Red Post Collection: Bilgewater: Burning Tides sails over the horizon, What is a Juggernaut, and more!

"TLDR: Bilgewater: Burning Tides is over and League has changed forever with the introduction of a new item commemorating Gangplank’s fall.

From Brazil to Korea, Oceania to Europe West, players all over the world took a journey to Bilgewater as part of League’s biggest in-game event. You explored the city online, battled across Butcher’s Bridge, plundered alongside the Black Market Brawlers, and read through the Burning Tides story in three acts. And now you can relive the story with a commemorative version of Burning Tides: The Reckoning.Download the PDF here!

In celebration of Bilgewater: Burning Tides, we’re leaving a permanent mark on League of Legends. As part of the next patch, Dead Man’s Plate will join the armory of League armaments in commemoration of Gangplank’s fall and grim resolve to reclaim his former glory.

As a reminder, all players who owned and played an entire matchmade game as Gangplank during the event will receive the Captain Gangplank skin. It can take up to three days to award everyone their skins. Beginning at 11:00 AM PDT on August 12, the Captain Gangplank skin will be available in the store for 975 RP.

Thank you for joining us on this long voyage, we hope you enjoyed the ride, and we’ll see you out on the battlefields!"

The 42 page PDF shared in the post also contains the full story, as well as a note from the Bilgewater team and  a few extra pieces of art!

For those looking forward to the Captain Gangplank skin now that the event is over, be aware that it may take "up to three days to award everyone their skins."

What is a Juggernaut? 

When asked about Juggernauts gameplay updates on the PBE and what other champions might fit into this new term, Meddler explained:

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So I'm really excited about the upcoming changes for the 4 juggernauts, but I would like to know who else may end up in the classification of juggernaut. Running through the list in my head I started to wonder about Yorik as well as a few others, but Yorik specifically. Is he going to be reclassified as a juggernaut because I honestly could see him becoming very viable and completely unique running in that theme. 

That being said, I would also like to know how you are making a differentiation between Tank and Juggernaut, or on the flip side, Bruiser/Fighter and Juggernaut. There seems to be a fair amount of overlap here, unless you are renaming these archetypes, which honestly I would prefer.

We see juggernauts as a sub class of fighters/brawlers/bruisers/whatever else you want to call them. That's a really large group of champions that ranges from the really mobile characters that build damage only, like Tryndamere, to the immobile champs that build tanky like Nasus. We've been looking at a series of sub groups with that larger fighter group as a result as follows: 

• Juggernauts - Immobile, tough, build one to two offensive items on average (e.g. Nasus or Garen)
• Divers - Pretty mobile, and really good at getting onto specific targets they want to kill, builds a little bit more offensively than juggernauts (e.g. Irelia or Xin Zhao)
• Light fighters (need a better name for this group - Highly mobile, builds almost entirely offense, often good at killing multiple targets, usually squishy with windowed defense of evasieness (e.g. Trynd or Fiora). 

Biggest contrast between tanks and juggernauts is in what each group is trying do. Tanks are generally trying to initiate or peel more, kill by themselves less. They build almost mainly (sometimes exclusively) defense/utility and have a greater amount of mobility, generally tied to initiation or peeling actions. 

As far as other juggernauts go, Olaf, Shyvana are the next two we're planning on looking at. Yorick's arguably a juggernaut, he'll get a full relaunch though. Volibear could be described as a juggernaut, though he's also got some diver and tank bits to him. Mundo also shares some juggernaut characteristics, but doesn't really match overall (which is fine, we're looking to use these descriptions as ways to map similarities and differences between champions, not because every champion has to be forced into a specific category)."

As for work on other classes or creating items to fit some of these new labels as they did with the upcoming juggernaut items, Meddler commented:

"As you say a bunch of this sort of sub class breakdown already exists (poke mage versus burst mage, utility caster support versus tank support etc). We'll likely look at clarifying some of those groups, particularly those that need items to suit their needs better, but it'll be on a where useful basis, rather than driven by the need to label stuff. 

Unsure if we'll add these tags into the search bar or not, we're still talking about that. 

Skirmishers is one of the names we've considered, concern we ran into was that it's a very general term. Doesn't tell you much about the sub class in question, in contrast to Diver or Juggernaut for example, and could just as easily apply to someone like Kayle, Teemo, Nidalee or Quinn. 

We think juggernaut's probably the closest description for Shyvana because damage output, and ability to kill enemy champions herself, is a really core part of her identity. She's happy soaking some damage certainly, but she's not there primarily to set up/enable her team. Gragas and Cho we've been looking at as tank/mage combinations, Trundle as tank (though he's definitely got some juggenaut characteristics and doesn't fit the tank mold that cleanly), J4 as diver or tank (definitely not a juggernaut given the amount of mobility on his kit)."

He continued:

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Just want to make it clear, are you trying to push Juggernaut as a "thing"? If so, GREAT!! Thanks for explaining this new category of fighter.

'Juggernaut' is a term we're using to talk about a type of champion that's pretty much always been in the game. We haven't previously put enough time into identifying their strengths, weaknesses, item needs, role in lane, role in a teamfight however, so we're doing some of that work now."

He continued:

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I'm glad that you're categorizing the Fighter class even further, I believe you'll be able to make a lot out of this patch because of this. 

Are you going to spend time advocating to Divers/LFighters and hopefully other champion classes? Or do they not need changes as bad as Juggernauts?

We chose juggernauts as a group to focus on because we felt they needed the work the most. Next step's going to be follow up work post 5.16 release (balancing if we're off on power, adjusting mechanics if some of our theories get proven wrong etc). We'll then assess how successful this work was or wasn't and use that to help inform how we tackle other characters."

When asked if Poppy's champion update would leave her as a tank or a juggernaut, Meddler noted:

"More tank (stronger CC focus, so more like Sion than like Garen)."

Gangplank, the Saltwater Scourge on Soundcloud

Last up - the Gangplank, the Saltwater Scourge's theme has been added to the LoL soundcloud, following the original Gangplank and Captain Fortune tracks from earlier in the Bilgewater event!