League of Legends: Hecarim Patch Preview
Well, it’s been another two weeks in the world of League of Legends, which can only mean one thing – there’s a patch incoming! This patch in-particular looks to update and improve a larger-than-usual amount of content and bugs, and also brings with it the newest Champion in the League: Hecarim, the Shadow of War.
Over on their website, Riot have posted the Patch Preview, showing buffs and bugfixes coming to Kayle and Teemo – both champions who haven’t been competitively viable for a while – and more interestingly, making tweaks on some Runes, buffing offensive mage-based Runes and nerfing their Magic Resist counterparts. Small changes, maybe, but definitely something that had been long overdue; after all, taking a risk and going with an offensive runeset felt like too much of a trade-off to be sensible in almost any situation. A further update they’ve talked about is an adjustment to the experience earned when killing enemy champions, granting players more XP than before when taking down players of a higher level, whilst reducing the amount earned when taking down lower level champions. The reasoning behind this change is that once a team gets a level advantage, it’s currently too difficult for the losing team to fight back.
On the League of Legends website, they also talked about some User Interface updates coming in the Hecarim patch. The main change coming here is the separation of damage number indicators over champions’ heads when dealing damage. Physical damage shows up as red, whilst Magic damage is purple, true damage is white and healing remains the green it was before. Apparently the positioning of these numbers have also been adjusted so they can more clearly be seen at the same time, which makes enough sense. Additionally, masteries are finally going to be stored on Riot’s servers for the first time, removing the annoyance of having to rebuild your own mastery sets on every computer you play. After all, we didn’t have to do this with Runes, so why should Masteries be any different? A couple of other updates are coming to the HUD, including Health and Mana Regen stats alongside your respective health and mana bars, and in Co-op vs. AI, Sion bot has been added to the roster as well as the bots’ ability to buy elixirs, making for a more realistic experience.
On top of this, (of course) a new champion is arriving in the form of Hecarim, the Shadow of War – a ghostly centaur of sorts, ready to summon undead horsemen to assist himself in battle. Hit the link to check out exactly what his skills are, but from what we’ve read, he seems to be a speedy brawler with some powerful magic-based abilities. His passive is especially interesting, as he gains bonus attack damage based upon any bonus movement speed he has, so movement speed quintessences look to be ideal.
Phew, this is quite the patch Riot has lined up, so what do you think? Is this the champion you’ve been looking for, or are you happy to see everyone’s favourite yordle getting buffed back up in line with his counterparts? Air your opinions in the comments below.