10/23 PBE Update: New Skins, Summoner Icons, Preseason Content, & More

The PBE has been updated! As we start the 8.22 PBE cycle, today's patch includes five new skins, new chroma, summoner icons, Preseason changes, and more!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• New Champion Skins
• Victorious Orianna
• Program LeBlanc
• Program Nami
• Praetorian Fiddlesticks
• Praetorian Graves
• New Chroma
• New Summoner Icons
• New Ward Skins
• Preseason Dev Update Number 3!
• Miscellaneous
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

New Champion Skins

A total of five new skins hit the PBE this cycle, including Victorious Orianna, Program LeBlanc & Nami, and Praetorian Fiddlesticks & Graves!

Victorious Orianna

Here's KateyKhaos with a bugs and feedback thread for Victorious Orianna!

"I know what makes them tick. I know how to make the ticking stop. 

Victorious Orianna is the 2018 ranked season reward skin! 

• New models and textures: A new robot body, crafted with gold!
• New particles: Shiny golds, regal blues, and gold laurel accents!
• New sound effects: New, shimmery sounds!
• New recall animation: Orianna descends onto the Rift to celebrate!

Victorious Orianna is awarded only to players who are ranked Gold or higher at the end of the season in any ranked queue! If you reach at least Gold at the end of the season and do not own Orianna, you will unlock both the champion and the Victorious Orianna skin! If you haven’t reached at least Gold yet, don’t worry—the 2018 season doesn’t end until November 12! 

For more info on season rewards, click here!"

Program LeBlanc

Here's Fairy Flan with a bugs and feedback thread for Program LeBlanc!

"Program LeBlanc hits PBE! Her head is a hologram that is projected by the mechanism on her collar! 

• New model and textures - A sleek, Program body, with a digital hologram head!
• New VFX for all spells - Digital ribbon cable!
• New SFX for all spells - Zippy zap!
• New recall animation - She changes her hologram head to suit the occasion!

As players who get the first look at this in-progress skin, it would be wonderful to hear your constructive thoughts and feelings on Program LeBlanc! The feedback and bugs you leave here will help us get a better idea of things we may still have to take a look at! :) 

This skin is set to be 1350RP.
Pricing is subject to change. 

See you on the Rift!"

Program Nami

Here's KateyKhaos with a bugs and feedback thread for Program Nami!

"c:\users\supportonetrick\fish\fish.exe healbot.fsh 

Program Nami swims onto the Rift with: 

• New models and textures: A sleek new look, complete with robot sharks!
• New particles: Green healing fluids and glowy circuitry!
• New sound effects: Robotic energy!
• New VO processing: New mechanized processing on all voice lines!
• New recall animation: Nami recharges herself! 

Program Nami is now available to play on PBE! As players who experience this content firsthand, your constructive feedback is appreciated. If you have any questions, you can also drop them below and I’ll do my best to answer them! ^-^ 

Program Nami is set to be 1350 RP.
*Prices are subject to change."

Praetorian Fiddlesticks

Here's Riot KiWiKiD with a bugs and feedback thread for Praetorian Fiddlesticks!

"Hey Everyone! Praetorian is a new skinline of ours. Praetorian champions are perfected robot versions of the original -- sent out to destroy and terrorize mercilessly (cause they have no feelings). It would be foolish for anything to stand in their way. 

Praetorian Fiddlesticks creepily robot-waddles the Rift with:

• New model and textures, Featuring an enhance scythe-axe!
• New VFX for all spells: Metallic bluish greys on killer projectiles on some parts of kit
• New SFX for all spells - No spookiness was compromised on the creation of this robot.
• New recall animation: Comere lil birdy~

Praetorian Fiddlesticks is now available to play on PBE! Your feedback is always appreciated, so post it all! Let me know any questions you’ve got as well. :) 

Praetorian Fiddlesticks is set to be 1350 RP.
Prices are subject to change."

Praetorian Graves

Here's Riot KiWiKiD with a bugs and feedback thread for Praetorian Graves!

Hey Everyone! Praetorian is a new skinline of ours. Praetorian champions are perfected robot versions of the original -- sent out to destroy and terrorize mercilessly (cause they have no feelings). It would be foolish for anything to stand in their way.

Praetorian Graves gets deployed onto the PBE Rift with the following enhancements:

• New model and textures: Sleek metals that’ll intimidate anything.
• New VFX for all spells: Bullets that’ll penetrate the impenetrable
• New SFX for all spells Thunk! goes the deployment capsule
• New recall animation: Repairing took on a whole new definition

Praetorian Graves is now available to play on PBE! As players who experience this content firsthand, your feedback is appreciated. If you have any questions, post them here and I’ll do my best to answer them! 

Praetorian Graves is set to be 1350 RP.
Prices are subject to change.

New Chroma

New chroma sets for, Victorious Orianna [2], Program LeBlanc [6] & Nami [5], and Praetorian Fiddlesticks [6] & Graves [6] are now on the PBE!

Victorious Orianna

Program LeBlanc

Program Nami

Praetorian Fiddlesticks

Praetorian Graves

[Images later this cycle!]

New Summoner Icons

A total of twelve new summoner icons are now on the PBE:

New Ward Skins

[Three new ward skins added, only have placeholder images currently, more info when available!]

Preseason Dev Update Number 3! 

Here's Riot MapleNectar with all the details on Preseason changes coming this cycle:

Hey everyone, 

Welcome to our third preseason dev update! We’re going to be sending all of our changes to PBE later today, so we wanted to touch base once more with some fleshed out goals, tactics, and current tuning! Our previous updates (Update 1, Update 2 went into quite a bit of what we’ll cover today, but to summarize our preseason: We want you to feel like your time playing League was well spent, whether you win or lose. 

Preseason ships on patch 8.23 which is still a month away, so a lot of the finer details are still subject to change! For example, you’ll likely see more particles and sound effects for turret plating show up over the PBE cycle, as well as numbers tuning for a bunch of the systemic updates. I'll say that one more time just in case - NUMBERS TUNING IS STILL SUPER SUBJECT TO CHANGE! 

Let’s step through the changes: 

Laning Phase is improved and slightly longer

Goals:

• Turrets will much more rarely fall from 100% to 0% early game after one gank or recall attempt.
• Players that lane aggressively and take risks in the early game are rewarded.
• Bad matchups don’t feel like a surrendered lane. You may be pushed under turret, but you’ll have more time to CS safely before your turret falls.
• Lane matchups are less influenced by success or failure in other lanes and you have more time to outplay your opponent in an even matchup early game.
• Players should be a little more likely to leave lane phase having completed their first item. 

Tactics:

• Outer turrets are now reinforced with "turret plating" at game start that resembles a shield that is divided into 5 sections called "plates".
• Destroying a plate grants local gold but also increases the turret's resistances until all remaining plates fall off (currently 14:00). Additionally, when a plate breaks, the turret gains 20 seconds of extra protection called Bulwark if more than one enemy champion is sieging it.
• With turret plating in play, we've also adjusted outer turret base stats. We've increased their health and their AD scaling but their resistances are now tied entirely to turret plating.
• Turret plating provides a baseline amount of resistances in addition to the resistances gained when a plate breaks, but once turret plating falls off, they're left with 0 armor and magic resist.
• The overall impact here is that outer turrets will much less frequently get run over in the first few minutes of the game, but will be more fragile past the 14 minute mark. This gives us a much stabler laning phase. 

Current tuning - SUBJECT TO CHANGE: 

Turret Plating:

• Each Plate represents 1000 Turret HP
• Armor and MR provided by Turret Plating :: 40 + 30 for each plate destroyed
• Gold reward per destroyed plate :: 160 local gold (divided among nearby champions)
• Bulwark :: + 25 Armor and MR per nearby enemy champion past the first on destroying a plate 

Turrets:

• Outer Turret HP :: 3800 >>> 5000
• Outer Turret Armor/MR :: 55 >>> 0 (replaced by turret plating)
• Outer Turret Armor/MR scaling per minute :: 1 >>> 0 (replaced by turret plating)
• All Turret AD scaling per minute :: 4 >>> 9
• Outer Turret AD cap :: 152 >>> 278
• Inner/Inhib Turret AD Cap :: 250 >>> 305
• Nexus Turret AD cap :: 230 >>> 285
• Turret First Blood :: 300 >>>150 (reduced due to turret plating gold)

Rune paths no longer dictate stat bonuses

Goals:

• Players can take the runes they want without feeling restricted by path style bonuses, better supporting creative (Glacial Augment Jax?) and strategic (double MR shards vs Rumble top) decision making.
• Slightly reduce early-game damage potency via 1 enforced defensive stat choice.

Tactics:

• We'll be referring to these bonuses as Stat Shards from now on
• You'll select three Stat Shards, one from each of three rows on your rune page
• We're preemptively adjusting some minor runes to accommodate Stat Shards. 

Current Tuning - STAT CHOICES AND VALUES SUBJECT TO CHANGE 

Stat Shards: 

• Row 1: 10 Adaptive (6 AD or 10 AP), 8% Attack Speed, 1-10% CDR (lvls 1-18).
• Row 2: 10 Adaptive, 5 Armor, 6 Magic Resist, (We’re debating adding a 4th here).
• Row 3: 15-90 HP (lvls 1-18), 5 Armor, 6 Magic Resist

Important note for clarity: Rune paths themselves no longer grant style bonuses; you now get those stats from Stat Shards. 

Comebacks are more achievable and satisfying

Goals: 

• Make the path to staging a comeback clearer for the team that’s fallen behind
• More accurately assign bounty levels to account for leads that don't come solely from champ kills
• Make the system more forgiving when you're playing well on the losing team 

Tactics - SUBJECT TO CHANGE:

• Bounties will now be visible in the scoreboard to help you pinpoint your next target
• Minion/Monster gold earned is now a part of the bounty system
• Payout of bounties is capped at 1000 (700 from bounty, 300 from baseline kill) with remaining rolling over to the next kill
• Bounties for champs on the losing team are reduced so as not to punish the one person trying to carry their team from behind.
• Champion kill bounties will scale higher at higher kill counts.

Current tuning - SUBJECT TO CHANGE:

• The actual math behind how bounties are calculated is really dense, so we’re not going to get too deep into specifics - at the end of the day all you need to worry about is the value that you see in the scoreboard if someone is doing well.
• In games where CS is skewed heavily, bounties will be accrued approximately 70% from champions kills, and 30% from minion/monster gold. In even games, bounties will be made up almost 100% from champion kills. 

Decided games resolve faster 

Goals:

• Teams with a sizable lead should be able to close out the game without Baron Buff
• Idle time should be minimized (waiting for a minion wave to be in position to siege the enemy base, waiting for next Baron/Dragon to spawn)

Tactics:

• Scale up minion health, turret damage resistance, and movement speed to make them better at soaking damage during Baron-less sieges.
• Increase spawn rate of cannons earlier in the game
• Decrease respawn timers of major objectives (Dragons, Baron, Elder)

Current tuning - SUBJECT TO CHANGE: 

All minions: 

• Damage to towers :: 60% >>> 50%
• Movement speed :: +25 at 20:00 >>> +25 to +100 between 10:00-30:00

Melee minions:

• Max HP (reached at 37:00) :: 1200 >>> 1500
• Max Armor (reached at 37:00) :: 0 >>> 16
• Max AD (reached at 37:00) :: 12 >>> 80

Caster minions:

• Max HP :: 425, reached at 27:00 >>> 485, reached at 37:00 (27:00 value unchanged)
• Max AD :: Scales infinitely (60.5 at 37:00) >>> 120.5 at 37:00 (no longer scales infinitely)

Cannon minions:

• Switchover to spawning every 2 waves :: 20 minutes >>> 15 minutes
• Switchover to spawning every wave :: 35 minutes >>> 25 minutes
• Max HP :: Scales infinitely (2300 at 37:00) >>> 3200 at 37:00 (no longer scales infinitely)
• Damage taken by turrets :: 14% max HP (8 shots to die) >>> 14% from outers, 11% from inners, 8% from inhib/nexus (8/10/12 shots to die)

Super minions:

• Base AD :: 306 >>> 225
• Base AS :: 0.694 >>> 0.850
• Aura :: No longer grants nearby minions +70% damage

Baron buff:

• Minion protection from champ damage :: 75% champ damage reduction for melee minions, 50% for caster minions >>> 65% for melee and caster minions
• Minion protection from turret damage :: Removed

Pushing advantage:

• Removed. Minions no longer gain bonus stats based on your team's average level vs the enemy team's average level

Epic Monster Respawn Time

• Elemental Drakes :: 6 minutes >>> 5 minutes
• Elder Dragon :: 8 minutes >>> 6 minutes
• Baron :: 7 minutes >>> 6 minutes 

Thanks for those who’ve made it this far! I know that was a lot to digest so feel free to hit us up in the comments with your questions. Before wrapping up, I want to stress again that the numbers for a bunch of things listed above are still subject to change, whether on PBE or after preseason ships live. 

We’ll be writing up another post in the next week or two to go over some of the usual assortment of additional preseason changes, but we wanted to get your feedback on these primary areas now that we’re much closer to what we want to ship. 

Thanks!
MapleNectar"

Aatrox

• World Ender (R) Active duration lowered from 12 seconds to 10 seconds

Pyke

• Gift of the Drowned Ones (Passive) percent of max health able to be stored as grey health changed from [25-50%] to [80 health +8% BAD (max 60% Max Health)]

Context & Notes

1) Riot Rovient provided a changelist for Dark Harvest coming later this cycle:

"A new version of Dark Harvest hits PBE tomorrow. Read the image for a more complete picture, but base damage is 30-180 (based on level) (+4 x Souls) (+25% Bonus AD) (+15% AP). This damage is Adaptive."