1/20 PBE Update: New Shield VFX for BT/Vanguard, Infernal Alistar Q vfx return, and more!

[IMPORTANT: Pwyff has confirmed today's "Alistar's W is a skill shot" change as being experimental and accidentally pushed to the PBE.]

A small update has been pushed to the PBE! We have new shield visual effects for The Bloodthirster and the tower ability Vanguard, the return of Infernal Alistar's Q vfx, & tentative balance changes for Akali and Zed!

Continue reading for more information!

(Warning: PBE Content is tentative and iterative - what you see may not reflect what eventually gets pushed to live servers! Manage your expectations accordingly. )

Vanguard & Blood Thirster Shield VFX

The turret ability Vanguard (the shield inner towers buff nearby champions with) has new VFX!

The Bloodthirster's shield has also been updated

Infernal Alistar - Fiery Q

After it's unintended removal in patch 5.1's Alistar champion update, Infernal Alistar once again has a fiery orange particle for Pulverize (Q)!

Miscellaneous 

Rod of Ages now displays its current stacks on its inventory icon

Balance Changes

* Remember *: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, and sometimes radical changes. The changes you see below may be lacking context or other accompanying changes that didn't make it in - don't freak out! These are not official notes.

Champions

Alistar

• [Unintended] Headbutt (W) is now a "skill shot" and can be aimed freely (think Vi Q) instead of needing to click target a unit. Pwyff has confirmed this is  as an EXPERIMENTAL CHANGE that UNINTENTIONALLY was pushed to the PBE.

• [Context: From Pwyff - 

• [1] "RE: Alistar's "Headbutt is a skillshot" on the PBE. 'Twas an accident with a random experiment. PBE'S FOR FUN RIGHT? http://www.reddit.com/r/league...."

• [2] "Talked to the designer - this was an issue with a random experiment that accidentally shipped and didn't get reverted before the PBE push. Is not intended and will not ship currently (actually it should be super broken, given how it's coded)."]

• [Context: From Certainly T - 

•  [1] "Tested a version of Headbutt where it was a skillshot that could only be cast in a cone directionally toward an enemy unit for giggles since I had MLK day off. Accidentally submitted half of the change along with a bug fix to Kalista. <-- Irony. 

A lot of you have noted how slow and clunky the ability feels. Interestingly, this is how most abilities feel during our early testing when we lack proper art support. Part of the challenge of the job is imagining what the ability will feel like when our talented animators, particle artists and sound designers do their work."]

Akali

• Crescent Slash (E) no longer detonates Mark of Assassin (Q) 

• [Note: Tooltip has not been updated yet, in game it does not trigger through.]

• Shadow Dance (R) range reduced to 700 from 800 

Zed

• Attack Speed per level lowered to 2.1% per level from 3.1%

• Base Attack Speed lowered to 0.644 from .658.

• [Note: For those aware of how attack speed is calculated and "attack delay", this is going FROM -0.05 to -0.03]

Check out THIS PAGE for a comprehensive list of the new content in this PBE cycle or catch up with the individual update links below !

• [Comprehensive PBE Content List for the 5.2 Cycle]
• 1/13 PBE Update: Four New Skins, Tristana Champion Update, Several Texture rebalances, DFG removed from SR, and more
• 1/14 PBE Update: Sweetheart Annie, Tristana VO & Updated Previews, Mysterious WIP Splash, and more
• 1/15 PBE Update: Nemesis Draft Featured Game Mode, Firecracker Ward Skin, Swain Texture rebalance, and more
• 1/16 PBE Update: New Summoner Icons, Skin updates, and more