Red Post Collection:More on Viktor Gameplay Update , Dino Gnar & Gnar Community Creations, and much, much more!

[ I've included the full post here rather than just the update.  ]

But at the end of the day, it is not a really interesting spell. Especially if you don't augment it.

The weirdest part of Viktor's Q is that it is the shortest of his spells by a large margin. By the time you are using Q, your other spells are presumably on cooldown.
So what are you getting the shield and speed boost for? "To run away" is a valid answer I guess, but having a spell that only works in a specific situation (and not being particularly powerful) is not ideal.

In lane you autoattack after you get the shield for marginal benefit, in teamfights they are worth even less. Well?

(If you love the effects as much as I do please give a shoutout to the talented Riot Kesyerito! Yeah I know his naming skills are kinda suspect but the man knows his particles) 

The initial Q will have higher range, but the benefits will be focused on the utility than the damage. As for the damage part? See the above image 

Wait you want me to buy Lich Bane  on him? 

It's a good thing the Hex Core has ridiculous amounts of AP no? 

Oh btw, the Q augment is currently the same. It's the only one that has carried over atm."

When pressed for more information on his Q hints and if there will be any QoL ( quality of life ) changes to Viktor's laser or auto attacks, Solcrushed replied:

"Quote

Can you elaborate on his Q? Is it an auto attack reset/modifier? It looks like there are two sets of damage numbers there. 

Also any word on laser/auto attack QoL changes?

Looking into the laser still, the issue is that the function of allowing you to target your laser outside the range and having you walk up there is still a valuable asset for the feel of the character. Planning to try some shady stuff (which we internally call cheating) to see if I can hit a point I like. 

As to the question about the Q its a secret."

As for if we will see Viktor's gameplay update on the PBE soon, Solcrushed commented:

"Hmm i don't forsee this being on the PBE this month at least, still lots of work to do"

Dino Gnar will eat you up!

As Gnar is out rampaging about on live, Riot has published a stand alone preview for DINO GNAR, the "king of the dinosaurs, destroyer of Demaglia, scourge of the sandbox"!

"Dino Gnar, king of the dinosaurs, destroyer of Demaglia, scourge of the sandbox! He’s cute. He’s cuddly. He’s in a dinosaur onesie! Seriously, IT’S A DINOSAUR ONESIE. He’s green and purple with an adorable little tail. 

Just don’t steal his toys.

Overload on cuteness with Dino Gnar, available now in the League of Legends store for 975 RP."

The preview also contains this image, which seems to be down by quite the imaginative young .. yordle?
Want to discover more on Gnar and Dino Gnar? Check out our earlier coverage for screen shots, preview videos, and more!

Gnar Community Creations Roundup

Speaking of Gnar, Riot Preeti has posted up a collection of the communities gnarliest fan arts and creations!

"The Rift’s gotten more terrifying and adorable ever since Gnar’s been on the loose, and we’re not sure whether to squeeze him in delight or run screaming in absolute horror. To celebrate the arrival of both forms of the prehistoric Yordle, you guys have created some of the cutest (and most ferocious) art, comics, cosplay, and crafts we’ve seen since the ice ages! 

While you’re checking out these mega awesome Gnar creations, click on the artists’ names below to see more of their amazing work.

Illisia Cosplay

Wolfspirit Creations

Fireflufferz

Gnar_ML

o0dzaka0o

秋貓

Joseph Zavaletta

Skyen

Mynx

Artsed

Hanjidile

totemhead

김유딩

N1PS

We know some of you are still perfecting your Gnar creations, so we’d love a heads up when you’re done. We’re checking comments throughout the weekend and will feature some of our favorites on our Summoner Showcase Tumblr!"

Vesh on Soraka's skin color

When asked if her upcoming gameplay update will also include any sort of changes for Soraka's model or textures, Vesh replied:

"Nothing for her model, but I personally want to see her skin color shifted more towards the purple tones of the splash art instead of the light blue that's currently there. Unsure how popular that would be though and it really depends on what our artists feel is the best. What do you guys think? Light blue like in game currently or more purple like the splash?"

Summoner Spells

In a thread discussing summoner spells and their relative power, Ghostcrawler replied with a few comments to stir the discussion:

"Would you remove or nerf Flash?" is a frequent question in our designer interviews.

Like many good interview questions, there isn't a right answer here. "Meaningful choices" is a design value, and you can make the argument that Flash existing means that choosing summoner spells is a less interesting choice than it could be (at least for certain roles).

You can also make the argument that Flash itself creates a ton of meaningful choices, mostly around when is the best time to blow it. Historically, this is where we have landed: that the positives mandatory Flash brings outweigh the negatives.

You could also take the trinket approach, and say that everyone should just get Flash for free *and* two spell choices on top of that. It probably bloats the UI a bit and does contribute to power creep in the game.

Clarity, Clairvoyance, and Revive are at the other end of the spectrum, and you can make the argument that we should just cut them or that we should buff them (somehow?) to make them competitive.

I'm posing all of these answers as theoreticals, because we don't have an immediate plan to do any of these, but they are all the sorts of changes that are on the table.

How to make champions interesting

Ghostcrawler also popped on the forums to answer a summoner's question about how you can make a champion interesting and not boring:

"We look a lot at depth. By depth we mean that the question of how best to use the champion, when to use a particular ability, what the outcome of a particular duel is going to be aren't intuitively obvious. Take tic-tac-toe. You probably played a few games as a kid and realized quickly that there was always a right answer for almost every opponent move.

There are a lot of ways champions can have depth. Here are just three:

1. Tactical depth. In this case you may know the right thing to do, but you may screw it up. Skill shots fall into this category, but so do things like Sona's new hugging and even Singed's Poison Trail.
2. Strategic depth. This has to do more with how you play the champion over the course of the game. Several of the hyper carries do a lot of reliable damage with their ranged attacks, so there may not be much tactical depth to an encounter with them, but you do change your strategy to try and keep them alive or even fed until the late game when they can really come into their own. (I'm not saying feeding hyper carries is the way we want every game to play out, but you do tend to play differently when you have them on your team, or at least that's the idea.)
3. Windows. This is the category of champs that are weak or strong at certain moments. Do you rush in when your enemy is weak? Do you blow evereything you have to get a kill knowing you'll be weak for the next several seconds until your cooldowns finish?

The champs we consider boring don't have to plan a lot, either short term or long term. Other players, either your team or the enemy, don't have to make different decisions based on your champion choice. If your answer to the question "Would I have done that thing I just did differently if the other guy had been playing a different champ?" is no, then we'd consider that champ to be boring. For awhile, we sort of naively thought that we could make a champion interesting by having a really good theme or good art or a good story. Those are all awesome to have, but the champ also has to approach a battle in an interesting way as well. (Designers love that word "interesting.") 

It's also possible to have a lot of depth, but still have abilities that are too similar to an existing champion. We'd call that boring too.

It's also possible to have a lot of interesting abilities, that don't really play well or complement each other. I don't know that I'd call that champ boring, but it's a missed opportunity for sure. 

Does that jive with your impressions?"

Master Tier Testing on the PBE

In case you missed it in our latest PBE coverage, here's Socrates with more information on the new MASTER TIER of ranked that is currently up for testing on the PBE!

"Hey all,

We take ranked competition seriously. At the end of last season, immunity in challenger tier caused issues with transparency around ranked standings. This season we’re making some improvements to address these issues in the form of a new ranked challenge we’re calling Master Tier. We’ll be turning off all non-ranked queues over the weekend on PBE to give it a test run.

Master Tier sits between Challenger and Diamond 1. Players in Master and Challenger will share the same LP scoring ladder, however the only time it’s possible to move between the two tiers is at a set time once every twenty-four hours. When the clock strikes zero, any player from Master Tier among the Top 200 players on the server by League Points will be promoted to Challenger. Any player from Challenger below this threshold will be relegated to Master.

While there’s no hard player limit to Master Tier, players will be demoted after they have played more than 3 games in the tier if they lose a game that puts them below 0 LP. Players in Diamond 1 will see much more predictable LP gains and losses following this change.

At the outset we won’t be seeding any players directly in Master Tier. Players who reach their promotion series at the top of Diamond 1 will enter Master Tier if they are successful. Players in Challenger will remain in their current position, but the competition kicks off right away so ambitious players will be fighting to achieve Master Tier and wrestle away Challenger spots even on the first day.

For inactivity, we’ve slightly loosened the rules in Challenger so instead of instantly being demoted after becoming inactive, Challenger players will lose 250 LP for each day of inactivity after the 10th day. This will give high tier players a little more leeway in terms of inactivity while still maintaining the standard of being an active player for being showcased as one of the best competitors in the region.

Lastly, at the end of the season we’re going to be introducing differentiated season reward summoner icons for high-performing players in Challenger Tier. This is to better recognize the difference in accomplishments of achieving the top 10, 50 or 200 spots in solo queue as well as the top 3, 15 and 50 spots in team queues.

We’re excited to see who will rise as the season heads towards the finish line. Good luck on the Fields of Justice!

Riot Socrates"

He continued:

"You'll have to play to earn master, although the thresholds are very low atm for entry on PBE."

[ Continued ] Summoner's Rift Update Discussion

When asked if the Rioters working on the Summoner's Rift update are strictly working on that or are also doing other things, Riot JxE commented:

"Quote

I'm just curious about the people working on the Summoner's Rift VU. Obviously you have artists, programmers, etc. working on this, but are they also doing other things? Or are they all tasked with working only on the VU until it is finished. And if the VU is their only project, where will the be working afterward?

"It really depends on the position. For instance we had a programmer who was helping us improve our performance on the VU team, but after he dug into it he realized there's a lot of stuff outside of Summoner's Rift that could be causing issues, so he became part of a broader performance that's geared towards improving performance across the game. 

In my case, My expertise is specifically focused on environments, I could go over to the champions team, but I wouldn't be as effective or passionate about it as someone else. So you have to take someone's specialties into account when deciding where to put them. If someone is awesome at making worlds/maps you don't want to move them over to champions, you want them to keep doing what they're awesome at. 

Where we're going afterwards remains to be seen, soon tm :)"

 JxE continued, answering a question regarding the bushes on the new SR:

"Quote:

please tell me you also fixed the visuals of the bushes. I am so tired of visually placing a ward in a bush but the geometry or what all doesn't give vision in the bush. Like the ward is covered by grass but "technically" it's not in there

This is something we're definitely looking at. We're not happy with the clarity of bushes right now, so we're experimenting with different solutions to make it easier to see what's going on. If you guys have any suggestions toss them in here!"