Surrender at 20

Red Post Collection: Nemesis Draft available through Feb 23rd, Zilean 5.4 Changes, LoL themed Valentines, and more

[UPDATE: Nemesis Draft is now LIVE! Details added to post!]

Tonight's red post collection includes details on the launch of Nemesis Draft, 20thCenturyFaux with info on the tentative 5.4 Zilean changes currently testing on the PBE, Gypsylord commenting on Jinx's weapon names, a set of community created League of Legends themed Valentines, higher resolution versions of the Lunar Revel splash arts, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents


Nemesis Draft live Through February 23rd

Nemesis Draft, our latest featured game mode is live and will be available through February 23rd!
Here's Fizznchips with more details and a handy Q&A on Nemesis Draft!
"We’ve just cranked open the Featured Game Mode workshop and rolled out the team’s latest creation! This time, you’re picking your ENEMIES’ champions before making the most of the champs and comps they pick out for you. Here are the main points:
  • You pick out your enemy team.
  • The champions you pick for your enemies will comprise your team’s combined champion pool.
  • Battle Boosts are back!
Here are some details presented in handy Q&A form! Yay!
So Riot, I pick the champin the other team uses? I can give them champs like... Urgot?
Yep, and they can reply with Poppy! But champ select is only a tiny part of a game of League - the rest is all about kicking butt on Summoner’s Rift!
Oh. Yeah that makes sense.
Mmhmm. So once you’ve figured out who on your team’s playing who, you’ll need to figure out how exactly you’ll win your game. Maybe you’ve got Blitz, Thresh, Janna, Nami, and Poppy. Sweet - stick Thresh and Blitz together for those ludicrous end of days lantern grabs, set Poppy loose in the jungle, and try out Nami top and Janna mid? Or whatever - it doesn’t matter. The point is you’ll have a bunch of tools to use together, and it’s down to you to figure out if you can chisel out a masterpiece with what you’re given, or just derp around the Rift until your Nexus goes boom.
So can I counter… counter pick…?

Yep! Maybe you’ll be Nemesis Drafting away, and discover that you’re being given some pocket siege comp by accident. Instead of just giving your enemies champs that you just think are weak, why not deliberately give ‘em characters who clear waves slower than a manaless level 1 Swain? Again, it’s up to you.
Huh. How does champion select work?
Excellent question - couldn’t have worded it better myself. In Nemesis Draft, everyone picks a champion for the opposing team, and each team gives their opponents champions from their team’s combined champion pool. For example, if you’re blue side, and only Dave on your team has Nidalee, anyone on your team can give any of the red team guys the crazy cat lady, even if none of them own her. Does that make sense? I think that makes sense.
Okay, but what about dodgers? DO YOU HAVE A PLAN HERE, MR. RIOT?!
Of course! Wouldn’t have added this question into an FAQ if we didn’t, duh. Queue dodgers and game leavers might play (or er, start to play) Nemesis Draft, too, so to make sure those of you who legitimately want to play the mode get to actually do so, we’re dialling up the queue dodge and game leaver penalties. Check out this post for details on how our detection system, cunningly named LeaverBuster, works! Spoilers: it can detect if you just disconnected because your ISP hates you, which is nice. 
We also wanted to reward the summoners who play the mode properly, so we’ll be sending out a fancy summoner icon to all Nemesis Draft players who play the mode without quitting during champion select or the actual game!
ASUMMONERICONERMAHGERD.
I know right?! Oh, and speaking of which, it won’t actually hit your account until up to two weeks after Nemesis Draft closes shop. Something something manually applied something takes time something patience. 
Anything else we should know?

YEP. We’re locking Battle Boosts into Nemesis Draft! Stick 125 RP down and you’ll find yourself 200 IP richer while your teammates get 100 IP for basically being in your team, and ALL of you’ll unlock access to all the currently available skins for the champion they select are given! Enemy team gives you Veigar? HIT THEM BACK WITH FINAL BOSS VEIGAR AND CACKLE YOUR WAY TO VICTORY. That’ll learn ‘em. 
Okay. Cool. So when does this mode end?
We’ll wrap Nemesis Draft up on February 23, meaning you’ll have plenty of time to find your way around a whole bunch of new champs and comps!"
Check out the Riot Games Support FAQ for Nemesis Draft for more info!


Zilean 5.4 Changes

Here's 20thCenturyFaux with details on the tentative 5.4 changes for Zilean that were recently put up on the PBE for testing!
"It is time.

Ever since his passive went to local from global, Zilean has struggled to succeed on the rift. His kit was such that no new power could be added safely--his R often full heals, his Q does so much damage that it needs sharp mana-gating to prevent Zilean from winning lane automatically, buffing his passive or W would be a de facto Q buff, and his E already permanently slows or hastes things. By the nature of his spells, and specifically the Q's targetting paradigm, it was impossible for us to responsibly add power to Zilean though he sorely needed it. Having all of his damage come from directly targetted effects leaves insufficient room for play from him or his opponent, and tends to result in a relatively flat outcome.

Through careful balancing of cosmic forces, Zilean has unraveled this riddle by pulling a single thread: converting his targetted Time Bomb into a lobbed sticky bomb. Time Bomb is now tossed to its destination, attaches to the first unit to come near it (prioritizing champions), and persists even if it hits the ground. By adding in a way for enemies to play against his Time Bomb, Zilean can safely channel more temporal power. Much more.

Attaching two Time Bombs to the same unit detonates the first early, just like on live--only now that detonation stuns enemies in the radius of the Time Bomb, making it the largest non-ultimate stun in the game. His Time Bombs have more range and cost less mana, though they do slightly less damage. By remaining active on the ground, Zilean can create large zones of control around the map, using them to block passages, scout brushes, or stack two bombs on the same place to instantly stun enemies who attempt to move through while dealing massive AE damage--brutally effective area denial. He can also put a pair of bombs on an allied champion to stun all enemies around them.

Time Warp is supercharged, recieving greatly reduced mana cost and cooldown. It has slightly reduced effectiveness at rank 1, and its cast range has been brought in line with most ADC autoattacks to keep it from negating the skill component of Q--he can use his Time Warp to guarantee a stun, but he has to put himself at risk to do it. Time warp also now scales in effectiveness by rank instead of in duration, eventually reaching 99% haste/slow at rank 5. This sharply improves the responsiveness and effectivenss of Time Warp lategame.

Next, Zilean's Chronoshift has been decoupled from his Rewind, going to 120/90/60 from 180/180/180 but no longer being reduced by Rewind. This change is important for his new balancability--previously, we had no way to adjust Chronoshift's cooldown lategame without changing it early game or altering Rewind at large. The change should be neutral-to-positive for Zileans until rank 5 Rewind and max CDR, at which point it's a slight nerf. You still can't killean the Zilean--the idea here is to take Chronoshift out of being twice-a-fight lategame now that it no longer has to be such a gigantic portion of his power budget.

Zilean's autoattack timing has long been one of the worst in the game, but with his practice tossing bombs his throwing arm has gotten quite a workout--he should find last-hitting much easier now. He also had the same attack range as Ashe/Varus mainly by virtue of being one of our oldest champions (har har); that kind of power costs too much for how little it helps, so his range has been brought in line with most ADCs (550 from 600).

Lastly, power looks good. His particle effects and spell icons have been updated to reflect this. Zilean's got swag."
When asked about the prioritization for Zilean's new Q, 20thCenturyFaux commented:
"Currently bombs stun for 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5, and the priority is: anything with a bomb > enemy champ > ally champ > enemy creep > ally creep"
He also noted that while it may not be like this on the PBE at the moment, his bombs will still draw turret aggro while ticking down:
"Nope! It's meant to work like it does on live, I'll be fixing it soon"

When asked about previously mentioned plans to flesh out Zilean's "Time Mage" theme, Velocity explained:
"This was more of a change to bring him into line with other supports, rather than a full rework."
Check out our coverage of the 2/10 PBE update for more information!

Jinx's Weapon's Names

In a reddit thread claiming that Riot had removed the names of Jinx's two guns - Fishbones and Pow-Pow - from her tooltips, Gypsylord stepped in to explain they were never in the tooltips but the buff icons with the names were removed a while back and that stinks!
"So the Q tooltip has always been like that. What is missing is that she used to have buff icons with the name of the gun she was currently using.

Since those are gone (we rolled them into the Q icons) you're right that there is no longer a way to find the name of her guns after you've loaded into the game (The ability summary in champ select has always named them but you don't really look at that all that often). I agree that Jinx is about more than "rocket launcher and minigun." Wonder how big of a clarity hit it would be to add the names to the TT...

No promises but I'll at least take a look and shop the idea around.

PS - did you know Jinx's shock pistol also has a name? She goes by Zapper."

Zz'Rot Portal Discussion

When asked about her thoughts on Zz'Rot Portal and the balance of it's unique stragedy, Riot Reinboom commented:
"Well, I don't plan on nerfing it.

The balance of Zz'Rot Portal and the perception of the balance of Zz'Rot Portal is tricky. I actually think the item could use some buffs (in the realms of AI fixes).

Zz'Rot Portal is an item of constrained opportunity (which I believe is a good thing, or at least worth the risk of it). The strategies it opens are very different and the opportunity for those strategies is very limited. (1) There's a strong risk of "What do I do now?" when playing against it because of that difference. (2)

Zz'Rot also represents very clearly the idea of "Win More". I don't think it's actually any better at this than another heavy item investment, you're getting substantial power over your opponent either way, just that Zz'Rot is very very visible (it creates a structure that you can see) and thus it's easy to blame. 
The other aspect of this is that the opportunities that normally constrain Zz'Rot are, of course, increased for a winning team.

First, I don't think "Win More" is that big of a deal (in this case) and the perception may go away (or I may learn different and it might be a problem. Too early to tell). 
Beyond that though, I would like to speak on the points I numbered for as far as balancing the item goes.

1: This is where I think a few polishing AI fixes could go a long way (as a buff!). Things such as "Rescan for a new direction to spawn after a turret goes down" or "When I place near top lane inhibitor, I expect it to go towards top lane inhibitor" (it's lane detection is a little wonky) will make opportunities for it more clear.

2: This is where most of the nerfs (overall probably) came from last patch. There was a sentiment of not being able to address it for certain team comps. This type of sentiment actually squashes out fringe compositions, since there is a feeling of "We can't run this comp because of this item restriction". Sometimes this is good (Ignite's existence provides a base line to pushing out sustain stacking comps) and sometimes this is bad.

After 5.2 though, I actually think Zz'Rot has a pretty healthy amount of 2 while needing more of 1. Basically, personally, I believe it might need a slight fix up buff."

5.3 Bugs & Concerns

With patch 5.3 now out on live, we numerous bug reports going out and several Rioters commenting on them and other concerns regarding the latest patch.

In response to concern that Fiddlesticks' Drain range was actually reduced more than 50, Gypsylord commented that the dependency between the notes and the previously listed range was due to an issue with earlier documentation:
"It was 700 and has been for a long time. I checked in the script before putting in the nerfs. Those patch notes from way back when were wrong. They should have read: "Increased tether range from 650 to 700.""

KateyKhaos also confirmed that the increased size of default (not skinned) wards is also a bug.
"Unfortunately, the base wards in patch 5.3. were accidentally scaled up in size. This is a bug. Ward skins should not be affected, and should still be at their normal size."

The service status page also mentions that Panda Teemo is currently disabled due to an in-game bug and that they are working on a fix. According to reddit, the skin is missing it's explosion vfx and sounds.

When asked how a bug causing with Thresh's W indicator not showing it up made it to live despite being reported on the PBE boards, Riscx noted:
"Not sure how this was missed; we have a team that reviews all PBE posts. I'll be following up on this today to find out why we didn't get this fixed based on your report. Pretty disappointing."
In response to claims Riot does not actively view the PBE boards,  Riscx continued:
"A known gap is that the team reviewing doesn't have the training to do forum interaction. We're looking to level up the PBE experience overall in 2015, and the feedback loop is part of it. 
I would argue the point about reported bugs flying past PBE - it may seem that way when highly visible issues like this end up shipping, but we do tracking around discovery location of bugs on Live and the vast majority of PBE reported bugs are indeed fixed. 
The other thing that may skew the perception is that sometimes we find highly visible bugs that aren't worth derailing the entire patch for - such as the ward size bug currently in 5.3. It is a better player experience to have bigger wards that look weird, rather than delay the players from receiving a patch for a day or two with all the other game improvements included."

Send your teammates League Valentines!

Riot Jynx is back with another batch of community creations, this time including League of Legends themed valentines from community artist Oskar "raspbearyart" Vega!
"Let’s show appreciation for our teammates this Valentine’s Day with these heartfelt cards created in collaboration with community artist Oskar Vega.
MID: You carry us

JUNGLE: You give 5 star service

ADC: You make us look good!

SUPPORT: We'll never forget you

TOP: Thanks for holding it down

Already have the perfect words? Use these blank versions to create custom Valentines of your own. But don’t forget to share your poems and creations in the comments below!
Check out more from raspbearyart over on Twitter and Deviantart!

Higher Resolution Lunar Revel Art

While the Lunar Revel promo page already includes several resolutions of the new Lunar Revel skins splash art, Riot Baconhawk swooped on to reddit to drop off even higher resolution versions!

Don't forget to check out our Lunar Revel 2015 page for skin previews and more!
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