5/4 PBE Update: Ping Muting, balance changes, and more!

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 7.10 PBE cycle, tonight's update includes PING MUTING up for testing, several tentative balance changes, and more!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Ping Muting Options
• "Missions" Assets Update
• Miscellaneous 
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Ping muting options

As previewed in the 5/3 update, new ping muting options are now on the PBE for testing!

Here's Riot NaKyle with a boards thread on the upcoming ping muting options in testing:

"Hey everyone, 

Earlier today we shipped some code for ping muting to PBE. We'll be turning it on for testing on PBE in the next few days, and hope to have it live around the world within just a couple patches. This is a new button we're adding to the tab menu. It'll axe standard, smart, and HUD pings from the player you ping mute. 

The mute button that's already in the game is not moving or changing at all. It mutes chat, and extracurricular animations and emotes. The idea is to give everyone granular mute controls."

Two new muting options available:

• /Pingmute or  /muteping- This will mute ping, smart ping, and UI pings from the player.
• /fullmute or /mutefull - mutes both text and pings from the player.

You can mute pings by either using the UI icon on the scoreboard (right beside the existing mute button) or by typing the /muteping & /pingmute or /fullmute & /mutefull into chat. Typing the command again or clicking the button will of course undo the mute.

"Missions" Assets Update

This cycle also includes continued changes to the previously mentioned MISSIONS assets, a future system in the works to support event rewards and more in the client.

Starting with 7.9 cycle, assets have slowly been hitting PBE but it hasn't been enabled for testing yet.

Thus far in the 7.10 PBE cycle, we've have several new placeholder art as as well various strings and small icons referencing all sorts of various potential rewards for Missions. "Order Tokens" and "Chaos Tokens" not in strings but mentioned else where; Chaos Tokens also has an icon asset.

Keep in mind these are just assets and strings pulled directly from the files, the feature is not complete or enabled and very much a work in progress!
As a reminder, here's a comment on missions from RiotMartlet :

"Hey guys, you might have noticed something new in the latest PBE build called Missions. It is in the build but not visible yet. We’re building Missions to support event rewards and more. If you participated in an event like Project or Shurima you probably remember janky experiences like manually claiming rewards through a website, or just seeing a random new summoner icon in your account a week or two afterward. We’re fixing that with a much more clear, “do thing, get thing” approach that’s all handled in client. We’ve still got some more work to do before we’re ready to reveal all the details, so expect to hear more in the coming weeks!"

• H-28G Evolution Turret (Q):

• Base Damage adjusted from 12/18/24/30/36 (+15% AP) to 6/9/12/15/18 (+35% AP)
• Cooldown adjusted from 24 - 20 to 20
• Amount of turrets held adjusted from  1/2/2/3/3 to 3
• Beam attack time to charge increased from 16 to 50
• Mana bar (for beam attack) changed from blue to white (instead of having a blue bar on top of another blue bar). 

• Hextech Micro-Rockets (W):

• Mana Cost adjusted from 70/80/90/100/120 to 50/60/70/80/90
• Cooldown adjusted from 11 to 11/10/9/8/7
• [New] Each rocket hit on champions charges 20% of each nearby turret's beam attack.

• CH-2 Electron Storm Grenade (E) :

• Grenade hitbox increased from 210 to 250 
• (stun hitbox stays the same)
• Cooldown adjusted from 18/16/14/12/10 to 12
• [New] A successful E hit on a champion charges all nearby turrets to full beam charge. 

• UPGRADE!!! (R) :

• CH-3X Lightning Grenade (RE)

• Base Damage adjusted from 150/200/250 to 150/250/350

Sejuani
[context]

• Health lowered from 600 to 560 -- **(pushed to live in 5/4 mid patch update**

• Fury of the North (P) cooldown lowered from 9 at all levels to 15/12/9 at levels 1/7/14

• Winter's Wrath (W) :- **all three changes (pushed to live in 5/4 mid patch update**
• Mana cost increased from 60 to 80
• 1st damage - lowered from 30/35/40/45/50 to 20/25/30/35/40
• 2nd damage changed from 40/75/110/135/180 to 30/65/100/135/170

Zac
[context / additional context + more changes potentially on the way]
[*NOTE: All Q/E changes (pushed to live in 5/4 mid patch update]

• Stretching Strikes (Q) slow duration increased from 0.25 to 0.5 sec*

• Elastic Slingshot (E) damage increased from 80/120/10/200/240 to 80/130/180/230/280*

Spellthief line

• Unique Passive - Tribute - Tooltip changed from " Killing a minion stops you from triggering for 6 seconds per minion slain." to " Killing minions slows Tribute generation."

Context & Notes

i'm justifiably in a wip that I'd rather not be in but the context rise to the top ooh yeah macho mooness  yes

1) Meddler is back with his quick gameplay thoughts for May 4th, including comments on a few upcoming changes for Sejuiani and Zac:

"Morning all! 

Usual Disclaimers 

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped.
If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler 

Mid-Season so far 

It's really early in 7.9's release, some preliminary thoughts though:

• Sejuani - Is clearly too strong. We made some late changes just before the patch locked a week ago and internal testing between then and now left us pretty convinced we'd made her too strong. What we've seen so far supports that so we'll be hotfixing some nerfs out to her, probably later today. Likely changes are a reduction in starting health (600-560), higher passive CD (15/12/9 instead of 9 at all levels) and lowered base damage on W (20-40+30-170 instead of 30-50+40-180). Still locking down exact details though, so those could change slightly. 

• Zac - Is probably too weak by a noticeable margin. We'll be assessing him more today, depending on how he does we're considering some slight hotfix buffs however, which would be increases to his Q slow (0.5s per trigger instead of 0.25s) and E damage (80-280 instead of 80-240, thinking being that that change was an unnecessary nerf). 

• Rift Herald - Too early to say much yet. In most games so far people aren't optimizing with it, optimizing against it or even taking it consistently. Keeping a really close eye on how she does, given potential game impact's really high, no conclusions yet though. 

• New Items - Nothing seems too out of line so far. Having said that it often takes a while for adoption rates of new items to get to the appropriate level for their power, so it's possible there's some subtle but strong stuff out there we just haven't seen revealed yet. 

Zac's Voice 

We'll be looking to do a bit of tweaking to how Zac's voice pitch changes with his health in 7.10. Currently that'll probably involve adjusting the thresholds where the pitch changes kick in (probably too frequent right now). Feedback on that much appreciated if you've had a chance to play new Zac. 

Developing Features for the New Client 

While we've started swapping some regions over fully to the new client that's not the case globally yet. That means that until we've got all regions over (we're working on it) we'll still need to take the old client into account and can't release things that affect all players (like pick/ban changes) that only work in the new client. Getting there, but not quite there yet."

2) Fizz Enthusiast hit the boards with a thread on tentative Heimerdinger Changes in the works for 7.10:

"Overall Goals 

• Make Heimer less oppressive against melee, which gives us room to buff him (specifically, reducing the amount of punishment melee champs take when being ambiently in range of turrets and tagged by the "pheromone" mechanic [Heimer's attacks and spells tag champions, which cause turrets to automatically target them]). 

• Increase Heimer's viability in midlane. 

• Buff underperforming R options, so that RQ is not always correct.  

General Thoughts 

• Heimer has historically been a tough champion to just buff in isolation because of his tendency to ambiently destroy melee matchups. 

• When he is strong, usually results in non-interactive lanes by pushing them in constantly. 

• Attempting to absorb the general counterplay of "dodge spells" into the turret gameplay and subsequently be able to make them stronger. 

• We know that Heimer players enjoy playing him for the turrets and so, we are trying to find a way to make the turrets have better gameplay without isolating Heimerdinger players. 

• Heimer is generally more performant the lower MMR you go (or worse the higher you go), meaning that when Heimer is "viable" in higher MMR's, he will usually be absolutely destroying lower MMR. 

• In this sense, it is desirable to inject some skill into his kit to allow him to be more viable in higher MMR without breaking lower MMR. 

Changelist 

Stats 

• HP Regen: 2.2 (+0.35) >>> 1.4 (+0.11)
• With new passive, doesn't need abnormally high HP regen.  

Passive: Hextech Affinity (P) 

• Moves 20% faster around turrets (SR turrets and his own turrets) - 300 range.
• Gives him a reason to play and maneuver around turrets apart from damage. 

Turrets (Q) 

• Base Damage: 12 / 18 / 24 / 30 / 36 (+0.15) >>> 6 / 9 / 12 / 15 / 18 (+0.3)
• This is a large nerf and significantly hampers early game ambient turret damage in laning phase, but builds back up in mid game
• Cooldown: 24 - 20 >>> 20
• Turrets can hold: 1 / 2 / 2 / 3 / 3 >>> 3
• Beam attack time to charge: 16 >>> 50
• Greater emphasis on landing spells to have your turrets perform (in laning phase), rather than autonomously destroying people
• Mana bar (for beam attack) changed from blue to white (instead of having a blue bar on top of another blue bar). 

Rocket (W) 

• Mana Cost: 70 - 110 >>> 50 - 90
• Cooldown: 11 >>> 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 / 7
• Each rocket hit on champions charges 20% of each nearby turret's beam attack.

Grenade (E)  

• Grenade hitbox: 210 >>> 250 (stun hitbox stays the same)
• Cooldown: 18 / 16 / 14 / 12 / 10 >>> 12
• Make it less punishing to fish for E's in lane
• A successful E hit on a champion charges all nearby turrets to full beam charge.  

General thoughts on R Spells   

Big Turret (RQ)  

• Given that RQ doesn't consume a cooldown, this is likely to be used in a lot of cases. Didn't feel impetus to change it (was exploring some iterations where it was used as a sieging tool (attacks slowly, but has high range and low in-combat value to nuke down turrets).  

Big Rockets (RW) 

• Still feel like this spell is usable on follow up CC and sometimes off a grenade stun hit, but didn't feel comfortable increasing its damage.  

Big Grenade (RE) 

• Base Damage: 150 / 200 / 250 >>> 150 / 250 / 350
• AP Ratio: 60% >>> 90%

** RE on live is usable, but given that it consumes your E cooldown, it COULD be more powerful. 

Would say candid feedback is most helpful. Want to see which things people like/don't like."

3) Riot Shrieve has posted on the Zac subreddit regarding the Zac post 7.9 state, including mention of the changes to be hotfixed in from above and a few options going forward.