Red Post Collection: Zilean Comments, Final round of Jinx feedback, Why Patch times vary, fun stuff for "One for All" mode, and more!

This late night ( or early morning depending where you are from! ) red post collection features Meddler with a few comments on Zilean and a few previously mentioned, upcoming kit reworks, a final round of Jinx feedback before her release, an explanation of why some servers patch at different times than others, a few comments on some fun stuff brewing for "One for All" mode, and a behind the scenes look at the rigging for Jinx's animated login screen!
Continue reading for more information!

Meddler on Zilean & Status of other kit reworks

It's been a while but Meddler has popped up with a few comments on Zilean and if we'll ever see changes for the Chronokeeper:

"Fair question, Zilean's a champ we've been pretty quiet about. He is someone we'd like to do some design side work on at some point for a couple of reaosns. First off is that he's got a really cool concept (time mage), which his kit doesn't explore as much as it could. Bonus XP on the passive's kind of useful, and kind of thematic for example, it's not all that exciting or engaging though so we'd like to explore things like that to see what more we could be doing to really dig into his theme/background. Secondly he's also got some gameplay issues it would be nice to address (no rank up damage scaling beyond level 9 for example makes his power curve tough to balance in a satisfying way for example).

When we'll get a chance to take a crack at his gameplay however's a harder question to answer. He's a bit under-appreciated, has a few issues, isn't living up to his full potential etc, but he's certainly not at all comparable to other contenders for design time like Poppy, Sion or Yorick who are higher priorities for us. Not certain what his timeline's like for visual improvements, at a guess the answer's probably pretty similar in that he's not in a Sivir or Yi like state, so would be nice to do some work on but not a contender for a major upgrade in the short/medium term." 

Regarding the other reworks:

"At the moment we're really focused on Season 4 related work, so major reworks are on hold, unless they're already pretty far along (like Xerath for example). Poppy, Sion and Yorick are all really major reworks that are in their extremely early stages, so are a long way off."

Final Round of Jinx Feedback

With her release right around the corner, gypsylord has posted his final comments on the Jinx feedback thread:

"With Jinx's impending release am going to be unsticking this thread. Thanks so much for all the stellar feedback. Have read it all and will use it to inform design decisions going forward in case we have to buff or nerf her. 

Apologies for not being able to get in here and directly respond to you guys. Last few weeks have been rather hectic. I'm thinking of running an AMA on the forums after she ships out in order to better respond to some of your design comments and questions. Would come in here first and write up a few answers for the initial post based off of what has already been said. 

Some clarifications on the ultimate: 

-R fully charges its damage after it travels 1500 units (the range of W). This takes a little less than a second.

-R deals 80% of its effect to all enemies in the AoE and calculates the damage on an individual basis. Say you hit a Caitlyn with R at max range and it splashes to the Thresh behind her. Caitlyn will take 450 (+1.0) damage + 35% of her missing health. Thresh will take 360 (+.8) damage +28% of his missing health."

More fun Brewing for One for All Mode

BuffMePlz, a features designer, commented on the future "One for All" mode, noting a bunch of cool stuff he's been fixing up since the mode was accidentally made available earlier this week.

"Yeah we've fixed a lot of the issues you guys have seen. We've been pretty intentional about trying to create ways so that you can play off of your allies' abilities - in these cases, you will be able to proc plants off of allies' seeds (properly consuming them, haha) and casting Time Bomb on a unit already carrying a Time Bomb placed by a different Zilean will cause the first one to detonate.

Other cool things include having Brand's Blaze effects proc off allied Brands' spell casts, allied Katarinas being able to detonate allied Bouncing Blade marks, and Jarvan IV being able to pull himself to allied flags."

Speaking of "One for All" or the 5v5 dupe mode, Riot Feithen commented that the Jinx hotfix will disable the mode until it's official release:

"This does disable the 5x5 dupe mode because it's incredibly buggy and not quite ready for the public yet. It can actually lead to service problems, which are bad for everybody. It'll be back as a legit mode that everybody can play ASAP!"

On varying Patch Times

As some of you may have noticed, the Oceania servers patched the Jinx hotfix much earlier than the rest of the pack and have been able to play with Jinx for a few hours before everyone else's maintence even began.

Here's Riot Nautral20 with a bit of information on how the patching process works and why OCE was patched so much earlier than the rest:

"Hey all, 

My team runs the deploys to all servers so I thought I'd give you some insight to our process. 

We schedule the release to happen in each region at the low usage time for the server, so we disrupt the fewest number of players. That is around 2am-3am local time for most regions. NA will go offline so we can update the server around 3am PDT time tonight (3am Thursday). Then NA will have Jinx!

-Riot Natural20"

When asked why the hotfix is listed as taking five hours, he noted:

"Hotfixes take a varying length of time depending on the number of systems being touched. It should be significantly less than 5 hours though."

Jinx Login Screen Rigging

Over on twitter, LiQuiDStRiPeS shared a cool behind the scenes look at the rigging for the Jinx login screen.

"Heres a little behind the scenes for Jinx's Login Screen. The rig for animation: http://youtu.be/-bXtXtmRwdE "