2/13 PBE Update: More Tentative Balance Changes

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 9.4 PBE cycle, today's patch includes more tentative balance changes for Azir, Gnar, and more!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Context & Notes

1) Riot Repertoir provided multiple changelists for champions this cycle:

[1] "Got last minute changes to the Trundle and Urgot lists before we cut the 9.4 patch. We expect Urgot's probably going to be pretty sad for a patch or two, but there's some stuff we're considering to encourage more offensive builds a few patches out if that ends up true."

[2] Tentative Azir. Pretty boring unfortunately, but want to be cautious with this one, as always.

[3] Tentative Gnar

[4] Tentative Hecarim

[5] Karthus

[6] Tentative Thresh

[7] Tentative Varus.

[8] Tentative Yasuo

2) Check out Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for February 13:

"Hi 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 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 

Support Item Restrictions 

As you might have seen we've just hotfixed some changes to the Ancient Coin and Spellthief's items so that they require a nearby ally to generate gold coins and gold on damage procs respectively. That's in response to rapidly growing use of them in top lane that removes a lot of CSing skill test for the user while offering little counterplay to their opponent. Usually we'd prefer to let emergent strategies play out where we can. Our feeling in this case, as with gold funneling last year, was that the overall result is a less interesting and deep game though, hence the quick response. 

Also as per gold funneling we're taking what's admittedly somewhat heavy handed action to quickly fix the problem. Plan is to then look at whether there's a better solution available in the moderate term. With the Monster Hunter debuff for gold funneling for example our initial take was sometimes pretty punishing on junglers who got ahead but didn't want to finish their jungle item. We then made an adjustment later that changed it to account for amount of gold taken from lane minions to target the debuff specifically at problem cases. Goal would be to take a similar approach here if we see unintended issues emerge. 

Crit items, their users and marksmen in general post 9.3 

We've been watching how things have settled post crit changes in 9.3 for a bit now. Feeling so far is that the changes have landed pretty well overall, without leaving most crit users too strong or too weak. Where we're up to on some specific cases:

• Still got Yasuo nerfs planned for 9.4. Current approach is reverting most of the buffs we gave him after midseason's Infinity Edge update since that update's mostly reverted.
• We'll also be bringing back the Lucian nerfs we held off on previously while we waited to see where 9.3 landed, in part given he was already strong and crit item buffs are sometimes further power positive for him at 3-4 items.
• Unlikely we do anything for Kai'Sa at this point, she seems to be doing pretty well with IE/Hurricane builds. Updating her recommended items so players stop rushing Stormrazor, though.
• Want to see where Ezreal sits after some more play before deciding whether he needs nerfs or not.
• Looking at a small buff to ER in 9.4, it's in the right ballpark but a bit weak relative to IE. 

Spectator Bugs 

We'e looking into a couple of categories of spectator bug that have been cropping up a lot recently. Should have more to share on that shortly. 9.4 should have fixes for some issues, still determining whether there's anything not covered by that work though."

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 !

• 2/5 PBE Update: Papercraft Skins, Chroma, Icons & More
• 2/7 PBE Update: Tentative Balance Changes
• 2/8 PBE Update: Papercraft Splash Art
• 2/11 PBE Update: More Tentative Balance Changes
• 2/12 PBE Update: Even More Tentative Balance Changes