Thoughts on Patch 5.6 (and its updates)

'Eyyyy, what's going on MOBA Fire? Wait, say what? You forgot about me? Well, that's a fine how-do-you-do huh? It's been a little bit, distractions and procrastination abound, but later is better than never in my book. So without much further ado, let's get into this patch. It's really a bunch of champion changes and a couple item fixes, but a couple of these are sure to peak interests.

Skins

Preface - Alright, so technically no skins were announced with this patch since it was close to April Fools day, AKA let's all go play U.R.F. and what we thought would have been N.U.R.F., which I still say was a good prank. Made me not want to play League on the day of fools, and it made me look like a fool. However, some comedic skins came out for the day of the fools, and they are all enjoyable to some degree...well their splash arts anyway.
Archduke Nasus - This sort of heralds back to the gentlemanly theme back with Cho'Gath and Gragas, and Nasus looks dapper as all could be. I get it's sort of a joke skin, but you gotta admit when the splash for a skin looks good, and when the in game texturing also looks good. No, it doesn't fit him thematically, but it's for the gentleman theme and for that, I give the applause to Riot. Oh, as a generally theme all these skins share the same splash, so past this I'll really only comment on something unique about them.
Definitely Not Udyr - This Zac skin looks amazing! He looks so much like Udyr it's ridiculous! Joking and prodding at one of the only champions to not get a skin since his day one debut a couple years back aside, this skin gives a shoutout to the old Blitzcrank skin that resides within the deepest trenches of the legacy vault, and I gotta say, well done Riot, you hit the nail on the head with this one, it came from left field and I never knew I wanted it. He also looks really cuddly in those full sized suits doesn't he?
Order of the Banana Soraka - This skin plays on the joke that Soraka throws bananas as auto-attacks, so the joke isn't cool anymore, but that doesn't mean this skin isn't. As a bonus to you perverts, there's a little bit of fan-service with the skin being able to see the valley and whatnot. I mean, that's if you're into that sort of thing, she technically isn't human, but that never stopped some of you from liking Ahri, Zyra, or Elise for their assets. Oh, skin looks cool in game too, thought I should mention.
Urf the Nami-tee - Here goes Riot again, poking fun at the very first April Fools joke they ever did. I will say; it looks adorable, it's just not a skin I'd use or would see people use very often other than for a joke. So for those of you that will use it, kudos to you, but me personally I like my fish to be a koi thank you.
Surprise Party Amumu - Amumu has quite a few skins, all of them related to being sad. This one just looks sad, he's got a cake stuck on his head like some jerk dropped it on him. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for his lore, but personally, I won't run this skin, and it doesn't make too many changes to Amumu, the differences mostly being in his animations, and obviously his model is different but that's besides the point. At the very least however, unlike Urf the Nami-tee this one will be used frequently, it looks good and doesn't amount a ton of joking to be had at it; everybody is always afraid of a good Amumu.
Overall - The batch is pretty funny, pretty awesome, and great to look at. Despite some of my grievous opinion with Nami's new skin, it still looks good and I do like it, I just think they kind of went a little crazy on the Urf joke this time around. Hopefully you cool cats will be looking dapper, throwing surprise parties, and constantly saying "remember remember, the fifth of November" as you stay incognito.

Champions

Massacre - From the way I understand the change to this, for each hit that Aatrox lands while in Ult mode he fills his secondary bar 20% of the way. Considering I rarely see this demon being played anymore, I can't say I'm too peeved about this, if his passive is up after he dives into the fray, he'll fill up his bar completely for a second chance at life when his team follows and he falls. Gives a kamikaze feel to him that's actually remotely viable!

Despair - Hey, weren't we just talking about this mummy? Yeah, so apparently this ability would stay active even when Amumu ran out of mana. Talk about something to cry about if you're on the enemy team! Dry up those tears my sad little mummy...well, actually, I think you'll cry more, because Riot fixed this little bug of yours.

Summon: Tibbers - This is a rebalancing act by Riot, making it so early levels of Tibbers aura aren't as threatening, but late game is generally the same as he was before. I personally don't fear tibbers because of his aura damage, I fear him for his heavy hits and that initial burst of damage (and sometimes a stun) when he first comes in. I think this will make minimal changes, save for when Annie first hits level six, misses the Tibbers stun, and has to make him chase you like you're a delicious piece of candy or something along those lines.

Post Patch Fixes - This is the first time I've encountered these post-patch fixes, and all of them regard Bard really. Well, there's the skin re-enabling, but that's really minor. It seems after this patch it was discovered that Bard could use his R and make his towers unkillable. That's uh...not good, that's like when Syndra could take her spawn tower on Twisted Treeline and use it not only as a projectile, but an immortal lane killer. It's game breaking and makes the game not fun. Kudos to Riot for fixing this when they did, I never knew about it, but clearly other players did.
Cosmic Binding - This got a base damage buff, and I think that's in an attempt to make players fear Bard a tiny bit more for more than just his stuns and slows, but for his poke. I can't say I'm complaining, big dude is hard to play, so this just gives him a little bit more notoriety.
Magical Journey - This ability got a shorter cooldown, actually making it a little bit more viable, but on top of that it's easier to click into it, and clones can go into it. Siv HD and his posers, eat your hearts out, the jukes just got real...realer? Er, yeah, realer. Overall it's a good change in my eyes.
Tempered Fate - We touched on this a little bit above, but the patch fix makes it so using this on neutral monsters won't reset their health once this is all said and done. I kinda thought that was the point, but then again you don't see that happening with players. It's a bug fix.
Overall - Seems like the buff barge swung by Bard's recently established house, and since people are getting the hang of him I feel like we gotta leave it up to fate whether this is not good or actually quite good. He's really difficult to play due to the roaming playstyle he...she...it...whatever Bard is has, so I think this buff just gives him more presence when he's not in lane. This kind of buff never truly bothers me, but again we have to wait and see.

AP Interaction Change - So it seems like Dragon + Rabadon's + Cassiopeia passive last patch equaled something neither man nor snake was deemed fit to fight. In short; all the previously mentioned stuff we multiplied rather than added together, so her AP scaled massively. Riot went back and fixed that problem, so now we won't have to pick our Alpha Draft picks based on who plays Cass the most.

Base Stats - Human form movement speed got a slight nerf, we're talking like five points. Meanwhile spider form got a slight buff, and we're talking a ten point buff there. Is it significant? Well if you wanna chase spider form is the way to do it 100% now, it's just faster period.
Rappel - Just a usability change, you can right click now and still use E to descend on your target, and that's pretty nice. Least now I won't look like an idiot if I pick up Elise.
Cocoon - First Veigar and now Elise get the projectile speed change. In short; won't have to lead as much as her but you better be ready if some web is flying your way.
Overall - Not too many major changes, the big change is the functionality between human and spider form with their base movement speed change. This is neither a nerf nor a buff, and I don't expect to see Elise being played any differently.

Shadow Walk - Oooh this passive change. This is kind of a major buff, as it makes her harder to deal with later and later into the game as she becomes stealthed sooner and sooner. The best course of action is to try and make her stay in combat, so that way she can't recloak and get away with a sliver of health. Is it a big deal? Kind of, now it's almost required you keep a pink handy if you want to make sure she dies, but then again she's like Shaco or Akali in that way isn't she?
Dark Frenzy - Change from one passive that makes her faster to a passive that shortens the cooldown on this ability. For a CC removing ability that's pretty big, it's passive acts like a Katarina base passive but making it usable again 100% of the time after kills or assists, so I don't think you can ever keep Eve down now. But maybe this isn't as big as I think it is, never played her, so I don't know how frequently she'll hit you with spells.
Overall - I don't know about you, but I see this as a buff, maybe not a big one but certainly a significant one. I expect to see more Evelynn's in play, and on top of that I expect to see their style of play change to coincide with an angel of death swooping in to secure kills, rather than showing up and staying.

Righteous Gust - This is the first ability on this champion to get a scaling cooldown, meaning per level its cooldown gets shorter. Hey grats Galio, now you can consistently get to lane a lot faster...and this ability will probably be maxed first now, won't it?

Equilibrium Strike - In all my days playing League I've never seen this champion get nerfed. Not only that, this nerf is actually small, this is her E, it stuns when your percent health is higher than hers, and its scaling base damage was nerfed. So that's all I'll say about it, she's still really strong when she's fed, and she'll still probably be annoying to your team in team fights.

Base Stats - Basically overall Katarina's health over the course of the game got a nerf, slower regen per five on her, lower base health, but minorly higher health per level. This is to try and make it so Katarina has to play it safer in team fights, but honestly? This change is laughably insignificant, the only thing you'll see happen is that if you poke her enough she DEFINITELY will not stay in lane if she's low enough.

Less Bad Attack Frame - I guess this means his autos are actually worth a damn in speed? I think that's what it means...

Mimic - All of her mimic'ed spells now deal less scaled-off-ap damage, about .05 * AP less overall, but two or three extra points of damage can make a difference...well, then again, I think this is more an early game nerf than anything to make the burst less crazy until late game.

Final Spark - Bug fix! Now if you have her passive on you when this hits you, the passive will actually trigger properly! So yeah...now you really can't underestimate Lux anymore. Talk about a bug eh?

Mentioned - So Riot didn't actually change her this patch but they mentioned her. In short, they're saying when the tanks come around Nid will have a hard time controlling the pace of the fight, and that her hard engage is a big weakness. Considering the vagueness on the definition of hard engage, I can't discern what they mean from that, all I know is that she engages well. I can gather they mean she can't stay with the fight if it drifts too quickly, or her engages have no true oomph like a Malphite or Braum engage does. They're saying to wait and see with the tank flood coming, and I personally think Nidalee will swim along fine with the right team comp, but that team comp would have Vayne and Nasus on the roster I feel. In other words, I smell a buff coming her way when I think she needs a nerf, especially to her cat form leap, that is some crazy escaping man!

Paranoia - Don't you just hate it when your Nocturne uses this ult? Doesn't it give you PARANOIA!? Eh? Eh? No? I'll be here all week! Joking aside, this got a buff in the way of a better scaling cooldown, and what I mean by that is that as it is upgraded the cooldown is shorter. So expect to see this ult more often, and expect to see one or two more Nocturnes to show up in PvP.

Vault - Hey! This is getting bug fixes and something akin to buffs! So, bug fixes first, and I've never had this happen but sometimes Quinn's passive, y'know the reticle thing, would not apply when she used this herself. Additionally there was an issue when Quinn used this in close proximity to her targets she would get launched too far...which I thought was the point of the ability but maybe I misheard the champion spotlight when she first game out, so now she consistently lands at about auto-attack range away. On the effectively buff side of things, when Quinn lands after vaulting, her auto-attack is reset (what this means is if she launched an auto, did this, and autos again, it'll launch as if she didn't auto-attack before vault), additionally you can vault off of targets over terrain easier now, so the gromp escape is much more viable than before. They also mentioned that they'll work on Quinn in the future, which makes me happy since before I tried Graves she was 100% my ADC main and she wasn't all that good due to a high risk high reward like playstyle since her auto-attack speed and damage were somewhat low.

Powerball - The yellow streak got this ability to be cheaper on the mana cost, and considering the armordillo doesn't really build mana, this looks like a big deal to me. Now granted its like a 20 mana cost reduction average, but that 20 mana can stack up after using his ability something like 20-50 times a game. His armored rear will probably engage and escape more often, and I guess that's a good thing, but I didn't realize this was a huge issue.

Overload - The base damage on this ability has been buffed by an average of about 15 points. How do I feel about this? Well, seeing as Ryze was so flippin' uncommon as is, I don't think this will really bring him back or make him super terrifying, but he's still a really good tank when he goes mana and a really bursty mage when he goes AP, so we'll have to see what the future has in store for this change.

Flail of the Northern Winds - I just realized how long that ability name is, here I thought Orb of Deception was a little long... Anyway, this got a max health scaling damage nerf, we're averaging here of something akin to 1.5% nerf, so being tanky isn't punished as much if you have oodles and oodles of health, but it still scales off of your max health, so watch yourself because some 30-50 points of damage missing per second on this ability doesn't make it any less scary.
Glacial Prison - I did notice the slow when she missed with this thing was kinda silly, and she rarely misses with this thing. Turns out Riot noticed and gave it a big ol' nerf, which I think is good to punish sloppy Sej players so they learn to land this thing to setup teamfights rather than lazily throw it to maybe hit one player while the other four can't quite get away in time.
Overall - It's a nerf, with one ability I'm on the fence about the nerf while the other one making Sej a bit more on the requiring skill side of things, and I'm very happy about the latter. Now if only more people played her, she's still a really good tanky champion because of her flail ability. No, I'm not typing it out again unless I need to.

Fling - So this got a base damage nerf on the scaling side so that Singed can actually become a remotely useful damage dealer as it now deals % damage based on the opponent's max health! Considering in the past Singed could really only laugh as you chased him through the poison, now you should be somewhat weary when you build health, he could be dangerous now.

Decimating Smash - This ability now does 80% of its max damage to monsters, as Riot now sees Sion as a pretty good jungler, and want to make sure he's not TOO good with this ability, which I can agree with. Couple of my games have been ruined by the all too good super-highway that is river when a Sion uses his ult.
Roar of the Slayer - I don't quite get this, I think this is the stacking bonus this ability gets when it hits a minion/monster, so now it no longer does 1.5 times damage if it hits a minion/monster and then hits a target, it now does 1.3 times damage. Again, don't really know what Riot is meaning here, I'm just assuming so take that with a grain of salt.
Overall - Sion is shaping up to be another Lee Sin; able to go anywhere, able to do just about anything, but he can't build AP anymore since it's just not a thing after his rework, so there's that to consider. I'm glad Riot is responding to that this time by making sure he'll be balanced in all areas if this continues to be the case, kind of like how Lee Sin is, but better balanced I feel.

Deadly Venom - This now scales a little better as the game goes on, Riot dropping the 1 damage portion going for a 2/3/4/5/6 at levels 1/5/9/13/17, meaning Twitch has to get to higher levels to see an improvement on his poison, but it's stronger earlier as well, making the poison something to worry a smidge more about. You'd still need max stacks to really give a damn about it though.

Equilibrium - His passive now puts Athene's Unholy Grail to shame, making it so Veigar needs it less and less as it got a scaling buff of .5% per 1% missing mana. I know it's not big, but considering most people will tell you Archangel's Staff is a good item on Veigar when they don't build Racecar, it means Veigar near oom will get something akin to an extra 20 mana per 5 so those abilities will come on really quickly.
Baleful Strike - The range got increase on this...that's about all there is to say, Veigar will stay silly with this as he kills minions and pokes you, or as he kills two minions from further away now. He is now becoming a long range poker it seems, and I don't have a problem with it really. Well, other than the fact that he needs a nerf, as people will realize how good he really is...
Event Horizon - So this now stands out as you can no longer dash through this wall to escape the prison, even if you get stunned on the other side, now this just straight up stops you in your tracks. I wonder how it interacts with Flash, because I think that's just a teleport, not a dash.
Overall - My opinion still stands that Veigar needs a nerf, but the passive change here and the new feature on his Event Horizon do make me pretty happy overall. My only qualm is the range increase on his Q, which I think was a response to the fact he was probably getting outplayed by the likes of Annie and Twisted Fate due to lack of range against those kinds of champions, needing to get close enough to get wrecked. Whatever the case may be, I feel it's an overall good change for Veigar.

Life Form Disintegration Ray - I take back what I said about Sej's flail ability, that's some long name for an ult. Anyway onto the change...you can now cancel out of it by grabbing onto a Thresh lantern...that's all I have to say about it as I'm pretty sure almost every other champion can do this. Well, if their ability is channeled anyway.

Omen of War - I never got how this champion worked, and this change seems somewhat minor. When using this ability he makes like Shovel Knight and bashes your face in with his shovel like his critical hit animation, and the range of this was increased from it's measly 125 to 175. Yorick is already pretty strong and tanky, so this just makes it so he can poke you better. Oh, and make sure he doesn't start pogo-shoveling on your head with that shovel of his.

Bouncing Bomb - Just a slight mana cost reduction after level one of this ability, and Riot does admit mana regen took a hit this overall season, which means this actually puts Ziggs back to basis with his former glory...or so it sounds like. You go Ziggs!

Base Stat - Zilean now gets 6 more health per level up, which is an increase of 102 health at level 18. If he had sunglasses Leona might be crying of the extra health she needs to hit through plus dat -1 damage mod for enemy wearing sunglasses.
Time Bomb - The ap scaling on this ability got better by .1, and the mana cost was dropped a small amount after level 1 of this ability. All this does is make this ability a lot scarier than it already has been, since y'know, stunning after second bomb hits and all.
Rewind - I think Riot needs to double back and take a look at the buff of this. It's cooldown is decreased by 2.5 seconds on average across the scaling, and now costs 15 mana less. I get mana regen is not as good a thing anymore, but now you're just allowing Zilean to spam a zilean bombs at a zilean times faster rate. I do think this buff is overkill.
Time Warp - From scaling mana cost to a base of 50, it's sort of a weird change but it does mean Zilean can actually be useful when low on mana in the late game versus unable to do anything ever.
Overall - It seems like Riot is trying their hardest to make Zilean more broken than he was in the past, that's a big buff to Rewind, and I could care less about the other two abilities, they were really good as is. Zilean's power has always been in the fact that he could almost always insta-reset his cooldowns whenever he pleased, so now that that cooldown is shorter and it costs less, Zilean is a pretty damn good support as long as Blitzcrank isn't on the other side. I know I say Veigar needs a nerf, but Zilean needs it more!

Overview of the rest of the patch - As far as jungle goes, it's now better than it was before to kill jungle mobs as the game goes on, which is really good in my book as people who are behind in game at the mid and late game mark can now actually go into the jungle (as long as their team has a good grasp on it) to get a boost in exp to try and get back into the fighting faster. Now granted that's a small boost in EXP, but it isn't too bad. The other couple things I want to touch on is that isn't available (for right now) on Twisted Treeline and Crystal Scar, I imagine it'll be reworked or another 120 or 100 AP item will be implemented to the game to replace Luden's on those maps. Also, Rift Scuttler shrine was apparently giving way too much vision in terms of its radius, so Riot fixed that and that makes me sad face as it means wards are more viable when watching Baron or Dragon, as I think people can now just walk around them to avoid detection. Oh, is also better mana regen wise. There were also some more texture rebalancing, some of champions I love, others one champions that really needed it, like Ryze. Oh, do get comfy with this new section too, I think I'll do it more often as I can use it to touch on things in the patch that I don't want to get in depth about as I don't have much of an opinion over them when they don't regard champions.

That's all for this patch folks, excuse the lateness but I type this all at once and it's a lot to type. On top of that, it's hard to motivate yourself to type everything I do all at once. also wasn't mentioned in this patch but I still am going to look for it in upcoming patches. So until next patch, may you all become champions in your own right!

Firbane

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