Red Post Collection: Context on Splash Art updates, Azir bug fixes in 4.18, no texture rebalances in 4.19, and more!

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Full List of Azir Bugfixes Coming in 4.18

Patch 4.18 is on the wave to live and with it comes a  healthy clutch of Azir bug fixes!
Here's ZenonTheStoic with a comprehensive list of the Azir bugs that are being squashed:

"Greetings, friends of Shurima!

Azir has been out for a few weeks now and players are still struggling to fully access his power. Partly this is due to strongly undertuned base stats (a problem we're looking to fix with conservative buffs in 4.18), but to a much greater degree the problem is that Azir released with a lot more bugs than we'd normally see on a new champion. We would like to apologize for that--we bit off more than we could chew with a champion of Azir's complexity delivered on a pretty strict deadline (the Shurima event, which of course we didn't want to overlap too much with Worlds). We made the call that a somewhat buggy Azir delivered now would still be better than a much less buggy Azir delivered potentially much later.

Just how buggy was Azir on release? Glad you asked. Here is the list of confirmed bug fixes for 4.18:

PASSIVE: 

• Fixed a bug where two opposing Azirs could click the same turret ruins and create two Sun Discs on top of each other
• Fixed a bug where the clicker to raise the Sun Disc was visible to other players
• Reduced the clickable size of Sun Disc clickers by 20% to avoid accidental clicks
• Added a missing string for spectator mode only in color-blind mode for when a blue-side Sun Disc self destructs.
• FIXED IN THE FUTURE: The Sun Disc doesn't ramp up like a proper turret (fixed in 4.19)
• KNOWN BUT NOT FIXED YET: Attack moving onto a Sun Disc clicker will activate the clicker. This is a bug in the underlying attack move code. The same is true for attack moving onto a Thresh lantern, for instance. We will fix this eventually, but have no ETA yet. Probably not 4.19. Sorry!

Q: 

• Fixed a bug where moving inactive soldiers into activation range with Conquering Sands would fail to activate their auto attacks properly, leading to 0 damage attacks
• Fixed a bug where soldiers would fail to go through walls
• Fixed a bug where the targeting indicators for Conquering Sands were not constrained to the cast range of the spell
• Fixed a bug where damaging units at the very end of a soldier's movement would fail to apply damage from Azir, leading to failed buff transfers, missing damage attribution in death recap, and buggy interactions with spell on-hit effects such a Rylaj's Crystal Scepter
• Fixed a bug where damaging units at the very end of a soldier's movement would ignore spell shields

W: 

• Fixed a bug where dancing would break your soldiers auto attacks
• Fixed a bug where multiple soldiers attacking multiple targets would often lead to soldiers incorrectly applying reduced damage to targets that were only hit by one soldier. This one's a pretty big buff fix.
• FIXED IN THE FUTURE: Soldiers only last 6 seconds on the Crystal Scar until you put a second point into W (when they go to 9s as intended) (consider putting a point into W at level 4 for the time being)

E: 

• Fixed a bug where E would sometimes take Azir to the wrong soldier
• Fixed a bug with E not firing when there's only one soldier in the world regardless of where the player's mouse cursor is
• Changed Shifting Sand's behavior when used to go to a soldier currently in transit from Conquering Sands--the soldier now takes Azir along on a magical journey. This is also a pretty noticeable buff.
• Fixed a bug where queueing an E spell cast right after pressing W wouldn't work. Feel free to W+E away now! (Or try W+Q+E for an even cooler combo)
• KNOWN BUT NOT YET FIXED: Azir can leave the platform on the Crystal Scar by using W+Q+E. Hoping to fix for 4.19.

R: 

• Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would bounce targets multiple times
• Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would sometimes cause a target to be pinned against a wall for the full duration
• Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would fail to fully bounce targets to the far side of the wall
• Fixed a bug where enemies were able to cross Emperor's Divide by spamming a low cooldown move block such as Ahri's Spirit Rush or Rengar's leap from brush
• Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would fail to stop channel abilities
• Fixed a bug where targets knocked into the air by Emperor's Divide were able to cast or attack while airborn
• Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would sometimes ignore spell shields and still knock enemies back
• Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would break spell shields and still knock enemies back
• Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would deal its damage multiple times
• Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would play multiple instances of its hit effect against minions, leading to FPS loss for slower machines
• Added a second targetting indicator to Emperor's Divide that communicates that soldiers move forward into position rather than just spawning as a wall
• Fixed a bug where Emperor's Divide would move the Greater Relic on the Crystal Scar
• FIXED IN THE NEAR FUTURE: Fixed a bug where Azir's Emperor's Divide would give Azir kill credit (gold+xp) for invisible minions used as placeholders in many spells (Jayce gate / Lux R / Karthus W being the most noticeable) Will be fixed in a hotfix soon (before 4.19) 

Bugs we need help with: 

• There are constant reports (and I've certainly seen this myself) of people summoning a soldier, immediately order the soldier to attack, and the attack failing. We cannot reproduce this in isolation though, so there must be something we're missing. If you have any further info here (or a video! A video would be great) please let us know.

When asked why Azir was not disabled due to this multitude of bugs, ZenonTheStoic replied:

"Does the bug severely impact games? Does it give the champion enough power to ruin / take over games, does it stop other people from enjoying their champion?

I would argue that none of those were true."

ZenonTheStoic also commented on why Azir's soldiers don't have a bar timer to indicator

"We tried this in a bunch of different ways (depleting health bar like wards, circular timer like Yasuo E target indicator) and found that players don't ACTUALLY want this. You seem to think you do, but the information you're looking for is "will this soldier time out in the near future?" Information noise is a real thing and players were actually harder pressed to make decisions around soldiers with this excessive bit of information, so we stripped it out and decided to give the "about to time out" notice instead. You're picking up on that one, right?"

As for if there will be a change to the announcer when one of Azir's turrets dies vs a normal turret, ZenonTheStoic noted:

"We do want to do this, but didn't have the time to dig into the announcement system for this patch (announcements are hard coded; we'll need to change this code to know the difference between a regular tower and an Azir tower. We'll get to it eventually!)"

No Texture Rebalances in 4.19

For those on the look out, Ququroon has confirmed there will be no texture rebalances in patch 4.19 but we will see more in the future.

"As a heads up, there will be no Texture Rebalances in the 4.19 patch due to logistic reasons. Expect many of them in 4.20. #LeagueOfLegends"

This follows over 40 rebalances in patch 4.17 and 20 in 4.18.

New Sound & Music Board

Riot Eno has posted up an introduction for the new, official Sound & Music board!

"Hey gang! 

Welcome to the League of Legends Sound & Music board! This is the place to discuss all things audio in Runeterra. 

Music, voice-over, and sound FX are all fair game here, and we want to hear your thoughts. 

Not only do we want this space to serve as a hub for great feedback, we'd love to grow this into a fun place for all of us to share in the discussion of audio in all of its forms. 

Welcome!"

Patch 4.18 Volume Sliders

Speaking  of the new Sound and Music board, here's Riot N0TAR breaking it in with some information on the new volume sliders included in patch 4.18:

"Hey all! 

I wanted to bring into attention a new feature that the audio team has been working on, with hopes that players everywhere get the most use out of it. With Patch 4.18, comes greater power over your League of Legends mix. If you navigate to "Sound" in the "Options" menu, you'll find that a "Pings" and "Ambience" slider has been added to the options menu as well. Bumpin! 

The pings slider will control ping volume yes, but what about Ambience? As of now, all of the environment sound such as wind, birds, fire, etc, will be controlled by the Ambience slider, along with any other sounds that are not considered gameplay impactful. For example, the water mills on Dominion. While these help immerse us within the game world, hearing that sound offers zero gameplay feedback. It may be considered a "Hard" effect", but in no way does it help you kill the wild Teemo. 

On the flip side, we have the alters and health pack on the Twisted Treeline, which are extremely important. Their sounds have been kept in the SFX bus in order to provide that sonic feedback to the player. When you stand near a health pack, you will hear it's aura. When an alter opens, the whispering souls will be calling. As players, these are the things we listen for, and are considered gameplay impactful. 

Finally, the options menu for sound now has SEVEN meaty, wholesome sliders fighting for space in a small window. This can be intimidating at first glance. In the future, I'd love to grab some artists and deck this menu out. Get a golden decorative dragon surrounding the master slider, organize it in an easy to read way, etc. For now however, we hope that these new sliders will help you find audio clarity in game, and improve your League of Legends experience. 

Riot N0TAR"