Surrender at 20

[Updated] Red Post Collection: QGT: 12/6, Riot Forge, Clash Global Beta, Rank Specific Merch & More

This red post collection includes the announcement of Riot Forge, details on the Clash Global Beta, Rank specific merch, new True Damage merch, new LoL & TFT loot on Twitch Prime, Meddler's Quick Gameplay Thoughts for December 6th, and more!
Continue reading for more information!


Table of Contents


Quick Gameplay Thoughts: December 6 

Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts for December 6th, including thoughts on jungler performance, 9.24b, the Prestige point shop, 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 
Looking into the effects of preseason on jungler performance 
We're looking into jungler performance right now, with the goal being to make some adjustments if needs be in 9.24b. Primary angles we're considering are:
  • Average level before preseason and after at different points in the game. When combined with kill participation this serves as a fairly good proxy for overall jungler influence.
  • Variation in jungler performance. The removal of catch up XP was intended to bring about bigger differences between high and low performing junglers. We do want to make sure we haven't swung too far the other way though, make sure small mistakes or good plays aren't leading to large advantages/disadvantages.
  • Whether particular classes and/or jungler styles are over or under performing (e.g. tanks versus carries, farmers versus gankers etc). 
9.24b 
Speaking of 9.24b, a brief timeline:
  • Patch 9.24 next week will be the last normal patch of the year.
  • We will do a server side only (so no download needed or new content like skins/champs) patch called 9.24b about a week after 9.24 goes out.
  • That patch will contain balance changes for SR and TFT, particularly to things that need some follow up after 9.24 (e.g. things that got hit too hard, didn't get hit hard enough, in retrospect should have been in 9.24 in the first place). Some current users of Conqueror are a likely group of candidates for changes for example if the Conqueror changes in 9.24 don't take off the predicted amount of power. 
Support Items 
In addition to looking at jungling we're also doing some analysis on the effects of the support item changes right now. Questions we're particularly looking to answer are things like whether the drop off in income post quest completion is too punishing (more GP10 on the item or less farming penalty?), whether the Ward portion of the quest is potentially being completed too quickly in some circumstances, whether the stat lines for the different items need some adjustments etc. No specific changes planned just yet though. 
Champion Win Rates by Rift Type 
One of the first things we wanted to find out after preseason went out was how the different elemental rifts + dragon souls impacted the power of different champions. We have seen some meaningful win rate differences depending on the champion + map type combination, but nothing particularly dramatic overall. Examples of some of that data below. Note that this is before the Ocean Drake regen nerf. It's also a combination of the impact of the terrain changes, the dragon buffs potentially acquired and the dragon soul potentially claimed. 
Some trends seem very much as expected (e.g. poke champs tend to do a bit worse on Ocean maps, given regen around and brush to hide in. Others are a bit more surprising (e.g. Rengar not actually doing better on an ocean map, with other factors offsetting power he gains from more brush pouncing). Tahm Kench, at least pre Ocean nerf, was the champion with the biggest win rate change based off a rift element, with the next most impacted champs around half his win rate change. Possible he just really wants regen, also possible a small sample size could be skewing data though (he's a less played champ and this is data from just a couple of days). More recent data suggests win rates are likely within 1% across elemental rifts for all champs, Tahm included.
Prestige Points 
On a different note, for anyone with Prestige points sitting around, we've got the Prestige Point shop coming up next week on the 12th of December. That will contain a range of stuff purchasable with less than 100 Prestige Points like skin Jackpot bags, Hextech Keys, Orange essence etc. 
Some more details in case you missed them the first time around can be found at the link below. We'll also have some more details to share when the shop itself goes live.
https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/prestige-updates 
Last post of the year 
This will be my last post of 2019, hope the year's treated you folks well! I'm heading home to New Zealand for a couple of weeks, so will be out of contact for a bit. Riot Scruffy's going to get a post here instead though next week covering things like where our jungle/support investigations have led, context on changes in 9.24b etc."

Riot Forge


Over at CCXP in São Paulo, Brazil, Riot announced their new game publisher, Riot Forge!
"We’re a player- and developer-focused publisher; our mission is to bring awesome new League of Legends games to players by partnering with experienced and talented developers from around the world. 
The League Universe and its champions offer limitless possibilities; by supporting and empowering passionate partners to tell their own stories and expand the League world, we’ll deliver a variety of bespoke games that enable players of all types to experience League in new and exciting ways. 
We can’t wait to get these games to players and play them ourselves!
If you’re a developer and want to be a part of our mission, we want to hear from you."
Check the post for an FAQ and Follow Riot Forge on Twitter for more details on upcoming games, including a game announcement at the Game Awards on  December 12th!


Twitch Prime Loot for LoL & TFT

New loot from Twitch Prime is now available for both LoL and TFT!

Receive a Mystery Skin permanent for LoL:

And receive a Mystery Little Legend Egg and Mystery Emote!

As the images suggest, look for additional loot to be unlocked for Twitch Prime in the near future!

Clash Global Beta

The Clash Global beta is here! Teams begin forming on December 2, with different lock-in times depending on Tier! Check out the Clash FAQ for all the details on forming teams, Tiers, lock-in times, and much more!
"WHAT IS CLASH? 
When Champions meet, a Clash is inevitable (and loads of fun). Clash is a biweekly tournament. This competitive game mode sees you and four fellow players team up to compete against other teams at your skill level. 
You can begin forming your team on Monday, but matches will take place either on Saturday or Sunday. Your team can join an 8-team bracket on either day (or on both!) If you win all three games, you'll get a trophy and awesome prizes! The more games you win, the better your prizes will be! And, if your team loses the first round, you can still play consolation games to keep improving your prize pool. 
Your team can only join one Clash bracket each day, and once you've joined, that team is locked in for the entire bracket. However, if things don't go well for you on Saturday, you can still come back Sunday and try again (with the same team, or even a new one!)"

You can also check out the Clash Homepage for full details and a run through on how the process works, as well as earn a free Clash ticket!
Finally, head to the client for the Clash hub, where you can start the signup process!

Riot IAmWalrus noted the removal of the Honor requirement for the global beta:
"Since I've seen a couple people asking: there's no Honor requirement for the Clash Global Beta. When we did some research, the restriction was keeping a lot of qualifying players out of Clash because of a potential teammate not having high enough Honor."

Rank Specific Merch

Finally climbed to Challenger this season? Check out the Merch unlocks page in the Riot Games Merch Store to commemorate it with a personalized item showing off your summoner name and rank!
"Welcome to Riot Games Merch Ranked Unlocks! Log in below to find out which products you qualify for. Each product will include your Summoner Name & Ranked Crest to rep your achievements from season 9. Available until the beginning of Season 10. To qualify you must be at least Honor Level 2 and placed in a rank for Summoner's Rift or Twisted Treeline."

True Damage Merch Collection


Speaking of merch, the True Damage website where we previously saw Akali's preview of her clothing line has dropped a new collection on 12/5! The full set of items are now available on TrueDamage.com!
"Limited edition streetwear pieces at truedamage.com in collaboration with the guys from Anti Social Social Club."

Miscellaneous

  • over on r/VolibearMains subreddit, RiotLutzburg noted should have more Volibear update info in January  
"There will be a Volibear-specific roadmap in January. I'm not sure how much we'll be sharing there, but expect some concrete details about the kit and some more visuals. :)"
  • Riot Astryx tweeted to remind everyone that Issue #2 of the Zed comic will be released December 12 at 12 AM PST!
  • Riot Scruffy provided changelists for 9.24 balance:
[1] Patch 9.24 Changes Preview:  
Bigger change lists in the thread. Almost final, but a few tweaks may still happen. This is the last patch of the year, but we expect to do a balance hotfix in late december (9.24b).
[2] Senna Nerfs - focused on nerfing adc senna more than support
[3] Yuumi Buffs - making her viable for regular play and less dominant in high elo and pro
On Yuumi, he added:  
"We intend the 9.24 Yuumi changes to have a pretty nice boost to her soloq winrates (and not have her pick ban pro).   
Because it's a pretty big list, we are expecting to check back again after the patch and follow up with buffs/nerfs if it doesn't land where we want." 
[4] Braum Buffs - Also targeted at regular player viability
[5] Omnistone "smart" logic
  • Over in the Sugar Rush Zilean PBE feedback thread, Riot KiWiKiD noted:
"Hey thanks for all of the feedback everyone! Will try to get the chroma matching the skin colors as that seems to resonate the most with ya'll"
  • Riot Sirhaian posted some updates to the Lux VFX work he's been doing:
[1] Some work I've done for the Lux VFX Update, based off all the feedback I received:
- Reduced some of the pinks overall
- Narrowed her auto attack missiles
- Reduced Base Q brightness slightly
- Added a trail to Base Q
- Added sparks on Q width indicator to make it a bit clearer 
[2] - Base W missile orbs are now pale orange like the rest of her kit
- Adjusted Base E explosion color
- Base R Red beam is now more red
- Added slightly more oomph to her Base R beam
- Did a value pass on all skins for her R
- Added a scorch mark on all her skins after R has fired 
[3] - R cleanup (too many lines)
- Changed the R indicators to match skin color where appropriate
- Adjusted her Quick Cast indicators to actually (and finally) match the range and width of her abilities
"It turns out the experimental TFT RFC changes didn't pan out so well (was favoring ranged champions too much and was hard to appreciate). Thanks everyone for the thoughts, excitement, and feedback about it. Hopefully we'll have other item changes to share in the coming weeks!"

"Deep dive into ranked and Clash with Riot IAmWalrus!"

"Watch from December 5 – 7 as Caps returns to defend his title against 31 of the greatest players in the world, including Pabu, the dark horse from the OPL that ran through the bracket in 2018 to nearly win the tournament."
"Your semi-weekly dose of server problem-os, NA League news, and other! (Moved to Mondays for easier updates) 
Preseason is here (for better or for worse) with a bunch of dragons, executions, new items, and another set of Clash testing coming to NA! Also, there’s been a bunch of roster changes across various LCS teams, TFT changes, All-Stars incoming, and several items have been removed from League. Oh yeah, and a lot of problems, so here’s a wall of text. :( 
Follow-Ups:
  • Mac voice still not working properly Bug grouped with other Mac bugs. Something to do with .plists. Haven’t seen any major progress from JIRA yet.
Ongoing
  • None
Server Stuff:
  • Delayed game stat processing(11/18, ~8 hours) 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(11/19, ~8 hours) See above
  • Delayed game stat processing(11/21, ~5 hours) See further above
  • Delayed game stat processing(11/23, ~15 hours) See further further above
  • Delayed game stat processing(11/24, ~20 hours) See further further further above
  • Delayed game stat processing(11/25, ~31 hours) See further further further further above
  • LoL Client doesn’t load landing page correctly on first login(11/20, ~21 minutes) Sydney Rioters notify the NOC that Rioters logging in for the first time that day are seeing login issues, but only on the first login for that day. Various testing rules out account specific issues, and a quick workaround is found (clicking on any tab and then back again fixes it). A JIRA bug is created to track and solve the underlying issue, but the root problem doesn’t warrant a hotfix.
  • Impacted parties and game invites(11/21, ~50 minutes) Rioters report issues with friend/chat list to the NOC. Quick checks show that relogging fixes the problem for most Rioters, but further investigation shows problems with a dedicated service. Engineers confirm that service is undergoing a deploy, and problems should disappear once the deploy has finished.
  • Impacted parties and game invites(11/25, ~21 minutes) Rioters report issues with friend/chat list to the NOC. Investigation shows a specific network node was timing out, causing the problems. Rebooting the node solved the problem.
  • Riot API high response times(11/22, ~51 minutes) NOC is manually alerted that the Riot API is exceeding high response time limits. Investigation shows the response time was caused by the League Connect app, and additional scaling is dedicated to the appropriate services, lowering the response times back within acceptable limits.
  • Outage impacting player ability to get in game(11/14, ~22 minutes) NOC is notified by automated alerting that there’s an overload in one monitoring system. Compensation mode is enabled and messaging broadcast. LPs on call start an investigation, which points to a specific service that froze, and needed a reboot to reset the issue properly.
  • Outage impacting player ability to get in game(11/14, ~26 minutes) See above
  • Issues with AskRiot and support site(11/25, ~128 minutes) Reports filter in that the Ask Riot page isn’t working properly. NOC escalates to the appropriate LP and triage shows that it’s likely a DNS issue. Rioters reach out to appropriate contacts to get the proper context, and end up taking down the page since it’s not reachable anymore.
  • Store gifting tab causes errors(11/25, ~22 hours) Reports filter that gifting is intermittently failing after a recent store deploy. NOC escalation reaches the LP, who starts a large investigation to uncover why gifting isn’t working properly. The root cause is discovered, and rolling restarts of the core services are needed to return the store to proper working order.
  • Match History unavailable(11/27, ~7 hours) NOC is alerted that match history is failing to load on NA. NOC starts to escalate the issue and enables tickers across the support sites. The issue spreads from NA to all Riot Regions, and engineers need to restart the core instances and disable functionality until the load decreased.
  • Error rate spike, impacting ranked borders on load-in(11/27, ~90 minutes) Automated alerts notify the NOC that there are error rates exceeding acceptable for a specific service. NOC escalates to the on-call team associated with the service, who discover the root service needs to undergo a full reboot. The reboot is done, and the errors don’t drop off. Further investigation shows a single node is causing problems, and once that node is killed, the errors disappear.
Game Stuff:
  • Critical node restart impacts game starts(11/20, ~20 minutes) NOC receives direct reports from Rioters that they are stuck at 0 in champ select. Compensation mode is quickly enabled after verification is made that multiple game lobbies are stuck in limbo. LPs on call make the decision to push messaging and start triaging, only to have all stuck lobbies slowly filter into active games without crashing out.
  • Fiddlesticks ult invisible to players(11/20, ~3 hours) The NOC is notified by game designers that Fiddlesticks may require a champion disable due to rising reports of invisible ultimates. 13 minutes later, Fiddlestick is disabled across all Riot-Regions. After a quick triage and change to the back-end services, Fiddle is re-enabled across all regions and messaging is removed. Total time of Fiddlesticks problems: ~3 hours.
  • Poro King accidentally enabled(11/26, ~2 minutes) The NOC is notified that the game mode was accidentally enabled by a developer by mistake, and immediately turned it off after realizing the mistake. Sorry fluffy, you’ve got to wait for the right time to be enabled.
Morgageddon"

Reminders

To round out this red post collection, here are a few reminders on current promotions or limited time events!
  • The Essence Emporium is now open in the client! From November 25th to December 10th, you can get chromas, icons, skins, and more for Blue Essence! Head tot he client to check out the deals!

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