League of Legends

[Kaden]

has anyone noticed any significant changes in gameplay? I'd test this myself if I could.

Played my first Morde game today. It was very sad. His shield just plummets and building it up is significantly harder. Self-casting his AoE damage shield seems to negate the natural decay at ~4 targets, which is sad because it used to provide a significant amount of damage mitigation.

What's really annoying is that he still plays exactly the same, it just feels like you get less for it. I guess that's what they were shooting for. He still pushes just as well.

I'm definitely feeling the nerf to ward duration, though. Junglers got a significant buff with the change to CS tracking, which obviously makes side-lanes more dependent on wards for defense, but wards are a pain in the ass now. It feels like the wards are gone after ten seconds, not three minutes. There were definitely some skills that were hitting wards, too, that shouldn't have been.

I feel like Riot got some of their signals crossed with this patch. While I agree with the overall, longer-term goal of removing passivity from early game play, they're never going to accomplish it with things like the CS change and the ward nerf. If you want people to play more actively, you have to give them the tools to do it. Three minutes is about enough time to farm two waves, pill back to base, purchase, and run back to the lane; since most of that time will be spent away from the lane, it makes the ward nearly useless as a defensive tool. Either you need someone in the lane to keep a full stack of wards on them at all times to make sure they don't get jungle ganked or you need to keep running back and forth from the base to set up new ones. Both hurt their goal of proactive gameplay (spending a minimum of 270 gold for a full stack of wards means players aren't buying their core items, which means they're not going to be active because they feel naked, whereas running back to base every two minutes so you're able to place a new ward is simply not playing the game).

The above sounds like an exaggeration, I know, but it's not. Place a few wards the next game you're in. You'll feel it. Consequentially, Wriggle's not an indirect buff, since its wards weren't nerfed.

EDIT: Mundo's in a good place right now, even on 5s. Waff or Ashe or even shifo can vouch that almost every time I play him I end up just crushing. He's got sick pushing power, a crazy AD steroid, and gets very survivable with only a couple of items. I like to go Merc Treads (when I'm not running my AS runes), Spirit Visage, and Randuin's and that makes me one hell of a tank, even when my ult is down (which it rarely is, thanks to the CDR from two of those items).