Surrender at 20

Red Post Collection: Preseason 2020, Night & Dawn event coming soon, TFT Ranked Set 2, Zed comic Issue #1, and more!

Today's red post collection includes a look at the in-client Preseason 2020 hub & upcoming Night & Dawn event, notes on TFT ranked with set 2, the first issue of the new Zed comic series, and more!
Continue reading for more information!


Table of Contents


Patch 9.23 Hotfixes

Patch 9.23 is in full swing and the Preseason 2020 changes are now in testing! Because these changes are so extensive, the team has been keeping a close eye and a handful of hotfixes and changes have gone through already!

Patch 9.23 Notes - Mid Patch Updates

Here's an excerpt from the Patch 9.23 notes showing details on some of the hotfixes:
"11/21/2019 Elder Dragon's Execute Damage Calculation 
  • EXECUTE DAMAGE CALCULATION Elder Dragon's Immolation now properly calculates its 20% health execute threshold with resistances accounted for 
11/20/2019 Fiddlesticks VFX and Death's Dance Bugfix 
Fiddlesticks
  • VFX BUGFIX Fiddlesticks' R - Crowstorm VFX is no longer invisible to the enemy team
Death's Dance
  • BUGFIX Death's Dance passive will no longer infinitely proc Infernal Soul explosions (Summon Aery will also no longer infinitely proc from said explosions)"

Other Hotfixes

Riot Scruffy noted other hotfix changes that went through that are not yet noted in the patch notes:
"Preaseason Balance Hotfix going live - This covers champ, rune, and item outliers. We will have more info on systems in the next few days."


TFT Hotfixes

Riot Mort noted a few TFT hotfix changes that should now be live:
[1] TFT - As promised, we checked the data this morning to see how we're looking balance wise. Brand is not out of line (it's an inconsistent build that can succeed) so we'll be sticking to our plan of no B-Patch or hotfix. 
NAH JK GONNA HOT FIX IT ASAP (next 24 hours)

[2] Actual Changes: 
Brand Mana: 0/85 >>> 0/90 
Brand Spell Damage: 300/450/600 >>> 250/325/400 
Brand Spell Bounces: 5/6/20 >>> 5/7/20 
This means with 4 ocean he needs an extra auto to cast, and his total damage output is down ~17% and more spread out, which is less valuable dmg.
[3] TFT - We just deployed a hotfix for the following: 
*Ranged unit targeting issues have been fixed 
*Brand has been nerfed. (Tool tip won't update, but you know it's live since Brand has 90 mana) 
Enjoy and good luck in your ranked climb!"

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: November 22

Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for November 22, including thoughts on Preseason so far, Worlds champ diversity, 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 
Preseason so far 
Hopefully preseason's treating you well so far. Thoughts on a range of topics below.
  • Bugs
Getting high impact gameplay bugs addressed is one of our main focuses after each preseason ships. We've hit the highest urgency ones through hotfixes (Fiddle R missing its visual effects, Death's Dance and Infernal Soul interacting incorrectly, Elder sometimes executing at too high a health threshold). Aim is to hit a range of other preseason associated gameplay bugs in 9.24.
  • General Balance
Early indicators suggest the game's in a reasonably good state so far for just after a large patch. Champion win rates have changed at most one or two percent generally, with most not moving much at all on average. A few specific categories covered below, next up we'll be looking at how the difference SR types (Cloud, Ocean etc) affect the win rates of different champs (e.g. how much does an Ocean game actually help Rengar?). After that we'll also be digging into various other things not touched on below (e.g. impact of RH changes or side lane alcoves, how jungle and top lane agency have changed etc).
  • Kleptomancy and Oministone Balance
Klepto users look to be down meaningfully in power as expected. We'll be putting some power back into some of their kits as a result, starting with a hotfix (probably out already by the time you read this) to Ezreal who's been the most affected.
Early indications are that Omnistone is too weak so we're discussing a potential hotfix buff to it. It's not the optimal choice on any champion at present, though is moderately close to being so on a few champs (Kayle, Kennen, Illaoi, Twisted Fate).
  • Balance impacts of Crit, Lethality, Support item changes
Crit changes so far seem pretty power neutral to crit users. Lethality users seem to be somewhere between neutral and slightly weaker. Support item changes don't seem to have shifted the balance of power substantially between different types of support, with no clear trend yet for how tanks versus enchanters versus damage supports have been affected and win rate changes almost all below 1%. 
It's early days still though when it comes to assessing these sorts of changes. Things like players adapting their builds, the meta being a bit uncertain and team comps being less optimized with ranked off will likely impact assessment of item changes somewhat. We're going to keep digging into them as a result, early signs are things are pretty balanced though.
  • Infernal Screen Tint
We'll be toning down the amount of screen tint the infernal SR transformation creates. Feedback on that's been pretty clear that it's overly dominant. We'll have some changes on the PBE the next time it updates and would love feedback on whether the change feels right, goes too far or doesn't go far enough. Plan is to then ship a change in 9.24. 
Worlds Champion Diversity 
One of a number of things we look at each year post Worlds is how champion diversity compared to previous years since we believe that's one of the components that supports both a great viewing experience and a good competitive experience. 2019 was overall quite a good year in that regard, even if a few champions (Panth, Qiyana, Kai'Sa and Xayah) were much higher profile than ideal, leading to some meaningful staleness of champ select/team comps at times still. Some slides one of our analysts (thanks Blaustoise!) put together below that show some of the ways we look at that sort of data. 
For those unfamiliar, the Gini Coefficient is a statistic usually used to measure income inequality. In our case, we're using pick/ban presence instead of income. A score of 0 means perfect pick/ban equality among the entire roster, so lower's better.
TFT Ranked Season start 
TFT ranked kicked off on Wednesday with the new set. For this set we opted to go for a complete LP reset and a partial MMR reset. From discussion we've seen so far that's creating both some confusion and some frustration, particularly in cases where LP and MMR feel very far apart (e.g. LP climbing slowly for Masters players because max LP is capped per game at one division's worth). Feedback on how the reset's felt to you much appreciated, we'd like to refine our approach here. Since TFT seasons are much shorter than SR ones issues will be felt more often, though on the positive side it also means we've got more opportunities to make the sort of large improvements that can only happen at a season start."

True Damage Ekko Tweaks

Here's Riot Eggo McLego with details on tweaks to True Damage Ekko and his chroma:
"Greetings fellow humans, 
We have a couple of True Damage Ekko updates for you today! 
Based on feedback surrounding True Damage Ekko, we agreed that his hair looked too sparse in certain animations. We’ve fixed the texture in patch 9.23 to cover more of his head without altering his overall look very much. Again, this is already live, but wanted to make sure that everyone who chimed in about this was aware of the change!
Secondly, seven of True Damage Ekko's chromas went live in patch 9.23, but we have one more coming in patch 9.24. Due to some adjustments we wanted to make to that eighth chroma (‘Obsidian True Damage Ekko’), it was not included in time to be a part of the bundle. The pricing on the bundle correctly reflected the seven chromas, so those who bought it were not overcharged for eight. But with that said, the Obsidian TD Ekko chroma will not ever be a part of the chroma bundle, and will only be available for purchase individually. 
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and for your time! 
Riot Eggo McLego"

Preseason Hub +  Night & Dawn Event coming Soon

With Patch 9.23 out to live, Preseason 2020 is here and you can check out more the new in-client Preseason 2020 tab on the home page.

After clicking to start the journey, you'll find embedded links to the preseason spotlight and the lengthy preseason patch notes. Towards the bottom you can find a timeline for what is coming soon in Preseason 2020 including the Global Beta for Clash listed on December 2nd, our new champion Aphelios on December 11th, a new Night & Dawn event for December 12th, and the road to season start on January 8th.
Look for more on this upcoming Night & Dawn event soon!

Here's a large version pulled from the LoL FB:
Artist Mathias Zamęcki has also shared several close up and work in progress shots of this art over on twitter.

TFT Ranked in Set 2 Rise of the Elements

Here's Riot MapleNectar on the boards with more information on the new ranked season for TFT Set 2 including details on how everyone's ranks and MMR will shake out:
"Hey Tacticians! 
With Rise of the Elements now out in the wild, and our first patch coming to a close, we wanted to highlight what you should expect from the next Teamfight Tactics ranked split when it kicks back off this week on patch 9.23. There’s three main things we wanted to cover:
  • We'll be hard resetting everyone’s rank down to Iron.
  • We'll be soft resetting everyone’s MMR.
  • Never losing LP for coming 4th
Why a hard rank reset? 
For many of you, we know that progressing through the ladder as you master a game can be an incredibly satisfying period of time. We want to see if we can offer that entirely fresh ranked experience each time we release a new set. Given that we’ve introduced almost entirely new champions, spells, and strategies, we feel now is a good time to go for a big change, and gather feedback from players to see how it feels to inform future set releases. It’s worth noting that during placements - the first 5 ranked games you play on 9.23, you will not lose any LP regardless of how low you place so the sky's the limit if you win all 5! 
Why a soft MMR reset? 
While everyone kicking off their ranked split from the same rank is exciting, we still want the games at the start of the season to feel competitive and fair. We don't want someone totally new to ranked ending up in a game with all of you former challenger players, just like we don't want a challenger player finding themselves in a lobby with a bunch of players in Iron (and me). Since we’d changed SO much about the game however, we went with a soft reset to reflect the learning process we are all going through while maintaining the competitive nature of the queue. That being said, players who were high MMR in Set 1 can expect that they’ll progress through the ranks faster than those who were lower MMR. While we want your first games to be competitive, we also didn’t want it to feel like you were punished for doing well during set 1. 
Never losing LP for coming 4th 
One clear pain point from Set 1 that many of you brought to our attention was that it felt really bad to place 4th in a game, thinking you “won”, only to end up losing LP. These instances were rare, but when they happened they really felt shitty, so we wanted to make some improvements. In set 2, 4th place will now never result in an LP loss, but 5th place always will. We hope that this makes games where you make it to the top 4 feel more exciting, helps change the mindset that the only way to win is to come 1st, and it allows us to add some additional in game ceremony to help recognize your placement. 
We’re super excited to watch you figure out the new strategies available in Rise of the Elements over the coming months! Please continue to give us feedback, it helped us build Rise of the Elements knowing confidently that we were moving in the right direction. You can read up on some of the other larger changes we've made here."
With 9.23 going out to live, Teamfight Tactics ranked is back up!

Don't forget to kick off ranked by brushing up on the latest changes with the 9.23 TFT Patch notes!

Zed Comic Issue #1

The first issue of the new six part Zed comic is now available in full on the Universe! Issue #2 is set to release December 18th.
"In Ionia, a land steeped in tradition and still reeling from war, the once honorable warrior named Zed leads a band of assassins. After Zed murdered their master, his childhood friend Shen has taken a different path, inheriting his father’s former mantle as the Eye of Twilight and maintaining magical balance in Ionia. But when Zed is lured back to a village where he and Shen once encountered a great evil, a brutal killer from their past resurfaces: the magically gifted psychopath Khada Jhin!"
Issue #1 can be found in [here].
"Zed is lured back to a village where he and Shen once encountered a great evil, a brutal killer from their past resurfaces: the magically gifted psychopath Khada Jhin!"

Miscellaneous 

  • Riot Mort tweeted both a reminder that 9.23 is a three week patch cycle and that we can likely expect our first glimpse of 9.24 on the PBE next week.
  •  Riot Ashekandi tweeted that Lore Notes will be returning in 2020! Lore notes are sort of patch note like rundown of new and developing lore stories, releases, etc. - examples from the past can be found here and here.
  • Riot Lutzburg posted on the Dev Corner boards to note they have decided not to go through with the previously mentioned experimental changes to Max Cast Range:
"RESULTS UPDATE: After careful consideration, we have decided to fully revert this set of changes. Thanks to everyone for your feedback! This kind of thing is highly subjective and varies for all sorts of reasons. We ultimately agreed that the burden of asking players to re-learn spells was too high of a cost, even though there were benefits to the changes (especially for new players)."
  • In case you missed it in the 9.23 patch notes, the Essence Emporium is returning November 25th through December 10th!

"Your semi-weekly dose of server problem-os, NA League news, and other! (Moved to Mondays for easier updates) 
Worlds is over, True Damage (and Giants) launched, TFT Set 2 is live and ranked is near, and the end of the season is basically tonight, with a lot of last minute grinding. Buckle up, the year is almost over! 
Follow-Ups:
  • Mac voice still not working properly Bug grouped with other Mac bugs. Something to do with .plists
  • Project Akali Rose Quartz Chroma disabled(10/25 - 11/8) The NOC is notified via email that Project Akali’s Rose Quartz Chroma has missing assets, which cause invisible animations in game. Considering that has some game-breaking issues, the NOC disables that particular Chroma until the assets are fixed.
    • This bug is fixed by adding the chroma assets back in patch 9.22.
Ongoing
  • None
Server Stuff:
  • Impacted Match History(11/02, ~9 hours) Automated alerting notices that Match History values aren’t loading properly. NOC disables Match History while triage teams start to diagnose why the system isn’t uploading properly. Live Producers are called, and the root cause is solved after several hours of analysis.
  • Delayed game stat processing(11/2, ~45 minutes) Automated alerting notifies the NOC that game stat processing is starting to fall behind due to high volume of incoming stats. The NOC doesn’t escalate and instead watches to see if the lag behind reaches a critical state. It does not, and the system catches up to real time in an acceptable time frame.
  • Delayed game stat processing(11/3, ~270 minutes) Automated alerting notifies the NOC that data volume for match history is too high. Volume exceeds the ‘wait it out’ expectation, and teams are notified as the NOC disables Match History and enables tickers in the client. This backlog exists until after peak time, at which point the system is caught up and Match History is re-enabled.
  • Network Outage causes Leagues issues(11/6, ~4 hours) An automated alert from a network deploy notifies the NOC and other parties that a specific program is broken. The network deploy causes a system of interconnected systems to fail, requiring a full triage of all related services on NA. Various queues (Logins and ranked) are disabled while the systems undergo recovery.
  • Honor system causes messaging spike(11/18, ~6 hours) Automated alerts identify a problem with Honor services. Engineers notify the NOC that they want to perform a rolling restart on the servers hosting the services. The rolling restart is completed, and the Honor system recovers.
  • Error with Freljord Tribe bundle(11/08, ~30 minutes ) Rioters ping the NOC and store teams with errors of arena skin bundle purchases timing out. Investigation shows the bundles aren’t being completed and a re-initiation of the bundle to the database solves the problem.
  • Games failing to upload, impacting Match History(11/1, ~125 minutes) Match History stops working as the data being transmitted/stored is overloading the allocated bandwidth. Adjustments are made to the service to fix the backlog of games waiting to be stored.
  • Change to a service prevents confirmation email when buying RP(11/11, ~64 minutes) NOC is notified that a deploy taking place is causing issues with emails. In response, a rollback of the deploy is made, which fixes the email problem.
  • Loot disabled due to insufficient RAM total(11/13, ~3 hours) NOC is notified that Loot is having problems. The store and loot tabs are disabled, and engineering teams start to diagnose why the systems are having problems. Investigation points to Loot and not the store, which leads to a DB change approved earlier in the day. The DB change wasn’t to correct specs, and has since been fixed.
  • Store disabled due to players being unable to purchase content(11/13, ~2 hours) NOC is notified that players are unable to purchase content within the store. The store is quickly disabled, and the investigation shows the store isn’t the problem (Loot was, this issue was related to the Loot problem in the previous paragraph). Store is re-enabled.
Game Stuff:
  • One Game server host unreachable, causing issues(11/9, ~4 hours) The NOC is notified that automated comp mode isn’t running on a specific game host. Player Support reports ghost games on that specific host as well. The NOC investigation shows the game server crashed and never fully recovered. That server was restarted and re-initialized. The server recovered and services were restarted on that host.
  • One Game server host causing higher reconnects(11/11, ~70 minutes) The NOC is notified that one game server host has higher than normal numbers of reconnects. The NOC disables future games on that server to allow the server to drain. Once drained, the server is disabled and added to the check-list of stuff to look at for the next hardware maintenance cycle. 
Morgageddon
"Def agree that some animation in LoR slows down game pacing and we are looking for ways to resolve these without taking away the excitement of the moment! Currently we are digging into: Jinx's SuperMegaDeathRocket, Yasuo's strikes and Draven's Spinning axes!"

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