10/31 Massive PBE Update: Nasus VU and Preseason Changes

"Hey folks, 

We've updated player health bar frames and colors, and are in the process of adding a few features as well. 

Old colors

• Player is green or blue (colorblind).

• Allies are green or blue (colorblind).

• Enemies are red.

New colors

• Player is green or gold (colorblind).

• Allies are blue.

• Enemies are red.

In addition to this, hovering over a unit will now display a highlight around the health bar as well as the unit itself. A picture is worth a thousand words, so be sure to check out the attachment (or in-game) and give us your feedback!"

If you’re interested in the core philosophies around our support changes, check out our complete rundown here!

We’ll be going over our individual changes with smaller contextual paragraphs, but these were written with our overarching approaches in mind.

Summary: We want all roles and positions to have the opportunity to fulfill their endgame fantasies within each game. Currently Support champions as a role experience the lowest amount of growth in comparison to other roles, and we want to supplement their story. We’re also looking to create a stronger identity for utility-focused supports with additional utility scaling on their abilities (as opposed to simply adding more raw damage).

• Added a mastery that grants experience every 5 sec.
• Added the Life Insurance mastery to the Utility tree - grants bonus gold when enemy lane minions die.
• Added increased assist rewards (assist bonuses) when a player has a very large number of assists (see our Game Flow post for more information)

Support Items

• Kage's Pick now grants gold on dealing damage to an enemy. (10 sec cooldown. Cooldown triggers on killing a minion.)
• Philosopher's Stone now transmutes minions into gold when they die, but you didn't kill them.
• Reaper's Emblem now shares the gold from your last hits with the nearest ally and heals them (30 sec cd)
• Kage's Pick, Philosopher's Stone and Reaper's Emblem build from 365 gold starter versions that are intended to be starting items for support lanes

Mid-Game Support Items

• The above items turn into midgame support items.
• Kage's Pick becomes Shard of True Ice, which grants 50 AP and now casts a frost nova on a ranged enemy.
• Philospher's Stone becomes Shurelia's Reverie, which no longer grants health and instead grants 20% CDR and additional mana regen.
• Reaper's Emblem becomes Martyr's Call, a high health item which allows you to sacrifice your health to shield allies and deal damage to opponents near the target.

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Champions
Summaries are more focused on high-level changes rather than each individual change.

Soraka

Summary: Soraka’s health and mana restoring abilities are more effective the more the targeted unit is missing health / mana. Astral Blessing’s armor granted now scales with ability power. Starcall’s magic resistance reduction scales with AP and each time Soraka hits at least one enemy champion with Starcall she reduces the cooldown of Astral Blessing by a base percentage. Infuse now partially donates a portion of Soraka’s maximum mana to the targeted ally and its damage also scales with her maximum mana (in addition to an ability power ratio). Wish now affects untargetable allies and with Soraka’s new passive is more effective on targets below 40% health but less effective on targets above 40% health.

Context: We wanted to provide a link between Soraka's primary offensive ability and her core niche identity as a defensive support. Additionally, we took this opportunity to introduce more gameplay into Soraka’s kit so that she will be rewarded more heavily for successful plays.

Base Stats

• Base health increased to 405 (was 375)
• Health per level increased to 76 (was 71)
• Base Armor increased to 9.4 (was 7.4)

Passive - Consecration

• New Passive: Salvation: Soraka's health and mana restoring abilities are 1% more effective for each 2% health or mana the target is missing.

Q - Starcall

• Magic Resistance reduction changed to 6 at all levels + 0.01 AP (was 8-12)
• Mana cost changed to 30-70 (was 20-80)
• If Starcall hits at least one enemy champion Astral Blessing's cooldown is reduced by 5%/6.25%/7.5%/8.75%/10%

W - Astral Blessing

• Healing reduced to 70-270 (from 70-350) + 0.35 (from +0.45)
• Armor granted now scales with AP (0.15 ratio)
• Armor duration reduced to 2s (was 3s)
• Base armor changed to 50-110 (was 25-105)
• Lowered mana cost to 80-160 (was 80-200)

E - Infuse

• Allied cast changed to give an ally 20/40/60/80/100 mana + donate 5% of Soraka's max mana (was 40-200 for no cost)
• Can no longer be cast on allies who do not use mana or are already at max mana
• Enemy cast changed to deal damage equal to 40/70/100/130/160 + 5% of Soraka's max mana + 0.4 AP (was 50-250 + 0.6 AP)
• Added a spell effect from Soraka to her target

R - Wish

• Healing reduced to 150-350 (from 200/320/440) + (0.55 (from +0.7))
• Now affects untargetable allies

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Taric

Summary: Taric’s passive now gives him a buff that deals 40% of his armor as bonus magic damage after casting a spell – each empowered auto attack landed also reduces all of Taric’s cooldowns by 2 seconds. Imbue now scales with 5% of Taric’s bonus health, although the AP ratio has been lowered. Shatter now solely scales with Taric’s armor and not Ability Power. Dazzle has had its AP ratio reduced. Radiance has had its AP ratio lowered and cooldown increased.

Context: Our core goals with Taric were to make his passive a more interesting and involving ability while also opening up more build opportunities. Instead of giving Taric high AP ratios for huge burst, we want to push him to build more tanky with his new gold income to further cement his role as a tanky front-line support with strong burst / aura capabilities.*

Passive - Gemcraft Gives Taric a buff that deals 40% of his armor as bonus magic damage on the next auto attack after casting a spell Passive empowered auto attacks reduce the cooldown of all abilities by 2s

Q - Imbue

• Cooldown reduction on auto attacks removed (moved to passive)
• Base cooldown lowered to 18/17/16/15/14 from 20/19/18/17/16
• AP ratio lowered to 0.3 from 0.6
• Added scaling from 5% of bonus health

W - Shatter

• Base damages lowered to 40/80/120/160/200 from 50/90/130/170/210
• Armor Ratio increased to 50% from 20%
• AP ratio lowered to 0 from 0.6

E - Dazzle

• Cooldown increased to 18/17/16/15/14 from 14/13/12/11/10
• AP Ratio lowered to 0.2/0.4 from 0.4/0.8

R - Radiance

• AP Ratio lowered from 0.7 to 0.5
• Cooldown increased from 60 to 75 seconds

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Leona

Summary: Eclipse’s bonus Armor and Magic Resistance now scales with ability power.
Context: Leona’s general utility and Ability Power ratios have transitioned well to the preseason changes, so we’re not changing much with her current kit.

W - Eclipse

• Changed base Armor / Magic Resistance from 30/40/50/60/70 to 25/35/45/55/65. Added (+0.2 AP) bonus armor and magic resist ratios to the armor/magic resist bonus respectively.

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Janna

Summary: Janna’s global passive has been converted to a localized area (equivalent to sight range). Howling Gale’s AP ratio has been significantly lowered but gains a scaling AP ratio per second it is charged. Zephyr’s self-haste and slow amount on the active cast now scale with AP although the base slow has been lowered. Eye of the Storm’s bonus AD given to allies now scales with AP. Monsoon remains unchanged.

Context: We’ve been saying for a while that we wanted to change all global passives that provide a lot of “hidden” power, like Twisted Fate’s old passive, and were finally able to tackle Janna’s Tailwind passive with her new utility scaling. The Howling Gale change looks like a significant nerf to Janna’s AP ratio, but the additional AP scaling per second means that Janna will need to fully charge her Howling Gale in order to do high damage at end game with her additional Ability Power.

Passive – Tailwind

• Converting to a localized area (1300 range; equivalent to sight range)
• Increased movement speed bonus to 5% from 3%

Q - Howling Gale

• Added a .1 AP per second that Howling Gale is charged before release
• Ability Power ratio lowered to .35 from .75
• Lowered charge damage to 14/20/25/30/35 from 25/30/40/50/60

W – Zephyr

• Added an AP ratio to both her passive self-haste and slow amount on the active. These values are .04 for the self-haste and .12 for the slow
• Lowered damage ratio to .5 from .6
• Lowered base slow to 24%/28%/32%/36%/40% from 24%/30%/36%/42%/48%

E - Eye of the Storm

• Added an AP ratio to the AD given to her allies. The ratio is +0.33 AP for the base AD (based off of the rank of her shield)

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Nami

Summary: Nami’s passive now scales in higher movement speed with the more Ability Power she gets. Ebb and Flow’s heal / damage bounces now scale with Ability Power, meaning with enough Ability Power, Nami can heal / deal more damage per additional bounce rather than having it fall off. The slow on Tidecaller’s Blessing now scales with Ability Power.

Passive - Surging Tides

• Added a 0.1 AP to 1% movement speed ratio to her movement speed buff

Q -Aqua Prison

• Reduced AP ratio to .5 from .65

W - Ebb and Flow

• Removed % drop off from bounces. Goes from 15% to 0% at 200 AP and can go over 0, leading to increased effects off every bounce

E - Tidecaller's Blessing

• Increased the slow amount by a .05 AP ratio (100 AP is 5% additional slow)

R - Tidal Wave * Reduced AP Ratio to .6 from .7

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Sona

Summary: Power Chord now scales with Ability Power. Song of Celerity’s speed boost now scales with ability power.

Passive - Power Chord

• Power Chord reduced to 10/17/24/33/41/50/60/70/80/90/100/110/120/130/145/150/175/190 from (13/20/27/35/43/52/62/72/82/92/102/112/122/132/147/162/177/192)
• Added .2 AP scaling to Power Chord Damage

Q - Hymn Of Valor

• Ratio Reduced to .5 from .7

W - Aria of Perseverance

• Base heal amount reduced at later ranks to 40/55/70/85/100 from 40/60/80/100/120

E - Song of Celerity

• Activated speed boost reduced to (.04/.06/.08.10/.12) from (.08/.10/.12.14/.16)
• Added .02 Scaling to activated speed boost
• Added .02 Scaling to power chord slow

R – Crescendo

• Ratio reduced to .4 from .8

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Lulu

Summary: Pix, Faerie Companion now scales with Ability Power. Glitterlance’s slow now scales with Ability Power. Whimsy no longer boosts Ability Power but now scales its bonus movement speed with Ability Power.

Passive - Pix, Faerie Companion

• Base damage reduced to 9/18/27/36/45/54/63/72/81 from 9/21/33/45/57/69/81/93/105
• Added .15 AP scaling

Q – Glitterlance

• Added minimum speed on slow falloff: 1% per 7.5 AP.

W – Whimsy

• Removed AP boost
• Reduced base move speed increase from 35% to 30%
• Added AP ratio for movespeed, added a movespeed ratio of 1% per 10 AP.

E - Help Pix!

• Increased AP ratio for shield to .7 from .6
• Reduced AP ratio for damage to .5 from .6

R - Wild Growth

• Reduced base to 250/375/500 from 300/450/600"

If you’re interested in the core philosophies around our vision changes, check out our complete rundown here!

We’ll be going over our individual changes with smaller contextual paragraphs, but these were written with our overarching approaches in mind.

Summary: With this preseason we want to diffuse the responsibility of vision from being a single player burden to a team-wide job. Additionally, we want to infuse more gameplay into the vision game with additional functionality and the addition of trinkets.

Vision Trinkets (Summoner’s Rift Only)
To encourage all players to participate in providing vision for their allies, we're providing unique item options dedicated to vision on Summoner’s Rift.

• Added a 7th Item slot, which can only contain a vision trinket
• Added 3 free vision relics: Warding Totem, Scrying Orb and Sweeping Lens
• Warding Totem - places an stealth ward for 60 sec. (120 sec cooldown)
• Scrying Orb - reveals a location within 1100 range for 1 sec. (150 sec cd)
• Sweeping Lens - disables and reveals any nearby hidden wards, traps or devices for 4 seconds (180 sec cd)

-

• These items upgrade at Champion Level 9:
• Greater Totem - places a stealth ward for 120 sec. (120 sec cooldown)
• Greater Orb - cast range increased to 2000.
• Greater Lens - sweep area of effect increased by 100%, cooldown reduced to 150 sec.

-

• These items can then be upgraded at the shop for 475 Gold:
• Greater Stealth Totem - Places a stealth ward for 180 sec. (180 second cooldown)
• Greater Vision Totem - Places a vision ward (180 second cooldown)
• Farsight Orb - Cast Range increased to 2500, (120 second cooldown)
• Oracle's Lens - Additionally grants True Sight for 10 seconds after activation (90 second cooldown)

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Wards

Support players were expected to shoulder the majority of the warding burden on the map. Because they could place as many ward as they could afford, this meant all of the support income was best spent on warding. We want all players on the team to participate in warding and providing vision to their team.

Sight Wards

• Sight (Green) wards renamed to "Stealth Wards"
• Sight wards limited to a max of 3 placed per player
• Ward tooltips display how many stealth wards are currently placed

Vision Wards

Vision Wards being superior in every respect to Sight Wards has created some weird escalation cases where there is simply an unending cycle of 'Pink' Ward destruction. By positioning Vision Wards as having different strengths and trade-offs - we hope to create a better defined role for both Sight and Vision Wards.

• Vision (Pink) wards no longer stealthed
• Vision wards have 5 health
• Vision wards have infinite duration
• Vision wards cost reduced to 75 from 100
• Vision wards limited to 1 placed on the map

Sightstone / Ruby Sightstone

• Sightstones no longer have their own restriction but are restricted by your stealth ward cap

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General

• Placing a ward will now display your ward count and the ward that will be destroyed.

Oracle's Elixir

We’re removing Oracle's Elixir as it has traditionally been a major drain on support and jungler item builds, and has also traditionally been far too binary in controlling early game vision.

• Removed from Summoner's Rift"

*If you’re interested in the core philosophies around our jungle changes, check out our complete rundown here!

We’ll be going over our individual changes with smaller contextual paragraphs, but these were written with our overarching approaches in mind.*

Summary: We’re looking to create more options and possibilities for junglers of all kinds in this preseason. Within this thread we’ll be consolidating all feedback surrounding the jungle. Let’s get into the changes!

Jungle

The gold income for a primary jungler wasn't scaling appropriately for dedicated jungle farmers. Similarly, the jungle difficulty was out of line with what we thought was appropriate. Now the jungle difficulty is shown by monster level and the difficulty/rewards are linked to the monster level.

• Jungle monsters now have levels
• Jungle monster level is based on the average level of the champions in the game when they spawn (equal to average of all champion levels, rounded up)
• Jungle monster level determines their HP/Damage and XP/Gold value
• Jungle monsters grant 50% bonus XP per level to lower-level champions, up to a cap
  
• Added an extra camp (the Wight) near the Blue Golem and Wolves
  

Crest of the Ancient Golem (“Blue Buff”)

Crest of the Ancient Golem is too powerful at the moment, especially with such a wealth of cooldown reduction options available.

• Cooldown Reduction reduced to 10% from 20%

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Jungle Monster Statistics

All jungle monsters have been retuned to better fit the new items being introduced as well as the new flow of the game

Ancient Golem

• Health increased to 1500 from 1400
• Gold reduced to 60 from 66

Elder Lizard

• Health increased to 1500 from 1400
• Gold reduced to 60 from 66

Lizard

• Attack Damage reduced to 10 from 11
• Experience reduced to 20 from 50
• Gold increased to 7 from 5

Giant Wolf

• Attack Damage increased to 40 from 35
• Experience reduced to 110 from 170
• Gold reduced to 40 from 55

Wolf

• Attack Damage increased to 14 from 8
• Experience increased to 25 from 10
• Gold increased to 8 from 4

Golem

• Attack Damage increased to 55 from 54
• Experience reduced to 140 from 160

Small Golem

• Health increased to 450 from 300
• Attack Damage reduced to 25 from 30
• Experience increased to 40 from 38

Wraith

• Experience reduced to 90 from 103
• Gold increased to 35 from 30

Lesser Wraith

• Health increased to 250 from 150
• Attack Damage increased to 12 from 10
• Experience increased to 20 from 4
• Gold increased to 4 from 3

Wight (New Camp)

• 1400 Health
• 75 Attack Damage
• 15 Armor
• 55 Gold
• 150 Experience

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Jungle Items

*In the current game, Junglers tend fall behind their allies after laning phase ends. Here we've adjusted jungle items to compensate by adding additional gold generation patterns to several jungle items that complement the intended playstyle of those items

Madred's Razors

• Armor reduced to 20 from 25

Wriggle's Lantern

• Recipe: Madred's Razors + Dagger + Dagger (Total 1800)
• 20 Armor
• 25% Attack Speed
• Unique Passive: Deals 100 magic damage and heals 10 health per hit against monsters
• Unique Passive: Gain 40% increased gold from monsters

Spirit of the Elder Lizard

• Attack Damage reduced to 25 from 35
• Incinerate passive now procs on physical damage, damage increased to 16-50 from 7-40
• Unique Passive: Champion kills, assists and epic monsters grant 30 gold and 10 gold from large monsters

Spirit of the Ancient Golem

• Health reduced to 350 from 500
• Unique Passive: Gain a stack of Conservation every 1.5 seconds. Lose Conservation stacks and gain equal gold upon killing a large monster. Maximum stacks: 30.

Spirit of the Spectral Wraith

• Recipe: Spirit Stone + Fiendish Codex (Total 2000)
• 50 Ability Power
• 10% Cooldown Reduction
• 14 Health regen per 5
• 7 Mana regen per 5
• Unique Passive: 5% of magic damage dealt to monsters is restored as Health and Mana
• Unique Passive – Bounty Hunter: Champion kills, assists and epic monsters grant 30 gold and 10 gold from large monsters
• Unique Passive: Damage dealt to monsters increased by 30%"

Summary: We want to increase diversity with summoner spell choices in League of Legends. Additionally, we’ve done our annual overhaul of masteries and you can check them out in-game.

Summoner Spells
Certain summoner spells have become firmly entrenched within the League of Legends metagame while others have stagnated. We are tweaking summoner spells to make picking non-standard summoner spells a reasonable choice.

Ghost

• Cooldown rescaled to 180/160/140/120 from 180
• Now grants 15% Multiplicative Movement Speed from 27% Additive Movement Speed
• Grants 75% Multiplicative Movement Speed in the first second
• Now immediately updates your pathing on cast
• Ghost cannot be cast if you are immobilized

Ignite

• Damage rescaled based on game time
• Now also reveals the target for the duration.

Exhaust

• Attack Speed reduction reduced to 30% from 50%
• Movement Speed reduction rescaled to 30/35/40/45% from 30%.

Heal

• Now a targeted spell, casting this on yourself will target you and the closest nearby ally
• Cast Range increased to 900 from 600
• Cooldown reduced to 180 seconds from 300 seconds
• Grants 30% movespeed to both targets for 1 second

Teleport

• Cooldown reduced to 180 seconds when targetting an allied building
• Cooldown increased to 300 seconds when cancelled or interrupted

Cleanse

• Successfully cleansing an effect that prevents you from moving creates a shockwave that knocks nearby enemy's back slightly.

Smite

• Cooldown lowered to 40 sec.
• Damage reduced at early character levels, same damage at level 18.

Clarity

• Now only available on Howling Abyss

Revive

• Now only available on Dominion

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Masteries

Masteries that amplified summoner spells have been removed, as they unfairly penalized players who adapted to the enemy strategy by selecting summoner spells outside their preferred tree.

• Masteries have been updated."

If you’re interested in the core philosophies around our game flow changes, check out our complete rundown here!

We’ll be going over our individual changes with smaller contextual paragraphs, but these were written with our overarching approaches in mind.

Summary: It’ll be a little difficult to summarize our core game flow changes here, but we’re basically looking to clarify the benefits of each individual objective throughout the game. Additionally we want to tackle snowballing with our changes to alleviate some snowballing cases in the early and late game.

Turrets

The player experience for last hitting under turrets was inconsistent between high Attack Damage champions and supports/mages. We've adjusted base turret damage and damage against minions to make last hitting under turrets more consistent across all roles

• Base damage adjusted to match minion health growth
• Base damage against minions increased to make last-hitting under turrets consistent

Turrets gave equal amounts of global gold for each turret, despite outer turrets being a lane objective. While some of this is beneficial, we don’t believe a lane should lose simply because some other lane lost a turret too early.

• Outer turrets now grant 100 global gold per player and 150 gold split among the players who kill the turret
• Inner turrets now grant 125 global gold per player and 100 gold split among the players who kill the turret
• Inhibitor turrets now grant 175 global gold per player

Taking outer turrets should be a team objective, but global experience on the outer turrets have some weird edge cases in lane, such as levelling up other lanes accidentally. We're shifting this global experience to a phase of the game in which it'll be more appreciated and less likely to cause odd level ups and snowball advantages.

• Outer towers no longer give 30 global experience when destroyed
• Inhibitor towers now give 100 global experience when destroyed from 70

Defending against a split pusher is extremely taxing, but ultimately unrewarding. We've added very small amounts of HP regen to inhibitor turrets to make extended split push defense grant the defending team some breathing room.

• Inhibitor Turrets gained 15 hp / 5 seconds

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Dragon

To reduce the early snowball effect of Dragon and to give it a 'mid-game comeback' value, it now gives global gold and local experience based on its level. Dragon also gives additional bonus experience for Champions who are far behind in level. The Dragon level updates constantly, unlike other jungle monsters.

• Dragon level minimum 6, maximum 15
• Dragon local experience: 150 to 510 based on Dragon's level, divided between nearby allied Champions
• Dragon global Gold: 125 to 260 based on Dragon's level given to all allied Champions
• If killing team is lower average level than their opponents, bonus experience is gained at +25% per average level difference
• Bonus experience is sharply increased for the lowest level members of the team, +15% per number of levels behind Dragon squared (max total +200% extra)

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Inhibitors

• Inhibitor death timers reduced to 4 minutes from 5 minutes
• Inhibitors no longer grant a global buff to all minions when destroyed
• Inhibitors now grant a stronger damage and durability buff to minions in their specific lane

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Minion Experience

The fact that minions become worth more experience over time creates a severe discrepancy between champions who can farm or split push late game versus champions who are forced to siege or participate in objective control. We're removing this as this causes champion levels to spike unnecessarily. While this has the potential to create some snowballing consequences, we'll address that with future tuning over other systems

• Lane Minions now have a level, which is equal to the average level of champions in the game.
• Currently this has no effect on the game but will be expanded upon in the future.
• Lane Minions are no longer worth more experience based on game time.
• Minions will still become worth more gold and gain more statistics over time.

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Bounty Changes

Along with our game flow adjustments, we’ve also adjusted gold income across the game to better fit what income patterns make sense in that phase.
Level 1 team fights could swing the game too much, essentially ending a game before it began. Now the kill reward for very early game deaths is reduced.

• Kills are worth 60% of the base reward at 2 mins, scaling to 100% at 4 mins

Players who are present for a large number of assists aren't rewarded appropriately for their contribution to team fights

• Assists are worth 50% of the kill value at 20 mins, increasing to 80% at 35 mins

Assist Bonuses

• If players have 2 more assists than kills they get 30g additional gold per assist
• Additional assists increase this bonus by 15 gold, capping at 60 gold

Creep Score Reducing Death Sprees

Proxy Farming is a fairly destructive method of playing the game, mostly due to the fact that your value as a champion isn't being accurately updated to account for your actual value (due to farming minions).

• Now every 1000 gold earned from minions/monsters reduces your Death Spree by 1

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Death Timers

Early death timers were a little too punishing, given the importance of the early game. We've shaved a few seconds from this to help reduce early lane snowballing.

• Early Game death timers have been reduced
• Timers now start at 7.5 seconds instead of 12 and scale to the same values over the course of the game"