2/23 PBE Update: Tentative Balance Changes

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 8.5 PBE cycle, today's patch includes more tentative balance changes!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Miscellaneous
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Miscellaneous 

• Here's a video from SkinSpotlights showing off the Resistance Illaoi chroma:

• The shop asset for the 8th Bullet Angel Kai'Sa chroma (Catseye) was added:

Azir

• Conquering Sands (Q) sand soldier damage lowered from 70/95/120/145/170 to 60/80/100/120/140

Galio

• Winds of War (Q) 
• cooldown increased from 10/9/8/7/6 to 10/9.5/9/8.5/8
• cost increased from 70/75/80/85/90 to 70/85/100/115/130

• Justice Punch (E) cooldown reverted from 16/14/12/10/8 to 12/11/10/9/8

Context & Notes

1) Here's Phroxz0n with context on the Tristana changes testing on the PBE this cycle:

"The changelist as it currently stands is as follows:

• Range is smaller at level 1, which increases her susceptibility to poke or her worse matchups (eg. Varus, Cait, pokey supports).
• We also want her to find ways to succeed in some matchups with opportunistically looking for moments to jump in or chaining resets.
• Some people on team didn't like the Q change as scaling durations for steroids are a little weird, but some people did like it, so it was a bit divisive."

2) Here's Riot August with a small changelist for Rengar in today's PBE:

"Repertoire was kind enough to hookup some DELAY REMOVAL for Rengar's ferocity. Should be seeing it in today's PBE update. 

Additionally, a hotfix went out last night (should be live now) that fixed his bonetooth VO spam, Klepto mana pot ferocity exploits, and Q fizzles.

PBE
-Lockout time before Rengar can cast empowered spells reduced to .1 from .25 

LIVE HOTFIX
-Fixed a bug where Rengar would spam bonetooth lines while casting spells
-Fixed a bug with Kleptomancy could grant mana potions to characters without mana
-Fixed a bug where when Rengar attacked with Q just as the buff expired, the spell would fizzle.

More to come."

3) Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for February 23rd, providing more mastery curves, notes on a Minion FPS bugfix, Duskblade nerfs moved to 8.6, 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

Some more Mastery Curves

Got some requests to show more of these, Singed included, after the first post on them earlier in the week. Some more, with brief comments, below. As a reminder, a flatter curve doesn't necessarily mean that a champion is less skilled since it in part reflects how similar the skills a champion tests are to those tested on other champions. As with the previous set of mastery curves this is based off data from the previous 6 months, so it won't perfectly match current win rates. I've also gone with mastery curves over 100 games this time, which does introduce some messiness into the curves for champs with lower sample sizes at higher game values, but also gives a better impression of how they change with more games played.

Singed - As mentioned previously has a really steep curve. That reflects how different his playstyle is to other champs in part. There's a lot to learn, even after a lot of games. It's also correlated somewhat though with how, if you're a really dedicated Singed player, you'll end up much better on him than other champions. That means you’ll climb playing Singed and then, when you're playing other champs you'll end up losing more. That drags your MMR down a bit again, potentially increasing your future Singed winrate.

Tanks - A lot of tanks have mastery curves that cap out fairly quickly, given they test game skill in general more than kit specific mechanics. Malphite's a particularly clear example of that, maxing out after ~10-15 games. Alistar's got some more kit specific stuff to him, but still on average maxes out curve wise around 40 games or so mark. Ornn's then a strong contrast with most other tanks, with his curve continuing upwards a bit even after 100 games, reflecting that he's got a lot of different stuff going to to learn. When coupled with how most games on Ornn are by people still very early on in that mastery curve (the grey section below) it means you can end up with a champ with a low average win rate who's still quite strong when played by someone who knows what they're doing.

Marksmen - Marksmen are another class with a lot of overlap between the skills they test, so their curves usually look pretty similar, with a steep early climb that then flattens out a lot. Tristana and Ezreal are good examples. Lucian's an interesting counterpoint in that he's got an initial steep climb, that curves off sooner, but then keeps gradually going up, suggesting there's a lot players pick up really quickly and then some subtleties that even after 100 games keep mattering. Vayne's a stronger contrast again, with a curve that's yet to flatten that much even after 100 games. That's a trend we see on mechanically intensive champions in general too, such as Yasuo (shown here) or other champs like Azir or Kalista.

Minion FPS Bug Fix
We got a fix into 8.3, that we've now verified is working as intended, that fixes a number of FPS dropping/hitching when minions get spawned into the game (lane minions, jungle monsters, player created minions etc). Should have improved performance noticeably for a number of players. Won't fix everything of course, but worth checking out if you've been having problems around those circumstances and haven't played for a bit.

Duskblade Nerfs moving to 8.6

We'll be moving the Duskblade nerfs back to 8.6 so that we've got enough time to also do some compensatory work on champions who might be hit too hard otherwise. Not sure exactly what that compensation will look like yet. Possible (not guaranteed) candidates for buffs below. Most likely case where we don't buff is if a champion already has similar strength with Ghostblade or something else (they're not actually very dependent on Duskblade).

• Wukong
• Zed
• Talon
• Rengar
• Quinn
• Miss Fortune
• Kayn
• Kha'Zix"

4) ricklessabandon noted Ahri changes may show next week:

"still haven't settled on a direction yet, so she won't make it on the pbe this week — hope to have something ready in time for early next week"

5) PlaytestPenguin noted Quinn would be seeing some changes sometime this patch:

"Quinn is likely to get some QoL stuff this patch that is independent of duskblade compensation."

Check out [THIS PAGE] for a comprehensive list of the new content & changes currently on the PBE as a part of this cycle or catch up with the individual update links below !

• 2/21 PBE Update: Kai'Sa, Daughter of the Void + New Skins, Chroma, & More
• 2/22 PBE Update: New  Premade Voice in Testing, New Emotes, & Tentative Balance Changes