2/7 PBE Update: Dark Star Jarvan IV Splash Art

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 8.4 PBE cycle, today's patch includes splash art for Dark Star Jarvan IV, Dragon Master Swain's special interactions, and more tentative balance changes!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Dark Star Jarvan IV Splash Art
• Skin Tweaks
• Miscellaneous
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Dark Star Jarvan IV Splash Art

The splash art for the upcoming Dark Star Jarvan IV is now on the PBE!

Dark Star Jarvan IV

Skin Tweaks

As mentioned on boards, Dark Star Jarvan IV's R VFX have been tweaked including adding a faint void in the ring.

Miscellaneous 

• With his debut in the 2/6 update, here's a look at Dragon Master Swain's special interactions:

Fiddlesticks
[Context 1 / Context 2]

• Dark Wind (E) 
• cooldown lowered from 12/11.5/11/10.5/10 to 10 at all ranks
• cost increased from 50/60/70/80/90 to 70/80/90/100/110
• Additional damage to  monsters increased from 50% to 100%
• [No longer mentions minions]

• Crowstorm (R) cooldown lowered from 150/140/130 to 140/110/80

Context & Notes

1) ricklessabandon noted a change coming for Master Yi:

"okay, submitted a fix that should be in 8.4 — alpha strike will no longer break incoming friendly missiles (like dark harvest's souls, or triumph's heal)"

2) Wav3break provided context on the Kalista changes in today's PBE:

"Some lines are missing from PBE - Kalista's Base attack speed is also increased from 0.644 to 0.694. 

The W Cooldown nerf is also not intended to ship, made a mistake in merging down to PBE."

3) PhRoXzOn provided a changelist for Deathcap as well as context on the Lost Chapter Changes:

"Lost Chapter AP change is not going to be in the final changelist (didn't revert it). 

Deathcap build path change :: NLR + BW + Amp + 1265 >>> NLR + NLR + 1100"

He also noted Spellbound Orb should be ready for testing when the PBE comes back up from maintenance.

4) Riot Sotere provided some further context on the Fiddlesticks changes in today's PBE:

"That change is already in for our testing. The idea is that we couldn't make spamming Dark Wind into minions better, but wanted to give it more impact in the jungle. 

We also expect Fiddle to be the beneficiary of increased mana in the jungle."

5) Regarding Pathfinder's Knife and the jungle item changes on the PBE, Meddler commented they are very experimental:

"Very experimental, to the extent I'm a little surprised it's on the PBE already (hasn't really been tested internally at all yet either). A test into how much benefit there is from potentially streamlining the jungle item effects somewhat. Lot of varying opinions on it here."

6) Here's Riot August with a changelist and context for Rengar changes in today's PBE update:

"PBE update for tomorrow (2/7) 

Tomorrow you're going to see a number of bug fixes and tweaks flowing in for Rengar. Here's the list:

Balance Tuning: 

Q -
Buff duration for on-next-hit:: 5 >>> 3 

W -
Empowered W base damage increased to 60 (to match base W) 

R-
Enemy champions near the closest enemy who can sense Rengar are also alerted of Rengar's presence
Armor shred on ult 10/14/18 >>> 12/18/24 

Tweaks and Bug fixes:
W animation no longer interrupts attack animations 

Q no longer has old Q's range indicator
Tiamat active now plays Q's animation (complete with particles) if used in combination with Q (plays normal attack animation otherwise). 

Ult no longer crits targets Rengar attacks in melee range (without leaping) and now properly applies the bonus damage and shred.

Thoughts 

I was thinking of "solving" triple Q by making the empowered Q buff fall off when the Passive timer does. A number of you suggested that it would feel better and not be all that abusive if we just reduced the amount of time he can hold the Q after casting it. Seemed like a good middle ground. We'll see how it plays out. 

Ran some numbers on comparative shreds and the R shred felt low, especially late game. Bumping it up as I want to encourage jumping to closest. This could be risky and may need to revert once we do a more complete damage analysis 

The overall goal of reducing range at which enemies sense Rengar with the updated ult was to allow him to better dodge wards and pick off solo targets. The intended counterplay in a grouped up situation is that the person he's stalking's allies can still pickup on the fact that Rengar is coming and move in to help out. As such, trying out a mechanic where the closest target (the one with the eyes above them) adds "Rengar sense"( the screen tint everyone gets when in the reveal range) to allies in a circle around them. Hope is that this mechanic makes it easier for a Braum who's chilling within a screen of his ADC to realize they're getting hunted and move in to help, while still preserving the ult's ability to skirt around enemy vision. 

People said my tiamat implementation could be better so I tried again. Please tell me if it's finally working the way you expect. 

FINALLY - Thank you to the people who sent me Rengar's old bonetooth icons <3 I tested them internally and decided NOT to swap them with what's on live. Why? Given how small they are, the black background makes them pretty hard to read. At a glance, it was much more difficult to tell how many Bonetooth stacks you had. 

Thanks for the all the feedback and help. Iteration continues. Does anyone have any strong feelings for or against Mecha Rengar's new Q animation?"

7) Maple Nectar noted changes would be coming to Liandry's due to some strong interactions with certain champions:

"Damnit Morde you're why we can't have nice things:P . Definitely aware, and we're looking into what we can/will change before ship. Almost certainly going to be a change to the Liandries as opposed to a change to Morde, but haven't decided the plan yet." 

8) Penguin noted we would be seeing a change to Spellbound Orb's cooldown for ARAM sometime soon:

"The designer just doubled the CD of the item for ARAM."