Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts May 15, Rainbow Fluft Icons, & more

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: May 15th

Here's Riot Scruffy with his quick gameplay thoughts for May 15th - "Enhanced Elemental Rifts and other Systems Changes.":

"Disclaimer 

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The work or goals could change depending on what we discover, and projects mentioned may get delayed or even stopped. That said, I believe it’s important to share as much as we can even if plans may change. 

Elemental Rift Touch Up for 10.12 

We’ve been slow burning on a few light improvements to some Elemental Rifts. After having some time to see the Elemental Rifts gameplay settle in this season, we’re very happy with how environmental changes add new mastery points and freshness without generating particular advantage to one team or another - it’s how well you use them. Based on that, we’re adding a few more elements to some rifts to enhance their gameplay possibilities: 

• Infernal Rift - Destruction of walls opens new pathing, doubling down on this idea.
• Additional Blast Cones spawn in the jungle and alcoves
• Cloud Rift - Whirlwinds in the jungle enhance speed and rotations
• Additional Scryers Blooms spawn in the jungle
• Wind speed areas now have increased effect for champions out of combat 

Runes and Summoner Spells for 10.12 

We’ve also looked through runes and summoner spells for improvements and discovered some opportunities. We’ve targeted runes and summoners that are weak, too narrow, or underdelivering on satisfaction causing them to have very few users. 

• Keystone Runes
• Guardian - the goal here is to ease up the usability of this rune significantly by making the area that you can protect allies much larger. Additionally, we’re changing the trigger from “any damage” to a significant burst of damage so that you have fewer cases where it triggers on tiny chip damage.
• Predator - Overall we’re simplifying and removing some restrictions like the long channel time, reducing the cooldown significantly and lowering the damage. The end result we hope is that this remains a strong option for ganking junglers, but also can find use with top fighters and supports.
• Minor Runes - We’re looking to tune and tweak a handful of minor runes.
• Unflinching - Simplifying to a more available tenacity option. 10% tenacity increased to 30% at low health.
• Approach Velocity - Removing the ally element which hasn’t delivered on the intended core idea for CC heavy champs to capitalize on their picks. New direction - movement speed towards CCed enemies, doubled when the CC is applied by yourself.
• Ghost - Ghost overall seems like a weak summoner, so we’re taking the opportunity to buff it but also look for ways to improve its satisfaction and differentiation from other summoners. We’re still iterating on this, but currently changes like removing the “ramp up” are on the table. 

Bot and Mid Progress 

After testing our first round of Bot lane changes, we’re fairly happy with the initial spike, but we think there is an even better direction that focuses entirely on defensive power instead of splitting it between offense and defense. In the end, we think that the core pain point bot lane players are having isn’t a lack of damage, but survivability and self reliance. We’re hoping that a mix of base health and movement speed, give the correct small nudge in terms of surviving burst and dodging incoming spells. The current set of changes we’re testing (not final) are: 

• Base HP +30 (across bot lane marksmen)
• HP per level +2
• Zeal MS: 5% >>> 7%
• PD MS: 5% >>> 7%
• RFC MS: 5% >>> 7%
• Shiv MS: 5% >>> 7%
• Hurricane MS: 7% >>> 9% 

Our current goal is to ship these bot lane changes for 10.11 if we can get confidence that they’re balanced and producing the right outcomes. Work on mid lane hasn’t yet started, we will pick that up after we finish up the bot position buffs. 

Thanks again everyone for playing. Stay safe out there. 

Scruffy"

He continued:

"Current plan for marksman base hp buffs is that they will apply to all bot laners except Lucian, Kalista, and Vayne. Those three will get different changes that are more scaling focused to avoid the risk of them skewing solo lanes."

Rainbow Fluft Icons Now Available!

Six new Rainbow Fluft icons are now available in the store for 1BE! These icons unlock Rainbow spawn and homeguard animations on the Rift, as well as in TFT! The animation colors will match the icon colors.

Miscellaneous

• Trundle's biography was updated on the Universe:

"Trolls are, for the most part, hulking and brutish creatures, found in many of Runeterra’s least hospitable environments. Though not invulnerable, they are blessed with a hardy constitution and the ability to heal more quickly than other mortal races—especially the feeble humans. This means they can endure extremes of climate and scarce resources merely by out-surviving their rivals, and this is the most likely reason some of the largest known tribes still call the mountains of the Freljord home."

Other Games

• League of Legends: Wild Rift
• Here's more from the Wild Rift Twitter about Google Play bugs & an upcoming alpha:

"Hey everyone, Wild Rift team here. We hope everyone is staying safe and well. A few quick updates on our Google Play Store page. We’re seeing reports of a few confusing experiences which we’re hoping we can clear up. Here goes:"

Reminders 

• The FPX skins are now in the store and will be available until June 11th!

• The Pulsefire 2020 event is running from now until June 15th!