Red Post Collection: Runes Corner, Quick Gameplay Thoughts for 8/29, Introducing the League Client Strike Team, & More

Tonight's red post collection includes a new Runes Corner covering late-game options, Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for August 29th, and intro the the League Client Strike Team who is handling all things LCU, and update on the PAX Sivir cosplay collab, and much more!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

Runes Corner: Late-Game Focused Runes 

RiotWrekz is back with a new Runes Corner, covering late game focused runes in the Sorcery path:

"Hey Everyone! 

I’m Wrekz from the Runes Reforged project and I’m back with some more Runes Corner previews! Last time we posted there was a lot of interest in seeing some of the runes that are more late-game focused and let you trade early power for a higher late-game payoff. Given how much League can snowball and accelerate in power, forgoing benefits you can claim immediately for lane phase is a big sacrifice. In exchange, however, you can take some late-game effects of considerable power. Today we have a couple examples of that pattern to show off. Give them a look and let us know what you think. 

First, Gathering Storm. This rune is in the Sorcery path, and for those keeping track it’s in the last slot. 

Gathering Storm

Every 10 minutes gain +8 Ability Power or +6 Attack Damage, adaptive, per 10 minutes of game time that have elapsed. 

Working through a quick example, that means: 

10:00 8 AP 6 AD
20:00 24 AP 18 AD
30:00 48 AP 36 AD
40:00 80 AP 60 AD 

Gathering Storm heavily concentrates its power into the late-game. Taking it is substantial risk, but with a big reward coming as the game goes on. Beyond normal linear scaling it actually accelerates its power growth as time passes. However, this rune doesn’t just grant its power gradually, you only get its bonus at each 10 minute interval. This makes some extremely powerful late-game spikes (30, 40, 50 minutes) particularly meaningful. The stats from Gathering Storm after 30 minutes can absolutely look scary, and we’re going to be keeping a close eye on its tuning. In general, scaling runes need to be balanced carefully and be fairly rare within the system. Their ability to be cool and powerful is proportionate to the risk you undertake in bypassing other options granting immediate and more reliable power. 

Next up is another rune in the Sorcery path (gasp!), this time in the first non-keystone slot. This rune has a very temporary name. 

Ultimore 

Gain 5% cooldown reduction and maximum cooldown reduction on your ultimate. This increases by 1.5% each time you cast your ultimate. Stacks up to 10 times. 

Ever played a champion and wished you could just get some more time off their ult cooldown? Vi, Karthus, Amumu certainly come to mind. Ultimore lets you get just that. Instead of broad power or cooldown reduction across the entire kit, this is focused purely on your champion’s ultimate. We’ve seen uses on both ends of the cooldown spectrum. Some players take this to get access to their long cooldown ultimates more often, while others use it to try and reach a point where they can use their ultimate twice in a fight. Overall, we hope it creates some creative uses and different feeling builds for you try out. 

As an aside, we actually tried this mechanic as a keystone in its early iterations. Balancing delayed power in the keystone slot proved pretty hard, however. Giving enough power to make it worth the wait proved too pattern warping. When Lux starts ulting 3+ times per teamfight things get a bit scary. Moving this rune out of the keystone slot let us provide the ultimate-only cooldown effect at a more reasonable power level that everyone can still get excited about. 

What do you think of the Runes we showed off today? What other things would you like to see next? Let us know in your comments below. As always we’ll be hanging out in the comments section below for a while answering questions. Thanks for reading!"

When asked about a preseason timeline, Meddler gave a rough estimate:

"Quote:

Hey Meddler, when can we expect Pre-season changes starting to role out? And can you hint at any of the possible changes that may be coming in those changes?

Plan is they'll go live sometime around early to mid November, all going according to plan. 

PBE would then be early to mid October. For Pre-Season's we generally do more than just the usual 2 weeks on PBE for at least some of the content. "

On Veigar, Meddler commented:

"Quote:

Anything planned for Veigar in 7.18?

We've been testing some stuff for Veigar, with possible buffs to stats, R ratio and W CD. Might or might not be in 7.18, unclear yet, also wouldn't be changes to all three at once."

Meddler gave his thoughts on ADC power shifts:

"I think some variation in ADC power reflects how much of their impact tends to come from the same tool - AA damage. That can mean that whoever's not top tier at that can be a clearly poor choice, compared to other roles where different strengths brought are less comparable (e.g. it's much easier to compare Trist AA output and Lucian AA output than Braum peel versus Blitz catch). 

Having said that that argument definitely doesn't hold up for some ADCs (e.g. Ashe versus Vayne). I don't think we've seen 10% swings off slight changes either, would agree some ADCs are definitely more sensitive to systemic change than most champs, not that extreme though (Cait lost a fair bit of power from her kit for example, not just a bit of AS)."

Meddler commented on Ornn's winrate issues and what they are doing to help him out:

"Quote:

Wondering if part o the problem with Ornn's item upgrades is them being in the first block of the recommended. 

Idk if you guys can, but there is likely a win% difference between people with item sets (Ornn block is last) and those without (Ornn block is first).

We've had the same suspicion (placement in recc items leading people to think they should rush items they normally wouldn't). Moving them down a bit as a result. 

Will see if we can get data on win % with and without item sets. That's not part of our standard reporting set though, so might not get it before the patch locks."

Meddler continued on the subject of Ornn, commenting on his item upgrades:

"Quote: 

Also, it might be late now, but why have you guys decided to go with the upgrades only giving increased raw stats instead of stronger passives? Harder to balance?

Primarily balance risk yeah."

"TL;DR: We have a new team focused on resolving the largest points of feedback in the new client. Let us know what you think! 

Hello all! Wanted to give you all a brief update on where we’re at with the new League Client, what we’re now doing… and why! 

Sooooo you probably remember that little thing we did a while ago when we retired the old, legacy client in favor of a newer client -- right? Aside from updating the look and feel of the League client, the change did a few other things, such as moving to a completely new codebase, built on way newer technologies, which means it’s easier for us to improve and build on. 

Although we think the change has been valuable, we’re also acutely aware that it’s introduced some pain for players. You’ve been clear that while the new client’s visuals and sound effects are generally meeting your expectations, there are other elements that aren’t -- particularly in the categories of performance and reliability. We’ve also gotten feedback (relatively less, but still significant) around UX design. 

We’ve created a new team to attack some of these major pain points. 

The basic idea is that this new team -- the Client Strike Team -- is going to knock out the biggest issues that impact players. 

What qualifies as a “big issue”? With a bunch of areas in which we want to make improvements, and only so many hours in the day, we’re going to need to be hardcore about prioritizing fixes and enhancements in ways that maximize impact. For example, bugs in Champ Select that can potentially affect EVERYONE (a classic “big issue”) would get priority over a UX issue that impacts only a small number of players. 

The hope is that we make a significant and positive impact on the way that many of you feel about the new client. Issues we don’t take on ourselves can still get some love, they’ll just be handled by teams other than the Strike Team. 

Another thing I want to be clear about: Once we’ve taken care of the largest issues, we’ll want to stop and take a look at whether it makes sense to continue having a dedicated Strike Team at all. Other League teams are working hard to deliver upcoming features, but once those have shipped, we should be in a place where those other teams have capacity to make improvements in the new League client. At that point, it might not make a ton of sense to continue having a separate, dedicated Strike Team that duplicates efforts that can happen elsewhere. 

So when we’ve tackled the largest, thorniest issues impacting players, and once we’re confident other teams can take the reins, we’ll probably make the call to spin down the team and put our engineers on whatever is the next highest-priority project. 

I get that talk about resource allocation and such probably sounds a little too “behind-the-scenes” (even for a Dev Corner post) but I thought it made sense to share our plans so you’re aware that a) we’re hearing your feedback and b) are committing to addressing it.
Going forward, you can expect either me or a member of the team to provide recurring updates on what we’re focusing on, or what we’ve changed recently. 

Speaking of which, our current focus is on three major buckets, of which we’ll be working on as much as possible and will have varying amounts of impact depending on your computer. We’ll talk about improvements we make as we go, and would love your feedback if you see things getting better! On with the list: 

1. Improving the time it takes to start up the client and to return from the game. (Changes here will be noticeable primarily on lower-performance systems.) You might have seen that we’ve already shipped some enhancements in this area with a recent patch, and we’re on the lookout for additional room to improve.
2. Fixing crashes and bugs, particularly those impacting flow into the game, thereby resulting in unintentional dodges
3. Reducing lag for the client, which disproportionately affects lower-performing systems. Cutting down on the amount of system resources that the client requires is likely to be a byproduct of this work. 

How are we setting our priorities? How can I influence those priorities? I’m glad you asked! We’re constantly monitoring data from surveys about the client, Player Support tickets and BugSplat crash reports. We aggregate and review all these inputs, across all regions, on a frequent basis to identify what needs the most attention. 

(We also rely on our regional offices and local partners to capture feedback that gets surfaced in social media and in threads like this one -- although the best way for us to capture feedback at League scale is to use the channels I outlined above… which makes them also your best bet for making sure your feedback gets captured.) 

OK -- that’s a lot of context from a guy named zerocontext, and a lot to digest. LMK what you think!"

PAX Sivir cosplay update 

Following the announcement of the PAX Sivir cosplay collab, the team of Ladee Danger and Ben Bayouth are back with an update on the cosplay:

"We’re back with another update for the PAX Sivir cosplay collaboration between community creator Ladee Danger and Ben Bayouth of Stoopid Buddy Stoodios! The team is putting the finishing touches on the build as we speak, and are very excited to share it with you soon. 

Also, if you’re heading to PAX West this week, keep an eye out for the Sivir crew walking the floor, attending the official afterparty, and visiting with players at the cosplay meetups!