Hey Everyone, Shakarez from LolKing here!
Following last week's video about some unusual picks, today we decided to look at some more
champions and explain why they are picked in competitive.
Let's start with Varus.
The Arrow of Retribution showed up out of nowhere and currently he's considered to be
a top tier AD Carry and one of the most contested champions in his role, alongside Ashe and
Jhin.
If you have been following competitive, you will know Varus has been primarily played
in the mid lane in the past 2 seasons.
PowerOfEvil debuted the pick with a caster centric build.
However, the pick has finally returned to his intended primary role, the bot lane.
The 6.24 buffs to his passive finally allowed him to build a more traditional AD carry build.
In short, making his passive scale with bonus attack speed made attack speed oriented builds
much more attractive.
Given the very high item dependency and low impact in the early stages of matches for
AD Carries, having utility in their kits is an extremely good trait to have, especially
in pro play.
Varus brings unmatched wave clear in his class and hard crowd control via his ultimate, so
even if he's behind or not dishing out much damage, he can still set his teammates for
success.
Right now, Varus is probably the most versatile pick in terms of builds.
Currently we're consistently seeing 3 different builds from him.
The Essence Reaver build has a heavy Crit focus.
High amounts of CDR are also key to allow him to have Chain of Corruption up frequently,
so he can set up crowd control for his team to follow up on.
Another build that has appeared recently is the one with Blade of the Ruined King.
This build has no Cooldown Reduction in it but this auto attack based build is stronger
when facing tanks, as the % current health damage from Blade will do work.
Finally, a lot of Varus players have been defaulting to go for the caster build with
lethality items.
This build isn't as strong in the early stages as it was before, but with the changes to
lethality on Patch 7.2, it's likely we will see more of it in the future.
If the threat level is too high to be in auto range, this build is better as it allows Varus
to stay in the outskirts and just poke with Piercing Arrow from range.
If you want to learn more about Varus, check the article in the description.
Kennen is a champion that has been consistently picked in competitive for a while but recently
his build has been very different from what we traditionally see and the AP centric build
we saw players use at worlds.
Currently, kennen is building an attack speed oriented build, but why?
The most recent nerfs to the Yordle have really limited his ability to burst down targets
with Slicing Maelstrom.
Even though the skill's total damage is now slightly higher, it's much more shifted towards
the final part of the cast, meaning opponents have more time to react to the ultimate and
get out of his damage zone.
With that said, Kennen still maintains the attractive traits that he had beforehand.
He has strong matchups into all of these tanks as he's ranged and is an energy based champion,
so he can constantly trade without having to worry about something like mana.
The build he's going for currently is heavily on hit oriented and the idea behind it is
very simple, to split and duel with Tanks.
You will rarely see Kennen teamfight with this build, instead he's going to constantly
be in a side lane, taking turrets and forcing a response from the enemy team.
If unattended, he can definitely take over games.
Finally there's Taliyah.
The stoneweaver was nerfed on 6.18 and we didn't see her at worlds at all, but buffs
to Threaded Volley in two different patches helped her see play again.
However, there was another change that helped her gain a lot of pressure with wave clear
that many did not notice.
On Patch 6.22, there were changes to melee and ranged minions.
The reduction of health growth over time for ranged minions allowed certain champions to
more effectively clear them from earlier stages in the game, another good example of this
is Ahri, who can now easily clear ranged minions with 1 Q and don't need to auto each creep
once to finally kill them.
This might not sound that significant, but in pro play, wave control and having strong
pushing power means a lot in the mid lane, being able to shove allows a mid laner to
start roaming and putting pressure in the side lanes.
Given Taliyah's kit, this is essential as she can easily get out of lane and roam and
set up a dive with Weaver's Wall That's going to be it for today, let me know
if you enjoyed it by leaving a like on the video as it helps us a lot.
See you next week!
