Greetings and salutations summoners! Patch 5.7 came out a little sooner than I thought it would, so I spent a couple of days letting it simmer before I turned around to give my thoughts on it. So here it is, my thoughts on Patch 5.7. Riot sums it up using the term "change canoe," and yes, they're taking that joke too far, but we still love them except when they nerf our favorite champions.

Skins

• Omega Squad Teemo - Teemo just got hit with his first Legendary skin, and as much as I hate the furry little monster, this skin seems very terrifying. As fan theory has passed before, it seems like this skin is based on a time after the League of Legends during a post-apocalyptic time, where war is now fought until you actually die, and Teemo has...well, gotten very good at said killing and very good at not dying. Basically it tells me Teemo snapped, and his killing half of his cute and cuddly facade has come out full blown, and he won't stop until he sees the world burn. What do I think of that? Terrifying, and the skin totally looks like it was inspired by Fallout.
• Arclight Vayne - Our caped crusader got the gradial shift into the brighter shades of gray. Good for her, why she still basically has sunglasses on I don't know, and I think take away from the skin splash, though I'd bet is hardly noticeable in game. It's cool to see riot pursuing some of the themes they made but never created a ton for multiple champions. Now, maybe this idea would work great for Zac? Think about it; Arclight Zac! He's golden and glowy!
• Debonair Galio - Galio looks suave as heck, not only that but I could actually see Galio get polished up and slip into an XXXL tuxedo designed for gargoyles to go out with his buddies Jayce and Ezreal. I think this skin will look okay in game, Galio has still yet to receive a kind of needed visual upgrade, but I digress.
• Guardian of the Sands Rammus, Skarner, and Xerath - That makes four guardians, all we need now is Maokai and we basically have the five guardians we need...sort of...to make a Guardians of the Galaxy spoof! Anyway, I think this is kind of cool and in the case of Rammus and Skarner, is really thematically fitting considering their animal types. Xerath on the other hand all I can possibly say is that he'll look cool in game, gaining a more golden sandy look to him to replace that blue pulsating arcane power deal.
• Overall - Well done Riot, and that's about all I got to say on that. Nothing particularly sticks out to me, but I know people will play Teemo more with his new skin, and Riot will make bank on that, meanwhile if I play more Galio or pick up Skarner I'd probably get those skins, but everyone else I'm disinterested in as nothing else catches my fancy.

Items and Gromp Buff

• Enchantment: Cinderhulk - This item got a small health decrease of 50 HP and a small item increase of 50 gold. The latter is a bug fix according to Riot, and the 50 HP will only really matter against the jungle creep in the early game. 50 HP doesn't make too much difference in teamfights unless you're being poked by a mage, otherwise the burst will handle you fairly quickly. So the nerf in my book is almost nonexistence, the price change is where the nerf really is but then again...they say it's not really a nerf.
• Tiamat/ Ravenous Hydra - Did you ever notice how your damage with these at range of the AoE nonsense you got when you auto'd actually scaled to correspond within three "zones?" Neither did I, but Riot has made it so both items now scale their damage linearly with range, meaning literally the closer the opponent is the more damage they'll take. I won't even notice.
• Postface - I thought it was important to bring these up as they're kind of a decent deal and "big" changes to the items. Cinderhulk is actually really minor, but I think it was worth to bring up to voice what I think of the nerf. In short; people will still get it, it's a sunfire cape for junglers and that's what makes it good.
• Gromp Buff - This now deals half the damage of % health than it did before. So that's 5% scaling based on the health of the buffed champ of poisonous damage to the enemy. I did not know this, and it should make it so a Master Yi picking up this buff before gank is less ludicrous to attack and more reasonable to focus first.

Champions

Bard

• Base Stats - Auto attack up by six points and so is his base armor by four. The general thoughts on this are that Bard relies very heavily on his Meeps to do his auto-attacks and, well, it's almost mandatory. This way, Bard can poke a bit better without his meeps, but his meeps added on will do a good deal of damage in the long run. In short, it makes bard just overall better at poking and trading, however minorly.
• Traveler's Call - On top of his base stats getting boosted, Bard gets Meeps faster, scaling as he grabs chimes, and now grabbing chimes restores 12% of his max mana which could be a huge deal, changing his style to burning spells then roaming to restore mana, then coming back for a quick gank. He's his own personal jungler, and that's kinda cool.
• Cosmic Binding - The AP ratio got a buff and after level one this spell gets better flat damage, again making Bard scarier in lane. I really think Riot is making a push on players to play more of Bard. I don't know why, but he's actually quite good, able to make a fool out of the likes of Braum with his jukes and stuns. Though this also gives AP Bard more of a chance to shine.
• Overall - The buff barge the past few times has really liked Bard, and though I'm glad I can probably play him and not get wrecked as easily, I'm a little worried this may be overkill, but I doubt that is in fact the case. Give him two more buffs and I'll whip out the wait and see remark however.

Blitzcrank

• Overdrive - No longer does this ability give a flat amount of movement speed, but it now instead gives a gigantic percentage of movement speed, with a drawback; after it's all said and done, Blitzcrank will slow down by a total of 30%, which is kind of harsh coming from one of his own abilities. I will say this; it brings risk and reward to the big robot with a heart, and considering Blitz was a superior bot lane pick as a support next to the likes of Thresh, this is a big deal. If he cannot get away with the huge burst of speed, or gets caught as he casts it, he'll only get away a couple of feet before he's slowed and unable to get away period, and I think this was very much needed for the hulking goliath robot. Though to be fair I would have personally nerfed the heck out of that grab; it's silly.

Darius

• Noxian Guillotine - The dunk is back with this patch, as Darius gets a chunk of his mana back every time he kills someone with this dunk, 25/50/100 mana to be exact, and on top of that at rank 3 getting a kill with the dunk just straight up resets the cooldown on the dunk, just like how it worked before his big nerf when it was made so it would only be reusable so long as you could chain kills with the dunk. How do I feel about the last part? Well, this makes Darius really good at one-on-ones, making it if he dunks you at level sixteen and kills you he'll be ready to go should a five versus four break out, making his late game picking off potential really good, and I'm not so sure that's a good thing. Keep an eye out for Darius at this time, the mana on kill actually makes him pretty damn good now as a chaser.

Evelynn

• Hate Spike - Ugh, another buff for the stealthy mistress. It's a flat damage buff, but it makes her good in early skirmishes so Riot claims, and when I see that I just kind of get a little worried, thinking early fights will end in losses against a stealth champ. The last thing I want to see is a bunch of Eve players, but with the last patch and this one I can safely think that she'll come back into the meta in a pretty big way.

Fizz

• Seastone Trident - The active and passive component of this has been switched, where the passive damage over time now scales off of missing health (which is great considering this fish is good at poking) and the on hit has been changed to scale on .25 of Fizz's AP. This makes this a good finisher if you hit a target with low enough health as they're running away it seems, and that passive part gets me a little worried, but overall if he can't lower your health low enough this is very unworthy. It's a change, and a possible slight buff.

Garen

• Demacian Justice - The dunk now has a shorter cooldown! You have no idea how silly that level one cooldown was, and this makes it so Garen plays a bigger role early game, making him a relatively large threat to the enemy team if they're not careful in how they play around his ult. The hope is is that if they continue this trend that Garen does not become overpowered lest he face the fate of Olaf.

Hecarim

• Base Stats - I don't religiously follow base stats, but Hec got a slight nerf to both health regen and mana regen. Something to tone down is top lane superiority a little bit as he has a decent self-heal and low mana costs to boot. If in fact this nerf is inconsequential than that will be a shame, no one champ should completely be able to dominate a lane against most or all opponents.

Kassadin

• Riftwalk - The time it takes before Kassadin loses the stacks from using this multiple times in a row is reduced by five seconds, a pretty big difference if you ask me. This should get Kassadin players to feel more comfortable with their slightly shorter ranged hop as they can go back to using it a crazy amount just like before. The trick is to be patient enough to wait fifteen seconds once you get away from your opponents to ensure you're away from them.

Maokai

• Sap Magic - Groot got a nerf for the early and mid game, making it so that he doesn't restore nearly as much health once his passive procs. I never saw enough of Maokai to really care about this change, but I believe this got stacks from both enemy and Mao's spells, making it really good and it would proc often, meaning it'd be very hard to kill him as a mage character against Mao. A good two percent nerf for early levels makes it pretty fair early game I feel.

Nidalee

• Base Stats - Nidalee got a slight nerf on base health and health per level, so she did not leave this patch unscathed, and I do think Riot is in the works behind the scenes either giving her a hard nerf or giving her a good sized buff to make up for the slight nerf. Who knows at this stage, but killing her late game after a 200 HP difference should be much easier. If you got the burst.

Quinn

• Blinding Assault - Hey, this works better! In short; what this change does is that when Quinn blinds a target, that target with blind will have the blind check to see when the PROJECTILE is created versus when the attack is launched entirely, giving what I'd say a good half a second to a whole second change to when the blind actually takes place early game versus before where an opponent would be blinded, but the check wouldn't happen until they started attacking before the projectile was made. I think that's big, and I expect to see a bit more of Quinn and a bit more raging and people claim this buff is OP.

Rek'Sai

• Queen's Wrath - I can say I'm happy with this little nerf, as it means Rek'sai is finally getting a much needed nerf to one of her key abilities that I'd argue was actually very, very overpowered at the time. Though it's a small nerf, a whole .1 scaling bonus damage difference, that's still a good 75 points or so of damage in the long run during late game gone, and for three attacks that's a maybe 225 damage difference.
• Tunnel - The cooldown is shorter as it's leveled up giving it a big buff for the later game, making it so Rek'sai is much more mobile, but I'm honestly not too chuffed about it. It's a healthy buff as this is sort of how it works on a lot of champions who have some decent mobility, so it just puts Rek'sai up to speed.
• Overall - Good changes to Rek'sai, she'll still wreck sure, but it's going to require a bit more strategy for that to happen now versus just pure damage from her Q.

Shen

• Stand United - Much like Garen, Shen is seeing a good and decent buff to his ultimate so that it's better to use in the early game and gets better later into the game. Unlike Garen's buff though the final level is also on a shorter cooldown, this way Shen can have some good map presence, and as long as the Shen is good, means that Shen can probably be seen again in blind pick and team builder. He probably won't see much play in ranked for a while, save for maybe in Bronze or Silver.

Singed

• Fling - Bug fix! Now his damage to monsters now properly caps at 300 damage, as it now takes into account his base damage. What did before he'd deal like 500 damage to monsters because he had 200 damage base? I'm making these numbers up by the way, at the time of typing this I'm not going to look at his base damage for the sake of a simple joke.

Teemo

• Blinding Dart - See the change to Quinn, it's literally the same change, and I guess it's fair but I'm not happy about it. I just hate Teemo; period.

Tristana

• Rapid Fire - Ha, cute Riot, it's an URF joke in their patch notes. In all seriousness, it's an interesting interaction with her Explosive Charge shortening it's cooldown each hit made with this ability, which would seem silly if...
• Explosive Charge - ...Didn't get a cooldown nerf. So this interaction makes it so Tristana should rely a little bit on her Rapid Fire after using Explosive Charge on her target to get it off cooldown as soon as possible, so she can use it again and potentially kill tanky targets or her original target if it's not dead yet. It's an interesting change, and what I know of Explosive Charge not something that makes her TOO overpowered, but I'd keep my eye on her as I very well could be wrong.

Overview of Remainder of Patch

• Luden's - It's now in Twisted Treeline and Crystal Scar, and it's a 100 AP item there. Cool beans.
• Animations! - Creeps on Summoner's Rift now have a spawn animation! Not very important, but sorta neat. Oh! Also the VICTORY and Defeat... animation banners are back, so get pumped!
• Loading Screen - Some art has been added here. Aesthetics man, can you really go wrong with that?

That's all from this patch folks! Some pretty lackluster changes in my opinion, but a couple of champions got hit big and Trist now has a more interesting interaction between her two abilities that wasn't there before. No Veigar, so no me ranting about the lunacy that is his overpoweredness but he needs a nerf! Overall though, not a bad patch, just a little disappointing considering the big expectation to see a buff or nerf happen to Nid since the last patch. Anyway that's all I have to say on this topic, so until next time summoners! May you all become champions in your own right!