Prepare your bodies for all of the horrible sona players!

Riot has revealed the new champion.

He could be fun, but the trolls.  Good lord.  He can freeze teammates AND he can allow enemies to pass through walls.  Don't make your solo queue support angry.

Jesus, the repeated nerfs to all junglers are brutal.  I honestly think that we are getting to the point that if you can't get one of the top 3 or so junglers, it might be better to go 2/1/2.  I'm serious.  BIG nerfs to low mobility junglers and most tanky junglers this patch, and they had problems already.

I think that there has been so much complaining about jungle and fighters on the boards/reddit that Riot has actually gotten toxic tbh.  Their balance team is willfully refusing to do what the community wants at this point because they don't want to give in to the "whiners".  So they are trying to fix major problems while being spiteful, and its just a mess.

With three camps on each side and being able to get a true damage slow off a cheap item with smite, what about running smite supports top and bot?  The blue side could be using going for some high efficiency damage increases  and getting some farm as they pop in and out of the jungle, while the red support could do quick runs through to pick up red for the adc.

Don't see the problem with jungle though, if you don't have CC or high mobility, not sure why you'd be in the jungle, and you don't need both to make a well planned gank succeed.  Trundle pillars will work just as well after this patch as they did before, J4's the only one getting a minor nerf aside from the range reduction on smite, and he's been comfortably above 50% for a long time.  If the slow on smite is your only means of effectively engaging, it's never really been a viable jungler.  I guess the 5 damage off warrior might hurt a little, but everyone takes warrior because it's so much better than juggernaut, it will still have huge efficiency.

The biggest deal is the loss of ability to change smites.  Before A LOT of junglers needed to swap pink smite for blue smite.  Blue smite is better at most phases of the game, but you need pink smite to not suck early.  You can't do this any more without paying a fairly large tax.  That's a big nerf to most non strong junglers (most of the top tier junglers won't care that much).

The smite range nerf is big to the non mobile junglers.  Udyr, skarner, voli, etc REALLY care about this nerf.  They need that range to gap close.  The intended targets of the nerf don't care so much.  They have mobility to gap close already, so a bit of range off the top doesn't matter so much.  But Udyr losing a third of his gap close range?  Yeah, thats big.

Also, pretty much everybody loses 5 AD due to Warriors nerf, except for nidalee.

Jungle was already the least popular role by a fair margin (according to reddit info).  Jungle was also the least diverse role by a substantial margin by pretty much any measure that you want to use.  3 nerfs, 2 of which really hit at the lesser junglers is going to be ugly.  Really ugly.

Right now Vi and Nidalee are huge, Lee is great if you can play him, J4 is probably still decent (the nerf is bigger than you think - his first clear is going to be REALLY REALLY rough - for reference, I do the necessary 4 camp clear in our organized games at less than 100 health a lot of the time, and he lost a ton of armor late game).  Pantheon is still fine since not a lot of this matters to him.  After that its getting really ugly real fast.

what i don't get.. and please explain it to me if I'm missing it... didn't they say they were going to do something to buff jungle tanks? hurm..

Anyway, I'm downloading the latest pbe build. Will try out the new champ some tomorrow as time allows (and if he's still enabled).  Might stream that for a little bit, but I'm sure there will be other vids out there soon. Night all!

ff at 21 has some ability stat details for the new champ-live on pbe now anyway

http://www.surrenderat20.net/2015/02/224-pbe-update-2-bard.html

oh.. and I think there might be a tip here... ban rango - dj sona appears, rangos like to kill her. 

oh - and I'm sure we all agree we are thrilled to see another galio skin - cuz f u meta.

I also think mao kai and malphite are not terrible in this jungle but are just not played much. Mao doesn't really take damage in the junlge and malphite can clear with a healthy HP (slowishly if you wait for his shield to regen inbetween doubles and red or blue and gromp). AD malphite is better in the jungle and starting W for the aoe on autos. They both have really strong CC for ganks and are always relevant late game even if they have a shit jungle. dueling wise they both are not to bad but would probably die to vi/reksai (malphite more so then mao and everyone dies to nid if she hits you with a spear).

dj sona live now

So, I've been playing Rengar a bit. He works pretty decently in the jungle.

What was up with all the pinging last night?  I know that it really aggravated Cow and Dan, so we should not do that.  Was it some kind of bug or something?

I don't act like a child in game.  

as you say - apologies if it wasn't you pinging then.  Glad whoever was doing it eventually knocked it off at any rate.  That leaves hunny and I didn't think he was tilted.  w/e - hopefully that's the end of shite like that.

Not sure re: the pick/ban.  I agree re keeping vi/j4 up or banning out both if we led with a ban of one of them.  I'd be ok with we got j4 and they got vi, but not the other way around.  I think liss is less of a threat.  And you kids like to carry on about nidalee.  My number 1 priority for bans is to make sure the enemy team does not get j4.  Even with the nerf, I still think he's too useful (obv gnarvan makes it worse).  Anyway, he's pick or ban status for me.  We'll see how his win rate looks in a few days, but the utility is still really strong.  Kalista seems to be hit and miss for us.  Apparently irelia/liss are good at shutting her down, but I think I'm the only one that plays those ladies. 

Anyway, here's my ban list

• j4 is banned unless we have 1st pick
• if j4 is already banned and we don't have 1st pick, we ban vi (we can vi through if needed, though)
• nidalee/kalista... MAYBE liss take up the other slots - so, we start with a nidalee ban

my pick list

• Get j4 if 1st pick

Thoughts?

I really don't think vi is more valuable than j4.  To the point that I think picking up vi instead of j4 is a mistake (on 2nd thought).  I don't consider it a breaking even trade.  I still think j4 is more valuable due to higher uptime on more reliable cc.  Basically, I think he's en easier champ to play with more consistent results than vi.  Def not bad to have vi on the team - I'd take a skilled j4 over a skilled vi now and think this should be an axiom - j4 is banned unless we have 1st pick

also factor in that if we don't have someone that is playing gnar for us in top lane and we let j4 through, we now should consider banning gnar as well.