Red Post Collection: Update on Rengar Rework, Fiddlesticks & Terrify Changes, CertainlyT on "Riot Only Nerfs", Xypherous itemization discussion, and more!

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"Then why not just remove it, along with all of the other useless items? Leaving it in seems to be..pointless. "

I'm not sure about that - it has high points in both co-op vs. AI / aram and other alternative low stress modes.

Additionally, the reason that working on it is a larger task is basically you have to carefully consider the functionality of the class because alternate playstyles can cause sweeping side effects if done poorly.

There are other, more important concerns about AD carries at the moment (such as their targets, their feeling of scaling and their feelings of powerless versus their actual effect on the game) - tasks that offer alternative fantasies can't really be a main concern. We've been fighting back super tanks for a little while and the complete burst-patterns in lane to figure out how to get defensive supports and peels back into the game and until that's in a healthy spot working on side itemization for carries is analogous to painting a room while the foundations are in trouble.

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"ADC'S builds nowadays are ALWAYS the same. You need BT for sustain. You need infinity edge for the crit increased damage. You need LW because of tanks. 

There is room to change your bath build. 

Some games i can play YOLO darius. Some games i have to play tank/cdr Darius. 

But as adc? is always the same thing. "

You are absolutely right that you're locked into a lot of items on an ADC.

However, a balanced hurricane won't fix that. An overpowered one will because it'll create a different issue. 

The issues regarding AD carry itemization are deeper and need to be tackled first before you work on something like Hurricane. It's a hard statement to make - but it's true."

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"And what's wrong with just nerfing Annie Thresh and Leona until you figure out how to fix it? You have a bunch of champions that you consider 'toxic' to the game if they're strong, so what's wrong with a few more?"

Annie / Thresh and Leona are a lot of things but I'm not sure toxic is one of them.
The game is functioning fine with them in the game and in many respects it's a faster and more action-packed game for people who enjoy that kind of thing. The support role has never made more of an impact that those characters at the moment. 

However, what we're seeing is a stagnation of defensive picks and a complete lack of defenders for the carry. It's not toxic - it's just cramping out the environment. Toxicity results in a game where if X is strong, no one has fun. Their current status is simply causing some staleness (which we're trying to address with shield/edge and working on other stuff). 

Stale itemization for ADCs is certainly a problem but carry frustrations right now are much much more than a lack of variety in items and the gauge on it currently at the moment is that those problems are much more dire than stale itemization. 

From the top of my head, ADCs suffer right now because peelers aren't being played or have the incentives to be played and the current crop of ADCs are lane bullies that control the lane. Those two issues seem to be first and second on the Carry issues over 'stale' itemization.

Still, you should keep beating me up about it. It's definitely a weak point at the moment."

"While I'm not saying BoM is tuned perfectly right at the moment - let me respond to a couple of notes. This won't alleviate all your concerns - because adding real meaningful tradeoffs is always going to be a sour pill to take but... 

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"All of the other boots gain a very large bonus in combat, while the Mobility Boots gain nothing. This is in my opinion a fair trade. You gain the ability to put down more map pressure but lose fighting potential, especially in teamfight."

Boots of Mobility actually has one of the largest bonuses to combat hidden on the item.
--> Bonus XP and Gold generation. 

True, it was conditional - but no other boot option basically gives you the possibility of being +1 Level in a fight. It's incredibly hidden power and very hard to evaluate but for a roaming pattern getting to partake of assist xp/gold bonuses translates to a huge amount of effectiveness.
It's the main reason why if you can take Boots of Mobility and work with it - you should.

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"How can I viably expect to gank someone if I have T1 boots and they have T2? That's what they are btw, in combat they become T1 boots. It's ridiculous to try and use them on a melee Character and expect to be able to do anything."

You're right - you will have a much much harder time ganking someone in lane, without flanking someone, if they have Tier 2 boots. The questions here are: When will they have Tier 2 boots? Can you beat them to increased mobility? 

Afterwards, can you flank them and take more optimal gank routes? Can your team set up kills for you if you do? 

A contributing portion of this is that most melee at T1 boots match or are innately faster than most ranged at T2 boots - to say nothing of characters with intrinsic MS boosts coming out of the jungle.

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"As a jungler this kind of irritates me, because the concept of Mobility Boots is ideal for the role, but you're basically just forcefully refusing to let me buy them."

An item that is ideal for the role without any meaningful tradeoffs isn't really an item that you want because you get to the same kind of restriction - you are forced to buy them to be effective - the exact problem you're talking about, only for the other extreme. 

Boots of Mobility, throughout it's lifetime, has always fallen in and out of favor as 'only boot option viable for junglers.'"

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"So basically you're saying your inability to actually provide meaningful alternatives to good items forced you to gut an item again." 

If we've truly gutted an item - we'll obviously make adjustments for it. That said, most people will view any kind of tradeoff as 'gutting the item' because item build theory tends to look at ideal optimal conditions rather than how the game flows."

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"Also just want to point out you say that the hidden benefit of Boots 5 is +1 level in fights. Well, if you're taking off 25 movespeed for 5 seconds after a jungle camp I can guarantee that isn't happening any longer." 

Right - and if the effects of that are dramatic, the next follow-up step is to make the mobility portion of the item break on threshold damage break or champion damage break. 

Internal testing suggested that we didn't really need them as the gold decrease in cost actually made boots of mobility a pretty big pacing change that allowed for a lot more gank opportunities - but if we're wrong and the inability to farm neutral monsters makes it hard to actually do anything meaningful mid-game - more steps need to follow.

However, the tricky part here with this change is that it simply will never look good on paper because it's always going to be a nerf to a theoretical maximum build - so we'll have to rely on usage patterns / feedback and observation at large."

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"You keep talking about "trade offs".
Please explain what are the trade offs for Tabis, Merc Treads, or Swiftness?"

So, the easiest one is that you are only allowed one boot choice, so every boot choice locks you out of every other boot choice and it's horribly gold inefficient to do so. 

Merc Treads are pretty inefficient at what they do from a cost perspective. Since their tenacity is freely available to everyone - the cost of tenacity on that item is far greater than many of the other sources (See: Ancient Golem or Masteries.)

Swiftness boots are incredibly niche as the passive and base don't actually work at full efficiency a lot of the time. Udyr with Swiftness sounds like a good concept until you realize that Udyr either always hits diminishing returns with his MS boots *or* benefits from the slow reduction, never both. 

You've totally got me on Tabi though - those boots are pretty powerful at the moment compared to their actual cost."

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"I like that Xyph uses the cost versus massive efficient items."

Right - this is the fundamental disconnect of analysis between in-game flow and theoretical best.
Cost is mostly a function of in-game flow. How am I doing? Am I doing well? Are other people doing well? 

Efficiency is a function of maximizing a hypothetical amount of resources. If I have X gold, what should I spend it on? If I have a full build, what would I prefer? 

The different modes here are generally why people view early scale scaling nerfs as 'fine' as long as late game scaling is untouched - even if early game scaling is typically far more impactful.

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"The trade off value for boots as a starting item is pretty much gone now. From the videos, it seemed like it used to be a decision to take boots to lane or items that grant stats, as the movement speed difference is huge. Right now, only certain characters or people who want to dodge skillshots (a little) better would want to start with it - not a lot of people, to be honest."

For that specific point - it actually wasn't a decision by the time we made that change. You had to start boots because the pace of the game simply didn't work at 300 base MS. 

Every start for every character was boots / 3 potions and the game simply wasn't fun at all with 300 base MS - so we retuned base MS across the board to better fit the dimensions of the game in terms of lane width/size/shot speed/etc. 

Boots 1 being a feasible starting option simply adds +1 to starting options at the cost of the game speed feeling dramatically off and the tradeoffs for that don't seem to be favorable."

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"Mobo boots are hit harder early game, and they're almost not worth the buy for junglers that would want them. They push the jungler norm to those WITH dashes/jumps, which is unfortunately further homogenizing the traits champs need to have in the jungle." 

Gap closers usually act as powerful initiation mechanics - in the context of an early gank. Boots of Mobility serves as an additional +1 gap closer if used correctly so that you can re-engage. 

It's a difficult thing to work through - mostly because what people expect a jungler to have and do has ballooned incredibly to a set of statistics which is, at best, unfeasible and, at worst, incredibly damaging to the overall game. 

There are so many categories that you need to be a good jungler: Clear, Roam, Gank, Farm, Late Utility, Scaling, etc. and people have expected to be powerful in nearly all categories to be "playable" and thus whatever is deemed 'good' in the jungle has to be completely without drawbacks. 

The real question to me is what value does variety have - if every junglers output looks the same? If there's no difference in the expectations of what your jungler can and can't do - then essentially you just pick the one with the highest power level in the end. It's a tricky thing to wrap my head around. 

That said, that's not incredibly relevant to the BoM discussion - it's just a hard question with all the jungle stuff that's been changing.

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"Xypherous, there's another aspect to the BoM nerf. Balance completely aside, it feels horrendous to pay gold to *lose* stats. 

Please never, ever, nerf an item like this again. If you must nerf, please remove positive stats, don't add negative ones."

You don't lose stats upgrading the item. You just don't get any more additional base movement speed."

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"If you wanted to nerf mobility boots why not just reduce the out of combat move speed by 20? 

Why not just increase the time it takes to get the movement speed back? 

Why not make it ramp up slower like MF's passive. "

All of these fights the item's core purpose - to get around the map faster. When you go around this approach of nerfing - you minimize short term pain because no one has to adjust but eventually you simply strip out the reason for the item's existence.

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"See, I actually agree with this. The problem I have is that they add drawbacks to champs/items/whatevers that are already kinda weak, but not the ones that are dominating." 

In all fairness Boots of Mobility have never been 'kinda weak.' :P"

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"On the topic of boots, are boots meant to be a "mandatory item"? 

Almost everyone gets them in almost every game. Is this a design decision to speed up the pace of the game, or would you in the future consider nerfing boots to make room for other build options? "

I would love for certain classes to have a boots alternative late late late late late late game (but not everyone.) 

Zephyr, for example, turned into this - and at this point it's really hard for me to argue with the fact that Zephyr should probably just build out of Berzerker's Greaves and give flat MS.
Okay, maybe just carries."

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"My concern is that if I want to play a non-traditional jungler that doesn't have a great gap closer (like Darius), if I get hit by a minion on the way to a gank, or if I want to try and catch someone after I get hit, it's a lot harder to do my role properly. I am being hyperbolic to a degree, but I think it hurts lesser-picked junglers, or junglers with mediocre gap-closing ability more."

The minion on the way to gank part is fairly rare for straight running - mostly because minions can't actually aggro you unless you've triggered a call for help. Since calls for help are exclusively generated by inflicting damage - you've already engage in combat. 

This does come up in the deep flanking case a lot though, which is the only realistic option for non-gap closing champions which means the minion breaking speed part hurts this paradigm quite a bit.

Hrm.. I still need a lot more data on use cases/rates and analysis from higher level in the scene as to the pacing changes with the gold adjustments but that suggests that the next logical step if it proves too weak is to have it only break on champion damage (which also cleans up the support/ward case nicely.) 

I can already hear the Miss Fortune posts as I write this though."

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Wellllllllllllllllllll...
In all seriousness though, why hasn't something like that been considered as a way to help MF out in the current meta?

I don't speak on champion balance but I'm actually fairly certain that if this happened to MF - she wouldn't be able to keep her trade potential or strut's current power level. 

Strut is way swingy due to the high amount of potential power in it and so removing restrictions without hitting either her or the effect creates much larger consequences. 

It's a small change with huge effect - but you assume it'll get her up to par but I'm pretty sure it'll overshoot quite drastically and then, what then do you adjust back?

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"Is this the same calculus behind Fiora and other champs with blatantly lacking kits being practically ignored for the entirety of their non-competitive lives?"

Here's the thing about Fiora - the people playing her, even at gold or above - do fairly well with her in most settings. They win more games than they lose. While there are long standing issues with Fiora in terms of what people want her to be - she's actually performing really well for the players that use her. 

Yes, that sounds like a slap in the face - but a lot of it is due to the fact that her optimal playstyle is more of an assassin and less like a melee carry.

So people who want to play crazy fencer girl with super multi-strike can do so - it's just not well aligned with people who simply want to be right-click and sustained focused."

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"I realize their kits need help, but why do they not get priority over someone like skarner or Xerath who aren't nearly as bad, and are more popular?" 

You are absolutely right in calling us out on that and you should keep calling us out on stuff like that. That is an admitted failing in our process right now where we keep toxic characters weak and lag too long on reworking them to a healthy state. 

It doesn't excuse us for taking this long and you guys are right in holding us accountable to it - so make a fuss about things we're doing wrong. 

We have characters that we deem impossible to buff because we think they'd damage the game as a whole when they're good - but the urgency has been lost in reworking them simply because it's been so long.

You're right about Sion/Urgot and you should call us out on it more."

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"While on this topic, is there any chance of a list of champions you'd deem to be in this state? Poor GP for example has been wanting some changes for the longest time but whenever he's "good" he becomes completely toxic due to his point and click ranged harass/slow."

GP, Poppy, Talon, Yorick are the ones that spring off the top of my head."