Patch 3.2 has been out long enough that I have opinions about it. Not just the kinds of opinions I have when people ask me questions, but opinions I want to share. Which is good because this patch matters. The first ever Wild Rift ICONS world championship is going to be played on it (or actually maybe it’ll be 3.2a which was just announced with some champion hot fixes).

The new runes are very good but

do mean that the game is more about damage than ever before. My blessed tank meta that was ushered in at the beginning of this season may finally be dead. Why is this?

Kraken Slayer gives early game champions tools to burn through huge hunks of hit points like Garen. Characters like Lucian, who is ostensibly an early game champion, previously had to wait until they got their first two items to do damage to tanks. Now the tools to hurt the hunks are built into their rune page as they load in.

Also Nullifying Orb gives squishy champions a shield that prevents lethal damage. The rune’s HP shield scales based on how much AD or AP damage you have built. This means that squishy assassins will have an annoying amount of rune based survivability. Specifically countering the slow burn they might face from big tanky boys like Mundo.

Scorch is also very fun and I will be running it on every support enchanter because it applies bonus damage which scales off of my level and nothing else. It’s free damage Jim!

                                                               Something neat I’ve been doing is playing Senna with Arcane Comet, Scorch, and Pack Hunter. I don’t need to finish kills and I do a frustrating amount of poke damage.

League of Legends: Wild Rift

NOW WITH NEW AND ADDED LANE PHASE

because they moved back the spawn time of the first Dragon and Rift Herald. The delay means that carries will be allowed to stay in lane longer, both because the dragon fight is later, and because the first Rift Herald no longer decides who gets the first dragon fight.

This will probably benefit a weird sub-section of champions. It’s not a clear win for scaling or early game champs, so much as a win for “laning” champs. Which is a much more amorphous label. Characters that succeed at pushing their opponents off of early waves will now have longer to do so.

Conversely, I expect Support and Jungle mains to roam more which will increase pressure on lanes as well. Previously playing something like Lee Sin meant spending the first two minutes of gameplay setting up for Dragon or Rift Herald. Any ganks or early skirmishes had to be building towards your first objective take. Now the chains are off and Lee Sin players are able to schedule their own extra-curricular activities(which is a euphemism for lane ganks).

In my games, this has mostly meant that scaling junglers are back in town. It’s very reminiscent of the Horizon Cup meta where games were decided by a Jax vs Graves teamfight at fifteen minutes. It’s unclear if that will hold true at the highest levels of play, but I would put safe money on some good jungle duels at ICONS. If you want to make your rank go up, learning jungle is still the best way to do it.

The poke damage ADC thing

//is probably here to stay?

//that I was doing with Senna, is viable on a number of champions. KDF’s all star Dragon Laner Acrobat has been banned from ever playing Varus again. So he’s playing Jayce. The idea behind all of these champions is that their poke gives them a layer of safety Wild Rift rarely affords carries. In comparison to Kai’sa, a Jayce can hover behind his tanks and throw out safe damage with shock blasts. This is also why Ziggs and Varus were go-to carries for so long in China’s WRL and Korea’s WCK.

That doesn’t seem super fun, what are the devs doing about it?

Devs have been targeting individual champions that represent this meta, and they’ve added tools like Nullifying Orb and Lethal Tempo that might encourage more risky auto attack focused play. Lethal Tempo in particular encourages characters like Kai’sa and Lucian to step forward into fights.

The issue is that it will always be more reliable to have your carry play something safe and sit a mile away. I suspect that Top focused teams who have star players in the Baron Lane or Jungle will continue to abandon their Dragon Laners. Relegating them to poke duty.

                                                                    HOWEVER

the new options do mean that picks like Lucian are seeing much more play. Teams that win games through their dragon laner, like Korea’s #1 seed Rolster, will probably take advantage of the new options at ICONS.

How’s Ekko?

He’s fine I guess. I don’t know, if you are into his mechanics he’s pretty fun. People who like Ekko are happy that he’s in the game.

He’s certainly not OP.

Ekko, like all assassins, is most useful when he hits a breakpoint where he can one-shot the other team’s carry with a single combo. As he currently stands Ekko— doesn’t.

He’ll still do a lot of damage with a substantial lead, but the most reliable way of getting there isn’t building towards one-shot AP damage at all. The most successful Ekko players so far are building his HP to get more value out of Parallel Convergence.

The most effective scaling jungler is still Irelia, weirdly enough SEA junglers are also getting a lot of milage out of Rammus who has the highest winrate on their server. He’s pretty good but I’m not sure if he’s “best champion on the SEA server” good.

If you need something to do during draft phase I’d say

ban Yumii.

The character is undergoing a second renaissance as Thai WCS player WhatTheJess (who is qualified for Wild Rift ICONS on Buriram United) discovered that the optimal way to play Yuumii is maximizing her AP.

A player who builds Ludins Echo into Rabbadon’s Deathcap will do more damage than their carry and still be able to heal for impressive amounts.

A

dditionally:

1) I’ll be trying to post more of these patch notes-notes, even when there aren’t patches. They are mostly a transcription and organization of my ongoing meta notes, which means they’re good for me to write.

1. The Wild Rift Icons is next month. It’ll be the biggest esports tournament in the history of western mobile esports. It’ll be very exciting and extremely cool.

Here are the exact event details and more information at the newly launched

www.WildRiftEsports.com

• I also discussed this patch in detail with WCS commentator Omo during the latest episode of the Out Of Hand podcast. You can find weekly esports oriented discussion there.