Red Post Collection: Mid-Patch Updates, Ask Riot: Honor Rewards & More

Posted on at 3:46 PM by Aznbeat
Today's red post collection includes some mid-patch updates for 1/25, a new Ask Riot covering Honor rewards, Volibear, and Gnar's language, as well as red posts from across the web, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents


1/25 Mid-Patch Updates

A mid-patch update went out to make some changes on Nunu and Turrets:
"1/25/2018 Balance Update 
Nunu 
"We wanted Nunu something to do with his hands, but it turns out we gave him too much. Dialing that back so he can settle in a good place."
  • Q - Consume
    • ON-HIT DAMAGE 3/5/7/9/11 (+5 per 100 ability power) ⇒ 1/2/3/4/5 (+5 per 100 ability power)
Turret Durability
Armor and magic resist increased early. 
"We've added more and more ways to bust towers, and as a result, we're seeing the laning phase come to an end a bit earlier than we think is sufficient. Some early resistances should help extend the laning phase. 
This change went out at the beginning of the patch, it just didn't end up in patch notes."
  • BASE ARMOR AND MAGIC RESIST 40 ⇒ 55
  • SCALING ARMOR AND MAGIC RESIST +30 over 15 minutes ⇒ +15 over 15 minutes"

Ask Riot: Honor Rewards 


Here's this week's Ask Riot, covering honor rewards, Volibear, and more, plus a note that Ask Riot will be coming out every two weeks from this point on:
"This week, it’s honor rewards, Gnar, and Volibear. 
As a general announcement: Ask Riot will now run every other week rather than every week, starting with the next edition (meaning the next Ask Riot will be in two weeks). Over the last two years, we’ve answered a lot of questions, and the number of hot-topic inquiries (hey, where’s URF? Will Riot make a movie? Where’s Graves’ cigar?) has slowly declined. There’s still plenty talk about—spicy new topics pop up all the time—but by running Ask Riot biweekly, we hope to focus more on the questions players care about the most. 
Also, please continue to submit your questions as always! We’ll do our best to answer them.

Why didn’t I get the rewards for the earlier honor checkpoints when I was level 5 last season? Do less honorable players get more out of the system than me?

It’s not super intuitive, but the Honor reset is better for Season 7’s honorable players. Rewards now scale with Honor level, meaning the higher level you reach, the better rewards you’ll earn. Orbs continue dropping after level 5, so starting at a higher checkpoint this year means you’ll earn better rewards faster than players below you. It’s true you don’t get rewards from the checkpoints you skip, but that difference is more than made up for because of the reward scaling that’s new to Honor this season. 
RIOT NAKYLE
Comms, Player Behavior 
How do you guys feel about Volibear?

Volibear has a kit that causes him to be pretty one-dimensional and see wildly variant success between high-skill and low-skill play—he can be performing reasonably well at lower skill levels while underperforming pretty dramatically at higher ones. Because of these factors, he can take time do good work on, even in the short-term. Doing “good work” on Volibear entails trying to design more skilled play into his pattern, and so we don’t necessarily just see buffing him as a good change. 
That said, he could use some love, which is why we’re looking at giving him some buffs in the near future even though it’s not a permanent solution. 
RIOTREPERTOIR
Game Designer, Live Gameplay 
What language does Gnar speak?

Gnar is certainly speaking some form of ancient, long-forgotten language… but his vocabulary seems a little limited. Either he’s experiencing a spectacular case of brain-freeze, or he never fully got the hang of it in the first place. 
(I tried to ask him, but he shouted something about “vrooboo” and threw a boomerang at me.) 
Yordles are known to learn by imitating the world around them, so it could depend on who he spent time with before he got stuck in the ice. I’m not sure we’ll ever know for certain. 
SCATHLOCKE
Lead Narrative Editor, LoL

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

  • Reav3 noted that there were no visual changes planned for Swain, and went in deeper on why that was the case:
"Hey guys, 
In retrospect I think my response was pretty bad because I just described the teams feeling on why we think Swains new look reflects his new theme/direction but I didn't really go into the foundations of the Swain VGU that led to that reasoning which I think made it end up pretty shallow and I apologize for that. It also came across as "Because lore" which wasn't the intention as we choose the lore when we make the champion, as long as it makes sense within the IP of course. I also don't want to give away too much of the new lore/bio stuff before it is released. 
Let's start from the beginning though. Whenever we make a new champion or VGU we highly value thematic cohesion. We generally start with a high level theme or archetype we are trying to achieve and then Art, Narrative and gameplay design forms pillars in order to support that theme. One of the problems with pre-rework Swain was that he wasn't very thematically cohesive, and his source of power wasn't very clear either (though that in unrelated to the hair discussion.) Early on we decided that it was important that Swain felt like the ruler of Noxus and we wanted his high level theme to be a Warlock Dictator. We felt it was very important that he feels like he is in control on the demon which is why he doesn't fully transform into a bird when he ults. We didn't feel chained to the lore and of course we could have changed this but in the end we felt it was important that Swain was in control of the demon and that it wasn't controlling or corrupting him. Swain is not Kayn or Varus. This goes back to his theme of being bad ass enough to bend a nation to his will, on his own. As for the hair, the team does feel the long hair adds the sophistication/intellect feeling that is also very important to his theme, which also comes across in his lore/personality and VO. Once again we aren't bending to any lore, we created the lore in service of what we believe was a strong thematic direction for Swain. Short hair lends itself more to a rugged, war general, and less of a Intellectual Warlock Dictator. Jarven is probably closer to the rugged War General Archetype rather then Warlock Dictator which is more cohesive with a ranged/mage champion. 
Tbh the changes would not be difficult to make, that is not the issue. We don't want to make changes we feel will lessen his thematic cohesion when that was one of the primary goals of the rework from the beginning. 
One thing I will note however is that I do think the hair is coming off more white in the splash then grey which is leading him to look more young/malfoy then intended. In the model his hair looks much more grey. Our intention was that young Swain had black hair but it turned grey as he got older. In fact for a large portion of development Swain did have black hair but many people felt he looked way to young to be leading a powerful nation like Noxus. We will look into this."
"I've used two builds - one is RoA, Liandry, Zhonyas, Void, DCap, Boots and the other swap RoA for Morello. 
I think Unsealed Spellbook is optimal on him but also thinks he makes great use of Phase Rush. In the gameplay videos you've seen on his reveal page and the ones in his champion spotlight that are yet to be seen I have Phase Rush because US was bugged on our internal environments :P. 
Max order depends. Q max first and then depending on matchup and team comps I'd say you either max W or E second. Probably E most of the time. 
In terms of scrapped spells? Hmmm, we did A LOT of exploration with Swain. One example....earlier in development his passive replaced his trinket slot with a raven that you could place on the map at almost global range. The raven would act as a ward with a speed shrine on top of it (scuttle crab). The idea was that you were supposed to use it tactically, but we wound up realizing the optimal play was to either place it between towers midlane so jungle could move faster and mid could get to lane faster OR placing it in lane as a mid laner and just using it as a perma-ghost in lane."

Reminders

To round out this red post collection, here are a few reminders on current promotions or limited time events!
  • As noted by Riot Aeon, there will be no Rotating Game Mode for the next few patches while they work on getting One For All working in the client!

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