Surrender at 20: Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts 8/27, Inktales Little Legends, Pentakill News & More

Today's red post collection includes quick gameplay thoughts from AzuBK on Amumu, Inktales Little Legends, More Pentakill III news, and more!

Continue reading for more information!

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: 8/27

Here's AzuBK with this week's quick gameplay thoughts on recent Amumu changes - "Philosophy behind Amumu's 11.17 changes.":

Hi everyone. I’m AzuBK from the Summoner’s Rift Team, here to break down the Amumu changes that just went out with patch 11.17. I’ve been working on Amumu with the intent of showing some love to one of our oldest champions, and wanted to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about how we approach this type of project in general.

For those who aren’t familiar, the core of the change is that Amumu can store two charges of Bandage Toss and his early game is buffed. That new power came with tradeoffs in other parts of his kit, which we’ll get to later on.

So, let’s start from the beginning. Amumu isn’t exactly a world-beater at the high end of League’s ranked ladder, and that’s not news. For a long time now, he’s barely scraped by in higher-skilled play while also bordering on overpowered for the average player. This is an unfortunate position for players of any champion, because it means that your favorite champ becomes less and less powerful as you improve at the game. It can feel like League is telling you that, in order to climb, you need to abandon your champ—and that sucks.

We talk a lot on the Summoner’s Rift Team about ways to help champs in this sort of tough spot, but actually resolving the issue is a delicate undertaking. There are a lot of tricky factors we have to reckon with on this type of change, which we refer to as a “reshape.” Many of them overlap with the considerations we have for VGUs.

We want to enhance what current players of the champion love about their champ, or at least retain it as best we can. However, that playerbase isn’t homogenous. They often want different things, and it’s a careful dance to respect as many of them as possible while also making the changes we believe will best serve everyone.

This type of project usually demands more ambitious, novel changes, which are also more uncertain than something like +5 AD. This means we spend more time than usual testing and validating, and even then the outcome is never 100% sure. PBE feedback is especially helpful for understanding whether players think we’ve gone too far or missed something critical, which can cause us to re-evaluate our approach.

Finally, we ask for a lot of trust when we make big changes to a champion, so the stakes are high. It’s unlikely that we revisit the same champ for major changes anytime soon, since we have obligations to the entire roster and also don’t want to force players to re-learn their main repeatedly. So, both we and players know it’s gotta be good the first time, aside from follow-up tuning.

With all of that in mind, let’s explore how we arrived at the Amumu changes we made this patch. It was clear from the get-go that small adjustments weren’t going to cut it, as he had nearly a 6% winrate difference between Average and Skilled play. So, I pitched a bigger idea that I believed would dramatically increase Amumu’s skill expression: 2 Q charges.

The idea behind this change was that it would add flexibility to his play pattern. He could Spiderman around the jungle, Q to the frontline to threaten the backline, Q to a minion for a gank, Q to peel without giving up all his threat… Basically, Amumu would no longer be a sitting duck after casting his first Q. This change seemed to do the job, so it remained through the entire process. We also know early power is more valuable in higher MMR, so I brought up his clear speed through early W buffs. Combined with the Q change, this seriously improved his early skirmishing.

The Game Analysis Team (high-MMR and ex-pro players who test and advise on our projects) reported that Amumu was running over their tests early game, which was great to hear since the goal was to make him appealing for their skill level specifically. Lower-MMR tests showed him to still be reasonable, which made me pretty confident that the direction could work with some fine-tuning. I pulled back on Q's cooldown, because it often felt more like 3 Qs than 2. I nerfed his late-game through R and W, along with some base stat scaling reductions. After further testing with GAT, we had a list of changes we were proud to deliver to you all.

I hope you enjoyed this look into how we approach reshapes for troubled champions. By the time you read this, Amumu’s reshape has been live for a few days, and I hope he’s landed well. If he hasn’t, I’m probably talking to the team about how we can follow up. If he has, well… there’s always another champion to work on."

Turning Off Web Match History

Here's Riot Aether on web match history - "The web version of League's match history is deactivating on Sep 7.":

Where do you go when you want to check match history for a game you recently played? Chances are, it's probably the client or a community website. Very few players use our official Match History site, and we're okay with that.

Web match history is in a similar situation as Clubs was: Community sites have done amazing things with the match data provided by our APIs, far surpassing our site. So, as with Clubs, we're going to fully hand things over to these experts. On September 7 around 10:00 AM PST, the League Web Match History site will be permanently taken offline.

A few key notes:

The client will still have a match history page

We're not shutting down third party access to match history data, though we are transitioning to a new service for it. Our Developer Relations team will continue to support third party sites during the transition.

We're also creating a solution for esports sites that should be an improvement to how they currently get data. Technically unrelated to regular match history, but worth mentioning.

Here are a few sites you can bookmark for your web match history needs in North America:

op.gg

porofessor.gg

Mobalytics"

Painted To Life: Inktale Little Legends

Here's MinionsRPeople2 with a rundown on the Inktale Little Legends - "Bursting from the canvas of the painted world in patch 11.18 comes a new Little Legend thematic!"

"Bursting from the canvas of the painted world comes an all new Little Legend thematic: Inktale! Coming to life in patch 11.18 are five variants each for Ao Shin, Featherknight, and Paddlemar. They’ll be available by direct purchase, through eggs, or through bundles (of joy)!

The Inktale universe is steeped in myth, each new legend adding a fresh coat of paint over the last. In this painted world, five elements (Azure, Terra, Darkspark, Ember, Galeborn) vie for domain on the canvas. But which will you choose as the final layer of your masterpiece?

Choose your elemental Inktale via direct purchase for $7.99 (mobile) or 925 RP. But if you’re having trouble choosing, don’t! We’ve also got bundles for all you collectors and art enthusiasts below:

Look, I know you want to start painting happy little Convergence clouds and happy little first place animations with your newest Little Legend. But before you go choosing one willy-nilly, let’s get to know them! (I hear they’re quite animated!)

Water is the element of change, and Azure Inktales are all about going with the flow. They're also all about staying hydrated.

Want the strength to move mountains? The Terra Inktales can do that with the stroke of a brush, riff of a guitar, or… I think that Paddlemar just moved one in their sleep?

It’s lonely being the most powerful element, but it sure feels good knowing you are. Darkspark Inktales channel the colors of moody storms, and the moods of stormy tweens. You just don’t understand them yet.

Ember Inktales burn the canvas with each brush stroke, paving the way for new life. But if you ask me, burning that poor Galeborn Paddlemar’s scroll seems downright sketchy! Don’t worry, we’re working on a new one for them as we speak—er, write.

While the other Inktales are bickering over their own spot on the page, the Galeborn Inktales float on without a care on the canvas. It’s in their breezy nature to let the others quarrel while they lackadaisically pollinate the land, feed the fires, and brew the storms.

With the new Inktale thematic, we're excited to bring you all a universe brimming with vibrant colors. Anything is possible in this painted world, so take up a brush and add your story. If you have an inkling for Inktales like us, there may be more story and Little Legends from this world still yet to be painted."

Pentakill III: Lost Chapter News

As we get closer to the release of the next Pentakill album, a sinister story has been unfolding on the Riot Games Music Twitter! Here's a look at their latest tweets:

Tweets by riotgamesmusic

Check out the videos on Youtube:

"On 9.8.21 at 1:00 PM PT, experience Lost Chapter in an interactive album experience. Join Pentakill and make history: register now: wave.watch/pentakill"

The Battle Of Pentakill Begins... | Experience Trailer

Finally, Part 2 and 3 of The Dissonant Verses were added over on the Universe!

The Dissonant Verses by Ian St. Martin

Miscellaneous

The Wild Rift twitter noted some changes for Thresh, and the LoL twitter followed up nothing those changes would be reflected on the Unbound Thresh skin:

[Wild Rift]"In Patch 2.5 in October, we'll be adding some tweaks to Thresh's collection page model to match his appearance in A Night At The Inn. All that torment takes a toll, y'know."

[LoL] We'll be releasing changes to Unbound Thresh on League of Legends as well!

A WIP splash for LoL was also shown off:

A new Garen Unlocked statue is now available on the Riot Games merch store!

A preorder for a new Elemental Lux figure is now up on GoodSmile!

"From "League of Legends" comes a 1/7th scale figure of Elementalist Lux! The Lady of Luminosity's Elementalist skin has been captured in figure form in stunning detail! Preorders open now!