The State of Mikael's Crucible

Introduction

Season 3 possibly brought the biggest change to League of Legends with the many different items that were introduced or changed. A lot of items were obviously good at first glance, such as Black Cleaver and Warmogs. But with overpowered items also came very underwhelming ones, such as Hurricane and Mikael's Crucible. These items are very niche and rarely see play, if any at all. In particular, I have yet to see a single Mikael's Crucible bought in any of my games. Why is that?

Item Analysis

First, let's break it down. In order to make Mikael's Crucible, you need a Chalice of Harmony (880g), a Sapphire Crystal (400g), and an additional 920g, for a total of 2200g. The finished item retains the Chalice passive and adds an active which functions as a QSS on another target and a minor heal. The best usage of MC would be against a team with a lot of single target CC or if you have a team that is unable to peel well for your carries.

The nature of MC clearly makes it a support item, but therein lies the first problem. The items used to make it are not items you would get on a support. Chalice is more geared towards champions that are spamming their abilities and with the exception of Sona, you don't see this happening with supports. Likewise, the inclusion of a Sapphire Crystal gives additional mana which is, while not completely unhelpful, just adding on to the cost of the item without giving too much benefit, which brings me to the next problem.

MC is too expensive, particularly the combine cost. Let's assume you decide to buy a Chalice because you want to have more mana regen in lane. Now you have to gather an additional 1320g, more gold than Chalice itself, in order to complete the item. The ONLY benefit you have at this time is more mana regeneration and once you have the Sapphire Crystal, 200 more mana. As a support that has to rely on passive gold gain to make that much and forgo buying other items, such as wards and potions, that is going to take a very long time to get.

Now, compare Chalice to every alternative that a support should be getting.

• Philosopher's Stone costs 700g, provides the same amount of base mana regeneration as Chalice, health regeneration, and gold per 5 seconds, an essential part to being able to get items on a support. 
• Kage's Lucky Pick costs 765g, gives AP and also gold per 5. 
• Sightstone costs 950g, gives health (better survivability) and free wards, saving you gold in the long run. 
• Kindlegem costs 850g, gives CDR, and more health, which also equates to better survivability and builds into several great utility items. 

So while Chalice might look like a good item by itself, there are far superior options to it for supports.

For some reason, you are madly in love with MC and still went ahead and bought it. What did you miss out on getting?

• Shurelya's Reverie costs 2100g, builds off Philosopher's Stone and Kindlegem, and provides a great movement speed boost to your team every 60 seconds, which can be used in offensively and defensively.
• It's important to note that the extra gold made from Philosopher's Stone will get you the total gold cost quicker.
• Aegis of the Legion costs 2150g, builds off an Emblem of Valor, a Null-Magic Mantle, and a Ruby Crystal (all items that provide survivability immediately on purchase), and provides various defensive auras for your team.
• Locket of the Iron Solari costs 1850g, builds off a Kindlegem, a Cloth Armor and a Rejuvenation Bead (which also all provide survivability immediately on purchase), and provides a shield for your team every 60 seconds.
• Twin Shadows costs 1900g, builds off Kage's Lucky Pick and a Null-Magic Mantle, and sends out two ghouls which slow the two nearest enemies every 120 seconds, allowing for your team to catch enemies easier.
• Likewise with Shurelya's, the extra gold made from Kage's Lucky Pick will get you the total gold cost quicker.

Great, you now know the common support items in League of Legends! Now, compare them to this:

• You increase your (base) mana regeneration by 1% for each 1% of your mana missing.
• Every 180 seconds, you can remove all stuns, roots, taunts, fears, silences, and slows on an allied champion and heals them for 150 + 15% of their missing health.

The active ability is very underwhelming compared to other support items. Other items provide much more utility for their team (and have much lower cool downs) and also provide the support with more desirable stats. Once the active has been used, you are sitting with a 2200g chalice for the next three minutes. It's simply not worth getting MC over any other support item at this time.

Let's take an in-depth look into the ability itself. Every 3 minutes, you have a targetable QSS and a minor heal on someone, most of the time a carry. The nature of the item is geared towards teams that have a lot of single target CC, making it a situational item. However, when is a carry going to be put in a situation that they will actually be cc'd? Competent teams are not going to allow their carry to get dived by champions with hard cc, they are going to react and push them back. Likewise, if a team is running from an enemy and one person gets caught, most of the time the team will react to it and turn around to fight. MC might seem like a good item on paper for heavy cc teams, but in reality a carry should almost never find themselves in a situation that they need to be broken free.

Now, there are situations when a carry will get dived, no matter a teams best intentions. We are seeing a rise in assassin play in the LCS, namely Zed, Akali, Kha'zix and Elise to name the big ones. They are able to rush past the front line and deal straight up massive damage to a carry, no CC needed. This is where the heal should shine, but it is very weak. Assuming a carry has 2k hp, using this whey they are missing 1700 hp makes MC heal for a total of 405 hp (203 with ignite on them, also a common occurrence). This is not going to save a carry and for 2200g, it should make a bigger difference.

New ability suggestion

I believe that the niche that MC needs to be adjusted for is the one described above. Being able to mitigate the burst damage by an assassin would make the item more favorable, hands down. Since Exhaust already exists to reduce the damage output on a champion, a better active ability for MC should be to reduce the damage taken on a champion. If you are familiar with World of Warcraft, there exists a Priest ability called Pain Suppression, which decreases a targets damage taken by 40% for 8 seconds. I'm not going to run numbers or anything, but something like 20% reduced damage intake for 3-5 seconds would help a carries survivability far more than the current MC ability. Or even a barrier placed on the ground that everyone inside of it takes reduced damage if a single target wasn't enough. Anything that could help mitigate assassin damage would be a step in the right direction for MC.


New build path

As I went over above, the build path for MC is not very desirable for a support. A good build path include passive gold gain, more survivability, or some sort of utility for your team. An example of a good item path would be something like:

• Mana Manipulator (500g)
• Faerie Charm (180g)
• Faerie Charm (180g)
• Kindlegem (850g)
• Ruby Crystal (375g)
• 400g to combine

Mana manipulator will still give a decent amount of mana regeneration while providing it to your team as well.  Kindlegem gives the support some survivability, but you can pretty much replace that with any sort of desirable support item. The point is that the build path needs to be better for a support and something like the above would accomplish that.

Conclusions

Mikael's Crucible is currently a very underwhelming support item that doesn't fit its intended niche very well and doesn't give desirable stats for the support. A better fit for the item would be against heavy assassin teams and an ability that helps mitigate the burst damage done to carries, something that is more powerful on a single target than the shield from Locket of the Iron Solari. I feel like Riot had something good in mind when creating MC, but it fell flat and needs to be redone.

Risk vs. Reward in champion balance

Hello everyone, I have been recently been watching a lot of LCS matches and with the abundance of certain ranged spell champions, I’ve been thinking a lot about of risk vs. reward and how it applies to different aspects of League of Legends, particularly champion balance. But first, an overview of the concept itself.

Risk vs. Reward

The concept of risk vs. reward is simple: the more risk an objective has, the greater the reward should be. This concept can be applied to many things we see in the world. Gambling grants you rewards dependent on how much money you wager, the risk being a chance of spending all your money and not making any profit Competitive poker players have to know when to fold, call bluffs, or risk a huge wager on a bad hand, the reward being more chips. Stock markets involve buying stock at low prices and knowing when to sell it back for a larger profit, the risk being that prices could drop at any point below the price you bought it at, not allowing you to profit.

Video game developers often implement risks and rewards to increase the entertainment value of their creations, from Super Mario Brothers (putting 1-up mushrooms in difficult to reach places, forcing the player to risk their own lives to gain more) to the Diablo series (hardcore mode gives you only one life, but beating the game gives a much more sense of accomplishment). A low risk/high reward ratio often implies an imbalance in competitive gaming or a simplicity in game design. For example, the overabundance of 1-ups mushrooms in Super Mario 3D Land gives the player no fear of death. 

At this point, you are probably thinking about risk vs. reward in League. From start to finish, every decision you make in the game is influenced by this concept. Why don’t people dive towers at level 1? Because the risk of botching a kill and giving the other team first blood is just too much. So people farm up, get items, and decrease the risk of making such plays. Ever wonder why people opt to do baron after a successful team fight? Because there is almost no risk in doing it and a great reward to boot. But trying to baron while the other team is in the area is a huge risk, as there is the possibility that you will lose a team fight, lose baron, and possibly lose towers and inhibitors. It’s important to weigh these factors against each other when making decisions in League, otherwise you’ll suddenly find yourself down 3 inhibitors and wondering what went wrong.

Risk vs. Reward and champion balance

Now, this is where risk and reward really needs to be balanced against each other. A mismatch between the two could lead to a champion that’s exceedingly difficult to play and doesn't help their teams chance of winning despite great play (high risk, low reward) or a champion that is amazing at many roles and is seen as overpowered since nothing can stand up to them (low risk, high reward, such as AP tryndamere pre-nerf). Riot does a great job at keeping champions in check, but there are some champions that I feel go against this concept. However, before I delve into that, I want to take a look at some good examples of risk versus reward in League.

Akali is an excellent example of a high risk, high reward champion. Generally every assassin has that play style, but seeing as Akali is the most popular (from what I’ve seen), I will focus on her. The job of an assassin means getting to the squishier enemy champions and bursting them down before they have a chance to harm your team and push a fight in their favor. This often requires mobility, gap closers, deception, and of course, high amounts of burst. Akali is a great example of this as she has a three usage gap closer which recharges and does substantial burst when combined with her q, as well as a shroud that masks her movements and increases her survivability. However, the risk of playing an assassin is that they are generally somewhat squishy themselves. Someone that isn’t very competent at Akali will go in a fight and find themselves being killed almost instantly. Good teams will carry pink wards to counter her invisibility and peel her off their carries. So while Akali brings great rewards to her team, she is very risky to play and often times, you will see a team build around Akali to decrease the amount of risk she has.

Nasus is another champion that I feel has a medium-high risk/high reward ratio. His risk comes from his weak early game, in which he needs to build up damage on his Siphoning Strike to do substantial damage later on in the game. At lower level play, teams are not aware of his danger late game and let him farm without harassment, then 40 minutes hits and he’s bashing your team for tons of damage. Smart teams will attempt to take objectives early in order to become strong enough that a farmed Nasus isn’t a threat later on.

Now, let’s move on to champions whom I believe are mismatched in the risk/reward ratio, focusing on low risk/high reward.

Anyone who has played League of Legends has encountered this champion (or devil, if you were unfortunate enough to meet one building AP). Teemo is a huge offender of having an ability that is no risk/high reward, his ultimate ability which places invisible mushrooms on the ground that poison and slow enemies that run through them. He can place an infinite number of mushrooms as there is no limit to the amount that can be on the map at once (although they disappear after 10 minutes). There is no risk in placing mushrooms on cool down as they continuously recharge, but there are a great deal of rewards that come with them:

•    Free vision
•    Potential for free kills
•    Safeguard for dragon/baron (mushshrooms are placed in all entrances to the objective)
•    No fear of a gank during laning phase
•    Oracles being bought means 400 less gold on the other team 
•    Impossible to clear mushrooms in bush without entering one

Unfortunately, Teemo is most likely to remain untouched. While his shrooms are a product of imbalanced game design, his team fight is certainly lacking compared to the other champions that could be in his place, which is why he isn’t seen too much in solo queue except as counter picks to melee champions. Ways to balance his ult could be making mushrooms visible (just like all other traps in the game), limiting the number of mushrooms that can be on the map at once (similar to techies from DotA and probably the best way to balance the ability), making his mushshroom a targeted ability that does damage and slows, or just removing it completely and giving him a new ult.

Now we move on to the next two champions that spurred me to write this article. If you watched the NA LCS super week, you should know that I am talking about Nidalee and Lux, both very common picks and bans in every game (I don’t have the exact stats).

(Here is the part of the game this is from)

The power of Nidalees spears and Lux’ ult is quite absurd because is almost no risk involved in using those abilities. The cool down on spear is a mere 6 seconds and when paired with Tear of the Goddess (a very common item on Nidalee), expect a nonstop flurry of spears when either sieging or defending. And when a spear connects, the damage is so high that a team is forced to either back off or fight with someone at less than 50% hp.

That is not the face of a sane person.

Lux isn’t as bad, but the extremely low cool down of her ult at level 3 (24 seconds at 40% CDR, easily accomplished with her core items) allows her to use it on every creep wave when pushing or defending, removing the ability for a team to push onto a tower without tanking it themselves or allowing her team to push onto a tower without an enemy creep wave there to block them. She can also take the role of Nidalee while defending or sieging, throwing out her Light Binding on cool down and ulting whomever it lands on, most of the time leading to a kill. The two approaches she has (ulting a creep wave vs. ulting an ensnared enemy) both grant her huge rewards with almost no risk involved.

The range of all the aforementioned abilities is so big that neither character has be remotely close to danger in order to do massive damage. Once again, referring to risk vs. reward, there is no risk for Nidalee to use her abilities while Lux has the risk of a 24 second cool down (the horror!), whereas the reward is huge (one caught person usually means a tower and/or inhibitor). How is this fixed? The cooldown on Lux’ ult needs to go up so the player doesn’t feel like they can spam it on cool down without punishment. The damage on it is fine, a nerf to it would ruin the reason why people play Lux and the satisfaction players get from landing it. Nidalee has several means to scale her down. The cool down on her spear can be increased, the range of the skillshot can be decreased to force her closer to danger, or a limit to the number of spears that can throw  in a window of time so that she uses them more conservatively. Nidalee’s kit is already great enough without having a 1HKO ability, so she should be rolled back to the tank/split push Nidalee we are already familiar with.

Conclusions

A competitive game needs to have a match between risk and reward in order to maintain a sense of balance, otherwise the game turns into who is playing the most overpowered champions and skill becomes a lesser factor. Nidalee/Lux are prime offenders of it right now (Teemo too, but I doubt he is an issue to the Live Design team at the moment) and should be expected to see nerfs soon. I have confidence in our balancing team as we have seen swift nerfs to things deemed overpowered (Black Cleaver, AP tryndamere for example). In the meantime, be sure to abuse the two of them as long as you can (since Riot is already on the bandwagon) and get that free elo!

An analysis of top lane

Introduction

Hello everyone, I’m here again with another analysis. Today I’ll be looking at the factors behind top lane and examples of the different champions that excel at these factors. By writing this analysis, I hope that readers will be smarter in choosing their champions and improve their experience in top lane.

Zoning Capabilities

If you have ever watched or played any sort of fighting game, then you should know that a major part of the game is being able to control areas of the screen and force your opponent where you want them to be. This concept applies to League of Legends as well, since you want to force your opponent away from minions to deny them experience and gold. This causes them to fall behind, put themselves in danger to keep up with you, or forces their jungler to come top and try to even the lane (which relieves pressure on other lanes and often leads to an uncontested dragon). Champions with strong zoning capabilities abuse the weaknesses of their opponent and dominate them in lane. Almost any top champion can be considered strong at zoning, but the ones that shine are ones that continue to wreak havoc past the laning phase (aka snowballing).

Examples of strong champions at zoning – Darius, Teemo, Nidalee, Akali (post-6), Kayle, Elise

Sustain

Champions can only stay in lane as long as they have a sufficient amount of hp. To avoid going back to base to heal, sustain is a very important aspect of laning as well. With the start of season 3, it is very common to see opening builds which favored sustain over damage/mobility. Aside from health potions, many champions have abilities that give them an edge in sustain. This is very important as a champion that might have weak zoning capabilities can instead abuse their sustain and simply outlast their opponent, forcing them to go back to base while you push to their tower and deny them creeps while they are gone.

Examples of strong champions at sustaining – Yorick, Nidalee, Kayle, Cho'gath, Garen, Vladimir

Escape

Top lane is very susceptible to ganks as the distance between towers is much larger than that of the middle lane. Therefore, you must have the means to reach the safety of your tower before you die, either by being tanky enough or having a good escape. Champions with good escapes often feel no pressure from junglers and can put themselves in riskier situations without much fear. While not as important as sustain or zoning, it’s definitely a good trait to have and could lead to split pushing later in the game. Good escapes include bursts of movement speeds and abilities that mimic flash.

Examples of strong champions at escaping – Kennen, Nidalee, Singed, Garen, Tryndamere, Renekton, Zed

Consistent Harass

This factor ties in a bit with zoning, but I felt it warranted its own section. One of the huge advantages that manaless champions have is that they can (usually) spam their abilities constantly and force an opponent to duel them (and lose mana in the process) or escape. By depleting your opponent’s resources, you can harass them without retaliation and push them out of the lane. Likewise, you can also push your lane to their tower and make your opponent miss minion kills if they can’t fight back. Champions with low mana cost abilities or ranged attacks are also great at being able to consistently harass.

Examples of strong champions at consistent harass – Generally any manaless champion, Elise, Teemo

Last Hitting

Being able to last hit is the most important skill in League of Legends, hands down. Despite its reliance on player skill, there are champions that can last hit much more effectively than others. This trait really comes into effect when you are pushed to your tower or you are being zoned and can’t be close enough to auto attack minions. Anyone who plays top lane needs to have atleast one champion that can safely farm at a distance regardless of whom you are against or be able to force the minion wave to your tower to farm there.

Examples of strong champions at last hitting – Kennen, Irelia, Nidalee, Jayce, Nasus, Zed

Baiting

One of the best things a top laner can do is force the opposing jungler to top lane while your team takes objectives (bot tower, dragon). Baiting can really turn the game in your favor, especially if you can force the 2v1 in your favor and get a double kill. This includes champions with deceptive burst or champions that can kite while doing damage, only to turn around and complete the kill. Using the bushes is crucial to how you bait as it masks your position and forces your opponent to play a guessing game on where you may or may not be. An example would be using a gap closer on a nearby minion wave as an enemy is about to enter the bush or faking out your enemy by running the complete opposite direction than they are expecting (try running past their tower into their jungle and using fog of war to your advantage to avoid others, it's highly effective early on in the game).

Examples of strong champions at baiting – Rumble, Singed, Garen, Teemo

Picking your champion

Now that we have all these defined, we can take a look at how to pick a top lane without being hard countered. When you are forced to select a champion before your opponent does, it is usually beneficial to pick a champion with strong sustain, last hitting capabilities, or consistent harass. A champion which has a ranged attack (or a ranged skill, such as Rumble) makes for a strong first pick as it is much harder to zone out a champion which doesn’t have to be in melee range to get minion kills. Sustain allows you to outlast your opponent if you happen to be countered. Consistent harass is also a good trait as your opponent shouldn’t be able to push to your tower without taking any sort of damage. An example of a bad first pick would be Gangplank, as he has only one damaging ability and it would only take a champion with consistent damage output to shut him down in lane. Garen would also be a bad first pick as the entire enemy team will be thinking about ways to keep you at a distance and pick accordingly.

If you are fortunate enough to pick after their top lane has been determined, you can use the knowledge to your advantage to pick a champ with strong zoning capabilities and the ability to bait an enemy jungler (not as important). Since there are many champions that can fulfill that category, it’s imperative to pick one that will utterly dominate your opponent, such as picking Darius or Elise against melee champions with low early game damage (Irelia, Singed) or picking bursty gap closers against ranged (Jayce, Teemo). This requires some common knowledge and being able to visualize how a matchup will play out while still in champ select. The farther your opponent falls behind, the more likely that ganks will be focused on your lane, allowing your team to secure objectives without much resistance.

Occasionally, you will be last pick in champion select and by some miracle, you will be able to play top lane (which should be the case in every game, but you know, pick order > call order). In this position, you have the amazing chance to pick a champion that can abuse any weakness the other team might have. Don’t see a lot of cc? Grab Singed and just run through their whole team. An all AD team? Malphite is a great pick. They don’t have any hard initiates? Pick Jayce and poke their team without retaliation. There is almost always a champion that can both win top lane as well as tear apart the other team, so don’t pass up that opportunity!

Conclusions

I hope this analysis gives more insight as to what makes top lane and how to effectively pick a champion, regardless of your pick order. It’s important to note that picking a good champion is only part of the top lane experience, being able to play a champion to its most potential and picking a champion that compliments your team will ultimately decide whether you win or lose games.