Tons and tons of preseason
changes were shipped to the PBE recently. Some are here to stay, some
aren’t, and some have yet to be seen. But as with any change,
there are trade-offs:
Items
The first item change I want to mention is the addition of
Righteous Glory; specifically, I’d like to thank our Rito overlords for adding
another item that builds out of Catalyst the Protector. Ever since Season 3, we've only had one
option when buying this - Banshee’s Veil. With the new Righteous Glory, we have an option similar to Rod of Ages that helps your team a bit more when sieging. Also,
just a hunch, this item on a team with the new Sion will hurt quite a bit.
There’s another new item, though, that I don’t like so much:
the Zz’rot portal. This item, intended for tanks who aren’t very good at
split-pushing, spawns monsters that act as extra
minions for your team and sends them to the nearest lane. A cool concept but, in my opinion, it will greatly devalue the skill of controlling side waves. This
is a hard skill to learn and an even harder one to implement, as you can see
when the top professional teams lose track of how a lane is pushing and end up losing a
tower. If you spend the time and resources building up your side
lanes and then your opponent just buys an item to spawn more
minions, what’s the point in learning that skill?
There are also a slew of changes to elixirs. Some are good
and exciting, but I have some deep reservations about others. The current
elixirs are being removed and there are four new elixirs taking their
place, so it’s not like that idea is gone. In fact, I think there will
be some great uses for these new elixirs. Take the Elixir of Iron for example; paired with the Captain enchantment on a set of boots, your allies can quickly
follow up when you engage on the enemy team. Or your Tristana could buy an
Elixir of Wrath and stack on extra time to its duration as she gets resets in a
teamfight. These new elixirs open up plenty of possibilities.
However, they also added a restriction to elixirs that seems
to be pretty much out of the blue. You can no longer buy elixirs before level
9, even though this had never caused problems before. There were very few situations where
anyone would do this anyways - one example being the red elixir start on Zed - and
doing this was always a choice which had clear strengths and weaknesses.
Note: This item is still bad. Don’t buy it. It got some changes,
but it’s still in a very awkward place.
Jungle
Changes
There are a lot of changes to how the jungle works, and this
is the area where we’re most likely to see more changes in the coming
weeks. Little is known about these changes, but I think I can say that the four
different versions of Smite will probably turn out to be a good thing. It
allows for junglers to play more to their strength and what their team needs.
Also, I have a feeling that these jungle changes will benefit Korean teams more
than teams from any other region, since the need for “jungle smarts” is going to
increase and Korean junglers currently outshine the rest in that department.
However, now you can only buy Hunter’s Machete if you took
Smite as a summoner spell. Many of you may not know this (since LPL has a very
low English-speaking viewership), but Chinese mid laners had begun building
jungle items (usually Spirit of the Spectral Lizard) and farming wraiths every
time they respawned. This new restriction on the jungle items eliminates this
innovative strategy, which could have even been improved with these jungle
changes (i.e. getting faster camp clear).
Read: Always kill wraiths before you go to dragon or Baron.
‘Nuff said.
Objectives/Macro
Strategy/Misc.
One of the biggest changes announced was the addition of the
crab patrolling the two sections of river. Now, Xypherous referred
to it as a “scuttle crab,” but the client calls it a “giant enemy
crab.” Whichever name goes through (but it should totally be the second one),
this moving camp will be important to keep track of. This is likely going to be
a good change, as long as they add special interactions between this camp and Urgot.
Still Waters is a buff introduced in these preseason
changes. It gives bonus movement speed out of combat and, after standing still
for half a second, 25% increased vision range and the ability to see over
walls. This will be useful in many situations, from sieging the enemy’s base to
contesting Baron. The only player I wouldn't give this power-up to would be a
split pusher. If they’re relying on it to avoid getting caught out, then your
team does not have the proper map pressure to attempt a split push in the first
place.
The new dragon bonuses are certainly a little odd; stacking
bonuses for each dragon you kill is an interesting direction to take things.
Early dragons will likely become much more important. These changes should be good for competitive play but could go either way for solo queue, since
objective control is typically better and more emphasized in competitive
matches.
Dragon gets a buff, though, against your team for each
time you kill it. As you challenge for your fifth dragon, it will be dealing
180% damage to your team. This means that you either have to be very far ahead
of the other team to contest, or you have to rotate in such a way that you can
take it without any opposition. This will probably need to be tuned down, but
we’ll see.
The new Baron buff is interesting too, but the most striking
thing about it to me is the massively improved recall you get when you have it.
You recall in half the time and, from what it sounds like, basically get a free
Homeguard enchantment on top of it. This may (and I hope, will) encourage more
diverse choices when upgrading your boots - assuming boot enchantments aren’t
also being updated.---
By Kennan French
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