Red Post Collection: 5.8 Patch not this week, Context on Jinx PBE R nerf, Champion Mastery still in works, & more

This morning's red post collection includes Meddler confirming the 5.8 patch will not be coming to live this week, Gypsylord getting excited with a context post on the tentative Jinx R nerfs on the PBE, 20thCenturyFaux and ZenonTheStoic discussing concept of a "slow motion field" ability, and much more
Continue reading for more information!

• Red Post Collection: PBE updates starting back up, New Riot Games HQ in LA, & more
• Arclight Vayne now available!

• 4/21 PBE Update: BM Zilean Update, New Quick Cast with Indicator keybind options, tentative Graves and Jinx changes, and more

Table of Contents

• Patch 5.8 not going to live this week
• Champion Mastery still in the works
• Context on Recent PBE nerfs to Jinx R
• Slow Motion Fields
• Lyte on "Suggested Bans" concept
• More Taunts in the Future?
• Upcoming Riot Cosplay Round-ups

Patch 5.8 is not this week

With the recent PBE break and Riot's recent office move, a few folks have been inquiring whether or not the next live patch will be longer than our typical 2 week PBE to live cycle or not.

Meddler commented on the boards to confirm that 5.8 will not be releasing to live this week, saying:

"Not this week, 5.7 -> 5.8's going to be longer than the usual 2 week cycle."

As always, feel free to check out our current PBE cycle coverage for a tentative a look at what is on the way in 5.8 patch, including new skins, Ryze's rework, texture rebalances, and more!

Champion Mastery System still in the works

Since it's live beta started on the Brazilian server in patch 5.6, Riot has been pretty quiet on the progress of the upcoming Champion Mastery system.

When asked about its status on the boards,  Meddler simply commented that it is still in the works:

"Quote

What happened to the cool champion mastery thing where you Gained points for playing your favorite champion? When does is come out? Will it come out?

It's still being worked out - it's not ready for a proper release just yet."

For more information on the upcoming system, check out Riot Support's guide to Champion Mastery!

Context on Recent PBE nerfs to Jinx R

Following the tentative Jinx R nerfs hitting the PBE earlier today, Gypsylord popped on the boards to fire off a super mega context rocket explaining the nerfs and the rationale behind them:

"Okay got response typed up again. 

So as Jinx's designer I asked to head up the nerfs coming out for her this patch. Let's talk about them and Jinxy in general. 

First full info on the nerfs: 

The min damage on the R is being cut. The max damage is staying the same. Additionally, the execute damage is not being touched. SMD rocket will ALWAYS deal 25/30/35% of the target's missing health regardless of range. 

Below are the rough damage estimates based on ranges Jinxs should be familiar with: 

NUMBERS AND CHANGES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE (or not). ALL THIS IS STILL IN TESTING 

Point blank: 125/175/225(+.5) >>> 25/35/45 (+.1) 

Minigun range: 175/245/315 (+.7) >>> 110/155/200(+.45) 

Level 9 Rocket range: 185/260/335 (+.75) >>> 135/190/245(+.55) 

Shock Pistol range (max): unchanged - 250/350/450(+1.0) 

TLDR summary of the below wall of text: 

We like Jinx being strong for a variety of reasons but she may be TOO strong at the moment. Jinx's snowballing and hyper-carry potential is intended to be strong and we like it where it is so this change is targeted at amping up her main weakness (gets wrekt if jumped on). IF THIS CHANGE GOES TOO FAR WE'LL FOLLOW UP ON IT. THE GOAL HERE IS A SLIGHT TONING DOWN OF JINX'S POWER. 

Generally we like Jinx being a strong champ in League of Legends. Even when winning she has a lot of inbuilt counterplay which makes losing to her feel a lot less demoralizing. Thanks to her general immobility combined with the delayed and conditional nature of her spells players tend to come out of games against Jinx with gameplans on how they're going to beat her next time. 

Going off of this, it is likely that Jinx "at balance" sits at above a 50% winrate. This partially stems from the nature of her power profile. Jinx is highly snowbally, especially in AoE focused teamfights, and is one of the best characters in the game at taking objectives after killing off the enemy team. This is going to contribute to a higher number of wins in solo queue where the "group and push" strategy is so prevalent (Jinx loves grouping and pushing!). People group, teamfights happen, Jinx AoE's things, and 1 kill tends to lead to 1-4 more + towers and dragons. 

Additionally, it's worth mentioning Jinx's dedicated player base. If you run into a Jinx player on live that person is going to have 31 games on her on average, That's up there with other "I main dis guy forever" champs like Yasuo, Lee Sin, and Riven. For comparison, Graves has a similar play rate to Jinx (they're neck and neck for most picked ADC), and yet the average Graves player only has 16 games on him. This isn't meant to be a knock on Graves but more a highlight on the fact that many of the Jinx's you run into out there have played her A LOT and as such you'd expect a higher win rate out of her due to player experience. 

So I've gone over why we're okay with Jinx being strong so in that case why are we nerfing her? Well the thing is there's strong and then there's I AM THE GOD OF SOLO QUEUE strong. Jinx is trending towards the latter and has only been getting better each patch. She's got one of the highest winrates in the game at 55% across all elos and that combined with her insane playrate is cause for alarm. We felt some light tuning would be appropriate to level the playing field vs. other ADC's so we looked across her kit and asked ourselves "is there anything Jinx is doing right now that maybe she shouldn't be?"
So as her designer I've always felt that Jinx is defined by the following strength and weakness 

A) Jinx is a snowball: If you let Jinx get ahead and can't figure out how to get to her SHE WILL TAKE EVERYTHING YOU LOVE AND BURN IT TO THE GROUND.
B) Jinx has a hard time with people who invade her personal space. If you manage to jump on her when she's unprepared you should be rewarded accordingly. 

The strength is supported by things like Get Excited (the speed passive), the always-on AS/range+AoE steroids on Switcheroo (the Q), and Jinx's reach in general which progresses from 525 range - to 700 - to 1500 - to global. This power combination ensures that if Jinx has enough gold and manages to get a foothold of safety/advantage in a fight she WILL GET TO YOU, BLOW YOU UP, AND THEN TAKE YOUR TOWERS. 

This is good, it's character defining and it's what we'd like her to excel at. 

The weakness is supported by the ramp up on minigun, the cast/arm times on all her spells/ and the damage w/distance mechanic on the R. If you manage to close with an unprepared Jinx she's going to have a hard time dealing with you. Her spells leave her vulnerable, her AS needs to ramp for full DPS, chompers take a while to arm, and ideally she can't just Graves ult you for a burst of power unless you're incredibly low on health. 

^^^^^that last thing is where we found a possible problem. Jinx was winning a number of engagements off the sheer burst power of her ultimate, even at pointblank range. This to me is out of line with her strength/weakness profile. 

In summary: 

Jinx is a hyper carry who can kill every single member of your team from extreme ranges if left alone but if you jump on her she should be at a severe disadvantage. Nerfing the pointblank ultimate makes the weakness more true and allows us to preserve her strengths in light of extreme power in solo queue."

He continued:

"Effectively what is being changed is the Base Damage + Ratio multiplier over distance. 

On live they increase by 2X over 1 second of travel 

This change increases that multiplier to 10X."

When asked about his personal thoughts on if this will change Jinx's playstyle, he noted:

"So yeah I've tested the changes and I'm pretty confident that this will not massively affect Jinx's playstyle. You're mainly going to feel it against people in melee range of you (and that's the point) but in the average lane duel at 525 + range it should still be a potent execute. In the early game you're likely going to need one more basic attack than before to secure those closer range kills. 

I'm also willing to admit that we're not omniscient and this change may affect her in ways we didn't anticipate. We'll follow up on it if that's the case."

Slow Motion Fields

In response to a player's concept for a "Time Warp" type ability that creates a field and slows projectiles down that pass through it (click here for a video demo), 20thCenturyFaux jumped in to share this experiences with trying out a similar sort of ability while working on the Zilean rework from earlier this year:

"This idea is really cool! We tested a few things like this on Zilean, and yeah, the script to get them to work was nightmarish xD. It ended up being really visually awesome but having some weird catch-22s on the gameplay.

If the ability renders the projectiles harmless, it serves essentially the same function as Wind Wall in a fight, but if the bullets are still meaningfully threatening the ability's function is degraded. What's more, the awesome part of slow-moving bullets is dodging in and among them, where Zilean generally doesn't want to be. If you put the zone around him to make him go in there to body-block the projectiles, he suddenly has Braum overlap (plus it feels weird).

I think the raw awesome of getting to see spells moving in super slow motion will keep drawing us back to try this kind of thing on different characters. There's probably patterns where it will work--for example there's space open where the spell is primarily selfish and focused on general time supremacy rather than specifically blocking missiles for allies.

At any rate, super cool idea!"

"Ironically, we prototyped and tested a version of "Suggested Bans" for the Team Builder Draft system and found mixed results.

We brought players to Riot HQ, had them sign NDAs and go through a few prototype Champion Selects with other players and go through 4 different banning designs. A few surprising findings we noticed were:

1) Players often did want to suggest bans to their Captains. 

2) However, Captains generally already know who they want to ban and did not follow the suggestions.

Players generally liked the idea of the feature, but it could create more conflict because when a Captain declines your "suggestion," it was now much more formal."

"Quote

The only ones we've got right now who can taunt as a CC are Shen, Rammus, Galio. I honestly think there needs to be more taunting going on, but it seems like Riot dislikes the CC as a whole because of how it tends to have counterplay issues or forces the victim into a "kill yourself" scenario. 

Is there any hope of Taunters in the future, or has the Champion Design team labelled it off-limits?

I expect we'll make more Taunt using champions at some point. It's a type of effect with some pretty specific gameplay, so as with other specialized CCs we'll probably only ever use it occasionally, in part to ensure those champions with it remain distinctive."