Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts: 8/11, Ask Riot: Missions & Tacos, & more

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: August 11

Here's Meddler with his Quick Gameplay Thoughts for August 11, covering Vayne, Janna, Taric, and more:

Hi folks, 

Apologies for the late post, busier than expected morning. 

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 

Vayne after 7.17 

Almost guaranteed that we won't have Vayne changes in 7.17. We've seen some promising bits in initial investigation (e.g. making Q unable to crit and shifting power elsewhere so she's less bursty, in particular against squishy targets). Won't have enough time in the current patch development cycle, but definitely want to revisit Vayne shortly. 

Also worth noting Vayne wise that yeah, a fair number of players don't like playing against Vayne. Some of that's probably that, even if she's got average overall performance when she does do well she sometimes does extremely well, so her strong games are really in your face. We believe some of it's also part of a wider trend where, with the occasional exception, champions who are primarily or entirely single target damage focused tend to be perceived as much more frustrating than champions who aren't, regardless of their power level. 

Ardent Censer, Janna, Taric 

We'll be nerfing Ardent Censer in 7.17. Because of that we'll likely be leaving Janna and Taric untouched for a patch, see what impact that Censer nerf, especially following the recent Coin nerf, has on their performance. Will then reassess them both during 7.18. Still looking to get some more skill expression into Janna's kit as well at some point, though the team haven't felt the recently tested changes did a great job of that so will be trying some other stuff at some point. 

7.18 Timing 

Speaking of 7.18 there'll be a longer gap than usual between 7.17 and 7.18 of three weeks, rather than the usual two. That's because we need to fit one 3 week patch into the year somewhere to some patch release timing stuff around pre-season etc to work out. 7.17 made sense as a time to do that since it then gives us a bit more time when the game's pretty stable to work on Runes/other pre-season content and do a bit more assessment of final changes for the Worlds patch (7.18). 

Stoneplate Tweaks 

We've got a couple of adjustments for Stoneplate coming in the next patch. The first is a bug fix regarding its interaction with Cinderhulk, where the combination of the two was giving noticeably more health than it was meant to. 

The second, which is still being tested, but likely to ship, is a change where the 100% extra health temporarily granted will be split between base and bonus health, rather than all be treated as bonus health. E.g. a champ with 1500 base health and 1000 bonus health would now get an extra 1500 base health and an extra 1000 bonus health, rather than 2500 bonus health. That impacts cases like Cho and Locket which scale off bonus health, so Stoneplate will likely still be a powerful combo with them but won't be giving as much power."

When asked about Dr. Mundo, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

Hey Meddler, thanks as always for the updates. 

What are your thoughts on how Mundo is doing with his recent magic resist buff on E? Are you happy with the change? 

And out of curiosity, if the Stoneplate change ended up not being enough, is making the health gained 100% base health something that you're considering?

Mundo seems reasonable so far. We were tracking jungle Mundo especially with suspicion he might be overperforming there, doesn't seem out of line in terms of actual impact in game though. 

Not sure if 100% base health has been brought up, could take that approach if necessary. 

Generally we want to enable item combos where possible provided the current tuning can be found. 100% base would certainly ensure extreme bonus HP scaling interactions didn't happen, but would also remove the possibility of balanced ones too. Hopefully won't have to go there."

On Doran's Ring, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

What does Riot think about ADCs starting Doran's Ring? Are you guys ok with that since they do have the trade off of not having the AD and life steal from Doran's Blade in favor of the Mana Sustain of Ring?

No concern so far, seems like a reasonable trade off since they're giving up sustain and last hitting ability versus Blade/Shield. Wouldn't surprise if there's an edge case or two who've got high enough AP ratios it's really strong on them, haven't seen anything worrying yet at least though."

As for Nidalee, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

Any plans on changing nidalee's heal? I really don't like that she's building support items after runic echoes eventhough she is suppose to be an assassin.

No plans at present, the heal's intended to add some distinction versus other champs with similar patterns. Which support items are you seeing? Ardent Censer in particular's likely an issue with that item being too strong rather than Nid's kit and I'm not aware of much Redemption building on her part."

Meddler also commented on Stoneplate:

"Quote:

What items/champions are affected by going with this paradigm for stoneplate?

Any champ with a bonus HP ratio who builds Stoneplate would be affected somewhat. Cho and Locket are likely the most visible cases at least though. 

Some interactions will be unaffected if they're based off max health (e.g. Titanic Hydra's damage or Warmog's regen)."

As for how Orianna and Syndra are doing after their 7.16 changes, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

Are you guys happier with where Syndra and Orianna are now, or waiting until 7.16 hits pro play to evaluate that? 

On the same curve: any plans if their solo queue performance is hit too much after the repeated nerfs?

Syndra - doubt we hit her too hard, hard to say more than that yet. 

Ori - Useability cost of the changes, especially on the R which got hit unintentionally by the changes to the W, look out of line. We're talking about whether to revert the W/R forgiveness changes and then take a bit more time to build a better buffering system there instead."

On Lissandra, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

Hello Meddler ,
Any plans regarding Lissandra and her passive ?

Someday probably, in the short to moderate term, no."

When asked for his thoughts on Ekko, Meddler replied:

"Quote:

Hey Meddler, long time lurker of these quick gameplay thoughts. I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on jungle Ekko. 

Has there been any consideration of allowing him to jungle again? Ever since his changes pushing him more to assassin than tank his base damages have been too low to be able to compete with other junglers. I personally didn't ever like tank Ekko and always played him jungle with a mix of damage and durability or straight assassin. Do you think assassin jungle Ekko is healthy for the game and if we could see some monster damage added to his passive or Q in the future? 

Thanks for your time

I could see jungle Ekko being fine, issues we saw previously seemed to be much more about the tank build than Ekko in the jungle. Can't make any promises about working on jungle support for him soon necessarily though, work for pre-season especially's eating most of our time at this point."

Ask Riot: Missions and Tacos 

 http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2017/08/ask-riot-missions-and-tacos/

"Let’s talk duo champions, missions, and Noxian tacos.

Based on what you’ve seen with Xayah and Rakan, do you think you’ll ever do another champion combo with the same types of synergies?

Although anything is possible we likely wouldn’t add another unique synergy between two champions. For one, the game would get very complicated very quickly if many champions had unique interactions that players had to keep track of, but more importantly, having these interactions are what makes Xayah & Rakan unique and we wouldn’t want to take that away from them. 

REAV3

Lead Producer of Champions

In your missions dev blog Riot said that “kill X things”-type missions would be bad, but the VS. event had many events that changed the way people play (picking Riven, focusing on kills, etc.). Is Riot happy with the way these played out?

VS. was the first foray into missions for Riot and we’ve looked at it as a learning opportunity that will help us refine missions in the future. Since then we’ve started using missions more, with the small Omega Squad event and the Kayn launch, missions are treading new ground and fueling better understanding. Our number one priority is to do no harm (because League doesn’t need missions to be fun). That said, we want to make the most fun missions we can. You’ll continue to occasionally see missions testing new boundaries that we’re pretty confident in, but we’ll always be ready to cut something off if it’s hurting players. 

So how did we come to that conclusion? During VS., we looked at the effects of the various missions to ensure that we didn’t see significant negative effects on gameplay – longer game times, abnormal increases in kills – which would indicate that missions were causing problems. We didn’t find any indications we were changing the game in either our data or in player feedback, and we did see lots of players having fun with missions. The biggest change we saw was an increase in bot games and normal games as players sought to more easily complete their missions. 

That doesn’t mean, though, that every mission we tried was a hit or a success. Looking at the VS. missions (and the Kayn missions which followed) we identified a few definite trends: 

FAILS:

• Missions that require you to play a particular queue you don’t normally play (the daily mission to play a game of ARAM was easily the most disliked in VS.)
• Missions requiring you to play specific champs (Kayn) feel bad when players aren’t particularly interested in playing that champ
• Missions that are particularly hard to complete if you play a certain role 

SUCCESSES: 

• Missions to win games
• Missions to get kills and assists
• Playing with (not necessarily as) a specific champion in your game 

In general, missions that celebrate the achievements in-game that you already care about are the most successful, while in-your-face missions that require you to play a way you don’t want to are disliked. 

REVENANCER

Game Designer

Kled is a very funny champion, but one of his voice over lines causes me great concern: “After we finish murdering these folks, what do you think? Tacos? Yeah, tacos.” Since Runeterra has nothing to do with the real world, which civilization in Runeterra developed tacos?

Every civilization must reach a point in its cultural growth where it finally realizes the culinary superiority of tacos. However, Kled, being Kled, was talking about Noxian tacos — which he believes (incorrectly) to be the best.  

WAAAARGHBOBO

Narrative Writer

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

• Small post on phroxz0n on Orianna for 7.17

"Hi all, 

Rioter here, following up on R clunkiness. 

By reducing the early W timings, we also inadvertently reduced the range that you could early cast R. This was obviously a pretty significant power hit that was not intended. 

We are not looking at restoring this R functionality (as it historically cheated pretty badly) - being able to cast R 300 units before the ball has finished travelling (while it makes Ori silky smooth to play), also makes it pretty BS to play against. 

We are looking at restoring R buffering functionality (Q -> R fires R when the ball finishes travelling instead of having to input the command only after the ball has finished travelling) and potentially small power back as necessary for 7.17. 

Thanks for being patient."

• Riot Bradmore confirmed that a set of Star Guardian mini figures seen on a Chinese merch site would be coming in September!

• Helmet Bro: The Animated Series - Big Giant Swords | League of Legends Community Collab

Reminders

• As mentioned in 7.16 notes, ARURF returns to the RGMQ from 8/11/17 12:00 PT to 8/24/17 11:59PM PT!