Is it finally time for Ghost Poro to shine? Early on, this rune was definitely outclassed by Zombie Ward, which was incredibly strong during the first patches of Season 8. Ghost Poro could also be extremely frustrating to use, as you couldn't choose to take a moment in a brush without (re-)placing your poro automatically (part of its weakness, too). As of Patch 8.14, however, Ghost Poro has gotten a significant overhaul that avoids the issue of automatic poro placement, and the rework is surfacing at a time when vision is especially scarce, and clearing wards is especially valuable. Read on to learn the nitty-gritty of how this new iteration of Ghost Poro works, as well as my thoughts on how this rework affects the game.

How It Works

First off, let's take a look at the 8.14 patch notes and the new tooltip.

These descriptions complement each other fairly well in terms of clarity, so it's useful to look at both. The tooltip expands upon the patch notes, letting you know that vision is granted for 300s, and that there is a 60s cooldown if an enemy champion enters its brush (note that a ward alone won't scare if off). The patch notes also complement the tooltip by specifying the channel time (1s), as well as specifying that "enemy territory" means "past the river" (this is an important point which we will return to later).

Let's dive a little deeper into the poro mechanics. When you have a poro available, you do not "place" it in the traditional way that you would "place" a ward. Rather, when you press your trinket key, the poro will appear where you are, not where your cursor is (as is the case with wards). This was the case with the old Ghost Poro, but with it now being a deliberate action (and with words like "place" in the description), you might understandably be tricked into thinking that it works as a ward in this manner. Additionally, once you have placed the poro, your trinket icon will return and you will not be able to replace your poro while still in the brush. You can, however, leave the brush and reenter it, triggering the channel and a subsequent chance to place it in a different area in the brush. It's also worth noting that you can activate Oracle Alteration before triggering your poro substitution, and you can then place your poro without canceling your ongoing sweep.

Let's now circle back to the part about "enemy territory." The patch notes definition is important, because there are at least two plausible misinterpretations of the text. One is that as long as you're on the enemy's "side" of the map, then you are in their territory. This would be a mistake, since the river has non-trivial depth. Simply being close to an enemy jungle entrance, or playing up past the middle of your lane, is not sufficient. Another view might be that "enemy territory" means inside their jungle or behind their first line of towers. This is also not the case and would preclude one from being able to trigger Ghost Poro's adaptive bonus in lane from champion positioning alone.

As a consequence of the actual definition, these requirements allow for a modest zone in any lane in which you can activate the aforementioned adaptive bonus (significantly past the middle of the lane, but still doable). There are also some very small sweet spots in side lanes in which you can be in the brush closest to the enemy tower and get the adaptive bonus. I do not know exactly which spots are possible, but they are very small, and it is much easier when closer to the wall of the map's edge (examples below).

Finally, let's look at the numerical values associated with this rune. Since Ghost Poro is a minor rune that gives an adaptive bonus based on champion level, a natural comparison is with Absolute Focus (which shares those traits). The table below shows the specific values - although there is almost certainly decimal rounding happening - of each rune bonus at every level, for both AP and AD.

As you can see, the two runes start out granting equal bonuses at level 1, but Absolute Focus scales about twice as fast and ends up with twice the value by level 18. Of course, different conditions must be met in order to get the bonuses, but we are just considering what the actual bonuses are supposing the conditions have been met.

One more observation that seems natural is to compare these runes to Gathering Storm and Eyeball Collection (both of which give adaptive bonuses, and the latter of which directly competes with Ghost Poro for a row in the Domination Tree). In this table, we can see the break-even points for all the runes with Gathering Storm, the rune with the best scaling and the highest potential value of all four.

Thoughts on Game Impact

It should be noted that these break-even points do not denote always denote equivalent values, but rather the least possible value that is equal to, or exceeds, a Gathering Storm interval. In the case of Eyeball Collection, this is significant, since 19 Eyeballs grants 19 AP/11.4 AD, but 20 Eyeballs grants 30 AP/18 AD (due to its "completion bonus"); thus, 20 Eyeballs well exceeds Gathering Storm at the 20m mark, but 19 Eyeballs is too few. Finally, because Gathering Storm continues to scale as the game goes on, no other rune listed can match Gathering Storm at 30 minutes (and Ghost Poro cannot even match it at 20).

Now that we've gotten all the mechanics and numerical values out of the way, the first thing I'd like to touch on is how it feels to use Ghost Poro. To me, it feels better than its previous iteration, but still clunky. As I alluded to earlier, it feels counterintuitive to have some ward-like entity I am placing from my trinket slot, but not be able to ground-target the area with my cursor. In real games, this has at times left me sitting in the brush for a second thinking, "Wait, where is my poro? Didn't I just place it in front of me?" before sheepishly realizing that it is hidden right under my feet.

Another source of frustration for me is not having clear feedback on when the poro is spotted and disappears. It's one of those things that is very easy to have go unnoticed, especially in a chaotic game. It would be nice to have some sort of clear visual or audio cue to avoid this issue (maybe it will be added in the future, or maybe it is so subtle that I have missed it entirely).

Probably the most frustrating misplay you can do with the new poro, however, is accidentally relocating your poro out of the enemy jungle. Scenario: you are in lane, happily farming and harassing with your adaptive stats gained from a well-placed poro. You walk out of lane briefly to place a Warding Totem to scout out a gank path, but oops! You stood in brush too long and you placed a poro instead. Your stats are now gone, and you won't be able to stay pushed up or retake a jungle brush in the foreseeable future. Unlucky.

Last but not least, it still just feels a little clunky. Channeling for one second in brush is awkward, especially when it's in enemy territory and you don't want sit in one small area or overstay your welcome. That all being said, these are largely avoidable and non-devastating issues. Over time, I am sure that I and others will learn how to play properly with our friend the Ghost Poro, and it will become one of many other League of Legends habits that were at one point frustrating or unintuitive but are now automatic.

Although I have started by mentioning some perceived downsides, it's not all doom-and-gloom. Something I am really excited about is the possibility for aggressive play this rune could open up. As we can see from the charts above, Ghost Poro grants the same potential stats as Absolute Focus and is still granting ~2/3 the value by Champion Level 6. This means that being able to push up and harass near the enemy tower is rewarded and will be a cakewalk for champions with good waveclear (and you don't even need to have a poro placed for this to work). It's also exciting because you can, in theory, run a hyper-aggressive page now such as Aery/Comet, Absolute Focus, Scorch, Ghost Poro, and Cheap Shot/Sudden Impact. The defensive and utility rune options may still be largely superior for champions that have the ability to support this type of push-up-and-bully playstyle, but the possibility is there now (and somewhat tantalizing, I think).

Even without being able to push the lane, I am guessing it will be easy for (at least) some time to cheese free stats with clever level 1 ward placements. Anecdotally, from my own games the past 1-2 seasons in Diamond and Platinum, I have the impression that players rarely cover the uppermost mid lane jungle entrance. Mid laners often opt to group up for a clump/invade, sit too far back under mid tower, or just be late to lane (and champions in other positions seldom cover this spot, unless the jungler is starting top side). This means that you can go through that entrance and place your ward in the nearest bush, and sit on those stats for a while in lane. Another area worth noting is the long brush opposite the blue buff, and near the river brush. That is the closest brush you can utilize to gain your adaptive bonus, and it provides solid vision control in its own right. Moreover, if you are on the red/purple side of the map, these brushes are one and the same (the brush circled at the bottom of the following image)--providing, perhaps, an extremely easy value poro!

Image Courtesy of riftkit.net

All this being said, it should be pretty trivial to counter this placement strategy if your opponents are aware and willing. A simple 5 point defense, covering the jungle entrances, stifles any such attempt, and incorporating the brushes near the river into jungle pathing would keep these safe poros to a minimum. Nonetheless, these are still probably spots worth aiming for. Just realize that there is a natural response to this strategy, and it may become hard to gain these spots at level 1 or hold them for extended periods if the idea becomes popular enough.

In addition to Ghost Poro's rework, there are a plethora of other changes this season that may incentivize picking the poro more. For one, there is no more Tracker's Knife or Sightstone, and support items (in my experience) come online earliest around 9 minutes, with it not even being uncommon to reach quest completion until around 13 minutes into the game. This makes vision more scarce. Additionally, Warding Totem also got hit with a cooldown increase, making the impact of a swept Totem ward higher; this is further exacerbated by Oracle Alteration becoming available at level 1. Zombie Ward has had its duration nerfed quite a bit, and it notably no longer pops up Zombie Wards off of friendly ward expirations (this also makes vision more scarce). Additionally, in addition to the aforementioned points about wards being easier to sweep and more profitable, taking Zombie Ward now grants a damage bonus post ward kill, which makes it even less fun to have a ward cleared. All this combines to make vision more valuable, and getting a ward swept away worse, resulting in a favorable environment for Ghost Poro.

So, what's the upshot? Is Ghost Poro good now? I'm hopeful, but not convinced just yet. The stage is certainly set for its triumphant debut as a premier rune, but that doesn't mean it will make the cut in its current state. Competing in its same row in the Domination Tree, we have already seen that Eyeball Collection potentially outscales Ghost Poro (and if it does, the stats are kept unconditionally), and the new Zombie Ward provides a pretty enticing bonus for junglers looking to take Electrocute and get picks with a burst combo. For laners, as mentioned above, it is probably a small group of waveclear-dominant/bully champions that can hope to brute-force the adaptive stat bonus off of positioning and, even then, it might be better to opt into some defense or utility.

I don't see the poro vision on its own, or the adaptive stats on their own, as enough to push the poro into favor. However, if the poro proves valuable enough in this vision-light environment, I think we will start to see the types of laners mentioned above, and maybe some junglers that invade but don't really burst (Ivern and Nunu, perhaps?), pick it up. And that makes sense, since presumably the rune is balanced around being able to get benefit out of both aspects (the vision as well as the stats). Moreover, with Riot's efforts to decrease the amount of essentially-mandatory vision options available, especially in pro play, it would also make sense that they would try to avoid making this an amazing rune for a wide swathe of champions.

Of course, this is all just speculation. We'll learn more as solo queue statistics role in, and even more as patch 8.14 rolls out later for professional play. I look forward to experimenting more with Ghost Poro myself, and I hope to see it take to the rift more at some point. I hope you now have a better understanding of how Ghost Poro works and have some Poro-Snax for thought on why the poro may, or may not, achieve more popularity in 8.14 and beyond. Happy poro planting!

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