Patch 3.14 launched on Wednesday, and NACL was the first look into the innovative strategies the patch opened up in high levels of play.
Though IEM Cologne will take place this weekend, just after the release of the first preseason patch, participants will not be playing with the new changes to allow time for adjustment. According to NACL tradition, however, matches always take place on the live North American servers, so fans got their first taste of initial innovations and abuses of new item and vision changes.
The first game featured vVv and COGnitive Gaming. vVv has been known for running tanks with high health regeneration, and the new Perserverance and Second Wind masteries in the Defense Tree turned Udyr and Zac into beefy, nearly unkillable monsters with a couple health items. Arguably, the 3% health regen and 10% increased healing below 25% health on their front line kept vVv in the game even after they fell behind early and allowed them to peel efficiently for Tails' Varus. COGnitive was not without their own innovations, of course. Zaineking's support Mundo was able to acquire a Spirit Visage, a fully upgraded Face of the Mountain, and both components of a Randuin's Omen before the game ended. Perhaps, however, COG will take a page from vVv's book and run Mundo in a role where he can abuse the Perserverence and Second Wind masteries as well.
The second game between Denial eSports, under Velocity's tag, and Curse Gaming unveiled one of the more popular strategies that rolled out with the new patch. Denial started Relic Shields on four champions: top lane, jungle, the marksman, and the support. This strategy involved YoDa frequently roaming top to split farm with BillyBoss, keeping both of them topped up in health during laning phase and netting them bonus gold income. ecko and Atomic enjoyed this same benefit in the bottom lane. Though Velocity ultimately lost to Curse Gaming's more standard strategies, and Voyboy's Vladimir found himself a pentakill, the four Relic Shields start kept Velocity even in gold with Curse after they lost two kills and a dragon early in the game.
In the third game of the night, To Be Determined also decided to pick up the four Relic Shields strategy and found more success. After losing to the high health regen in the "2v1 lane" - which mainly consisted of Brokenshard's Olaf farming alongside Westrice's Rengar - GGLA picked up their own set of Relic Shields. TBD, however, dominated Gold Gaming Los Angeles to such an extent that RobertxLee built a Zhonya's Hourglass on Vayne, and Arthelon's Ziggs purchased four Rabadon's Deathcaps. It is likely that this victory cannot be solely attributed to the Relic Shields, but it is safe to say that Gold Gaming Los Angeles found the strategy effective if they sold their own starting items to copy their opponents.
The final game of the night was a match between Curse Academy and Team Coast. Curse Academy picked up Relic Shields on four of their members while Team Coast picked up three: one for NintendudeX, one for wizfujiin, and one for Daydreamin. Shiphtur in mid decided to start with a Hunter's Machete, and ZionSpartan's top lane Quinn picked up a Doran's Blade. Onebadbrad ran jungle Nunu, probably due to the buff to Consume's regen provided by Second Wind, and Daydreamin played support Oriana. The execution of these strategies saw both junglers supporting their top laners, taking only one buff each at the start of the game. This effectively gave Team Coast two AD carry and support duo lanes, with NintendudeX's Elise investing heavily into the utility tree for support masteries. Shiphtur's Ziggs took the opportunity to farm the abandoned jungle creeps after pushing out his lane with his Machete start. Ultimately, Onebadbrad's willingness to roam secured them more objectives on the lower half of the map, and his Nunu snowballed the game for Curse Academy. In addition, the experience splitting in the top lane crippled Coast's typical ZionSpartan split push strategy, as his Quinn was nowhere near as monstrous as his Riven, his Jax, or his Nasus. One might say Coast tried out too many new things at once, as this game ultimately ended in their second loss of North American Challenger League.
It seems that changes to support and jungle items have made it more appealing to have two duo lanes over a dedicated jungler. To explain this change, NintendudeX himself stated this morning on Reddit in response to a question regarding whether the changes resulted in a jungle nerf:
it WAS nerfed, I mean think about it.. Supports get their gold generation at level 1, and junglers have to wait for 2k gold for a Spirit of the X / Wriggles to start their "gold generation" and lets be honest, by this point junglers want to start grouping up / playing the objective game to enforce their tankiness and start gaining objectives by denying enemies:
It seems logical that Riot will attempt to balance these changes, as their investment in changing the jungle and objectives like Dragon and Baron indicates that they did not intend for the role to become obsolete. In addition, this was the result of limited theorizing on the first of the preseason patches, so only time will tell how gameplay will evolve as changes are tweaked and begin to take root.
