3/12 PBE Update: Tentative Balance Changes

Posted on at 2:50 PM by Aznbeat
The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 8.6 PBE cycle, today's patch includes tentative balance changes for several champions and more!
Continue reading for more information and context!

(Warning: PBE Content is tentative and subject to change - what you see below may not reflect what eventually gets pushed to live servers at the end of the cycle! Manage your expectations accordingly.)

Table of Contents


Miscellaneous 

  • Loot strings for an upcoming event added, including newa  few loot descriptions. While these are likely new event purchasables, keep an eye out more in the near future. 
"Score! Birdie's got your back. Open the bag to find a random, complete set of skin shards for over 60 skin lines such as Blood Moon, Star Guardian, and PROJECT. Limited and Mythic skins are excluded."
"What's the word? Get three 975+ RP skin shards, 150 Orange Essence, and a chance to obtain an event-only Birdie Bag, Gemstone, or Gemstone Skin. Gemstone and Gemstone Skin drop rate multiplied by 1.5."
  • Here's a spotlight for the seven Renektoy chroma set to release in 8.6:

Balance Changes

* NOTE*: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, & experimental changes. Be aware that what you see below may be relative to other changes earlier this cycle! These are not official notes.

Champions
Ahri
[Context]
  • Spirit Rush (R):
    • [Removed Effect] No longer notes "Each cast of Spirit Rush reduces the remaining cooldown of Ahri's other spells by 1.5 seconds"

Kayn
  • The Darkin Scythe (Passive)
[1] Yep, I brought the speed at which you gain passive points down a bit again. It’s still faster than on live if you fight champions before ten minutes.
[2] Oh man, a changelist for this would be an actual dissertation. There's also some under the hood stuff that I'm not 100% prepared to share more widely yet. Sorry! Best I can do: you ROUGHLY earns points before 10m as fast as you would have at 8m on live.
[3] So on live for instance there's a very punitive multiplier at 2m in the game (0.75x). That's gone now. Everything before 10m is flat, then it steps up softly twice. There's more to this, but like I said, hard to explain without divulging everything.

LeBlanc
[Context - changes aren't aimed at shipping in 8.6]
  • Distortion (W) Snapback Window reverted from 3 seconds to 4 seconds
  • Mimic (R) cooldown changed from 110/75/40 to 80/55/30
    • [Vs. Live: 54/42/30 to 80/55/30]

Lee Sin
  • Dragon's Rage (R) damage changed from 150/400/650 to 150/375/600
    • [Vs. Live: increased from 150/300/450 to 150/375/600]

 Xayah
  • Deadly Plumage (W): Tooltip Changed from "If Deadly Plumage strikes an enemy champion, Xayah gains X movement speed" to " If Deadly Plumage strikes an enemy champion, allies under the effects of Deadly Plumage gain X movement speed".
      • [Seems to just be a tooltip change - both Xayah and Rakan still get the movement speed bonus if one or the other lands a DP enhanced AA]

Items
Locket of the Iron Solari
  • [Reverted to live functionality - has had experimental changes in testing for last two cycles]

Seraph's Embrace
  • Unique Active - Mana Shield :
    • mana cost increased from 10% current mana to 15% current mana
      • (Vs Live: from 20% to 15%)
    • shield duration lowered from 3 seconds to 2 seconds

Runes
Manaflow Band (S2)
[Context]
  • [Reverted to live functionality]

Conqueror (P1)
  • AD lowered from [10 - 60] to [10 - 50]
  • Duration lowered from 4s to 3s
  • [Tooltip bugged, assuming true damage is still 20%]

Presence of Mind (P2)
  • [Reverted to live functionality]


Summoner Spells
Ignite
  • Damage increased from 70-410 to 80-505

Ghost
  • Movement speed reverted from 40% to [28-45% depending on champion level]

Context & Notes

1) AzuBK noted the LeBlanc changes wouldn't be going out in 8.6:
"We're not going to be shipping LeBlanc in 8.6, been a bit strapped for iteration time. Basically designers generally have multiple projects in flight at once, so I opted to do other work while initial feedback came in (which has been very helpful). I should be around more from here on out :)"
He also noted some changes coming in today's PBE Update:
"I'm reverting the W return window to 4 seconds, the change will be on the next PBE build. The original thought was that LeBlanc's slipperiness was too reliable in W/RW juke case. Addressing it in this fashion, though, pays the high cost of compressing her W->combo->W back window, leaving less time for play from both sides and punishing players who can't get all their skills off immediately for whatever reason (mechanical proficiency or circumstance). 
Note to self: I need to get a twitter or something so I can message this stuff out more widely."
2) ZenontheStoic noted more changes to Kayn's passive:
[1] Yep, I brought the speed at which you gain passive points down a bit again. It’s still faster than on live if you fight champions before ten minutes.
[2] Oh man, a changelist for this would be an actual dissertation. There's also some under the hood stuff that I'm not 100% prepared to share more widely yet. Sorry! Best I can do: you ROUGHLY earns points before 10m as fast as you would have at 8m on live.
[3] So on live for instance there's a very punitive multiplier at 2m in the game (0.75x). That's gone now. Everything before 10m is flat, then it steps up softly twice. There's more to this, but like I said, hard to explain without divulging everything.
3) ricklessabandon noted another change coming for Ahri in today's PBE update:
[1] i know it's the weekend, but have some more ahri info for anyone following along since we'd like to wrap the changes up for 8.6 and already have quite a bit of change going on, i'm going to pull the new additional 'cooldown refund' mechanic from her ultimate for monday's version
[2] don't believe there's enough time to see how much room that mechanic has to be stronger/weaker (to learn the full range of balance implications) and build confidence in it on top of doing a finer balance/polish pass on the rest of the changes, so opting to hold off at this time
[3] might make sense to revisit at a later date, especially if we'd ever do larger changes to her passive or fox-fire

in any case, will be trying to balance out the full ahri changes in light of pulling the spirit rush cooldown mechanic — expect balance changes on tuesday, probably
He added:
[1] final ahri update for the 8.6 cycle: team has decided that now is a good opportunity to put in the time for more meaningful W changes, so we've made the call to withhold the list from 8.6 and increase the scope of the changes 
so, longer wait for hopefully longer lasting changes

[2] will be pulling the current changes out of the pbe for now (so they shouldn't be there in tomorrow's update) 
everything will show up on the pbe again along with the new changes when we're far enough along with work on W — targeting 8.7 but actual release
could be further out

[3] the focus will be on getting W to a good place within her kit — other changes could happen as well to facilitate that, but unsure on which direction we'll focus on so can't commit to specifics quite yet
[4] correct — i pulled everything, including the under-the-hood script changes, so ahri should be identical between 8.5 and 8.6
4) Riot Repertoir noted the Rageblade changes testing on the PBE right now should be headed to live in 8.6:
"No new iteration planned. I might adjust cost as part of a final tuning pass, but the version that is on PBE today is the one I expect to go Live next patch."
He also noted other changes coming for Shaco:
"I've been thinking it over and reading feedback, and since we're now confident in shipping Ignite buffs (which Shaco obviously benefits from), I'm probably going to pull back on the damage very slightly, something akin to: 
20/30/40/50/60 (+80% bAD) >>> 10/20/30/40/50 (+80% bAD)"
He also noted context on the Ignite changes:
"Just looking to increase the power of going for kills (Ignite damage buff) by a bit and increase the windows of vulnerability of Heal users (Heal CD) a bit."
5) Riot Wittrock noted the changes to Manaflow Band in today's PBE were intended to be a full revert, with more changes testing in the future:
"Oh hello there. 
You guessed it; Manaflow band on PBE is intended to be a revert, we just uhh...did a half-way thing. Should be fully reverted tomorrow. 
More Manaflow exploration coming in 8.7"
Check out [THIS PAGE] for a comprehensive list of the new content & changes currently on the PBE as a part of this cycle or catch up with the individual update links below !

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