1/30 PBE Update: More Tentative Balance Changes

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 8.3 PBE cycle, today's patch includes more tentative balance changes!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Regarding Recent Loot Issues on PBE 1/30/18 
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Regarding Recent Loot Issues on PBE 1/30/18 

Here's Riot Rainbow Pi with an update on Loot issues on the PBE:

"Hey Everyone! I'm posting on behalf of our Loot Tech Lead, Riot Rainbow Pi. She is still getting her PBE credentials set up at RITO HQ, so I'm passing this message along for you all. 

Hi, I’m the tech lead on loot, and I wanted to apologize and talk about why loot has been down for the last week. 

TLDR: We managed to find a unique and arcane bug that we couldn’t repro in our internal environments. It caused a ~50% failure rate of any transaction in loot. (Crafting, add loot via missions or store, etc). We decided it would be safest to disable access to players while we triaged the issue. 

The longer version: 

We started rolling out a new version of the loot service to PBE last Tue in preparation for Lunar Revel. We had done a bunch of testing on internal environments and everything looked fine. Once we did the deploy we starting running our test suite against it to verify the upgrade worked. Unfortunately our suite found issues we had never seen in internal envs. About 50% of transactions were failing to go through, which meant you wouldn’t be able to craft, there would be sporadic failures of content from missions (fixed upon retry), and a generally degraded experience. 

We decided to spend some time triaging it, we had found a root cause error but we weren’t able to find a quick fix. We tried to roll it back to the previous working version so we could get loot back up and running, but for some reason the previous version was no longer behaving. In an attempt to minimize player pain, we made a decision to disable loot while we looked into this. Over this past week, we have been researching, experimenting, and trying to get loot back up. Half of our team, plus a number of people outside of the loot team were working on this. It wasn’t until today that one of our experiments proved successful. 

Since this issue didn’t crop up on other envs, there was a chance that this would not impact a live deploy for lunar revel. But we didn’t want to take that chance, so we’ve been working to get this fixed. We have a fix out, and loot should be back on. If you run into any further issues please let us know. 

Again, I’m sorry we had it down so long. Hopefully we have this particularly nasty bug nipped in the bud for good. 

Riot Rainbow Pi"

Azir

• Conquering Sands (Q) cooldown increased from 11/9.5/8/6.5/5 to 15/12.5/10/7.5/5

• Arise (W) secondary stab damage lowered from 40/70/100% at 1/6/11 to 20/40/60% at 1/6/11 
• [Missed an an earlier update!]

Kalista
[Context]

• Attack range reverted from 525 to 550
• Sentinel (W) reverted to live functionality.

Kog'Maw

• Bio-Arcane Barrage (W) bonus magic damage lowered from 3/4/5/6/7% to 3/3.5/4/4.5/5%

Master Yi
[Master Yi has other changes in testing on the PBE!]

• Alpha Strike (Q) AD ratio reverted from 110% to 100%

Rengar
[Context]
[Rengar has extensive changes already in testing on the PBE!]

• Base attack speed changed from .625 + 3.5%/lvl to .666 + 3%/lvl
• Battle Roar (W) AP ratio reverted from .7 to .8
• Bola Strike (E) reverted to live functionality.
• Thrill of the Hunt (R) closest enemy leap bonus changed from [gain 3 Ferocity and shred the target's armor by 10/14/18 for 4 seconds] to [30% TAD + 60% AP Bonus physical damage +10/14/18 Armor shred for 4 seconds.] 

Tryndamere
[Tryndamere has other changes in testing on the PBE!]

• Bloodlust (Q) AD reverted from 6/12/18/24/30 to 5/10/15/20/25 

Viktor
[Viktor has other changes in testing on the PBE!]

• Death Ray (E) cooldown reverted from 12/11/10/9/8 to 13/12/11/10/9

Context & Notes

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single PBE in possession of a good number of champions, must be in want of a WIP.

1) Riot August with a changelist and context for more changes to Rengar in today's PBE update:

"2 patch notes today (I was off Friday at an anime convention pretending to be 707 so didn't get a chance to write them then, apologies) 

Patch Notes for 1/29 (these should already be out on pbe)

R-
No longer grants ferocity on leaping to closest target (IGNORE THE TOOLTIP, IT IS BUGGED)

Patch Notes for 1/30 (tomorrow)

Stats-
Base AS:: .625 + 3.5%/lvl >>> .666 + 3%/lvl
Sped up certain attack animations to make them feel crisper and better match with when the damage comes out (this is purely a visual change) 

P-
No longer plays Q animation when leaping with Q (looked bad)
Now plays Q Hit VFX when hitting target with leap Q (looks dope) 

W -
AP Ratio reverted:: .7 >>> .8 

E -
AP Ratio Removed 

R-
Closest target leap bonus: 30% TAD + 60% AP Bonus physical damage +10/14/18 Armor shred for 4 seconds.
Fixed tooltip to reflect this 

Sounds-
All sounds are being reverted to live states until the 8/4 PBE cycle starts next week.
THEY WILL COME BACK, THIS IS TO PREVENT THE NEW ONES FROM SHIPPING TO LIVE IN 8.3 

Skins -
Adding a new Q animation for Mecha Rango. (This is currently very WIP, still needs VFX, sound and general iteration)

Context: 

Don't worry about the sounds being gone tomorrow, we'll bring them back. We had to revert them for the week so we can cut the 8.3 branch and ship it to live. Rengar's target patch remains 8.4 and the sounds will be back for the 8.4 PBE cycle. All gameplay changes will remain playable on PBE. 

Mecha Rango feels a little off now that his old Q is back, but his skin model has a SLASHY blade and not a STABBY knife. We're going to try giving him a fancy new SLASHY animation for Mecha Q. (THIS MAY NOT WORK OUT, IT IS TEMP, WE ARE TESTING) 

The base AS changes are there with the consideration that he basic attacks a lot more with reverted Q + his jungle clear has gotten a bit worse with the removal of live Q's AoE. Attacks should feel smoother as a result because Attack Speed makes everything feel 10/10. 

Reverting the AP ratio changes on W and E as I expect AP Rengar may already be getting a lot better only with the boonetooth changes and Q lich bane synergy. Additionally, E AP ratio wasn't adding much (since he maxes the spell last and it deals physical) and it felt bad to lower W ratio if we don't need to (since he uses it to clear/farm and ROAR-ROAR). 

Removing the ferocity from the ult as giving any amount of it on leap messes with Rengar's combo flow (turns out lions love casting tons of spells IN THE AIR, who knew). The combos as they exist on live are pretty smooth (Ult --> jump --> Basic spells --> Ferocity finisher) and it feels low value to mess with that. Something that's delayed (offering more counterplay) AND feels good for Rengar? Yes pls. 

So why not just remove the closest bonus entirely? We're not removing it because we think its GOOD COUNTERPLAY that the enemy team can body-block for their squishies to prevent Rengar from getting max value if he leaps on them. The difficulty we're running into here though is that the bonus has to be WORTH BLOCKING, but also NOT JUST ONE-SHOT A GUY. That's why we're trying a shred + small amount of cosmetic damage. Idea here is that it lowers up-front burst (giving time to flash), but then gives a lot of strength to Rengar's followup if his opponent can't get away (therefore making it worth it for opponents to block him from getting a "closest leap" on a squishy). 

As always, we're still iterating so not all of this will stay. Trying to make Rango as cool as possible while still offering adequate counterplay for his opponents. Please give feedback! Appreciate all your help <3."

2) Riot Maple noted the Kalista changes would be reverted this patch. Look for them to return in some form in the 8.4 PBE cycle:

"You're likely to see us reverting Kalista changes today. We're not going to be shipping anything on 8.3 but likely 8.4 instead. We like the direction of the range nerf, but want to get more testing first in case there's more followup needed."