Previews

LoL New Champ Ivern: Gameplay RXN

I got back from clinic and the gym to find the very first livestream of League’s up coming champ Ivern’s gameplay on the PBE.  Hot damn can this champion do a lot, so forgive me ahead of time but this will be an extensive reaction article in which I go over what I have learned from the 2 hours of live gameplay.

I didn’t get in early enough to catch the names and descriptions of the abilities, so these are my thoughts on what they are and how exactly they work.

Passive: Friend of the Forrest:  Whenever Ivern comes to a jungle camps, he graces them with friendship creating a ring around them.  This ring ticks down over time and when it is complete Ivern can return to the camp to automatically clear it and gain Red or Blue buffs.  It also leaves another buff for an ally to pick up after level 5.  Ivern never actually fights the camps, which I called in my previous article, so he sacrifices his own HP to grace the camps instead of taking damage fighting them.  This passive does not work on epic monsters such as Rift Herald, Dragons, and the Baron.  There is no cooldwon on this, however, you cannot grace a camp if you don;t have enough HP to sacrifice.

Q: Ivern throws out a lined projectile that stuns the first enemy hit and can be reactivated to have Ivern dash to the enemy snaring them.  An ally champion can also take his Q stun to dash to the enemy within their auto attack range.  This is his main damage spell and will most likely be maxed out first.

W: Like I said in my earlier article preview of him, Ivern can create new brush and holds up to 3 stacks at a time.  When in brush, Ivern gains ranged auto attacks and vision around the brush.  When the brush is summoned it tries to connect to walls and other brushes.  One unique aspect of this is if you connect multiple brushes together and ward one segment of it, you gain vision of the entire brush.  This will most likely be maxed out last because it is mainly used for utility.

E: You can shield yourself or an ally with a bubble which explodes causing damage after a short amount of time.  This is reminiscent of Sion’s W Shiled.  I think there is a passive that synergizes with Friend of the Forrest, where as you max this out, the cooldown for the camp clearing is reduced from 40 seconds to 6 seconds at max rank.  This is the main reason why it should be maxed second for faster clears.

R: (Summon Daisy?) Another thing I called in my previous article… I’m practically a prophet with this shit.  You summon what appears to be a mix between the Blue buff large monster and Tibbers which you can control and have attack enemies.  Daisy lasts 60 seconds and 3 stacked auto attacks on the same enemy champ causing daisy to throw a lined knock up in the direction of the champ, knocking up anyone in the path.  Daisy also stacks with your build.

Daisy

Ivern is meant to play a passive support jungler who scales with AP, and I will provide the build they used in the PBE gameplay as an example.  He is one of the very few “Good Guy” champs in League, similar to Braum and Bard.  They even go into describing him to be somewhat like Bob Ross, Rafiki, and Yoda…If you don’t know at least 2 of those 3, stop reading and reassess where the fuck you are in life.  Anyways, they wanted to make a sort of fey creature who isn’t a bad guy, just likes to play tricks on people and mess with them just in a good way.  I feel like Ivern will synergize well with champs that utilize brush mechanics, like Teemo and Rengar, however and enemy Rengar completely negates the effectiveness of his W ability.  This gives the Garen In A Bush meme so much more meaning… he can literally be anywhere now.

If Ivern smites a graced camp before the E cooldown is complete, the camp is cleared early, and this can make for some very unique jungling paths that no other junglers can benefit from.  Sharing buffs during the laning phase can be immensely beneficial to your laners.  Imagine giving your top lane Darius a bonus Red buff and your mid laner Blue at level 5.  They automatically should be at an advantage.  Also, if you can counter jungler well enough with Ivern, you can essentially have 5 buffs on your teams.  Imagine, you take your blue and your midlaner takes the bonus blue.  You take your red and your ADC takes the bonus red.  You steal their blue and your anyone can take the bonus.  You take their red and your top laner can take the bonus.

Ivern with have a tough time against all in, full engage champions and comps.  A team full of champs who don’t care what is inside a bush will just charge right through them.  He’ll also have a really tough matchup against champs that counterjungler well, if he can;t manage his passive cooldown timer.  There is a thought about seeing Ivern as a Support, but he would need to be working in tandem with a good laner, preferably someone you duo with.  Say you and a friend play Ivern and Caitlyn, you can siege with his brush and Cait and place traps in it and get crit after crit on whoever walks into them with no vision.

An example build for Ivern is, Runic Echoes / Rylais / Mobbie Boots / Guardian Angel /  and Protobelt, with your last item being situational.  We should expect to see Ivern hit the Rift sometime around patch 6.20 and he will be released with his hilarious CandyKing Ivern Skin.  So not for nothing, but last week, I had a Raven Simone vision and pretty much predicted what Ivern would be like.  I think he will be an amazingly interesting champion with some great variety and changed to the flow of the game.  I look forward to getting my finger and keys on him in the near future.  Let me know what you think in the comments guys and Happy Climbing!

Dr. Bob

Friendly Neighborhood physicist who just so happens to enjoy drinking 12 beers and playing videogames all night. Always streaming at Twitch.tv/WickedGoodGaming

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *