Best Of

I’m actually going to double back. Because we just had a whole controversy over Magik completely losing her power steal (which I’m neutral about to be clear… it’s a different champion. Whatever)

But now we have a new Blade who’s supposed to be “Enhanced” by a mystic that Kabam wants us to believe is some kind of Elder/God of the continuity. And you’re essentially telling us that the ONLY valid change is that now Blade deals degen instead of Bleed damage… once again Kabam misses the boat on the creative aspects of a champion kit, and does something that is alienating to the fan base.

So Blade’s Danger Sense now activates against everyone but the effect is completely negligible. Atrophy without any other form of buff control or reduced buff potency makes no sense. Removing AAR completely from his kit was scummy. And keeping the regen at exactly 70% is not indicative of someone who has been “Enhanced” even if the block regen is a nice boost. As a counterpoint Blade won’t be able to stop passive unblockable attacks or indefinite unblockable attacks. He’s also going to struggle against power gain champions with stronger buffs and passive buffs. Or like usual AW where he won’t have any immunities and will have to deal with compounding buffs (power gain nodes stacked on power gaining champions)

This is the same old script of the last 8 months with Kabam. Going too soft on a champion and ignoring what the game actually looks like today and even more egregiously underdelivering to the fans on what is really a fan service champion. PUT THE EXTRA SAUCE ON THE CHAMPION KITS! Stop with the “Just good enough” champion releases and actually put some effort in.

Next season, we'll just see a bunch of nukes. Copy and paste of the same 30 champion decks over and over because of competent game design

Also, I know they revealed where all the pieces are coming from on the stream, but was there ever a condensed list with dates in a single slide or an infographic?

They nerfed the damage increase from the danger sense as well which is a bummer. I really hope he is spamming enough specials to make his degen damage enough. I am honestly mind blown they left the regen alone (actually made it better with the blocked hit regen) so that is very nice. I am still waiting until I play him to form a final opinion because star lord let me down massively

I also think banquet this year was a huge leveller for 1000’s of summoners sitting in and around the top 3-5%, and that’s contributed to the struggle. Almost everyone picked up a Nico, Jean Grey, Karolina, Zola, etc., etc., (assuming they didn’t have them before) with all the shards that were kicking around and then had access to huge amounts of rank 4 materials in the same event.

The end result is BG decks, 90% of which will contain the same 20 or so meta champs, all at rank 4, and then it’s just down to who draws what.

Now we’re moving into R5’s, and to a lesser extent new ascension, we might start to see a less even spread of champs and ranks and that might remove some of the blockages.

Majority don't touch battlegrounds

Especially this season, the participation numbers are record low in history