Red Post Collection: Skarner Choices, Irelia Visual Updates a while off, Diana Concept Art, and more!

This morning's red post collection features Riot Scruffy asking if players would prefer a vastly stronger E slow on Skarner or a slow that can be extended in time by Q / Auto attacks, Meddler explaining how "negative armor" works,  IronStylus mentioning that updates to Irelia's visuals are "probably a while off", a look at the original concept for Diana's ult, and more!
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Skarner Rework Follow Through: Stronger E Slow or E Slow Extended with Q/AA?

Even though Riot Scruffy recently posted a tentative list of Skarner changes he wanted to push to the PBE, he returned to the Skarner Rework Follow Through thread to offer players a choice based on their feedback of the rework:

"I see a bunch of posts about a mechanic where a Q or auto could extend the E slow. This is actually pretty reasonable and is something that we could do. Realistically if we added this mechanic, we would not be able to buff the slow amount as much. In this case, as a Skarner player, which would you rather have? 

-A stronger E slow like proposed with same 2.5s duration
or

-A (less than first option) stronger E slow that can be extended for additional time with Q or auto attack damage

I'm glad that we are having some good suggestions on ways to improve the kit and both of these mechanics could work out well."

How does Negative Armor Work?

Meddler popped into a forum thread to share how negative armor ( achieved through flat pen reduction abilities, such as Corki's E ) works:

"You'll deal extra physical damage to targets with negative Armor. True damage by contrast can't be increased. As a result if you're playing with powerful enough reduction effects (as opposed to penetration) you'll gain more damage output from physical/magic damage potentially than true."

Irelia Visual Changes are "probably a while off"

Over on reddit, IronStylus mentioned that if Irelia was to get a visual update, it was likely she'd be in for a gameplay overhaul first.

"Not sure this'll get seen, but right now Irelia is in such a place where she's gunna need gameplay overhaul before we make her a visual update priority. That's just my hunch. We're getting to a point on Relaunch where we'd like to consolidate gameplay changes and visual changes in order to keep things nice and tidy. I actually do have a concept of Irelia hanging around that I did.. but it's probably going to be pretty far off from being used anytime soon."

He continued:

"Honestly it's not my area of expertise, I'm just talking very broadly about how we think we're going to go forward with this stuff. All subject to change of course. From what I've seen though, I think Design wants to play with her kit before we do much work on her model or other visual elements. I'm not sure what constitutes number tweaks or reworks in terms of mechanical changes, I'll leave that up to design to decide on the level of intensity, I'm just speaking from a holistic standpoint about how visual changes are probably a while off."

As for the concept he mentioned:

"Unfortunately I can't show it. It's pretty much a higher fidelity version of her current, which takes visual influences of what I supposed Ionia had as defined by the new Karma design and Yasuo. If Karma is a sage/politician, and Yasuo is a rouge, what would someone in the Ionian military look like? I basically went with that gut feeling. 

Hopefully someday it'll see the light of day ;)"

Working to add more Run Animations

In response to a thread asking if there are any plans to add another run animation to Karma ( for example, a hastened animation when she is above a certain movement speed ), nickstravaganza, an associate animator, commented:

"Thanks for bringing this up. We've been giving attention to various characters' runs, so this seems like a good thing to focus on. I may even take this on myself, runs are always fun :)"

For an example of some of the attention he commented about, look no further than the new Pantheon animations included in 4.2.

Diana's original VFX Mockup

IronStylus also shared a little peek into Diana's concept phase, mentioning one iteration of her pre-release ult was more like her current Moonfall ability :

"Funny thing, and I'm not sure there's ANY validity to this being a thing, but initially what turned into Moonfall (at least from a VFX standpoint, not really mechanically) was originally her ult, however it was supposed to be a channeled AOE which darkened the surrounding area where a projection of crescent moon would turn into a full moon if channeled fully. Upon the completion of the moon projection Diana would shatter the area for a boat load of true damage dumping an accumulated resource we had on her at the time called "scorn". It was interesting, but holy shit was it toxic and nearly impossible to counter. 

Here's our original VFX mockups!"

He continued, elaborating on the Scorn mechanic:

"Scorn was difficult to manage. Volty, the designer working on her, has a thing for resource management and some really intellectual kits. I think there was a problem that it was simply too much to manage. At one point, there was a "wax/wane" state where her skillshot went in different arcs. It was interesting, but again, difficult to manage. 

We tend to do that. Sometimes there's a lot we pile onto a champion at first and we pare that down."

Cosmetic Toggles

Replying to a thread from a summoner who has a dislike for some of the various headgear in the game, IronStylus mentioned that he'd personally like to see the more use of the tech that allows Neon Vi's glasses swap on or off when you taunt.

"Currently we have the ability to do this as you see in Vi's Neon Strike skin. If you use her taunt, her glasses come down. It's something I'd like to implement on a champion or skin someday, but with a helmet. 

Right now I'm pretty sure we can use the same function for a number of things."