Patch 4.10 part 1: Wewillfailer discusses the Midlane, Skarner and Support items

Patch 4.10 brings a huge number of changes ready to have an impact on competitive play. There have been drastic champion changes like that of Nidalee and Skarner, as well as a massive revamp of ADC items and changes to support. Wewillfailer, ex-support player for the EU LCS team Supa Hot Crew has discussed the changes which he believes are the most important.

Midlane and Athene's Unholy Grail

Nidalee has recieved significant alterations to her kit which substantially alters her playstyle. With a nerf to her spears and her cat form being available from level 1, no one was sure of exactly how Nidalee was going to turn out this patch. Wewillfailer however focuses more on the Athenes Holy Grail nerf than the changes to Nidalee as a champion, believing that it will have a greater effect on the mechanics of mid lane overall:

In general I think they did some really good changes towards the passive midlaners such as Nidalee, who became more of a bruiser. Also they nerfed the athene's unholy grail which has been the most OP midlane item for ages; this will at least punish some of the really passive play and skill and better trades will now be rewarded because before that the massive pushing and the insanely high magic resist gave people a possibility to escape the 1v1 part in mid and just ignore each other and wait for mid/lategame.

It's not very often we see 1v1 kills in LCS level competitive play, but Wewillfailer is correct when he discusses midlane champions safely farming until mid-game. We saw champions like Ziggs, Lulu, Orianna etc simply playing safely, pushing lane to tower and not making any moves towards the enemy midlaner without jungle aid. Building an Athenes first soon became the go-to item for almost every midlaner; the Magic Resist and insane Mana Regeneration allowing midlaners to simply stay in lane, farm with spells and be able to take the poke from the enemy they're facing.

With the severe nerf almost halving the MR, we may be about to see something change. This does not have to be specifically to the champions using the item, but other champions who rely on burst damage or roaming. Instead, we might start to see Deathfire Grasp make a return with AP assassin-type champions.

Skarner over-hype?

There seemed to be a great deal of excitement for the Skarner changes, and from the moment he hit the servers there were cries of "This champion is so overpowered!" to "He isn't really as amazing as everyone is saying". Skarner has definitely received a well needed buff, but he appears to not be as great as everyone is saying.

The main change for Skarner is his new passive, allowing his spell hits to stun targets:

In reality Skarner is still not a top tier jungle pick, as Wewillfailer points out bluntly:

Skarner will be a fun change I think he is at least more viable if a lot of junglers are banned but I still don't think he's top tier vs the mass CC/jump meta at this point.

It's as Wewillfailer says; ever since the coming of Vi, Skarner has simply been a lesser version of her. He doesn't boast the mobility to the same standards of her Q's dash, and she overall does a lot more damage than him too. Sorry Skarner fans, it seems you're going to have to wait a little while longer before your favourite scorpion returns to King of the Jungle.

Not-so-Ardent Censer?

With the arrival of Ardent Censer it appeared Riot were finally going to give the passive supports some love and new items to use outside of the Sightstone to Mikael's Crucible build. With it's itemisation focused specifically on shield/heal champs, yet movement speed and AP also being incorporated, it was unsure which champions this is actually being aimed at.

Wewillfailer discusses this problem and shares his insight on which champions it really fits with, as well as it's viability:

The new item "Ardent Censer" has good statistics but doesn't make any sense to buy on the healing support champs like Nami/Sona/Janna because you need other stats more like tankiness. Even though the item gives you nice in general stats such as AP/movespeed it suites champs like Velkoz / Annie, but they don't get anything from the healing shield attack speed buff.

In reality the champion that this probably fits best is Janna. Wewillfailer talks about how the AP/MS is best for AP burst supports, but the passive just doesn't do anything for them. The same goes for Nami/Soraka/Alistar, the passive is great, but can they really sacrifice defensive stats for the AP and MS? Probably not. Janna however benefits from it all, and so does her ADC. The passive from her shield plus the AP from the item gives her ADC an Attack Speed buff and an Attack Damage buff, oh yeah, and the actual protection of the shield. MS is even a good stat for Janna, she can catch people out and chase with her W, and dart around teamfights to get in position to use her spells. Unfortunately for Janna, her kit just isn't on the same level as other supports right now, and it's highly unlikely she will be seen as a standard pick until her Q/W is made to be more practical and useful.

Mikeal's Crucible takes a hit from the nerf bat

Mikeal's Crucible was the go-to support item after Sightstone, bringing a ton of Mana Regeneration stats for the Support, and a super useful passive for the whole team. What was special about this item was how cheap it was; this was perfect for a support, who doesn't really have money in the bank like every other role.

The real question with this change is; is the 10% CDR really worth the extra 850 gold it now costs to have that passive on your team? Wewillfailer disagrees and explains why:

The Mikael's Crucible item change is pretty sad to me personally, I would have loved to see the healing removed or slightly nerfed or maybe even a slightly higher cost like 300g. However the change to add 850g cost and make it +10% cdr isn't really a lovely change for supports as all. The supports know we don't having bags full of money, so by wanting to change the item for people buy it less isn't successful, because it's still by far the best item to buy - it's just way more expensive which is really a nerf to supports.

The new price of Mikael's Crucible and item build means that when usually a support would be able to go back and pick up their CC removing, heal-giving passive, they're actually picking up a Forbidden Idol, trading that passive for 10% CDR and a bit more Mana Regen. It's fairly easy to see why Wewillfailer thinks that this is a slight nerf to supports, it takes them a bit longer to get into the teamfighting stage of the game, which could be said for the overall botlane after the 4.10 ADC changes.

So here we have the possibility of hyper aggressive mid lane play and champions coming back into the game with the nerf of Athenes. Moreover it appears bot lane will be starting off the game rather slow, not being able to finish their core items until much later due to support item changes and the whole revamp of ADCs, which will be discussed in patch 4.10 part 2.