7-31 / 8-1 News Recap: Red Posts Galore!

Soraka's model rework is "Still in the works. Not really much we can say at this point. Still in the oven, still cooking." according to IronStylus. He also squawked out a few more details, saying:

"She's gone through a whole pile of overhaul. Okmikegoodness was her animator and Bitsplosion was her particle artist. They've both invested a ton of time into a very elegant visual rework. She has a new model obviously, but the animations that were done required a significant remake of her rig, just like Ashe (another Ohmikegoodness production).

The skins aren't the issue, it's the fact that the new rework is so tuned at such a higher quality that it's taken a decent amount of time."

The Amumu nerfs included in the Early August patch certainly caught a few of us off guard. RiotJules said the following about the changes, adding some of Riot's rationale to the mix and highlighting the underestimated buff to his Tantrum.:

"The goal with the mana cost reduction (50 to 35 is a bigger change than it looks) is to somewhat reduce Amumu's dependence on blue buff. Currently, Amumu players get completely gimped if they are invaded upon and denied blue.

At the same time, we felt Amumu's AP ratios were out of line given the power and crowd control he brings with his ultimate. That said, his new ratios (0.7, .01%, 0.5, 0.8) are nothing to be laughed at."

Continuing on the balance train, a lot of players were also surprised to see that Zyra went nerf free this patch. RiotJules commented on this by saying:

"We are still evaluating Zyra. I agree with you that she does appear on the strong side, but to be fair, she's only been out for 1 week. We don't like to rush changes without fully understanding a champion's impact on the game."

Currently, Nidalee's Pounce always moves in the direction she is facing, not where her cursor is located.

I must admit I'm enjoying all the recent quality of life style buffs we've been seeing lately; we had Cho'Gath and Hecarim this patch and tons of updates for Malzahar last patch. Xypherous commented on these saying that both Nidalee and Garen were up next on the chopping block. While they have both been confirmed for some upgrades in the past,  it's nice to know they are coming up soon. He expanded about the slated changes to Nidalee's pounce, saying :

"I sync'ed with Brackhar on this - and until we get additional tech to make you switch between targetting types at will - I think we'll just go with mimic'ing how Riven's Q works for now. It's not perfect and far from ideal - but for now it'll be at least a good improvement on the current one."

Lux charging her.. erm... Infinite Light.

One of the bigger discussion points of this patch was Lux's ultimate being renamed from "Finales Funkein" to "Infinite Light". Ymir, the English Community Coordinator, gave the forums a taste of the thought process behind the change:

"If we were making Lux today, we’d never name her ult ‘Finales Funkeln’ today. Here’s why:

It’s an incomprehensible in-joke that’s an obscure reference.
It’s a tip of the hat to another character’s ability from another game that’s been translated into German. This is unintelligible to most people, because they don’t get the joke. This is not pandering to the lowest common denominator – we’re talking about the vast majority of our players around the world here.

It’s hard to pronounce.
No, not just because it’s German. Once again, this isn’t about the lowest common denominator.

It doesn’t even come close to conveying what the ability does.
And Infinite Light does. Yeah, yeah, it’s not a global ability, but it's a pretty big ******* laser. A little hyperbole is just fine by us. We considered translating the name directly from German to English as “Final Spark,” but felt reference to electricity didn’t feel like Lux."

While this chunk was the meat and potatoes of the post, I'd recommend you check out the rest of it if this something you feel passionately about, as the change is live right now and I doubt we'll be seeing it reverted.

Boy, oh boy, do I miss the delicious lore infused Journal of Justice releases.

For my fellow lore heads out there, we had some good news come out of the Lore Discussion forums today. Kitae, a Lead Lore Designer, posted a massive wall of text detailing Riot's upcoming initiative to improve the current champion bios. The post, while very informative, is much to long to share in its entity, here is the reasoning behind the updates and what we can expect out to see in the near future:

"We think that all of our champion bios should be as well written as newer bios:

• Players read bios to better understand champions. You deserve the same quality experience when reading an older bio as you get when you read a newer one.
• Bios are the first place players go to learn more about a champion's past, and they form the foundation upon which other stories about that champion can be crafted. This is true for both player-written stories as well as Riot-written ones. You deserve great stories built on a strong foundation.
• Bios feed our lore, granting insight into our world and other champions mentioned in the bio. You deserve a consistent, well planned fantasy world in which great stories can be told.

With these goals in mind we are starting to bring all champion bios up to today's standards. We’ve brought on some new creative designers (who we’ll introduce soon) to help make this happen, so it won’t impact new champion bios. What can you expect to see when we re-write a champion bio?

•  More focus on personality and motivation. We want you to understand who our champions are, and what they want.
• A better sense of where champions come from. Every champion has an origin that helps you better understand who they are.
• More relationships. Whether its friendship, love, or hate, relationships provide a jumping off point for additional stories involving our champions.
• Closer ties in the world. Many champions come off as totally focused on the League. We want you to have a good sense of what champions do when they are not fighting in the League.
• To help ground champions further, many champions who were previously summoned from afar will now have closer ties to Valoran.
• More champion free will. We're shying away from champions being imprisoned, bound, or unable to shape their own destiny. For example, we’d like bound champions like Cho'Gath and Brand to have more freedom. This is pretty scary, but it also is a great potential source of compelling stories."

Rounding out the news, we have a new champion and skin sale. This sale's selections include Amumu ( 292 RP ) , Varus ( 487 RP ), and Irelia ( 487 RP ), as well as  Galactic Nasus, ( 260 RP ), Scarlet Hammer Poppy ( 487 RP ), and Coral Reef Malphite ( 487 RP ). These prices are good between July 31st and August 3rd, so act quickly!


PHEW! Lots of cool stuff today.