1/9 PBE Update: Tentative Balance Changes

The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 9.2 PBE cycle, today's patch includes tentative balance changes!
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Position ranks and split rewards coming to PBE today for 9.2! 
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Position ranks and split rewards coming to PBE today for 9.2! 

Here's Riot SapMagic with details on Position ranks and split rewards now testing on the PBE:

"TL;DR: Position ranks and rewards are rolling out to PBE today for Patch 9.2. This week we’re testing the season reset and next week we’ll test the ability to revert position ranks without losing your progress. 

Hey everyone, Ed “SapMagic” Altorfer here on behalf of the Ranked team. Today, we’re rolling out position ranks to PBE, so I want to give you a rundown on what you can expect leading up to season start. I covered the other Ranked changes on PBE in a previous post, so feel free to check that out. 

Wait, you’re making changes to Ranked? 

Yes! Back in April, we laid out our plan to overhaul Ranked, which includes clear feedback during placements, better matchmaking, more accurate ranks, milestones and meaningful goals regardless of skill, and new rewards for deep and ongoing engagement. 

If you want a quick (or...not so quick) refresher on our previous posts, check out the links below! 

Post 1: High-level goals and overviewPost 2: Summarizing your initial feedbackPost 3: Addressing feedback and adjustments to position ranksPost 4: Laying out our plan to do regional previews of position ranksPost 5: Talking about new tiers and placementsPost 6: Discussing how the top of the ladder is affectedPost 7: Outlining the three-split season and new split rewardsPost 8: Answering more questions on rewards 

Position Ranks 

Position ranks is all about giving you a matchmaking rating and rank that matches your skill in each position you play so we can put you into more fair games no matter which one you queue up for. 

With position ranks, there’s no overall rank, so you’ll get LP each game for the position you played. Some of that LP will splash into all your other positions since if you’re climbing in one, some of that skill is transferable. 

Placements 

For position ranks, all the changes we made to placements still apply. That means you’ll play placements for each position you want to rank up and you’ll receive a provisional rank after one game. You’ll need to play eight games total in a position to unlock its rank, with Autofill games counting toward placements for the position you played. 

Rewards 

We’re also testing split rewards on PBE. You’ll earn points toward rewards every time you win a game and you’ll unlock rewards as soon as you have enough points. For Split 1, here are the rewards you can earn: 

• Summoner Icon - 150pts
• You earn a split-themed icon designed to be worn alongside your Ranked Armor.
• Ranked Armor Upgrade - 250pts
• You earn a visual upgrade to your Ranked Armor that dynamically matches your tier and lasts for the rest of the season.
• Dynamic Emote - 500pts
• You earn a split-themed emote that dynamically matches your tier. We’re still working on making it update when you rank up, so look for that a little later this cycle. 

Position Ranks Switch 

Since we’re planning to preview position ranks in a couple regions at season start, we will be tracking both position ranks and current ranks. That way, if there are any issues, technical or otherwise, we’ll be ready to switch everyone over as soon as possible without you losing any progress. 

To make sure that switch is working as intended, we’ll be testing it next week. That means, at some point your position ranks will be hidden and we’ll display your legacy rank. We’ll make another post before we test that functionality. 

Give us your feedback! 

Because there are fewer players on PBE and most don’t play regularly, it’s tough to test legitimacy or matchmaking quality. As a result, you probably shouldn’t expect the high stakes climb you’re used to on live. 

We still need your help testing everything going live today though, so please jump in and play some games. Let us know what bugs you find and feel free to share your thoughts on any of the changes, whether it’s about system rules, UI, or art. 

Thanks in advance for all the help making sure this is a stable and awesome experience, and as always, we’ll see you on the Rift!"

Kayn

• Changelist from Riot Rovient:

Neeko
[Neeko has other changes in testing on the PBE!]

• Inherent Glamour (Passive) 
• cooldown increased from [25/22/19/16/13/10 at 1/4/7/10/13/16] to [35/30/25/20/15/10 at 1/4/7/10/13/16]
• [New Effect] "If Neeko becomes invisible to the enemy while disguised, she gains 20% magic penetration that lasts 4 seconds after the disguise breaks."

• Shapesplitter (W) 
• Clone duration increased from 2 seconds to 3 seconds
• bonus movement speed duration increased from 2 seconds to 3 seconds 

• Tangle Barbs (E) 
• AP reverted from 60% to 40%
• Damage reverted from 80/125/170/215/260 to 80/115/150/185/220
• Empowered root duration reverted from .75/1/1.25/1.5/1.75 seconds to .7/.9/1.1/1.3/1.5 seconds

• Pop Blossom (R)
• Cooldown increased from 90 seconds to 120/100/80 seconds
• Leap duration lowered from .75 seconds to .6 seconds
• [New] Nearby champion leap damage now had a 40% AP ratio

Volibear
[Changelist - Missed in 1/8 Update]

• Majestic Roar (E) 
• Bonus damage to dashing or airborne enemies changed from [40/60/80/100/120 (+30% AP)] to [8% Target Max HP] 

• Thunder Claws (R)
• Delay before initial bolt on cast changed from [0.25s - 0.1s delay between each bounce] to [0.075s - 0s delay between each bounce]

Context & Notes

1) Riot Maple provided a changelist for Volibear this cycle:

"This is the whole list 

Majestic Roar (E) Damage :: Bonus damage to dashing or airborne enemies :: 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 (+30% AP) >>> 8% Target Max HP 

Thunder Claws (R) Delay before initial bolt on cast :: 0.25s >>> 0.1s Delay between each bounce :: 0.075s >>> 0s"

He also provided further changes for Yorick this cycle:

"The version that we're going to try out tomorrow is: 

• Maiden lives in the world permanently and follows you by default
• After some period of time you can choose to recast R to set her free to roam down a lane."

2) Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for January 9th, including details on buffs and nerfs in 9.2 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 

Happy 2019! 

Hope the year's treating you all well so far. To kick things off as these posts resume I wanted to get some feedback on the posts themselves, in particular:

• What types of topic would you like to see more of in these posts?
• How often do you want to see one of these posts come out? Twice a week's been the regular schedule for quite a while now, would once a week and a bit longer be more appealing for example, or is shorter but more frequent better?
• Who else should we be learning from? Would particularly love to hear your thoughts on communication from other game developers and what approaches and techniques we should be adopting. 

Changes in 9.2 and beyond 

As you might have seen Maple Nectar talking about on Twitter we've just picked our likely targets for 9.2 as below. As usual not guaranteed we'll necessarily ship changes for all of these cases and we're still in the process of testing what exactly we'll do. 

Buffs:

• Sunfire Cape
• Aurelion Sol
• Dr Mundo
• Jarvan
• Neeko
• Renekton
• Shen
• Shyvana
• Volibear
• Yorick 

Nerfs:

• Oblivion Orb
• Relic Shield line
• Aatrox
• Brand
• Camille
• Cassiopeia
• Galio
• Irelia
• Jax
• Kassadin
• Rakan
• Urgot
• Zyra 

We're also looking at some more Akali work, though that's looking at counterplay, pro versus regular play power etc rather than a straight buff or nerf. Part of that includes assessing the recent shroud changes to see how much they have or haven't moved the needle and whether further shroud changes are a good tactic. 

In terms of longer term work (likely changes over more than one patch, which might or might not include 9.2) we're also looking at some wider issues. The key ones there are how damage is distributed across the game (including which sources contribute how much damage), ADC itemization (crit primarily, possibly a bit that affects other build paths too) and reducing jungle influence a bit (lower camp reward scaling, less damage from the Smite upgrades). 

Allowing a few champs to go beyond level 18 

Wanted to get a gut check from you folks on a concept we've kicked around occasionally internally. How does the idea of allowing a few specific champions to exceed the level cap slightly (level 19, maybe 20?) sound? If for example Zilean's passive, in addition to allowing him to give XP to allies, also allowed him to break the level cap a bit just for himself is that something that feels natural? If so, is it something that would feel out of place if a few other champions could do the same? Not something we're immediately planning to do, but could be an option for champs who could do with a bit of super late game power and a bit of extra relevance to their passives. Was curious as to whether it was something that generally sounded appealing versus boring, fair versus unfair etc to you all." 

3) Here's Riot Orphyre with a bugs & feedback thread for the chroma this cycle:

"Hey everyone! 

We’ve got some new Chromas coming up for Coin Emperor Tahm Kench, Firecracker Sejuani, Lunar Wraith Sylas, and a couple of Golden Chromas for Lunar Guardian Warwick, Warring Kingdoms Xin Zhao, and Warring Kingdoms Jarvan IV! We also have some coming out a bit later for Heartpiercer Fiora and Heartbreaker Vi!

Coin Emperor Tahm Kench:

• New textures:
• Coin Emperor Tahm Kench (Obsidian)
• Coin Emperor Tahm Kench (Aquamarine)
• Coin Emperor Tahm Kench (Amethyst)
• Coin Emperor Tahm Kench (Rose Quartz)
• Coin Emperor Tahm Kench (Pearl)
• Coin Emperor Tahm Kench (Ruby)

Firecracker Sejuani:

• New textures:
• Firecracker Sejuani (Ruby)
• Firecracker Sejuani (Citrine)
• Firecracker Sejuani (Sapphire)
• Firecracker Sejuani (Rose Quartz)
• Firecracker Sejuani (Obsidian)
• Firecracker Sejuani (Turquoise)

Lunar Wraith Sylas:

• New textures:
• Lunar Wraith Sylas (Obsidian)
• Lunar Wraith Sylas (Ruby)
• Lunar Wraith Sylas (Catseye)
• Lunar Wraith Sylas (Aquamarine)
• Lunar Wraith Sylas (Amethyst)
• Lunar Wraith Sylas (Pearl)

2019 Lunar Revel Goldens:

• New textures:
• Lunar Guardian Warwick (Golden)
• Warring Kingdoms Xin Zhao (Golden)
• Warring Kingdoms Jarvan IV (Golden)

Heartpiercer Fiora:

• New textures:
• Heartpiercer Fiora (Ruby)
• Heartpiercer Fiora (Citrine)
• Heartpiercer Fiora (Amethyst)
• Heartpiercer Fiora (Rose Quartz)
• Heartpiercer Fiora (Aquamarine)
• Heartpiercer Fiora (Obsidian)
• Heartpiercer Fiora (Pearl)

Heartbreaker Vi:

• New textures:
• Heartbreaker Vi (Ruby)
• Heartbreaker Vi (Rose Quartz)
• Heartbreaker Vi (Catseye)
• Heartbreaker Vi (Turquoise)
• Heartbreaker Vi (Amethyst)
• Heartbreaker Vi (Obsidian)
• Heartbreaker Vi (Pearl) 

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"

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 !

• 1/8 PBE Update: Sylas, the Unshackled, Lunar Revel & Valentines Skins, and more!