Rumble: The Mechanized Menace

Story:

Even amongst yordles, Rumble was always the runt of the litter. As such, he was used to being bullied. In order to survive, he had to be scrappier and more resourceful than his peers. He developed a quick temper and a reputation for getting even, no matter who crossed him. This made him something of a loner, but he didn't mind. He liked to tinker, preferring the company of gadgets, and he could usually be found rummaging through the junkyard. He showed great potential as a mechanic. His teachers recommended him for enrollment at the Yordle Academy of Science and Progress in Piltover, where he may very well have become one of Heimerdinger's esteemed proteges, but Rumble refused to go. He believed that Heimerdinger and his associates were ''sellouts,'' trading superior yordle technology to humans for nothing more than a pat on the head while yordles remained the butt of their jokes. When a group of human graduates from the Yordle Academy sailed to Bandle City to visit the place where their mentor was born and raised, Rumble couldn't resist the temptation to see them face-to-face (so to speak). He only intended to get a good look at the humans, but four hours and several choice words later, he returned home bruised and bloodied with an earful about how he was an embarrassment to ''enlightened'' yordles like Heimerdinger. The next morning he left Bandle City without a word, and wasn't seen again for months. When he returned, he was at the helm of a clanking, mechanized monstrosity. He marched it to the center of town amidst dumbfounded onlookers and there announced that he would join the League of Legends to show the world what yordle-tech was really capable of, without hiding behind a foreign banner.

''Ugh, it's gonna take forever to scrape your face off my suit!'' – Rumble

Thoughts:

Rumble is a heavy hitting, tanky DPS champion with devastating moves, trading blows with him is likely to leave you dead.  Flamespitter’s damage is massive.  While he hides behind his scrap shield for protection, Rumble can cripple you with Electro-Harpoon and then finish you off with some fire.  He has an extremely powerful laning presence with his Ult, The Equalizer.  Rumble can push lanes line nobody’s business through being able to burn minions with Flamespitter and his regular attack at the same time.

Rumble really excels at pushing lanes, taking out turrets, and protecting allies.  He has so much slow (especially if you give him a Rylai’s) that no champion will be able to catch up to your escaping carry.  And then because Rumble is fairly tanky, and has his Scrap Shield for a speed boost and damage mitigation, he can get away too if necessary.  Chasing people down with Rumble is also a breeze; a well placed Equalizer, 2 Electro-Harpoon shots, and Flamespitter to finish them off.

One of my favorite things to do with Rumble (is a little mean… but I am ok with that!  ;-)  ), is to get someone extremely low in lane, have them escape behind the safety of their tower, and finish them off with my Equalizer.  Rumble is another one of those champions that people say is OP.  Most common complaint I hear is that The Equalizer is broken because of how much damage it can do.  It does not really do that much damage, and you just have to move off the “wall” of damage and it does nothing. 

Not many people on the American server seem to be able to use Rumble correctly or play him that often, but he is extremely popular on the European server.  I will hopefully be able to throw up a game play video this weekend some time for Rumble.  I would love to see some better Rumble players because he is a lot of fun to play, and an interesting champion fairly different from the others.

Calling champs OP is OP

THIS in my humble opinion is one of the biggest problems with League of legends.   People saying that everything is OP (Over Powered) or UP (Under Powered).   Riot has been working very hard to churn out new champs fairly often that are unique and fun to play, and they do a pretty good job.  Then we get a bunch of poor players with absolutely no idea what it means to adapt to a new game play mechanic getting completely slaughtered by the new champ.  They whine and complain, spouting word vomit over forums, in game, and everywhere else that the new champ does too much damage or he’s unkillable or something else like that.

Common situation in game after a new champ comes out:

IPlayNewChamps has slain NoobGamerGG.

[ALL]NoobGamerGG: OMG  Vayne SO OP  F—king can’t wait NERF hamer hits!  So stupud!  GG

NoobGamerGG has called a surrender vote.

And this goes on all game, all the time.  Is Vayne doing too much damage to you?  Why don’t you try not letting her shoot you 12 times in the face for no reason?  Maybe get some armor instead of stacking ONLY AD or AP items?  These players complain so hard and so often that Riot thinks this is what the gamers as a whole want to see happen.  And Riot really DOES want to make us happy.  Happy consumers will continue to consume product.  So they nerf champions, sometimes to ALMOST unusable levels (Pantheon, Twitch, and Galio are all really great examples of this).

Now, I am not saying that Riot should release their champs and then forget about them.  All champs will need balancing once they are released into general use.  Players are VERY good at finding out what something can do, and then abusing the hell out of it.  An example of this is Nidalee’s Javelin Toss.  It deals bonus damage the further away Nidalee is when it hits a target.  So players will toss that javelin and then walk straight backwards.  Probably not what Riot intended when they made this ability, but it works.  But everyone once in a while, Riot hits just a bit too hard with that Nerf Bat.  I will use Galio as the example.  I saw lots of tank Galio’s pre-12/01/10 Patch.  Since then, I have been MAYBE 10?  And none of them did fantastically.  The reason behind this is quite simple, they destroyed the one thing that made Galio such a powerful tank; Idol of Durand.  They made it do 20% less damage, cut the bonus damage in half from his being attacked, and reduced the max damage by 40%.  It doesn’t do any damage anymore.  Sure you have a short AOE taunt, but Galio is going to take heavy damage during that time and there are just much better options for the same basic effect (EX: Amumu’s Ult).

As far as I know Riot has never once made a champion COMPLETELY useless after a nerf, but they have made several champions not viable picks for a well balanced team because of these nerfs and it’s because of whiney people that cannot learn how to overcome a certain champion, or a new game play mechanic.  I would venture to say that for the most part, new champions only need very minor changes for balance issues.  This does not make a character OP, just new.

Also, since it’s relevant at the moment, I will also bring up UP champions.  This almost never happens, and complaints aren’t nearly as common (though griefing for using these champs is a MUST apparently…), but once in a while Riot releases a champ that is just cannot hold its own.  Yorick is the current good example.  He is somewhere between a carry and a tank, but cannot quite manage to do either.  He’s abilities aren’t terrible, other than his ultimate (which in my opinion is the worst ultimate in the game), but he really doesn’t bring anything to a team fight.  He does doesn’t do enough damage to be a good carry, and he doesn’t have enough survivability to be a tank.

No one is really happy with the current state of Yorick, and this is part of the reason why most champions come out a little stronger and why it makes sense to do it this way.  Other than the people that bought Yorick on the first day he came out, MOST people are going to wait until the buff/change Yorick to purchase him.  That is a loss to Riot, as no one is purchasing RP to buy their newly released champ.  But when Vayne and Nocturne came out, I had at least 1 of these champs in every game I played for over a month after they came out.  That’s a lot of RP spent.

The one positive thing that I will give out of this rant, is that League of Legends DOES have a large player base and good number of people that play this game actually do know what they are doing and do know what they are talking about (Most of the people on the high ELO Teams like solomid and CLG for example).  I have seen several good suggestions on the league of legends forums as well on how to improve game play or modify champions to make them more viable.  And these aren’t just griefers or complainers.  These are serious gamers, that really do want to make a difference and improve this game that they have spent so much time (and money…) on.  I just wish that Riot would spend more time listening to these well thought out ideas that sometimes slip between the cracks and less time listening to the hundreds of posts that read nothing more than “  ZOMGS VAYNE ES BROKED!  NERF! NERF!”

And as a last note, I love this game.  I have considered quitting in the past because of all the in game abuse that you have to suffer through if you aren’t getting fed and aren’t a super über pro.  But I also played DOTA back in the day, and it was A LOT worse in DOTA.  Stupid is everywhere.  You just have to shrug it off, laugh in their faces, and keep going.  I do have faith in Riot, and I do believe that at some point these little issues will become smaller issues.  But I also don’t expect them to disappear entirely because that is just not realistic.

Ramble, Ramble, Ramble, Rumble, Ramble…. END.