As some may know I am an avid Ringo supporter. I feel his kit will never fall out of favor and he will always remain relevant in the meta. Ringo is the baseline for all lane carries in Vainglory. However, we’re met with an outlier, Vox.

“A New Challenger is Approaching!” Vox was introduced in patch 1.3, and after about a day or two of testing he rose to be the most powerful laner in the game. He had more mobility, more range (with resonance and ult), better wave clear, and better utility than every other lane carry. He was a laner’s best case scenario. Vox reigned supreme through constants nerfs and meta transitions. This trend continued until around July 11th, 2015; the very first day of the Vainglory World Invitational. Ringo came out of his slumber and dusted his revolver off. He was back. Why did this happen? What lead to it happening? Why is Ringo now rivaling the very Hero who took his trophy?

Positive Traits

Let’s start by looking over Ringo’s kit. Ringo has a slow, an attack/movement speed steroid, and a single target burst ult. Level one, Ringo has potential to have the highest movement and attack speed in the game. This combined with his high base Weapon Damage makes him a perfect candidate for a early game triple invade.

Moving on, it’s evident Ringo has a great early game, but we need to look further in the meta to understand how this affected his pick rates over Vox.

“We must dig deeper!”

Jungle

Currently the best Jungle Carry is Taka. His single target focus makes him a great candidate to single out priority targets, such as a laner. Taka’s main downside is that his early game skirmish potential is quite lower than his Jungle counter parts (AKA Koshka). Early invades that snowball the enemy team can really put Taka in a terrible spot, starving him of gold and not allowing him to hit any mid/late game power spikes. Therefore, early game invades can shut down Taka.

Support

Catherine recently rose to power due to a ton of meta changes in patch 1.4 to present. Even though she is definitely one of the top 3 supports, she lacks early game skirmish potential. Sound familiar?

When we look at each support, Fortress and Adagio provide a ton of skirmish/invade potential, making early game pressure quite potent in the recent meta. Quite Abruptly, Fortress and Adagio made their way into competitive play trumping Catherine and Ardan.

Lane

Vox has been the most picked laner ever since his release. Looking at his kit, this comes as no surprise. However, this “god” of the lane does have one weakness. He has to scale.

Coming into the game level one, with a 52 base weapon damage, Vox is quite lack luster in the early game. This weakness can be heavily exploited by early game pressure.

In Conclusion…

Every top tier pick in every role seems to have one similar trait, they need time. This downside opens up early game pressure from heroes like Adagio and Fortress to rise in the meta. Ringo’s kit and base stats serve as great tools for early game dominance. All of these factors combine to form a catalyst for Ringo’s effectiveness in the game, making him the missing piece of the puzzle. All of this, with not a single target buff to Ringo.

All in all, Ringo is, and always will be, the King of the Lane.