Gold, Warding and Vision Game
Trinkets and the limitation of a maximum of 3 green ward and 1 pink ward per player as well as pink wards not being invisible had affected the vision game vastly. Support players are no longer burdened by the responsibility to ward and will have a larger role to play in the game. With the presence of new gold generation items, supports will gain more gold and will be more viable late game.
However, Elementz - the current coach of Coast Gaming mentioned and pointed out his frustration on the availability of Trinkets in the game on his vlog due to reason such as causing the laning phase stale and on the issue of "the end of ward wars". You can watch and understand more here (Part 1, Part 2)
Support Champions Overhaul
The changes on the amount of gold available for the support caused a lot of traditional support champions (Sona, Lulu, Nami) being reworked, overhaul and nerfed. Now, support champions scales up their utility based on their AP ratio. However, by doing this, it may cause non-traditional support AP-based mage (Annie, Nidalee, Orianna) to be used vastly due to their ability to scale exponentially in the late game
Xpecial - the current support player of Team Solo Mid gave his insight on such changes and the emergence of non-traditional support. View it here. At the same time, when doing its patch rundown, SaintVicious - coach of Curse Gaming mentioned on how traditional supports just wouldn't cut it anymore as AP-scaling mages (Annie, Fiddlestick, Zyra) might be a better alternative. Click here to watch (10:00 onwards)
Jungle/ Jungler Item Changes
The jungle changes on gold and experience affected the champion picks and it's play style very much. The decreased experience early game and also the powered-down smite early game causes early jungling to be extremely tough. Jatt - Shoutcaster and Analyst of Riot Games mentioned on the jungle changes causing the junglers to gank less early game. This also caused some junglers (in NA) preferring to lane with its top-laner until a certain level before going into the jungle.
In addition to that, the changes to jungling items which gives more gold once completed also gives its pros and cons. Instead of junglers looking to gank and pressure lanes early, junglers are burdened to complete their 'gold generation item' before actually taking risks to gank as not getting the item early simply means that they will fall behind. TheOddOne from Team Solo Mid gave a brief review on the jungle item changes here.
To summarize on the changes on the jungling item,
- Wriggles are only good if the laning phase ends late due to the need to kill JUNGLE minions
- Spirit of Ancient Golems are similar - swapping 150HP with the extra gold generation
- Spirit of Spectral Wraiths couldn't be use on most champions except Amumu
- Spirit of Elder Lizard is fine if the team is able to get kills/snowball. Useless when being stomped. Better alternative includes BoTRK and Triforce
Overall Preview
Season 4 seems to be an exciting experience for League of Legends as how the changes are being made. However, there are a lot of issues that needs to be dealt with during the PreSeason because the game is actually in a 'mess' due to people not being able to adapt. With the buff on gold on the support, would traditional support continue to take its place in the game, or it is actually the uprising of AP-Mages at the bot lane.
What are your point of view on the PreSeason 4?
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