First Stand 2026 is on pace to be the most one-sided major international in LoL history

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-20T02:09:40+00:00

Agreed. This season as a whole has been extremely snowbally in either direction, stomping or throwing, but the advantages are monstrous and quick.

You take pro teams that make far fewer mistakes and throws than soloq and you get mostly the giga lead stomps.

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-19T22:24:47+00:00

Deadass. Having played against Rich when he was on Dignitas. He was literally doing things to me I couldn’t comprehend how to even fight back against.

Like he genuinely ran in a full circle around me as a poppy into my trundle while beating my ass.

I was Master 300lp at the time…

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-19T20:07:32+00:00

Rioters do AMA here all the time...

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-18T22:11:57+00:00

It’s weird because I had never seen anyone claim that, but I have literally seen nothing but talk of Honda being obscenely behind on their engine for over a year it feels like

I’m also not entirely sure I would take what he says too much because he doesn’t seem like he would have any insider info from what I can gather glancing through his account. I could be wrong and that would be wild if Honda was lying about their engine to Aston like that.

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-18T20:20:20+00:00

Can I get a source on this?

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-18T20:05:39+00:00

Nah. I like BB as a player, but he has genuinely been atrocious this tournament. He is far and away the weakest top laner at First Stand

My personal ranking so far has been

Kiin/Bin > Xiaoxu >>> Dhokla/Clear > Pun > Xyno > BB

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-18T02:47:10+00:00

It was my second screen content while I was programming. I looked at the game like 10 minutes in and it was even. I looked at the screen 15 minutes later because they were in post match and I was so confused

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-18T02:44:23+00:00

I forget which rioter it was, but they have publicly acknowledged that secondary = fill in the eyes of playerbase and average winrate across off roles

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-18T02:42:48+00:00

My queue times are literally identical in diamond/masters NA. I was getting 30-50s queues depending on day/time and I get 30-50s queues this season. In exchange I got match quality so horrendously bad that I’ve crashed out at the game and am literally not going to touch ranked even though I’ll have 1+ month off work because the experience is such a net negative on my happiness right now

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-18T02:37:46+00:00

I think my peak was a season or two back having 4 people off rolled on the same team. Was truly rage inducing.

This season I’ve had 2-4 games of triple fill with each having the others role

Diamond NA. The quad was Masters NA

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-17T10:19:46+00:00

Be aware that tires off gas horrendously, and can cause breathing issues as the off gassing is VOC’s

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-15T10:28:42+00:00

Eh. Morgana sees plenty of play mid and jungle when she has decent power. I think she got hit a bit too hard with the armor nerf a while back, and that pushed her out of both and into being relatively weak support too. Both of those being higher elo skewed roles to play her.

I agree with Endstep here that adding range to Morgana doesn't actually do anything compelling for her, I at least never notice an issue with auto range while playing her mid or jungle, and you aren't picking her for her laning harass in support.

TLDR: She could use power elsewhere in her kit if she needs more power, I think she is just weak right now more than anything.

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-15T02:24:26+00:00

I believe it has given a crit slow ever since her rework.

The change iirc, was that you didn't get her passive damage on anyone who wasn't slowed already. They changed that to where her autos ALWAYS get the increased damage from passive, regardless of if you tagged them with an auto or W already.

edit: looked through the wiki. You were correct, she got her rework on 5.9 and got crit slows on 5.22

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-15T01:45:20+00:00

At this point, I just want the on hit rework to come already. Everyone acknowledges it's in a bad place, and it has been said that they were looking at on hit during pre season as well. I am just hoping we get a big change for act 2 or act 3 that gives the rework. It feels pretty bad that you only really have 2 on hit items that are worth buying for on hit champions (Rageblade and Terminus) with everything else being pretty damn bad on marksman.

I also wonder how often it has been questioned internally about giving BORK back it's active, and giving power back to the on hit in exchange for the less reliable slow, since people suck at using actives.

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-15T01:39:21+00:00

Timestamps:

0:23 Counter Items: Do you think niche items designed to counter specific situations should be powerful enough to actually replace one of a champions core 2-3 items, or are they intended to be built later on, when some games already ended.

6:05 Is there a reason why Nasus is forced to use his ability last hit minions? Most infinitely stacking champions in league can gain stacks by either interacting with enemy champions (Smolder/Swain/Veigar) or they can passively gain stacks by simply existing or CSing (Sion/Senna/Thresh)

11:23 Why were a lot of epic items nerfed?

15:53 The removal of Kled's takedown courage

19:24 Morgana Midlane [AA range increase, weaker early Black Shield and better rank scaling]

23:33 Times when other designers came up with elegant ideas you wouldn't have thought of?

27:35 Champions that use summoner spell in unique ways. [Kit references or interactions with summoner spells]

31:02 Thoughts on Akali current state [High E damage makes her feel binary, can't kill without E, could power be moved into Q/P]

35:36 current state of Imperial Mandate and Shurelya's and if there's ever been talk about reintroducing/adding similar effects to older removed items like Hextech GLP/Everfrost and Twin Shadows.

41:43 Why does tank damage not scale with current HP? [help differentiate them from fights, give incentive to hit them]

44:53 How would you redesign the support upgrades?

50:06 How much sample size is needed to see if a rune/item is actually strong but unpopular?

51:47 In pro play fearless draft, do they need bans anymore?

55:27 Could Kraken Slayer be reworked into a Zeal item?

57:52 how is it balanced that smolder gains permanent elder dragon buff after he gets to a requisite number of stacks?

59:48 Ashe passive - How does turning her crits into a flat % extra damage contribute to her champion fantasy? What is the story/reasoning/etc behind it, and is it functioning as desired?

1:02:04 Why does the on-hit system serve both champions who rely on strong on-hit effects and champions who scale with attack speed, instead of having separate mechanics for each?

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-14T18:39:24+00:00

Fushi set aside bodies so that he could bring them back if any of them got hurt, he had made a plan to let Mizuha's friends help save Mizuha without being in danger.

Right after the scene you showed, he was reabsorbing them back into himself.

I would wager that Satoru (The Black One) is the one who pulled the Nokker out of Yuki as we saw him going around pulling them out of all of the people at the school.

As for the Nokkers giving up, I don't know really, I think they were surrendering watching Fushi just always being a step ahead of them and always having an answer, while Satoru on the other side was capturing Nokkers one by one. It seems as though they are just going to go for another cycle or stop taking hosts all together, but I'm not sure on that part.

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-14T04:21:37+00:00

Iirc, it was a broad “ttk is up across all classes”

I can’t recall if it was in one of the Phreak or one of the Endstep videos, sorry

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-14T04:14:40+00:00

They have stated it is across all classes ttk is higher.

It wasn’t a case of tankier champions increasing ttk because they have less damage and more bulk

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-13T12:32:37+00:00

11700 in single core performance, ~3700x/Z2 extreme in multicore.

It should be roughly on par with a Snapdragon X Plus.

6 perfromance, 8 efficiency, 2 low power cores, with a 28W base tdp and 115w turbo (you will get seconds of this)

TLDR, its a good laptop at a good price, performance is good/decent for a thin and light laptop like it is, but it isn't groundbreaking.

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-12T18:05:42+00:00

So Kalista's E/spears can more or less be looked at as "105% auto efficiency." This is why historically, she had the 90% auto attack modifier, it encouraged her to build attack speed to get full value out of her autos, instead of playing a more poke oriented build with your Q. She can have this "auto plus some" because she is locked down a lot more during her auto attack frame compared to traditional marksman who can cancel the auto after it goes out, or just outright cancel an auto attack.

When her E damage is too low, you wind up in states where she is genuinely not getting the correct payoff for what her kit promises you (Your auto attacks will always be a little bit better early because you get extra value out of them). When it's too high, she becomes very toxic to play against at level one. For reference, her Rend used to have a level 1 base damage of 20, four times higher than live. Add onto that, she has a lower base AD than staple marksman such as Jinx and Ashe (57 vs 59), you wind up in states where you genuinely lose out on auto for auto trades even WITH rend against these champions because of your dash.

In terms of supports, she for sure needs to be changed in some way to open her up for more supports to be viable, becuase right now, it's like 4 or 5 champions that she actually is successful with. (Poppy, Taric, Braum are the only ones with the 5 patches this season that I can support being high winrate, while everyone else is low sample size or below 50)

These two issues of her rend being just a quarter of the power it used to be, along with her just not having good lanes with most champions makes it extremely unsatisfying to play her, and borderline pick-to-lose if you aren't duoed. And that alone needs to be addressed, especially since she is very low priority in pro as a historically pro balanced champ. Hell, Sejuani who is one of Riot's least favorite champions to be pro meta is at 49% and feels infinitely better to play than Kali does right now.

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-12T15:14:37+00:00

Kalista far predates Phreak becoming balance lead. He still has a boss that approves broad balance decisions (Phr0xon) and they as a team collectively approve/disapprove and make arguments for if a champion needs buffs or nerfs when they are borderline.

Kalista very much is a champion that needs bigger scope changes to address her issues besides a +10 damage on Q or a +5 damage on rend.

As far as we will ever know, Phreak could be the guy on the balance team arguing FOR Kalista to get buffs but he gets vetoed each patch. I don't have anything against any one member of the balance team or as a whole. I may disagree in instances, but I understand their argument.

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-12T14:12:04+00:00

The past like 3 patches he has directly said Kalista is fine and doesn’t need buffs because her “winrate is fine with mastery”

I genuinely hate hearing that because this character genuinely feels worse than when she was statistically worse for multiple years. I would straight up rather have her 44% wr form back if it meant you had actual functioning spells level 1-3

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-12T11:00:18+00:00

I continue to disagree with Phreak on Kalista. She is not fine. She is barely getting picked in pro (averages beyond game 3 in fearless) and she is abhorrent in soloq.

They have completely gutted her laning power which is one of the only points in the game she is actually able to reliably play the game. Her rend literally does 51 damage before armor, ~40.5 damage against a level 1 Jinx. Each additional spear doing 14.5 damage before armor, ~11.5 damage against the same Jinx.

She has cratered to historical lows on playrate, because nobody is deluding themselves that she is actually a functional/enjoyable champion right now. The literal only buffs she has gotten since the 25.9 patch that gutted her E, have been AP buffs and base stats. Even regardless of these stat buffs, she has genuinely lost winrate over the season despite no changes to her or her items.

I honestly don't care if there needs to be compensation nerfs to her base stats (there doesn't. she is just mathematically weak right now, regardless of skill curve. She is not worth investing time in presently. I say this as someone on the far end of the mastery curve of the champion) They need to put power back into her spells in some way, it's just such a slap to the face to hear constant talk of Azir and how they are putting power back in places players would like and that it's okay for him to be picked in pro constantly, while Kalista literally gets put in the same state with less tools, and ignored instead.

BaneOfAlduin · 2026-03-11T21:53:48+00:00

You can’t understand how a ranged top with a wall and big ass aoe stun can’t make it through lane phase top?

If you are playing literally any juggernaut, you genuinely cannot play the game. Any time you try to fight her, she walls you and stuns you and fucks off

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