8.12 PBE Cycle

(Warning: PBE Content is tentative and iterative - what you see may not reflect what eventually gets pushed to live servers! Manage your expectations accordingly. )

• New Skins
• Dark Star Cho'Gath
• Playmaker Lee Sin
• Sweeper Rammus
• New Chroma
• New Summoner Icons
• New Emotes
• Master's Challenge Season 2 Emote & Summoner Icon
• New Login Theme - College Championshp 2018
• Miscellaneous
• Cursor Update on PBE
• Changes to emotes coming to PBE in patch 8.12 
• PBE Chat with the Playtest Team - 8.12
• Balance Changes
• Patch History

New Skins

Three new skins are rolling on the PBE for 8.12 - Dark Star Cho'Gath, Playmaker Lee Sin, and Sweeper Rammus.

Dark Star Cho'Gath

Here's Riot KiWiKiD with a bugs & feedback thread for Dark Star Cho'Gath:

"Hey friends! KiWiKiD here with the awesome Dark Star Cho’Gath! He’s jumped in from the outer worlds to gorge himself silly on Summoner’s Rift. 

• New model and textures - Featuring a mesmerizing Dark Void at the center.
• New Spell VFX - The force of the Dark Star in each hit.
• New SFX - Angry, deep undertones.
• New recall animation - Rip open a portal back home to destroy those who dare attack.
• Awesome Feast transformations- Color and texture additions upon the 4th and 8th Feast Stack! 

Dark Star Cho’Gath is now available on PBE! Feel like a harbinger of terror as you tear through your enemies. Please report back here with any bugs that occured or feedback that you have. If you’ve got any questions, those are very welcome, too! 

Dark Star Cho’Gath is currently set at 1350 RP (subject to change). 

*Dark Star Cho’Gath was built with Bryan as part of The Make-A-Wish Foundation. Bringing Bryan’s vision into League of Legends is a huge honor for us, and we feel that this is a great opportunity to support organizations that make a real impact. 

Dark Star Cho’Gath (and any related items) will be available for a limited time, with 100% of the proceeds going to charities around the world during that time. 

We’d like to thank Bryan, The Make-A-Wish Foundation, and players for all the support."

Playmaker Lee Sin

Here's Nurse Flan with a bugs & feedback thread for Playmaker Lee Sin:

"Playmaker Lee Sin is the latest sporty skin to hit the Rift! 

• New model and textures - He's got his custom sports jersey!
• New VFX for all spells - Soccer/Football themed!
• Light SFX treatment for some spells - Mainly on his Q!
• New recall animation and a small VO clip - Goooooaaaaaaall!

As players who get the first look at this in-progress skin, it would be wonderful to hear your constructive thoughts and feelings on the new Playmaker skin! The feedback and bugs you leave here will help us get a better idea of things we may still have to take a look at. :] 

This skin is 975 RP.
Prices are subject to change! 

See you on the Rift!"

Sweeper Rammus

Here's Riot KiWiKiD with a bugs & feedback thread for Sweeper Rammus:

"KiWiKiD rolling in here with Sweeper Rammus! He’s slide tackling anyone that tries to score against him. Ouch. 

• New model and textures - Futbol inspired, in celebration of the World Cup.
• New Spell VFX - Protect the goal with flair.
• New SFX - STOP! In the name of the ball.
• New recall animation - Rammus can’t always sit back. He’s gotta score sometimes, too! 

Sweeper Rammus is now available on PBE! I hope you have as much fun with his sounds as I did. Report back here with any bugs that occured or feedback that you have. As always, questions are welcome, too! 

Sweeper Rammus is currently set at 975 RP (subject to change)."

New Chroma

We also have chroma sets for Playmaker Lee Sin (8) and Sweeper Rammus (7).

Playmaker Lee Sin

Sweeper Rammus

Here's Riot Orphyre with a bugs & feedback thread for Sweeper Rammus and Playmaker Lee Sin:

"Hey everyone! 

We’ve got some new Chromas coming up for our newest skins, Playmaker Lee Sin and Sweeper Rammus!

Playmaker Lee Sin:

• New textures: “Your will, my hands feet”
• Playmaker Lee Sin (Pearl)
• Playmaker Lee Sin (Citrine)
• Playmaker Lee Sin (Emerald)
• Playmaker Lee Sin (Sapphire)
• Playmaker Lee Sin (Aquamarine)
• Playmaker Lee Sin (Tanzanite)
• Playmaker Lee Sin (Obsidian)
• Playmaker Lee Sin (Rose Quartz)

Sweeper Rammus:

• New textures: “Ok.”
• Sweeper Rammus (Ruby)
• Sweeper Rammus (Rose Quartz)
• Sweeper Rammus (Emerald)
• Sweeper Rammus (Sapphire)
• Sweeper Rammus (Aquamarine)
• Sweeper Rammus (Tanzanite)
• Sweeper Rammus (Obsidian) 

The chroma sets are now available on PBE! We hope you all will enjoy the new sets; as usual, we’re looking forward to hearing your constructive feedback. I’ll do my best to answer and reply to your questions and feedback! 

Thanks! 

Riot Orphyre"

New Summoner Icons

Two new summoner icons featuring Playmaker Lee Sin and Sweeper Rammus are now on the PBE:

One new Esports summoner icon was also added:

The TSM icon from Patch 8.11 was also tweaked slightly:

New Emotes

A new emote called "Hat's Off" has been added! The emote is an enhanced version of 'M'Pengu', now complete with a tiny cane and bowtie! This looks to be a loot item.

A handful of new emoted were also added - "Okay", "Yikes", and "Go Team!" featuring Rammus, Ezreal, and Sona.

For more on upcoming emote changes, check out this thread - "Feedback & Discussion - Changes to emotes coming to PBE in patch 8.12"

Master's Challenge Season 2 Emote & Summoner Icon

A new emote and summoner icons are now on the PBE! We've seen similar icons before, headed for the CN Masters Challenge server.

New Login Theme - College Championshp 2018

A login theme for the upcoming LoL College Championship 2018 is now on the PBE:


For more information on the LoL College Championship 2018, check out [this article on LoL Esports]. The action kicks off June 7th!

Miscellaneous 

• With Butcher's Bridge ARAM coming back in the Curse of the Drowned event, some files are making their way to the PBE, including champion select music:

Cursor Update on PBE 

Here's Riot BadTofu with a thread detailing the cursor changes that starts testing this cycle on the PBE:

Hey all, we’re visually updating League’s cursor! The current one is an old classic, but there are a lot of things we want to improve, so let’s talk context. 

A cursor should always be clearly visible and easy to track on your screen. This one seems obvious, but isn’t always easy to achieve. League often has moments with a lot of visuals competing for our attention, especially in a big teamfights with dozens of spells flying back and forth. 

The classic cursor can sometimes get lost against the background, because its brown and yellow colors are pretty close to a lot of parts of Summoner’s Rift and its rounded, busier shape can be hard to pick out. We’re hoping the new version is brighter and cleaner, making it easier to see throughout the game. 

Cursor Comparisons

To make it even easier for players to always find the cursor, we’ve also added the ability to scale the size up and down - good news for anyone using a 4K monitor! 

A cursor should also give us immediate feedback for our actions. For example, the old cursor changes states (shapes and colors) to acknowledge when we’re doing different activities like hovering an enemy or placing a ward. We are still trying a couple different approaches on how to surface this info, and are looking for feedback! 

Hover Enemy

Hover Ally

Place Ward

Feedback pls!
The cursor is a feature that every player uses throughout their games, so we are going to give this a couple PBE cycles to soak and respond to feedback. We definitely want to hear your thoughts, especially in a few areas: 

Do you feel like you’re getting the feedback on your actions that you’re looking for?
In what situations do you most notice the changes?

But My Bronze Gauntlet? 

We know a lot of people have grown to love the old cursor, so when we ship the update in a few patches, you'll have a "Legacy Cursor" toggle in the options menu allowing you to switch back to... the legacy cursor. 

When 8.12 hits PBE today, the Legacy Cursor toggle will be disabled so we can get as much feedback as possible. We'll add the toggle part way through the cycle so we can make sure that works, too. Once 8.12 gets ready for shipping, both the new cursor and the toggle will vanish from PBE. Then they'll reappear for the 8.13 PBE cycle in a few weeks. We'll repeat this process a few times until the new cursor is ready to ship."

Changes to emotes coming to PBE in patch 8.12 

Here's Riot Pabro with details on changes coming for Emotes in patch 8.12:

"Hey everyone! 

While we love emotes, we’ve been working on a couple of ways to make them better. We’re gonna try these features out on PBE with patch 8.12. 

New: Emote Bubbles
One of the problems with emotes right now is that they’re mostly used to communicate with your lane opponent. Emote Bubbles show each teammate’s emotes, whether or not their champ is on your screen. 

We hope that this will encourage more within-team expression, like high-fiving your Top lane for that First Blood all the way from bot. You can disable Emote Bubbles in Settings if you don’t want to see them. 

New Auto-Fire Slots: First Blood and Ace
It can be hard to remember to use emotes, especially during a fight. So we’re adding two new auto-fire slots (which we tested during the April Fools event, for those who noticed!) for First Blood and Ace, so you can show ‘em how you feel without having to think. 

If you have other ideas for new auto-fire slots, we’d love to hear them in the comments! 

Emote Collection Tab Update
We’ve added some basic quality of life updates to the Emotes Collection tab. We’ve got more changes planned, but for 8.12 we’re making these core adjustments:  

• You can now view emotes that you don’t have and directly purchase them from your collection
• You can now sort emotes alphabetically or by the order in which your acquired them
• New Emote Sounds
• All emotes will have sound effects attached to them for a little extra oomph. 

Mystery Emote Token
In 8.12, we’ll be selling the Mystery Emote Token that was previously available in event loot bundles on its own. This new Emote Token will randomly award an unowned emote and will be periodically available in the store to purchase. The Mystery Emote Token can also drop previous event emotes that are no longer available for regular purchase! 

Emotes Sale ScheduleEmotes will now be a part of the regular skin sale cadence. Expect to see emotes older than 6 months on sale for deep discounts regularly! 

We look at all the feedback we can find, so please let us know what you think of these changes to Emotes while they’re on PBE! 

Pabro"

PBE Chat with the Playtest Team - 8.12 

Here's Riot Novalas with the PBE chat with the Playtest team for the 8.12 PBE cycle:

"Hey guys! 

I’m Riot Novalas. I'm a QA Analyst on Riot’s Playtest Team, a group of high elo players who work on Core Gameplay playing new and in dev content before they’re released. It’s our job to test the changes that our designers come up with to ensure that we’re introducing positive changes to League in terms of both balance and fun. 

Rather than a Patch Chat, we’re opting for a new approach these next few patch cycles. Lots of changes are planned in the upcoming patches and a lot of content is or has been on PBE for awhile. We’d like you guys to talk to us about your questions or concerns with upcoming content - We’ve tested a lot of it and would be more than happy to give you guys insight on how the changes are panning out. If you’d like us to test something in particular out - let us know and we can try to get it into a playtest. 

The biggest changes on PBE right now are the Fighter itemization changes. If you have any questions related to the items on the PBE, ask Riot Endstep who is the primary ticketholder for the itemization changes! 

We’d love for players to get in on this & help the Playtest team make Patch 8.12 launch as smoothly as possible! 

Here’s a link to the content currently on the PBE.
https://www.surrenderat20.net/p/current-pbe-balance-changes.html 

• Brandon "Roku" Davis
• Chris “Auberaun” Roberts
• Nick “Riot Endstep” Frijia
• Sigmundur “GangIeri” Helgason
• Arnor “Riot Hjarta” Halldorsson
• Miktat “Riot Koyuncu” Koyuncu
• Brian “Riot Madness Heroo” Pressoir
• Nabi “Riot Novalas” Barak
• Dan “Riot penguin” Hardison
• Robert “ROBERTxLEE” Lee
• Louis "nubblez" Carpetto"