Red Post Collection: ARAM Balance Update Thread, 9.7: Lore Update & More

Posted on at 2:27 PM by Aznbeat
Today's red post collection includes an ARAM balance update from Mortdog, details on lore updated in Patch 9.7, a post on future item changes from Riot Scruffy & more!
Continue reading for more information!


Table of Contents


ARAM Balance Update Thread 

Here's Mortdog with an updated list of ARAM specific balance changes:
"Here is the current status of ARAM balance adjustments
=============================================================== 
NERFS
  • Ashe: -5% damage dealt
  • Brand: -5% damage dealt
  • Dr. Mundo: +10% damage taken
  • Fiddlesticks: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken
  • Heimerdinger: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken
  • Illaoi: +5% damage taken
  • Janna: +10% damage taken
  • Jhin: -5% damage dealt
  • Jinx: -5% damage dealt
  • Karthus: -10% damage dealt
  • Kayle: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken
  • Kog’maw: -10% damage dealt
  • Lux: -10% damage dealt & +8% damage taken
  • Malzahar: -8% damage dealt & +8% damage taken
  • Maokai: -10% damage dealt & +10% damage taken
  • Miss Fortune: -8% damage dealt
  • Morgana: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken
  • Nasus: -5% damage dealt
  • Sion: +10% damage taken
  • Sivir: -8% damage dealt
  • Sona: -10% damage dealt & -25% healing done & +12% damage taken
  • Swain: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken
  • Teemo: -12% damage dealt
  • Veigar: -8% damage dealt & +10% damage taken
  • Vel’Koz: -10% damage dealt
  • Xerath: -5% damage dealt
  • Yorick: +8% damage taken
  • Ziggs: -15% damage dealt & +8% damage taken
  • Zyra: -8% damage dealt & +8% damage taken

BUFFS
  • Aatrox: +10% damage done & -10% damage taken
  • Akali: +18% damage dealt & -8% damage taken
  • Bard: +8% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Camille: +8% damage done & -8% damage taken
  • Evelynn: +15% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Fiora: +8% damage done & -8% damage taken
  • Hecarim: -10% damage taken
  • Irelia: +5% damage done & -5% damage taken
  • Kai’Sa: +15% damage done
  • Kassadin: +10% damage done & -5% damage taken
  • Kindred: +10% damage dealt
  • Khazix: +8% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • LeBlanc: +12% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Lee Sin: +8% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Nidalee: +15% damage dealt
  • Nocturne: +5% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Quinn: +10% damage done & -10% damage taken
  • Rek’sai: +18% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Rengar: +5% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Ryze: +8% damage dealt & -5% damage taken
  • Sejuani: -10% damage taken
  • Shyvana: +5% damage done & -5% damage taken
  • Tahm Kench: +8% damage done & -8% damage taken
  • Talon: +10% damage done & -5% damage taken
  • Tryndamere: +10% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Warwick: -8% damage taken
  • Udyr: +10% damage done & -10% damage taken 
CHANGE LOG 
=============================================================== 
April 4th Hotfix Changes
NERFS:
  • Brand: -5% damage dealt
  • Dr. Mundo: +10% damage taken
  • Fiddle: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken
  • Heimerdinger: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken
  • Janna: Additional +5% damage taken
  • Karthus: -10% damage dealt
  • Kayle: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken
  • Kog'maw: Additional -2% damage dealt
  • Lux: Additional -2% damage dealt & +10% damage taken
  • Malzahar: -8% damage dealt & +8% damage taken
  • Maokai: Additional -2% damage dealt & +5% damage taken
  • Miss Fortune: Additional -3% damage dealt
  • Morgana: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken
  • Sion: Additional +5% damage taken
  • Sona: Additional +12% damage taken
  • Swain: -6% damage dealt & +6% damage taken
  • Teemo: Additional -4% damage dealt
  • Veigar: Additional -8% damage dealt & +5% damage taken
  • Vel'Koz: Additional -5% damage dealt
  • Xerath: -5% damage dealt
  • Ziggs: Additional +8% damage taken
  • Zyra: -8% damage dealt & +8% damage taken
BUFFS:
  • Aatrox: +10% damage done & -10% damage taken
  • Akali: Additional +6% damage done
  • Camille: +8% damage done & -8% damage taken
  • Evelynn: Additional +3% damage done & -5% damage taken
  • Fiora: +8% damage done & -8% damage taken
  • Irelia: +5% damage done & -5% damage taken
  • Kai’Sa: +15% damage done
  • Kassadin: +10% damage done & -5% damage taken
  • Khazix: Additional +8% damage done
  • LeBlanc: Additional -10% damage taken
  • Quinn: +10% damage done & -10% damage taken
  • Rek’Sai: Additional +8% damage dealt
  • Rengar: Additional +5% damage dealt
  • Shyvana: +5% damage done & -5% damage taken
  • Tahm Kench: +8% damage done & -8% damage taken
  • Talon: +10% damage done & -5% damage taken
  • Udyr: +10% damage done & -10% damage taken
============================================================== 
Original Launch
NERFS:
  • Ashe: -5% damage dealt
  • Illaoi: +5% damage taken
  • Janna: +5% damage taken
  • Jhin: -5% damage dealt
  • Jinx: -5% damage dealt
  • Kog’maw: -8% damage dealt
  • Lux: -8% damage dealt
  • Maokai: -8% damage dealt & +5% damage taken
  • Miss Fortune: -5% damage dealt
  • Nasus: -5% damage dealt
  • Sion: +5% damage taken
  • Sivir: -8% damage dealt
  • Sona: -10% damage dealt & -25% healing done
  • Teemo: -8% damage dealt
  • Veigar: +5% damage taken
  • Vel’Koz: -5% damage dealt
  • Yorick: +8% damage taken (doesn’t apply to Maiden of the Mist)
  • Ziggs: -15% damage dealt
BUFFS:
  • Akali: +12% damage dealt & -8% damage taken
  • Bard: +8% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Evelynn: +12% damage dealt & -5% damage taken
  • Hecarim: -10% damage taken
  • Kindred: +10% damage dealt
  • Khazix: -10% damage taken
  • LeBlanc: +12% damage dealt
  • Lee Sin: +8% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Nidalee: +15% damage dealt
  • Nocturne: +5% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Rek’sai: +10% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Rengar: -10% damage taken
  • Ryze: +8% damage dealt & -5% damage taken
  • Sejuani: -10% damage taken
  • Tryndamere: +10% damage dealt & -10% damage taken
  • Warwick: -8% damage taken
=============================================================="

9.7: Lore Update 

Here's Riot Ashekandi with the lore update for Patch 9.7:
"Hey everyone! 
In this week’s Lore Update we’re departing from our tales of Demacia for a darker story on the Shadow Isles featuring Thresh and Kalista. 
Alongside that, we also have new color stories for Darius and Zyra. With the spotlight on the Shadow Isles, we’ve also taken the chance to update Hecarim and Kalista’s bios as well. 
Finally, we’ve included a couple of updates that have been made to the Universe website and the League Displays app, and we’ll use this as a platform to share more updates to those as they come in the future. 
As always, we look forward to hearing your thoughts—let’s get to it!
Ashekandi 
Short Story 
NEW The Echoes Left Behind
- by Anthony Reynolds
Thresh shook his head, laughing. “We have what mortals have coveted since time immemorial—eternity.

Thresh, Kalista, Shadow Isles 
Color Story 
NEW The Winterspike Road
- by Laura Michet
Noxians don’t run. We win,” he growled. “We chop them to pieces for what they do to us.
Darius, Noxus
NEW With the Flowers
- by Matt Dunn
“Step into the garden that ever grows…” Zyra whispered through the stems and petals. “Death blossoms, and you don’t want to miss the colors, do you?”
Zyra, Kumangra, Jungle 
Bio Updates 
Hecarim: Updated Bio
Break their ranks, and ride them down without mercy. Crush the living. Feast on their terror.
Hecarim, Shadow Isles, Bio

Kalista Updated Bio
Turncoats, oath breakers and betrayers… we hate them all.
Kalista, Shadow Isles, Bio 
Comics 
Warmother
- by Odin Austin Shafer
Raised in the avage wilds of the north, Ashe is an Iceborn, a warrior gifted with a magical connection to her frozen homeland--and burdened by her mother’s fanatical expectations. When they set out on a dangerous quest for the truth behind an ancient myth, bonds are broken, secrets come to light, and Runeterra is forever changed. Will young Ashe become the leader her people need? Or is destiny merely an empty dream? 
With the final issue of Ashe: Warmother live, the full story of how Ashe became Warmother of the Avarosan tribe is now available for free on Universe! If you are yet to dive in, head on over to the issue page on Universe to get started and learn more of Ashe’s origins.
Ashe, Sejuani, Freljord, Comic 
Universe Updates 
With Universe being updated regularly with new features and quality of life improvements, we thought these notes would be a good place to document updates to the site. We will work to include updates to the site going forward here, and if you have any questions or feedback on Universe itself, this would be a great place to let us know!
Reorganized each region’s respective page on Universe to have a better flow, include more artwork, and connect many more stories to individual regions and champions.
The League Displays app has been reorganized. 
A new “Cinematic” collection has been added with cinematic stills. 
All images added to Universe in the above reorganization have also been added to League Displays."

Item Shop Cleanup 

Here's Riot Scruffy with details on upcoming item changes:
"Hey everyone, we have some broader item work we’re hoping to do later this year and I wanted to share our goals and philosophy for these changes before you start seeing potential updates on the PBE. 
What are we planning to do? 
One of the main problems that keeps us from exploring exciting and meaningful new items is that the shop is overcrowded. This can make it hard to quickly find the item you're looking for and makes the store overwhelming to both new players and players trying champs or roles that use items they aren't yet familiar with. We want to remove "dead" items from the shop to clean up unnecessary clutter, make the shop faster to navigate and easier to understand, and make room for new additions. 
What items should we remove?
Unhealthy items, meaning items that:
  • Massively reduce or remove counterplay against a champion
  • Incentivize not interacting with the enemy team
  • Give access to an effect (usually reactive or defensive) that we don’t actually want all champions to have access to  
Items too similar to another item:
  • This leads to always picking whichever one is stronger rather than making decisions around the items' unique properties. Either we find better ways to differentiate them or we can just combine these items and retain both user bases 
Very low usage rate items:
  • This can sometimes be because we nerfed an unhealthy item. Removing the item would be better at this point since it's too weak to be a good item, but we aren't going to buff it since it causes gameplay issues when strong.
  • It can also be because a too-similar alternative is currently better so everyone's using that alternative instead
  • Some item niches aren't really something that any champion would want 
Items reducing or not adding impactful decisions to the system:
  • Overly similar versions of Zeal items or tank items with near identical stats have had this problem in the past
  • Overpowered or "always good" items can squash a lot of other choices in the system - core items like IE can be great for power fantasy but if we have too many of these there is no room to make choices
  • This can also be true of overly similar component items, like if we had a 500g health item that was used sometimes instead of Ruby Crystal; we’re not really gaining any new decision space 
What kind of items are we looking to add? 
Once we free up space, we want to deliver better versions of certain niches that we haven't been able to fill in the past. As an example, we'd like to make a healthy "tower pushing" focused item that doesn't have the problems of Banner of Command or Zz'Rot Portal. 
We also want to add more viable and differentiated choices to build paths that lack diversity. Lethality items are a space that currently lack enough choices for AD assassin players to have meaningful build differences game to game. 
When and how are doing this? 
We don’t want to just rip out items and tell you "hey, we promise this will be better soon." So our approach is to combo future item removals with item reworks or new items that often replace them in spirit and overall make for a more deep and satisfying item system in League of Legends. 
Scruffy"

Learn More: Spring Split Finals Missions 


Here's Riot Talumar with details on Spring Split Finals missions:
"You’ve watched and earned for Spring Split, but now it’s time to cap off this season with the Spring Finals Mission! Soon before Finals start, you will receive a mission to watch your regional league’s Finals. As always, you can watch it live or as a VOD but only up to 7 days after the match ends in order to earn. You must be logged in and watching on watch.lolesports.com or on the League Friends App (download iOS/Android). You need to watch at least 10 minutes of a game for it to count toward mission progress. 
Below are the missions and rewards you can expect, but as a reminder, you will only receive the mission that corresponds to your region; so if you’re playing in EU, you’ll receive the LEC mission, and if you’re playing in Brazil, you’ll receive the CBLoL mission.
Excluding the icon you can earn, all of these icons will be available in store for 250 RP until April 27 23:59 PT. You can also check out your mission progress and total games watched on the rewards hub."

/Dev: Nexus Blitz Wrap-Up

Check out the latest /Dev on Nexus Blitz - "What we learned from the 2nd run of Nexus Blitz, and our future plans for the experimental mode."
"During the summer of 2018, we launched the Nexus Blitz alpha as the first “experimental game mode,” a new development approach where we start live testing of a game mode very early in development to help us determine if we should continue working on it. Based on the feedback we got during that first window, we decided to bring it back for a second, longer test run during Snowdown with a huge set of changes. 
After seeing how players engaged while Nexus Blitz was live, we’ve decided not to make it permanent at this time. It remains a great mode to occasionally bring back in the future, especially when paired with an event, but players just weren’t playing it enough by the end of the run to keep it always turned on. We know this news might disappoint some Nexus Blitz mains, but the experiment of making it with the League community taught us a lot about what you value, and the lessons from Nexus Blitz will help us make our future modes even more resonant and broadly appealing. 
The Second Run of Nexus Blitz 
We structured this live window of Nexus Blitz to have two phases: The first four weeks took place during Snowdown as the central “special event” mode, and the last two weeks were a standalone experience. We changed the map a bunch, added new content, introduced bans, and brought in a huge list of other improvements. You can find the full changelist here. 
How’d It Go? 
At launch and during Snowdown, people played a ton of Nexus Blitz! There was a huge surge of players that queued up to experience all the changes, and total hours played in the first four weeks of the second run were double that of the first—that’s CRAZY. With the exception of the URF modes, Nexus Blitz had the highest engagement from players on an alternate game mode. 
People really loved the new content added for this run—Prize Fight and URF Deathmatch were the favorite events by a mile, and the Battle Sled was the most loved reward from the list based on player surveys. Many of the other big changes like the updated map art, addition of bans, and forecast of which event was coming up were also broadly well-received. The quiet powerhouse, though, was the addition of the Nexus Blitz missions and the mode’s tie-in with Snowdown. We saw huge interest in the Nexus Blitz missions, mode-exclusive unlockable cosmetics, and the Snowdown missions to earn tokens. 
But when Snowdown ended and the missions turned off for the last two weeks of the run, we saw a huge portion of Nexus Blitz players immediately go back to their usual modes. There was a significant drop in hours played per day, and engagement continued to decline for the rest of the run. 
All this tells us that Nexus Blitz is at its best when it’s closely tied into an event. Most players wanted to check out the new, crazy, “wait, that happened in League??” moments, but the novelty of those experiences eventually faded. The big reason people came back consistently was because they had goals to work towards in the form of earnable cosmetics, mission completion, and tokens. Once they had achieved those goals, the vast majority of players preferred to switch back to their usual modes. 
What We’ve Learned 
Ideally the experimental mode that we make permanent will be able to draw people in over and over again, even after that first burst of novelty wears off and there isn’t an event going on. As we think about future experimental modes, we’ll be reflecting on the lessons learned here and using that knowledge to create a long-lasting experience that can repeatedly serve players. Excitingly enough, we’re already using some of these learnings in other modes. Recently, we brought the Catapult of Champions to ARURF+ so players don’t have to always take Teleport, and we also applied the Nexus Blitz balance approach to both ARURF+ and the ARAM event mode. 
While we’re no longer considering Nexus Blitz as a permanent mode for the foreseeable future, we are going to treat it as a great mode to accompany events, especially given its flexibility to feature new in-game events and rewards. We’re already starting to think about when it could come back! 
I want to take a moment to give a sincere “thank you” to the League community. Thank you so much for jumping in, looking past the unpolished parts, and having a great time playing this experimental mode. We loved seeing all the clips of Battle Sled crashes, Bardle Royale Poppy ults, and clutch Prize Fight duels.

As developers, it was amazing to get real feedback from the community so quickly, which only helped us to make more meaningful improvements to the mode right away. While we don’t have immediate plans, Nexus Blitz gained a lot from the “experimental modes” approach, and it’s a path we’ll consider for future prototypes. Thanks for helping us make a better (and blitzier) game mode! 
To commemorate some of the mayhem, here are some tidbits our data analysts shared about the mode! 
Nexus Blitz Fun Facts:
  • The Catapult of Champions was originally conceived of by Brian “Feral Pony” Feeney and is known as the FeeneyPult internally.
  • It is also known as the Int-Pult, but it’s not as bad as the Int-Sled, which was by far the lowest win rate reward and the best way to lose a lead. It was also most players’ favorite reward.
  • Despite having one of the highest win rates, Nasus had the lowest proportions of S grades and highest of D and C grades. Gotta get them stacks.
  • The Arena event winner had the highest win rate of any event, finally proving that “2v2, 2v2, 1v1 me” is a valid way to determine the better team.
  • About 1 in 5 games ended with Sudden Death Nexus-to-Nexus Combat.
  • Maokai was played the most on Nexus Blitz in comparison to Summoner’s Rift. He was also probably winning the most compared to SR.
  • Akali was one of the top 20 most played champions, despite having the lowest win rate in the game mode (41%).
  • The most purchased NB-exclusive item was Deathfire Grasp and the least purchased was Wriggle’s Lantern. Stat-Stick of Stoicism had the highest win rate (60%), but that’s mostly because only the people who were already winning could afford it."

Esports in the League Friends app! 

New features are available in the League Friends app! Check out this article for more details:
"Looking for a better way to keep up with LoL Esports? The League Friends app (download for iOS, Android) now includes up-to-date schedules and VODs for most regional leagues!
You can customize your app to show only the leagues you follow, and watching VODs in the app counts toward Watch Rewards. The app also includes League/LoL Esports news and lets you manage your in-game friends list. 
We’re dedicated to bringing you new ways to interact with LoL on your phone. Let us know what you think - you can provide feedback through the app via the settings menu, on social or in the comment section below."

Miscellaneous

  • A new support article detailing a new patcher is up on the support site! Look for it to slowly roll out over the next few patches:
"We've created a new League patcher that's faster and more stable. We'll launch it over the course of a few patches, so if you don't have it yet, you will soon."

Reminders

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

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