Recent News
Doran's Shield Nerfs coming to PBE
Here's Xypherous with a heads up on some nerfs to Doran's Shield that will be hitting the PBE soon."Just a quick note because this will hit PBE soon (Monday) and will probably require some decent scrutiny / input. I also wanted to provide a quick heads up to head off the storm of conjecture these kinds of things usually do.
Testing some fairly severe Doran's Shield nerfs - going kind of ham on the initial testing numbers to try to quickly find the point where it makes or breaks things.
Doran's Shield is warping the bottom lane matchups and pick structure right now fairly significantly. The relative power of the item has also dramatically increased due to the mastery / vision / support changes and so the item is just better in every respect this season compared to last.
What this means is that certain harass based characters are basically in a weird twilight state where they get stomped heavily and also have to pick up shield in order not to get counter bursted by the same ones using Doran's Shield.
Doran's Shield
100 Health --> 80 Health
10 HP/5 --> 5 HP/5
8 Block --> Unchanged
The idea behind hitting just the Health / HP/5 is to enable magic-based harassment still effective while also keeping Doran's Shield strong against ranged attacks (I.E. I am fighting Caitlyn and Lulu and I hate my life.)
We like the item's niche - but at the moment it's just too generically good against a wide array of matchups at the moment and shuts down both counterburst and harassment strategies a little too hard.
I suspect that the HP/5 nerf is a bit much and we'll have to reassess the strength of some mid-laners who rely on the item. As for 'Why do this now?' kind of issues - We're in the middle of some tier 0.5 item cleanup and Doran's Shield also kind of warps all of those issues, making tier 0.5 items kind of dance around the fact that they'll never compete."
Continued discussion on the Relaunch team
Following up on the discussion from yesterday, IronStylus returned to the forums to discuss the relaunch team!In addition to some champion specific questions ( which you can find below ), he also commented on just how big the relaunch team is:
"I don't know all of our dudes' summoner names but we basically have:
1 full time concept artist, myself and then usually 1-2 concept artists "guest starring" because they're fans of the champion and want to vision hold.
1 full time 3D guy, Grumpy Monkey, and he works with about 2-3 other 3D and texture artists.
3 full time animators at the moment, with other animators from the Champion team popping into supplement.
Rigging assets are shared across the teams so any technical artist is on any task at a given time, regardless of team. Dudes like JesterCapp and such.
1 VFX artist, RiotDudeBro, with help from another VFX artist who comes back and forth.
1 dedicated QA guy, Ququroon.
1 dedicated creative designer/writer, RiotEntropy, who will sync with the Creative team at large.
1 dedicated splash artist who reps for the splash team at large.
Other people float in and out depending on needs of departments.
The Champion team is much larger and functions differently. So yeah, we're actually a tiny team, and we not only handle the new base and all the conceptual/thematic/gameplay overhaul, but also the production tasks of the skins. It's a fair amount of work and we're pretty much just a single pod/strike team. I'm extremely pleased to work with all these guys because they're the most professional and talented people I know. It's a lean machine, and the group has an amazing dynamic. I'm very much looking forward to what we have in store for this year."
IronStylus also replied to several comments asking about specific champions, how much of a priority they are for the art team, and more.
When asked again about Warwick's visual fate, he commented:
"As I said, Warwick recently came up in conversation and he does look painfully out of date. Personally i think because he's pretty straight forward he might be an "easy win", but no idea when he'd be slated for."On the topic of Evelynn, IronStylus noted that she won't get another skin until after she gets visual update:
"She certainly won't get another skin until she gets a VU, but my hope is that we get her in sometime this year. It can take a while when we have such an ill-defined champion which needs a lot of thematic overhaul or reinforcing. That process tends to take more time than actual production often does. Right now she's a whole pile of confusion, that has to get solved. We have a few people, including myself, doing concepts, but we haven't broken ground on what she is and the thematic direction we want to take."When asked if there were any plans for Blitzcrank, he replied:
"An artist was working on a model for him in his spare time just for fun off of a concept I did for style guide exploration a while back. One of the reasons I took him on was because he's iconic. He's not prioritized yet but I'd like to get him in there. He's a really great playground."As for Taric, IronStylus commented:
"Taric is a high priority, because man.. is he outdated.. but the idea of him being "low-risk" is completely not the case. He's been challenging to conceptually lock down."
When asked about a Cho'Gath visual upgrade, he replied:
"I know some internal fans of Cho are doing concept passes, but he's currently not anywhere on our map for this year. Not sure where he stands in the overall priority buckets but he certainly needs to be re-explored from a visual side."
Tournament Rules Beta
Riot martlet, a community programs designer, has posted up information on the new tournament rules beta, a rulebook aimed at helping organizers and players with their own community tournaments."Hi everyone,
I wanted to drop by and announce that we're kicking off our new tournament rules beta test starting right now!
Why beta test a rulebook? Well, we want this to be a living document that grows and evolves along with the community. This first version is the starting point, and we'll keep iterating as often as we need to.
We want the tournament rules to be a great resource that organizers and players can use to have a consistently great event experience. We've packed this doc with tons of information and guidelines, but in order for this to work best for players and organizers, we need to know if we're missing anything or leaving out crucial info.
If anything is confusing or impossible to understand this is your chance to help clarify and ask the questions you need the answers to. The info in this doc is designed to help you and improve event experiences, so if it's not working for you, let us know.
Check out the new rules here, and get started with our prized events over here. I'll be answering questions in the forums, but I wanted to address a few right here.
Why only English?
Eventually we'll release tournament rules in all of our supported languages. For now, we're still heavily iterating on the doc, and before opening a wider feedback loop, we want to focus on improving this first version.
Is this supposed to be for LCS or Challenger Series play?
Nope. While this was produced with guidance from the rules gurus on the esports team, the LCS and Challenger Series have their own rulebook that focuses on the highest level of competitive play. These tournament rules are a resource for community organizers that anyone can choose to use to help ensure a great experience for every level of competition.
Is this required for Riot-sanctioned tournaments?
Not at this time. While we're developing this program, we want to provide guidelines, helpful hints, tips and general advice for running awesome events, not require organizers to use one set of rules. Visit our prized events page to learn more about what we expect from Riot-sanctioned events."
What is the environment team working on?
RiotForScience popped up in a thread, replying to an summoner demanding to know what the team is working on if Magma Chamber was truly scrapped."I am pretty nervous about wading into this particular thread, but I would love to take a moment to clarify what I said. Most of our departments are specialized. For example I am a world-builder. If Riot really wanted to make more champions (even though I am an artist) I would not be much of an asset to that initiative because I am specialized in my expertise. On the other hand the Champion team is free to rearrange it's priorities in order to do more VU's because the same skills are used for both initiatives. But we will not be able to create new maps or improve our tech by stopping or slowing the production of champions. (Speaking strictly from an Art standpoint)
Concerning what the Environment team is working on, it is still too early to say; but I am really excited about it. Sorry it took me so long to notice this thread. I mostly hang out on the Art and Audio feedback forum. If you ever want to reach me in a timely manner you will have better luck over there."
Team Builder back to PBE on Feb 3rd & Feb 4th from 1:00 to 5:00 PM PST!
As it has the last few weeks, Team Builder is coming back to the PBE next Monday, Feb 3rd and Tuesday, Feb 4th from 1 PM to 5 PM PST! Check this thread for more info, including what will be in the new build!
Speaking of Team Builder, Lyte also commented
Speaking of Team Builder, Lyte also commented
"The team is focused on just Team Builder right now, and we're trying to see if we can do some Live Betas on some servers with the current features. Come join us on PBE if you have an account, we're currently there every Monday and Tuesday and are actively playing Team Builder games with players and collecting feedback in-game and on the PBE forums."
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