- 9/4 PBE Update: UI Updates & More Tentative Balance Changes
- Red Post Collection: 9/4 Patch Update, Arcade Community Creations, New /ALL Chat, and more!
- EU & NA LCS Spring Promotion Tournament
- This Week in ESPORTS [September 1st - 6th]
- Champion and Skin Sale 9/8 - 9/11, including PROJECT: Yasuo.
- Free Champion Rotation, Week of September 8th
Table of Contents
- Thoughts on Juggernaut reworks: Where we're up to after 4 weeks
- On Poppy & Taric Updates
- Yorick Full rework still planned
- Garen Villain Changes in 5.18
- Miss Fortune W Indicator & Future Update
- Meddler on Poacher's Knife and Grievous Wounds
- FeralPony ask.fm round up
- Chat with Community dude CapnBranFlakes on 9/9!
- Randuin's Omen & Critical Damage
- The Climb: The trick to an efficient recall | ScrapComputer
- Everything you need to know about 2015 World Championship
Thoughts on Juggernaut reworks: Where we're up to after 4 weeks
"Hey folks,
Wanted to provide an update on our thinking about the recently reworked juggernauts. Initial post from a week post launch here:
[[ link ]]
Overall the juggernauts have definitely been too strong (our bad). Making comparatively immobile melee effective is something we've had trouble with in the past, which in retrospect's lead to us putting too much power into this group. We have been seeing some distinctive play generated by each of the reworks though, which hits on one of our primary goals for this work of making different characters have distinctly different effects on the game. Fairly optimistic we'll see that continue once we've got balance into the correct spot, though won't count those chickens before they hatch of course. What we're thinking for patch 5.18 below, with a few longer term thoughts mixed in.
- Garen: Garen did turn out to be too strong as initially suspected. The mobility nerfs in 5.17 have helped with that, we still feel he's a bit strong at present though. Next major change we'll be doing in 5.18 is making it so that people no longer generate Villainy stacks by killing Garen himself. Biggest impact there is that you won't get punished for killing Garen in lane, which in some match ups makes it really hard to get a real advantage in lane against him (or even turns what should be a winning action into a losing action).
- Darius: Went from significantly weak to too strong with the hotfix and buff in 5.17. We're nerfing him in 5.18 as a result, giving Q a scaling mana cost and reducing the amount he heals per target hit by Q (with an increase to the max possible healing). Goal there is to nerf his healing overall, in lane in particular, while allowing some big moments still if he can catch 3 enemy champions with the blade. Longer term we've also been talking about whether straight % missing health is the correct model or not for Darius' heal, given how much a tanky Darius can heal for. It's possible we'll shift towards a flat + missing% model instead at some point, still discussing/waiting to see how the 5.18 nerfs impact him.
- Skarner: We were pretty happy with how the hotfix hit Skarner, since it dropped his power substantially without going too far and leaving him too weak. He's still too strong, so we'll be following up on him as well in 5.18, with a nerf to his E slow, reducing the power of his ganks in particular.
- Morde: Now that the dust's settled somewhat it's pretty clear Morde's significantly overpowered as a farming duo laner, and very weak as a solo laner. We'll be nerfing Morde's base Armor, W healing and W damage (no longer deals double damage when overlapping, base damage increased somewhat). For solo Morde W's going to be self castable for the healing effect (though not the damage). Expectation is that we'll need to do more to Morde in follow up patches as well, though as usual we'll see what effect those changes have first.
- Bonus items section: So far Deadman's Plate, Titanic Hydra and Sterak's Gage are looking pretty reasonable. They're doing the right sort of things on the right sort of champions. No current changes planned for them as a result, though we're still keeping a clear eye on them of course as builds continue to get tested and refined.
Finally it's also worth noting that since 5.18 is the patch World's will be played on we've been putting a lot of focus into how the juggernauts are performing in professional play (since balance tends to be somewhat different between normal games and organized 5s, high skill level 5s especially). The recent LPL games have been played on 5.16 with the hotfix, which has been a useful data point for us in assessing juggernaut power. We've seen Darius and Skarner picked there (Skarner much more than Darius), both looking strong, though not overwhelming so. No sign of Garen isn't surprising (the nature of his kit's a better match for solo queue). No Morde picks or bans is a harder one to interpret. It's possible his weaknesses are such that an organized team can just shut him down, or that he's new enough teams haven't had enough time to drill into his changes yet, so aren't interested in picking him for now even if he's theoretically strong (I'm personally in this camp, though definitely not 100% certain about it)."
On Poppy & Taric Updates
In a boards thread discussion larger scope updates, Repertoir swung by to clarify that Poppy will be the next update similar in scope to "Sion" and that Taric will likely be early next year:
"Poppy is next. Taric isn't likely until early in the next year.
Edit: Specifically, Poppy is the next update closest to a "Sion-level" update."
For a few more bits from the last few months, they've noted Poppy will continue to be a top/jungler primarily [source] and she'll likely have a totally new passive and R [source]. IronStylus chatted a bit more about her here.
Yorick Full rework still planned
"Quote:
In this thread [link] Xelnath outlined a yorick rework that looked pretty darn sick, and said it would be handed over to you. It's been almost two years, I was wondering if we could get an update on this, even just to say that it's iceboxed, or something. Yorick seems like he'd be a priority because his playstyle is oppressive, resulting in him being pretty weak and binary (win the lane, lose the game). He also seems like he fits the "Juggernaut" fantasy really well (low mobility, high dueling/damage capacity with tankiness). So... can you tell us anything?
The Yorick rework Xelnath was experimenting with did get ice boxed. We do plan to do a full rework (Sion/Poppy level) for Yorick still at some point, at the very least that won't be happening this year though. Yorick's got some major issues, Poppy, and likely Taric, are ahead of him in the full relaunch queue at a minimum though.
In terms of class we do think juggernaut would be a good fit. Given his minion summoning theme the direction we're most likely to go is a juggernaut with strong pushing power (split push, counter push, tower sieger or some combination of the above)."
Garen Villain Changes in 5.18
"Quote
Killing Garen should not make me a villian.
His whole theme is that he fights for justice and therefore punishes everyone who harmed his teammates. If he dies to a champion that champion should not be classified as a villian. There is no justice to be served. He just fucked up. A mechanic which rewards you for dying can't be healthy. It just feels unfair for his lane opponents.
It won't in 5.18."As for why, he continued:
"The disadvantage that the opposing laner (who in some cases absolutely has to continue fighting Garen) incurs by being the Villain is substantial, so it felt too punishing to them for doing well against specifically Garen.
There's some worry that we've stripped a lot of lane power from Garen and that this will leave him particularly weak, but if that turns out to be true, I'd prefer to address it in the future by just putting some power back into his early game.
From a thematic standpoint, it makes more sense that Garen would seek to strike down those that bullied his allies than someone that harmed him."
Miss Fortune W Indicator & Future update
"MF is getting some tweaks in the pretty near future, and I believe that part of this package is better visualization for Impure Shots."
As for the timeline of these changes, CertainlyT reiterated they wouldn't be until preseason:
"The present plan is for MF's changes to come out with the pre-season (so after Worlds), as they require particle updates to her base and skins.
Not to get everyone too excited, but we are also having to do a lot of performance testing to ensure that the number of bullets her ult fires at level 16 doesn't destroy min spec computers."
Meddler on Poacher's Knife and Grievous Wounds
"It has, outside of the occasional really niche use. Odds are high we'll remove it come preseason when we do an item pass (updating, adding, removing various items"He continued:
"Quote:
Just straight out remove it? I'm going to go off the assumption that you have had ideas for Poacher, but none that work out quite as you would want them too, but to just straight off remove seems... hasty, at best?
We wanted to try an item that really clearly telegraphed your intent to counter jungle a lot, with power loaded into the action of counter jungling specifically (as opposed to an item that's good for counterjungling, but also has other uses, like boots). Conclusion at this point is that that's too narrow a space for an item, given its tendency to lead to one jungler or the other failing really hard early. We want early actions to matter, but not to effectively decide games, and Poacher's risks games snowballing too hard too fast for one team or the other."
As for if this preseason will have a large focus on the jungle, Meddler noted:
"We're focusing much less on the jungle specifically this time than past preseasons. There'll be some tweaks to it, but nothing as large as the overhaul last year.
Details on what we are focusing on to follow closer to the time once they're more certain (lot of early experimentation in progress at present)."
When asked if any other items are currently on the chopping block to be removed during preseason, Meddler noted interest in a reworked AD Grievous Wounds item:
"None as clear cut as Poacher's. We're experimenting with a lot of stuff at present, it'll be a while though before most of that's solid enough to talk about usefully though.
One thing I will mention, since I've seen it requested a lot, is that we're looking at a reworked version of Executioner's Calling (AD Grevious Wounds item). Way too early to make any promises it'll necessarily be coming back, it is one of the things we're looking into though."As for GW in general, he explained:
"Current thinking is that Grevious Wounds serves a useful function keeping healing/regen in check, but that we may not have been offering it in the right ways. For starters the % may not be right, - 50% is such a larger difference that characters with strong healing end up being really feast or famine depending on whether they're facing GW or not. Shifting to a lower %, and reducing healing/regen amounts somewhat, might be more appropriate.
As far as GW on individual champions goes we've stripped it off a number of champions because of the amount if felt like some match ups were decided in champion select. We're still talking though about whether there are some good spots for GW on champion kits (e.g. is the problem regular application of GW in lane, rather than GW on kits in general)."
FeralPony ask.fm round up
[Link] Hi, do you have any context regarding the Zac nerf on the PBE right now (slingshot windup time increase)? Nerfs are the last thing I'd expect for Zac right now so wondering if these are a mistake/a compensation nerf for a buff coming later? Thanks!
It was a non-gameplay impacting result of fixing some of the bugs with using the timing at long ranges (you can go max distance now!). I ended up rewriting part of the spell to address a few other issues and prevent future issues with any range or timing adjustments.
I'll be switching the ini value (this thing surrender @ 20 scrapes) back come Monday since that part of the fix is no longer needed, but behavior and channel time should be identical in both versions. This change is bug fix only.
[Link] I've just played with the Zyra changes on the PBE and my goodness, they feel amazing. The AI changes are a joy to use. But have you considered that she may be too good after these buffs? Would some compensation nerfs not be in order?
Yes, we did a small bug fix yesterday in response to the PBE feedback about Q plants being extra sneaky and just sniping champions at long range regardless of circumstance. We've fixed this but kept the fluidity of attacks, derp fixes, and other adjustments.
We agree that the AI changes were more power than we wanted to add (pretty easy to do since plants are the vast majority of her damage), and as such reverted the knockup increase. This will let us get a good sense on the Live environment how much impact the AI changes alone will do and inform us of future work.
I much prefer scaling down a buff if we feel it'll be overkill than putting in compensation nerfs if we can avoid it.
[Link] Is Guinsoo's Rageblade ever going to be removed or reworked?
Yup. No promises, but it'll most likely get updated during Preseason.
[link] Hi greg, good afternoon I was thinking about marksmen, when you do the ad item rework would you think about making marksmen scale worst into late game, in favor of a better early and mid game, talking about items cheaper items with less stats and make the scaling come from the champion when needed?
The focus is more on creating additional paths and options for marksmen rather than change their dps curve substantially. Any additional power granted in the form of early game power would most certainly need to come from somewhere, most likely late game hyperscaling. I'd be hesitant about moving too far in this direction as that power curve is a large part in what defines a marksman and creates interesting variance between the DPS type classes.
Also Greg is Ghostcrawler, I am just one of his many minions. :)
Chat with Community dude CapnBranFlakes on 9/9!
As we continue with the Between Two Turrets series, CapnBranFlakes will be hosting a Q&A on September 9th!
"Join us tomorrow for the latest installment of Between Two Turrets, a Q&A series through which we 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 Community / Player Relations dude Brandon “CapnBranFlakes” Felczer - come chat with him on the Boards September 9 starting at 12 PM PDT!
Randuin's Omen & Critical Damage
In a thread discussing how Randuin's Omen is reducing damage from ability that display as a critical strike (such as Anivia's E), Meddler noted:"Just heard back from Xypherous, apparently that's working as intended. Randuin's should be reducing any form of crit damage, not just auto attack crits (so anything that uses the crit combat text/symbol)."He continued:
"Quote
Anyways, Randuins reducing Anivia's E damage is absurd and should be changed. You shouldn't be protected against Anivia for building armor. It almost makes it worse that it sounds like that they intended that interaction to be that way.
There's also no reason for players to believe it works like that. This goes back to the "clarity" thing that was getting harped about a while ago. Anivias E text does not state "crits against slowed targets", nor does her E benefit from IEdge. Her E against slowed targets is NOT a critical strike, does not work like one, and should not be treated as one by Randuins.
Even with the reduction to spell's flagged as crits Randuin's is still going to be a poor choice if you need survivability against a heavy magic damage dealer like Anivia. It will sometimes offer a small point of optimization if you're trying to decide between Randuin's and another Armor item to deal with a physical though if there's a champ like Anivia on the enemy team as well. As far as logical conclusions go the passive reduces damage from everything that gets displayed as a crit in game. I'd agree that results in interactions like this not being intuitive at first glance, there's some argument for an expanded tooltip as a result (versus the tradeoff of additional tooltip length of course)."
The Climb: The trick to an efficient recall | ScrapComputer
Next up we have Riot Opti & community member ScrapComputer with tips on how to recall efficiently."League is a game in which the tiniest of advantages can have a major impact on the course of a match. ScrapComputer’s video “Backing to Lane Efficiently,” goes over a tactic to get you out of the fountain and back into the fray quickly and efficiently. This trick could net you minions that you might otherwise have missed, or even get you to the brewing fight at Dragon just in time to save a life -- or take one. .
Do you know any small tricks that can make a huge difference in a game? Let us know in the comments below, and please recommend your favorite community guides or videos!
Creator Background
EU West player ScrapComputer has been making educational League of Legends videos since 2013. His channel focuses on preparation and macro-level strategy in Ranked play.
Learn more about ScrapComputer via the links below!
Everything you need to know about 2015 World Championship
With the last four spots locked in over the weekend, the 2015 World Championship is fast approaching and Riot Mirhi has you covered with a round up of all the important information: who is playing, what they are playing for, the tournament format, and more!
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