Update week! Hope you got your Rona skin to rock because home girl has increased blood rage and fortified health, giving her a huge boost in her brawl quotient. With Spring Season Live Championhsips right around the corner and all sorts of new surprises to keep you coming back for more of the Fold, let’s take a quick break to appreciate the lovely things happening around the community.

Champion v Champion

On Saturday the 21st it finally went down between NA and EU in a fantastic best of seven series. Team SoloMid and Team Secret went back and forth with sexy tap reflexes for six games before TSM finally came out on top. I sincerely recommend you watch the VOD if you can, but at least check out this highlight made by fightastic.

If you live in NA, EA or SA, you have until May 26th to claim your free box of cards with Skaarf, Phinn and Glaive. Also look forward to 1.18 when you can spam your “NA > EU” ping while playing in NA where everyone is NA anyway, and Lance will have a line of dialogue pledging allegiance to our region.

Tesseract

The first Spring Qualifier for the SEA league finished in kickass fashion this weekend with Infamous Legion besting the slayers of their sister teams in Ardent Allegiant during the quarter finals and taking that momentum all the way to the top with a finals win over Happy Pills. Congratulations go out as well to Dion Strategist for finishing third. Check out the website for more and MobCrush for VODs of the sweet plays.

VIS Schedule Update

Vainglory Invitiational Series will be entering its seventh week tomorrow with previous underdog Team Nemesis now in the lead! The games thus far have been gangbusters, chock full of surprises and upsets. Tune in this week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 6pm/9pm but be forewarned that things are mixing up a bit to finish out the league. Here is the updated scheduled from VIS:

Lance Lore: The Archelions

A new hero, a new world, and new connection. The first piece of the Lance puzzle falls into place with the introduction to an island on the back of a great tortoise. The first thing that immediately stood out to me was how peaceful Lance appears. Especially in contrast to the angst-ridden Samuel, the apprentice from Reim’s lore, this stalwart warrior appears quite zen despite a presumably battle-worn past. As the update notes already have an inactive link to his next story, I can only hope by the time this publishes we know even more. What I’ve seen so far further fleshes out a fully realized world outside the Fold that breathes from the page.

Team Beta Art Contest

This lovely info graphic says it all! Do it!

Shatter The Vain Celebrates 100 Episodes!

The first (right?) Vainglory podcast to break onto the scene way back when has remained a staple with great interviews and news content now totaling well over 100 hours of listening pleasure. Brad Chimelewski, host and beer aficionado, has welcomed community members from all corners of the Vainglory universe to discuss the happenings of our favorite game. This week Shatter The Vain is joined by the hosts of three other podcasts, The Fold, The Main Vain and Alternating Current for a retrospective and look into the future with update 1.18. Get your listen on.

Know Your OP History: 1.4 Tank Skaarf

Right after Vox received his first well-deserved nerf, a slight oversight in Update 1.4 caused draconian devastation across the Fold. A bug in Skaarf’s heroic perk meant that two stacks of Fan the Flames were applied with a Spitfire. With a couple auto attacks following, you could singe your opponent for 10% of their max health damage per second and they would melt like SEMC servers on “Free ICE For Pinging Day”.

This bonus damage lead to the Tank Skaarf build that worked around outlasting in team fights to burn the other team down. Prowling the jungle, the baby dragon would focus on attack speed, getting an Eve of Harvest and usually building two Fountains of Renewal (this was back when you can stack those, but that’s a story for another time). This huge amount of sustain made it near impossible to take out the wyrm before he rapid fired your ass to death.

But this isn’t just the story of a bug gone awry, the reason Tank Skaarf was so effective was also due to his overall stats in 1.4. Taking a look back at the notes from that update; his perk burn started at 4% and the duration was 3.5 seconds, plus 50% AOE damage to nearby targets in a 3.5 meter radius meant teams that clumped together burned together.

Some of these details were nerfed in 1.5, seeing a reduction in burn damage to 1.5% and all piercing removed. While the initial duration stayed at 3.5 seconds, the refresh was lowered to 2 seconds and the AOE radius reduced to 2 meters.

As you can now see, this was a perfect storm of circumstances that birthed a new generation of players grinding their way into the high tiers by making sure they or a teammate started a forest fire with jungle Skaarf. If you want more, here’s a Rumblysuperset video of the beast or you can listen to episode 13 of The Fold Podcast where Chuck and Justin break down the build and Chuck bestows the nickname “Skank”.

Huge thank you once again to Fierte for compiling data and numbers that make my argument valid.

Little “Lore”: Name Tag

Phinn and Reim sit around a campfire in the jungle following a match. They pass a pipe back and forth that’s definitely not full of bubbles. Somewhere an owl hoots, but that’s not relevant to the story.

Reim– Look, I hate to ask this…

Phinn– What is it, old friend?

Reim– What’s the monkey’s name? I keep calling him “buddy” or “chief”, I feel like he’s gonna notice eventually.

Phinn (chuckles)- Ozo.

Reim– Huh?

Phinn– O-zo.

Reim– That lady that broke up the Beatles?

Phinn– That’s Yoko Ono.

Reim– The cellist?

Phinn– That’s Yoyo Ma.

Reim– The city in Nebraska?

Phinn– That’s Omaha.

Reim– Oh like The Muppets, “do-dooooo-da-doo-doo”

Phinn– That’s Manamana.

Reim– When something unexplained happens?

Phinn– That’s a phenomenon!

Reim– Like what makes girls so girlie?

Phinn– That’s feminine.

Reim– Thought that was what snakes were.

Phinn– That’s venomous.

Reim– The second largest planet?

Phinn– That’s Venus!

Reim– My butt is the second largest planet?

Phinn– That’s anus!

Reim– The flavor additive to the Greek liqueur Ouzo?

Phinn– That’s anise– wait what did you say?

Reim– The flavor of Ouzo.

Phinn– That’s it! You got it.

Reim– Ohhh, thanks.

Ozo swings in from the trees and lands next to the campfire.

Ozo– ‘Sup guys.

Reim– Hey Anus.

Have fun on the new update getting your rewards and levels! Later this week I should be dropping more “lore” (trying to keep up with the prolific SugarVenom) Get cracking all you free card grabbers and mortal wound stabbers.