Champions to Watch out for
Evelynn's clear speed may end up worse due to the change of Spirit of the Elder Lizard, allowing the passive to only trigger on physical damage. Still, it's definitely justified by her new-found ganking power. Plenty of teams will surely be practicing Evelynn and those who already have will have an advantage in drafting. Samsung Galaxy Ozone jungler DanDy is known for his powerful Evelynn play, even if he didn't manage to utilize it much in OGN Summer 2013.
Without the same resources as Season 3 provided to deal with Evelynn, however, Eve advocates will be able to utilize her with far more success or force a ban if they manage to be successful on the champion. It'll come as no surprise if Evelynn gets heavily abused in OGN on the 3.14 patch due to the reduced counter-play and scarcity of vision control. Although, there is the possibility of her sparking the use of strong duelists in the jungle that are also more deadly in the current iteration of League of Legends, which brings us to...
Lee Sin will likely be a highly contested pick in both the jungle and top lane, but especially in the jungle. If "the plays" weren't enough from last Season's OGN and you weren't impressed with what could be done in a level 3 gank before, imagine it now with a free ward before your first back.
Lee Sin is one of very few junglers who can get away with ganking an early warded lane due to the multiple approaches and options he has that stem off the use of his Safe Guard. With several added angles to approach and a way to cut off victims who may try and flash away. Lee Sin will be applying incredible amounts of pressure on the map and may avoid the current missing mid-game power spike junglers used to have altogether.
If the sheer amount of crowd control a Fiddlesticks could bring to the table without any farm made him a dangerous and highly contested pick last season, you can only imagine the terror he brings when you add in an hourglass and some magic penetration. Fiddlesticks is undisputably strong this patch, and with how intuitive the top Korean teams are with engagement opportunities, Fiddle is going to set up a lot of kills. Not only that, he'll be one of the most efficient roaming supports if him and his lane partner get his tower down early (which will happen due to the power of Dark Wind's pushing capabilities), With lack of vision across the map, An unsuspected Crowstorm mid will not be uncommon.
Support isn't the only place we'll be seeing Fiddlesticks, however, as he's also grown quite strong in the jungle with the exception of heavy counter-jungling and duelist junglers. With the new Spirit of the Spectral Wraith, Fiddle can afford to hand his blue off to his mid laners and still apply a lot of pressure on the map. The new jungle item also allows him to clear the wight camp in a single drain. Expect to see the harbringer of doom contested heavily.
Annie wasn't really all that popular prior to worlds outside of China. Other teams in China started catching onto the strength after seeing it played by Tabe very frequently in his games with Royal Club. Annie will be strong for similar reasons to Fiddlesticks; if you saw what she was capable of with just base damage, imagine that with magic penetration added into the mix and some AP.
Annie can 1v1 AD carries by themselves, so any support player already capable of doing that before (*cough* Madlife) will be overpowered. I actually wouldn't be surprised if Tibbers could solo AD carries without the help of Annie at this rate.
Remember when Leona was one of those champions that fell off if you didn't crush laning phase in comparison to other late game supports? Well, that's pretty much completely untrue now. What's worse is that her snowball potential is even more ridiculous now and she'll probably be tankier than the jungler and tied with top lane now. Leona also happens to be one of, if not, the safest melee champion to proc Targon's and Relic Shield.
After 4 years, Riot seems to have made Taric work in the way that they intended, utilizing a more up-front paladin-esque playstyle rather than a ranged healer and stun bot. With CDR and tons of armor, Taric can get up in your face and essentially keep you permanently CC'd while still doing incredible amounts of damage. Most terrifying of all is that he is now viable in just about every part of the map.
Due to his viability and strength in various parts of the map, don't be surpised if you see it pulled out by aggressive top laners like Flame or tank top laners like Homme pull out Taric to counter heavy AD compositions and to counter their opponents in lane.
The options Olaf have are incredible now due to how fast he clears the jungle with Undertow as well as his ganking and diving potential. Once again, Olaf is going to be the tanky, intimidating beast that makes carries run in fear. His itemization even allows him to bypass jungle items as a whole, meaning he can run double Doran's Blades and wreak havoc backed up with lots of damage early on.
In combination with the new defensive tree and perhaps one of the only junglers who can farm on par with Shyvana, Olasf will be a top jungle pick heading into OGN.
Orianna may be the strongest she's been in a very long time due to the nature of middle lane and the new masteries. Since many assassin middles got nerfed, Orianna is now a lane bully who not only does incredible damage, but has massive utility. The addition of Spell Weaving and Blade Weaving on top of Arcande Blade further raises her damage on her already enhanced auto attacks.
In addition, Faker is a monster on Orianna, meaning this hero will very likely be banned away from SKT T1 #2 in their set against Team NB.
Honorable mentions:
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Players to watch out for
(by role)
TOP
?Shy has shown amazingly fast adaptibility since his debut in the scene (if not being one of the best top laners in a year of playing wasn't enough to convince you.) Not only astounding on his mechanical play and dueling abilities, Shy is not afraid to innovate and had played champions like Jax and Singed before they rose into heavy popularity.
Recently, Shy has developed a rather unusual Riven build, using it to split push and add a bit of tankiness and cooldown reduction to his champion. During WCG, Shy was seen building Spirit of the Ancient Golem, an item that he may decide to pick up if he does the same strategy in the upcoming matches. With split pushing being his recent role on the team and forte, he may be able to utilize that strategy once again by pushing up and farming jungle camps to use the conservation stacks, snowballing harder than before.
Shy's strength will be further exemplified and complimented with the improved defensive tree, which is likely to make him a stronger force in teamfights as well. So far, Shy has an impressive KDA of 11.00, which will be even stronger now with the patch making him harder to kill and complimenting his champion choices.
??JUNGLE
DanDy specializes in control junglers and is probably one of, if not, the brightest jungle talent in Korea's pool. Not only that, but DanDy specializes in junglers like Lee Sin and Evelynn, both of which are going to find an incredibly strong place in 3.14. In one of the few games that Samsung Galaxy Ozone were able to find success in at the Season 3 World Championship, DanDy locked in Evelynn and provided tons of pressure on the map.
Now, with players needing to be much more careful of vision, it's only a matter of time before DanDy makes his opposing jungler his pray and shows people the performance he can dish out when the metagame is in his favor.
DanDy currently has the top KDA in OGN with a staggering 46.0 KDA and continues to help make up for the team's performance at Season 3 Worlds.
MID
?It had to be said, Faker is just consistently dominant and has a large reportoire of champions to compliment his mechanical prowess and decision making. Although his beloved Zed won't see as much light of day due to his greatly deserved nerfs, there are many other tricks up his sleeve that are incredibly potent in this patch.
As mentioned earlier, Orianna will be dominant once again, when Faker already performed very well on him prior to this patch. Faker has always been aggressive and very intimidating in how he plays his mid lane, resulting in a stronger Gragas as well. While others may have trouble with the new Gragas due to his nerfs to poking and roaming, Faker's all-in style is greatly complimented by the changes to Gragas' body slam, which should help him secure early kills with the help of Bengi.
Last but not least, Kassadin is still up in the air for 17 year old prodigy. Again, the hero may not be so strong at poking down the opposition, but if anything, his all-in potential may have been buffed with force pulse being the primary skill priority and aggressive Riftwalk play being heavily rewarded in this patch.
ADC
Space has proven that he deserved his climb to a primary roster spot after being just a sub in times when Woong was still the primary marskman for the team. Space has shown that his performance is spot-on for his favorite auto attack and kiting based champions, but has shown that he can also adjust to the situation when need be.
Space currently stands as the second highest KDA in OGN at a whopping 26.0 KDA. Space is incredibly good at staying alive until teamfights are over and dishing as much damage as he can for the duration of the fight rather than playing a kamikaze style. After all, how could be perform bad or be caught dead when your support is considered so far ahead of the competition? While Space certainly deserves his recognition for what he puts into the deadly duo lane, much of the credit has to be handed to none other than...
?SUPPORT
?Everyone knew it was coming, but I was more than happy to have "Godlife" be the support to look out for. Madlife was carrying his team on his back before he had gold, and now, Surely he's giggling like a schoolgirl at his potential with the current patch (or laughing maniacally upon all other lowly support plebes.) Perhaps some of the traditional supports got nerfed, but that is no issue for madlife, the hook master and hard carry down in the bottom lane with Space.
Madlife has always been praised and renowned for his Blitzcrank, Thresh, and occasional Alistar play, but he was one of the first to find incredible success with AP supports like Zyra and Lux. Now, his arsenal has only grown larger and his already existing champion reportoire is just that much more powerful.
Though other supports in the region certainly are playing catchup such as Mata and PoohManDu, Madlife stakes the sole spot for best support in the world and has a unique yet unpredictable style of play that keeps him mechanically sharp and dangerously intelligent. Madlife may show to be living proof on if Riot went too far with the potential supports hold onto currently.
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