Supreme Lord Cow Dong

Donger Kong

Support Dong

DongKnee

Brad Dong

KraziKarl <-- Best handle any of us has, must not be changed.

i think Brad Dong is a clear winner.  

S6 in general is an acid trip, so that would fit...

Karthus is still being played primarily by highly skilled Karthus players, very low pick rate for a supposedly really strong champion, it doesn't appear to be reliable freelo like the other mids listed.

Unless they fix that stupid DFT, they're just going to make it the only possible choice for champs with DOT's, so these are pretty tard moves regardless.

The Malzahar nerfs pretty much only late game anyway, since he levels up W last. The deathfire nerf might hurt a bit more, but it is necessary since everyone with a DoT is pretty dumb with it right now. Seeing every mid rush Liandry's into Rylai's every game is getting a little bit ridiculous, between the massive DoT stacking, the long duration slow and the nice amount of AP/Health/MPen.

The high winrate mages getting nerfed this patch was also important since AD carries received even larger nerfs, with Statik and Longfire no longer stacking, along with a longer build up time on Essence Reaver. They also nerfed Fervor of Battle, which was looking to be a better option since crit was being taken down a notch.

Supports are also being chopped down a notch this patch with the plethora of nerfs to the resolve tree, meaning they will have a harder time peeling for ADC against the amount of damage some mages were capable of putting out.

Metagame.

You can't balance champions around their most favorable metagame without giving the meta time to adjust.

Right now, champions like Malz are in their most favorable meta possible.  It's a tank heavy meta, which is great because Malz (etc) are good against tanks.  But the tanks stack armor VERY heavily right now - to the point that many don't build any MR at all, and those that do only build it late.  So double bonus to Malz.

But champions like Malz and friends aren't heavily played enough for the meta to adjust back.  So they take advantage of the meta, but the meta doesn't change and punish their (many) weaknesses because their playrates haven't gotten high enough.

Because Riot has decided to PREEMPTIVELY nerf champions before they even get played that much, 2 things will happen:

1) The meta will become ossified.  Because champions that take advantage of the meta are nerfed before they can change the meta, the meta changes much more slowly.  That's boring, and it further enforces the same old status quo.

2) Champions with historically low playrates that get balanced around the most favorable possible meta will be complete trash tier once the meta does change.  This is especially true if they have limited tools in their kit to adjust to meta changes (HELLO MALZAHAR).  They will go down to Urgot level playrates, so diversity will get murdered.

Basically, you have to at least give champions a chance to change the meta before you nerf them.  50% winrate for new players on a champion that fits PERFECTLY into the meta is completely and totally reasonable.  If the meta were to shift at all (which it would if Malzahar and friends became too popular) that rate would drop quickly because Malz has pretty much no tools to adjust.

Like Brad Wong said, the nerf hammer isn't exactly coming down on these guys.  There is not a Challenger Swain main out there somewhere who will have to stop playing League because his amazing R toggling mechanics has boosted his favorite champions win rate too high and is now getting nerfed to oblivion because of it.

There is some truth to the idea that players that are highly skilled at their favorite champions boost their win rates artificially and make them look better than they are.  Just as all the bandwaggoners who are playing Brand right now are probably dragging Brand's win rate down a bit and he might actually be better than his insanely good win rate suggests?  Scary thought.

Maybe Riot's not perfect about figuring out the difference between a legitimately OP champion and one that just looks good because of the OTP's that main them or a favorable meta.  They at least acknowledge they have a hard task and don't always get it right.

They've talked about Taric and say they're not going to touch him and some other champs because he counters the AD heavy meta going on.  And Amumu is getting nerfed this patch.  Him and every other tank.  Windspeaker's no longer benefiting tanks more than other types of champions, Unyielding's getting nerfed, and the % health mastery Veteran's Scars is becoming flat which is also a tank nerf.

RE: #meta:

Thunder, i'm a bit surprised with you! You generally seem to understand Riot's ... predisposition for balancing around #LCSBIGPLAYS by allowing certain champions to have "assured viability" but being rather heavy-handed on other champs who honestly haven't had enough time in the spotlight yet.

HOWEVER: ever since the juggernaut patch, champs like Brand, Anivia and Malz have had favorable metas and correspondingly high winrates. Of course, a lot of their recent success is to do Deathfire Touch. i wish they'd just take DFT out back and shoot it rather than keeping it on life support for a few months before pulling the plug... but they probably won't be doing that.

So the "unpopular champs being strong in a favorable meta" argument is a little old. i just doubt that this meta is going to stick around... which can leave these champions in a frustrating state.

Anyway, there has got to be a midpoint between "DFT is my personal-pet and i will feel invalidated if we have to remove it from the game" and "6 months of Patron Warrior - i mean, Brand/Malz/Karthus/Anivia - followed by the Return to Cancer (#LCSBIGPLAYS)".

---

@pacov:

Thunderlord is pretty bonkers and it was being used by 2 people pretty much every game... before the buffs \:

The tweaks to Fervor were making it less attractive to ADCs (specifically, the lane-bully ADCs who truly preferred it to Bloodlust), but more attractive to auto-attack bruisers such as Irelia, Jax or Renekton (though they could also go that one life-sapping one in the Defense tree if they were worried about losing lane).

Renekton still has a lot of power with Fervor due to his W applying it multiple times, and then animation-canceling with hydra for a fourth autoattack.

Yeah, I was following a discussion of some higher elo folks re: rene specifically and they were all about thunderlords now vs fervor.  Didn't make a ton of sense to me.  Old fervor it was super easy to stack up to max with auto's on creeps + the stacking effect on champs.  It just seems a little off to dump it completely in favor of thunderlords, but perhaps the damage differential is enough in their minds.  Even though you can stack fervor on champs, you still miss out on the damage as you aren't starting a fight with 10 stacks.  Still not really sure, guess I'll toy around with it a bit tonight.

No, i agree that nearly every class was nerfed this or last patc, and i'm generally relatively neutral about Malz/Anivia nerfs (except i wish they focus on DFT first), and Brand clearly needs to be tuned.

i believe that Riot wanted to "only-slightly" increase the "power budget" of all classes over the entire course of the game, but did want to specifically reduce some classes "power budget" specifically (Morellonomicon mages being the big one). Some classes got too much power (Yasuo/Trynd/Fiora), others got much less than expected (Brutalizer/Last Whisper changes hurt Zed/Talon far more than expected).

It does look like there's a lot more wholesale nerfs across the board, since the "power budget" is too high at the moment. However, i do think that Riot needs to be a little more "hands off" for low-playrate champs in favorable metas (even those who have been in favorable metas for a long time like Anivia!) unless they are actually planning on maintaining the current meta for the entirety of next season, while at-the-same-time than constantly pushing #LCSBIGPLAYS.

upgraded frost queen to max makes it so the passive doesn't disable if u kill creeps.  Random thing I didn't know.  1st 2 tiers it gets disabled.  tier 3 it gets 1 charge every 10 seconds and pays out 15 per AA or ability cast.  

Brand feels exactly the same as he did to me last season. I hope the "nerfs" are enough for the flavor of the month crowd to leave him alone so hes not banned anymore and I can play him in solo queue all day. 

frost queen rush on morgana is like GDM reincarnated - only no Gp/10 required.  If you are in lane, frost queen is 15 gp/10.  Obviously, not consistent income, but even on a support, the gold earned goes way, way up.  And the active is completely worth it (4 second slow and vision).  I wonder what change they will make to cause it to be less desirable to APs in other lanes and if that wrecks support utilization.  

I feel like lissandra could really use a damage oriented buff.  They gave her that crappy buff when she self casts her ult she gets a little more healing. She has a decent kit already that does allow for counter play, but she lacks damage and certainly seems to fall off as games go along.