Season 3 is here!

Patch notes got put up officially today. We can all start speculating on the way the meta will change now.

Here's the relevant highlights:
Ambient gold has gone up (From 13 per 10 to 16 per 10) while melee and caster creeps are tweaked down slightly. One note that HASN'T been much covered, however is the BIG spike in siege minions increasing from 27 to 40. The result is that last hitting will be SLIGHTLY less emphasized except on the siege creeps where it really will start to matter (10 siege creeps is now 400 gold... not at all insignificant). The gold scaling for time has also increased for siege minions (doubling) so they will be very real gold income sources in mid game (more on this in a minute).

Kill streaks now matter a lot more (although the cap on them is slightly lower). You get the full bonus at 4 now. That's a big deal as 2-3 kills now matter more. This streak matters in the reverse too so chronic feeding will not be as huge.

Assist gold was tweaked down ever so slightly (from 158% to 150%... i suspect this was done purely to get back to a round number)

Jungle (big changes!): Jungle monsters are significantly tougher overall with more hps and more base damage. They've been redistributed to the large monster in each spawn, however. At the same time, leashing was made much harder (you can't kite the monsters like you used to be able to). Monster "banking" has been removed (although they will scale xp and gold over time so it's now purely time sensitive and not "spawn" sensitive).

Take the wraith spawn, for instance (since it's the most contested spawn):
Old: Big Wraith 400 and small wraiths 275. Big wraith dealt 25 and small wraiths 17.
New: Big Wraith 750 and small wraiths 250. Big wraith deals 35 and small wraiths deal 10.

That's a big shift in how that particular spawn will play out (before, you obviously killed the small ones first before finishing the big one... now, I don't know).

Additionally, the wraith spawn has been made less rewarding (in both gold and xp) while the wolf spawn has been made SLIGHTLY more lucrative (2gp) and significantly more experience (25). The golem spawn is also worth 5gp more and 20 more xp (and is weirdly magic vulnerable now with a -10MR).

New mastery trees

What does this mean?

Let's look at it one at a time:
1) Support will be richer (by a fair clip), Jungler will be richer (slightly) and AD Carry will be poorer (slightly). However, the AD carry can pick up almost the entire amount of lost gold by making sure they last hit the siege minion. Each wave is worth 9 less with every other wave having a siege worth 13 more. So net/net you're losing 5 every minute from a perfect creep score. So a good last hitting AD is going to end up with MORE gold from this rather than less (because they ambient gp/10 got turned up)... Last hitting on the siege minions is really big though now.

2) Kill streaks hitting quicker probably doesn't matter much (other than making certain targets get targeted faster) but deathstreaks mattering less could make a difference in team comp. I can see a strategy forming around big beefy tanky characters with taunts / great initiates. I don't know if Assists ruin death streaks (if they do, this probably doesn't work) but if you can have a designated (you start the fight, tank, and die) then a new type of play style may evolve around trading 2 for 1s and 3 for 2s and denying your opponent the benefit of those death bonuses.

3) They want the jungle to be more friendly to single target junglers. I suspect this will occur fairly organically now. Hunter's Machete emphasizes single target DPS as do the changes overall to the jungle. The increased toughness on golems and magic vulnerability is interesting. I suspect we may see a return of the laners picking up golems and a departure from the mid laners picking up wraiths. At the new reward level, unless you have a very good single target AP mid, you probably can't be bothered sinking the time into Wraiths for a small reward. On the other hand, a machete armed Jungler should make short work of that spawn. I think you'll see ALOT of Fiddlesticks jungle.

4) The revamped mastery trees are really interesting. Two changes in particular are worth mentioning. The flat armor/MR/AP/AD buffs have been moved into the second tier of their respective masteries. This means that you can't just put 6 points in defense to get 6MR/6AR out of it easily. Likewise, you can't throw 4 points in the tier 1 of the attack tree to reap early benefits either. These changes are important and will matter to certain builds on the margins. But the bigger change is probably to the utility tree. This tree now contains some real support gems (pick pocket being the one that jumped out at me) and one key mastery for junglers, +50 starting gold. That may not sound like alot but it's what lets a jungler start with Crystalline Flask AND Hunter's Machete. That start will allow even junglers without real sustain to do jungle clears if they have the damage. Expect to see a renewed emphasis on junglers who can gank with sustain being less important (and AoE being even less so).

So are there any champions that really get changed by this?

I think Maokai in the jungle is significantly less likely now. I think Diana will definitely be a mid lane option though I can see her moving top some now (her ability to snag the wraiths easily was a bonus that means less now). Fiddlesticks in the jungle seems pretty likely as does Kha'Zix. Really most of the assassins with decent initiates should be able to play jungle now.

In support, I think you'll see a host of transition characters. Since the support will now definitely have gold, you'll want to be able to translate that into something. People like Zyra, Zilean, Morgana, Blitzcrank all benefit from this. The more passive supports (Soraka, Sona, Lulu etc) probably fall behind slightly unless they can find a niche in team fights. You're going to want 5 team fighters at some point... Or at least an ultimate that can be swingy (Sona's ultimate for example). In particular, I think a hybride Zilean that gets Pick Pocket in the utility tree and attack speed / AD buffs could be very interesting.

It's exciting times in League of Legends.