Red Post Collection: 8/3 & 8/2 Update, Kled champion insights, LCU Alpha - Draft testing soon, Meddler on Yasuo & more!

Posted on at 5:24 PM by Moobeat
Tonight's red post collection includes 8/3 and 8/2 patch updates, a champion insights article on Kled, an LCU Alpha dev blog on the upcoming addition of Draft mode and the shop, Meddler discussing potential Yasuo changes in the next few patches, a trailer for the new Live/Play series, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents


August 3rd and 2nd Patch Updates

The official 6.15 patch notes have been updated to reflect hotfixes that went out on August 3rd and August 2nd to fix a variety of issues.
"8/3/2016
Varus 
  • BUGFIX  -Targets hit by Q - Piercing Arrow at its maximum range now properly take damage 
Teleport
  • SPACE LASERS - Teleport's visual effects are once again globally visible through fog of war/brush, reverting a previous change which restricted fog of war/brush VFX visibility to within 500 units. 
  • BUT WHY? - This revert is in response to a bug where Teleport's visuals weren't always displaying through fog of war/brush in the new 500-unit range. We may reintroduce the range restriction in the future. 
8/2/2016
Audio bugfixes 
  • BUGFIX - Sound effects no longer play from the beginning when you gain vision of a champion who's in the middle of a channeled ability (ex. Recall)  
  • BUGFIX -Ward placement audio no longer plays when you gain vision of a ward that's been on the map for a while"

Champion Insights: Kled, the Noxian Meme 

First up is a champion Insights article on our upcoming champion Kled!
"If Noxian soldiers made memes, what would they look like?
A weird question, maybe, but you can find the answer by cracking open a history book and flipping back to the 1940s, when American GIs were tramping around Europe during World War II. Around that time, a pre-internet meme started to appear as graffiti across the continent—an image of a little bald man with an enormous nose peeking over a wall. His name was Kilroy. 
It's unclear exactly where Kilroy came from or who first drew him. Some say Kilroy was named after a man who worked as an American shipyard inspector in the '40s, but a very similar drawing is said to have appeared among Australian soldiers as early as the first World War. Whatever the case, American GIs couldn't resist doodling Kilroy all over territory they'd conquered, even if it got them thrown into the stocks for a night. To the soldiers, Kilroy was an icon representing their victories, their values, their identities. Kilroy was the spirit of those soldiers. 
Just like Kled is the spirit of enlisted Noxians.
THE FUZZY, BLOODTHIRSTY SPIRIT OF NOXUS 
Life isn't easy for the men serving among the lowest ranks of the Noxian soldier class. To survive in that job you have to learn to love war, hate cowardice, and seize whatever bloodsoaked glory you can get. 
With this in mind, we began to imagine a character who would take those Noxian warrior values to the extreme—an ornery creature that relished riding into battle and chopping off heads. Someone who’d never back away from a fight, who'd always want to go HAM. Who better to represent the ideals of these troops than a murderous, mounted, yordle soldier? 
We set to work developing a champ that would encourage hyper-aggressive gameplay. We didn't yet have any real idea of what the character would look like, so our designers slapped together a prototype using existing assets. The first model was literally Gentleman Gnar riding around on a tiny Hecarim. 
"When you got dismounted, the little Hecarim would run away and the Gnar would be left by himself," says champion designer Iain "Harrow" Hendry. “Sometimes," he says with a smile, "you need an expressive prototype to sell an idea.” 
When it comes to nimble AD champs designed mostly for the top lane (we call them "skirmishers"), your options include folks like Yasuo, Riven, and Tryndamere. Each of these champs is designed for the kinds of players who like going in deep, usually a bit further than they should. All of these characters, says Harrow, are sort of tryhard champs. "These are super-serious people with super-serious swords," he says. "The goal was to make Kled a little more playful than his skirmisher peers." 
When designing Kled's abilities, we went out of our way to avoid giving him anything that felt defensive or "safe." Everything Kled does is about incentivizing and rewarding aggressive, risky actions. He has to charge straight into battle to get the shield from his ult. Even when he uses his unmounted “disengage” move, Pocket Pistol, he's firing a gun blast to knock himself back. 
We've always thought about Kled as "light cavalry," as opposed to Sejuani's "heavy cavalry" role, but there are other ways we wanted to differentiate Kled from the boar-riding jungler. One thematic problem for Sejuani is that her mechanics don't emphasize interaction with Bristle, her boar. If we removed Bristle altogether and Sejuani was just a big ol' lady, it wouldn’t necessarily make a difference to her gameplay. 
So, we wondered, how could we fix this for Kled? What sort of relationship might he have with his mount? 
A YORDLE AND HIS GUTLESS LIZARD-BIRD-THING 
Kled may be a yordle, but that doesn't mean he has to be cute. "Cuteness isn't valued by the Noxians," says art lead Edmundo "odnumde" Sanchez. "He’s sort of a weird little goblin, and that was the vibe we were going for. He’s supposed to look very wicked.” 
Skaarl, meanwhile, needed to appear a bit more goofy to fit its "cowardly mount" theme. We went through a bunch of animals during early explorations of Skaarl's design, including a rhino, a frog, and a buzzard. While all of these sound like Donkey Kong Country mounts, the design direction is sort of appropriate given the role Skaarl plays—it's cartoonish, like a critter that could pop out of a barrel. “I don’t think the Donkey Kong vibes were intentional," says odnumde, "but we were aiming for whimsical, so it worked out that way.” 
There's one exception to Kled's "aggressive or nothing" design: the ability to re-mount Skaarl just by returning to base. This was a sort of compromise around player expectations. For every other champ in League, successfully recalling to base offers a complete reset; we felt it was important to preserve that with Kled. 
Before working on Kled, Narrative writer Odin "WAAARGHbobo" Shafer had just finished writing VO lines for Jhin. After spending months writing gems like "Life has no meaning, but your death shall," he was ready to move onto something a little more lighthearted. Yordles are lighthearted, right? 
"We wanted them to be a comedy duo," Shafer says. "The idea is that Skaarl doesn’t want to go into combat, but Kled REALLY wants to go into combat. So Skaarl will run off at some point, causing Kled to freak out. Their dysfunctional relationship is built directly into the mechanics." 
The process works both ways, with the mechanics informing the character as the character informs the mechanics. Once we were certain that Kled would spend time fighting both on his mount and off it, Shafer gave Kled two stages in his voice-over lines. 
Kled always wants to go HAM, but once he gets knocked off of Skaarl he actually starts going more insane and more aggressive. Kled may have lengthy conversations with Skaarl, but Skaarl has the intelligence of a dog—mostly Kled is projecting onto his reptilian pal when he talks to it. He loses a part of himself whenever Skaarl runs off, resulting in some way crazier lines of dialogue. 
The cantankerous cavalier is more than just a crazy old yordle. All the aspects of Kled's character—the violence, insanity, and his refusal to back down from any fight—are things that would make him an icon for the soldiers of Noxus. Not just an icon, but a meme. The dankest Noxian meme ever. 
Share your worst, most hastily slapped-together Kled doodles in the comments section below."
For more on Kled, check out our 6.16 PBE coverage:

[LCU] Crafting the Client: Draft and Ranked 

Next we have a new article on the League Client Update Alpha, which will soon be updated to include Draft Pick! 
"Time for an update on what we're shipping next! Today we're talking about draft pick normals and the store so you can ban wisely and shop smart. We've also got some early info on ranked, which is coming within the next few patches. 
DRAFT PICK

Our UI team really had some fun here designing effects that celebrate key moments in champ select. If you've been playing in the blind pick queue, you've already seen the flashy stuff that happens when you highlight and lock in a champ, but the ban phase is new to the alpha. 
Little bits of extra visual flair have been added throughout the process to not only better highlight whose turn it is, but to make each stage of the champ select process (pick intent, banning, champ selection) feel meaningful and distinct. 
Now, whenever you ban a champ, a beam of arcane banmagic rips through the OP champ's portrait, splitting it in half and cracking the glass above the image. The banbeam then ricochets to the top corner of the screen, stuffing the shattered spirit of the banned champ into a cute little box, where it's displayed for all to see. 
As each player locks in their picks and bans, the hextech wheel in the center of the screen spins and morphs to highlight which player is currently banning or picking, and you'll hear audible champion quotes depending on who gets banned. 
These changes are purely aesthetic—not game design changes. If you were hoping for extra bans, the ability to buy skins in champ select, or any other much-requested champ select features, this might feel like a let-down, but hang with us. Remember, our big goal right now for the client update alpha is to rebuild and tune all the current client's features. Once the alpha client is ready to actually replace the legacy client, our teams will be freed up to pursue new features and actual game design changes. 
COMING LATER: SHOP HARDER, PREPARE FOR RANKED 
Before we talk about ranked, let's cover all the other little changes coming during the next couple of patches. As teased in our previous devblog, we're pushing out a mostly-functional version of the store.Mostly functional and not wholly functional because it's still missing loot and the ability to purchase RP. You might be thinking "why won't you take my money," and the answer is that we totally will take your money in an upcoming patch. For now we wanna make sure everything is working the way it should, though. 
Draft pick is coming now, but we're waiting a bit to add in ranked; We've gotta make sure our draft pick champ select is stable before we start putting LP gainz and losses on the table. When ranked does ship, though, it'll come with a slew of associated client features you'd expect, including ranked leaderboards, ranked stats on your profile, and ranked emblems. 
With this patch, we'll be opening up the alpha to hundreds of thousands of new testers, so if you haven't yet signed up for the alpha, we need your help!"
As usual, expect this update to hit the PBE LCU Alpha first then later be pushed to the Live LCU Alpha!

When asked about when Draft mode and the new shop will hit the LIVE LCU Alpha, Cactopus noted:
"Quote:
Is there an ETA on Draft and the Shop? i really wanna switch completely to the new client since i only play Draft Normals.
Current plan is that draft goodness will hit in about three weeks. But it's an alpha, not a super crisp marketing campaign, so you may have to pray to alpha zeus (god of all alphas) for it to land then."

When asked about the lack of champion select quotes in the demo above, Cactopus noted:
"Quote:
Loving the new draft pick! Looks awesome, the quotes are great when the champs get banned but there is one little thing. I miss hearing their quote when they get picked. Some prefer it some don't maybe if you guys put it back in there maybe add an option to turn it off/on or take a poll. :) Have a great day/night riot or any one reading this.
We're adding champ select quotes back in! It was just a weird bug keeping them out."
On ban quotes, Riot_Eno  added:
"Quote:
I just wish they would say positive quotes when you pick them
You're just hearing the Ban quotes in this video - we tried to pull from existing Champ VO to find lines that we felt a Champ might say after being banned - all newer Champs have custom Ban lines."
He continued:
"Newer meaning starting with Taliyah and movnig forward"
He also added there will be options to mute different sorts of air client sounds, explaining:
"We wouldn't get as granular as letting you mute everything but queue pops, but we're looking at giving you the option to mute individual audio channels, (music, SFX, Champ VO, Notifications)  
Hypothetically, to achieve what you're looking for, you'd just mute everything but Notifications - so you'd only hear stuff like game invites, friend requests, queue pops, trade requests and countdown timers in Champ Select."
 When asked what the new client is built on, Riot Credo  added:
"Quote:
Great polish on many bits and bobs! 
Can you tell what you used to build the UI? It is Flash/Scaleform, some HTML-based solution, or in-house developed software? As a UI designer myself, I would be curious how are you enabling your artists and animators in the process (anything not confidential, of course).
The UI is HTML + JS running on CEF, more info if you're curious: [link]"

[LCU] Become a League client update alpha tester 

Speaking of the LIVE LCU Alpha, remember to sign up to participate if you haven't already! 
"For the past several months, brave players have stepped up to help us test and tune the League client update. We've got a ways to go before we're done testing, so we're calling for more recruits. We want YOU to join the alpha. 
We've slain some seriously gnarly bugs in our quest to deliver a more stable, better looking client for players, but it wouldn't have been possible without the help of the brave warriors in the alpha test legions. Our testers have stuck with us through the fight as we've iterated on features like redesigned profiles, updated rune pages, collection, and the updated champ select, to name a few. 
With the recent addition of draft pick normals, we're making preparations to turn on ranked for the League client update. Players in the alpha are connected directly to live servers, making it important for the client to remain stable, even in alpha. To get ready for ranked, we need as many soldiers as we can get. So we're widening the gate to the alpha and letting way more of you experience the updated client. 
Sign up now to become a tester, or check out the alpha website for ongoing updates about what we're releasing and posts detailing how your feedback makes a difference."

Live/Play Miniseries: Trailer 

Next up is a trailer for the upcoming Live/Play miniseries, an upcoming documentary telling stories of LoL players from around the world!

"A new Live/Play documentary miniseries explores a world of stories sourced straight from the League community. Get to know players from Korea, Norway, Taiwan, the United States and more."

Over on reddit, RiotZwill  added:
"As a bit of a teaser: We've got something special planned for the English language premier of Live/Play. 
Tomorrow at 12PM PST/8 PM GMT we'll be showing the first episode of Live/Play in English for the first time ever on Twitch. The stream will be at twitch.tv/leagueoflegends. We'll be joined by BeefTheJerkee, the director of Live/Play for a live Q&A immediately following the premier (think of it as our version of Talking Dead ;)). 
Looking forward to seeing you all there!"


Meddler on Potential Yasuo nerfs

In a boards thread inquiring about the balance team's thoughts on Yasuo, Meddler  commented that they would be looking into nerfs in the future likely for Tank Yasuo builds.
"He is looking a bit out of line yeah. We'll likely trim a bit of power sometime in the next couple of patches. Not sure what yet, one of the first things we'll look at though is whether tank builds are inappropriately effective." 
Meddler  continued:
"Quote:
Isn't Frozen Mallet the hype Yasuo build at the moment?
Frozen Mallet's a moderately common pick up on top Yasuos going tanky yeah. Doesn't necessarily mean that's a problem, or that if it is, it's the most important thing to address. Wouldn't want to commit to a direction before the live gameplay team's had a chance to look into Yasuo properly. 
In terms of timing also possible Yasuo changes end up in 6.19. I'd originally been thinking 6.17 or 6.18 as the next two patches (6.16 lock date's already past). Might end up bumping Yasuo work a bit later though, given those two patches have a heavy Worlds focus (6.18 being the Worlds patch) and Yasuo isn't a pro play problem. By contrast some champions (e.g. Jhin and Ashe) are issues in both pro play and regular play. "

ACCESS GRANTED // Gemstones 

With the new PROJECT skins and crafting content released on live, here's a reminder that once a a day between August 2nd and 7th, you'll be able to pick up a bundle of 10 Augmented Caches and get a free gemstone!
"New PROJECT skins have joined the fight, but that’s not the only upgrade we’ve made to the League store... 
On top of acquiring gemstones by chance from Hextech Chest drops, you can also purchase them through PROJECT crafting bundles from August 2 - 7. Limit one bundle per day.

SUBJECT A // Augment+ Bundle
2950 RP 
Grants you a guaranteed gemstone and additional loot and crafting materials. 
  • 1 Gemstone
  • 10 Augment Caches
SUBJECT B // First Strike Augment+ Bundle
8220 RP (10245 RP if you need the champs)  
Grants you a guaranteed gemstone and all the materials you need to join the First Strike and unlock unique loading screen cards for all three new PROJECT skins.
  • 1 Gemstone
  • PROJECT: Ashe
  • PROJECT: Ekko
  • PROJECT: Katarina
  • 10 Augment Caches
  • 3 Icons
  • Bonus Items
    • PROJECT: Ashe Cache
    • PROJECT: Ekko Cache
    • PROJECT: Katarina Cache
    • Recon Drone Ward"

To the tune of these new PROJECT skins, SpaceNorth commented there would not be a unique PROJECT animation similar to PROJECT: OVERDRIVE but they are working on something else for this year!
"Quote:
It would have been so fucking cool with katarina and zed teleporting and juking around, something similar to the last cinematic
Hey guys, I'm on Skins team and I worked on PROJECT last year and this year. We freaking LOVE the PROJECT universe, and would love to show off more about the characters and the world, and we had a lot of conversations about doing a big PROJECT animation again. At the end of the day, we decided not to do one this year. :( 
We don't talk about it much, but creating animations like OVERDRIVE is a huge effort - it took somewhere between 6 and 9 months with a lot of talented people involved. PROJECT is one of many worlds we want to expand, but we can only land a big project like that once in a while. This year, we're focusing that effort on expanding another amazing universe through CG, so keep an eye out! 
Even though we don't have a full animation, we still put a lot of love into PROJECT this year and we hope you guys enjoy it!"
Be sure to check out our dedicated PROJECT post for more information on the new content and crafting! Remember that the DISRUPTION cache unlocks on August 9th!

/ALL Chat | Rengar vs. Kha’zix! 

Next up we have a new /ALL CHAT as well as an announcement that the program will be moving to having two shows released on Monday and on Fridays with a different focus on different parts of the show.

"On this episode of Summoner Showcase, Xell and Jessica weigh in on one of League’s oldest rivalries, Rengar versus Kha’zix, and show off fan art from the years of battling between the two. Post your favorite Rengar vs. Kha’zix creations in the comments below and let us know who you like the best! 
We have an ALL Chat announcement – the show is moving to MONDAYS AND FRIDAYS. We heard you out and having only one episode of ALL Chat each week just was not working. So now, we will be bringing you two episodes a week, Monday and Friday, which focus on separate segments of the show. We will be trying this new schedule starting today and would love your feedback to keep making the best show we can for you!"

[REMINDERS]

Last up for today's red post collection we have a few reminders on current promotions and events!

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