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Red Post Collection: Patch Rundown 6.12, Xypherous on planned 6.13 XP, Teleport, and Support Item changes, and more!

Today's red post collection includes 6.12 Patch Rundown,  Xypherous on upcoming XP, Teleport, & Support item changes planned for 6.13, Gypsylord with context on the Kindred PBE changes, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents


Patch Rundown 6.12 

With Patch 6.12 out on live, check out SmashGizmo, Scarizard, and Riot Fearless in the latest installment of the Patch rundown!
"Welcome to another episode of the Patch Rundown, a series where expert analysts and developers give you an inside take on the biggest changes heading into the game each and every patch. 
This week, designers Wesley ‘SmashGizmo’ Ruttle and Jo ‘Fearless’ Graylock stop by to discuss the upcoming update to ARAM, as well as the rest of the changes coming in to Patch 6.12!

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You can also find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or check out past episodes here!"

Context on 6.13 PBE Kindred Changes

The first two PBE updates in the 6.13 PBE cycle have included several tentative Kindred changes, including removal of the heal from W, base armor reductions, and making Wolf's attacks from W slow monster movement and attack speed by 50%

Over on twitter, Gypsylord noted the goal of the changes were:
"Kindred changes should hit her dueling but new wolf maim preserves her ability to clear pretty effectively. 50% DR and Slow is a big deal."
Over on reddit, he elaborated:
"Kindred changes are harsh but likely needed. Here's the problem. We've historically had to balance Kindred around the fact that kiting jungle mobs has a huge delta between experienced and non-experienced players. Kite well and you take no damage. Kite poorly and you might not be able to complete your first clear. 
As such Kindred has historically had to have very high base stats and healing to ensure that she can clear, even when not kiting optimally. This resulted in a character who was insane when played well. She's a ranged character who gets to run around at full health all the time with the base stats of a melee on top of that. 
The changes to wolf are trying to address the kiting delta. The assumption is that if we can make Kindred's jungle kiting easier (wolf slows jungle monsters and causes them to attack less frequently) we can then take away her Melee champion base stats without the previous side effect of making her unable to clear the jungle. 
End result? Kindred becomes an actually squishy champion (similar to other ADC's) which allows burst and melee focused characters to take advantage of her easier in the early game. Then if she's too weak, we can put power back into her spells. It's a lot more fair for Vayne to jump around and deal a bunch of damage to you if she actually takes damage when you jump on her."

Meddler on Ryze and Yorick Champion Updates


While we've heard these timelines before, Meddler reiterated that Ryze's champion update should be before 6.18 and that Yorick's large scope champion update should be after 6.18 but before end of 2016:

On Ryze:
"Quote:
When is ryze rework coming?
Almost certainly before patch 6.18. Details beyond that still subject to change."
On Yorick:
"Quote:
Any idea on yorick, or is that still a secrete/no sure thing.
After 6.18 and probably before the end of the year."
Recent discussion on the Ryze champion update, including scope and "why",  can be found here.

[6.13 Planned] Adjustments to Secondary Systems [Part 1 - Experience Changes] 

As mentioned in the latest State of the Season post, patch 6.13 is scheduled to have several changes to experience aimed at the support role.

Here's Xypherous with a look at several experience related changes tentatively planned for next patch, which should be hitting the PBE soon!
"We're making some experience changes in the 6.13 patch to address some of our concerns with how experience is rewarded. In certain cases - it's pushed too aggressively - while in others - these plays aren't being rewarded at all. 
  • Champion Kill XP Adjustments 
    • Champions are now worth less XP at levels 1 to 9 relative to live - this is more pronounced at early levels - 1 / 2 / 3.  
Context: In general, killing someone early in lane creates an XP advantage due to deprivation. We're adjusting early champion deaths to account for the fact that super early kills are mostly about their inability to soak a wave's worth of experience rather than having the two effects compound on top of each other.  
  • XP Rubberbanding Adjustments 
    • Currently, our experience rubberbanding kicks in incredibly hard at certain breakpoints. For example, for minions - you gain no rubberband EXP until you are 4 levels below the average of the enemy team. 
    • We're making two major changes to our rubberband system: 
      • XP difference is now calculated continuously - rather than by integers - The EXP system now considers that you can be 2.5 levels behind rather than 2, for example. 
      • In general, rubberband bonuses will kick in earlier than they have previously - with reduced early coefficients.  
Context: Our XP rubberbanding system is currently tuned kind of oddly. It doesn't care about you at all until a certain point where it then kicks into hyperdrive. In addition, the use of integers rather than floats leads to this odd thing where - if the system does kick in - it's guaranteed to be kicking in much too hard for that context initially. These changes are intended to soften those curves to be more responsive to the actual state of the game. 
  • XP "Soak" Rules 
    • After dying, Champions are still considered eligible to 'soak' experience from enemy champion kills even if they did not score an assist on that target for a period of time - roughly 10 seconds for now. 
    • They still aren't eligible for minion EXP while dead. 
    • Note that this doesn't affect most tower dives - as you gained experience from a tower assisted kill even post death previously.  
Context: There's a disturbing trend where a supportive initiation or sacrificial play that leads to your team winning the fight tends to create a terrible cyclical case. You don't gain XP for not tagging everyone in the fight. The XP gets distributed to your team instead of you. You are now lower level than your team and even less likely to be alive to soak XP for the next fight - and on and on - until the XP difference gets so large that the aforementioned plays are no longer possible. This change is intended to address the fact that the XP system for teamfights needs to consider participation for a time rather than whether or not you managed to get an assist tag on everyone involved.  
  • Wards 
    • Wards are now worth 30 EXP when slain. 
    • Blue Trinket Wards are worth 15 EXP when slain.  
Context: Ward Sweeping is an important activity but the disparity between sweeping vs. soaking experience from lanes is a bit too high at the moment. Successful sweeps should be rewarding and so we're introducing a bit of experience on wards. 
(It's likely I should be more aggressive on this one - come to think of it.)"

When asked if these were on the PBE as of the 6/15 update, Xypherous  commented:
"Quote:
Are these on the PBE already (current build is 6/15 update)?
The base XP system changes should be in - the Ward XP stuff is not.
Let me know if things seem off."
When asked about ward kill xp and roles other than support, Xypherous  commented:
"Quote: 
Would the ward XP not lead to an overproportional advantage for champions that are safe enough (read: tanks) to clear more aggressively?
Based on the knowledge of how many wards are cleared vs. the experience you lose from not participating in activities that award passive experience - it's really hard to say whether it's overproportional. 
We know roughly how many wards are killed by what position - and it seems fairly targetted given that supports kill roughly twice or thrice that of other role/positions - but as the incentives change - you're right in that it could shift classes around."
As for how the ward kill xp will be shared and concerns on "feeding xp",  Xypherous commented:
"Quote:
What happens when you just get an assisst and someone else kills the ward? Do both get XP (50/50 or shared like minions with a slight bonus?). 
And what about supports trying to feed the XP to the carries (using trinket but letting the other players destroy the wards)? 
I would give the full XP always to the player that used the trinket/placed the pink ward (or destroyed the pink ward).
XP is distributed like minions - rather than last hitting - so you can't really feed the XP that effectively unless you split up after revealing the ward.

I don't really want to add too many additional rules even if it would result in a more optimal distribution - just due to keeping the rules relatively slim on this."
He continued:
"Quote:
Does these numbers really help supports enough to at least stay close to the lvl of other roles? Or is it that the difference just shrinks from ~6 lvls to 5 lvls?
The impact will generally be somewhere around 200 to 300 xp. 
As I've said - I might be being super light on this particular mechanic - and we might go more aggressive in future patches but at the very least - this is a field that we can reliably track and measure pretty consistently to get an idea of the total effect and so the idea is that we want to follow up on this continuously until we think it's no longer needed."

Xypherous also elaborated on what "rubberband" means in terms of the XP changes:
"Quote:
What is exactly rubberband exp?
"Rubberband" Exp is circumstances in which we award bonus experience in the case of some imbalance in terms of power level. 
For example, if you kill someone much higher level than you - you get bonus experience based on the level difference as well - due to the experience system trying to catch you back up to your opponents for successful actions. 
It's nicknamed rubberband exp because of how it has the effect of snapping back things that are too far out of line. "




[6.13 Planned] Adjustments to.. more Stuff! [Part 2 - Teleport / Support Items] 

In addition to the experience related changes mentioned above, Xypherous also shared a tentative changelist for both teleport and support item changes planned for 6.13:
"Note Part 2 of this focuses on more direct non-champion changes planned in 6.13 - This won't be in today's PBE patch - but I think they should be in by Thursday for this set. Apologies. 
Teleport Re-balancing 
Context: Teleport's power is fairly strong at the moment and it's only gaining in popularity. These adjustments are designed to give enemies sufficient warning to react to a powerful use of Teleport - as well as generally make the spell easier to play around.  
  • Teleport Channel Time: 3.5 --> 4.5 
  • Teleport destination point is no longer random on the target. Instead - you will appear on the side of the object closest to your nexus. 
    • In practical terms, what this means is that, if you teleport to a tower - you will appear behind the tower - not at some random point around it. 
  • Teleport destination VFX is now shown if you have vision within 500 units of the target point. 
    • In practical terms, if they teleport to a brush that you do not have vision in - you will still see a teleport channel particle so long as you have vision of the area around the brush. 
  • Teleport not automatically does a soundless 'OMW' ping to your allies - denoting both where you will specifically end up - and who is coming. 
Ancient Coin Line Buffs / Changes

Context: Because... well - because I probably nerfed it way too hard in S2016 because we didn't like the defined identity it had. That was likely a mistake on my part. 
Ancient Coin
  • Cooldown Reduction: 0% --> 5%
  • Other stats unchanged 
Nomad's Medallion
  • Cooldown Reduction: 0% --> 10%
  • HP Regen : 50% --> 25%
  • MP Regen : 25% --> 75%
  • Other stats unchanged 
Context: These two changes are intended to push Coin into a heavy spell-based pattern - in contrast to Targon's last hitting or Spellthief's aggressive attack / spell harass combos. Coin simply gives you more potential spells and the mana to sustain that pattern in lane. 
Talisman of Ascension 
Recipe Change: Raptor's Cloak + Nomad's Medallion + 450 G = 2500 G Total 
  • Armor: 0 --> 45
  • HP Regen : 100% --> 150%
  • MP Regen : 100% --> 75%
  • Gains another passive - Point Runner: Builds up to 20% Movement speed over 2 seconds while near turrets, fallen turrets and void gates.
  • Retains previous AoE speed boost Active.
  • Other stats unchanged 
Context: The addition of Raptor's Cloak being the component for Talisman of Ascension is hoping to do a couple of things. It brings the roam / mobility fantasy online a lot quicker. It provides an interesting tension of components you can build early - as an early Chain Vest can be acquired in this build path. 
Spooooky Idol and Friends

Context: Now that Forbidden Idol doesn't build into Talisman - and in fact, really only builds into two items - that leaves open some interesting opportunity space to specialize the component.  
Spoopy Idol 
  • Total Cost: 550 --> 850
  • Gains another passive: +10% Heal and Shield Power
  • Other stats unchanged 
Mikael's Crucible 
  • Combine Cost: 850 --> 650
  • Total Cost: 2300 --> 2400 (Due to Forbidden Idol cost increase)
  • Heal / Shield Power : 0% --> 15%
  • Other stats unchanged 
Ardent Censer 
  • Combine Cost: 800 --> 700
  • Total Cost: 2200 --> 2400 (Due to Forbidden Idol cost increase)
  • Heal / Shield Power : 0% --> 15%
  • MP Regen : 100% --> 50%
  • Ability Power : 40 --> 60
  • Other stats unchanged
Context: Forbidden Idol hasn't been a terribly useful component item as it was basically made as a way to 'explain' certain end-game statistics on items. This pattern of items hasn't worked - so we took a look at what items the item builds into and decided to add Heal / Shield Power to better fit and lock in the power of the upgrades to enchantress type supports. 
Ardent Censer has been shifted around to give a bit more punch to everything you do. The mana regeneration of the item has been hit given that the item improves your mana efficiency of a heal spell by quite a bit. 
Ruby Sightstone 
  • Combine Cost: 600 --> 400
  • Total Cost: 1800 --> 1600
  • Active Item CDR: 10% --> 20%
  • Other stats unchanged 
Context: Eyestones are pretty good - mostly in that they let you rush your 2nd/3rd item and give you an additional ward early. By contrast, Ruby isn't really holding up to something like a Locket or Crucible rush. This change is intended to make Ruby even more multiplicative late game with an heavy active item build - while also re-examining what the item should actually cost - as active item cdr by itself is fairly useless.
Some QoL buffs - courtesy of Gypsylord, hallowed be his name

Boots of Mobility
  • Attacking a Ward no longer triggers Boots of Mobility's in-combat reduced movement speed.  
Spellthief's Edge
  • Killing non-lane minions no longer deactivates Spellthief's Edge's passive. (For example: Voidlings or Zyra Plants.)"
Following the initial post, Xypherous hung around the PBE boards to answer questions and reply to comments:

When asked about what counts as a heal or shield for the purpose of the new Forbidden Idol passive, Xypherous explained:
"Quote:
Is this ALL shields and heals in which you are involved or only heals and shield on allies?
Shield / Heal power is all things classified as healing and shielding effects. 
This notably - should not effect things like lifesteal and drain effects. Just simple heals and shields. 
So you can try buying it on Udyr or something, I suppose and amplify his Turtle Stance. Just.. that statline might be poor on you."
As for the new Forbidden Idol passive's price and stackability, Xypherous commented:
"Quote:
Spoopy Idol seems a bit expensive for +10% Healing/Shield (+300g) while the other 2 are more like +100g for the +15%. Maybe just 800g.
The problem with this type of effect is that it tends to be much scarier in lane than in other contexts - hence why it seems like the cost of this stat goes down as the item gets more expensive. The stat is effectively worth less outside of lane sustain scenarios.
(That is, until you get so far you start supporting a Heal/Poke meta. We'll see what happens if/when we hit that.)
What about stacking the 2 items to get 30%? Is the effect unique? If they are stackable I feel like Soraka gets forced to build both and probably Janna, too, just because they have 2 shield/healing spells. Karma probably too because she is 80% about R+E and then spamming E on CD later.
You could try doing so but the key thing to realize is that these %'s are multipliers. At a certain point - Ability Power actually becomes better to scale the effect overall - as you can get equivalent mileage out of a single one of these items and then a certain amount of AP - knowing that the 15% will boost the heal gains you get from AP as well. 
You could argue that a theoretical 6 item build has both of them - but I think a heavy AP item + one of these items can go toe to toe with that build in effective healing and efficiency."
When asked about support champion specific champions, Xypherous commented:
"Quote:
Are there any plans to change any champions that are having a lower win-rate in games? Thresh and janna come to mind as too weak/strong.
Champion balance is part of the patch - though those tend to be in flux way more as the patch gets locked down. I don't have more concrete details as live balance tends to iterate as much as they can patch to patch - and so I'd be misrepresenting them if I did post notes as they'd probably rapidly change. 
I know that they're looking at champions - I'm not sure they are looking at those - but that's kind of no different from every patch. Apologies that I can't be more helpful."
As for how these changes may play out for Soraka, Xypherous commented:
"Quote:
As someone who likes to play 'enchantress' supports, I am happy with all of these.
Are you prepared for the inevitable Soraka QQing?
Highly likely that Soraka will be more annoying but perhaps we can tone her base heal amounts down - now that she has an item path to specialize that ouput. 
However - I do know that we're looking at a series of other changes for other support champion kits more directly - and my hope is that these will counterbalance out the item boost she's getting." 
On Soraka, Xypherous  continued:
"Quote:
My only concern about nerfing her heals as a response to the new item is making the item essentially mandatory on her. Supports already have to finish their GP10 and a Sightstone. It would be frustrating to have to sink another 850 gold into an item to get back to my original usefulness. But, that's something to worry about if any nerfs came through. I like the idea of the items so far :)
Hopefully there's enough of a tradeoff between building this item vs. building something like a Warmog's on her that will naturally balance out... but Soraka is... tricky given her extreme nature. 
I would love a world in which we could shift power from her base heal into other aspects of her kit so that her overall power level is similar - and then force her to decide via itemization which path she prefers to scale - where she wants to be more starcall / silence focused - or whether to double down on healing - but that's a personal opinion. :P
He continued:
"Quote:
I don't see why you wouldn't want her healing.
The difference in the builds would result in more of the following archetypes of healer being possible for her builds. 
Glass Healer - who is squishy but has the highest heal impact - AKA - my heals are huge - my health pool is small and I am very careful. 
Tanky Healer - who is harder to take down - whose healing output is more moderate - I have high regeneration and decent heals + some utility to downplay the necessity of healing constantly. 
For example, Rylai's Slow in the right circumstance can reduce as much damage as a healing someone for 100 more. If that type of distinction is possible - that'd be pretty interesting. 
There's also the more worrisome facet that inflexible narrow champions tend to be very very hard to support - we've traditionally had the most trouble with these types of champions as what they do has to be super reliable and then it leads to a lack of play - it's a long term maintainability concern for this."
Xypherous also replied to a question concerning how Mikael's Crucible and Athene's Unholy Grail interact:
"Quote:
Does the Ardent Censer or Mikael's Crucible stack with Athene's Unholy Grail passive?
They will amplify Grail's passive. You will get more value per blood charge. This is similar to how Windspeaker's blessing is amplifying the value of blood charges as well as letting you expend more blood charges at a time.
In one playtest, with ~300 AP - I think I Nami 'W'ed someone for like 800 health - then it bounced to an enemy, bounced back and healed them for another 400. Granted - 300 AP is a bit high - but the potential is there. It could be unreasonable but the price of those items pushes it in the later parts of laning phase and into the team fight case - which may be more acceptable.
Also, any plans for other supports items, including Zeke's Herald?
Not at the moment. Those items are performing very well - so we mostly wanted to focus on things that we felt were performing poorly to create some new potential options."
When asked if they will take a look at Ohmwrecker, Xypherous noted:
"Quote:
This miiiight not be the right place to ask this, but while we're on the subject of tweaking items, are there any plans regarding Ohmwrecker? Honestly surprised it just wasn't removed from the game alongside Zephyr. I haven't seen it purchased in 2 years of playing League consistently.
My experiments still haven't gone well with that item. 
I really have to revisit it some more at this point - but they were either too disruptive for the meta (aka - giving all Ohmwrecker people the ability to channel laserbeams to disable / reduce tower effectiveness - somewhat akin to Dominion) - or just never really panned out due to the fact that no role in the game seems to have sufficient slots to devote to the effect. 
Still committed to trying to find something for the item - as it's named after a player and I'd like to figure out something that still fits the theme / name."
Xypherous continued:
"Quote:
I always like the idea of being able to use the Ohmwrecker on allied OR enemy towers. I think the reason Ohmwrecker isn't very popular is because you get to a point when you're tanky enough not to need to deactivate their tower.
The idea of making Ohmwrecker basically have a dual function ran into problems where - by end games - there were no towers. It delayed Ohmwrecker feeling awful to build due to lack of useful targets - but the fact that it was so keyed into just towers made this approach tricky as you tend to get the item late - but you also burn all of its potential. :/"

Group Questions 1
"Quote:
These are looking pretty neat, Xyph! I have a few questions for you though.
  1. Is the Heal/Shield amp on these items Unique, or can I build Crucible and Censer together for a 30% boost? (Or more if they're multiplicative)
  2. Is natural health regeneration amplified by the Heal/Shield power passive?
  3. Have you ever considered a larger-ticket support item, ala deathcap, that supports could use to double-down on their utility late game or if they're ahead? Something not stat-efficient in terms of combat statistics, but had unique stats such as heal/shield power, + Max CDR, summoner spell CDR, or increased CC duration.
  1. They're not unique - but they are additive.
  2. Nope - This stat is different from Spirit Visage's passive which amplifies every source of healing.
  3. It tends to be hard to build something like this given the gold constraints and the fact that there's really no sources of 'unreliable' gold for supports to aspire to. The gold system is very fundamentally flawed when it comes to this role in particular in that there's no real way to accrue a huge variance of gold that the super-larger ticket items can fit in well.
It's an interesting space but we'll have to do some more groundwork first I think. First off - We probably want to encapsulate all ally buffs somehow - and then keyword that so it can be referenced - then we can talk about the super item that allows for that."
Group Questions 2:
"Quote:
Here are my thoughts/questions:
  1. I'm not sure why the situational MS of Raptor Cloak is considered better for Talisman than its old passive MS and overall I feel like I don't really understand the problems you guys have/had with that line of items. We all know that Coin encourages a passive lane but do these changes address that? The gold gen passive remains the same.
  2. I like the consistent nerfs to mana regen on individual items that you've been doing - it's a great way to remove the redundancy that's often been shown by items like Censer where people won't pick them up because they don't need the regen. The nerf to the mana on both Censer and Talisman enhances this, as buying either of those won't necessarily make something like Grail an unattractive purchase anymore.
  3. In the mid-season update you reduced the mana regen on FQC because bot lane had too much sustain, but you left Eye of the Watchers at 100% MP5. Doesn't that make the FQC change redundant, and if so, shouldn't Watchers go down to 75% as well? Bot lane has just as much sustain as it used to, you just buy Watchers instead of Frost Queen's now.
  4. If Censer ends up going down well then... thoughts on Athene's? I like it a lot, but people haven't really been picking it up and it's had basically no LCS presence despite champions like Nami and Karma showing up a lot. Surely it's a bit weak on the numbers side, so I'm surprised it's not present here.
  5. Is Talisman intended to appeal to tanks now? I dunno, armour + HP5 seems to push it more towards them than the sustainy mages it used to like.
  6. Ruby Sightstone's buff is wonderful, thanks a lot.
Overall I'm happy but I do have a lot of questions about support itemisation, as you can see.
1 - The actual passive may not be better than situational movement speed - but generally, concentrated power that has the same net effect has both felt better and been better to optimize than things like ~3% MS boost. While the total power might be the same - one of the passives can be optimized around well - and the other can't - which leads to a little more play. 
As far as Coin being passive - this is still true with the passive - I agree. These changes are small nudges to the overall game overall - as larger changes as we get closer to worlds are difficult to justify. 
3 - For the sustain in bot lane problem - we were mostly looking at raw health sustain. While certain characters can convert the mana very effectively into health - we were more concerned with the amount that healing potions, feast and other effects are doing to make even tank lanes super sustainy. 
While I could agree that Watchers should have less MP/5 - I don't really want to do any nerfs this patch as it's not altogether clear that it's necessary. It'd be nice from a consistency angle - but it doesn't seem like the current state it problematic. 
4 - To be bluntly honest, I actually don't expect any of these secondary support items to be purchased a lot. This is because Locket pretty much dominates a support's purchases. However - removing Locket from being mandatory right after the mage patch has a lot of disruptive consequences. 
Basically - you won't see any support items show up other than Eyestone + Locket - and you shouldn't expect to really see it - because Locket is just that damn strong. Support item diversity really needs Locket to be gone from the game - but that change needs quite a bit more care in terms of the number of things it disrupts. 
5 - No real desire to push it one way or the other. If it ends up getting picked up by Tanks - that's okay. Suspect that they'll waste the MP/5 + CDR portion of it."
Xypherous is still over on the PBE boards answering questions, be sure to check the thread out!

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