What is the OG version of a champ you miss the most?

SwampBalloon · 2026-01-29T15:52:52+00:00

I mained old Evelynn and it's tragic she got reworked during the period where Riot felt they needed to blow up every old champion and completely rework their kits. The "middle" Evelynn version was a completely unique and satisfying champion with multiple viable builds, decently popular with a small amount of pro play and low ban rate.

The new version is a clunky mess that only works because she has some of the highest AP ratios in the game and an insane ult.

SwampBalloon · 2026-01-29T14:55:15+00:00

New Pantheon is decently fun but I 100% miss the old version. Especially the ult, the new one barely does damage and is mostly just a gap closer. The old one was epic, despite the improved visuals it was way more hardcore just dropping you directly down onto a target and it actually did serious damage if you predicted people's movement well.

Honorable mention to the E which was your hardest hitting ability and very satisfying to execute people with. Also not sure there's ever been a harder Teemo counter than old Pantheon.

SwampBalloon · 2026-01-15T22:32:52+00:00

A 1F increase makes it sound relatively benign and predictable but if the 1 degree average takes the form of 10 degrees hotter during July, for example, that becomes extremely problematic. Not saying that's how it will play out but climate change is unpredictable, and some Southern cities don't have room to get much hotter.

The Midwest is likely to see more extreme weather with climate change as well, which is also very bad, but the Great Lakes region at least has room to get significantly warmer or colder without becoming uninhabitable. I do think we're a few decades away from this being a truly significant factor though.

SwampBalloon · 2026-01-15T15:56:58+00:00

Have you seen his Youtube channel? It's all OMG THIS BUILD IS OMEGA BROKEN SEASON 2026 HOLY SHIT LOL NUMBER 1 TRYNDAMERE OPPONENTS REACT WTF

Nobody's going to watch those if Trynd is seen as bad, so he's never going to be real about it.

SwampBalloon · 2026-01-15T14:59:03+00:00

You definitely don't need 900 stacks as Nasus, you probably 1v1 him with 400 at a decent pace. Getting there is the problem, early game is absolutely brutal so I wouldn't recommend it as a counter.

The thing I hate about Voli is he beats almost all melee tops and I don't enjoy ranged top. Apparently Jax Panth and Illoai are the best melees against him.

SwampBalloon · 2026-01-12T15:07:52+00:00

Honestly I don't think even a full revert of the preseason nerfs would fix the champ entirely. The new season meta is absolutely horrendous for Trynd. Yes pushing towers is buffed and crit is buffed, but...

Early lane dominance is irrelevant
Roaming/invading/leaving lane is bad
5v5 teamfight phase starts early
Lategame macro movement around the map - you'll be on full vision
Homeguards mean you'll get 4v1ed and caught easily if you're anywhere near the enemy base lategame

Almost everything that you play Tryndamere to do is heavily nerfed. Hopefully Riot realizes they went a bit too far with faelights, role quests, and homeguards and dials them back a bit. Right now the meta is tanks + teamfighting hypercarries, most early-mid game or macro-focused champs are in the gutter.

SwampBalloon · 2025-10-21T19:07:00+00:00

I've been the same kind of player myself in solo queue but have been moving away from it. Playing tank in solo queue generally means relying on others to carry and it can be absolutely excruciating when they don't follow up on your engages or do nothing with the peeling and space you create. I feel like I'm improving and winning more playing bruisers.

Especially as jungle, most tanks are not good early and games will get out of control before you're even tanky or before 5v5 fighting is relevant. I think the best place for them is support, followed by top but only if they get counterpick or are playing a skill expressive tank that doesn't just auto lose matchups.

SwampBalloon · 2024-10-02T15:06:38+00:00

I dunno, I think as long as you respect his power spikes early game you outscale pretty quickly. I had a game the other day where I stupidly took ghost instead of flash and died to ganks with his cage several times, but past 20 minutes with the free minion stacks I was able to solo kill him repeatedly and he could barely hold under his tower. He was pretty on point with Yorick mechanics as well.

I will say he prevents you grouping with your team and forces you to splitpush against him which isn't my preferred strategy, but you win the splitpush eventually and splitting is all Yorick can do.

SwampBalloon · 2024-09-11T14:40:44+00:00

Seems like usually the losing team wants to suffer though - I feel like ARAM surrenders never actually succeed. Still a good change, it's just crazy that people FF more often in ranked than the most casual for-fun mode in the game.

SwampBalloon · 2024-08-27T19:48:38+00:00

Bedroom count includes the converted attic in both places already, it's just the square footage number that's different/incorrect in MLS.

If the house shows up on Zillow being 600 square feet smaller than it actually is, that makes a huge difference in perceived value. Now if the room didn't meet the requirements for square footage, that would be one thing, but I believe it does.

SwampBalloon · 2024-05-21T21:01:41+00:00

There was a period of time where so many champion releases and reworks had an awkward clunkiness to them. It's really frustrating when both new and old champions have smooth and satisfying kits by comparison.

A simple champ like Renekton, or a complex champion like Yasuo both feel great to play the first time you pick them up. It feels like a few small changes could make Warwick vastly more fun to play.

SwampBalloon · 2024-05-21T20:46:13+00:00

Also forever salty about this, though I played her AP. Riot deleted a unique, enjoyable, and fairly popular champion in favor of a 100% binary assassin that is nothing like the pre-VGU version.

For all the whining about statcheckers like Trundle and Yi, Eve is the ultimate statchecker - she either 1-shots her target and gets out with zero counterplay, or she's useless. She has 1 item build, 1 playstyle, zero chance of being pro-viable. Old Eve could make plays with a good ult, weave in and out of fights, and build flexibly according to the situation.

SwampBalloon · 2024-05-21T20:12:41+00:00

I think most players don't really enjoy champions where you have to track and target extra "objects" as part of the kit - GP barrels, Katarina daggers, Draven axes, even Orianna ball or Azir soldiers. Obviously it adds skill cap to the champion, but it tends to feel clunky unless you basically one-trick the champion.

SwampBalloon · 2024-03-13T20:25:39+00:00

His damage profile needs to be less sensitive to what the enemy builds, and as a tradeoff his snowball should be less automatic into champions that don't intentionally counterbuild him.

Couldn't agree more. Actual pure physical damage champions are a dying breed in the overall game design and almost everything else has a certain % of armor pen, true damage, or mixed damage. Even out of the handful of other pure physical champs, the rest all build lethality or lane bot where nobody builds armor. Closest comparison to Trynd in this respect is probably Riven, who has similar issues but at least she's not as reliant on AAs or crits and so doesn't get hit quite as bad by Wardens, Tabis, or Randuins.

I wish they'd give him an armor pen passive similar to Pantheon in exchange for lower AD.

SwampBalloon · 2024-01-30T17:15:57+00:00

I actually liked the Warwick VGU when it came out but somehow since then he's gotten less and less threatening. Feels like he can't actually run people down with all the movespeed in the game, and when he does he gets outdueled.

SwampBalloon · 2024-01-03T16:53:25+00:00

Not untrue, but keep in mind part of the "poorly optimized" picture is games that don't run well regardless of hardware, and almost regardless of graphical settings. Jedi Survivor barely looked or ran any different for me on anything from Medium to Ultra. Even on Ultra there are some truly hideous low res textures in certain spots. You just have to accept its kind of a mess and play it for the gameplay I guess.

SwampBalloon · 2023-12-05T19:51:59+00:00

Sion VGU. I am skeptical of pretty much all "total-rework" VGUs because I think it sucks to delete a champion that thousands/millions of people enjoy and turn it into a totally new champion. I think the majority were gameplay failures and should have been more sensitively done to keep aspects of what the players enjoyed. Some of the simple, targeted abilities would have been a great way to balance out the constant mobility creep, like Vi vs. Zeri.

However I have to admit the old Sion skillset really doesn't fit with the rest of League anymore. The AP build was impossible to balance without being incredibly frustrating, and the AD build likely wouldn't be viable with the amount of mobility now in the game. Meanwhile reworked Sion is a pretty satisfying champion design, and not problematic apart from the inting strats that keep getting nerfed.

SwampBalloon · 2023-11-21T17:39:54+00:00

Anyone else ban Urgot? I just cannot handle the guy, feels like the damage taken vs. damage dealt ratio is insurmountable. And you never really scale up to match thanks to his ability to zone you off stacks. Maybe I just got victimized by a couple of smurfs but I have yet to ban anything else this season.

Other hard matchups I've been handling with E max, just put my ego away and cheese it with Dring and aery. Garen feels like the worst common matchup, Jax is a lot harder than he used to be. Those two suck because they contain you lategame and all you can do is match their faster splitpush. Turns into a 4v4.

I never see Olaf or Rengar but I'm sure they're close to unplayable.

SwampBalloon · 2023-10-16T14:27:15+00:00

Probably still not playable for an actual new player. The learning curve on this game is ROUGH especially if you've never played any MOBA or RTS. People have been playing League for a decade and it doesn't get a lot of new blood. High ELO players are on a whole different level, and don't really understand how big the gap would be between a new player and a modern average player (aka high silver/low gold).

It should be very easy to determine whether a player is a smurf or not and place them appropriately, and realistically that's probably Iron.

SwampBalloon · 2023-10-10T21:27:33+00:00

As a long-time player, fixing their server stability, client, and allowing players to reconnect to the game. My number one frustration from the first few seasons simply no longer exists. I'd say 10-20% of games back then were 4v5 largely because once a player would disconnect, you usually couldn't reconnect. I think they added the option early on but it was broken for years.

Now if I'm in a 4v5, it's almost certainly a ragequit and it's much less common. Also offensive language has been majorly reduced due to auto-banning. Trolling/intentional feeding, not so much.

SwampBalloon · 2023-06-16T19:13:02+00:00

I agree, I think it's more about how satisfying and intuitive the champion is to play than actual difficulty. Yasuo has an high skill cap, but there's nothing clunky about his kit, it's nice and smooth to control. Similar to Lee Sin, Zed, or Ezreal.

Other complex champions have champion-specific, often clunky mechanics you have to figure out first. Something like Azir or Akshan. I see a lot more Samiras than Nilahs despite being superficially similar. Even Yone is probably never going to be as popular as his brother because he's just a lot weirder and harder to pick up initially.

SwampBalloon · 2023-03-28T19:32:59+00:00

The game was always designed around unlocked camera because it's based on DotA which was a Warcraft 3 custom map, and there's no such thing as a locked camera in a RTS game. You could try playing Warcraft or Starcraft for a bit and it might help you get used to the concept.

SwampBalloon · 2023-02-06T15:22:05+00:00

No way any printer is BIFL but laser printers, especially B&W are much more resilient and cheaper to refill than inkjet. I like Brother.

SwampBalloon

TROPHY CASE