With Worlds 2015 coming to a close we look now to the pre-season 2016 updates to get our quota of League of Legends hype, and as always it's exciting to see what Riot has in store for us in the coming season.

Victorious Sivir

As with the end of any season, players ranked in gold or above get themselves an awesome exclusive skin, this time around we have Victorious Sivir. This skin is the embodiment of League of Legends condensed into a skin sized package. Each season brings a different taste with each of their Victorious skins, and this one is no different. I have to say I am a fan, it looks awesome, especially the particles.

As I said before you can only acquire this skin for attaining gold or higher in ranked by the end of the season, if you don't fit this criteria then unfortunately you missed out, better luck next season.

Most significantly with this new season we are finally seeing some changes to the Marksman role. The Marksman haven't seen much love over the last few seasons, their playstyle has almost not changed at all and with the ever evolving flow that is the League meta, they have almost become obsolete. Riot has seen this and decided it is time to give the role a fresh lick of paint and have made some pretty unexpected and awesome changes. Most of the changes are centered around balance but numbers are being changed on champions as well as items. There are some Champs that have seen more substantial overhauls than others. However we are going to look more at the aesthetic and gameplay changes to the champions affected in this release.

Quinn

The most noticeable change to Quinn is her ultimate ability, while at its core it is still the same ability, it now acts a little differently, whether or not for the better is up to you to decide. While before the ult casting time was instant, now it has a small channel time and instead of Quinn fully swapping out for Valor, now Valor swoops down and picks her up, applying a movement stim. However now the Ult cooldown has been lowered to 3 seconds and is dispelled when either casting another ability, or taking damage. Recasting the ability while in the ultimate still calls down the arrows dealing damage in a radius of Quinn.

This change is really cool, it gives Quinn a new angle to play from, the new behaviour of the ultimate gives her a little more depth from what I have played and she hasn't lost her ability of closing down the opponent. I will be keeping an eye on her to see how these changes will affect Quinn, I think it's quite obvious she will be taking a more roaming approach though.

Graves

The changes Graves has seen are quite unexpected. His Q (Buckshot) has now become his Auto Attack, and he has received a new ability called "End of the Line". End of the Line fires a shot and explodes on impact dealing damage in the area shown by the range indicator below. He has also received a new passive where after 2 auto attacks he has to go through a reload animation. This also adds some extra characteristics to Graves' auto attacks including a knockback. This is very interesting and to me seems that the reload is an attempt to limit how much damage Graves can output now that he has a cone of fire as his auto attack. The downside from what I can tell is that you will almost always be pushing the lane, because it's going to be near impossible to not hit more than 1 minion when farming in the early game.

Not sure how I feel about this one. The changes feel cool and it's a fresh experience now when playing Graves, however as I stated above, you are almost always pushing the lane, and while this may work for an orchestrated team, solo queue might be a little difficult when playing Graves, we will see though.

Caitlyn

While all marksmen shown here are seeing balance changes as well as some aesthetic changes, Caitlyn being no exception here, her changes are a little different in that she doesn't really lose anything. However she does gain a new range icon when enemies step on her traps. Other than that her Q (Piltover Peacemaker) now has a before and after impact particle and that's about it, past her balance changes as well.

The range indicator seems interesting but the Q change is just a fresh lick of paint on an old ability, her passive icon has also seen a change, which now makes it look way out of place and honestly, while the changes are cool, Caitlyn seems to have gottent the short end of the stick in terms of changes here. However everything is subject to change so nothing is set in stone yet.

Corki

Now here is a set of changes that should really catch your attention. Corki has seen a pretty significant change, his new passive Hextech Munitions gives him a stim on his W(Valkyrie). After an initial 8 minutes a package will be dropped in base that literally straps rockets to corki's plane and he shoots out of the base with a 50% movement stim as well as an empowered W and 10% more damage on his autos. After that the passive will go on a 4 minute cooldown until the next delivery. Corki has also received a new set of icons, which all look pretty damn cool.

Now I have read on certain forums that people really don't like these "mini-games" on champions, as it distracts from the actual game which, in League, can get you killed. Personally I quite like them, it adds more depth the champions' gameplay and also adds another aspect to why you would pick him. This one I really like though because it's just awesome in general, the movement stim is great for getting back into the fight, plus the damage stims really give him timing based power curves, which mean you can make him hurt more when it really counts.

Kog'Maw

Other than his general balance changes, Kog'Maw has seen a change in a new set of icons.

Rift Herald

Now here is one of the more exciting changes released to the PBE, this guys is called the Rift Herald, and he is like a pre-baron buff. He spawns after 5 mins and when he is killed, he gives a buff to the champion that kills him, this includes the minion stim similar to baron, which quite frankly is worrying. If that minion stim makes it into the final release, then we will be seeing a lot more 4-1 splits. This will also force a lot more early aggression as well as lane swaps in order to better utilise the buff, a lot of what this guy has now will more than likely change.

I really don't know how I feel about this change, it's really difficult to see how it affects gameplay without playing a tonne of games with him. One thing is for certain, this new early game objective will definitely bring the pace of the game up. Which depending on what Riot are trying to do this season may or may not be a good thing, only time will tell.

That is pretty much everything substantial in this release, stay tuned for more big PBE releases and also keep in mind that all of this is subject to change. Thanks for reading.

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