12/5 PBE Update: Snowdown 2018 Login Theme

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 9.1 PBE cycle, today's patch includes a login theme for the 2018 Snowdown event, and more tentative balance changes!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Snowdown 2018 Login Theme
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Snowdown 2018 Login Theme

A new Snowdown login theme is now on the PBE!

Context & Notes

1) Here's Captain Gameplay with context on the Hail of Blades changes in today's update:

"I did an english. 

Concept is straightforwards but words are hard. If you use an auto-reset successfully during one of the subsequent 2 Hail of Blades attacks, you'll get another for free (since you didn't actually use the attack speed bonus from Hail of Blades on that attack)"

2) Here's Riot Orphyre with a bugs and feedback thread for the Blood Moon chromas this cycle:

"Hey everyone! 

We’ve got some new Chromas coming up for Blood Moon Pyke and Blood Moon Sivir!

Blood Moon Pyke:

• New textures:
• Blood Moon Pyke (Ruby)
• Blood Moon Pyke (Citrine)
• Blood Moon Pyke (Aquamarine)
• Blood Moon Pyke (Rose Quartz)
• Blood Moon Pyke (Obsidian)
• Blood Moon Pyke (Pearl)

Blood Moon Sivir:

• New textures:
• Blood Moon Sivir (Emerald)
• Blood Moon Sivir (Rose Quartz)
• Blood Moon Sivir (Sapphire)
• Blood Moon Sivir (Citrine)
• Blood Moon Sivir (Turquoise)
• Blood Moon Sivir (Ruby)
• Blood Moon Sivir (Obsidian) 

The Chroma sets are now available on PBE! We hope you all will enjoy the new sets; as usual, we’re looking forward to hearing your constructive feedback. I’ll do my best to answer and reply to your questions and feedback! 

Thanks!
Riot Orphyre"

Riot Lexical added:

"When chromas first launched, they were supposed to be a cheap way for players to customize. However, we quickly realized no one want a cheap product. When the new chroma team took on the challenge, we changed directions towards giving personalization options to players for already well loved thematics etc. The idea is that if someone gets tired playing Bloodmoon Sivir, but love the skin, they can have a bit more variety game to game. Thus, we approached thematic with a bit more variation, color options, personality etc. Generally we try our best to stay true to the base theme, but we do understand some pushes on the boundaries of thematics. Which is why we have been hesitant to explore color based skins (ex: Bloodmoon, Project, Starguardians etc). This is also why we are hesitant to touch legendary skins as well. We do not want these to be canon in the thematic universe but rather just customization option."

3) Check out Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for December 5th, including details on the Snowdown pass and Nexus Blitz, tower stats and rewards, 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 

Snowdown pass and Nexus Blitz 

Both the Snowdown pass and Nexus Blitz will be going live tomorrow morning (6th of December). First, some pass details:

• The Snowdown pass is an updated version of the Worlds pass. You now get tokens from winning games, with half as many for a loss. Champion mastery grades no longer have any effect on tokens earned. You can also get some tokens from first win of the day, from missions and from orbs.
• Prestige Akali's available this time.
• There will also be some unique rewards that only work on Nexus Blitz/ARAM during this event (special recall VFX/audio, finisher vfx/audio, a fire poro pet). You can unlock those via a second type of token that can only be earned on Nexus Blitz. Can also get them with RP if preferred.
• Pass runs until the 7th of January. More details, numbers especially can be found on Riot Mort's Twitter

Plus a quick refresh on what's up with Nexus Blitz:

• We've done a lot of work on Nexus Blitz since its first run, with significantly better map art, improved events and rewards, some changes to the map geo, bans in champion select and more. If you never checked it out previously, or gave it a shot but found it a bit too unpolished, highly recommend giving it a try!
• If Nexus Blitz proves to be really popular throughout its run we'll be looking into making it a permanent mode that's always on. If it gets a decent amount of play, but not enough to break the needed threshold for permanence we'll look at bringing it back as an RGM regularly instead.

Tower stats and rewards post preseason 

So far tower stats and rewards are performing as we'd hoped. One of our key goals was to address cases where towers fell too quickly, cutting lane phase off too early. We didn't want to increase the length of longest laning phases by contrast, feeling those were already long enough. Looking at some stats:.
10th percentile (towers fall before this time only 10% of the time)

• 8.22 = 9 minutes, 11 seconds
• 8.23 = 11 minutes, 8 seconds

50th percentile (towers fall before this time 50% of the time)

• 8.22 = 12 minutes, 17 seconds
• 8.23 = 14 minutes, 1 second

90th percentile (towers fall before this time 90% of the time)

• 8.22 = 15 minutes, 35 seconds
• 8.23 = 15 minutes, 56 seconds 

These are stats from all MMR ranges combined. When looking at high MMR only all of the above values are about 1 minute faster, both in 8.22 and 8.23. 

Other goals were to make diving a bit more risky, via increased tower damage. We're still seeing a decent amount of diving going on, but with somewhat increased odds of a turnaround being possible, so that's also looking good so far. Still looking into data on the rewards side of things, will have that to share soonish. Also looks pretty appropriate though, with income up a bit but not dramatically, leading to champs more often leaving laning phase with their first big item completed as desired. 

Lane Swaps 

Lane Swaps are on our minds a bit given the changes to towers and game pacing. We don't want to see the game end up back in a state where early lanes are uncontested and champions just don't interact in organized play. We are open to early rotations or 1v2s as an occasional thing, though have some caution about how balance-able lane swapping as a more niche but viable option is, given it's been extremely frequent or missing entirely historically. Not concerned at present, given there are a lot of factors that should stop lane swaps being excessively powerful, or could be tuned to do so if needed. Plating gives more time to respond to towers going down. Plating rewards make it more costly to not defend your own towers. First tower gold, though smaller now, still exists as does tower fortification (50% reduced damage on top and mid outer towers in the first 5 minutes). 

Katarina changes on the PBE 

We've got a couple of changes to Kat's E hitting PBE I wanted to mention since they hard to spot or datamine and feedback on them would be useful:

• Spell Buffering - Gunblade Active can now be buffered with all of Kat's spells. Should be particularly noticeable for higher ping players.
• E - Cast time is now split into 0.075s before the blink and 0.075s after it, instead of 0.15s all up front. Should make E feel better when dodging incoming spells or picking up daggers."

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 !

• 12/4 PBE Update: New Blood Moon Skins, Chroma, Icons, Ward & much more!