's, or 28 - 48 at 1+shoes - 5+shoes items with it.
Liandry's breaks even with Luden's in terms of pen at 120 magic resist. Squishies shouldn't be worried about Liandry's+Demonic Embrace because it's strictly weaker than Luden's against them.
Tanks get hurt a lot more however, and I do think there is too much %armor and %magic pen in the game now. It's good to have ways to stop things like Ornn from being unkillable, but tanks will struggle to 1v1 anything now.
I haven't seen anyone use Proto-belt. Axamuk's Folly and Rod of Eternity aren't really mage items anymore due to lack of mana; maybe Ryze or Cassio with a Tear.
Everfrost is f*cking stupid on Seraphine plz delet seraphine. For real though, not a lot of love for this item. Glacial Augment in my opinion just isn't as good without spooky ghosts.
Additionally, most AP items have lost some stats, raw AP is lower across the board with a big nerf to Rabadon's Deathcap.
P.S. Malzahar with Liandry's and Demonic Embrace is really dumb.
Healing is not OP either.
Ravenous Hunter went down from 1.5% +14% at max stacks to 1% +10%.
Death's Dance was reworked and lost its omnivamp. Takedowns now remove the damage queue (the 35% it delays is stored in a debuff) and heal 10% of your total HP over 2 seconds. This requires you to actually pop off in a fight to make use of it.
Oblivion Orb now costs 800 gold, and has grievous wounds; Morello is also cheaper.
There are 2 additional grievous wounds items (Chempunk Fumigator and Chempunk Chainsword) for enchanters and AD -no %arpen- respectively. The increased diversity allows you to build grievous wounds without wrecking your build.
Grievous wounds from items are now 60% against targets under half hp.
Moonstone Renewer is strong, but only during combat. You're not gonna see a Karma healing her team to full during a siege by spamming Q and E and staying far back anymore, thank god.
You are, however, gonna need to CC the enemy enchanter support or kill them during fights, unless you can delete carries in the 2-second cooldown.
Eclipse isn't the only item AD assassins have, please start buying the others.
I see almost every assassin rushing Eclipse on PBE, which would be good if they had to side lane vs a tank, but especially in its current nerfed version, it's not worth it against squishies. The invisibility from Duskblade is more helpful than the shield to get out, and Prowler's Claw gives much better stats.
TL;DR Eclipse is bad to assassinate squishies, good for side laning. Prowler's Claw is probably the best for the former.
Speaking of AD assassins, they've had it probably the best this pre-season.
Not only did AD assassins get an easy way to fight tanks in Eclipse, they also didn't sacrifice anything for it:
On Live, the maximum Lethality you can get from full items is 71.
On PBE, the minimum (Eclipse/Duskblade + Edge of Night) is 76. You also get a bunch of %arpen from Eclipse.
The maximum (Prowler's Claw + Collector) is 107.
On Live, the maximum AD you can get from full items is 275.
On PBE, the minimum AD (Eclipse/Duskblade + Collector) is 260.
The maximum (Prowler's Claw + Serpent's Fang) is 285.
A theoretical maximum lethality build would be:
Prowler's Claw, Collector, Ghostblade, Serpent's Fang (stats are too good to care about passive), Edge of Night: 105 Lethality, 280 AD.
Replace Edge of Night with Umbral Glaive: 107 Lethality, 280 AD.
But what if you want to fight tanks?
Replace Prowler's Claw with Eclipse, Edge of Night: 82 Lethality, 270 AD, 20% Armor Penetration.
Same, Umbral Glaive: 84 Lethality, 270 AD, 20% Armor Penetration.
For comparison, live theoretical maximum lethality build would be every lethality item: 71 Lethality, 275 AD, and that includes the sh*tty sanguine blade.
Every theoretical pbe build is stronger than live. I say "theoretical" a lot here because I know you're going to build GA or something, but that applies to both live and pbe so for comparison's sake it's easier this way.
Goredrinker seems busted on paper, but I haven't seen a lot of it.
Maybe it's because the best use of Goredrinker also happens to be the best use of grievous wounds - low hp, or maybe people just don't like bruisers :doubt:. I unfortunately didn't get to see this item a lot, I have to try it myself.
The other bruiser items have been okay so far outside of bugs.
Guinsoo's Rageblade is cool, but a bit too strong.
Yep, get ready for another season of Master Yi. At this point we've become accustomed to him tearing our buttholes apart at two items, and it's still gonna be the same. Rest assured though, there won't be Navori Quickblade perma-alpha striking master yi's; just 100-0 in 0.75 seconds ones. Woohoo.
Tanks are either hard engage or support now.
It doesn't look like tanks will one shot you anymore, from what I've seen so far; but they will run at you at mach-3 with Berserker Suit or slow you the f*ck down with Frostfire gauntlet after their engage. But neither of these items allow them to delete carries, nor do any of their legendaries.
It's nice to see tanks become indestructible cc bots again imo, with a lot of debuffs like Randuin and Frozen Heart while still being pretty tanky with Sterak and Gargoyle Stoneplate for example.
AD Carries hit a better powerspike at 1 item and can choose not to be made of paper anymore.
That's cool. Not much to say about the role though for me, I don't play it a lot.
And finally, please stop looking at exploits/bugs and thinking that's gonna be meta.
Bugs are bugs and they are fixed during the cycle. Of course a ton of them will show up with how many changes there have been. It's clearly not intended that you can reduce your cooldowns to 0 every AA, or have 2100 haste or even deal 40k crits (sorry jhins).
I hope I didn't get any math wrong.
TL;DR: Healing a bit down, raw damage around the same if a little higher, % armor/magic pen too high, ad assassins living the good life, ad carries are fine, tanks are fine. These are just my 2 cents, don't treat it as gospel.
External link →