Red Post Collection: November Bundles, Quick Gameplay Thoughts 11/30, & More

Posted on at 1:28 PM by Aznbeat
Today's red post collection includes November bundles, Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for November 30th, including thoughts on marksman, gold/xp funneling, and more, as well as this week's Ask Riot, All-Star 2018 event details, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents


It’s time for November bundles! 


Here's Riot Evaelin with the November Bundles:
"Grab these limited-time bundles now through December 6, 2018 at 11:59 p.m. PT. All bundles include champions as well as skins. 
Drive-by Dives Bundle - 50% off at 2136 RP (3541 RP RP if you need the champions)
Skins included:
  • Lancer Stratus Wukong
  • Firefang Warwick
  • Pentakill Olaf
  • Neon Strike Vi 
Hello, You’re Dead Bundle - 50% off at 1909 RP (3476 RP if you need the champions)
Skins included:
  • Blood Moon Evelynn
  • Mecha Kha’Zix
  • Ravager Nocturne
  • Nurse Akali 
Kill Secured Bundle - 50% off at 2324 RP (4133 RP if you need the champions)
Skins included:
  • Sand Wraith Pyke
  • Guqin Sona
  • Elderwood Bard
  • Battle Boss Brand 
Slow Burn Bundle - 50% off at 2024 RP (3638 RP if you need the champions)
Skins included:
  • Mecha Aurelion Sol
  • Karthus Lightsbane
  • Blade Mistress Morgana
  • Overlord Malzahar

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: November 30 

Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for November 30th, including thoughts on marksmen, gold/xp funneling, and more:
"Hi folks, 
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 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 
Marksmen 
Been seeing more discussion about the state of marksmen below. Some notes below covering what we’re seeing, what we’re thinking, and an early take on what changes we’re considering. 
Data and Observations  
  • We’ve been seeing some players on forum/social media argue strongly that Marksmen are weak. That argument comes in a few different versions, with the most common being ‘all marksmen are weak’, ‘Marksmen who aren’t on this short list are weak’ and ‘all crit marksmen are bad’.
  • Based off that we did some surveying of players from North America, Korea and Brazil this week to better understand how representative those feelings are. Results from that: 
All three regions feel jungle is the strongest position, followed fairly closely by mid
Korean players see top, bot and support as all around the same power level
North American players see top as 3rd most powerful, followed by support, followed by bot
Brazilian players see bot and support as equally powerful in 3rd place, with top clearly the weakest position in their eyes 
  • We then also looked at which roles players have been choosing as their primary selection when queueing as another data point (what people are choosing to play versus how they perceive power). Overall we’re seeing some decline in players picking bot as preferred position over the few weeks since Worlds ended. Again there’s quite a bit of regional variation, with a larger drop in NA for example but little change in Korea. Also worth noting that desire to play support goes down as much or more in most regions over the same period, and that the decline is seen primarily in Ranked, with normal draft affected but to a lesser degree. Also important to note that declines in both support and bot preference starts before preseason, so this isn't caused by preseason changes, at least not primarily.
  • Turning to in game data, win rate isn’t very helpful here, given most games still have a marksman versus another marksman. Pick rate tells us that, on average, marksmen are still almost always being picked bot lane, with the most common non marksman being Karthus, who composes about 1% of champ plays in bot lane. That does vary noticeably by context though, with Karthus’s pick rate in bot at 2% in high MMR (nearly 5% in NA), versus no measurable play at all bot lane in Brazil.
  • Worth noting that Marksmen, including some crit marksmen, remained dominant in professional play as of a few weeks ago. We believe that will still be the case when professional play resumes too. Context is pretty different however, both because play between organized teams is very different from solo queue and because the pro meta is noticeably different overall (e.g. more tanks, more macro play, more effectiveness from champs that require more team co-ordination).
  • Finally, speaking of the state of the meta, we’ve also seen meaingful increases in play rates of many divers, assassins and burst mages after the end of the ranked season/release of the preseason patch, coupled with lower play rates on tanks and defensive supports in general. Playing a marksman often feels worse when either or both of those things happen. 
Moving from talking about context to talking about our interpretations: 
  • We believe some marksmen are currently strong with appropriate agency and satisfaction. Lucian, Ezreal, Miss Fortune and Jhin being good examples. Some others though are failing on at least one of those axes, crit item dependent marksmen in particular. For players who want to play marksmen who don’t have good options other than crit builds that feels understandably bad.
  • We believe that itemization, crit primarily, needs work. A lot of that’s the way the items work more than their power levels. Stormrazor for example is really strong at this point, but still not generating good satisfaction.
  • Preseason’s a time when willingness to play marksmen impact has dropped historically and then increased again when season starts. We’re seeing that same trend at present. That reflects more marksmen predators getting played, given players tend to flock to less effective but appealing anti carry heavy team comps during less competitive times. Also reflects that fewer players are choosing to queue as support, resulting in more autofilled support players, who then often try experimental champs/builds and pick very aggressive champs rather than tanks or enchanters, leading to less marksmen/support synergy. There are some issues we should be addressing regardless of seasonal trends like this, but also don’t want to overcorrect when some effects are temporary.
  • Marksmen who are always forced to build for late game are more likely to be considered unsatisfying. Their balance is also likely to fluctuate more based off the state of the meta. That makes sense where a marksman’s core identity includes ‘late game hypercarry’, but can be a problem for others.
  • Marksmen are potentially too skewed towards almost all offense and no defense itemization wise. Being comparatively squishy makes sense as a class weakness. We’ve arguably pushed that too far though, leaving marksmen too tied to multiplicative damage items and therefore excessively brittle when not well protected or in a favorable meta. 
Finally, based off that what are we planning on doing? 
8.24b 
  • We’ll be looking at specific marksmen and putting power into some. Candidates we’re currently thinking about include Corki, Xayah, Ashe, Vayne, Trist, Jinx.
  • One tactic we’re going to look at for a number of them is giving more starting MR, reducing their vulnerability to harass in lane and magic damage based burst early/mid game. Not sure yet what sort of mixture of just more MR overall versus pulling per level MR forwards into starting MR that will be.
  • For Xayah we’ll be looking at whether she and Rakan are too dependent on each other power wise. Certainly want them to be effective together and feel a bit special, some concern their effectiveness is too low when apart though. 
9.1 and/or later
  • We’ll be looking at crit items. Details to come soon ish once we’ve got them, a core goal will be to make crit items feel more satisfying to most users, given satisfaction has been a long running issue regardless of balance state.
  • We’ll also be looking a marksman offense versus defense. Potential approaches include making partial defensive buys decent choices earlier on (e.g. an early BT or Hexdrinker as a decent choice, rather than too often a trap). Might also involve further adjustments to base defensive stats.
  • And we’ll be looking at power curves on some marksmen, in particular whether we’ve got champs who’d be better off if they lost a bit of power late game, which they don’t always get to access, in exchange for a better early and mid game.
Gold/XP Funneling 
For those unfamiliar with the term funneling here means putting more than one position's worth of gold/XP onto a single champ. We took actions to remove it earlier in the year where it involved low interaction strategies that don't give the opposing team sufficient options to respond to it. The main thing that addressed it was a debuff called Monster Hunter on starting jungle items that reduced lane minion gold heavily if you have the highest minion score on your team. That debuff did the job, but also inappropriately punished non funneling play at times. Intent was to only use it as a temporary band aid solution and we removed it in the 8.23. 
Our belief is that funneling should be much less powerful than it used to be, since not contesting a lane can be taken advantage of more now through turret plating gold. Putting that much farm on one person also increases their gold bounty, so focusing a funneled champ is more rewarding than it was. 
It’s certainly possible that’s not enough to keep funneling under control though without a more explicit penalty, even if it’s not as strong as it was. We’re working on a backup approach at the moment in case it’s needed. Possible direction is a more focused version of Monster Hunter that does a better job of distinguishing between funneled champs and champs who’ve just had a really good game and are picking up some lane farm while holding a tower, split pushing etc. More details to come if that looks necessary, want to make sure it’s an actual problem again, not just people giving it a try now it’s less obviously a poor choice. 
Next Week 
Some thoughts next week on turret plating, tower stats and tower rewards, including possibility of seeing lane swaps in organized play again. Was going to cover those topics today but this ended up really long already."

When asked about Camille, Meddler replied:
"No plans for Camille buffs no. Not immediately planning any other nerfs, but think her top lane performance is likely closer to too strong than too weak."

As for Jinx and Tristana, Meddler commented:
"Jinx is a potential candidate for higher starting MR, both due to degree she can get punished in lane by various mages and her vulnerability to other magic damage dealers later. 
Not sure about possible directions for Trist yet. This is a list of champs we're investigating at this stage, not a list of champs we've already got changes ready for."

Meddler talked more on Marksmen:
"Long term we think it'd be good to allow marksmen some more flexibility in which positions they play. First priority for us though is to address some issues with them in their existing position. Particularly interested though in things that potentially help with both, like the starting MR example mentioned above. Would also want to try and avoid changes that made them effective in other positions but ended up pushing them out of bot. Generally we see players stick to positions more than they move with champions so a champ becoming only effective in a position you don't play can be pretty painful for existing players."

On Crit items, Meddler commented:
"I can't share specific planned changes for crit items yet because we don't have them. We're talking about some possible directions, and believe we'll make some meaningful changes, not just tuning numbers up or down a bit. Stormrazor's likely to be one of the targets for bigger work, it's strong but not liked, a really poor combination."

Riot MapleNectar provided context on the Jax changes this PBE cycle:
"The reason we removed the power from his late game is largely due to how his performance scales with MMR (he's better at low MMR, scaling down the higher MMR you go). There's a fairly sizeable discrepancy in how long games last between low MMR and higher MMR (low = slower games, high = faster games), so we removed the majority of the power from his lvl 16 which he hits far more frequently in lower MMR due to games lasting longer. He's also more of a terror when being played in the jungle, so we wanted to leave more of his dueling tools in tact for lane."

Meddler talked more about gold/xp funneling:
"Concern there is that that likely reintroduces the same sort of problems we saw with the Monster Hunter Debuff, only more so if it's on all jungle items. 
What we've just started testing is a modified version where a gold penalty only kicks in if you've got a t1 or t2 jungle item and have more gold earned from minion kills than monster kills. Will let you folks know if that shows promise after some playtesting."

On Stormrazor and Essence Reaver, Meddler commented:
"Pretty confident we'll be making changes of some form to Stormrazor, strong but disliked is a bad state for an item to be in. 
Essence Reaver's on our list of items we'll be looking at too, though less sure about outcome there. Certainly hearing feedback about it though."

On Kalista and Ivern, Meddler replied:
"Kalista, along with Ryze and Azir, is a champ we're not working on for a while. That reflects that we feel we've sunk too much time into those three champs over the years and that the amount of further time needed now would create a bigger overall improvement to the game if we spent it on other champs. Realize that sucks if you play or want to play one of those three, but do feel it's the right overall call. 
Ivern wise, would have to disagree that he's weak. Certainly some things about him that are a bit cumbersome, Daisy controls especially IMO, but don't think power's his main issue."

And on Caitlyn, Meddler replied:
"Three things are making us hesitant to do anything for Caitlyn right now:
  • When she's strong she's pretty oppressive to the rest of bot lane, including pushing a range of other marksmen out. Not a great time for that sort of effect.
  • We're seeing a couple of builds perform much better at present, Grasp especially. Not the most fun way for Caitlyn to play, and would like her to have other equally effective options as well though.
  • The biggest one - we're expecting her to benefit more than most from crit item changes."

Ask Riot: K/DA Evelynn & Poros 

Check out this week's Ask Riot - "How many poros fit in the Howling Abyss? Plus two-factor authentication, streaming, and K/DA Eve."
This week, it’s K/DA Evelynn, two-factor authentication, the League Partner Program, and how many poros it’d take to cover the Howling Abyss. 
Why is K/DA Evelynn literally a titan in the video?

For portraying Eve in the POP/STARS music video, our main goal was to make her feel just as imposing as she was glamorous while tapping into the core fantasy of what players know about that champion. 
The giant scenes were a way for us to communicate her dominating presence in a stylized manner; when you face against her in-game, it can feel suffocating going into the jungle alone because she exerts that much presence on the map. We wanted to place the enormity of what that threat feels like, at scale, in front of the viewer—-as well as playing on the idea of showing a glimpse of Eve’s true from as an insatiable demon who thrives off of the fame, love, and attention from everyone who dares set eyes on her. 
RIOT PMO
Creative Lead 

Hello riot, I was wondering if you have any updates for two-step verification?

We actually do! We know this is something players have been asking about for a while, and we’re happy to announce that the wait is almost over. Starting this year, you’re going to be getting verification requests when you try to log in to your League of Legends account on the website to make changes to your account, or when you perform other tasks that may require a higher level of security. We’ve already been requiring two step verification for the past few months to log into the account management portal. For those who haven’t experienced it yet, it’ll be pretty simple in practice:
  1. When you try to log in on a new device for the first time, a code will automatically be sent to the email address linked with your League of Legends account.
  2. That code will get you logged in, that device will be added to a list of “trusted devices.” AKA, you won’t need to do it again next time.
  3. That’s it. Those are the two steps. We just put a third bullet here because those two looked lonely all by themselves.
Verification codes will be sent straight to your email address, and next year we’re going to be looking into whether or not it makes sense to develop a mobile app-based solution for two-factor authentication. 
MAROWE
Player Support Accounts Specialist 
If I become a streamer or YouTuber, will you support me even if my Elo sucks?

Heck yeah. Recently we started up the League Partner Program to support awesome content creators, and we really don’t care whether you’re a Challenger God or an Iron 4 animal. 
There are a few requirements to become a partner. You’ll need to make sure that: 
  • Your League account is in good standing and has a verified email address
  • At least 30% of your content is League of Legends related
  • You’ve gotten 50+ average concurrent viewers on your livestreams in the past 30 days and/or 5,000+ average views on your video content in the past 30 days + 1,000 YouTube subscribers 
As you can see, skill at the game isn’t one of the requirements. As a Silver 1 Garen Jungle main myself, I always try to be considerate my fellow low-elo compatriots.
Learn more and apply to join the League Partner Program here. 
Communications Lead, League of Legends 
How many poros long is the howling abyss? If one were to line up the poros one by one, how many you would need to go from one side of the howling abyss to the other?

Let’s define one standard poro as an SPU (Standard Poro Unit). The Howling Abyss map from fountain to fountain is approximately 384 SPUs long, and 37 SPUs wide. This means you can fit over 14,000 standard poros in the Howling Abyss map! 
But as you are likely aware, poros come in many sizes. If you feed a poro a Poro Snak, they grow! A fully fed poro, right before the moment of Porosplosion, gets as big as 2.35 SPUs, which means the Howling Abyss map is about 163 FPUs (Fed Poro Unit) long, and 16 FPUs wide. This means you can only fit around 2,600 fed poros in the map! 

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."

All-Star 2018 Event Details

The 2018 All-Star Event is happening December 6-8 in Las Vegas! Check out the All-Star 2018 minisite for all the details on the participants, players, and details on watch rewards!
"It’s All-Star time. Our final event of the year is back and reformulated to be a celebration of everything fans love about League: the game, the competition, and the community. Here’s everything you need to know to prepare yourself for the ultimate All-Star Experience."
Who is Participating? 
        

What are they playing?

Anything else?

Miscellaneous

  • Riot SapMagic provided a look at the Tier-up animations all in one handy video:
"Our team wanted to be a bit more transparent around server issues, as well as other information that the NA playerbase may want to hear about. This is 100% a work in progress, so feedback around what’s here, or what you might want to see, is highly appreciated! 
Your weekly dose of server problem-os, NA League news, and other! 
The last few pros are transferring teams (we hope everything’s final soon), Karthus is surprisingly strong in basically any role (...preseason oops, hi Dark Harvest?), and the servers have been relatively stable this last week. 
Server Stuff:
  • Coven Leona, Lissanda, and Camille in store on incorrect schedule (11/26/18, ~5 hours). Banners were scheduled and activated at the wrong time, resulting in tile cards enabled in the store without the skins actually being active.
  • Issues with modifying account settings (11/27/18, ~45 minutes). A config change to a database wasn’t picked up by applications, necessitating a restart of various processes.
  • Issues with modifying account settings (11/28/18, ~20 minutes). One backend node flagged issues, briefly causing players to have issues changing account settings. The problem self-fixed shortly afterwards. 
Game Stuff:
  • No major or moderate server issues this past week
Player Support Trend:
  • These last few days have seen a spike in tickets around League starting properly. A non-trivial amount were helped by having players reduce down the number of programs Windows boots up with, a process we call “Clean Boot”, try the steps in this KB before contacting Player Support. 
Anyone here planning on playing this weekend? If any of you see Morgageddon or me (Couch Commando), then don’t be afraid to say hi! Catch y’all in the Rift! 
Morgageddon & Couch Commando "

Reminders

To round out this good good red post collection, here are a few reminders on current promotions or limited time events!

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