Preseason Hot Take All Hail Seraph!

[quaint robin]

Honestly, I originally had a much longer, more detailed "hot take" drafted out at first, but my app crashed and it didn't save... 😦

But the TL;DR is that a recent update to Archangel's Staff and Seraph's Embrace in the PBE for Preseason basically turns many of the Champs that usually build it into high-damage off-tanks.

So yeah, imagine trying to 1v1 Syndra as Zed, only to get stunned then see most of your damage theoretically get soaked up by her mana, only for a good part of it to get restored from her beating your ass to a pulp.

Correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but personally I'm looking forward to this change! I really don't like the current AS and SE, tbh. They don't feel like "AP-scaling" Tear items, imo - more like "CDR Tear items" at the moment. Hopefully, this changes that in a very fun way!

https://youtu.be/uDR-6fPseGI

Here's a nice little source regarding what I'm talking about, btw. I meant to link it at the start.

[elder kernel]

Last I checked seraphs doesn’t heal anymore. They got rid of that when they brought catalyst back because seraphs was turned into a shitty Rod of ages

Speaking of Rod of ages

reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[quaint robin]

Fair point! But I do recall Cassiopeia having built-in healing from her E

You just have to Q or W first

Also, imagine seeing these guys picking Triumph in their builds... X_X

Mana restoration + HP restoration

Oof

[elder kernel]

At this point 10% bonus AP is only gonna matter on mages who were already purebred AP stackers. For the build I was testing on swain, these changes removed a whopping 84 AP from his final total. Swain gets nowhere near 800 AP, even building pure AP, so he’ll never make enough AP to make up for what we lost.

Another change to an item that’s gonna make it good on 4 mages instead of 40

Stop making items niche riot goddamn, why do you think 90% of mages built one of three general-use mythics?

[quaint robin]

Oof. Didn't know things were that bad, tbh

I just got back on after starting my break

Funnily enough, I did have fun with my first ever few games as Swain - but I built him like a tank just for memes in URF and it actually goddamn worked to my surprise.

[cold flower]

sounds balanced