Starting Anew in Season 3

Season three is here and it's time for you to start panicking about not knowing what to do anymore. What's that? You're waiting for someone how to tell you to play the game so that you don't have to figure anything out for yourself? PERFECT.

As it turns out, Riot has made a big move to diversify the starts that people come out with. As it stood all throughout Season 2, there were very few times in which you wouldn't want to start out with Boots of Speed and three health potions. And why would you want to move away from that?

Boots make you very hard to gank for a level two jungler, and the health potions give you 450 effective HP throughout the laning phase; more than two Ruby Crystals, all for the small cost of 105 gold. Sounds awesome! Right now there is no start that is nearly as efficient, so might as well hop on the train. Mid? Boots and pots. Top? Boots and pots. Jungle? Boots and pots. Enjoy your cookie cutter start, because unless you want to play support it's typically all you get these days.

Every champion is gaining a 25 movement speed boost to trade off some of the movespeed that Boots of Speed grant you. This disincentives people from always starting boots; and in fact, junglers even received a great new alternative to their boots to help make their jungle clear just a little bit faster.

Hunter's Machete
Item Cost: 300

UNIQUE Passive - Butcher: Damage dealt to monsters increased by 10%.
UNIQUE Passive - Rend: Basic attacks deal 10 bonus true damage to monsters.

Here is your replacement for cloth armor for those champions who are beefy enough to be able to simply want to kill things faster instead of having to worry about surviving. This item is effectively a Long Sword that grows in strength against jungle creeps as the game goes on for a mere 300 gold.

High sustain junglers with a slower clear time such as Warwick of Lee Sin all of a sudden have the capacity to cruise through the jungle. No longer does Madred's Razor need to be the first item you buy that soups up your clear time; just grab a Machete at level one and let the high damage beat up the jungle for you.

The Machete will likely make several showings as a potential starting item; it allows for a faster, and safer jungle clear at the cost of weaker ganks due to a lack of any kind of bonus stats applied to champions. However, the fact that it builds into both Madred's Razors and Spirit Stone mean that literally any jungler can start this item with at least some confidence.

Spirit Stone is your new Philosopher's Stone; the sheer number of options that you can turn this thing into is great. All of them make your jungle clear move even faster, and offer incredible utility.

Crystalline FlaskItem
Cost: 225

UNIQUE Active: Consumes a charge to restore 100 health and 40 mana over 10 seconds.
UNIQUE Passive: Starts with 3 charges and refills each time you stop by your shop.

This is a fun one. As a jungler, you'll be able to run points in the Utility tree, and guess what? You start Machete and Flask? You clear quickly, and have the sustain equivalent of 2 Health Potions and 1.2 Mana Potions. After going back to base once and using all three charges this item has paid for itself, and will continue to do so.

Even throughout the time in the game where you clear the jungle easily, this item will continue to keep you topped off and prevent you from losing any HP to those pesky weaklings in the jungle. As of right now it doesn't build into anything, so chances are by mid-to-late game you'll be ready to sell this and get some money back. And with a sale price of 158 gold, you will have paid 67 gold for your entire jungling phase worth of potions. 

Alternatively, you can start with this as a non-sustain support, and keep yourself topped off and fresh. Leona taking auto-harass? Now you don't even have to go home, you can just use one of your refillable potions and be right back to work. Because it costs so little, you also get to start with up to 4 wards should you please. This allows for an extremely aggressive opening for those that don't have any natural sustain.

I can foresee someone such as Leona being very exited about the possibility of starting with a Flask, a Biscuit and a whole slew of wards. This gives her an effective 380 hit points and 170 mana to start with; that is an impressive about of gold worth of potions.

Masteries are going to create a whole new slew of starts, as well. With new masteries, you will be able to go into the utility tree not just for extra gold, but also for an extra ward and even a delicious Biscuit.

Total Biscuit of Rejuvenation
Consume Restores 80 health and 50 mana over 10 seconds.

It isn't a full health potion, it isn't a full mana potion, but it's a little bit of both, and to not have to pay gold for extra lane sustain is awesome. It also works great on junglers; turns out free potions are really good on people who have to tank jungle creeps. While it doesn't help with your clear speed, it sure does help with your clear safety, and who would want to pass that up?

With a new, slightly tougher jungle, being able to have a little bit more sustain will definitely push you into the "able to gank" territory of health levels. Not to mention that many of the people who will be getting the Biscuiteer mastery already wanted to go into Utility, so turns out they'll just end up with a bunch of free health and mana from this. Now to mention they'll get a free ward. Yep, they sure do.

 

Explorer's Ward
Consume: Places an invisible ward that reveals the surrounding area for 60 seconds.

Explorer's ward takes some of the load off of buying early wards, or just allows you to stock up on wards an insane amount, by grabbing up to five, along with a starting item. While it lasts 60 seconds, it's still a free ward. Vision is valuable, and free vision is even more valuable, AND even more awesome.

This is great; I'm not sure how to expan on this better. It frees up your gold, whether it be for more wards or something else, as a jungler it gives you an early ward for invasion without having to dip into your potion gold stock. This is going to be an awesome mastery for a lot of people, so be ready for some free wards.

 

Faerie Charm may start to phase out, but there are still a lot of options that you have out of it. Instead of only Philosopher's Stone, which now has even weaker health regeneration than it did before, Mikael's Crucible out to be an interesting rush. It doesn't give you the gold generation that supports want right now, but with the global passive gold increase, and the potential to gain gold by hitting enemy champions right off the bat, it is quite possible that this will become far less important that it was before.

It will be interesting to see whether this turns out to be a powerful and versatile enough item to be worth rushing first; the ability to save your teammate is not something to be undervalued, however a lack of HP and health regeneration on Mikael'swill make supports just a bit squishier and less resilient than they were before the changes. While Faerie Charm may be a valid opener, it no longer appears to be the automatic go-to that it once was.

Season 3 is bringing a whole slew of new items around, and not just these few early items. The itemization overhaul is going to bring a lot to the table; expect to see new and different starts from literally every position on the map. Whether it be level one longswords going into early Vampiric Scepters, or Machetes flying left and right trying to take down the jungle, it's going to be a whole new beast to tackle these early game builds. Build diversity leads to an exciting meta, and expect things to be rattle around like they never have before.