[Updated]Red Post Collection: Mid-Patch Update, Quick Gameplay Thoughts 7/25, Runes Corner, & More

Posted on at 10:15 PM by Aznbeat
[Update: Added a look at the Urgot AMA!]

Tonight's red post collection includes a mid-patch update for Sivir, Meddler's Quick Gameplay Thoughts for 7/25, a new Runes Corner, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents



Urgot AMA on Reddit

The Urgot AMA was held on reddit on 7/25, and community member Stukov has gathered all the interesting responses into a  Google doc for easy viewing!

[Urgot AMA doc here]

Here's the opening post:
UPDATE 1:00pm PST - The AMA has officially ended! As usual, a few folks will hang around in the comments anyway, but the main event is now over. 
Y'all know me. I'm League of Legends. Wanna talk about Urgot? Show up between 11:00am PST and 1:00pm PST. 
Below is a list of Rioters Ask them questions, or just post memes idc 
RIOTERS PARTICIPATING: 
SOME RELEVANT LINKS: 

Mid Patch Updates 

A small mid patch update was released for Sivir:
7/26/2017 Balance Update 
Sivir
We wanted to help out Sivir's early game, but adding 30 damage to Boomerang Blade was way more than "helping". Shipping a buff that strong was a mistake on our part, and we're making an immediate correction before Sivir gets out of control. 
  • BOOMERANG BLADE DAMAGE 55/75/95/115/135 ⇒ 35/55/75/95/115

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: July 25 

Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts for July 25th, including thoughts on 7.16 balance, Udyr, Skin specific HUD changes, and more:
"Hi folks, 
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 
7.16 Balance Changes 
A couple more things that should be hitting PBE soon, or are being worked on for 7.16: 
  • Fiora - Hit too hard. Giving her some of the movement speed we took off her passive back (ult still doesn't grant movement speed just for being near an ulted target however).n
  • Yasuo - Exploring weaker shield and more frequent windwalls early game. Goal there is to test shifting defensive power so he's similar or slightly stronger against ranged match ups and weaker against melee, making it clearer how to deal with him if he gets picked/give him situations where he's a better choice without just being a better generalist. We're still looking to do larger work on him at some point too, this is initial investigation, not a comprehensive set of long term changes. 
Udyr and other smaller updates 
Context for anyone wondering why Udyr changes keep getting onto the PBE and then never making it into a patch. At this point we'll be holding off on any updates, such as Udyr's, until after 7.18. Some of that's a desire to keep the next few patches more stable, a lot of it's also that people who are working on Udyr, LB, Azir etc are also generally on a fair bit of other work as well during these patches, so development and testing time's limited. 7.19 onwards we'll get more focus back on those, likely release order is probably Udyr, then Azir, then LB. 
Skin Specific HUD Portraits 
For anyone that hasn't seen it, Ququroon put up some details yesterday about how we'll be doing skin specific portraits on the in game HUD. At present you'll see a picture of the base champion there when using a skin, which can sometimes feel pretty weird (e.g. I'm Zombie Brand, why am I seeing fire dude instead?). After this change that portrait should reflect the skin's loading screen art instead. Important to note that this is only the HUD portrait that no other players see. Tab Screen, Minimap etc will still use the default icon (really important those are obvious at a glance). 
Thread with more details:
https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/AEAHb3XZ-adding-skin-portraits-to-all-skins 

Personality Types and New Champs 
We see a lot of discussion around new appearances, powers, weapons, backstories etc for new champs people are interested in. Personality tends to get less of a focus though. Would love to hear what you folks would like to see that we haven't done in that regard yet (e.g. Draven as the self obsessed, fourth wall breaking showman, Tahm Kench as the smooth talking manipulative glutton etc). Anything particularly come to mind as missing, or that you've always wanted to see?"

When asked about the timeframe on the the Evelynn and Xin Zhao updates were, Meddler responded:
"Quote:
Does this include the Xin Zhao Gameplay Update and Evelynn too?
They'll both also be after 7.18, they're part of a separate work flow though so won't necessarily be after LB/could come before Azir or Udyr.

On Yasuo, Meddler commented:
"Quote: 
Hey Meddler, 
Are you exploring more changes to Yasuo? What else are we to expect? 
When is the new champion coming? Is he coming after or earlier than patch 7.20? 
Are there any more explorations in patch 7.16?
More work on Yasuo to come at some point, won't be for a while though at a guess.
I'll leave new champ reveal details to the champion team. 
Some more stuff to come in 7.16, especially once we see impact of 7.15 (a big patch) over the next few days."


Domination Major Slot Sneak Peek 


Riot Sparkle is back with another Runes Corner. This week covers the Domination path:
"Hi friends! Welcome to this week’s Rune Corner. I’m Riot Sparkle, Experience Designer on Runes Reforged and I’m here to be your rune guide for today. This week we’re gonna take a break from keystones (but we’ll be back soon with more!) to round out a complete set of runes from our Domination path. 
!!! WIP DISCLAIMER: Please do remember that we’re still working on these runes, so names, icons, numbers and DEFINITELY in game VFX will change before these ship. That being said, if there’s anything you folks really like be sure to let us know! !!! 
As you may remember from Riot Stashu’s post, Domination is a path focused on stalking prey and taking out targets quickly. The major rune slot in Domination focuses on that first part - tracking down your enemies. 
We’ve already seen one rune from this slot in the past - Zombie Ward. First introduced by RiotWrekz, Zombie Ward is about turning an enemy’s safe zones against them. 
Zombie Ward
After killing an enemy ward, a friendly Zombie Ward is raised in its place. Zombie Wards are visible, last for 180 seconds and don’t count towards your ward limit.
But what if you want an option that doesn’t require enemy actions to make use of? Or one that loves you? That’s where our next choice, Watchful Poro, comes in. 
Watchful Poro 
When you enter brush, a poro appears. It will stay behind to give you vision until an enemy champion scares it away or you enter a new brush.
Sidenote: You may notice this poro is definitely not a poro. This is what I mean with the temporary VFX - sometimes you need to use your imagination a little! We’ll be getting this little guy a proper model and icon soon. 
We’ve seen Watchful Poro used for all kinds of interesting scenarios - personal protection against ganks, pointing out areas with wards for teammates or even deep warding early with some careful pathing. 
So at this point you may be thinking to yourself, what if I want to stalk my prey WITHOUT having to manage extra thingies in my game? Well, there’s an option for that too - Trophy Collector. 
Trophy Collector
 
Gain +1 Ability Power or +.7 Attack Damage (Adaptive) when you or a nearby ally kill an enemy champion or an enemy ward. 
Trophy Collector still touches on the core fantasy and gameplay of stalking prey, but instead of focusing on the set up it’s more concerned with the payoff. This rune is more unreliable compared to its neighbors but can offer more direct power as well, similar to other aggressive gambits like the Bloodlust rune in Precision. 
So that’s all three runes in this slot! Remember, the way the new runes work means that you can only ever have one of these in your page at a time - they’re mutually exclusive. 
Really excited to read your thoughts and reactions for these runes! We’ll be hanging around in the comments section for a while to answer questions and, if we’re very lucky, maybe even meme. 
You can check the previous Runes Corner posts here:

When asked about a buff for this rune path, Riot Sparkle commented:
"Quote:
Can we get a buff icon for the trophy collector and the bounty hunter runes? With this kind of runes its nice to know how much we are getting on average in a game, or are you trying to avoid putting buff icons, especially on the smaller runes to avoid having to many icons?
Was considering doing a post about the UI that accompanies runes, but wasn't sure if enough players would be interested in that aspect. 
But yes, we will be providing a way for you to track the runes you took during your game and get feedback on their effectiveness. We think it's important to support what we call the "feedback loop" for Runes Reforged (i.e you pick, you play, you see how they worked and then you possibly pick differently next time)."

Riot Sparkle commented on the naming of the rune lines:
"Quote: 
Maybe something like "Selective Runes" and "General Runes" instead of "Major" and "Minor" would sound better, if you keep the system as it is now
By the way, i'm really looking forward to have a Rune system that supports different play styles, instead of something like searching "Urgot runes and masteries" on Google because there really is just one best option. I don't like feeling "forced" to make some very specific choices because there are no other ways to play the game (like any possible "On-hit" build always dealing less damage than pure Crit.) so i hope it's easier with Runes Reforged to choose my personal path that still feels powerful even when not being the most popular
One thing we are trying to incorporate in that regard are slots where the "right" answer might depend on the game. For instance, we revealed a slot in Resolve where you could get defenses in the form of armor, MR or wait a while and then get both. Depending on the matchup you're in that "right" answer might change some of the time. Internally, we call these "reactive" choices and hope that they disrupt the "one true build" at least a little bit."

When asked about a preseason website, Riot Sparkle responded:
"We will have a Preseason website as per usual, yes."
Riot Sparkle discussed more about how major and minor rune lines worked:
"For secondary paths you may have 1 major and 1 minor, or 2 minors, yes.
We're actually still internally discussing removing the major vs. minor terminology (or greater vs. normal), since majors aren't guaranteed to actually be more powerful than minors necessarily. The only difference is that "majors" have visible effects in game, whereas "minors" do not (they can both be just as impactful in a game)."

Riot Sparkle continued:
"Quote:
If that's the only difference, then yes, drop the distinction. Can you equip two major runes somehow? If so, then the distinction isn't needed (though AFAICT you can only equip one major rune). But really, if the only distinction is "this is more noticeable than the other", and because of that property you can only equip one instead of two, then I would either change the criteria after which you define a rune major or minor, or would drop the distinction altogether :)
That is good feedback and I think it's the direction we're headed but we're still discussing a bit. Someone (not gonna name names here :P) may have titled their Boards post badly in that regard. 
If I'm being totally honest, we were worried that players would want really defined rules around which things would get in game VFX and which wouldn't (a shield, for instance, needs VFX to work for the opponent case but something like extra armor doesn't necessarily). 
But we've found in testing that players actually care less about that (and can figure out the shield vs. armor example for themselves) and more about the distinction in power. If we call something a "major" rune, players expect it to be more powerful than a "minor". Thus, our naming has been slightly misleading in that regard. Also, sometimes SOME of the stuff needs VFX (Poro and Zombie) and other content...doesn't (Trophy) which adds to category confusion. 
We'll probably talk more about this and answer more Qs in the future, but as of right now I actually expect that we'll drop the distinction going forward. 
Would love additional feedback from a player perspective on that to help us though - have you folks following along been confused around our category names and what they mean at all? "

/Tech: Kayn Goes to Particle Town 

A new Nexus series was released, covering the making of a new tool to create particles, and the first champion to have them implemented, Kayn:
"/tech is a new Nexus series exploring the technology that powers League of Legends. If you like this story, consider checking out the Riot Games Engineering blog for even more complex deep-dives. 
Aren’t scythes supposed to be for farming? Yes. Farming bot lane.
One of the biggest challenges of developing a game as big as League of Legends that ships as frequently as League of Legends is making major changes to the tools we use to build the game without breaking anything. Hello, I’m John “Riot Jengles” Englund, a technical artist who works on our art tools, here to share how we delivered a brand-new visual effects editing tool in time to ship Kayn, our newest jungle assassin, who can walk through walls and possess other champions. (But not my champions! I play immobile ADCs and will be adopting a strict “always ban Kayn” policy in champ select.) 
A TEAM DEDICATED TO ITS NAME 
On our team, the mission is to create tools and tech that enable Rioters to deliver the best for players (by “best,” we mean whatever that team defines as best in the context of their work). We do that by providing software that aims to make the iterative loop of content creation as efficient as possible. That’s why our team is aptly named Content Efficiency! We are responsible for the back-end platform that hosts all game data on LoL, as well as the tools for designers and artists to edit properties for champions, skins, spells, and more. 
Late last year, we decided it was time to deliver a brand-new tool for editing VFX. Why? League has over 110,000 different VFX. It’s a huge part of what brings action in the game to life, and players often tell us how VFX make or break their enjoyment of champions, skins, items, map effects, and more.
Unlike animated characters, VFX are not created by crafting poses that blend into each other. VFX are animated procedurally, and simulated by the game over a period of time. Effects are composed of one or many particle systems -- collections of emitters of particles, whose behavior and appearance are defined by the VFX artist through textures, geometry, and many controls.
If you want to know more about the art of VFX, check out this article by RiotPhoenix, a VFX artist on Kayn that helped us develop and test the new tool! 
You can see how high quality VFX is integral to the game, but our workflow for authoring VFX was starting to show its age. There was no “undo” button, which made it hard to experiment with changes. VFX artists also had to keep the game running, save their effect, and wait for it to reload, every time they wanted to see the results of their work. There was no way to see it live. Lastly, all the VFX data was stored in our old file system, which required a lot of manual management of folders and filenames to get it to work correctly, with no easy way to track what files were being used for an effect in-game. 
SO WHERE’S THE UPGRADE BUTTON? 
Building a better VFX tool wasn’t easy, but surprisingly it wasn’t the most complicated part. Deploying that new tool into a production environment with aggressive deadlines, converting the old data into the new system, and making sure artists could transition with minimal disruption—that was another story. 
The first thing we needed to do was make sure our VFX artists were on board with this idea, excited about it, and involved in the development process. There’s no way we could have built the right thing without their expertise. VFX artists were already accustomed to and happy with the editing experience of their current VFX tool (despite some of its shortcomings), so the bar was set pretty high to give them something better. 
Plus, it had this delicious loading screen: 
Yes, the old tool was called Syrup, and yes, that is a breakfast taco with a cartoon taco standing on it.
Now, how do you top this? We started with a lot of ideas on how to improve the existing interface—fancier graphs, new spiffy tables, and clever simplifications—but in the end the major bottlenecks in the original workflow had little to do with the interface itself, so it behooved us to simply implement most of the the functions of the old tool to our new system. Even the best improvements to a software interface come at a temporary efficiency cost (people re-learning the tool, for example), so we opted to provide a familiar interface to ease their transition. 
Syrup vs Particle Town. Familiar, cleaned up just a little, with a new viewer! Oh, and undo!
We spent the bulk of our engineering effort towards creating a smooth transition for old data and VFX artists. In addition to building a familiar interface inspired by Syrup, we created tools to help artists convert old data—textures, meshes, and particle systems that make up VFX—to the new system. We even made sure artists could copy data from the old tool and paste it into the new tool. 
So, a new tool that we are confident that artists will be able to use is great and all, but how do we deploy it and use it for real things? 
WELCOME TO PARTICLE TOWN, MR. KAYN! 
We needed to find some sweet VFX data to bring into the new tool, which we dubbed “Particle Town.” Something meaty and already in progress to test converting data, but not too far in development that we might threaten a production deadline. 
So we talked to the Champion team, and they had just the thing: a champion with three different forms and VFX dialed up to 11. 
Enter Kayn, the Shadow Reaper. 
I heard you like full screen VFX
Now, the Champ team deals with deadlines of their own, and we didn’t want to guarantee this tool would make them faster right away. In fact, it was likely to make them a little slower, because of the pain of change! While we were confident this tool would be more efficient in the near future, it was important to set realistic expectations, and explicitly commit to doing whatever we could to help make sure Kayn shipped on time. 
So what did we do? We spent three months building a MVP (minimum viable product), during which time our entire team was focused on building this tool. We spent a lot of time going back and forth with VFX artists to maintain a good level of confidence that we were building the right thing. Some things got scaled back (like a fancier graph editor) not because the design wasn’t cool, but because we discovered other things were of higher priority. We knew we’d have time for polish after releasing something simple. Another good reason to start with something minimal that can be built quickly is so you can rush to getting feedback about the tool. Direct user feedback from experts is invaluable towards future improvement, and saves us time that might be wasted building features that wouldn’t have been used much. 
The ominous glow of Kayn’s scythe, live from Particle Town
Finally, at the end of March, we released it…and it did start a little painfully! Data came in broken, the tool sometimes slowed down to a crawl, or even crashed. It was crucial we had good relationships with the artists and on-the-minute support during this transition. We got around 100 pages of feedback and over 150+ bug reports and feature requests, and we didn’t account for the fact that filling out these requests slowed artists down too! We plugged away as fast as we could; some days we were pushing out fixes to the tool over 10 times a day. 
Fortunately, before too long, things started to stabilize and we could observe the fruits of our labor. We got feedback from artists who had hours of work recovered by the undo system, and others loving the fact they could see their changes reflected immediately in the new viewer and in-game. Most excitingly, artists discovered some things that made Kayn faster to build than he would have with our old tool! 

Moving the target of Kayn’s R on the left to test directional elements; full ability on the right
One example is Kayn’s ultimate. It can be cast in any direction, which meant it had to be tested for visual quality in every direction. Previously, artists would have to load the game, select a target, cast R on it, move the target, cast again, and repeat until they’ve seen it from all angles. Now with the preview window, they could just move the target around and see it play live in any direction. 
The Q is still devastating without the blood
Another interesting example is the on-hit effect for Kayn’s Q. We had to ship two versions, one with blood, and one without, due to different requirements for different regions. Normally, the VFX artist would have to load the game to see the effect; now they could just toggle “censored mode” in the preview window. 
COMING TO A PARTICLE TOWN NEAR YOU 
“Nooooope. Nope nope nope.” - Jhin
So what did we learn? Shipping a tool of this complexity in the middle of a busy production schedule is very tricky. But we already knew that. What we did learn was that we are getting better at it. We’ve had much rockier rollouts in the past. This one was made great because we brought everyone affected by it (artists, developers, producers) on the journey with us. We probably spent as much time communicating, setting expectations, and learning from our peers as we did building the tool. This whole process, while not over, will hopefully give us the confidence to keep making bold changes to our art workflows here so we can continue to deliver the best content we possibly can to all of you guys. 
We also might be able to use VFX a little more liberally in the future, if we can make them easier to create! What do you think, where should we put some more shiny VFX?"

Adding Skin Portraits to all skins


Here's Ququroon with an update on in game portraits for skins, which is testing on the PBE now!
"Hail, summoners! 
Let's talk about in-game splashes
Splashes, those awesome images I could never hope to draw, appear in several different places once you’re in the game itself. Many splash elements, such as the minimap, kill callouts, and scoreboard- need to remain as the base splash for gameplay clarity, quicker reads, and so on. 
However, the big circle next to your abilities doesn’t serve any significant gameplay purpose. Sooooo- it’s time for another wide-sweeping change! 
Voila! You’ll notice that Arcade Ahri now has her respective skin splash as her portrait, as opposed to Base Ahri, as it is on Live. 
On PBE tomorrow(ish), every single skin will now show its respective splash in this slot (and only this slot). 
And that’s it- short and sweet. Hit me with any questions and/or feedback you have! You're all great, and I hope you have a nice day. 
FAQ! 
Shouldn't this have been in five years ago or so?
Yeah, probably! :D
Isn't this a feature on ultimate skins?
Yeah. We’re sensitive to removing that as a unique feature on ultimate skins, but ~800 skins stand to benefit from this.
What if I think the minimap icons suck too?
Well, you’re kinda right. They aren’t made for that particular space, instead they’re teeny crops of huge assets, that are further downscaled. While skins will never have a place on the minimap (see the above reasons), there are changes we’re looking at to improve the standard iconography."

Turning Mentality to Victory 

Riot Costy wrote a piece about how your mentality going into a game may help you win games:
"You lock in the Vayne and Thresh duo, the solo queue heroes. This is your promo to Gold, you’re a Thresh one-trick, and you can’t help but distrust your fellow laner; after all, it’s a low-elo Vayne in solo queue. As you leave the base to make your way to lane, you hear that familiar voiceover line that signals this game is going to be a long one: “Silver of the moon.” Here we go again. Their jungler does a cheesy level-two route and Vayne gives up first blood, as she flashes forward to try and last hit an Ezreal with heal available. 
The game goes downhill from there. Repeat ganks, four-man dives, the full bot-lane fiesta we all know and love. Meanwhile, your mid-laner is quietly building up a sizeable lead for himself. It’s a Zed player, mastery level 7 naturally. While you’re happy to see at least one lane win, you can’t help but be deeply frustrated with your own performance, never mind Vayne. Zed roams bot after solo-killing mid and picks up a double kill. He’s snowballing now, and he’s your sole hope of walking away from this match with a “W”. 
That double quickly turns into a couple of towers and a dragon—your team is well and truly on the board now. The snowball continues, as Zed manages to pick off priority targets again and again. You stay positive the entire time, and this is key; if you let negative thoughts creep into your mind, this is over. You land a Madlife-tier hook on the enemy carry, and that’s game. Zed latches onto the easy kill, while your misfit Vayne pops off, somehow picking up a triple kill. You run it down mid and demolish the enemy base. As the Nexus explodes, your Zed—who’s been silent the entire game—simply types in chat “GGWP.” 
The Bonds You Break 
We’ve all had games like that, after which we ask ourselves “how did we win?” and “why did that guy not flame me for feeding my ass off?” You move on to your next game, your first as a newly-gilded player, happy with your promotion and in good spirits, ready to make your charge to platinum, and that’s because you stayed cool and positive when the odds were stacked against you, allowing your teammate to take you over the line to victory. There’s a lot of power in that genuine GG that you likely didn’t notice. Winning and losing gracefully is a core attribute in sport, and it’s a necessity in League of Legends because it helps set you up for next games. 
When we wrap up a game of League we get mentally stuck on the events of the game; it doesn’t matter that we got two solo kills in lane, or pulled off the best 1v2 Gold elo has ever seen, if at the end we see the defeat screen. When we’re already thinking about the bad stuff that just happened and caused us to lose the game, and when we resort to negative attitudes and unsportsmanlike behaviour, we’re not setting ourselves up for success in future games. If you tell your jungler she’s shit or curse your bot lane for curing world hunger, you take a negative bias from game to game, meaning you’re more likely to tilt and continue to lose. 
Those emotions follow you to your next match, and they influence how you play and even approach the game. Maybe you’ll simply be less trusting of your duo-queued bot lane, or you sigh with disappointment at a pick that could be considered off-meta. You’re already defeated because of your mindset, and that’s one way to ensure you’ll never climb to whatever tier you consider to be your season objective. To put it simply, you go on tilt. 
“When we have a more positive mindset on average,” says BionicNinja, game designer on the Honor initiative. “Then our brains are better able to see things as opportunities, and recover from the inevitable screw ups. No one is perfect!. Also, frustration is a slippery slope leading to giving up more easily, poor decision-making, and an inability to focus on what matters. There’s a huge difference in ‘this game is over because these “idiots” can’t play’ and ‘OK, so this isn’t going as well as I’d hoped, but it’s at least a chance to practice playing despite a gold deficit.’ You can’t escape frustration because, believe me, things can get frustrating, but you can change how you react to it over time and in turn you’ll be less stressed, more focused, and enjoy the game more.” 
Your actions here have consequences that go beyond your own mentality from game to game. Full disclosure here: I personally struggled with keeping my emotions in check when I started playing League. I’ve been playing for six years now and I matured over time, but it took a toll on some of my friendships. My friends didn’t want to play with me when I was too emotional, because it affected their enjoyment of the game as well. I fell out with them multiple times because of this, and it sucked. To be completely honest it was embarrassing. 
I created those issues in many ways because I responded emotionally to everything that happened in the game, rather than analysing my mistakes and looking at ways in which I could improve. I couldn’t bring myself to say a simple GG to my team and my opponents. Once I changed my mindset I began to enjoy games a whole lot more. To that end, I asked G2’s coach Weldon Green about what end-of-game sportsmanship can tell us about ourselves and each other. 
“Sportsmanship reveals the character of the player,” says Weldon. “Intent is everything. When a player loses to somebody supposedly worse than them, but they take responsibility for the loss; accept their opponent was (temporarily) better; and know they can focus, grow, and improve; then sportsmanship is a natural response. So next time you end a game and feel too mad at yourself or your opponent to say GGWP, take a look internally and investigate where you are trying to shift the blame. If you can force your intent to match your words when you congratulate them on a good game, you’ll be on the right track. And remember, you don’t have to enjoy it! You just have to mean it.” 
Fear of the Dark 
A key requirement for changing your mindset is learning to cope with the trials and tribulations awaiting you, especially important in solo queue where you know nothing about your team or the enemy. Control what you can feasibly control; if your teammate is having a bad game, you can’t control that. What you can do is look at your own play, stay focused on your win conditions, don’t fill your head with negative thoughts. 
Wrestling with the unknown is a skill, and another domain of mastery in League. “A team-based game, with people you don’t know, is never going to go perfectly,” says BionicNinja. “Humans are highly unpredictable. If you expect a perfect game or only define success in terms of that, you’re going to get frustrated. Embracing the unpredictability means you can instead optimize your skills for these challenges and develop a huge advantage over players who haven’t mastered this yet. Tell yourself the game is unpredictable, and that’s part of the challenge you love. Start thinking of yourself as a flexible person outside of game, and remind yourself of that when you kick off a new game. It might seem silly at first, but over time that mindset will become a habit and help you become more flexible when it counts.” 
GL HF!"

Patch Chat with the Playtest Team - Patch 7.15

Riot King Cobra is back with a new Patch Chat with the Playtest Team for Patch 7.15:
"Header by inkiness 
Hey, everyone! I'm Riot King Cobra and it's time for another round of Patch Chat! These threads serve as opportunity for us to talk about the patches that come out every two weeks. You can find the most recent patch by following this link: Patch 7.15 Notes
I'm on Riot's Playtest Team, a group of high elo players who play with the new champions, reworks, balance tweaks, items, and map updates before they are released. It's our job to the test the changes that our designers come up with and ensure that we're introducing positive changes to League in terms of both balance and fun. Ask us questions - we'll try to answer as many as we can! 
7.15 brings a reworked Urgot to the Rift! In addition to our new shot-gun knee monstrosity, we've also made a number of smaller changes to some champions: Akali, Azir, Cho'Gath, Mundo, Ekko, Elise, Ezreal, Gangplank, Grags, Irelia, Jinx, Kayn, Lissandra, Lux, Nami, Nautilus, Shyvana, Singed, Sivir, Twisted Fate, Xerath, Zac, and Ziggs. Nasus has received a relatively interesting change to his ultimate and E too!
All of us on the Playtest Team are avid gamers so feel free to talk to us as fellow LoL players! 
  • Ben “Cezium” Burkhardt
  • Don “Aesah” Ding
  • Dan “penguin” Hardison
  • Robert “ROBERTxLEE” Lee
  • Rob "King Cobra" Rosa
  • Nicholas “Nickwu” Smith
  • Blake “S0be” Soberanis
  • Trevor “ThEntropist” Thernes
  • Arnor "Hjarta" Halldorsson
  • Brian "Madness Heroo" Pressoir
  • Christopher "Ender L" Frierson"

Quick Hits

1) Check out this Thai cosplayer Thames as Kayn:

 


2) The Riot Games Merch FB posted that the Dragon Trainer Tristana figure would soon be retired for a while:
"Friends forever but not always in the store. Tristana and Riggle jump into the vault August 3rd - not to be seen for a while. Grab The Yordle Gunner and her faithful friend before they go. http://riot.com/2vTkZJj"


3) Riot Ohmu tweeted a video celebrating his animation work at riot for 2 years:
"Been animating at Riot for two years! Here's some of the work I've had the pleasure of working on! https://youtu.be/oPoxPiPld6o via @YouTube"


Reminders

Last up, a few reminders on upcoming and ending soon promotions and sales!
  • As mentioned in 7.15 notesAscension returns to the RGMQ on 7/28/17 12:00 PT - 8/1/17 04:00 PT and 8/4/17 12:00 PT - 8/8/17 04:00 PT.

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