10/13 PBE Update; Skin Tweaks, Continued Runes Testing, & More Tentative Balance Changes

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 7.21 PBE cycle, today's patch includes skin tweaks, continued runes testing, and more tentative balance changes!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Skin Tweaks
• New and Tweaked Summoner Icons
• Continued Runes Reforged Testing & Changes
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Skin Tweaks

KateyKhaos noted some skin tweaks for Death Sworn Katarina and Death Sworn Zed:

Death Sworn Katarina's pink accent colors have been changed to purple.
Her VFX are also being switched to more purple colors, we will have full pictures later in the cycle when they are completed!

Death Sworn Zed's Q has been changed to make it look more circular:

New and Tweaked Summoner Icons

A new runes themed summoner icon is now on the PBE:

The Death Sworn Katarina icon was tweaked to match her new dagger color change that is in today's PBE update:"

Evelynn

• Hate Spike (Q)
• cooldown lowered from 8 seconds at all ranks to 6 seconds at all ranks
• cooldown refund for hitting a monster lowered from 60% to 30%
• initial dart damage increased from 25/30/35/40/45 to 35/40/45/50/55
• spike damage increased from 25/30/35/40/45 to 35/40/45/50/55

• Whiplash (E)
• magic damage increased from 30/45/60/75/90 to 40/55/70/85/100
• empowered damage increased from 60/80/100/120/140 to 70/90/110/130/150

Context & Notes

1) Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts for October 13, including health bar inprovements, some item tweaks in preseason, 7.21 being a light patch, and more:

"Hi 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 

Health Bar Improvements 

We've got some health bar improvements coming to the PBE in the next week or two. Some of the changes will be more subtle stuff like making it a bit easier to tell how much damage you just took/dealt based off how the bar updates. Other changes will be more explicit like adding a clearer visualization for champs with resurrection effects available (Zac, Anivia, GA etc) so that figuring out whether someone will respawn or not doesn't have to involve digging through a bunch of icons on the buffbar.\ 

A lot more details about those changes to come from the team working on them once they're on PBE. We'll be continuing to work on them while they're on PBE, so feedback once they're there would be highly appreciated. 

Item Tweaking in Pre-Season 

In addition to base stat and ability adjustments we're trying out some item changes to also adjust for the impact of runes. We're buffing a range of items, primarily those that offer magic pen or lethality, to compensate for damage their users have otherwise lost. The particular items in question were chosen because they both generally offer anti champion power (what was lost, and we don't want to increase waveclear unnecessarily) and because they're pretty closely tied to champs who need a bit more help in the new runes world. We're still planning to look at AP items as well sometime early next year, it's likely a change or two we'd originally been considering for that package of work gets pulled forwards and done here though. 

7.21 will be a really light patch 

Just a quick reminder that there won't be much in 7.21 given there's so much coming in 7.22. A few small balance adjustments, but nothing too major. Most of it's on the PBE already, possible we get one or two more things depending on what time permits though (chance of Udyr buffs, Locket adjustments)."

2) KateyKhaos noted a few changes to Death Sworn Katarina and Death Sworn Zed:

[link] "October 13th changes 

Audio updates:

• Tweaking Q dagger hits on units and the ground to feel heavier.
• Changing volumes levels on the R of daggers vs. harrowing elements.
• Adding more variations to all spell SFX.
• Adding death and emotes SFX.
• Fixed recall bug that played spell SFX.
• Adjusting level volumes and various tweaks on all spells. 

Model Updates:

• Color shifting to purple from pink.
• Swords shortened to align better with base weapons. 

VFX Updates: 

• Some of these are still WIP!
• Color shifting VFX to purple from pink.
• Adding ethereal VFX to hair (definitely WIP!) 

[link] "Death Sworn Zed also has an updated (Q) projectile, which should help with readability - (more circular VFX around the daggers)"

3) The PBE signups are now open! Head over to this thread for more information, or sign up here! For any further questions, check out the PBE FAQ!