6/21 PBE Update: Nexus Siege and tentative balance changes

[NEWS: Dark Star Thresh re-enabled after a small hotfix!]

The PBE has been updated! Today's update includes NEXUS SIEGE up for testing as well as a set of tentative balance changes and reverts!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

After the name and assets hit the PBE earlier in the cycle, the new NEXUS SIEGE game mode is now up for testing on the PBE!

To put it quickly, NEXUS SIEGE is a 5v5 game mode on Summoner's Rift where teams take turns playing OFFENSE and DEFENSE to see who can siege the enemy nexus the fastest with the help from special abilities that replaces summoner spells! Players on offense aim to push their way down the lanes and siege the defender's player base, gadgets such as teleporters, turret upgrades, the Obliterator , and more are used by both teams to spice things up! At the end of the game and two rounds (each team playing offense and defense once), the team with the shorted siege time as offense wins!
For an introduction to the new game mode, here's L4T3NCY with an overview and known issues!

"Heya everyone, it's been a lo~ong time since we've dropped a brand new mode, as we were busy building the RGM queue! To top it off, Nexus Siege is probably one of the biggest modes we've ever attempted making. 

You came here to get details. ^_^ Let's go. 

Nexus Siege 

TL;DR: 

Nexus Siege is a round based attack & defense game mode, where teams take turns at sieging the enemy's Nexus using an arsenal of deadly new Siege Weapons. The team who destroys the enemy's Nexus in the fastest time wins! 

Players: 5v5
Map: Modified Summoner's Rift
Mode type: Blind Draft pick type with Attack + Defend rounds. 

General mechanics: 

Round based: 

Each team will take turns at sieging the enemy team's base. Team 1 will set a time for destroying the enemy Nexus, then teams will swap sides. The longer Team 2 can hold out and defend, the more time they give themselves to push when its their turn to attack! If they can destroy the enemy nexus faster than Team 1 did, they win! 

Siege Warp trinket and teleporting: 

Both team have a variety of teleport pads to warp out to from fountain. Use the Siege Warp trinket to get into battle faster! 

Crystal Shards: 

This currency is the fuel for your siege Attack or Defense. All new Siege Weapons are purchased using Crystal Shards. Earn them by: 

Attack side: 

-- Kill enemy champions
-- Passively earned over time 

Defense side: 

--Kill enemy champions
--When the 1st tower in each lane is destroyed
--For each minion escorted and pushed into the enemy fountain
--Passively earned over time 

Normalised EXP & Gold: 

Gold & EXP are normalised for Nexus Siege across both teams. This means don't worry about last-hitting, just push those minions as fast as you can! 

Obliterator (Defense team only): 

The Defense team is rewarded everytime they manage to safely escort and push a minion into one of the Attacking team's fountains. If they can push 15 total minions up there, they trigger the Obliterator laser. 

The Obliterator will kill all enemies in all lanes. All of them. Dead.
Very dead. 

No seriously, get out of the lane if you're not on the Defense team. :3
This is also a great lane reset for the Defending team, buying them precious extra minutes to stall.

Siege Weapons: 

Both the Attack and Defense teams have 4 unique Siege Weapons they can purchase using Crystal Shards they earn during the game. All Siege Weapons use the Summoner Spell slot and are cast or deployed similar to Summoner Spells. You can carry up to 2 different Siege Weapons at once, and they do not stack in your Summoner Spell inventory (1 at a time). As you might have guessed, this also means there are NO Summoner Spells in Siege Mode. :) 

Attack: 

Siege Ballista
A long ranged siege engine that will hammer away at enemy towers. These are excellent for applying pressure on defending teams who continually turtle and never come out from under their towers.

Vanguard Banner
Gives nearby allied minion significant combat stats for extra pushing power.

Shield Totem
Nearby allied Siege Weapons gain a recharging shield making them tougher to destroy.

Port Pad
Deploy additional teleport locations for your team, moving your forward point closer to the enemy base.

Defense: 

Tower Surge: Beam of Ruination
Attach to a nearby tower giving you control of 3 beam blasts from the tower. This does SERIOUS damage to enemy champions. 'Ruinate' your enemies. Do it. :)

Tower Surge: Firestorm Bulwark
An emergency Zhonya style shield for your tower that makes it invulnerable for a few seconds, then WRECKS all enemies that were around it in a rain of missiles. Great for clutch saves on a tower about to go down, buying you precious extra time.

Entropy Field
Freezes all enemy minions and slows all enemy champs within it's zone. Can completely change the balance of a team fight.

Flash Zone
Throw down a large area that gives all allied champions inside the zone unlimited Flash on a 1sec cooldown. Great for team engages or reaching hidden nests of Siege Ballistae.

We won't be immediately turning this mode on for PBE, but it will be coming soon. As you guys can see, there's A LOT we need to get through for testing, so once we flip it on all help is appreciated. <3 

Let the siege begin. :)
-- L4T3NCY 

EDIT: Nexus Siege is now live for testing on PBE. 

Known Bugs:
-- Placeholder icons. There are many icons around the shop, siege weapons, buff bar, etc that are clearly placeholder. These will be updated as we go.
-- Placeholder or missing sounds. There are a variety of sound FX that are still WIP or missing, these will be updated as we go.
-- Titan bar icon for Crystal Generator will be removed. Ignore this feature.
-- Shopkeepers are missing after the round swap. We're still figuring out where they went (short vacation?)
-- Siege Weapons in shop that you can't afford aren't correctly grey out, indicating that you can't currently afford them.
-- General performance. Low spec machines might struggle somewhat as we continue to optimise the mode's visuals.
-- End of Game screen has some new columns in it unique to Nexus Siege, but they are not yet hooked up and will look empty.
-- Spectator. Various spectator bugs."

He also clarified how to win exactly in another post:

"Whichever team kills the nexus in the shortest amount of time wins. If in the first round a team takes 15 minutes to kill the Nexus (e.g. 5 minutes remaining on the clock) we change the timer in the second round to start at 15 minutes. If the second team kills the nexus at all (e.g. any time remaining on the clock), it means they beat the first team's time and they win. If the second team fails to do so, it means that any time they would have taken to kill the nexus was longer than the first team's, so the first team automatically wins at that point. We are definitely doing a bad job of messaging this in game (as in, not at all). 

We'll probably try to add a bit more announcement and ceremony to help folks understand why you win or lose before we go live. Thanks for the feedback!"

To supplement the post above, here's a few more screenshots and such that we've taken, including map, items, deployables, and more!

Map

General

The map is walled off to about half of the normal size, teams are unable to enter the river area as all entrances are blocked with walls!

Defending


Attacking

Items/Resources

Crystal Shards

Offense: Earn shards by killing enemy champions and passively over time.

Defense: Earn shards by killing enemy champions, when your tower is destroyed, escorting your minions to the enemy  fountain, and passively over time.
Trinket #1

Defense: While on the summoning platform, you have a Siege Warp trinket to port to any friendly port pads (several on map around turrets + deployable pads). Defense team has extra pads.

Trinket #2
Offense: After leaving the platform your trinket switches to the Seer Stone.
Defense: After leaving the platform your trinket switches to the Siege Sight Warder


Offensive Siege Weapons:

Defensive Siege Weapons:

Balance Changes

* Remember *: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, and sometimes radical changes. The changes you see below may be lacking context or other accompanying changes that didn't make it in - don't freak out! These are not official notes.

Leona

• Previous changes from this cycle reverted.
• [. SmashGizmo noted they should return in 6.14: "Gonna pull Leona for this patch, should have her in for next, just need some time for tuning and/or particles."]

Lulu
[REMINDER: Lulu has several other changes on the PBE atm.]

• Glitterlance (Q) AP ratio reverted to .5 from .6.

Swain

• Ravenous Flock (R) cooldown changed to 20 seconds from 30 seconds.
• [NOTE: Live cooldown is currently 10 seconds.]

Check out [THIS PAGE] for a comprehensive list of the new content & changes currently on the PBE as a part of this cycle or catch up with the individual update links below !

• [Comprehensive 6.13 PBE Cycle Post]
• 6/14 PBE Update: Soulstealer Vayne, Deep Sea Nami, "Nexus Siege" strings & assets, and more
• 6/15 PBE Update:Tentative balance changes, Nexus Siege to PBE Soon, and more!
• 6/16 PBE Update: Support items &Teleport changes and more Tentative Balance changes
• 6/17 PBE Update: Soulstealer Vayne Load Screen & more tentative balance changes
• 6/20 PBE Update: Soulstealer Vayne Splash Art