That feel when a new champion tears your face off.

So after taking a short break from playing League of Legends, I return to Diana and Rengar. Such a nice way to welcome me back by stuffing two stupidly hard to deal with champions into the game. Riot are so wonderful, pumping out champions that are always above the bar to get you to splash out on some Riot points. At least they retain a semi-money-grubbing status instead of going full on EA games.

That feel.

Upon my first returning match of League, I pick Evelynn. As the loading screen appears, my friends decide to inform me that the opposing Diana and Rengar are going to eat me. Nothing I can do right? Blind pick, so I just have to suck it up and deal with it. I get dumped solo top against Rengar, with Diana ganking me every couple of minutes since level 2. Fun.

The worst part is not taking some time to research the new characters abilities before the match started. When you're up against somebody and you have no idea what kind of rape they will throw at you, sitting back and giving them some berth is the only logical option left. That, or play Yorick.

If you don't ward your own base, you're bad mkay.

Thank god they're giving Diana a nerf soon, her burst feels too high for someone with a fairly reliable shield ability. Getting hit by a fed Diana is more devastating than a fed Veigar or Leblanc, purely because you actually get to see Veigar and Leblanc actually land a couple of abilities on you before you die. With Diana, your screen goes grey and then the notification that she killed you appears.

As for Rengar, he's strong but looks quite balanced in the full scale of things. He has nice burst, a fair amount of utility and his clear speed looks pretty damn fast too. I haven't played against somebody who can use him properly yet though, so I shall reserve at least some judgement.

So what do you guys think about these two new champions? Balanced? Or stupid overpowered?

Nocturne!

Allegedly a new stealth hero finally joins the ranks of the League next week, Nocturne.

I'm one of those people who just loves playing characters with invisibility, or any escape ability for that matter. Here's an image of our shadowy champion, for those who haven't seen the awesome. The fact that he uses stealth has not been clarified.

Riot have released a little information on Nocturne, but not much so far.

Nocturne is an assassin type character who functions very differently than the traditional archetypes. Unlike a traditional stealth character such as Twitch who becomes personally invisible, or a character such as Nidalee who has special synergy with the brush, Nocturne’s ultimate ability afflicts the entire enemy team with a specialized debuff. This ultimate – dubbed Paranoia – removes the player’s shared vision with allied units, leaving them blind to anything beyond the sight range of their own champion. In this way, Nocturne is able to sow confusion amongst the enemy team, striking quickly and taking down enemy champions while their allies are blind to their need for assistance.

While this ulti is copied directly from HoN, and probably the DotA equivalent as well, I think it's an excellent addition to the ranks which can disrupt the enemy effectively. Most pub teams will split up and get wiped out during Paranoia, but I believe the good teams will quickly batten down the hatches and ride it out.

I'm a little excited about this guy, more excited than Jarvan anyway! I think a LOT of people are going to be buying him, mainly because of how he looks so awesome. Good one Riot!

News update

So what's been happening this week at Riot?

They have finally announced the release of Jarvan IV, the long awaited Exemplar of Demacia. Xin Zhao is this guys bodyguard, so surely he's going to be overpowered. Here is the only picture that has been released of Jarvan, a long time ago. This is the only interesting news Riot have posted this week, apart from the various skin price reductions and summoner showcase.

He is allegedly a dps character, hence the giant spear. However, to me he looks like he could easily be implemented as another skin for Xin Zhao. Riot are going to have to be careful with his skills, or he could just end up as Xin mark II.

So what else happened this week? The european servers were horribly broken for the better part of the week, with countless chat and ingame errors. It seems to have cleared up now though, so congratulations EU players, it's a shame you had so much downtime.

I saw some freedom fighters on the EU forums who decided since their forums and client weren't working properly, they thought they could fix the problem by spamming the US servers until they broke down. This was pretty damn funny, because I can't see a grain of logic behind that inspired plan.

Derp.

The free champions of the week have inspired a lot of QQ on the forums throughout the week, namely about Irelia. I don't have any problem with her balance whatsoever, but since the casuals do; Irelia players buckle down for the incoming nerf.

Other than that, this week has been incredibly baaawring for LoL, maybe they've decided to keep some cards up their sleeve instead of drooling them all over the table which seems to be the usual plan.

I personally am working for a couple more interviews, so hopefully you'll get to see those in the next couple of days. Until then, have a good weekend folks, or what's left of it.

Interview #3 CANCELLED

It appears Heat n Serve wasn't able to complete the questions I sent him, which is a shame because I was looking forward to reading it. Anyway, I've been trying to think of some eligible content to publish today.

I thought I'd cover a couple of things, starting with my favorite, Riots inadequacy:


Summoners!
Yesterday, many of you logged in to play League of Legends only to experience bugged IP rewards. As this is not the level of service that we strive to maintain, we wanted to offer all those players affected by these issues something to compensate for their negative experience.
If you logged in and played a game yesterday, your account will automatically be credited with a 10 Win IP Boost. Distribution of the boosts may take up to five days, so if you don’t get yours right away, don’t panic! We haven’t forgotten about you, it just takes some time to credit that many boosts! We apologize for the inconvenience, and for any disruptions to your regular gameplay schedule.
Thank for your patience and for your continued support for League of Legends!

When the new IP system came out, it was flawed and didn't work. Which didn't surprise nor annoy me; I play for fun not for the points. So then Riot announce we get a free boost. And once again, they didn't work. So this post on the news section is their attempt to apologise I guess, because third time is the charm. Amusing as always Riot, when will you get things right. <3

So, moving on. We've all seen the new UI, it's a little more complicated but it looks nice I guess. Vladmir escaped the heavy nerf that we were all expecting, probably by blood pooling out of it. The overpowered bastard.

I'd also like to reveal a few pieces of LoL art that have caught my eye today, League art is always so impressive.

Mhhhm Katarina. Dunno what the background is about, but looks good nonetheless. I'm actually half sure Riot are implementing this as a skin ingame. I'd buy it.

 I thought this was very nice actually, all the League art is so much better than what we see by Blizzard, and that's saying something. Ashe is one of my favorite characters, although she's a little easy to play, except for her ulti.

Now this one just looks like an attempt to remake the DotA loading screen. Fail. No wonder it's not in the game.

That's all I have for you today guys, I'll make sure I get something extraspecial for you tomorrow. For now, just eat your cookie and take a nap.