Red Post: More Tweaks to Ahri & Morgana PBE changes, RiotSeb with answers on upcoming PBE changes, and more!

Tonight's red post collection features a look at more tweaks to the Ahri and Morgana changes currently testing on the PBE, RiotSeb with a few more answers to questions about the upcoming  changes to PBE admission, and a small note CertainlyT being the designer for champion #117!
Continue reading for more information!

More Ahri E Changes coming to PBE

While they didn't make it in time for the 10/22 PBE update, ricklessabandon tossed up more incoming tweaks to the Ahri changes currently testing on the PBE.

"hey all, submitted another iteration last night (which should go out in the next update—this afternoon if i'm not mistaken).

Charm

• Now increases the magic damage Ahri deals to the target by 20% for 6 seconds (from 4)
• Added a visual effect for targets marked by Charm

the other changes are the same as they were. 

feedback that came up fairly often (both in this thread and elsewhere) was that some players felt like they needed to use up all of their cooldowns immediately if they landed a charm. this was largely triggered by an obligation to optimize (charm can amp damage, therefore all damage must be amp'd) combined with time pressure from the debuff duration (4-second uptime on a 7.2 to 12 second cooldown). bumping the debuff to a ~50% to ~80% uptime when landing charms should alleviate that time pressure noticeably. 

the visual effect is placeholder for now, so take that into consideration when playing around with it. 

primarily looking for feedback from players playing against these changes at this point, but all feedback is welcome as always."

Update on Morgana PBE Changes

Similar to the above, ricklessabandon also had another update for the Morgana changes currently testing on the PBE.

okay, i ran some numbers and did more quick lane tests. below are the most recent changes i've submitted, which will hit the pbe in the next deploy. this is the last iteration i'll have time for in the 3.13 patch cycle on the pbe, so the next step is to either ship/pull the changes (which can be split up to some degree). 

summary of these is that basic attacks and soil should feel a bit better (and more responsive) on their own. also, the 'clear ranged minions at level 3' is gone by default but by going 21/x/x, taking ap quints and ap glyphs, and starting with doran's ring she can just barely kill them. 

so yeah, please give her a spin and drop me post-game reports w/ any other feedback or bug reports that comes to mind regarding tormented soil.

General

• Attack Range increased to 450 from 425
• Base Attack Speed increased to 0.625 from 0.579
• Basic Attack is now more responsive 

Tormented Soil 

• Base damage per second decreased to 24/38/52/66/80 [120-400 total] (from 25/40/55/70/85)
• AP ratio per second increased to 22% [110% total] (from 20%)
• Tormented Soil's damage now increases up to 50% based on the enemy's missing Health
• Damage application cadence increased to every 0.5 seconds (from every 1 second)
• No longer applies a Magic Resist reduction debuff  

as a post-script note about other suggestions (like changes to dark binding, soul shackles, or her passive), thanks for the thoughts—if we end up doing changes with a larger scope as a follow-up, those will come in handy as starting points.

Additional Discussion on upcoming PBE Changes

Following yesterday's announcement on upcoming changes to the way summoners will be able to access the PBE, RiotSeb has stepped back in to answer several questions:

First up is a set of answers to users who currently submit PBE feedback from their alts rather than their main accounts, if feedback submission will see improvements, and why the PBE is so geared towards NA summoners.

"To answer some of the questions in this thread:

We know that some players have submitted feedback from their main accounts rather than their PBE accounts. Ultimately, the best long-term solution is to make sure all the tester accounts are linked properly with main accounts. We hope that this change will help us understand feedback better: for example, if we notice that only a specific skill level of player thinks a new champion is too powerful, or if we are alienating a specific champ's player base by reworking their favorite champion.

Also, there will be adjustments to how feedback should be given to be more clear, since I agree that it can be confusing-- there are many different PBE forums across regions, and this can be improved. More on this will be announced later, as we finalize some of these plans.

PBE right now is still hosted in NA, which can create ping problems for non NA players. Some reasons why the PBE is small and local to our HQ is so that we are able to more easily deploy to it every day-- our priority on PBE is to continually make changes to make the game better every day. A lot of bug testing can still be done with higher ping, but we're still exploring options to make the beta experience more global for players."

He continued, commenting on a desire to open signups to more regions soon and explaining some criteria Riot might be looking for when inviting applicants:

"Right now, we're only supporting NA, EUW, EUNE, but we hope to open signups to more regions soon.

As general piece of advice for applicants: smurf accounts without much activity are less likely to be chosen, since there is less historical (and less representative) play data on those accounts. The priority is to get a proper range of the best testers. For example, if we were testing a Sion design rework, we might specifically want feedback from:

• Players that play AP Sion right now
• Players that play AD Sion right now
• Players that used to play Sion but dropped him
• Players that were never interested in Sion at all

So, a smurf account with less than 100 games played won't be as interesting to us, since we wouldn't understand how to put their feedback in perspective. This is generally why we're looking for mature accounts that paint a good picture of how the player likes to play. Hopefully, by learning from player feedback as much as possible, we can make League of Legends better every patch!"

He continued, highlighting the importance of having context on who is leaving feedback on:

"It can be very difficult to identify players that have many accounts, which is one of the reasons why we're making this change. If someone posts on the PBE forum: "this champion feels overpowered," it's important to know what skill level that player is, what champions he usually plays, whether he plays ranked or not, etc.

If we have a link between the accounts, that gives us a ton of information even from players that don't say anything. For example, if a specific champion's win rate varies wildly between high- and low-skilled players, that's something we'll be able to track now. The best way to do this long-term is to make sure that all of the tester accounts are linked properly with main accounts.

We're not asking for players to give out specific info because our criteria will change depending on what we're testing. The examples we've given so far are relatively obvious ones, but if we make an optimization to the rendering engine in the future, then we're going target users that have specific system specs or use specific detail settings to make sure we're not damaging ingame performance. Hopefully, this change gives way more players a chance to play on PBE, and gives us at Riot better information to make League of Legends better. The more people that apply, the better!"

Champion #117 by CertainlyT

A big group of redditors are currently brainstorming ideas about who or what our next champion, champion #117, might be. Ranging from speculation on #117 being a yordle to a relative of Nasus/Renekton, all sorts of wild ideas are being thrown around.

 There is one bit of information we DO know though - the next champion was designed by CertainlyT - the designer behind Zed, Darius, Thresh, and others.

On this note, ZenonTheStoic commented:

"CertainlyT is the most creative, mold-breaking dude in our champion design team, in my humble opinion, so even if I knew nothing about his next champ, I'd expect great things.

As for all your speculation in this thread, it's really fun to watch, but I feel you're currently running into a wall."

Who or what do YOU think our next champion will be?