Red Post Collection: 6/9 Patch Update, Ask Riot #4, Hexakill: TT in RGM this weekend, & more

Continue reading for more information!

• Red Post Collection:State of the Season, RGM Brain Dump 2, API Challenge 2016 Winners, and more!
• EU LCS Summer Split Week 2
• Champion and Skin Sale 6/10 - 6/13
• 6.12 PBE Cycle

Table of Contents

• June 9th Mid-Patch Update
• RGM, IP, and tons of damage in Ask Riot 
• RGMQ - Hexakill:TT on Friday & Updated Schedule
• Design Stream! Q+A and games w/ Riot GoatScope
• When vision clearing goes wrong 
• [MERCH SHOP] Mystery Figure Sale
• Hextech Mystery Champion Shards arrive
• /ALL Chat | Who Do You Ship?

June 9th Mid-Patch Update

The 6.11 patch notes have been updated to reflect the small patch was pushed to live on June 9th to fix a bug with Mountain Drake and healing effects:

"6/9/2016 

Mountain Drake

• ROCKY REJUVENATION - Fixed a bug where Mountain Drake's buff significantly reduced the healing effectiveness of some abilities (ex. Fiddlesticks's W - Drain) against epic monsters"

Over on twitter, Riot Nekomaru added:

"Also fixes Warwick, Irelia, Yorick, and Blade of the Ruined King when smacking epic monsters, for those curious."

RGM, IP, and tons of damage in Ask Riot 

The fourth ASK RIOT is up, including questions on the rotating game modes, IP, and "tons of damage":

"Welcome to Ask Riot. 

This is a space where we focus on your questions and give you answers. 

What is next with Rotating Game Modes, what to do with all that IP, and why we use percent health damage are up for this week. 

Have a question (or two...hundred) yourself? Head over ask.leagueoflegends.com and sign into your League account. Check out the Do’s, the Don'ts, and then ask us something. We’ll archive the answers once we’ve accumulated a few of them. 

We’re committed to reading every question but can’t guarantee we’ll answer them all. 

“Okay, why not?” 

Some questions may be answered elsewhere or won’t be right for Ask Riot (we won’t be launching new products here or taking away from existing conversations, for example you can check out the round table video for information on Dynamic Queue). Even if your question isn’t the one being answered, we’re listening, and we’ll be sharing your questions with the Rioters who are working directly on the things you’re curious about. 

When will we see new game modes in RGM?

We're still forging the path at the moment with our current stable of modes, and we’re carefully looking at how each one is received and how people are engaging with it. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you exactly when your favorite mode, like say Doom Bots, is coming back but we can talk about how we’re selecting each mode to include in RGM. 

So far the modes we’ve included in RGM represent the widest spread of gameplay with strong engagement, URF for example, is a mode we consistently hear about from players, which is why we chose it among our first releases. That doesn’t mean RGM is a popularity contest. Any game mode that we've previously released is a potential candidate for the RGM queue. If your favourite mode isn't in there yet, there's a chance it will be eventually. 

We also want to try and offer something that’s updated, so as we look at other game modes, it’s important we deliver something more than nostalgia. As you’ve seen with Definitely Not Dominion, we don’t just want to throw old modes into the queue. We try to keep everyone updated on what modes are coming in the near future - so make sure you check in weekly to see what’s coming up. – L4T3NCY 

Have you thought of alternatives to spend our excess IP? (something different from champions and runes)? 

We are definitely looking for opportunities to add new ways to spend IP. We frequently release limited-time summoner icons for IP, and recently added a major new outlet for IP that we believe will be compelling for many.

Our latest foray was champion mastery levels 6 & 7, which grants players new mastery badge emotes, new loading screen border flags and announcement banner upgrades. This enables players to show off their favorite champions through a combination of skill and investment. We wanted to make sure the rewards were accessible to all of you so we added the ability to use IP to get them. 

Additionally, we know that for many newer players, the challenge is earning enough IP for everything you want to spend it on. To address this over the past year, we’ve permanently reduced the price of many runes, held rune and rune page sales, and added Party IP weekends. We will continue to look for ways to make things better for players across the full spectrum of IP wealth. – Wingfield 

Why include percent health damage in a champion’s kit? Is it simply a response to the tank meta? Or do you want to design every champion to always feel like they can do at least a bit of relevant damage even if they are full tank or utility because you have found this to be more satisfying for the player? 

We have four primary mechanics and we use them individually with the intent to help champions excel against different types of opposing champions. These mechanics deliver damage based off of:

• Current health
• Max health
• Missing health
• Scaling damage (based off of a percentage of missing health) 

Let’s break each of these down. 

Current health is typically used on tanky champions we want to soften up targets and set up allies for success (think Jarvan). Missing health works best when we want champions to deliver the final blow – assassins fit well here – such as Fizz. Maximum health is when we want a champion to be a threat to all enemies. Think of a fighter or skirmisher like Fiora, or for a specific ability that should always be a threat, Tahm Kench’s Devour. 

A similar-looking but very different mechanic is used with abilities like Veigar’s ultimate that multiply the ability’s damage with the percentage of the enemy’s missing health – but don’t actually consider the enemy’s raw health values. This is a big difference because this ability won’t scale in damage as an enemy’s max health increases. 

It’s worth noting this is a less-powerful mechanic as the ability has a hard cap on how much damage it can deal, such as double or triple the base damage. We like using this when we want an ability to feel great as a finishing move, but don’t want to be drastically changing who the champion is strong or weak against. Veigar and Riven both use this mechanic on their ultimates. Veigar excels at blowing up squishy targets (hence why marksmen so frequently flee the scene when he’s around) but struggles versus super tanky champs who can shrug off his ult. The amplified damage means he can more likely get the final blow on a champion but he’s still incentivized to use it on squishy enemies because at best, you are dealing twice the base damage which a tanky enemy simply won’t care about as much. 

You also specifically asked about how we create kits against an existing meta. We don’t design champions based on a current meta. Why not? Well, champions take a while to develop, so when a champion is released, it’s a different landscape from when it’s originally created. – FeralPony 

Please feel free to hit us up in the comments. Each of the Rioters who answered will do their best to engage in a conversation with you."

When asked about extending the time the rotating game modes are available, L4T3NCY commented:

"Quote:

Is there any chance of the RGM being available full-time rather than just on weekends?

The RGM queue has been quite healthy, so we're investigating extending it to Monday going forward, making for a total of 4 days each weekend. As with all things, this is subject to change (you never know sometimes with gamedev) but we're looking into it right now. Soon(tm)."

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/gameplay/rotating-game-mode-queue-now-live-8

"From the original clone-tastic One For All to the sand-strewn battlefield of Ascension, rotating game modes provide unique spins on the classic League formula. It’s time to kick things off with the next game mode in the rotation: Hexakill: Twisted Treeline is now live!

For a refresher on the mode, let’s go over the basics: 

• It’s Twisted Treeline, so there are altars to capture and a nexus to explodify.
• It’s Hexakill. So there are six champs on your team instead of three. 

As in any rotating queue game mode, we’ve specially tuned Champion Mastery so you can earn points in the mode. You’ll also be able to earn keys for your wins and loot chests for your (or your premade’s) S­-, S, and S+ games. 

Hexakill: Twisted Treeline is now available and lasts through the evening on Sunday (we’ll shut it down very early Monday morning--usually between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM).

We’ll be trying out different things with the rotating game mode queue over the next few months, such as potentially turning it on longer depending on how popular it is, changing the mode cadence or what modes are available. We’re looking for your feedback as we go, so let us know. GLHF, and we’ll bring a sixth man alongside you in the Twisted Treeline this weekend."

Design Stream! Q+A and games w/ Riot GoatScope

In case you missed it, be sure to check out the VOD of the recent design live stream with  Scarizard and systems designer Riot Goatscope!