Red Post Collection: Assassin Roster Update - Katarina, New Merch in shop, Kled price reduction, and more!

Continue reading for more information!

• Red Post Collection: LeBlanc Update Direction, Ask Riot - Chroma & Champ Up, LCU Alpha Patch .07 & Feedback, & more
• 8/12 PBE Update: Chroma testing, balance changes, & more!
• NA & EU LCS Summer Playoffs Quarterfinals
• This Week in Esports [August 8th - August 14th]
• Champion & Skin Sale 8/16 - 8/19
• Free Champion Rotation, Week of August 16th
• 8/15 PBE Update: Arcade Ezreal splash art, Nexus Siege tweaks, and more

Table of Contents

• August 15th Patch Updates
• Assassin Roster Update - Katarina
• New Riot Merch- OST Hoodie & Champions backpack + Mouse pad
• ETHERNET vs. WIFI: CLAIRVOYANCE BLOG  
• Meddler & Reav3 Grab Bag
• Working on Kled HP bar for Colorblind Mode
• ENDING SOON // First Strike 
• Pocket Picks: Darshan's Yasuo
• /ALL Chat | WTF is that? Items Part 2 
• /ALL Chat: What’s the best way a player can help the team? 
• IWCQ Match Schedule
• Lights, camera, League!
• Kled Price Reduction

Assassin Roster Update - Katarina

 Following the posts on Talon, Rengar, and LeBlanc, here's Beluga Whale with more info on the Katarina update that will be coming in the assassin roster update later this year:

"Hey all, 

The last major update for Assassins this pre-season will be focused around improving Katarina and solidifying her functionality within League of Legends. We believe that at her core, Katarina wants to be a hyper agile, high lethality champion that rides on the razor edge of adrenaline and thrives in the middle of the action. She was our fourth choice here because we wanted to create a more fleshed out and richer version of this - one that is even more exciting to play, but with fewer game health issues then her current kit incurs. Our goals for her are as follows: 

Tactical Play 

Perhaps the most significant goal in this update is building Tactical Play and Counterplay into her kit - giving both Katarina and her opponents the ability to make moment to moment plays against each other. In teamfights, there is no more frustrating experience than playing against Katarina when she can cast 5 spell rotations as fast as possible, blinking all over the screen in a completely un-interactible mess of blades. Like the other Assassins in the other updates, we are addings windows in her kill pattern that opponents will be able to meaningfully interact with. Expect her live combo of Shunpo + Sinister Steel to be altered to not be as instantaneous. In return, Katarina players can expect to gain significantly higher mobility and the ability to dance in and out of encounters and set up her own success. 

Laning and Interaction 

With her current live kit, Katarina players are forced to eek through laning phase, if they can. With no real means to kill or even make trades against most opponents, laning becomes a non-interactive affair of throwing Qs and stealing the opportune CS. This feels wrong given her nature and we want to make her laning a much deadlier dance for both parties involved. 

Mastery and Skill Expression 

We believe skill expression to be an extremely important part of Katarina’s appeal that has been unfortunately under-exposed. To all the Katarina players who have undeservingly earned the reputation as face-rollers that win fights by mashing all their buttons repeatedly, we dropped the ball. Internally, we know that she actually has a rather steep mastery curve. On top of rapid input constraints, she tests many less visible aspects revolving heavily around her ability to track opponent CC and pick the exact right moment to engage. These are all important to her, but there should also be more obvious moments where Katarina has out played her opponents built into her own kit, whether through clever juking or flashy prediction plays. 

Resetting 

This is probably the elephant in the room when it comes to Kat. There are multiple compelling arguments against it, including the extreme Feast or Famine pattern it creates. However, kill resets are a powerful tool for striking hard in high risk high reward and adrenaline rush gameplay, while also making a strategically sharp character. We see Katarina’s ability to hedge her entire skill rotation knowing that if she is successful, she will be able to try again for more is vital to the unique appeal she brings to League. To resolve the aforementioned Feast or Famine, we are actually doubling down here. Expect that Katarina will not only get to keep her live passive and also gain access to some other form of partial resetting on part of her kit - most likely Shunpo. 

• Shunpo and Ward Jumping 
• We felt a heads up is valuable here: As an indirect result of multiple shunpo resets built directly into Katarina’s kit and a heavy focus on premeditated set up plays, we are re-assessing Ward Jumping. Ward jumping allows Kat to be anywhere she wants regardless of how poorly she set up, which limits our ability to make this multi-jumping playstyle reasonable. Without Shunpo’s ability to ward jump, we would be able to push more power into Shunpo resetting, while also allowing us to give Katarina even more kill pressure in lane where the reliable escape limits her power budget. This isn’t a light consideration and we understand that this function is an expression of skill on the champion, but we feel that there is significantly more mastery to be gained through new Shunpo gameplay. 

Best, 

Beluga Whale"

Following the main post, several rioters hung around to answer questions:

When asked if Katarina will be receiving new abilities or just number tweaks, Reav3 noted:

"Quote:

Would Katarina be gaining any new spells as she recently got a skin with particles and it would seem odd to drastically change it so soon

She will be getting multiple new spells"

Reav3 continued:

"Quote:

Will Kat still be able to out the enemy team?? Or is that aspect of her getting removed?

She will have new ways to get in and out of fights :)"

Reav3  also added that Katarina will remain resourceless:

"She will remains resourceless"

When asked about her R changing significantly, Beluga Whale  noted:

"Quote:

I haven't seen anyone bring it up yet but are you touching her ultimate at all? I personally think that there's a lot of room to play around with her Q and W (so I'm excited to see what you do there) and you've already said that her passive and Shunpo will remain, so what about the ult? 

I really feel like the ability is super unique to League and it also offers a lot of counterplay considering its a channelled ability where she sits still in the middle of an enemy team that can be stopped with almost any cc.. I also saw CertainlyT mention in a stream that he felt the same way about her ult so I'm really interested to know what you guys are planning for it

Its unlikely that her ult will change in any significant fashion on a gameplay basis"

Beluga Whale   added:

"Quote:

Will she still spin?

She probably spins more actually. Spin to win is the way to go."

Statikk  also jumped in to add that her W will be new and a few other details:

"Quote:

So scared, but also so hyped ; - ; A few questions, will her W be changed entirely? Will her E have a new passive to contradict the removal of the 15% damage reduction? Will her Q/R still remain multiple target spells? Concerning her E and what I've gathered from the post, it's clear you guys want to make her less of a do or die champion concerning jumping headfirst into team fights. Whether that's through lowering the cooldown or giving a new way to reset I suppose we'll have to wait and see! Thank you and take care of Kat ; _ ; (Sorry if you can't answer all these by the way, I'm just so curious!)

Her W is being changed entirely, but we also plan to keep the current W elsewhere on the kit. 

Her E doesn't really have a new passive but will interact very integrally with the rest of this new kit. We don't feel it's necessary to preserve the arbitrary damage reduction mechanic given the amount of mobility we are adding to her kit. There's no need to reduce the damage taken if you're not there to take it in the first place. 

Her Q and R will remain multiple target spells. In fact, R is largely unchanged outside of some re-balancing." 

As for what Katarina will being to a team comp, Reav3  noted:

"Quote:

Also forgot another question. What does this Rework mean for Katabae? 

Will there be a reason to pick her? Talon rework already sounds great, add to it the fact he is ad compared to Kata, what would a reason be to pick Kata? What's her direction? And what does this look like for competitive play? 

The current icon for her ult shows her Blades thrown, but in truth correct me if im wrong but she doesn't throw her blades, she throws kunais or something like that. Will that be fixed?

Kat will likely remain one of the best team fight Assassins in the game."

Beluga Whale  added:

"Quote:

Will Kat still retain a good chunk of AOE abilities, or will she be pushed more to single target?

AoE is one of the main strategic elements Katarina brings as an Assassin"

When asked if Katarina will  remain AP or AD, Beluga Whale noted:

"Quote:

Will she still build the same?

We debated whether we should swap her over to AD since it made more sense with how her spells feel, but ultimately choose to keep her AP based builds because the items honestly were cooler (Zhonyas), and the cost of forcing everyone to re-learn builds was not worth it."

Beluga Whale added:

"Quote:

Do you mean that you'll make her mainly AP or hybrid/choosing between AD and AP? 

Regarding AP-build being cooler, maybe there should be cooler AD items if that's the case! That seems like an issue with AD items rather than Katarina's or any other champions' kit. 

What if the pass on assassin items ends up making an AD build equally cool? Would you re-evaluate? I mean, it seems to me any changes would disrupt her builds anyway, so re-learning those will be the case either case. 

Her thematics clearly say AD, so the AP scaling is a bit of a thematic disconnect. I think thematics are valuable, so I might actually prefer her as AD, idk.

I would re-evaluate if our items work produced some sexy ad items, but if that happens that would probably be a follow up later on, as we do need time to balance as well. I would really prefer if an AP Assassin like Kat did not build Abyssal Zhonyas Rylais... Imagine if Zed'soptimal build was Maw, Frozen Mallet, AND like, Atma's Impaler/Wriggles (Old Armor AD item). :( 

Hybrid builds are difficult to support in a significant scope because how powerful flat pen is, and how it constricts hybrids from being able to actually choose from both sides. Gunblade would be cool though." 

Beluga Whale continued:

"Quote:

We had AD Kat, Tanky Kat, Bi Kat and AP Kat. 

Do you think the new spells (Or spell adjustment) she'll receive will push her into a side in particular? 

Will she keep the grievious wounds passive on her ultimate? 

You said you wanted to change her Shunpo gameplay, but will she still have the damage reduction from it after using the spell? 

Is her Q, Bouncing Blade, receiving a minor change or will be a completely different one, without having to proc the mark like Akali's Q?

No goal towards pushing her back towards AD kat, though gunblade is a pretty cool item if she feels special and gets to build it. I will cry if tank katarina is the right way to play her... 

Unlikely her ultimate will undergo significant changes, though grevious wounds is still a question we are figuring out. 

The 15% DR is probably not staying. The belief is she has enough mobility in this iteration that any other type of defense is basically unnecessary here. 

Bouncing Blades is getting reworked, but will probably retain the feel of the live spell" 

On Q being reworked, Reav3  added:

"Quote:

Key word here is 'reworked' not removed. So something like removing the marks and increasing the base damage could be a possibility of what they consider 'reworked'

I would think more in the vain of Vlad Q. It feels the the same but functions very differently."

As for potentially removing ward jumping from other champions, Beluga Whale  commented:

"Quote:

I understand your take on removing Ward jumping as you have new reset mechanics with Shunpo, but I feel if you are to remove it from one champ wouldn't it only be fair to remove it from Jax and Lee Sin too?

No plans for this at the moment. If we were to, I would imagine they would be backed with significant changes similar to what we've been exploring on Katarina - probably even more so for Lee. Unlike Kat, Lee has entire combos and aspirations built around the function that extend past free escape."

BelugaWhale   added:

"Quote:

Also, RIP ward jump Kat. I thought ward jumping was a skill only decent players can do, but I guess Riot doesn't think that way. I know I couldn't ward jump when I started playing the game back in season 2

No, we understand ward jumping is one of the best ways to identify a skilled live katarina player. However, part of that is because its one of the only reliable ways to do so. This isn't like Lee sin, who has entire aspirations and combos built around the function. We strongly believe there are much cooler ways for katarina to show off than through her ability to remember to press 4 before e."

When asked about Fizz and the assassin update, Reav3 explained:

"Quote:

Can I ask why Fizz was considered for a major rework as part of this effort? From my reading of the stated goals of the reworks, he already meets most if not all of them. Just wondering what the thought process was and what sort of changes we can expect.

We felt that he could use something small, like maybe 1 ability reworked and be in a pretty good place. His W in particular is a root cause of Tank Fizz being a thing. We might not have found something solid for him and passed anyway but he was on the table. 

The reason we had him last on the champions to explore was for the very reasons you mentioned. We started with the champions that had combos that could come out in .5 seconds first. Fizz was more of a stretch goal."

As for Akali, Reav3 noted:

"Quote:

Are Talon, Rengar, LeBlanc, and Katarina the only assassins getting major reworks? What about Akali and Evelynn? I feel like those two also need a little bit of change, but that's just me.

We looked into Akali pretty early on in the Assassin update and concluded that she probably needs a full VGU to get her to where she needs to be. We didn't want to push out a update that only fixed some of her problems as that hasn't netted great results in the past. Evelynn was already high on our VGU list so we passed on her for now. Both of them are still on the table for smaller changes though (think Annie and Fiddlesticks size changes from the MYMU)"

When asked if a "big 4" will be the right number of champions to update in future updates, Reav3 explained:

"Quote:

Question, will 4 be the magic number of role reworks in the future? As in, 4 major diver and 4 major tank reworks? 

Will you ever go back and devote more resources into previous champions whose reworks didn't pan out well?

It will probably vary from project to project depending on resources and what we think the champions needs to be "complete." With Assassins we didn't want to pick the champions ahead of time and then commit to working on them. This is why we the direction posts for Assassins came out so much later then the mage ones. For Assassins we started looking into 6 at the beginning of the project. Stashu quickly realized that Akali needed more work then a roster project, so after some discussion with the team we decided to move onto Talon. At that point we had Talon, LB, Kat & Rengar in development. After working on them for a bit we had a better idea of how much work they would need to make them healthy, functional & fun. We realized that we would have to make sacrifices somewhere to get a 5th Assassin and we would rather have shipped 4 solid updates then 3 solid updates and 2 not as solid updates. We then made the decision to down scope the 5th Assassin (Fizz.) 

In future updates if it looks like we can really deliver a awesome update with less abilities changed on each champion then we will likely be able to do more then 4 (or maybe less in some cases) 

As for going back to older reworks. We already went back to Cass for the mage update. When we get to the Tank Class update we will likely give Shen a little love. Morde and Skarner are now on our list to get full VGUs one day (We skipped Akali because we didn't want a similar situation to Morde & Skarner, for example)"

Reav3  continued:

"Quote:

Would it be okay if I got your opinion on what led to Skarner getting put on that list?

Why Skarner is on the VGU list? He is on the list because his gameplay/art/thematics haven't aged super well. I think that given the full resources of a VGU we could really improve everything about Skarner similar to what we did with Taric/Sion/Poppy."

As for who exactly will be getting lower scope updates, Reav3  noted:

"Quote:

Will you make a post about the general direction of the minor changes coming for the other champs included in the assassin update ?
All these updates look so promising ! Thx riot ☺

Once we know exactly which Assassins will get smaller updates Statikk will likely do one post that briefly goes over each. They shouldn't be as ling or in-depth as the big ones are. 

We are still early on the smaller Assassins and of we don't find changes we are confident in for certain Assassins we will likely skip them. We should no more soon(ish) though, but likely not until a month or so."

As for the timing of the assassin update and if it would be before or after Yorick's large scope champion update, Reav3  noted:

"Quote:

Can we expect this update to occure before the yorick rework or not even this year?

The Assassin Update will be out for this years PreSeason update. So sometime around the end of the year. This will be after Yorick."

As for Warwrick's champion update, Reav3 noted:

"Quote:

Do you think that warwick will come out by the end of this year, or will it be early next year?

Not sure yet. But sometime around that timeframe still makes sense."

[8/17 UPDATE: Several additional posts!]



When asked if he thought current Katarina mains would remain satisfied after the update, Reav3  noted:

"Quote:

Do you believe with these changes, Katarina mains will remain satisfied ?

I believe that many will. I don't think any changes we make will ever make 100% of the players that play the champion happy, no matter what the changes are. So far all of our player labs where we have brought in Kat mains to play the new changes have been very positive though. But that is just a small sample compared to the amount of players that will play her on release."

Reav3  added:

"Quote:

I don't think she's gonna have any relevance in competitive play - simply because of the mechanics on her ultimate. She is too easy to shut down once she is in rotation-mode unless she get's both a black shield and taric ult.

That was also true of many low mobility mages before the mage update. They were considered not viable for competative play due to there weakness to ganks or being far to binary (like old Malz, for example.) 

Not sure if new Kat will or won't be played in pro play, but the changes should make her a lot less binary and lot less reliant on her Ult to be successful. 

Also a champions ability to lane well has a pretty huge effect on how viable they are in pro play. Kat having a stronger laning phase could help her viability quite a bit."

Reav3  added:

"I think CC will still be a weakness of hers, but overall she will be far less binary and have many more options in lane as well as in teamfights. She will be less reliant on waiting for the right moment to go in, even though that will still be a part of her identity. Giving other things to do rather then just "wait for the right time to go in" should help her out in that regard."

When asked if they will remove the damage from Shunpo, Beluga Whale  noted:

"Quote:

Are you planning on keeping shunpo damage? it is an interesting aspect when fighting low health enemies, and offers her to keep abilities in her arsenal rather then spamming them.

We found pretty quickly that shunpo without damage felt preeeetty bad, especially for last hitting in high pressure situations."

Statikk  also commented on her lack of the "usual" mechanics:

"Quote:

please tell me she won't have any % damage or true damage or 3 hits passive
I'm so hyped for the rework tough. Can't wait to try it out when it comes out

She currently dose not have any % HP damage, true damage, or 3 hit passives.
No promises though. =)"

As for a comment on Akali being on the list for a larger update, Reav3  noted:

"Quote:

U are always talking about this "VGU list".But with this pace of releasing reworks Akali will be out in like year 2020.Do u think thats a bit too late?

It's a fair argument based on our past release timeline. I think if you look at the release rate recently it won't look like Akali will be in 2020. Look at the time between Poppy->Shen->Taric->Ryze and soon to be Yorick and you will see that our VGU releases have been coming much quicker (Even though Shen wasn't a full VGU)"

New Riot Merch- OST Hoodie & Champions backpack + Mouse pad

• LOL Backpack: Champions
• LOL Champions Mousepad

• Omega Squad Teemo Hoodie

ETHERNET vs. WIFI: CLAIRVOYANCE BLOG  

Here's Viscarious with a new clairvoyance blog on Ethernet vs Wifi when it comes to the game:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that LAG SUCKS. Plenty of players experience ping spikes, lag, and full-blown disconnects all the time. But what if there was a quick fix for all your connection issues? For some players, there might be: switching from WiFi to an Ethernet connection when you play could have drastic results for your in-game experience. 

I'm Viscarious, a product manager on Riot's live services team. About six months ago, I lagged out of a game so hard that I decided I had to do something about it. It was the last game of my placement series, and I was playing as Sona supp. Our jungler was thundering into bot lane for a gank, and my Jinx ADC landed a sick double trap on our opponents (Leona and Ezreal). First blood was guaranteed. I was just about to follow-up with my ult when the lag gods smote me. The next thing I knew, Jinx was dead and the enemy Ezreal was snowballing. All I could do was apologize and resist the urge to kick my router. 

I had to wonder: what if my problems were caused by my WiFi connection? What if, to claim my rightful spot as a true PC gaming god at the top of the challenger ladder, all I had to do was switch to Ethernet? To understand the problem as deeply as possible (and because this is a Clairvoyance blog post) I dug into some data to find out. 

TERMS TO UNDERSTAND

PLAYING PING PONG AND LOSING SOME PACKETS 

When you look at League players around the world, the average ping for players on a WiFi connection is between 6.7ms and 11.7ms higher than for those using an Ethernet connection. 

However, this usually doesn’t manifest as consistently higher ping. Instead, increased ping is frequently experienced as ping spikes; your ping increases significantly over a short period of time, then goes back down a few moments later (usually after your whole team is already dead and the enemy Yi is dancing around your nexus). The chart above doesn’t show the severity or duration of ping spikes—just the average ping difference over the course of many games. 

Similarly, we found that players on WiFi had between 1.9 and 3.7 percentage points higher packet-loss than players on Ethernet. While this may not seem like a lot, there are two things to consider:

1. Every time a packet is lost between your computer and Riot’s servers, a request has to be made for that packet again. You want your packet-loss percentage numbers to be as close to zero as possible because, depending on when the packet-loss happens, you could miss a last-hit, fail to activate your ult, or even whiff the smite on Baron (that's definitely what it was, right junglers?).
2. Similar to our ping chart, this doesn’t show the magnitude or duration of packet-loss when it happens. Players most commonly feel lag when there are big spikes in packet-loss. The 1.9 to 3.7 percent figure is just the average difference between WiFi and Ethernet players over the course of many games. 

WHO'S PLAYING ON WIFI? 

Out of curiosity, we analyzed who is playing on Ethernet and WiFi and came across some pretty interesting results: 

Some regions rely on WiFi way more than others. While over 90 percent of games in KR are played on Ethernet, well over half of games played in NA and OCE are on WiFi. 

Part of this is likely due to the popularity of hard-wired PC bangs in Korea, but it's also probably because we NA players are complete scrublords. 

We saw a slight increase in Ethernet use in Ranked games compared to ARAM and Normal games across all regions. 

But most interesting was the change in Ethernet vs. WiFi use by rank. Across all regions, a higher percentage of high-rank games were played on Ethernet. Although we're not able to draw a causal relationship between playing on Ethernet and an increase in your rank, it’s clear that players at higher ranks are more likely to play on Ethernet. My best guessplanation for this is that highly ranked players are more likely to do everything possible to play on glorious, photo-worthy, wired battlestations. 

HOW DOES WIFI AFFECT GAME PERFORMANCE? 

We now know two things: 1) WiFi has an adverse affect on connection quality, and 2) it's unlikely that Faker has ever played on a WiFi connection. So the next question is whether your WiFi or Ethernet connection affects your in-game performance in a measurable way. 

For this analysis we decided to look at a range of gameplay metrics including: Minions Killed (CS), Gold Earned, K/D/A, Mastery Grade, and Win/Loss ratio. We decided to isolate our analysis to ranked games and players who played the same champion on both Ethernet and WiFi within the timeframe analyzed. Basically, we didn’t want to compare the same player’s Mastery Grade with Fizz on Ethernet to their Mastery Grade with Fiddlesticks on WiFi (since ping affects some champs more than others). Our analysis included only NA region players, but the results should apply globally. 

"We didn’t find conclusive evidence that playing on WiFi negatively impacts certain specific performance metrics such as CS, K/D/A, or Mastery Grade."

After all that gloom and doom we found about ping spikes, the results surprised us. No matter how we cut the data, we didn’t find conclusive evidence that playing on WiFi negatively impacts certain specific performance metrics such as CS, K/D/A, or Mastery Grade. 

We have a few hypotheses regarding this:

1. While lag experienced from WiFi can negatively impact gameplay, it usually only has noticeable effects intermittently, so it’s difficult to isolate the effects within the course of a game (i.e. it’s hard to find the signal among the noise)
2. Players on WiFi may be able to adapt to added ping and packet-loss (playing around it, effectively).
3. Since there are four other players on the team, the impact of one WiFi player may not significantly influence the outcome of a game, especially if there are other players on WiFi on the other team. 

When we removed the constraint that players had to play the same champion, we found that the win-rate on Ethernet was 1.1% to 1.7% higher than on WiFI. 

Surprisingly, when we removed the constraint that players had to play the same champion across WiFi and Ethernet, we found that the win-rate on Ethernet was 1.1 to 1.7 percentage points higher than on WiFi. This is pretty consistent across regions. We’re really not sure why removing the champion constraint had this result. One hypothesis is that by controlling for champion across connection types, we’re also focusing more on players’ main champs. If you main a champ, you probably get used to dealing with the ping spikes that come with WiFi, but those same spikes hit you harder when you’re just learning a champ. 

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE 

The same night I lost that disastrous promo game, I popped open a browser tab and bought a 50 ft. Ethernet cable. After untangling my cat from the wire, I ran diagnostics on my network and found some pretty drastic differences in the quality of my connection on Ethernet vs. WiFi. 

Sure enough, I was experiencing higher ping, more packet-loss, and more connection issues when on WiFi. Especially interesting was theway I was experiencing lag. While there were periods of stability over the course of the game, there were also short periods with large spikes in either ping or packet-loss. These were the times that I felt lag most acutely. 

My experience was pretty extreme, but let's throw this to the commenters: what's your own experience using either connection type? What lengths have you gone to improve your connection (longer than 50ft?) and how many of you intend to switch to Ethernet after reading this post?"

Meddler & Reav3 Grab Bag

Next up we have a grab bag of boards posts from Meddler on Reav3 - mostly dealing with champion & roster updates plus Jayce's tentative PBE changes:

When asked if the assassin update later this year will include any Kha'Zix changes, Meddler noted:

"Potentially some small scope stuff, same sort of size as the Fiddle or Annie changes in mid-season. Work on him hasn't started yet though so not guaranteed/can't offer any details."

When asked about the 6.17 PBE cycle balance changes for Jayce (currently R damage scaling switched to AD and Hammer E mana cost reduction), Meddler explained:

"We're with you, small buff is the goal here. The R change does look pretty sizeable on paper, it's bonus AD only though on a champion who itemizes Mana, Pen and CDR as well as AD however. Total amount of damage added isn't as dramatic as you'd initially predict as a result. It's also dependent on Jayce actually getting into melee and cooldown limited (every 12s without CDR assuming you're swapping as soon as you can which often isn't optimal). 

It's also still in testing of course. From memory it's showing some good promise without the issues the previous change (R CD reduced) created, still got a few days of development time before we have to lock the patch though so conceivable it could still change."

On the topic of champion updates,  Reav3  noted they'd soon have a "state of champion update" type dev blog to update folks on what is cooking (outside of the known Yorick and Warwick updates) -

"Quote:

Quick question not really related to this, but I have noticed a lot of rioters on the boards lately responding to threads that they would normally never respond to. Is this going to become a common thing? because I know I like it and I think a lot of others do too.

Not sure if it relates specifically to board comments (though I'm sure it is a side product) but we definitely want to start increasing our communication more going forward. We feel we haven't been communicating as much as we could recently. I'm currently working on a bigger "State of Champion Update" Devblog that should go out later this month that should go into much more details about past, current and upcoming champion update projects. Plan is to get a solid direction of what our next big VGU after Warwick will be by then as well, so we can start talking to you guys about that too."

Reav3 continued:

"Quote:

when you say the past, will be able to hear all about our boy morde and the failure surrounding his rework?

No, though there have already been DevCorver posts from the designers doing a Morde Retro. I will going over thoughts on the last 6 months of Champion Update projects and then going over our goals for the next 6 months of Champion update work."

Working on Kled HP bar for Colorblind Mode

RiotBrightmoon  commented over on reddit to note the team is currently working on improving the health bars for Kled in color blind mode:

"The team is actively working on improving the colors for Kled in colorblind mode. It's proven tricky to get totally right - there are multiple types of color blindness and a limited set of colors that can work (for enemy, ally, and then also for spectator mode). It is definitely a priority for us to address ASAP"

RiotBrightmoon  continued:

"Quote:

Some games have multiple colorblind modes for people with different variations of colorblindness. Do you think you'd be able to make a similar option? It seems like it'd solve that problem you're addressing.

That's a good idea - I think we'd want something like that in the future. We also have to support people who want to watch on stream, which means we must do our best to make as universal a solution as possible."

First Strike promotion ending soon ended.

[UPDATE: The time has come and the promotion is now over!]

PROJECT: DISRUPTION's First strike promotion is has now ended - this means the various types of caches are leaving the shop and First strike borders will no longer be obtainable after August 16th! 

"PROJECT: DISRUPTION // First Strike // ACTIVATE ENDING SEQUENCE... 

Show your place at the vanguard by unlocking First Strike loading screen cards for PROJECT: Ashe, PROJECT: Ekko, PROJECT: Katarina, or PROJECT: Yasuo. First Strike concludes on August 16 at 23:59 PT, so secure these unique borders quickly! 

Access the FAQ here to answer any additional questions on this process. 

// END TRANSMISSION"

If you are curious what will happen to left over cores & blueprints once the event ends, the Riot Support article mentions you'll be able to disenchant them for small amounts of essence:

"WHAT HAPPENS TO MY BLUEPRINTS AND CORES WHEN THE EVENT IS OVER? 

All PROJECT content will stay in your Hextech Crafting inventory once the event is over. If you prefer a tidy inventory, you'll be able to disenchant all PROJECT materials into a little bit of essence."

dArtagnan confirmed these will be disenchantable in 6.17.

Pocket Picks: Darshan's Yasuo

New Pocket Picks is up, taking a look at CLG Darshan's Yasuo!

Check out the LOL ESPORTS article for more  on Darshan's Yasuo!

/ALL Chat | WTF is that? Items Part 2 

/ALL Chat mini segment is here, taking another swing at item names!

"Can you name all of these items by just their icon? This one’s harder than the first one. 

How many did you guess correctly? 

Watch part 1 here!"

/ALL Chat: What’s the best way a player can help the team? 

and Monday's /ALL Chat includes a discussion on the best way a player can contribute to the team:

"The Baron Pit is ALL Chat’s discussion segment where we roundtable a question and then kick it to you for your opinions. This episode’s question: what’s the best way a solo player can contribute to the team? 

Whether you’re solo climbing the ladder or learning top with your teammates, the ALL Chat hosts weigh in with their own thoughts on the best way you can help get the win. Let us know what you think in the comments below, and if you’ve got any questions you want answered in the Baron Pit, let us know!"

IWCQ Match Schedule

With the 2016 International Wild Card Individual  starting up next week, check out this recent post on OCE for more details and tune in for the IWCQ to start on August 24th!

"Carrying different stories, metagames and playstyles, eight teams will fight for a place among the greatest, giving their best to conquer the two Wildcard spots for Worlds 2016. 

The International Wildcard Qualifier 2016 round robin kicks off in São Paulo (Brazil), August 24th, with epic battles between the champions from Brazil, Latin America North (LAN), Latin America South (LAS), Japan, Russia/CIS, Oceania, Turkey and Southeast Asia (Garena). 

After six days of competition at CBLoL studios, four teams say goodbye to Worlds, and the other four advance to the qualifiers, to be played at the Ópera de Arame, in Curitiba (PR)."

Lights, camera, League!

Next up is a look at what some of the lol youtube community has been up to in the Creator Lab!

"Last month some of the League community’s biggest creators descended on the YouTube Space in LA for the ultimate content collaboration event, Creator Lab. Tasked with making a minimum one-minute long League of Legends video, the creators were split into teams and given access to a bevy of stages, props, and technology to make their wildest video dreams a reality. The catch? They only had 36 hours to shoot, re-shoot, edit, and polish their videos into works of art. 

37 creators were split into eight teams, each with a mix of editors, musicians, and personalities. For some creators -- like Gbay and Gweedo -- this was a return to old stomping grounds, having participated in the YouTube Creator Lab last year. For others -- like Diashen, TooCurly, and DiscoHeat -- it was their first time thunderdoming. 

Creators had access to four different themed sets, including the Shadow Isles, a riff on “Between Two Ferns,” a green room, and a little slice of Summoner’s Rift, complete with Blue Buff. While each set came with a stock set of props, they were essentially plug-and-play spaces and YouTubers went after anything that wasn’t bolted down. They took chairs from the YouTube Space lobby and finagled their own props on set, like a life size LilyPichu mannequin, a ukulele, and more. Shoutcasting former All Chat-hosting wizard, James “Dash” Patterson, and Riot Designer Patrick “Scarizard” Scarborough also showed up for some very interesting cameo performances. 

At the end of the 36-hour, energy drink-fueled fever dream, each team was able to walk away with an incredible video. Not everyone wanted to publish to YouTube, which is totally cool, it's their content, but of the teams that did want to share their stuff with the world we’ve got a rap battle, a look into the future of League, and other assorted awesome, all of which we’ve included below:

Have a favorite video? Let us know in the comments below!"

Kled Price Reduction to 6300 IP

"Look, Skaarl! It's dinner time!" It's been a week since Kled's release and his price has dropped to 6300 IP!
For more information on Kled, check out our release coverage!