Red Post Collection: Bilgewater / SRU Music Toggle, Meddler on new Fighter Items, 2015 WC Finals tickets on July 29th

[Update: Added confirmation that Black Market Brawler's will be live in the next act of Bilgewater: Burning Tides & clarification from Meddler on the Fighter discussion.]

This afternoon's red post collection includes a heads up that you can now toggle between the Bilgewater and Updated Summoner's Rift music on SR, Meddler noting we'll tentatively see more fighter oriented items on the PBE soon, a look at the upcoming Black Market Brawlers show match, a reminder that 2015 World Championship Finals tickets go on sale July 29th, and more!
Continue reading for more information!




Table of Contents


July 28th Patch Update &  Bilgewater + Updated SRU music toggle

Here's Riot Stephiroth with a heads up that, on live, you can now toggle between the Bilgewater music and the updated SRU music via the options menu.
"Ahoy, Summoners! 
We have temporarily added the ability to toggle between Updated Summoner's Rift music and Bilgewater music on SRU.  
This option has temporarily replaced the ability to enable "Classic" music. 
Summoner's Rift Games will currently default to using "Updated" music, however you can switch it to Bilgewater music by navigating to the Sound section in the Options menu, and selecting the Theme Music as "Bilgewater". 
  • You may have some difficulty enabling the Bilgewater Theme to due a current bug with the HUD. To enable it easily, you will need to open the drop down, hover over it with your cursor, and use the Mouse Wheel (middle button/scroll button) to scroll down and select the Bilgewater option.
There are some bugs you may notice with the music currently. Notably: 
  • When switching from Bilgewater Music to Updated Music, the Updated Music may play over itself twice. This bug actually existed with the Classic music option too, but we did not uncover it until recently due to the low frequency of players switching between music. We are investigating a fix for that to be deployed in 5.15 :) This won't occur with the Bilgewater track, only with the Updated track.
  • You may notice the Victory/Defeat music is still Bilgewater music, even though you have set your option to Updated music. This should only occur at the End of Game Victory/Defeat banner.
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment!"
You can find this option under OPTIONS -> Sound at the bottom of the screen.

Likewise, the 5.14 Patch notes have been updated to reflect the small update that went out to add this:
"In-Game Music
SWAPPED - The Bilgewater music has been toggled OFF by default on Summoner's Rift. You can re-enable it via the "Theme Music" option under the "Sound" tab in the options menu.\ 
FIRST THING - Due to a display bug with the new HUD, you'll need to scroll down past "Updated" to see the "Bilgewater" option. Sorry! 
SECOND THING - This option is temporarily replacing the "Classic" music toggle"

Meddler on Fighter Itemization, New Fighter items testing soon

In a boards thread inquiring about the overlap of ADC and fighter itemization, Meddler noted that they'll be testing a few fighter oriented items on the PBE in (tentatively) a few weeks:
"We're on the same page when it comes to fighters and ADC item overlap, which makes it difficult to offer effects that are an appropriate fit for one class, but not the other. Removing ranged crit's not the solution we're trying out however, we feel that does add some important value to the ADC role. What we're looking into instead for fighters are items that:
  • Are a combination of offensive/defensive effects and therefore generally of noticeably lower appeal to ADCs who want to go full offense (e.g. the revised Black Cleaver which has a significant part of its budget spent on health, something fighters are fine with, but ADCs often aren't).
  • Offer additional rewards when combined with other defensive/partially defensive items (Atma's Impaler back in the day was an example of this sort of effect. It did have some other issues and so we felt we had to remove it, we believe there may be some variants on the concept that work better however).
  • Help melee champions engage in a fight, or stick to targets better once in a fight, in ways that aren't as consistently useful or accessible on ranged champions (Randuin's and Phage are good examples of this category) .
We're currently working on some items using the above approaches, which are intended in part to be good fits on heavy, immobile fighters like Garen, Darius, Udyr etc. More details to follow sometime pretty soon (patch 5.16 or 5.17 at a guess, so potentially hitting PBE 1-3 weeks from now, depending on how the rest of the work goes)."
When asked if Essence Reaver will be getting any changes here, he noted:
"Essence Reaver we'll look at when we work on ADC itemization."
[UPDATE] When asked about his comments of Udyr and Garen being heavy immobile fighters, Meddler elaborated:
"Yeah, that's the sort of distinction we've got in mind here, with heavy fighters being those without dashes/jumps/blinks. Fighters that have to fight, or at least walk past, the enemy front line, rather than diving onto their preferred targets. 
Also very much a soft distinction, rather than a black/white mobile/immobile thing, particularly in cases where a champion's strongest back line access is a longer CD ult (e.g. Shyvana)."
He continued:
"Lack of burst mobility's what we're looking at here, as opposed to sustained or strategic mobility."

He also added:
"We've got a lot of stuff being worked on for 5.16 or possibly 5.17. As a result 5.15 will be a somewhat smaller patch than usual."

Meddler on Zyra's Passive & "On Death" Passives

In response to a players idea of tweaking Zyra's passive to be a bit more interesting, Meddler noted:
"Quote:
I think Zyra's passive could be that if she manages kills an opponent with her passive she can either: 
a. Revert to a targetable flower bud stage and revive after a few seconds like Anivia egg; the health she regains is a fraction (maybe 1/6) of the damage dealt to all enemy champions killed from the passive 
b. Grow a targetable root to the location of the dead enemy champion and rebirth there the same way as stated from part 'a', if she kills multiple champions with the passive, the root grows to where to last enemy champion killed from her passive 
To prevent her from being immortal, the revival part of the passive only occurs every once in a while like how Zac/Aatrox has a cooldown timer for their passive, but her original passive still procs whenever she dies 
Sorry for posting this in the wrong category if I did
That's a really cool suggestion, and a change that would fit well with Zyra's playstyle and backstory. We'll do a bit of experimentation with that sort of approach, see if we can get a version that plays well in game without being excessively strong. Can't guarantee we'll end up shipping any changes, definitely worth investigating though."
He continued:
"Quote:
How often do you kill people with your passive
"I don't have any stats on average Zyra kills with passive per game, though must admit I'm curious now. Anecdotally I'm guessing somewhere around the one kill a game mark. That's not going to offer that many respawn opportunities, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Occasional high moments can create some really memorable games and a low rate of occurrence means that not too much of a champion's power budget needs to be spent on such an effect. High variance effects can be tough to balance at times, since a really good or lucky player can sometimes achieve extreme results we need to balance around. In this case though given the setup requires death and the reward would be lack of death that might not be too much of an issue however (again, can't promise this'll go anywhere yet of course)."
He continued:
"Yeah, there are a bunch of approaches that might fit here depending on the power that's appropriate and the gameplay desired. Main ones that leap to mind that we'll talk about internally being:
  • True respawn at point of kill, point of Zyra's death or back at the fountain
  • Temporary respawn at point of kill
  • Substantially reduced death timer per champion killed by the passive"

As for adding on death passives to champions, Meddler elaborated:
"We feel death passives can be the right choice in a couple of circumstances.
  1. High risk patterns that result in death frequently/where the best way to play is to expect to die in an even team fight. Post death passives here give you some chance for contribution regardless of how quickly you die and synergize well with the sort of actions you should be taking anyway (middle of enemy team or front of your own team). Sion and Karthus are the best examples here, with both often doing it right if they end up dead near the enemy team. Zyra's fits this category slightly, as a squishy, immobile mage with moderate cast ranges, whose contribution drops off significantly after she's used her CDs/seeds.
  2. When we want to offer a champion more power when they're having a poor game than a successful one. If a character's too feast or famine, absolutely crushing some games and failing to contribute anything in others, then a post death passive can be a good fit, since it offers more power to the struggling games. Kog'Maw's the best example of this, with the passive being non existent in games where he's stomping and a pretty reliable true damage AOE in games where he's having a lot of trouble. Zyra comes into this category pretty solidly. She's got a lot of damage between her plants and spells and regularly tops damage charts when having a reasonable game. She's pretty vulnerable though when her spells are on CD/against enemies with the right tools to avoid them, so if she's not having a good game she can end up dying a lot."

Chat with Morello on July 29th

Morello will be hitting the boards for a Q&A on July 29th!
"We’re back with Between Two Turrets, a new Q&A series from the NA Community team in which we’ll connect you with various Rioters to chat about League, life, and anything in between. You can expect an installment every couple weeks or so, with Rioters from all over jumping in to spend some time with you on the boards. 
This week, we’ve got game designer Ryan “Morello” Scott - come chat with him on the Boards July 29 starting at 1 PM PDT!"

Black Market Brawlers Show Match

[UPDATE] The LoL esports site has published an article on the upcoming show match and featured game mode, confirming that Black Market Brawlers will be live with the next act of Bilgewater: Burning Tides! 

There is a special Black Market Brawlers, our upcoming featured gamemode, show match scheduled for 12:00 PM PDT // 20:00 CET on Friday July 31st.
Follow the countdown over on youtube.

DRIVE: The Sneaky Story

The next installment of Riot's LCS Series DRIVE is up and this episode features Zachary "SNEAKY" Scuderi from Cloud 9.
More on Sneaky and a look at the previous episodes of DRIVE can be found here.

EU Community Showmatch on August 2nd - Gold Rush

A special five-game Butcher's Bridge show match with teams lead by community members Sp4zie and  ThePeacePigeon will be held on August 2nd at 14:00 CET! Check out the announcement for more information! 

2015  World Championship Finals Tickets on Sale July 29th

Last up we have a reminder that ticket for the 2015 World Championship finals will go on sale July 29th at 8:00 AM PDT / 5:00 PM CEST via Eventim. The final take place on October 31st in Berlin, Germany. More information on ticket & the event can be found here.

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