10/26 PBE Update - Urfwick Recall + Border, Ranked Reward Icons, Honor Wards, URFwick border, and more!

[UPDATED: Urfwick also has a spectacular new recall!]

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 7.22 PBE cycle, today's patch includes a new special loading screen and recall for Urfwick, ranked reward icons, health bar update, honor reward ward skins, and more.
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Urfwick 2017
• New Summoner Icons
• New Honor Ward Skins
• Skin Tweaks
• Health Bar Updates
• Ascension returns for PBE testing!
• Continued Runes Reforged Testing & Changes
• Miscellaneous
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Urfwick 2017

A spectacular new recall has been added to both versions of URFWICK.

"OG owners get the in game crown, loading screen boarder, and splash adjustments with the crown. 

Each version of Urfwick has the recall."

New Summoner Icons

New Honor Ward Skins

Honor 3 Ward, Honor 4 Ward, Honor 5 Ward

Skin Tweaks

Health Bar Update

• Preseason Healthbar Update - Rayven
• [PBE] Health Bar Update Bugs - Ququroon

Ascension returns for PBE testing! 

Here's Riot Bazaam with more on Ascension returning to the PBE for testing:

"Greetings Mortals! 

In patch 7.22, Xerath returns in all his Ascended glory to grant power to the most worthy warriors. 

This time around, we wanted to take a pass at addressing the 'Pacifist' strategy from our last visit to the Crystal Scar. To be clear, we are not in the business of dictating strategies on RGMs... that being said, we are not thrilled with gameplay that results in 5 players being held hostage for 50 minutes. 

Runes Reforged will also ship in 7.22 with Ascension, so we'll be looking for testing around how they interact with the game mode. We've made a few swaps already for Runes that just don't make sense in this mode (i.e. Minion Dematerializer). As a reference, here's a cool tool to explore the new Runes: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/featured/preseason-update/8000-8008 

Changes:  

• Players now have access empowered recall throughout the game, so take a break from the action and head back to base to grab some fancy new items. 

• Empowered recall is disabled for Ascended characters. 

• If you somehow manage to get back to base while you are Ascended (here's looking at you Pantheon) you will be stripped of the Ascension buff and Xerath will respawn as normal as if you died while ascended. 

• Runes Swaps 

• Waterwalking -> Scorch
• Zombie Ward -> Ghost Poro
• Minion Dematerializer -> Future's Market
• Kleptomancy -> Glacial Augment
• Demolish -> Font of Life 

Ascension will be enabled Soon(TM), good luck out there!"

Evelynn

• Demon Shade (Passive)
• [Tooltip reworded]
• Passive reset after taking damage lowered from 4 seconds to 1.5 seconds.

• Whiplash (E)
• damage changed from 30/45/60/75/90 flat damage to 50/60/70/80/90% tAD 
• empowered damage changed from 60/80/100/120/140 flat damage to 90/105/120/135/150% tAD

• Last Caress (R) 
• [New Effect] "If Last Caress kills a Champion or Epic Monster, 25% of it's cooldown is refunded and Evelynn regains Demon Shade."

Galio
[Note: These changes were hotfixed to live on 10/26]

• Winds of War (Q) 
• initial damage ap ratio lowered from .9 to .8
• tornado AP ratio lowered from [3% Percent Max Health per 100 AP Per Tick] to [1% Max Health per 100 AP Per Tick (3% total)]

Lee Sin

• Resonating Strike (Q2) damage increased from 50/80/110/140/170 to 55/85/115/145/175
• Tempest (E1) damage increased from 65/100/135/170/205 to 70/105/140/175/210

Leona

• [Meddler noted +20 base armor to Leona but not seeing this in game. Waiting for further context.]

Urgot

• Corrosive Charge (Q) slow lowered from 45/50/55/60/65% to 20/25/30/35/40%

Context & Notes

1) Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts for 10/25, including thoughts on runes coming back to the PBE, Jungle XP, and more:

"Morning folks, 

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 

Runes back on the PBE 

We're in the home stretch before runes go live and they're back on the PBE again now we're past the 7.21 testing period. We've made significant changes to a number of runes since the system was originally revealed, some of which haven't got as much visibility (and therefore testing) as others. Feedback, particularly from people who've played them in game, highly appreciated on: 

Guardian - Now triggers on spell casts on allies/priority, compared to version initially shown which was right click on ally. 

Sudden Impact - Now also works after exiting stealth, not just on dash/teleport. 

Press the Attack - Now deals damage after 3 auto attacks on the target, followed by amping all damage against them for 6 seconds (was stacking AD/AP). 

Presence of Mind - Now gives you free spell casts for 5 seconds after level up or takedown (used to restore mana by auto attacking when lowish on mana). 

Arcane Comet - Cooldown now reduces whenever you damage an enemy champion with an ability (should be much more appealing on champs with frequent spell casts or DoTs) 

Adjusting Jungle XP and Catch up XP in pre-season 

We'll be adjusting how jungle XP's earned somewhat in pre-season as is probably already on PBE at this point. TLDR is only catch up xp on large/epic monsters instead of all, some changes to individual camp xp, less ambient catch up XP. More details and our thinking about why these changes in a separate dev corner post to come shortly. 

Edit: Looks like that post's out already and had plenty of discussion already. Link for anyone that's missed it though: 

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/24K8ORZQ-catch-up-experience-and-jungle-changes-in-722 

Minions/Monsters spawning 10s earlier in pre-season 

Another change we'll be making in pre-season is having minions and monsters spawn 10s earlier than they normally would (e..g red/blue buff spawning at 1.30, not 1.40). Goal there's to remove a bit of time that's usually just spent by people afk/alt tabbed. At the same time we don't want to make jungle invades too hard to pull off, so to preserve similar timings on those we'll be increasing the speed bonus from the game start Homeguard effect as well. 

Couple of pre-season changes moving to 7.23 instead of 7.22 

Almost all of the pre-season stuff will be in 7.22, we'll have a few things though that will be a patch later however. Those are a slight increase to minion movement speed after 20 minutes and minion damage to towers (helps with split pushing for champs who don't themselves do as much tower damage in particular), plus a small increase to overall tower health (leaving towers as tough, or slightly tougher, overall, even accounting for the extra minion damage)." 

 2) Here's SapMagic with a look at some PBE-Only draft changes coming soon - We're launching an experimental, PBE-only, modified version of Draft Pick!

"Hey friends! 

We've been watching your feedback about Blind Pick being the default queue on PBE and totally understand the frustration you're expressing. In response to the feedback, we're going to test out an experimental configuration of Draft Pick on PBE only that we think will be a good balance between our goals (making sure that we can test all our champion changes and content) and a good-feeling player experience (position assignment and the ability to adjust your runes to the competition). 

The Deets 

1. We'll be enabling "Draft Pick" in the client
2. You'll specify your position preferences like you normally would for Draft Pick
3. When you get into Champion Select, you'll notice two changes:
1. There is no pick intent phase
2. There are no bans
4. You'll complete draft picks as normal (using our new simultaneous draft pick configuration)

We'll be monitoring after we deploy this change (probably around 1:30 PM Pacific Time on 10/26/2017) and we'd also love your feedback. Does this feel like a good compromise to you guys? Are there any weird things we didn't anticipate? 

If needed, we may revert back to the standard Blind or Draft Pick configuration, but we'll update this post if we decide to do that. 

-Sap" 

3) Here's Riot Stellari with a thread on Victorious Graves and some upcoming changes to the skin:

"Hi, thanks for your post. 

Regarding the purple: we made a conscious decision this year to evolve and solidify the direction on a number of skins that previously lacked cohesion and identity: Challenger (now Conqueror), Championship, and Victorious. Championship and Victorious have historically always been confusing to players, so these were the two we thought about the most. 

With Victorious, we identified the golden laurels and Tyrian purple as ceremonious, regal elements we wanted to focus on. Sivir had these elements (and Maokai to some extent), but we wanted to strengthen that. We added the lion motif (which we intend to use going forward, not just for Graves) as another nod to ceremonial attire (Roman inspired). The team vision was that they should feel like triumphant champions attending a medal ceremony in ceremonial/formal armor. 

Nonetheless, we're currently working to address the cohesion between Victorious Graves and Sivir so some of the changes we've been making (and are making) include: 

• Toning down the brightness on the purple
• Texture polish on armor and gun
• Adding some more blue gem elements
• Adjustments to VFX colors"

She added on Twitter:

We've done a cohesion pass on Victorious Graves with Victorious Sivir. You should see these in the next few days on PBE

4) Here's Riot Orphyre with a bugs & feedback thread for the Mecha Chroma:

"Hey everyone! 

We’ve got a huge lineup this time around with some new chromas coming up for Mecha Aatrox, Mecha Kha’Zix, and Mecha Rengar. Check ‘em out! 

Mecha Aatrox Chromas - 290 RP each, or 2910 RP for the bundle (585 RP if you already own the champion and skin)

• New textures - The skies are his!
• Obsidian - Perfect for nighttime reconnaissance
• Pearl - Is he man, machine, or deity!?!
• Tanzanite - The Darkin inside cometh

Mecha Kha’Zix Chromas - 290 RP each, or 3340 RP for the bundle (1110 RP if you already own the champion and skin) 

• New textures - “Consume and adapt”
• Pearl - Try not to scratch the metal
• Catseye - “Ah...delicious”
• Sapphire - There’s quarry in the ocean
• Emerald - “I sense worthy prey”
• Tanzanite - “Fear the Void”
• Rose Quartz - “They’ll never see me”

Note: Some of these assets are not up to date, check in-game for their most up to date textures! 

Mecha Rengar Chromas - 290 RP each, or 3340 RP for the bundle (1110 RP if you already own the champion and skin)

• New textures - “Tonight, we hunt roll out!”
• Ruby - Bleed some more, he won’t mind
• Obsidian - Easy prey...They’ll never see him coming
• Pearl - Ready to race?
• Tanzanite - Kha’Zix will never expect this
• Aquamarine - Not even the highest mountain creatures can hide from me
• Citrine - Time for a drive back home to Shurima 

The chroma sets are now available on PBE! We hope you all will enjoy the new sets, but we’re also looking forward to hearing your constructive feedback. I’ll do my best to answer and reply to your questions and feedback! 

Thanks! 

Riot Orphyre"