8/22 PBE Update: Eternum Cassiopeia, Championship Ashe, Primetime Draven Chroma & More

[Recent News: Quick Gameplay Thoughts, August 22nd]

The PBE has been updated! Today's update kicks off the 7.18 PBE cycle and includes Eternum Cassiopeia, Championship Ashe, new chroma for Primetime Draven, a new summoner icon, and more!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• New Champion Skins
• Eternum Cassiopeia
• Championship Ashe
• New Summoner Icon
• New Chroma
• Miscellaneous
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

New Champion Skins

Eternum Cassiopeia

Championship Ashe

Here's Riot LoveStrut with a bugs & feedback thread for Championship Ashe:

"Do not confuse mercy for weakness." 

Championship Ashe rests upon her throne, scanning for any threats foolish enough to cross her path. 

The Cold, Hard Facts 

• All new model: Donning Championship-style armor with a regal cape and tassles befitting a queen.
• All new animations: Ashe raises her throne in the middle of the battlefield.
• All new VFX: Her attacks are imbued with elegant blue and gold magic.
• All new SFX: Magic reverberates through her arrows.
• Currently set to be 1350 RP. **pricing subject to change. 

We always love hearing your feedback and feelings! All bug reports and thoughts help us make these skins even more awesome, so please keep 'em coming! 

Thanks, cuties!"

New Summoner Icon

A new summoner icon featuring the upcoming Championship Ashe skin has also been spotted on the PBE:

New Chroma

This cycle also includes a set of five new chroma for Primetime Draven:

Primetime Draven

Nautilus
[Context]

• Dredge Line (Q) Mana cost lowered from 60/70/80/90/100 to 60 at all ranks.

Context & Notes

 WE ARE WIP-ILY! I GOT ALL MY CONTEXT WITH ME!

1) Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts for August 22, covering upcoming runes reveals, Malphite, Ryze, & more. Make sure to check out the 8/18 quick gameplay thoughts as well, it also mentions several 7.18 changes being looked at.

"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 

Upcoming Runes Reveals 

We've been looking at some non damage focused Runes recently after seeing feedback that people wanted more visibility into utility/defensive options, with things like Don't Blink, Guardian Soul and Perfect Timing. Another post looking at a couple more utility keystones from the Inspiration tree this week as a result. We haven't yet locked down what we'll be looking at after that though. Suggestions would be much appreciated. 

Malphite 

We've been testing some Malphite changes that have shown quite a bit of promise, in particular giving him a stronger edge against physical damage comps, really playing up his W as a physical damage counter. Haven't yet found the right set of other changes to pair with those buffs though, so we'll be pushing that work into 7.19 instead. Malphite's performing ok already, so don't want to overbuff him, but also want to ensure we're not accidentally hitting him harder than intended. 

Pre-Season and Game Balance 

Pre-season's coming up soonish and we figured it might be good to talk about game balance during it a bit. Short version is we're expect pre-season to be pretty messy for a little bit. All pre-seasons are a bit chaotic, since there's a lot changing, and this pre-season's likely to be the biggest yet, given the new Runes system will impact both champion and item balance more than any of our previous individual patches. 

We're putting a lot of time into compensating for that already of course. Internal testing gives us only a small fraction of the number of games a live release does though, so we'll get a lot more understanding of what needs work once pre-season goes out. We'll be working to get anything that's out of line back into a good spot as quickly as possible, whether that's individual Runes that are too strong or too weak, champions that aren't getting the right mix of whatever it is. We'll likely do a moderate amount of that through micro patches too, jump on things that clearly need significant changes quicker rather than waiting for the next standard patch. 

Ryze Tweaks 

We’ll be taking a look at some Ryze stuff soon, with the goal of reducing his difference in power between regular play and organized teams (if he’s balanced to be appropriately strong for regular matchmade games he’s nuts in pro play especially). Approach there’s likely to be similar to the Shen work we did earlier in the year, so moving power around to change strengths and weaknesses rather than changing ability functionality much. Ryze has long been a problem child of course, so not expecting he’ll necessarily be solved after this work, or that we’ll necessarily hit on things worth shipping immediately, figured it was worth mentioning though, both for visibility’s sake and to see whether any of you folks have particularly strong ideas we should be considering in addition to the things we’re already looking at (wave clear, ability to farm, ult coordination requirements etc)."