Red Post Collection: July Bundles, Runes Talk from across the Boards, Ask Riot & More!

Posted on at 8:24 PM by Aznbeat
[Updated: Added Meddler's Quick Gameplay Thoughts for July 21st and followup discussion, and more discussion on VGUS, as well as Summoner Showcase 122]

Today's red post collection includes a new a ton of new Runes Reforged info, July bundles, more talk about VGUs, a new Ask Riot, and more!
Continue reading for more information!




Table of Contents


Quick Gameplay Thoughts: July 21 

Here's Meddler with his gameplay thoughts for July 21st, including thoughts on runes, 7.16 balance, and more!
"Hi all, 
Usual Disclaimers 
These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped. 
If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler 
More Runes Discussion 
Most of you will probably have seen this already, in case you missed it though some intial discussion on the IP/economy side of things with the runes transition was posted yesterday though. Lot more details to come, particularly around what happens with runes themselves, post from Cactopus that's well worth checking out if you haven't read it here though:
https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/RlNQkO39-buying-runes-between-now-and-preseason 

Also worth calling out was a post from Ghostcrawler in the replies, in particular since he discusses how we've been looking at runes in terms of their impact on Riot as a business a little bit.
https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/RlNQkO39-buying-runes-between-now-and-preseason?comment=0043  
7.16 Balance Approach 
We've just started work on looking at patch 7.16 balance work. Since 7.15's a pretty large patch more of the next patch cycle than usual will start out with a lot of analytical work, assessing what we need to respond to, rather than working on already defined issues. Things we'll be investigating include: 
  • Champs that may be too dominant or got changes recently for being too dominant and need to be watched closely now - Jayce, Thresh, Galio, Elise, Kalista, Caitlyn
  • Position assessments - Is Cinderhulk overtuned and thereby impacting jungling too much, what should we do about some mid laners (Ori, Synda etc) who overly present/reliable choices, are many ranged champs who should be good supports struggling too much at present. 
  • Duskblade - Do the 7.15 changes go far enough, how does its power compare for different types of users 
More thoughts to follow after some investigation. 
7.16 likely changes
In addition to that research there are also a few changes we'll be testing shortly including:
  • Malphite - Taking another crack at him, this time looking in part to get a bit more skill expression onto his kit (think things like the recent Garen W changes, at least in terms of goal). Probably power neutral ish, maybe slight buff?
  • Maokai - Likely nerfing, probably Q damage and/or CD. Will be dependent on that Cinderhulk analysis above though to ship or not ship (how much of it is Maokai being out of line, how much that particular item?) 
Spectator clean up 
Mentioned this a while ago, looks like it should be in 7.16. We'll be removing a few dozen team indicators from spectator view only, targeting things that just add unneeded clutter to the spectator experience. Rationale there is that LoL's already a really busy game visually, and anything unnecessary that's shown makes it harder to follow the necessary things. Changes will be hitting PBE soon, feedback much appreciated there, or on live after the patch goes out, if you notice anything that feels wrong (no longer seeing something really important, still seeing things of low value) . Changes include things like hiding the rings around Akali W or Kindred R because they're well defined already by existing spell effects. We're doing so now specifically because the next few patches will get a lot of use out of spectator in the competitive scene. These should also be improvements that are good for spectator in general in whatever context it's used of course."

On Tristana, Meddler commented
"Quote: 
Do you have any plans for Tristana?
No current balance plans. Could see her getting a small gameplay update someday, lot of other champs in much more need though."

On the Stoneplate/Locket combo, Viktor, and whether Meddler will design another new champ in the future, he replied:
"Quote:
Hey Meddler can i ask for your thoughts on several things. First off is Stoneplate/Locket combo since I've seen that been a sore point since the midseason, then on Viktor and lastly will you personally design another champion again. These are all a bit random
Stoneplate/Locket - At the very least strong. Unclear if that sort of strong you'd expect from combining effects in the right circumstances or too strong yet however. 
Viktor - Another mage who's been tough to balance between organized play and regular. Expect we'll want to do some work on him at some point, probably looking at his wave clear in particular so we can give him more power elsewhere. That's a guess though, haven't picked the team's brains on him for a bit. 
Another champ - It's pretty unlikely I'll personally do the game design on another champ. Doing so takes a lot of time and you need to be available to work with the rest of the team when needed too, so it's not always flexible time. That doesn't fit well with the responsibilities of my role now. I do miss getting to make stuff like that directly, getting to work with a wide range of folks and help them make stuff's been really cool too though."

Meddler continued:
"Quote:
I feel like that's been tried before on more than one occasion and anytime his E with the upgrade doesn't nuke the wave he instantly becomes trash-tier.
Yep, such a change would assumedly mean giving him better, relevant strengths that aren't just E-ing the wave reliably, not just token other buffs."

As fro Galio, Meddler replied:

"Quote:
Oh, what's the current stance on Galio?
Was definitely too strong and a consistently good a pick. Unclear where he sits now so definitely needs monitoring."

Meddler talked more about the amount of keystones they planned on having:
"Quote:
Hey Meddler, because I can't find an answer to this, how many Keystone runes are you trying to make and do you think you finally found a good spot for duskblade? 
Also, have you been keeping an eye on Pantheon recently? because I think the lethality changes probably helped his already high win rate.
Current thinking is it'll most likely be 5 keystones in total (5 choices of path, with 3 keystones per path). That could still change though. 
I suspect Duskblade will need further changes after 7.15, we'll see where those put it before committing to anything though."

On Evelynn, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
Anything about Evelynn ? 
Or you will write about she in next Quick Gameplay Thoughts ?
Evelynn's a VGU, so as with other large updates we'll be doing a bit of a teaser and a reveal just before she comes out (as we did with say Urgot recently). I'll avoid talking details about her update as a result to avoid stealing that team's thunder there, make sure they get the chance to talk about and present their work."

As for Fiora, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
What do you think about Fiora after her nerfs?
Might have hit her too hard, nerfs did impact her a bit more than we expected. 
Considering giving a bit of power back in 7.16, not certain about that yet though."

As for what they wanted to focus on in the Preseason, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
Can we summ up that just smaller things will happen until Worlds and can you give some details about work and changes after the worlds?(specially pre-season[not runes])
Runes is going to be the big focus of pre-season. There'll be some other stuff in there too, but it will either be in support of runes (e.g. base stat or starting item changes) or smaller stuff (game health adjustments to items like Locket's MR aura removal last year etc). There won't be a class update or other major changes like we've done in the past (so nothing like Elemental Dragons or Plants or whatever)."

When asked about the new elemental dragon that was mentioned in a past Gameplay Thoughts, Meddler commented:
"Quote:
I thought riot was going to add in a new elemental dragon later on or was that next year?
That's a potential next year thing. Definitely want to do one, definitely won't be this year."

On Kindred, Meddler replied:
"Quote:
Hey Meddler, are the changes to Kindred that got reverted on the PBE coming back in the next cycle? It would be great to know what was your goal with that buff and why you had to revert it. 
We were testing those buffs as an offset to a bug fix that, it was believed, would end up being a noticeable nerf. Conclusion was the impact of the bug fix should be pretty negligible however (E range being slightly higher than specified before Kindred had 4 passive stacks). We pulled the buffs as a result, though will reassess if that bug fix does have a noticeable effect on them."


When asked about new starting items, Meddler commented:
"Quote:
Hey Meddler, do you have any other new starting items in mind? Like armor, magic resist, or even cdr doran item.
We're looking at a range of possibilities. No guarantees, and we almost certainly wouldn't be adding too many, things like MR, Attack Speed, CDR are being considered though."

It’s time for July bundles!

It's time again for new bundles! The July Bundles run now through 7/27!
"Grab these limited-time bundles now through 7/27/17 at 23:59 PT. 
You Can Run But...Wait No, You Can’t Bundle - 50% off at 2399 RP (4648 RP if you need the champions) 
Skins included:
  • Pool Party Leona
  • Worldbreaker Nautilus
  • Blood Moon Thresh
  • Braum Lionheart
  • Dragonslayer Pantheon
Champions included:

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone Bundle - 50% off at 2396 RP (4333 RP if you need the champions) 
Skins included:
  • Pool Party Lulu
  • Shadow Prince Malzahar
  • Blood Moon Elise
  • Cottontail Fizz
  • Reverse Annie
Champions included:

League of Snipes Bundle - 50% off at 2587 RP (4836 RP if you need the champions) 
Skins included:
  • High Noon Jhin
  • Varus Swiftbolt
  • Firecracker Jinx
  • Steel Legion Lux
  • Debonair Ezreal
Champions included:

Size Doesn’t Matter Bundle - 50% off at 2623 RP (4482 RP if you need the champions)
Skins included:
  • Super Teemo
  • Rocket Girl Tristana
  • Arctic Ops Kennen
  • Piltover Customs Heimerdinger
  • Master Arcanist Ziggs
Champions included:

Runes Corner: Hunt of the Blood Moon Sneak Peek 

Here's Riot Stashu with a new Runes Corner, this week covering a new keystone rune with the temporary name of "Hunt for the Blood Moon"!
"Hey all! Welcome to another Runes Corner, this time brought to you by Riot Stashu. 
This week, I’m here to preview of a new keystone rune, Hunt of the Blood Moon (temp name)! 
I’ll get into the details in just a sec, but first, a bit of a primer on the high-level direction for this rune: 
Hunt of the Blood Moon comes from the path of Domination (also temp name) -- a style geared towards snowballing a lead by hunting down and taking out priority targets with a burst of damage. When designing the suite of three domination keystones, we wanted each one to highlight a different one of these three defining Domination aspects (‘snowball,’ ‘hunt,’ and ‘burst’). Hunt of the Blood Moon focuses on the ‘hunt’ aspect of the style, while its neighbors excel at the other two (stay tuned for more info on those!). 
So without further ado, here is Hunt of the Blood Moon: 
Enchants your boots with the active effect 'Blood Moon's Call.' 
Channel for 3 seconds to activate Blood Moon's Call. Gain 35% movement speed for 15 seconds. Damaging attacks or abilities end Blood Moon's Call, dealing 60 - 140 based on level (+0.2 bonus AD)(+0.3 AP) bonus damage. 
Cooldown: 180 seconds. Starts the game on cooldown and goes on cooldown if damaged or interrupted while channeling. 
(Typical W.I.P. note here: numbers are tentative and likely to change before release. Temp icon courtesy of Warwick W.) 
So there you have it: a high cooldown, long duration haste with a touch of damage all neatly packed into whatever boots you’re currently wearing (apologies, Cassiopeia). This rune/item combo works a lot like Edge of Night: a cast-while-moving channel that’s easily interrupted, so it is best used while out of combat. This mechanism is to solidify it as a ‘hunt’ rune, instead of an in-combat dodging or burst rune. 
You can cover some SERIOUS ground with this thing active (15s of a 35% haste!), which can be difficult for opponents to account for, so while the hunt is on some sound and visual effects (think Warwick W) will play on enemies within about a screen’s range of you. The effect will be on cooldown until 180 seconds into the game, partly to sidestep some potentially degenerate level one shenanigans, but also to enable junglers to take this keystone and start with a jungle item without feeling like they’re missing out on too much. Laners can still opt to start boots, but will have to lane for a few minutes before going out on their first hunt. 
With that all said, you may be wondering how we got to putting an active effect on boots. It’s a bit of a story, so gather ‘round and listen up for some Rune history: 
‘Hunting power’ generally means ‘power to impact other lanes,’ and in League of Legends, that can be very oppressive. So, starting from early on in development, we knew we had to limit the frequency of this sort of rune. Early attempted iterations included: requiring a number of unique champion takedowns before getting access to it, swapping or augmenting one of your summoner spells to it, and lastly, putting it on a fixed global timer that automatically activated the hunt for all with the rune every 5 minutes. 
That last one (fixed timer) had some real promise, but it would activate at useless times (while dead) and often pressured the user into using it at all costs, leading to some questionable tower dives. While this was its own sort of fun, it became apparent that we had to put more agency in the players’s hands. We experimented with many triggers to let the player choose when to use it (both here and in other runes), but to little success - nothing quite felt as satisfying or natural as pressing a button. Part of the struggle here was our desire to hook into existing systems rather than layering on new runes-specific buttons (a slippery slope of complexity). So, when someone suggested adding an active to the item that almost every champion buys, we had to try it. It was an immediate hit and got us what we wanted - hunt power, a long cooldown, and an intentional trigger. We have some worries and are playing close attention to negative side effects (such as sheer number of active items, especially on supports), but it looks like active boots will be here to stay! 
Now that we have some Keystones out there (Meteor, Perxie etc), hopefully the system is starting to take shape for you. We’ll be around to answer questions and meme, so let us know what you think of this latest rune! 
You can check the previous Runes Corner posts here:


When asked about the use of this rune with Cassiopeia, Riot Stashu commented:
"Currently, Cassiopeia cannot use this. This is not ideal, and it makes me sad, but it's acceptable to some degree. Runes are meant to have a wide audience, but some champions have especially unique kits that break certain rules, which excludes them from runes that hook into the common system that they are sidestepping at a kit level. If we can find a solution that allows her access to it in some way without compromising it for other users, that'd be ideal, and I'd love to do that, but no promises."

Riot Stashu commented on 'active item burden' with the new keystone runes:
"Quote:
Thanks for the answer Stash, do you feel this may furhter increase active item burden?
Yes, a little, which is bad. That said, I think this is going to be very low impact in that regard, since it's a huge cooldown and can really only be used out of combat, so it will rarely be competing with your other active items. I think the biggest problem with lots of actives is having to use them all in rapid succession in a team fight and getting your fingers all jumbled up on your keyboard. It's still not great to put in a bunch of active items, but avoiding this case gets us a lot of room."


When asked about runes that would enchant boots, Riot Stashu replied:
"Quote:
This seems really cool! I'm slightly concerned with all of the runes that are offering additional damage and other crazy effects... but I'm sure it will work out in the end :) 
Will other keystones enchant to boots or other items as well? 
Would it help balance keystones if they were gated by game events/quests and accessible through some kind of shop or armory? (I'm imagining some sort of quest mechanic where after a player completes certain requirements or a certain event happens in the match, they gain access to that rune the next time they visit the shop/armory)
Other keystones will not enchant boots. We're trying to keep active items to a minimum, as some champions already end up with an overwhelming number, so we see this as a cost. The boots hook worked uniquely well in this case -- this keystone is focused on mobility (like boots) and is a bit less offensive as an active item since it's an out-of-combat ability and has a high cooldown. 
And yes that's a good lever! We often use that on experimental runes. Sometimes it works, but the main problem is that we're aiming for the majority of Rune's influence to be in the early game, and having it quest-gated pushes it a bit into the later game by default. Still might be a good option for some runes, though!"

Riot Stashu confirmed that this was a keystone, therefore exclusive with other keystones:
"Quote:
This may have been answered already, but is this like a keystone? I.E. you get this rune and you can't have the meteor rune?
Yep it's a keystone! so will be exclusive with meteor."

As for how tanky champs could use this keystone, Riot Stashu commented:
"Quote:
Does it have impact on tanky champs because of the ratio? Seems more focused on Assassins/Bruisers imo.
While we are on it, also
'run fast' gankers have found success with it (Hec/Rammus) despite being tanks. It's gonna be quite a dance to make sure this is balanced on both those guys and on assassins, but the amount of power we distribute into the movespeed vs the base damage vs the damage ratios gives us a lot of room to tune, so I'm pretty confident we'll be able to get it into a good place. And yeah, part of that will be making sure the tanky champs are paying a cost by taking this instead of a tanky keystone -- when they take this keystone, they should feel significantly easier to kill, for example."

 Riot Stashu continued:
"Quote:
If damage runes like this one are balanced for Assassins and Tanks will tanky runes also get the same treatment? As in if the Assassin/ADC takes a tanky keystone to survive longer in fights, will their damage output be hit hard?
yes that's absolutely the plan. It might still be right in some rare cases for the ADC to take a defensive keystone, but it should come at a big cost to DPS." 

Riot Stashu assuaged a user's fears on the new keystone:
"Yep, I admit, that's pretty scary. I suspect we have some work yet to do on Drakthar, so we'll see what that looks like by the time this rune comes around. At the least, this one will have a much longer cooldown than other runes, so after someone uses it, you should be able to take advantage of their downtime with your lower CD rune."


As for protection centered runes, Riot Sparkle commented:
"Quote:
Is one of the new keystones going to be 'prevent the stupidly mobile champions from killing your squishy, unable to move faster than 375 mage'? 
Cause I kind of want that.
There are some protection centered runes we're looking at, yes. Both in the self protection area and ally protection area."

Riot Stashu also replied:
"We'll definitely be introducing a whole bunch of new defensive options that one can take to mitigate aggressive enemy champs. We were even experimenting with explicitly anti-mobility runes for a long time, but found directly punishing your opponents for using their abilities to violate some core gameplay principles, so ended up not going with that. I do believe there is a need for something in this vein, though, so we'll see what we can do."

Riot Reinboom answered some detailed questions on design:
"Quote:
Nice! I'm both excited and terrified of the power we see here, and I hope the other Keystones are this level of impactful -- this one feels far more engaging than the meteor previewed previously because there's more control and more conscious decision-making required. 
Two related design questions for you, if you have a moment! 
#1 -- Why do you feel it's worth using a boots active for this particular design space? To me that feels like it cuts out a lot of possibilities in the future, as now the ONLY things you can put on boots actives are Keystone Masteries, as otherwise it would create impossible complexities with this item. To me that feels like a potentially wasted opportunity since, as you said, there's a lot of exciting stuff you can do by hooking a feature up to an item everyone buys (or through a return to the boots enchantment style we saw before, which it seems something like this would be awesome for).
In short, what made you decide the benefit here was worth effectively locking that design space to Keystone Masteries for good (or for as long as the ability exists)? 
Because personally I'd be wondering if a Kindred-style interface for abilities like this might be a better fix, since it leaves the boots slot open and abilities like this will rarely be instant-cast in combat simply due to their warm-up time. Having to mouse over to an icon or menu of some sort for this seems like about the ONLY time a solution like that wouldn't feel super clunky. I get that there are numerous downsides to that (would have to do more analysis on how much time/effort/attention it takes to use), but it could open up a UI option for future effects (Rift Herald summoning, etc) that aren't in-combat usage, while also preserving the design space. Bonus points: Cassiopeia could still use it. 
Or, heck, a second button for a "functionality" wheel that acts like the ping wheel but with items on it. Sort of like the weapon selection menu in a lot of FPSs. Again, would have to do some thinking on where/how to implement that, but it would be speedy for things like this and, again, open up space for other abilities in the future as well. 
#2 -- Since we now will have two forms of "channel-while-moving," could we get a specific differentiation between the two (or more) types? It seems we have a few forms that all follow different rules, and it's not living up to the clarity that most of League's rules have. 
As is, I see the following types: 
  • Stationary, damage or CC interrupts (Recall)
  • Stationary, only CC interrupts (Teleport, Fiddlesticks, etc)
  • Mobile, damage or CC interrupts (Edge of Night, Hunt of the Blood Moon)
  • Mobile, only CC interrupts (not present in the game, but an interesting design space for the future, possibly for something like an AoE effect) 
It would be nice to have a better way to differentiate these effects (especially if the fourth type is ever used on a champion or item), even if only the static and mobile types were differently named, and the damage breaking effect were specified each time. 
Thoughts?
1: That's a great analysis of design space restriction. 
Short term looking, being afraid of space restriction for the sake of space restriction itself (with cautionary notes of long term, I'll get there) means that we'll never use that design space. Effectively, it means we've "wasted" the space in a different way, by not utilizing it. 
Long term looking, it's important to look at what types of content are consuming a space. In shorter lifespans (think 2 years or less time), systemic content like Runes (or items, or summoners) can be removed when they are discovered to not provide sufficient benefit for the space they consume. By compliment, this also means that trying out these spaces in systemic content can be very fruitful - that is if we don't remove it then it's implied the content was good enough for that space, or can be iterated there. 
Two major limits to this is 1) if the content that's consuming the space has a high potential attachment. See: Champions. Space consumed by champions is pretty much there to stay as a default assumption. Also, see: Old runes. Consuming attractive space with old runes (not that they would...) is an issue because of IP investments. Also 2) If the game becomes dependent on the consumed space. See: Flash. Curating Runes at this point to deliver on choice is much easier for us to do now then at release, however, and as long as there is choice then dependency takes longer to build. 
Keystones are also interesting in particular for this exact conversation. Most major pieces of content actually have a button associated with them, meaning that the desire and payoff for consumption is rather low. Keystones in particular sit on that edge, where they are strong enough that in some cases (see: This reveal) they may warrant a button (where mindspace allows, though that's a whole conversation on its own), and yet don't have a button to hook to. To me, this makes Keystones very appropriate movers on this particular space. 
2: I like the proposal of naming channels differently. Though, in this case, just adding mobileis appropriate (no need to over describe the list that contains "etc."). We found that for the most part this is easy to feel out, but your proposal works if it becomes more of an issue."
Riot Reinboom continued:
"Quote:
Either way, I really appreciate the in-depth response! Although it seems, amusingly, that the answer to the question might be "we weren't using that spot and someone came up with an idea for it, and we didn't have anything else planned for it in the near future so figured we'd test it out." Which is possibly A: actually the BEST reason for doing it, and B: a far simpler explanation than I was expecting! :D
Interestingly, this Rune / Rune Space didn't start with "Boots activation!". The first attempt at the space replaced your Ghost summoner spell, and then acted very much like the Demon Brand you have in the Hunt of the Blood Moon game mode (invisibility and all). This Rune was... ... an interesting study of interactions (Riven combo setup so easy with invisibility omg). That is, it very much started as "Hey. Let's do that thing. It's awesome!" 
The piece that survived was less the execution space and more the decision space. The "hunt" keystone. 
Stashu independently devised a Keystone not too dissimilar to the Demon Brand / Summoner Spell version that was the actual direct ancestor to the previewed Hunt of the Blood Moon Keystone. That keystone was targeting the space specifically. Initially, it was actually just a passive: every 3 minutes... once out of combat... it triggers the hunt. The output was appropriate for the game, though the activation condition felt like a lot of game control was stripped away. 
Further discussion brought us to realizing we needed to return to a button, but couldn't amp the power so far as to replace a summoner spell like before. Those conversations naturally brought us to where it is now."

When asked how many keystones there may be, Riot Stashu replied:
"Quote:
I remember getting told you guys plan to have about 60 runes at the start, give or take some, how many keystones do you think there will be and also how many from each rune path?
5 paths, aiming for 3 keystones per path, so that gets us to 15! There's a chance some paths end up with more or less, but our target is 3 per."

When asked about the runes being free and maybe giving too much power, Riot Stashu replied:
"Quote:
Wow, as someone who loves playing assassins, this seems like it gives a player a real leg up. 
However, for everyone else, this seems beyond broken. It essentially gives you both a stronger and free ghost plus duskblade active rolled into one. 
Not sure what kind of tweaking needs to be done with this to make it balanced, but in its current state, every assassin and nearly every jungler would most likely opt to take this keystone.
Sure it's 'free,' but only sort of 'free' -- we're doing a lot of work to make sure you pay real opportunity costs by taking a given rune (in that you don't get other, different but equally powerful runes). So, when an assassin takes this, they will have a powerful haste/nuke combo, but won't have access to it nearly as often as other combat keystones and may struggle in lane to other champions who took such keystones. Similarly, tanks who take this will have to give up on some significant tankiness potential, etc. So we're pretty confident we can balance it both by tuning the numbers and by making sure it has weaknesses compared to other runes."

When asked if this keystone was related to Stormraider's Surge, Riot Stashu replied:
"Quote:
Is this the stormraiders surge analogue? Or will there possibly be another keystone that fulfills a purpose similiar to SRS? 
I really love stormraiders surge and would hate it if there wasn't a new keystone with a similiar design and purpose
This is not intended to be a stormraider's surge analogue. I don't want to give much more away than that, as we have lots more rune reveals to do and a bunch of stuff is still up in the air, but please do stay tuned ;3"


Riot Stashu continued, commenting on whether there would be a analogue keystone for every current mastery:
"Quote:
Is each keystone in the current system going to have a suitable replacement in this new system? 
I cant wait to know what the storm raiders surge replacement is.
(also, what about ones like fervor? I need meh kled lvl 2 w cheese :))
I can't speak to this without stepping on the future reveals, but here's a short summary of our view of porting over live keystones: 
Holistic quality of the system comes first, and there's a lot of value in creating a brand newsystem. This can suffer if 9/15 of the new keystones are extremely familiar. That said, we definitely look to take what people like from the existing system if it has good gameplay and fills a healthy niche. Sometimes, this means porting a keystone directly over and buffing it, other times it means making slight alterations and then porting it to a new keystone, and OTHER times it means tuning it down and making it a new, non-keystone rune in the new system -- we've done all of these things in testing, so expect to see some examples of this down the road!"

As for whether this rune was "adaptive", Riot Sparkle commented:
"Quote:
Is this a "Adaptive" Rune, as in will it only fit with physical assassins, or will it's damage match the primary damage type of the assassin using it?
This adds its damage onto the type of damage you're already dealing - i.e it will work for physical or magical burst.
We haven't exactly decided how it works with true damage yet though, that's pending more testing."


On whether the keystone broke stealth, Riot Sparkle replied:
"Quote:
Does it break stealth? I'm curious if this'll be a cool thing to take on Evelynn in the future.
Currently, activation doesn't break stealth."


Runes Reforged: World Around Runes

A new dev blog about the upcoming Runes Reforged update was released, covering the most common questions asked about the system.
"Hello! If you haven't already heard, we're making some big changes to Runes and Masteries in the upcoming preseason. Last time we talked about how you'll be able to combine Runes from different paths to create a customized playstyle. 
This dev blog will be a bit different than the others. Since we announced the project, everyone on the team has enjoyed reading your questions, thoughts, and feedback. We noticed a number of questions popping up frequently and our responses to them have been scattered across a number of sources. In this piece we want to bring the most common questions together into one central place and give some deeper responses.

Base Stats 
One of the most frequent questions has been “Will my champion feel the same without the stats I currently get from runes?” 
This is a great question and it’s something we’ve been wrestling with for quite a long time now. Initial stats have a big impact on the effectiveness and feeling of your most common actions as a champion. The early game is tough: you don’t have the damage to just blast away minions, you’re doing your best to last hit with limited damage and slow attack speed, and mana is precious. While there is no magic bullet, we’ve found combining a number of approaches to be effective at restoring early game power and feel. 
First, we plan to directly change champion base stats. We’ll give every champion in the game an offensive boost tailored to what their kit needs. This ranges from attack speed on Tryndamere, Master Yi, and Yasuo, to starting ability power on Ahri. Sometimes we'll split this boost between multiple offensive stats, sometimes we'll concentrate it into one. We’re going through each champion individually and customizing a package to make sure that they get the stats most crucial to their needs. 
When we've tested this internally, the base stat changes made many champions feel a lot better. . However, others need to be able to choose specialized builds where they can double down on a narrow set of stats. For them, we’ve started to build new stat-focused runes to provide that option. We’ve previewed a number of those already and have more on the way. 
Doran’s Dagger is an experimental starting item that gives you +12% Attack Speed, +60 Health, +2 Life on Hit and +5 Bonus Minion Damage
Finally, we’re considering adding new starting items that offer a wider range of stats as first-buy options. The current set of starting items is fairly limited, so there’s plenty of room for expansion. This part of the project has just gotten underway, but it has already yielded some exciting results. Above is an extremely work-in-progress version of an experimental attack speed-focused starting item we're trying out.

 Stat-focused Runes 
A number of you have asked whether you’ll be able to get specific stats from the current pregame. We’re already exploring runes aimed at satisfying a lot of these demands. Those include (but are not limited to): 
  • Armor/Magic Resist
  • Health
  • Health Regen
  • Attack Speed
  • Cooldown Reduction
  • AD/AP (by way of Adaptive)
  • Mana
  • Movement Speed 
Not every stat will be covered. We won’t be bringing back a -% time dead rune, for example. Where we bring back stats we're trying to add interesting twists to them. For example, Overcharger grants scaling cooldown reduction but also converts cooldown reduction past the maximum into attack damage or ability power, opening up new itemization opportunities. These extra effects should let you think about how to use the stat in new ways. 
Rest assured though, we are reading and reacting to your feedback, which is how we reached many of the new runes we are testing now.

Experimentation 
Many of you also asked whether you'll still be able to build experimental pages in the new system and, if so, what kind. 
A lot of these types of builds specialize heavily in a particular stat. We’ve seen cooldown reduction, attack speed, and movement speed pop up frequently as they fuel a number of off-builds for different champions. As mentioned in the previous sections, we’re working hard to make sure the new runes have you covered for stat specialization options. But, we’re also looking at additional ways to ensure that the system supports creative experimentation through unique effects and synergies combined with stats. And, because you’re able to take two runes from a secondary path you’ll have broad access to a lot of different build options and even more rune combos to explore. 
The new “Adaptive” keyword is another tool that allows us to vastly broaden build options. Adaptive stats allow individual runes to support both AD and AP builds, automatically adapting based on your item build (hence the name). Better yet, with thoughtful itemization you can flip those bonuses mid-game, providing more options for creative early games. 
Beyond creative builds, a number of our new runes provide tools that you can use creatively in themselves. Store Credit, for example, helps you create immediate but costly power spikes. And Magical Footwear lets you focus on rushing your core items without worrying about buying boots. 

 How Many? 
One common question we’ve been seeing a lot on the forums is easy to answer: “How many runes do I get to select?” In short, you’ll get to bring six runes with you into game. Four will come from your primary path (one keystone and three others), while your secondary path will contribute two more. For example, this lets you grab four options from the Precision path and two from Inspiration. 
In total, there are five paths and we’re aiming for around 60 total runes (note: that number may go up or down slightly to meet the needs of the system).

 Balance 
This discussion wouldn’t be complete without covering balance. Balance is a broad topic and the process of balancing the new runes system has just barely begun, but I can discuss our balance plans. 
Balance is a high priority for us. That said, League has been built on a foundation of Runes and Masteries for a long time now and rebuilding that foundation will cause some disruption. We're taking as many steps as we can to prepare for—and mitigate—future balance issues. That means taking a lot of care to ensure that all of the runes we're making are capable of being balanced. New rune designs are being tested and challenged so that we understand how to tune their power up or down incrementally without destroying their identity. Your responses and questions continue to help us understand what’s appealing (or not) about a particular rune. Additionally, we will continue to work closely with the Live Balance and Playtest teams in balancing the system. Finally, we'll be moving quickly during preseason to make changes and address anything that slips through the cracks before the ranked season begins. 
One particular symptom of balance that gets mentioned frequently is waveclear. Certain champions run very specific pages in order to meet precise waveclear thresholds (usually ability power runes in specific slots to clear caster minions). Although we are removing one tool for you to achieve this type of manipulation, we're aware of its importance and are adding new tools for this same purpose. In particular, you will be able choose runes that grant Adaptive AD/AP to try and meet those breakpoints. Plus, we're testing additional runes that interact with minions to hit those same waveclear thresholds in other ways. 
Balancing the new runes won’t mean trying to make everything exactly the same. Instead, we’ll be trying to make sure that the new tools you have to explore League are fair, exciting, and create good games. 
How are you going to recognize and reward players who invested IP into the old Runes system? 
As it turns out, making one of the biggest components of the IP economy free has a lot of effects that we’re still thinking through. We’re committed to having concrete details before early September, and want to make this transition feel fair. It’s complicated, but we’re confident we'll figure it out, and we’ll let you know when we do. 
In the meantime, we have an announcement regarding the pricing of runes between now and preseason, so head on over to the boards to learn more about that. 
Thanks again for reading! We really appreciate you taking the time to discuss this with us we’ll be hanging out in the comments section fielding more specific questions. Also keep an eye on the dev corner for more previews of Runes."

RiotWrekz commented on adaptive runes:
"Quote:
That really is a good question. If Riot buffs every champion around what their usual meta runes are on Summoners Rift, that will inadvertently kill off-meta builds or champs with diverse build potential (particularly any marksmen who can be built AP instead of AD)despite Riot's claim that they do not decide the meta themselves.
Adaptive runes will have a much larger impact than champion base stat adjustments and we will be conscious of champions that have off builds and try to work around those as much as possible. Compared to the benefits you get from runes, which will adapat to the build path you choose, the stat changes we are making to champions are pretty minor."

Buying Runes Between Now and Preseason 


Riot Cactopus posted on the boards regarding rune sales between now and preseason when the Runes Reforged system should be launching:
"Hey friends, 
In May we announced that new Runes will be free when they launch this preseason. We've since seen tons of questions about how we'll transition to the new system, as well as what players should do about purchasing runes now. We're still working on the first question, but let's talk about the second. 
So here's our plan: when preseason arrives we'll refund all the IP you've spent on runes since May 30th, 2017 (the date we published the Riot Pls video linked above). This deal is effective now, so if you've got the IP for some runes you want, go ahead and grab 'em! We'll refund you later. We were originally going to roll these changes out with our bigger announcement in September, but we wanted to put this out there now since many of you have been asking about rune prices. 
At some point before the transition to the new runes system we'll also drastically reduce the prices of all runes. We won't refund rune purchases made after that point. 
But what about rune pages, you ask? The plan is for your rune pages to carry over into the new runes system, so prices on rune pages aren't being changed and they won't be refunded. The difference is you'll be able to edit them in champ select. 
Let us know if you've got any questions and we'll be happy to answer in the comments."

When asked what plans they had for players who had all runes and nothing to spend IP on, Riot Cactopus commented:
"Quote:
What plans are there to reward players who already have all runes and nothing to spend IP on? As the game gets older, the lack of options to use anything with IP gets frustrating.
Yeah, this is a big problem for people who've been playing for a while. All that IP is about as useful as the Chuck-E-Cheese tokens in the bottom of my underwear drawer. I don't want to spoil anything, but we've got some plans in the works to solve this.
We can't say more until early September, but we hear ya."

As for those who purchased runes with IP long before the start date of the refunds, Riot Cactopus replied:
"Quote:
So all the IP I spent buying runes 2-3 years ago, won't be refunded? Is there anything to compensate older accounts?
There's a bigger plan in the works for rewarding folks who've invested in IP over the years. It'll be more than what we're talking about here—we just wanted to go ahead and let you know now that you can spend on runes and expect to get refunded."

Riot Cactopus continued on the same subject:
"Quote:
Sucks for all the people that spent a bunch of IP on runes before that.
Nah, like we said before, we’re gonna do something for people who’ve been playing for years. This isn't the full plan. 
To some extent we want the rewards we come up with to take into account how much value you got out of the stuff you bought with your IP: if you got that s2 gold border using your crazy movespeed/attack speed page,on TF, you got some good use out of them. So you should still get recognized for what you spent to get those runes, but it probably doesn’t make sense to refund them the same exact way we would with a rune you got a few months ago. Details still TBD on the full plan for rewarding players who’ve invested in the game, but we’ve made a bunch of progress on figuring out a plan and I think it’ll feel fair for people.”


As for why runes cant just be free now, Riot Cactopus replied:
"Quote:
Why not make them free now and save the trouble? Whats the point of refunding it when you can make them free now?
It's basically just some boring technical reasons. We're working on some pretty cool other changes to how rewards work in League (which we'll announce in September), and making them free could potentially break a bunch of stuff. I can't really explain more without #spoilers 
So we figured it made more sense to do this now for players instead of waiting."

Ghostcrawler added:
""Just make runes free until preseason." 
We talked about this as a solution, and we went another way for a couple of reasons. Would be interested in your thoughts. 
1) The current rune system is not very robust technically, which in fact is one of the reasons for why we wanted to rebuild it (though not the main reason). For example, there is a maximum rune number that you can hit, but the game doesn't really communicate that well, and so many players open up support tickets when they can't add another rune. Yes, we could go fix all of that, but why spend the effort on a system that we have already planned to remove? 
2) Letting players get as many runes as they want invites a lot of experimentation and unusual builds and trying out runes they never had before. All of which is kind of the wrong focus for a system that is about to go away. We'd rather players be making posts and videos and streams about the new rune design rather than pumping a bunch of excitement into the one whose days or numbered. It just felt like a weird message to send. 
So we hit upon the solution of making runes cheap enough during the transition that you could still pick up a new champion or try out a new build, without encouraging everyone to go out and grab every rune they could find."

 Riot Cactopus teased:
"Quote:
I would honestly like to see more cosmetic options other then skins, icons and mastery level upgrade. That uses IP.
What a bold idea, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm"

As for why they wanted to keep multiple rune pages, Riot Cactopus commented:
"Quote:
So, you said that you want to keep multiple rune pages. But what's the point of multiple rune pages if you can edit them in champ select? This way (as I do with masteries atm) I only need one page which I change in every champ select. 
What does the extra rune pages offer me?
We've been thinking about this a bunch. It basically depends on your playstyle, I guess. Like I really get stressed editing masteries in champ select now, so I'll probably have 20 Rune pages for the ~10 champs I play so I don't have to spend a single extra second on building one from scratch every time. That way I can just change like a few runes on one of my preset pages and then have time to grab a beer or whatever. So this plan works really well for me, but you might not use it. 
I guess the question then is, is that fair enough for you? Like you're still getting all the other improvements to the rune system (including free runes, editing them in champ select). So does the change overall still feel fair for you even if you don't use the extra rune pages? I'm genuinely asking."

Ghostcrawler continued:
"I posted this on Reddit just a few minutes ago, but when we first talked about the new design I said "So rune pages are going away, right?" Because I assumed you would just make all the rune choices in champ select. 
But once we got farther into implementation, we found that we were using rune pages in our playtests. It's just helpful to have a few of them set up so you can spend more time in the lobby figuring out who is playing what champion (or heaven forbid, talking strategy) rather than quickly trying to grab the right runes. 
I wouldn't say our solution for rune pages is finalized yet by any stretch. We are still iterating a lot on the rune system (and IP and everything). Feedback on all of this is appreciated."

As for how they would deal with having rune pages feel worthless, Riot Cactopus commented:
"Quote:
it doesn't really feel worth it or fair, honestly. the only reason i have 20 rune pages is because you couldn't change them in champ select, if you could, i would have never bought any extras, and just changed them on the fly like i do with masteries. no point in having them now.
What you're saying makes sense. Like these pages feel like they're worth less, even though the change we're making to them is basically a straight improvement (before you couldn't edit them, and now you can). 
It's something we're arguing about internally at Riot. Making runes free makes other things feel like they're worth less. So how much should we do to make people who previously bought those other things (like rune pages) feel good? Personally I'm hoping that players will feel that rune pages are still worth it, even if they're now easier to tweak. But we're interested in the feedback."

Riot Mulligan commented on the special runes for Harrowing and Snowdown that were sold in the past:
"We haven't forgotten about those and have something in mind for you :)"


Ghostcrawler talked a little on the revenue made from runes:
"Warning: frank discussion incoming. 
One of the things we haven't talked about a lot with you guys, but which should come as no surprise, is that Riot does make revenue on runes, which we ultimately invest back into League to make the game better. 
This is indirect revenue, because it comes from players purchasing champions with RP since they don't have available IP to get those champions, since some of that IP goes towards runes. Freeing up rune IP (in the absence of any other changes) would let players buy a bunch of champions and spend less RP overall. 
Now we are making some other changes to the system, but overall, Riot is losing money on this deal. Potentially a lot of money. This was something we had to talk about a lot internally, but everyone was ultimately behind the decision, all the way to Tryndamere and Ryze. I don't want to make too big of a deal out of this, but if we seem cautious with some of our decisions here, this is part of the reason why. (Another big one obviously is that we are taking a gamble by overhauling such a core part of the game for something that we believe will be better.) 
We are making the new runes free because we believe 1) That it's the right thing to do for League and for League players, and 2) Our business model has always been to make a fun game that players want to keep coming back to year after year. Runes Reforged is a long-term bet on League of Legends (and Riot for that matter). 
If we thought that Rune Pages made no sense with the new design and risked feeling like a cash grab, we would absolutely just kill them as a feature. But we have found they are useful with Runes Reforged, just less mandatory than they were before. Definitely open to discussion on this topic however. "

Repertoir on Rengar


 RiotRepertoir responded to a lengthy Let's Discuss post on the boards. The topic at hand is was Rengar:
"I'm on mobile (out of office this week), so please don't take the brevity/choppiness/typos of this response as me trying to overly simplify or gloss over any of the issues here. 
As some of you may already know, I did the gameplay design on Rengar's assassin update, so this is indeed an important issue to me. I don't respond to many Rengar threads (because many seem to be trying to say the same things and it tends to feel like a dead horse is being beaten), but I do try and read all of them here and on places like rengarmains regardless. That said, the effort put in here is, at the very least, admirable and collaborative, so it seems like a decent place to speak up. 
Rengar is far from perfect in his current state. I'll be the first to admit that. I do remember feeling more nervous (than other updates I've been a part of) than usual prior to his release, because it felt like we took some pretty drastic steps to try to accomplish difficult gameplay goals. Some of these worked out well. Others did not. Outside any individual item, to me, the single biggest shortcoming of the update is that he feels too different too play to really feel like the same champion, which I suppose tends to feel quite bad as some kind of confirmation of my pre-release nerves. The experience has been valuable to me as we hone in on the ingredients of a great update and the risks we may feel comfortable taking, but that should be of little consolation to players that may be feeling betrayed by this update (or any other, really). 
I've read many ideas for what we could do or ought to have done for Rengar, and still, I'm not sure what would be best. It is easy to know what doesn't work. It can be difficult to know what will. In the spirit of thus thread, below will be my thoughts on Rengar's kit. Keep in mind that this isn't a commitment to any type of incoming change. 
P
I do think the changes to Ferocity generation were a great improvement to Rengar's gameplay, and I believe that this bonetooth is an improvement over the previous one, even if its progression and rewards are not as good as they could be. I'm unsure about the leap elements of the passive that get don't complaints, as I tried to set the range/speed/frequency as high as I could without being unfair to opponents, and I think that some of the complaints about these things mostly come from no longer being able to do some of the same exact jumping behaviors. I agree thus feels bad if you've learned all of them, but I still think the changes made here were generally acceptable. 
Q
If I were to do it again, I would take more of an approach of "keep Q the same at all costs." The spell is mostly good in isolation mechanically (could be a decent spell on a different kit), but just feels bland, rushed, and uninspired here, primarily if you were attached to the previous Q. This said, reverting to the previous Q would result in the kit being back in a state where all of its damage could be applied instantly, and we were trying to move away from that for his update (which, at a goals level, I still do think is correct). 
W
I don't think this spell is perfect, but I stand by it being mechanically better than the previous version. Whether that's true or not, honestly neither version is amazing. It's possible this should have been a new spell entirely, or that it should have part of a more extensive effort to make all of Rengar's instant cast spells not just stackable in the same instant. There is something to be said for the familiarity and simplicity of the spell, I suppose. 
E
Bola is mostly fine. I was shocked by how many players complained that they couldn't instant cast it during leap, but I do think it having a cast time at all times was the right call. 
R
After the Ferocity changes, I think the gains made to R's play for opponents was a definitive step in the right direction for Rengar's kit. I think there some merit to the spell having TOO much counterplay for opponents in the approach and not enough once he's there, but the spell seems far, far better for the game than the previous version, and with some tweaks, could be really great. I also know people tend to complain about the "free" crit on it, but I think rewarding jumping to the right target is appropriate, and damage seems appropriate as well. Perhaps it's the word crit? Maybe it should just be some kind of bonus damage. I'm not entirely sure, but that seems tunable. 
Pattern
I'm not really concerned about whether people think Rengar is an assassin, diver, bruiser, fighter, skirmisher, or whatever. There seems to be enough division there that satisfying a singe singular majority doesn't seem possible. 
Closing
Despite tending to think we made mostly good calls and took mostly good risks with Rengar's update, I think it's pretty clear that the changes to Q primarily tend to overshadow these. In my opinion, Rengar would have been best served by keeping the mechanics of pre-rework Q at all costs, though the way to accomplish that and still hit game health and counterplay goals we aimed for are still unclear, and are unlikely as simple as some passionate players may make it out to be. I'm thankful that League is a constantly changing game where we may get to circle back and revisit changes like these in the future. 
Thanks for taking the time and effort to put this post together. I know that sometimes it may feel like we aren't listening or don't care when something like this posted and maybe there's no response from a Rioter, but I do think it's rare that we're just turning a blind eye to something players care about. I apologize that it sometimes feels otherwise, and that we (I personally, on this case) don't always make the right calls, but I am thankful for feedback like this that keeps us in touch with player sentiment and helps us to improve moving forward."

More on VGUS


With the newest Champion Roadmap blog post out, the talk of VGUs is rampant, and many Rioters are hitting on the subject. Here are a few responses from around the boards:

RiotRepertoir gave his thoughts on Volibear:
"Mostly because he needs more than a little bit of work to get to a spot where we'd be happy with him, and there are other old champions that we've felt need the work just as much or more. It's not that he doesn't need it, but I don't think there are particularly strong arguments for why he needs it over others that have been prioritized for VGUs.
Not sure if this is known, but Volibear was originally considered for the Juggernaut update, and we couldn't really find a direction for him. So, the light update attempt has been tried; it just didn't yield anything."

Meddler commented on why Xin Zhao would be getting smaller scope work rather than a full VGU:

"We expect he'll get one eventually. We talked about him as a possibility for next year however and concluded there were other champs who needed a VGU more. That meant that a smaller update for Xin made sense, given there's definite improvement possible working within most of the constraints of the current kit and a VGU's at least 1.5 years away."

As for the timeframe we are seeing VGUs and the amount of "Tier 1" candidates needing work, Reav3 commented:
"The real answer is that we don't feel like we HAVE to get through every champion on the list. 
The list is constantly growing and evolving and with the size of our cast there will always be champions that need work. I mean it was only just recently that Fiddlesticks got into the Tier 1 list and we were just discussing Corki yesterday and he is getting pretty close to a Tier 1 candidate as well. 
If we did get through all the Tier 1's then the Tier 2 would just be new Tier 1's.
What we do care about is what is the right cadence of champion content to deliver to players. Right now we feel like releasing champions every 2 weeks is way to much. We feel like having big content releases, be it a VGU, a new Champ or a big seasonal update feels right at a monthly cadence. Obviously we won't always hit that perfectly but having content drops roughly every month feels right to us, at least currently. We always re-evaluate this of course and there will always be reason we don't release every month (Xayah & Rakan being a duo champion caused us to skip a Feb release and the scope of Kayns 3 forms made him take a bit longer then usually as well, skipping June.) Worlds being another thing that we may delay releases during. 
With that being said we then look at what out players want. Currently their are many players that want new champs as well as VGUs. The players on these boards are usually super hard core players invested in the lore that have been playing LoL for a long time. We know that those are the players that generally are more excited about VGUs. The sentiment on these boards doesn't necessarily represent the sentiment of all our players. 
With both of those facts our strategy is more about what ratio of VGUs and New Champions we want to release that will add the most player value. Our goal isn't driven by getting through our Tier 1 list as fast as possible. So looking at what our players want we feel moving to more of a 50/50 cadence of VGUs and New Champs makes the most sense right now. We will continue to evaluate this ratio though and adjust accordingly over time."


Reav3 continued:
"The tiers aren't really set in stone tbh. In retrospect I wish I never really framed our VGU priorities as tiers. At the time I was just responding to a comment on the boards asking which Champions where high priority and I threw out a list. 
Internally we don't separate the VGU candidates by Tiers. When I say Tier 1's I'm more referring to the champions that we feel are currently high priorities and are in the discussion to get a VGU when we start ideating on our next VGU. 
The way it works internally is that we have all the champions in the game on a list. We then assign a number for different categories of the champion. These categories are Art, Design, Theme, Highly Requested & Potential of Theme. For design, art & theme we assign each a number based on where we feel they are currently at. The highly requested is a number based on how highly requested the champion is by players in our surveys we send out. The potential of theme is based on our own internal assessment as well as how popular a champion once was. Warwick, for example, was very high on the "Potential of Theme" category as he was once a very popular champion but became much less popular as time went on, basically the category is for champions that we think have a theme that resonate very strongly with players but it isn't currently being executed well. Evelynn, Irelia or Akali would be other examples of champions with very high "Potential of Theme" scores. 
Anyways, we then have a column that adds all of these scores up to see what Champion has the overall highest value to update. All the champions with very high scores end up high priority and are on a list we look at when starting on new VGUs. We constantly update these scores though so champions can go up or down in priority over time.
So there are many reasons a champion can be on the list. A Champion like Irelia, for example, could have a similar score as Nunu as She would score very high in "Potential of Theme" where as Nunu would score similarly high in other areas, like theme or requested by players."
[Added 7/21]

Reav3 talked more about how the Champions are scored for needing more work:
"Quote:
So a higher score means they need the most work? I.e. for design - I assume this is about gameplay health, a higher number means they don't have a healthy pattern? For art, a higher number means they have ugly animations that don't fit the theme?
For Art/Design/Theme categories a higher score means they need more work or are in a worst state. For Player Request a higher score means they are highly requested, and for Potential of Theme a higher score represents how much potential the theme has if reworked."

Reav3 continued:
"Quote:
Let's say both Irelia and Akali are the highest numbers but the next available team has an idea for a 3rd champ (nunu?) they think will work while someone just starting a different project wants to tackle Akali. Would Nunu end up next while Akali waited for the team who wanted to work on her?
Multiple teams don't go into ideation at the same time so we usually don't run into that problem. 
Basically when a team is ready to go into ideation we look at the list of high priority champions and then narrow it down to a 3-4 from there. Usually we narrow it down based on what role/position we did last, what tone, or what factions we did last. We also look at which champions will fit well into the overall roadmap between new and VGUs. We then start early discovery on some possible directions and then after a period of time we go with the strongest direction we have.
Likewise, what happens when you've got a high priority champ but no one really wants to tackle them, assuming they've all got good reasons not to?
Well then the Champion could wait until we do have a exciting idea. Urgot for example was very high priority for a very long time but we didn't have anything super solid until late last year during a ideation period. The last thing we want to do is force a champion through production with a weak idea even if it is a very high priority champion. That would most likely not end up great for the Champion in the end."

As for what Urgot ranked in the tiers, Reav3 replied:
"Quote:
What was Urgot highest in out of the categories?
Urgot was the highest scoring champion in gameplay, art and the highest player requested champion as well. His theme was fairly strong which is why we maintained it with the VGU though."


Ask Riot: Two-Factor and Runes Reforged

This week's Ask Riot is here, covering topics such as when the Runes Reforged system will be launched, how physically big the servers that run League are, and more:
"This week’s Ask Riot is short and sweet with Runes, two-factor, and servers. 
Do you have a date for the new Runes system launch?

There’s still some stuff to figure out here, but we’re targeting Pre-Season 2017. So sometime after the end of the ranked season and Worlds. 
Lead Gameplay Designer 
Will you ever implement two-step verification for League accounts?

We are currently implementing a series of account protection feature updates to the player accounts system which will be rolling out over the next year. One of these planned features is a two-step verification for logins. So while we don’t have a hard date to offer, we did want to confirm that this is in the works. 
MOSHIDOG

Product Manager, Riot Accounts Team 
What is the size of the servers that allow us all to play?

About the size of a pizza box. Really! It’s a common server industry term to call a server a pizza box. Despite popular belief, we don’t have a single server powered by a hamster driven by a diet of Surge. Instead, we have a fleet of servers globally that provide resources for everything from how you interact with queuing into the game to the game itself.

While I can’t give specific numbers of how many games are run in a single server, I will say that each server hosts simultaneous games for many players. Any given server is capable of hosting games in the triple-digits. And any given data center can host hundreds of servers depending on the region. What you end up with are racks and racks of servers all dedicated to people playing League of Legends all over the world. 
SKWEETIS
Infrastructure Tech Lead

Thanks for reading this week’s Ask Riot. Have a question? 
Head over to Ask Riot and sign into your League account. Check out the Pro Tips, then ask away. 
We promise to read every question, but we can’t guarantee they’ll all get answers. Some questions may already be answered elsewhere, and some won’t be right for Ask Riot. This isn’t the best place to announce new features, for example, and we might skip conversations on issues we’ve talked about in depth before (though we can clarify individual points). 
We are listening, though, so keep asking. We’ll make sure your questions are heard by the Rioters working on the stuff you’re curious about."

Quick Hits


1) The Riot Games Merch facebook posted a reminder that the limited Firecracker Jinx figure will be going into the vault soon:
"It has been a blast but Firecracker Jinx rockets into the vault August 3rd, not to be seen for a while. Catch her before she goes (if you can)! http://riot.com/1WY34Jk"

2) The League of Legends Facebook posted a poster version of the Omega Squad login:


3) Anime Expo Cosplay Boogie 2017 | League of Legends Community Collab

"Dance along with these amazing League cosplayers from Anime Expo! Tag the creators you recognize in the comments. 
Steampunk Orianna: https://www.facebook.com/cinecosuDarius: https://www.facebook.com/ItsMissKattNidalee: https://www.facebook.com/pyrthcosplayBlood Moon Diana: https://www.facebook.com/kazzycosplayBlood Moon Diana: https://www.facebook.com/KinpatsuCosplayAzir: https://www.facebook.com/thegadgetfishPoro: https://www.facebook.com/IunRhysTwisted Fate: https://www.facebook.com/JustSleightlyRed Riding Annie: https://www.facebook.com/xLucidnessStar Guardian Jinx: https://www.facebook.com/arlenafaeBlood Moon Kennen: https://www.facebook.com/JynxedArtBraum: https://www.facebook.com/swimbananasDragon Sorceress Zyra: https://www.facebook.com/galahadthepu...Academy Ahri/Project Ashe: https://www.facebook.com/RokabugCospl...Steampunk Viktor: https://www.facebook.com/JustinJohnAl...Temple Jax: https://www.facebook.com/topkekjaxSteampunk Ahri: https://www.facebook.com/MonsterPohBlood Moon Jhin: https://www.facebook.com/SheepLatte/Battle Bunny Caitlyn: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialScar...Thresh: https://www.facebook.com/ZandatsuZachYasuo: https://www.facebook.com/KiryuCosplayOfficer Vi: https://www.facebook.com/perfectlyred...Arcade Riven: https://www.instagram.com/_deeuhnahFirecraker Jinx: https://www.instagram.com/alphabetazc...Arcade Ahri: https://www.instagram.com/dianuhhhhGenderbend Jinx by https://www.facebook.com/ubercosplaybroElementalist Lux Ice by https://www.facebook.com/GoodnightsugarShockblade Zed by https://www.facebook.com/cosplayquickArcade Miss Fortune by https://www.facebook.com/seramaicosplayBattle Bunny Riven by https://www.instagram.com/miragedawnJanna by https://www.instagram.com/chefkittens797Annie by https://www.instagram.com/lotusica_co...Star Guardian Jinx & Akali by https://www.instagram.com/kawaiidontcrySnow Bunny Nidalee by https://www.instagram.com/pandaleiaElementalist Lux Light by https://www.instagram.com/lilwontons 
And many more! 
Created in collaboration with Beat Down Boogie: https://www.youtube.com/beatdownboogie"
4) The Breakdown with Zirene: How SSG beat SKT (LCK Summer Week 6)

"This week on The Breakdown we’re taking a look at how Samsung turned the tides against SK Telecom T1 through an immaculate team fight. 
Watch more Breakdowns: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... 
Detailed Match History: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegend... 
Music by: Sean Barrett 
Tweet #TheBreakdown if you see a great competitive play you want us to break down and for more competitive League of Legends visit Lolesports.com"

5) Summoner Showcase 122 is now on the Summoner Showcase facebook page!

[Click here for full showcase!]




Reminders

Last up, a few reminders on upcoming and ending soon promotions and sales!
  • As mentioned in 7.14 notes, Dark Star: Singularity returns to the RGMQ 7/14/17 12:00 PT to 7/18/17 04:00 PT and 7/21/17 11:00 PT to 7/25/17 04:00 PT.
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