1/31 PBE Update: Swain Splash Tweaks & More Tentative Balance Changes

Posted on at 12:37 PM by Aznbeat
The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 8.3 PBE cycle, today's patch includes tweaks to Swain's base splash art, as well as more tentative balance changes!
Continue reading for more information!

(Warning: PBE Content is tentative and subject to change - what you see below may not reflect what eventually gets pushed to live servers at the end of the cycle! Manage your expectations accordingly.)

Table of Contents


Swain Splash Tweaks

The Swain splash art has been tweaked a small amount, most noticeably on his hair, making it more gray than white:

Balance Changes

* NOTE*: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, & experimental changes. Be aware that what you see below may be relative to other changes earlier this cycle! These are not official notes.

Champions
Azir
  • Arise (W) secondary stab damage reverted from 20/40/60% at 1/6/11 to 40/70/100% at 1/6/11

 Swain
  • Death's Hand (Q)
    • Damage lowered from 70/90/110/130/150 to 65/85/105/125/145
  • Demonic Ascension (R)
    • Heal lowered from 20/35/50 to 15/30/45
    • Heal AP ratio lowered from 17.5% to 16%
    • Non-champion drain lowered from 25% to 20%
    • Soul Fragment AP ratio increased from 22.5% to 27%

 Syndra
  • HP regen lowered from 1.3016 to 1.3

Context & Notes

1) Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for January 31st, covering why they want to open up bot lane, Azir, Kalista, and more:
Hey 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 
Why open up bot lane? 
As mentioned last week we're looking to open up bot lane to other classes beyond marksmen. Seen quite a lot of discussion about that, ranging from people really excited to play other stuff bot to players who think it's a terrible idea. Figured we should share some more of our rationale as a result. 
What we're trying to do:
  • We want to make it so other classes can be played bot IF you want to.
  • We don't want to push marksmen out of bot lane. They'll still be great choices there and, if you want to play nothing but marksmen in bot, that should be a fine choice. This is not about forcing people who want to play marksmen only to play other classes, but allowing people who want to play other things to do so. Can understand the concern about being pushed out of the only position some champions can play and that's not our goal.
  • We want to open bot up to a range of classes, not just marksmen and one other one. That'll be a gradual process though. Most likely outcome is that mid-season opens the position up somewhat (mages most likely). Later work then opens it up more, based in part off learnings from mid-season. 
Why we think we should do it:
  • We think LoL is a more enjoyable and interesting game when you can play a wider range of team comps and get a range of different laning experiences. A lot of players gravitate towards trying new stuff, experimenting with what does and doesn't work.
  • Bot is currently much more limited in terms of what works there than other positions. We'd like to open it up as a result to players who want to go bot but don't like Marksmen and players who like marksmen but would also like to play some other class(es). That's been a frequent request from many players for quite a long time. 
Azir 
We've (probably) got a late nerf going into 8.3 for Azir, targeting his waveclear/AOE. Plan is to reduce his damage on secondary AA targets, hitting both his laning power (ability to push/counterpush and roam) and ability to stall out sieges late game. 
Kalista 
By contrast we're pulling Kalista's changes from 8.3. We're looking to reduce her power in pro, with low impact in regular play. Reducing auto attack range, potentially with compensatory buffs elsewhere, looks like it might be a good lever there, given pro duo lanes are often more sensitive to differences in AA range. We're not confident enough the changes we've been testing are right though. We'll be taking a look at Kalista again during 8.4 development as a result, both the AA range reduction and other alternative approaches. 
Non LoL: Sid Meier on games as a series of decisions 
Summary below of a GDC talk by Sid Meier (creator of the Civilization series and a lot of other things).Well worth a read if design theory's your sort of thing. The opening section on what an interesting decision is is stuff that might be pretty familiar (talked about fairly widely). Later sections get into things like the value of informed choice and the use of historical context as an intuitive foundation though. 
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/164869/GDC_2012_Sid_Meier_on_how_to_see_games_as_sets_of_interesting_decisions.php"

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