1/20 PBE Update: League System, Splash Arts, and Steel Legion Garen

In a surprising twist, the PBE has been updated on an otherwise calm Sunday evening!

Continue reading for the low down on all of the new PBE changes, including a new Garen skin, splash arts for the upcoming Lunar Revel skins, the new League system, fancy new medal animations, and more!

( Warning: PBE content is highly tentative and subject to change! Some of this information may have been datamined and could likely be erroneous. )

New Skins
 A futuristic new Garen skin has been added to the game. This goes along nicely with the previously previewed ( and still incomplete ) Steel Legion Lux.

Steel Legion Garen

( Note : There is no model yet )

New Splashes
Five beautiful splash arts have been added to the game, one for each of the previously revealed Lunar Revel skins.

Panda Annie

Jade Fang Cassiopeia

Dragonwing Corki

Warring Kingdoms Jarvan IV

Warring Kingdoms Xin Zhao

New Ranked League System
The new League system has been enabled for testing on the PBE and the standard "ranked" tab has been replaced with a new "Leagues" tab.

When you are not qualified for a League ( I.E haven't played 5 games as team or 10 games of Solo queue ) your League tab shows up as this.

When you smack the "View Challenger Tier" button, it brings you to a page displaying the top teams / players in the Challenger tier, the most prestigious of all the tiers.

There is also a built in FAQ!

It is important to note there are still bugs to iron out but here is what it looks like if you go to a players profile and click their "League" tab. I don't have any ranked games played on the PBE, but I can only assume this is what your own League tab would look like.

Notice it tells you the players top champions, how many matches to progress in a division / series, and the navigation options that let you move through the various divisions and ladders.

For those who may be afraid it's missing, when you click the "See More Stats" button it takes you to the classic ranked stats page we all know and love.

Confused on what is going on? I suggest you head over and read Riot's announcement on the new ranked League system.

New Medal Animations
Accompanying the new League system is a batch of fancy animations that play when you A) complete your placement matches and enter a tier or B) Move up a tier ( bronze to silver, diamond to challenger, etc ).



Balance Changes
There were a lot of balance changed slipped into the  air client this patch... BUT there has been not ac been an update to the game client, meaning nothing you can play with has been changed. In light of this, I'm going to forgo posting them until that game client update happens. I choose to do this because there isn't really a good way to verify the air vs game changes without both patches and they are often times different than each other. Some of the changes were quite radical ( heavy Shaco nerfs, new items, new build patch for Sightstone, etc ) so I'm going to wait to pull the trigger to avoid any confusion.

However, here is a brief and tentative SUMMARY of the biggest changes

• New item called "Plate of the Warmage" that has armor, AP, and gives bonus AP/Armor every time you kill a unit. It also builds into Zhonya's Hourglass.
• Sightstone builds out of a Ruby Crystal ( which makes it more expensive ) and gives more base health.
• Shaco's passive slow removed from E and decieve range nerfed. ( See Statikk's response here )
• Various nerfs for Katarina, Nunu, Ezreal, and Blitzcrank

Again, those are tentative and not live on the PBE game client atm. Treat them as a sneak peek.

Need to catch up on the previous patches in this PBE cycle?

• 1/16 PBE Update: Annie Visual Update + Four Lunar Revel skins
• 1/17 PBE Update: New Lunar Revel stuff and Annie VO 
• 1/18 PBE Update: Panda Annie