Red Post Collection: May 9th Mid-Patch Update, Illaoi PBE Context, Statue Sale, PAX East Cosplay, & more!

• Red Post Collection: Taliyah Champion Insights, Shurima Stories - Azir & Xerath, 6.9 Balance Hotfix Soon, & more

• 5/6 PBE Update: Taliyah Login Theme, Super Galaxy Fizz, and tentative balance changes

• Champion and Skin Sale 5/10 - 5/13
• Free Champion Rotation, Week of May 10th
• This Week In Esports [May 2nd - May 9th]

• 5/9 PBE Update: New Tristana skin splash arts, tentative balance changes, and more

Table of Contents: 

• Mid-Patch Updates: May 9th Balance Update
• Gypsylord on Experimental Sona PBE Changes
• ricklessabandon on PBE AP ratio increases and Master Yi
• Illaoi PBE Q Healing Changes to be reverted
• Skin Splash Updates - Sion likely after Nidalee
• Lyte Leaves Riot Games: Goodbye for now, Riot Games
• Meddler on Bloodrazor
• Swain Discussion - Hotfix and Future
• [MERCH] 25% off Statues through May 20th
• Cosplay at PAX East

Mid-Patch Updates: May 9th Balance Update

The official 6.9 patch notes have been updated to reflect balance changes for Malzahar, Swain, Vladimir, and Cassiopeia that have all  been hotfixed to live on May 9th!

"5/9/2016 Balance Update 

Even this early out of the gate, it's clear that a few of our mage updates have fallen into 'balance outlier' territory. We're making some mid-patch adjustments to help them make it to 6.10, when we can follow up with further changes if necessary. 

Malzahar 

"Malzahar is powering through both lane and jungle a bit too well. We're hitting the efficiency of his spells to slow his roll. "

Q - Call of the Void

• COST  - 60 mana ⇒ 80 mana 

W - Void Swarm

• COST  - 60 mana ⇒ 80 mana 
• DAMAGE VERSUS MONSTERS 75% ⇒ 50%

R - Nether Grasp

• NULL ZONE DAMAGE PER SECOND  - 6/8/10% maximum health ⇒ 5/7/9% maximum health

Cassiopeia 

"Cassiopeia's update shaved a little too much power off of Twin Fang. Rather than raw damage buffs, we're giving back a bit of its uptime. "

E - Twin Fang

• COOLDOWN  - 0.9 seconds ⇒ 0.75 seconds
• COST  - 60/65/70/75/80 mana ⇒ 40/50/60/70/80 mana
• CAST RANGE  - 550 (from Cassiopeia's hitbox edge to her opponent's) ⇒ 700 (from Cassiopeia's hitbox center to her opponent's.) Overall, slight increase against small targets and slight decrease against large targets.

Vladimir 

"Vladimir's having difficulty translating his early game strength into late game impact. A bit of love for his Q and E should help him scale out of lane and into teamfights. "

Q - Transfusion

• CRIMSON RUSH HEALING BONUS  - 2.5% missing health per 100 ability power ⇒4% missing health per 100 ability power

E - Tides of Blood

• DAMAGE - 30/40/50/60/70 to 60/80/100/120/140 ⇒ 30/45/60/75/90 to 60/90/120/150/180

Swain 

"We're upping Swain's rewards for good Decrepify plays to help offset the loss of reliability. Just as important: his ult's no longer bugged to stop him in his tracks mid-combo. "

Q - Decrepify

• DAMAGE - 25/40/55/70/85 per second ⇒ 30/50/70/90/110 per second

R - Ravenous Flock

• BUGFIX - Fixed a bug where Ravenous Flock's cast time wasn't instant

Mordekaiser 

R - Children of the Grave

• BUGFIX Spawning a Dragon ghost no longer breaks the minimap's respawn timer (scoreboard timer was unaffected)

Deathfire Touch 

• BUGFIX - Fixed a bug where single target and area-effect abilities were applying the 1 second burn, rather than 4 and 2 seconds respectively"

When asked why the tooltips for these champions have not changed despite the update being out, Meddler noted:

"It should be out by now, yes. Because it's a server only hotfix tooltips will be inaccurate until the next patch though (nothing's being download to your computer, so the tooltip file can't be updated)."

He continued:

"It's too early to tell what the exact impact of any of the hotfix changes was. None of them were targeted at completely solving the problems of the champions in question, both to avoid overreacting just after the patch and because there are some things we can't change in a hotfix. Malz's passive is one of those things, we'll be nerfing it in 6.10 instead."

Gypsylord on Experimental Sona PBE Changes

Gypsylord has posted on the PBE boards noting he is reverting the experimental Sona changes that have been testing throughout the cycle as they will not be going to live in 6.10. He's also shared hos thoughts on the changes now that they have had some time to cook on the PBE:

"Hey guys, 

So I've pulled the Sona changes for now as we don't want to ship them for 6.10. They're likely to come back however for a future patch 

Thank you so much for your testing and feedback. 

Things I learned.

• Aura size is important. We could likely get away with a small size decrease to trim power, but there's a line that can be crossed at which point the auras become too small and feel unusable. 

• Q is Sona's primary laning tool and giving it a crazy long CD early makes for a pretty sad laning phase. Like aura sizes, early CD on Q can likely stand a minor nerf but make it too high and Sona starts feeling like she doesn't have anything to do. 

• E having a higher selfish MS buff is likely good overall for making Sona feel like a more impactful character, especially when most of the rest of her power is in her harder to feel auras. I think opening up Sona's pattern to try things like dodging skill shots, escaping ganks, and chasing/engaging without flash will overall in the long run make her more satisfying and easier to balance. 

• Need to be careful about changes that would allow Sona to get too tanky, especially in a world where she can move a lot faster. Probably good that she's able to be jumped on and killed when her E and R are down."

ricklessabandon on PBE AP ratio increases and Master Yi

As you may have noticed, Master Yi, Nocturne, and Shyvana all have slight AP ratio increases on the 6.10 PBE.cycle.  When asked about these changes, ricklessabandon explained:

"Quote:

hey there, since you're on the balance team, can you explain why the balance team thinks buffing meditate's ap ratio will help yi given that he doesn't build rageblade anymore? the real problem is the low duration on highlander

the ap ratio change isn't intended to be a balance change to help yi recover from the mid-season patch—they're part of a small side project to make some characters feel 'less bad' about the ap on a couple of hybrid items that might otherwise be attractive to them. 

we are looking at a balance change for yi this patch though, in addition to the bloodrazor buffs. the ap ratio thing just coincidentally includes him."

Illaoi PBE Q Healing Changes to be reverted

Here's Meddler with context on the recent Illaoi Q PBE healing changes, which include a massive increase to her healing when a tentacle hits a champion but also a lengthy cooldown on the effect:

"We'll be removing the Q healing change in the next PBE build. We're experimenting with different changes to Illaoi, aimed both at buffing her and at smoothing out just how varied her effectiveness can be depending on the circumstances. A CD on the Q heal was an exploration into more consistent performance that's got both some promise and some problems."

ricklessabandon also chimed in:

"quick heads up—the heal changes to tentacle smash aren't going in for the 6.10 patch. also, those are the old, original cooldown numbers i put in (current version we're looking to test are 10/8/6/4/2) so the changes on the pbe right now are pretty far off from what's being experimented with."

When asked about the damage her tentacles do on multiple hits, Meddler explained:

"Quote:

Can we get any information on her damage bug? 

Overlapping tentacles don't do full damage and there's NO information on this ANYWHERE. 

Fixing that could possibly be the buff she needs

It's intended that multiple tentacles strikes within 0.5s deal reduced damage, with 100% damage from the first, 50% damage from the second and 25% damage from any subsequent tentacles. We'll get mention of that in some form onto a tooltip at some point."

ricklessabandon added:

"Quote:

Illaoi's overlapping tentacles deal 50% less damage on live servers. Can you confirm if this is a bug or not with Illaoi? I've seen several posts about it and would either like her tooltip updated or to have this fixed. 

[link][link][link]

looking into her scripts, it looks like the damage is calculated as follows:

• first tentacle deals 100% damage
• second tentacle deals 50% damage
• third and beyond deal 25% damage

this applies to all tentacles, including illaoi's tentacle smash ability (all tentacles are the same, regardless of source). 

and yeah, i definitely want to do a tooltip pass on her."

When asked about perhaps changing Illaoi's R tentacles to heal less but not have the cooldown effect they are testing, ricklessabandon  commented:

"Quote:

Are you guys gonna consider making it so tentacles spawned by her ult are less effective but not limited by the healing CD? because a lot of people seem to think this will effect her teamfighting, since she'll heal for so much less during a really good ult.

unsure. tbh, when we continue to explore ways of better supporting illaoi, tightening the gap between the effectiveness ranges of her ult will probably be something we look at (at least on some axis). still super early in looking at her, so don't really have more than possible directions right now, but the idea would be to increase her baseline performance in a sustainable way."

Skin Splash Updates - Sion likely after Nidalee

With Trundle's updated skin splash arts in 6.9 and Tristana's updated skin splash arts coming in 6.10, Nidalee should be the next champion to get a set of updated skin splash art updates - these three were the first batch announced to get new skin splash arts as a part of Riot going back to update  out dated skin splash arts to match their post champion update visuals!

When asked when we might expect Sion skin splash art updates, Reav3 noted:

"Our current plan is to do Sion after Nidalee. Not sure when Sion's will be released though as Ryze has a lot of skins...." 

He also noted:

"It's not certain but we were thinking about updating Twitch's skin splashes after Sions"

Reav3 also confirmed that in addition to new skin art, Ryze will have a new base with his champion update:

"Ryze will get a new base splash with his up and coming VGU"

When asked for a potential timeline of when to expect arts after that, Reav3 noted:

"We don't have a exact timeline and probably won't create one as it would change often. Our bandwidth at times can dictate who we do next. If we have little bandwidth doing a champ with less splashes in need makes sense, whereas if we had more bandwidth doing a champion like MF or Twitch might make more sense."

  

Lyte Leaves Riot Games: Goodbye for now, Riot Games

Over on the boards, Lyte has posted a good bye to Riot Games and the community as he will be moving on from the company. Over the last few year's, Lyte has been the figure head and a leader in the player behavior team and the  lead game designer of social systems for LoL:

"Joining Riot has been one of the most epic quests in my life, but today, that quest comes to an end. Thank you for embarking on this wild roller coaster ride with me. Social design was pretty new in the games and tech industries, and exploring uncharted territory with you has been a thrilling experience.

I’ve always believed that making League of Legends had to be a collaboration with the community. My friend Ghostcrawler and I have always said that passionate gamers, even angry ones, are gamers that care about the game--just like us. Whether you were in Wood 1 (damn matchmaking!!) or Challenger, we all want League to be the best possible game it can be. Being able to work on a game with such a passionate community has been an honor.

To Riot: When I joined here I was just a kid. A mid-level designer with the opportunity to solve an impossible problem. I've made my fair share of mistakes along the way - and learned so much from them - but the journey has been incredible. To players: keep giving feedback and working with Riot to make League last for another decade, so I can one day teach my future son how to play this crazy game.

I will always remember the impressive and inspirational Rioters who’ve crossed my path, and a part of me will always be a shopkeeper on the Howling Abyss. Riot will be perpetually on my radar. That said, impossible problems have an irresistible allure to me, and I think it’s time for a new challenge. League is in better hands than ever before, and I’m excited to see, as a player, what they’ll do next.

I’ll be around,

Lyte"

Meddler on Bloodrazor

In a thread inquiring on the balance team's thoughts bout Xin Zhao following the 6.9 changes to remove Devourer and introduce Bloodrazr, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

How is Xin looking as of 6.9?

AS favoring junglers are almost all struggling at the moment, Xin included. From the look of it Bloodrazor's undertuned, which is pulling that whole group down. First thing we'll be doing as a result is buffing Bloodrazor, then looking at individual champs like Xin. Might be a few exceptions to that where we buff a champ a bit as well at the same time, Yi especially's looking like we'll probably buff in 6.10 given how hard Devourer/Rageblade changes hit him."

When asked about how Kindred are doing in relation to Bloodrazor, Meddler  noted:

"Quote:

are you going to nerf Kindred more to make up for buffing Bloodrazor since they're not suffering at all from it?

I suspect we'll have to at some point yes, won't be in 6.10 at least though." 

Swain Discussion - Hotfix and Future

"Seriously now, let's talk a little bit about Swain. You guys probably have noticed that champion.gg put his win rate around 38% or something like that, and we have been aware of that since day 1 of patch 6.9. To be honest I'm still very surprised about that. All playtests that we had showed that Swain was always the top damage, top healing and usually top killer too. 

Swain is a very interesting problem: we aimed to address how unhealthy was to play against him. And honestly, also address how boring was to play as him because I never felt good about just spamming E to win lanes, I wanted to setup massive health vamp situations where I could just laugh at my opponents instead. 

In any case, the lower win rate definitely has two points I want to consider at: 

1) Swain is the only champion of the patch that is free this week 

2) Swain (alongside Cassiopeia, which surprise surprise also has abysmal win rate) is one of the only two champions that now require players to completely change how they level up the skills: EWQ -> QWE 

That aside, of course those two points are not completely responsible for the drop (at least I hope so otherwise all things I'm going to say next are going to make him a god). 

We're micropatching Swain, Cassiopeia and Vlad on Monday. On that micropatch, the following changes will go in (the nature of the micropatch only allows numbers changes, no script changes unfortunatelly) 

R no longer has a cast time: Known meme around here, was an accident for testing during dev and I totally fucked that up by forgetting to remove  

Q damage is up by a little bit (+5 on base and extra +5 per rank). Seems dangerous but I really want to help Swain's success case where he does make the person stay inside the zone for longer. Live values were cool and all (as you had an extra full second of damage thanks to the longer duration), but unless you keep the guy inside and pay attention it just feels that I took your reliability away and gave you nothing in return. 

Now, the 6.10 stuff. I have much more freedom for changes because I can change scripts and behaviors. I'm VERY scared of those changes but I really want Swain to feel more like a tankier mage that just don't care about others and dish tons of ambient damage. 

1) HP per level: 78 >>> 90 -> this goes in line to make him feel more like a tank then a mage. His base health is still lower than tanks but just because he's ranged
2) Tooltip update on Q to also show max damage possible: No real change but God it was depressing to read E saying the full damage and Q saying the per second damage and some players do read "OMG E DOES 140 DMG AND Q DOES 25? SIGN ME UP FOR E DUDE". This might help a little bit players realize that Q is massive when allowed to DoT for a while
3) Q execute minions under a certain threshold. Ok, I'm going to be real on this one. It was in the code but when I had to fix a bug for One For All mode (Beatrice from Swain A would not attack the same target as Swain B) the execute mechanic was uh....... changed so it was checking if Swain was a minion, not Beatrice target Herpy derpy. Totally my fault, but I promise it will be there and it helps so fucking much.
4) Heals against minions on R: 15% of damage >>> 8/11/13 (+3% AP) -> No real change is, this is the exact same amount you would him from them because they have no MR
5) OKAY THIS IS THE SCARY ONE - healing from champions: 75% of damage >>> 30/45/60 (+10% AP) 

Okay, (5) needs a paragraph just for it. I'm changing so it works like Renekton's Q in a way so it no longers depends on your damage, but how much AP you have. What this means is that against targets with no MR (like just the 30 default base) you should be healing roughly the same, if not a tiny bit more. On the other hand, against people that buy MR you'll be healing the same amount as against squishies as it no longer takes in account their MR. In a way to see this, it's a change from post mitigation damage to pre mitigation damage. This is HUGE and fucking scary, but I've been wanting to push Swain more and more into the drain tank guy and lately he's been stuck in the front line against tanks while squishies nuke him from far away, so he's never healing anything from the tanks and just feels like his is super squishy too, which sucks balls. This also give me better levers to tune Swain in the future as his damage and healing are now unrelated to each other. 

Anyway, this is what I'm planning for 6.10. One thing that I thought about also was increasing the Q zapping range by 50 or 100, but we had that during dev and it was so fucking oppressive. I'll keep the idea in my pocket though. 

If you have any questions, let me know. It's a dark period for Swain but oh boy he will be great again I promise."

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