News of Legends

 

Patch 6.9 will hit live in the early hours of May 4th (Wednesday), assuming there are no delays. Here are all its contents:

 

StoreContent

• Black Scourge Singed
• Cursed Revenant Nocturne
• Iron Inquisitor Kayle
• New Summoner Icons

Balance

• General Changes
• Champion Changes
• Item Changes
• Objectives

Miscellaneous

• New Splash Arts

 

 

Black Scourge Singed will be available in store for 750 RP.

 

 

 

 

 

Cursed Revenant Nocturne will be available in store for 750 RP.

 

 

 

 

 

Iron Inquisitor will be available in store for 750 RP.

 

 

 

 

 

Four new summoner icons will be available for purchase; they’ll either require 250 RP or a blood sacrifice:

 

 

 

 

 

Hi all,

Most of the mid-season stuff should be on the PBE within the next day or two. As usual it should be pretty easy to identify most of the changes, there are a few things I wanted to call out though since they may not be as easy to spot as the more standard stuff like champion adjustments. Some of this stuff will also be discussed in more detail over the next few days by the developers working specifically on it too.

• Jungling XP’s getting adjusted. In particular Machete now gives more XP, including the catch up XP if you’re lower level than the monsters themselves. That’s a change targeted primarily at how safe and effective buddy jungling is in organized play.

• Tower damage will now ramp up quicker against champions and will maintain it’s ramped state when swapping between multiple champions. Agro juggling during a dive should still be a good play some of the time, but riskier at low levels in particular.

• Death timers will be getting reduced somewhat, probably between the 20-30 minute marks primarily. This is a follow up to the 6.7 changes that targeted 30 minute+ death timers, similarly aimed at reducing how punishing one fight can be and keeping a bit less gray screen time.

• Boot enchants are getting removed. After making Homeguard a universal effect post 20 minutes we wanted to see how the boot enchant system played out. One of the main consequences has been Alacrity on a lot of champions, which as lead to noticeably higher average movement speeds. That throws off balance on a number of things, skillshots and ground targeted AOEs in particular, so we’d like to get average speeds back to a more appropriate spot. Removing boot enchants, now that the most impactful and significant is always provided, was one of the best ways we identified to do that.

• Baron buff duration’s going up a bit, in part to draw clear distinctions between it and the Elder Dragon buff (Elder dragon’s around half the length, and on a longer respawn timer than normal dragons, so there shouldn’t be too many cases of each team taking one of the two and then the game stalling until both are gone).

[ Link to Post ]

 

Grievous Wounds [ Debuff ]

• Will now reduce all healing by 40%, not just self-healing.

 

 

 

• Missile speed of basic attacks increased from 1400 to 1500.

 

Flash Frost [ Q ]

• Damage on both pass-through and explosion decreased from 60/90/120/150/180 [+0.5 AP] to 60/85/110/135/160 [+0.4 AP].
• Ranks in Glacial Storm [ R ] now increase Flash Frost’s slow strength from 20% to 20/30/40%.
• Stun duration increased from 1 second at all ranks to 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5.

(Note) The stun circle effect can now be seen by enemies too.

 

Frostbite [ E ]

• Missile speed increased from 1200 to 1600.
• Looks like the cast center now originates from the end of Anivia’s model, not her center.

 

Glacial Storm [ R ]

• Slow strength increased from 20% to 20/30/40%, but no longer slows Attack Speed of enemies in the AoE;
• AoE now increases from 150 range to 400 over 3 seconds. At 400 range, the field slows for 70/80/90% and applies the “Chill” debuff for 2 seconds, up from 1;
• Cast range increased from 625 to 685;
• Now has a short cast animation.

 

 

Anivia’s also received new spell icons in today’s patch. From left to right: Passive, Q, W, E and R:

 

 

 

Pyromania [ Passive ]

• Now uses Jhin’s ammunition UI below Annie’s health bar to display the stacks toward a stun.

 

Incinerate [ W ]

• Cast range increased from 560 to 600;
• The damage and stun now only register after the cast animation completes, not when the spell is cast.

 

Molten Shield [ E ]

• No longer grants 10/20/30/40/50 Armor and Magic resist while the shield lasts; instead, it grants 16/22/28/34/40% damage reduction;
• Duration of shield increased from 3 seconds at all ranks to 5.
• Casting Molten Shield no longer gives Tibbers 300 movespeed (decaying over 0.75 seconds).

 

Summon: Tibbers [ R ]

Damage decreased from 175/300/425 [+0.8 AP] to 150/275/400 [+0.65 AP];

Damage of Tibbers aura decreased from 20/30/40 [+0.2 AP] to 10/15/20 [+0.1 AP];

Auto-attack range of Tibbers increased from 125 to 150;

Damage on Tibbers’ auto attacks changed from 80/105/130 to 50/75/100 [+0.15 AP];

Tibbers now regenerates 10% of his maximum Health-per-second after he’s been out of combat for 5 seconds;

Additionally, Tibbers will heal for 50% of his missing Health if Annie dies; he’ll also automatically aggro on the Champion that killed Annie if he’s within 1200 range;

Alt+Click on Annie will now make Tibbers follow Annie.

New effect: Tibbers Enrages when summoned; Annie stuns a Champion with Pyromania; and when Annie dies;

Enrages: Tibbers gains 275% Attack Speed and 100% Movement Speed, with the AS buff decaying as Tibbers attacks and the movespeed decaying over-time. Both numbers decay completely after 3 seconds. While Enraged, Tibbers ghosts through units.

 

 

 

Blaze [ Passive ]

DoT decreased from 8% of Maximum HP over 4 seconds to 2%;

The Blaze DoT now stacks 3 times (meaning you have to hit 3 spells while the DoT is ticking). At three stacks, Blaze detonates after a 2-second-delay, dealing 12 [+0.5 per level, caps at level 9] [+0.015 AP] % of Maximum HP (damage is calculated separately for each target in the AoE). Enemy champions can’t get Blaze stacks for 4 seconds after they’ve been damaged by a detonation.

 

 

Sear [ Q ]

• Damage decreased from 80/120/160/200/240 [+0.65 AP] to 80/110/140/170/200 [+0.55 AP];
• Stun duration decreased from 2 seconds at all ranks to 1.5.

 

Pillar Of Flame [ W ]

• Mana cost decreased from 70/80/90/100/110 to 60/70/80/90/100;
• Cooldown decreased from 10 seconds at all ranks to 10/9.5/9/8.5/8.

 

Conflagration [ E ]

• Damage decreased from 70/105/140/175/210 [+0.55 AP] to 70/90/110/130/150 [+0.35 AP];
• Cooldown decreased from 12/11/10/9/8 seconds to 10/9/8/7/6.

 

Pyroclasm [ R ]

• Damage decreased from 150/250/350 [+0.5 AP] to 100/200/300 [+0.25 AP];
• New Passive – Blaze: If the target is ablaze, Pyroclasm will briefly slow the target by 30/45/60%.

(Note) The updated Pyroclasm will always prioritize Champions over minions, and will further prioritize Champions with Blaze stacks.

 

Brand’s also received new spell icons. From left to right: Passive, Q, W, E and R:

 

 

 

• Base Health increased from 506 to 525;
• Base Mana increased from 370 to 375;
• Base Movement Speed decreased from 335 to 328;
• Attack Damage changed from 52.3 [+3.2 per level] to 53 [+3 per level];
• Armor changed from 22 [+4 per level] to 25 [+3.5 per level];
• Base Health regen increased from 1.08 per second to 1.2;
• Base Mana Regen decreased from 1.7 per second [+0.15 per level] to 1.6 [+0.16 per level].

 

Serpentine Grace [ Passive ] (Reworked)

Cassiopeia gains 4 flat Movement Speed per level. Also, she cannot purchase Boot items.

 

Noxious Blast [ Q ]

• Damage increased from 75/115/155/195/235 [+0.45 AP] to 75/120/165/210/255 [+0.7 AP];
• Cooldown decreased from 4 seconds at all ranks to 3.5;
• Mana cost increased from 40/50/60/70/80 to 60/65/70/75/80;
• Movement Speed buff changed from 20% at all ranks for 3 seconds to 20/22.5/25/27.5/30% for 2 seconds.

 

Miasma [ W ] (Partially Reworked)

• Cassiopeia will now throw several AoE clouds in an arc in front of her. Miasma will leave the clouds at either the max cast range (800) or in front of any walls it hits;
• Damage increased from 10/15/20/25/30 [+0.1 AP] to 20/35/50/65/80 [+0.15 AP];
• Slow strength changed from 25/30/35/40/45% to 35% at all ranks;
• Additionally, enemies who stay in the clouds will be debuffed with Debilitating Poison, which prevents them from using any displacement spells, including Flash.
• Cooldown increased from 14/13/12/11/10 seconds to 22/20/18/16/14;
• Mana cost increased to 70 at all ranks from 40/50/60/70/80.
• AoE duration increased from 4 seconds to 5.

 

Twin Fang [ E ]

• Cooldown decreased from 5 seconds at all ranks to 0.9;
• Mana cost changed from 50/60/70/80/90 to 60/65/70/75/80;
• If Twin Fang kills its target, Cassiopeia is refunded the entire mana cost;
• Damage decreased from 55/80/105/130/155 [+0.55 AP] to 52 [+4 per Champion level] [+0.1 AP];
• If the target is poisoned, Twin Fang will deal an additional 10/40/70/100/130 [+0.35 AP] and heal Cassiopeia for 5/10/15/20/25 [+0.1 AP].

 

Petrifying Gaze [ R ]

• Slow strength decreased from 60% at all ranks to 40%.

 

 

 

 

Dread [ Passive ] (Reworked)

If Fiddlesticks stands still or channels for 1.5 seconds, he’ll gain 25/30/35/40% bonus Movement Speed (values for levels 1/6/11/16) for 1.5 seconds after he starts moving. Hard CC resets the timer for Dread to activate, but soft CC doesn’t.

 

Terrify [ Q ]

• Cast range decreased from 576 to 525.

 

 

Drain [ W ]

• Cooldown decreased from 10/9/8/7/6 seconds to 4/3.75/3.5/3.25/3, but the CD starts when Drain’s channel ends, rather than when it’s cast.

 

Dark Wind [ E ]

• Maximum number of bounces increased from 5 to 7.

 

 

Crowstorm [ R ]

• If cast outside its maximum range, Crowstorm will be cast at its maximum range in that direction (meaning Fiddle won’t move until he’s in range for your command anymore);
• Additionally, Crowstorm will leave an “on my way” ping where it’s cast.

 

Fiddlesticks also received new spell icons. From left to right: Passive, Q, W, E and R:

   

 

 

 

Test of Spirit [ E ]

• Duration of Vessel debuff decreased from 60 seconds to 12;
• Vessels now cause Tentacles to spawn every 5 seconds (scaling down with Illaoi’s level), down from 10;
• Vessels can no longer remove the spell by killing Tentacles.

 

 

 

Mark of the Storm [ Passive ]

• Duration of repeated stuns debuff decreased from 7 seconds at all levels to 6.

 

 

Thundering Shuriken [ Q ]

• Energy cost decreased from 65/60/55/50/45 to 60/55/50/45/40.

 

 

Electrical Surge [ W ]

• Cast range on active decreased from 800 to 750.
• Energy cost decreased from 45 at all ranks to 40.

 

Slicing Maelstrom [ R ]

• Duration of AoE decreased from 3/4/5 seconds to 3 at all ranks;
• Damage on subsequent hits increased from 50% to 75% of the original damage;
• Now does damage to all champions in the AoE simultaneously every 0.5 seconds, decreased from hitting nearby random Champions every 0.25 seconds.

 

Kennen also received new spell icons. From left-to-right: Passive, Q, W, E and R.

 

 

 

 

Dance of Arrows [ Q ]

• Static cooldown of [ Q ] if cast within Wolf’s [ W ] zone increased from 2 seconds at all ranks to 4/3.5/3/2.5/2.

 

Wolf’s Frenzy [ W ]

• Passive now gains less stacks for moving, but will now additionally gain stacks for auto-attacking;
• Duration of Wolf’s zone increased from 8 seconds at all ranks to 8.5.
• Wolf’s basic attacks now deal 50% increased damage to jungle monsters.

 

 

 

Passive [ Void Shift ] (Reworked)

Malzahar enters Void Shift when he hasn’t taken direct damage for 24 seconds [-1 per level]. During Void Shift, Malzahar gains 90% damage reduction and crowd control immunity, which breaks 1 second after taking direct damage or when it blocks one instance of crowd control.

 

 

Call of the Void [ Q ]

• Damage decreased from 80/135/190/245/300 [+0.8 AP] to 70/115/160/205/250 [+0.6 AP];
• Cooldown decreased from 9 seconds at all ranks to 6;
• Mana cost decreased from 80/85/90/95/100 to 60 at all ranks;
• Silence duration decreased from 1.4/1.8/2.2/2.6/3 seconds to 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2.

 

Void Swarm [ W ] (Reworked)

Cooldown: 20/19/18/17/16 seconds at all ranks || Mana cost: 60 at all ranks

Summon a Voidling lasting 12 seconds to fight nearby enemies.

The first time a Voidling attacks a champion, large monster, or epic monster, or assists in killing a unit, Malzahar spawns a new Voidling with the same remaining duration. When 3 or more Voidlings are active, they all gain 50% bonus Attack Speed. Additionally, Voidlings will gain increased health with Champion level.

Voidling Details:

• Attacks deal [0.3/0.325/0.35/0.375/0.4 Total AD] physical damage + 10/15/20/25/30 [+0.1 AP] magic damage;
• Deals triple damage to lane minions below 25% Health;
• Will not spawn from a Voidling with less than 4 seconds left;
• Prefers to attack targets with Nether Grasp or Malefic Visions and has 100% increased Movement Speed when seeking these targets;
• Otherwise attacks the enemy nearest it.

 

Malefic Visions [ E ]

• Damage decreased from 80/140/200/260/320 [+0.8 AP] to 80/115/150/185/220 [+0.7 AP];
• Mana cost decreased from 80/115/150/185/220 to 60/70/80/90/100;
  
• No longer restores flat mana on-kill; instead, kills restore 2% of Malzahar’s maximum mana;
• If Malzahar hits a target affected by his Space AIDS [ E ], the duration of the DoT will refresh.

 

 

Nether Grasp [ R ]

• No longer deals 50/80/110 [+0.26 AP] per half second;
• Now spawns Malzahar’s old Null Zone [ W ] in the center of the suppressed target, dealing 6 [+0.15 AP] % of Maximum Health as magic damage for 5 seconds.

 

Malzahar’s also received new spell icons. From left to right: Passive, Q, W, E and R:

    

 

Malzahar’s base splash was also updated:

 

 

 

 

Takedown [ Q ]

• Execute bonus damage changed from 1.5% bonus damage per 1% missing HP to 1/1.25/1.5/1.75%.

 

 

 

Unseen Predator / Ferocity [ Passive ]

• Passive leap strike now procs Statikk Shiv and all other on-hit items.

 

 

Savagery [ Q ]

• Fixed a bug where Savagery was nullifying the damage from dead man’s plate and Spellblade (Sheen).

 

Bola Strike [ E ]

• Cast no longer maintains cast location, but maintains directional when moved during cast time. (Cast location was obtained at the start of cast, if Rengar jumps over or moves drastically around this point (commonly Flash & Unseen Predator), his bola can go in seemingly random direction. This change should prevent a lot of the “bola going in random direction” since it maintains the direction of cast, and will move accordingly with Rengar.)
• Fixed a bug where Bola cast time on live is most commonly at 0.25 seconds, so Bola cast time now consistently 0.25. We can reevaluate in later patches if this is still an issue.
• Fixed a bug where entering empowered mode while casting Bola would cast Empowered Bola to be on cooldown, or immediately kick Rengar out of ferocity mode.

 

Thrill of the Hunt [ R ]

• Fixed an inconsistency where exiting Thrill of the Hunt with an ability might result in 4 Ferocity gain instead of 5.

 

 

 

Carrion Renewal [ Passive ]

• Base mana restored per kill increased from 9 to 12.

 

 

Decrepify [ Q ]

• No longer single-target; instead, Swain will put Beatrice down in the center of an AoE that lasts 4 seconds. The crow will attack targets inside the circle, prioritizing targets affected by Torment. It will retarget on its own after a kill and will drop aggro on targets that exit the circle;
• Now deals double damage to minions;
• Cooldown increased from 8 at all ranks to 14/13/12/11/10;
• Mana cost decreased from 60/70/80/90/100 to 60/65/70/75/80.

 

Nevermove [ W ]

• Mana cost decreased from 80/90/100/110/120 to 80/85/90/95/100.

 

 

Torment [ E ]

• Damage changed from 75/115/155/195/235 [+0.8 AP] to 50/80/110/140/170 [+1.0 AP];
• Damage amplification increased from 8/11/14/17/20% to 20% at all ranks.

 

Ravenous Flock [ R ]

• Maximum number of targets increased from 3 to 5;
• Heal effectiveness from minions decreased from 25% to 15%;
• Cooldown increased from 8 seconds at all ranks to 10;
• Mana cost increase-per-second decreased from 5/6/7 seconds to 5 at all ranks.

 

 

 

Starcall [ Q ]

• Slow decreased from 30/35/40/45/50% to 30% at all ranks;
• Movement Speed strength of Rejuvenation buff decreased from 15% to 10%.

 

 

 

Transcendent [ Passive ]

• At level 9, Dark Spheres [ Q ] no longer deals 15% bonus damage against Champions; instead, it increases the lifespan of spheres from 6 seconds to 8;
• At level 9, no longer increases the slow duration on Force of Will [ W ] by 2 seconds; instead, Syndra will automatically grab two additional spheres near the targetted sphere (or buff monster).

 

Dark Sphere [ Q ] 

• AP ratio increased from 0.6 AP to 0.75.

 

 

Scatter The Weak [ E ]

• Cooldown decreased from 18/16.5/15/13.5/12 seconds to 16/15/14/13/12.

 

 

 

• Mana changed from 250 [+75 per level] to 300 [+60 per level].

 

Bastion [ W ]

• Cast range decreased from 1100 to 800;
• Tether range decreased from 1600 to 1300.

 

Dazzle [ E ]

• Hitbox of stun decreased from 650/150 (length/width) to 610/140.

 

 

 

 

Blinding Dart [ Q ]

• Mana cost decreased from 70/80/90/100/110 to 70/75/80/85/90.

 

 

Noxious Trap [ R ]

• Recharge cooldown decreased from 34/28/22 seconds to 30/25/20;
• Mana cost decreased from 75/100/125 to 75 at all ranks.

 

 

 

Phenomenal Evil Power [ Passive ] (Reworked)

Veigar is the greatest Evil to ever strike at the heart of Runeterra – and he’s only getting bigger! Striking an enemy Champion with a spell grants Veigar stacks of Phenomenal Evil, giving him 1 Ability Power. Takedowns grant an additional 3 stacks.

(Note) The passive’s tooltip shows how much AP you’ve earned with each spell and with takedowns.

 

Baleful Strike [ Q ]

• Mana cost decreased from 60/65/70/75/80 to 40/45/50/55/60;
• Killing a unit with this also grants Veigar a stack of Phenomenal Evil. Large minions and large monsters grant two.

 

Dark Matter [ W ]

• Mana cost decreased from 70/75/80/85/90 to 60/65/70/75/80.

 

 

Event Horizon [ E ]

• Mana cost decreased from 80/85/90/95/100 to 70/75/80/85/90.

 

 

Primordial Burst [ R ]

• Damage changed from 250/375/500 [+1.0 AP] [+0.8 of target’s AP] to 175/275/375 [0.75] – 350/550/750 [1.5 AP], based on the target’s missing Health.
• Mana cost decreased from 125 at all ranks to 100;

 

 

 

Organic Deconstruction [ Passive ]

• Base damage decreased from 35 to 25;
• Now has an added 0.4 AP ratio.

 

Plasma Fission [ Q ]

• The angle indicator will no longer be visible for enemies;
• Now refunds 20/22.5/25/27.5/30 mana for every unit Plasma Fission kills.

 

Void Rift [ W ]

• AP ratio on initial rift decreased from 0.25 to 0.15;
• AP ratio on rift opening decreased from 0.375 to 0.25.

 

Tectonic Disruption [ E ]

• AP ratio decreased from 0.5 to 0.3.

 

 

Life Form Disintegration Ray [ R ]

• No longer stacks Organic Deconstruction;
• Damage increased from 500/700/900 [+0.6 AP] to 500/725/950 [+1.0 AP];
• Cooldown decreased from 130/110/90 seconds to 120/100/80;
• New Passive – if Vel’Koz procs Organic Deconstruction with his other spells, he will Research them for 7 seconds. Life Form Disintegration Ray deals true damage against Researched targets. Vel’Koz’s basic spells and auto-attacks refresh the duration of the Research debuff.

 

 

 

Siphon Power [ Q ]

• Damage increased from 40/60/80/100/120 [+0.2 AP] to 60/85/110/135/160 [+0.4 AP];
• Shield value changed from 30/50/70/90/110 [+0.2 AP] to 0.15 AP [+0.08 of Maximum Mana];
• Bonus on-hit magic damage changed from 20-210 (scales with level) to  20/40/60/80/100 (Q ranks);
• Cooldown decreased from 10/8.5/7/5.5/4 seconds to  8/7/6/5/4.

 

Death Ray [ E ]

• AP ratio decreased from 0.7 to 0.5;
• Missle speed of laser increased from 780 to 1050;
• Explosion damage on Augmented laser decreased from 70/110/150/190/230 [+0.7 AP] to 40/70/100/130/160 [+0.6 AP];
• Delay on explosion increased from 0.6 seconds to 1;
• Explosion now deals full damage to targets damaged by Death Ray [60% on live].

 

Chaos Storm [ R ]

• Initial damage decreased from 150/250/350 [+0.55 AP] to 100/175/250 [+0.5 AP];
• Storm now deals 150/250/350 [+0.6 AP] magic damage every 2 seconds, increased from 15/30/45 [+0.1 AP] damage every 0.5 seconds;
• Storm duration decreased from 7 seconds at all ranks to 6.5.

 

 

• Base Health changed from 543 [+85 per level] to 550 [+84 per level];
• Armor changed from 22 [+3.5 per level] to 23 [+3.3 per level];
• Attack Damage increased from 48 to 52;

 

Crimson Pact [ Passive ]

• Bonus AP increased from 0.025 of Bonus Health to 0.04;
• Bonus HP decreased from 1.4 AP to 1.0.

 

Transfusion [ Q ]

• Damage decreased from 90/125/160/195/230 [+0.6 AP] to 80/100/120/140/160 [+0.45 AP];
• Heal decreased from 15/25/35/45/55 [+0.25 AP] to 20/25/30/35/40 [+0.15 AP];
• Cooldown changed from 10/8.5/7/5.5/4 seconds to 9/8/7/6/5;
• After casting Tranfusion Twice, Vladimir gains Crimson Rush for a few seconds, with the timer beginning when Tranfusion comes off cooldown.;
• Crimson Rush: For the next 2.5 seconds, Vladimir gains bonus Movement Speed and Tranfusion deals double damage and heals for a bonus 40 [+15 per Champion level] + 5 [+0.025 AP] % of his Missing Health. The bonus heal value is halved against lane minions, but not monsters.

 

Tides of Blood [ E ] (Reworked)

Cost: 10% of Maximum Health || Cooldown: 9/8/7/6/5 seconds || Cast Range: 600

Vladimir charges up a reservoir of blood, paying up to 10% of his Maximum Health over 1 second to increase Tides of Blood’s damage by the same amount.

On release or after 1.5 seconds, Vladimir unleashes a nova of blood, dealing between 30/40/50/60/70 [+0.025 Max HP] [+0.35 AP] and 60/80/100/150/140 (+0.1 Max HP) [+0.7 AP] magic damage to enemies hit.

When fully charged, Tides of Blood slows Vladimir while he holds it, but will briefly slow targets by 40/45/50/55/60% when he releases it.

 

 

Hemoplague [ R ]

• Duration of debuff (and time for the spell to deal damage) decreased from 5 seconds at all ranks to 4;
• Damage amplification decreased from 12% at all ranks to 10%;
• Additionally, Hemoplague will heal Vladimir for 75/125/175 [+0.35 AP] for each enemy champion it damages.

 

Vlad’s also received new spell icons. From left to right: Passive, Q, W, E and R:

 

 

 

Shocking Orb [ E ]

• Stun duration changed from 0.75 – 1.75 seconds to 0.5 – 2.

 

 

Rite of the Arcane [ R ]

• Number of missiles increased from 3 at all ranks to 3/4/5;
• Base damage changed from 190/245/300 to 200/230/260.

 

 

• Base Movement Speed increased from 335 to 340.

 

Cell Division [ Passive ]

• Blobs now take less time to converge to the center, decreasing with level.

• Lvl 1 – 8 seconds;
• Lvl 6 – 7 seconds;
• Lvl 10 – 6 seconds;
• Lvl 13 – 5 seconds;
• Lvl 17 – 4 seconds.

 

 

 

Satchel Charge [ W ]

• Can now instantly destroy towers below 25% HP.

 

 

Mega Inferno Bomb [ R ]

• Cooldown decreased from 120 seconds at all ranks to 120/105/90;
• Minions are no longer dealt double damage by the spell.

 

 

• Base Health increased from 479 to 499;
• Movement Speed increased from 325 to 340.

 

Garden of Thorns [ Passive ] (Reworked)

Seeds spawn around Zyra periodically, becoming faster with level and lasting 45 seconds (with a maximum number of 8 seeds planted at any time). If an enemy Champion steps on a seed, the seed dies. If Zyra casts Deadly Spines or Grasping Roots near seeds, she grows plants which last 5-7.5 seconds (scaling up with Champion level). Extra plants striking the same target deal 50% damage.

• Plant damage decreased from 23 [+6.5 per level] [+0.2 AP] to 24 [+5 per level] [+0.15 AP];
• Plant health decreased from 3 to 2.

(Note) Zyra will not attempt to place two seeds close to each other. Also, plant AI has received an overhaul.

 

 

Deadly Spines [ Q ]

• Skillshot changed from a circular AoE to a thick line;
• Damage decreased from 70/105/140/175/210 [+0.65 AP] to 60/90/120/150/180 [+0.55 AP];
• Mana cost decreased 75/80/85/90/95 to 60 at all ranks.

 

 

Rampant Growth [ W ]

• Passive no longer gives Zyra 2/4/6/8/10% Cooldown Reduction. Instead, it increases the maximum health of her plants by 10/20/30/40/50%;
• Seeds still grant vision in a small area and spot enemy champions who step on them for 2 seconds.

 

Stranglethorns [ R ]

• No longer increases the Attack Speed of plants in the AoE by 50%; instead, it increases their damage by 150%.

 

Zyra’s also received new spell icons. From left to right: Passive, Q, W, E and R:

 

 

 

Frozen Heart and Guinsoo’s Rageblade have both received updated item icons:

 

Abyssal Scepter

• Recipe Change: Fiendish Codex + Negatron Cloak + Amplifying Tome + 695 Gold = 2750 Total Gold;
• Ability Power decreased from 70 to 60;
• Magic Resist increased from 50 to 60;
• Now grants 10% Cooldown Reduction;
• Passive aura MR shred changed from 20 to 10-25 (scales with level);
• Passive aura no longer reduces the MR of minions.

 

Athene’s Unholy Grail

• Recipe Change: Chalice + Fiendish Codex + 300 Gold = 2100 Total Gold;
• Total Cost decreased from 2700 Gold to 2100;
• Ability Power decreased from 60 to 40;
• Bonus Mana Regeneration decreased from 100% of Base regen to 75%;
• Mana Passive: Mana Passives on Kill or Assist have been removed.
• New Passive: Gain 15% of premitigation damage dealt to champions as Blood charges, up to 100 to 270 (based on level). Healing or shielding another ally consumes Blood charges to heal that ally.

 

Banshee’s Veil

• Recipe Changed: Spectre’s Cowl + Negatron Cloak + 530 Gold;
• Total Cost decreased from 2900 Gold to 2450;
• Health decreased from 500 to 300.

 

Catalyst of Aeons

• Valor’s Reward passive removed (no longer restores 150 HP/200 Mana on level-up);
• New Passive – Eternity: 15% of damage taken from champion is gained as Mana. 15% of Mana spent is gained as Health. (Healing limited to 25 per spell cast or 25 per second for toggled spells.)*

 

Chalice of Harmony

• Passive remade: Increases your Health Regeneration by 100% if your Health % is lower than your Mana %. Increases your Mana Regeneration by 100% if your Mana % is lower than your Health %;

(Note) Mikael’s Crucible and Athene’s Unholy Grail gain this passive instead of Mana Font.

 

Enchantment: Bloodrazor (replaces Devourer)

• Grants 40% Attack Speed;
• UNIQUE Passive: Basic attacks deal 3% of the target’s maximum Health in bonus physical damage (max 75 vs monsters and minions) on hit.

 

Guardian Angel

• Recipe cost decreased from 1180 Gold to 880 (total cost down from 2700 to 2400);
• Magic Resist decreased from 60 to 45.

 

Guinsoo’s Rageblade

• Recipe changed: Blasting Wand (850) + Pickaxe (875) + Recurve Bow (1000) + 875 Recipe Cost = 3600 Gold total;
• Attack Damage increased from 30 to 35;
• Abiliy Power increased from 40 to 50;
• New Passive: Basic attacks deal an additional 15 magic damage on-hit;
• Maximum stacks are now 6, decreased from 8 (bonuses per stack are unchanged);
• Guinsoo’s Rage (buff at max stacks) no longer deals on-hit magic damage in an AoE; instead, it causes every other basic attack to trigger on-hit effects twice (aka Devourer’s passive).

 

Hextech GLP-800

• Recipe: Catalyst of Aeons + Hextech Revolver + 750 Gold = 3000 Total Gold;
• Grants 300 Health, 80 Ability Power and 400 Mana;
• Passive – Shared with Catalyst of Aeons;
• Active – Ice Bolts: Throw an arc of five piercing icy bolts that explode to deal 100 – 200(+20% of your Ability Power) as magic damage. Enemies hit are slowed by 60% decaying over 0.5 seconds. (30 second cooldown, shared with other Hextech Items).

 

Hextech Gunblade

• Damage on active changed from 150 [+0.4 AP] to 300 [+0.3 AP];
• Active now instantaneously shoots a lightning bolt with zero travel time, immediately slowing the target for 2 seconds;
• Active now shares a cooldown with other Hextech Items.

 

Hextech Revolver

• Combine Cost decreased from 340 to 240 (total cost down from 1200 Gold to 1100).
• Spell Vamp removed;
• New Passive – Magic Bolt: Your basic attacks deal 75 – 150 magic damage on hit. (30 second cooldown, shared with other Hextech items);

 

Hextech Protobelt-01

• Recipe: Hextech Revolver + Kindlegem + 750 Gold = 2500 Total Gold;
• Grants 300 Health, 80 Ability Power and 10% Cooldown Reduction;
• Active – Fire Bolt: Dash 300 units in a direction (at 1200 speed) and then unleash a nova of fireballs that deal 100 – 250 (+25% of your Ability Power) magic damage to enemies hit. Enemies hit by more than one fireball take 15% damage from additional balls. (30 second cooldown, shared with other Hextech items). This Dash cannot go over walls.

 

Lost Chapter [ New Item ]

• Recipe: Sapphire Crystal + Amplifying Tome + 115 Gold = 900 Total Gold;
• Grants 25 Ability Power and 250 Mana;
• Unique Passive: Upon levelling up, restores 20% of your maximum mana over 3 seconds.

 

Mercurial Scimitar

• Quicksilver active now removes CC effects only, not all debuffs (so spells like Zed’s ult or Trundle’s ult can’t be QSS-ed anymore).

 

Morellonomicon

• Recipe Change: Lost Chapter + Fiendish Codex + 500 Gold = 2300 Total Gold
• Mana Regeneration removed (+100% Base Regen on live);

 

Quicksilver Sash

• Quicksilver active now removes CC effects only, not all debuffs.

 

 

Righteous Glory

• Recipe cost decreased from 750 Gold to 650 (total cost down from 2600 Gold to 2500).

 

 

Rod of Ages

• Recipe Change: Catalyst of Aeons + Needlessly Large Rod + 50 Gold;
• Total Cost decreased from 3000 Gold to 2500;
• Ability Power decreased from 80 to 60;
• Mana decreased from 400 to 300;
• Mana-per-stack decreased from 40 to 10.

 

Spectre’s Cowl

• Total Cost increased from 1100 Gold to 1200;
• Health increased from 200 to 250;
• Magic Resist decreased from 35 to 30.

 

Spirit Visage

• Combine Cost decreased from 900 to 800 (total cost unchanged because of Spectre Cowl’s cost increase;
• Magic Resist decreased from 70 to 50;
• Bonus Health Regen increased from 150% of Base regen to 200%;
• Passive heal buff increased from 20% to 25%.

 

Sunfire Cape

• Recipe cost increased from 800 Gold to 1000 (total cost up from 2700 Gold to 2900).

 

 

Tear of the Goddess

• Mana Regeneration removed (+25% Base Regen on live);
• New (Additional) Passive – Awe: Refunds 25% of Mana spent.

 

The Black Cleaver

• Attack Damage decreased from 55 to 50;
• Recipe cost decreased from 1150 Gold to 750 (total cost down from 3500 Gold to 3100).

 

Will of the Ancients

• Removed from the game.

 

 

Zhonya’s Hourglass

• Recipe Change: Seeker’s Armguard + Fiendish Codex + 800 Gold = 2900 Total Gold;
• Total Cost decreased from 3500 Gold to 3000;
• Ability Power decreased from 100 to 70;
• Now grants 10% Cooldown Reduction;
• Cooldown on Statis active increased from 90 seconds to 120.

 

 

 

Hey everybody,

Hopefully you’ve had the chance to check out our Dragon and Mage changes for mid-season. We’ve got a bunch of other objective changes to Summoner’s Rift going in the patch, and I wanted to share those + context with ya’ll and take your questions and feedback!

Everything is subject to tuning and future iteration, of course.

Rift Herald

We’re pushing to make Rift Herald a more unique and meaningful objective for those looking to dominate the top half of the map. This new Rift Herald should be a more contestable objective with a clearer purpose: long-term selfish power for one team member – especially a lone-wolf or split push character.

• Rift Herald now spawns at 6 minutes and never respawns
• Rift Herald’s stats significantly increased (should be much harder to solo)
• Doom’s Eve removed and replaced with a unique Superbuff:
  • Lasts 20 minutes and persists through death
  • While alone, you gain some damage reduced vs. champions and build Corruption stacks
  • At 100 stacks, your next attack discharges all Corruption to deal bonus magic damage (works on almost anything, including minions and towers; damage is reduced for ranged attacks)
  • Corruption stack rate and discharge damage scale with champion level

Hopefully this excites top laners, junglers, and some mids. We’re keeping an eye on it to ensure it’s powerful, but also contestable and not too game-ending.

Red and Blue Buffs

Late-game, Red and Blue buff have been somewhat ignorable these days. We’re buffing and compressing their power in the mid-late game to make them more appreciable objectives to leverage or steal, especially in games that are in a standstill and need things to fight over and create power windows.

• Red Buff
  • Burn now applies a damage tick immediately on apply or reapply (stronger attack-speed scaling); damage-per-tick reduced to compensate
  • Health regen now scales steeply with champ level but turns off when in combat with champions or epic monsters (currently triples at level 6 and again at level 11!)
• Blue Buff
  • AP per level replaced with +15% total Ability Power (like Rabadon’s Deathcap effect)
  • Mana regen based on max Mana doubled (flat regen unchanged)
• Buff Durations
  • Red and Blue will last the same duration on your first clear, but all Red and Blue buffs after that will have a 90-second duration instead of 120

When you’re looking to make a play in mid-late game, buff camps should be juicier targets now, especially if you can steal them from the enemy’s side of the map!

Camp Respawn Timers

In order to facilitate more coordinated and contested objective play at all skill levels, we’re making a some UI changes. This also has the benefit of reducing timekeeping and chat-typing work.

• When a camp that has a timer (Red, Blue, Dragon, Baron, Rift Herald) has less than 60 seconds to spawn, its timer is revealed to both teams (regardless of their vision of the camp), and an “about to spawn” icon appears in the minimap (will replace regular camp icon if you still haven’t seen the cleared camp)
• The respawn icon starts dull at 60 seconds to spawn and becomes bright at 20 seconds

We generally like seeing more fights around objectives, and promoting objective awareness like this can help a lot. After getting used to the new UI, rallying your team around a Dragon spawn or even a buff steal can often be done with a simple ping instead of having to type things out in chat.

Turrets

Turrets have several changes in store. Overall, we want them to be more defendable places to stand your ground, reduce their takedown reward compared to other objectives, clean up some of their mechanics, and rebudget their defenses so things other than marksmen basic attacks can contribute more to turret takedowns.

• Turret Damage Ramp
  • Inner and Outer turrets more quickly ramp up their damage when attacking champions, and they maintain full damage when switching targets.
  • Inner and Outer turrets only take 4 shots to ramp up to full damage (instead of 5).
• Turret Takedown Rewards
  • Outer turret total gold reward reduced, though local gold reward is increased (local gold 220 -> 300, global gold 125 -> 100)
  • Inner turret gold rewards reduced (local gold 250 -> 175, global gold 150 -> 125) and XP reward removed
  • Inhibitor turret local gold reward increased (0 -> 50)
• AP Damage Conversion
  • When your attacks trigger AP damage conversion (occurs when attacking a turret while your AP is more than double your bonus AD), the converted damage is now magic instead of physical
• Turret Stats
  • Base Armor/MR increased (from 0 to 40), Base Health decreased (from 4000 to 3300)
  • Turrets are now subject to penetration (generally tankier than Live unless you have about 20 penetration or have a true damage proc; overall a small nerf to marksmen damage, but a buff to some mages and assassins)
  • Reinforced Armor converted from 200 Armor/MR to 66.67% damage reduction

Overall, diving and taking turrets should be less of a freebie than what we’ve seen recently.

Let’s hear your thoughts!

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Four new dragons will replace the existing stack system. They appear in a random order until the 35th minute, when the Elder dragon lands (after the last dragon has been killed, he won’t replace it like Baron replaces the Herald).

 

These smaller dragons provide stacking buffs, capping at 3 stacks:

 

Air Dragon

• This unit gains 15/30/45 bonus flat Movement Speed when out of combat. This bonus is increased to 22.5/45/67.5 if the unit has the Elder Dragon buff.

 

Earth Dragon

• This unit deals 10/20/30% bonus true damage to Dragon, Baron and Towers. This bonus is increased to 15/30/45% if the unit has the Elder Dragon buff.

 

Fire Dragon

• This unit has 8/16/24% bonus AP and AD. This bonus is increased to 12/24/36% if the unit has the Elder Dragon buff.

 

Water Dragon

• Every 18/12/6 seconds, this unit restores 10% of their missing Health and Mana. This bonus is increased to 15% of missing HP and mana if the unit has the Elder Dragon buff.

 

 

 

Trundle’s received updated splash arts on all his skins:

 

Traditional Trundle

 

Lil’ Slugger Trundle

 

Junkyard Trundle

 

Glacial Olaf has received an updated splash:

 

U.F.O Corki has also received a new splash:

 

Lastly, PAX Sivir has also received a new splash:

 

---

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at @NoL_Chefo or e-mail me at [email protected]

 

 

[ Reminder ] The PBE is a testing ground for changes. What you see here may not reflect what you see in Patch Notes. Remember that developers want your feedback so if you disagree with a change, you can always submit your thoughts on the PBE Community Forums.

 

 

 

 

Miasma [ W ]

• AoE duration increased from 4 seconds to 5.

 

 

 

 

Nevermove [ W ]

• Mana cost decreased from 80/90/100/110/120 to 80/85/90/95/100.

 

 

 

 

Siphon Power [ Q ]

• Damage increased from 40/60/80/100/120 [+0.2 AP] to 60/85/110/135/160 [+0.4 AP];
• Shield value changed from 30/50/70/90/110 [+0.2 AP] to 0.15 AP [+0.08 of Maximum Mana];
• Bonus on-hit magic damage changed from 20-210 (scales with level) to 20/35/50/65/80 (Q ranks);
• Cooldown decreased from 10/8.5/7/5.5/4 seconds to  8/7/6/5/4.

 

Death Ray [ E ]

• AP ratio decreased from 0.7 to 0.5;
• Explosion damage on Augmented laser decreased from 70/110/150/190/230 [+0.7 AP] to 40/70/100/130/160 [+0.6 AP];
• Delay on explosion increased from 0.6 seconds to 1.25;
• Explosion now deals full damage to targets damaged by Death Ray [60% on live].

 

Chaos Storm [ R ]

• Initial damage decreased from 150/250/350 [+0.55 AP] to 100/175/250 [+0.5 AP];
• Storm now deals 150/250/350 [+0.6 AP] magic damage every 2 seconds, increased from 15/30/45 [+0.1 AP] damage every 0.5 seconds;
• Storm duration decreased from 7 seconds at all ranks to 6.

 

 

 

Sunfire Cape

• Recipe cost increased from 800 Gold to 1000 (total cost up from 2700 Gold to 2900).

 

 

The Black Cleaver

• Attack Damage decreased from 55 to 50;
• Recipe cost decreased from 1150 Gold to 750 (total cost down from 3500 Gold to 3100).

 

Following Anivia’s small update from yesterday, she also received new spell icons in today’s patch. From left to right: Passive, Q, W, E and R:

 

---

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at @NoL_Chefo or e-mail me at [email protected]

 

Patch 6.2 will be live in a few hours. Here are the official notes:

 

New Champion

• Jhin, the Virtuoso

Shen Rework

• Base Stats & Abilities
• Skins

Balance

• Champion Changes
• Item Changes
• Mastery Changes

Store Content

• High Noon Jhin
• Beast Hunter Draven
• Beast Hunter Sejuani
• Beast Hunter Tryndamere
• New Summoner Icons

Client

• Hextech Crafting
• Lunar Revel Login Animation

Miscellaneous

• Keystone Mastery visible on Load Screen
• New Champion Select
• Wall Collision Detection
• Ward Debris
• Bugfixes

 

[ Note ] Radiant Wukong, Lunar Wraith Caitlyn & Morgana, the Rising Ward Dawn Skin and the four Lunar Revel Summoner Icons will be coming with this patch. You can find previews of them all HERE.

 

Don’t know when Patch 6.2 hits live? Here’s the maintenance schedule for all regions:

 

Greetings, Summoners.

Scarizard is taking a break from the patch notes, so you get me.

Before we get to the meat of things, let’s have a moment of silence for the passing of the old Mordekaiser vs. Master Yi art we stole from somewhere I can’t remember.

…

And now check out that awesome new art we stole from the 2016 season update! You cangrab it as a wallpaper here, which is nice.

Getting into the mix, 6.1 and 6.2 are our ‘preseason followup’ patches, and we’ve been pretty happy with how things are trending. We’re seeing some cool diversity picks in competitive games (little suspicious of that Lissandra support), a lot of major outliers are calming down (although Graves and a few others may need to be checked), and the season’s start is upon us.

In light of the above, 6.2’s very straightforward. The most exciting things I’d want to highlight (aside from the release of Jhin, the Shen update, and the Nunu buffs) are very ‘under-the-hood’ with the ward debris and wall collision detection changes. The wall collision changes are pretty important but self-explanatory, so go read the note. On the point of ward debris: we still firmly believe that there needs to be some way to learn one of the most critical (and often game-winning) systems in League of Legends, so shiny little ghost-wards is where we’re at. Clarity.

And that’s 6.2 wrapped up! We wish you the best of luck in your placement matches. If you’re struggling, try finding some like-minded friends to rank up with – just make sure they don’t owe you money or anything because if you start fighting over who threw the game at the 55 minute mark, feelings get hurt and Tyler will never pay you that $20 he owes unless you call him out publicly in the patch notes. FOR SHAME.

But seriously, find some friends and have fun! Good luck out there!

[ Link to Post ]

 

Jhin will be available for 7800 IP/975 RP on release. After a week his price will drop down to 6300 IP.  He’ll also be available for RP in a bundle with his release skin – High Noon Jhin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Health: 540 [ +85 per level ]
• Mana: 300 [ +35 per level ]
• Auto-Attack Range: 550
• Attack Damage: 53 [ +4 per level ]
• Base Movement Speed: 325
• Armor: 20 [ +3.5 per level ]
• Magic Resist: 30 [+0 per level ]
• HP-per-second: 1.1 [ +0.1 per level ]
• Mana-per-second: 1.2 [ +0.16 per level ]

 

Death in Four Acts: Jhin’s gun – Whisper – chambers four shots, which he fires at a fixed Attack Speed of 0.63 [+~3% per level]. The last bullet always crits and deals an additional 15-25% of the target’s missing Health as bonus physical damage. After firing the four shots, Jhin will pause to reload for ~2 seconds.

Every Moment Matters: Jhin’s crits deal 25% less damage, but grant him 10% [+0.4 of Bonus Attack Speed] Movement Speed which decays over 2 seconds. Also, Jhin’s Attack Damage is increased by ( 2-40 [scales with level] [+0.4 of Crit Chance] [+0.25 of Bonus Attack Speed] of Total AD ).

 

 

 

Cooldown: 7/6.5/6/5.5/5 seconds || Mana Cost: 30/35/40/45/50 || Range: 600

Jhin throws a cannister at a nearby targeted enemy, dealing 60/85/110/135/160 [+0.3/0.35/0.4/0.45/0.5 of Total AD] [+0.6 AP] physical damage. After landing, the cannister bounces up to four times on other nearby enemies. Killing an enemy with Dancing Grenade causes the following bounces to deal 35% extra damage, up to a maximum of 140% increased damage.

 

 

Cooldown: 14 seconds at all ranks || Mana Cost: 50/60/70/80/90 || Range: 2500

Passive: Enemy champions that have been struck by Jhin’s basic attacks, Captive Audience, or any allied damage are marked for 4 seconds.

Active: Jhin fires a massively long range shot that goes through minions and deals 50/85/120/155/190 [+0.7 of Total AD] to the first enemy Champion hit (deals 65% damage to minions and neutral monsters). If the enemy Champion has already been marked, Deadly Flourish will additionally root them for 0.75/1/1.25/1.50/1.75 seconds and Jhin will gain the bonus Movement Speed from his fourth-hit crit.

 

 

Cooldown: 2 seconds at all ranks || Cost: 40/45/50/55/60 Mana + 1 Charge

Range: 260 || Recharge Cooldown: 28/27/26/25/24 seconds || Maximum Charges: 2

Beauty in Death – Killing blows on Champions spawn a Lotus Trap which briefly provides vision of the area before exploding.

Jhin places a Lotus trap on the ground that turns invisible after arming. Enemy champions that walk over the trap trigger it, revealing them for 4 seconds and marking them with Deadly Flourish and creating a large slowing zone that slows for 35%. After 2 seconds, the trap detonates, dealing 20/80/140/200/260 [+1.2 of Total AD] [+1.0 of AP] to enemy Champions (minions and neutral monsters are dealt 65% damage).

 

 

Cooldown: 120/105/90 seconds || Mana Cost: 50/60/70/80/90 || Range: A lot

Jhin fully assembles his weapon before taking aim in a target direction, revealing all marked targets in a huge area. He can then fire four rounds that stop at the first enemy champion struck, slowing them and dealing 50/125/200 [+0.25 of Total AD] physical damage, increased by 2% for every 1% of missing HP on the target hit. The fourth shot crits for double damage.

If Curtain Call is canceled, it has its cooldown lowered by 10% for every unfired shot, up to a 40% CDR if no shots have been fired.

 

 

Here’s Jhin’s Champion Select quote:

 

And his login animation by frostyNinja:

 

 

Shen’s rework features a brand new passive, Q and W, tweaked values on E and R and a visual update, including new splash arts for all his skins:

 

 

• Health: 540 [ +73 per level ]
• Energy: 400
• Auto-Attack Range: 125
• Attack Damage: 60 [ +3 per level ]
• Base Movement Speed: 340
• Armor: 25 [ +2.6 per level ]
• Magic Resist: 32 [ +1.25 per level ]
• HP-per-second: 2 [ +0.15 per level ]

 

 

 

 

After casting a spell, Shen gains a shield that absorbs 52-120 [+14% of Bonus HP] damage for 2.5 seconds on a 10-second cooldown. Spells that successfully affect a Champion, be it ally or enemy, reduce that cooldown by 4-7.5 seconds [scales down with level].

Additionally, Shen gains a spirit sword that’s leashed to him. Shen can control the sword with his spells.

 

 

Energy Cost: 140/130/120/110/100 || Cooldown: 8/7.25/6.5/5.75/5 seconds

Shen recalls and draws his spirit sword, slowing enemies hit by 35% if they move away from Shen in the next 2 seconds. Additionally, Shen’s next 3 basic attacks deal 3/3.5/4/4.5/5% [+0.015 AP] % of enemy’s Max HP as bonus magic damage.

Hitting an enemy Champion with the sword increases the damage to 5/5.5/6/6.5/7% [+0.02 AP] % of Max HP and also grants Shen 50% Attack Speed for those 3 attacks.

Minions and monters take 30/50/70/90/110 additional damage per empowered attack.

 

 

Energy Cost: 40 at all ranks || Cooldown: 18/16.5/15/13.5/11 seconds

Shen’s spirit sword creates a field for 1.75 seconds, blocking all basic attacks that would hit Shen or allies inside of it. If there are no allied Champions inside the field, the spell will activate with a 2-second delay.

 

 

 

Energy Cost: 180 at all ranks || Cooldown: 18/16/14/12/10 seconds

Passive: Shen recovers 30-40 energy whenever he deals damage with Twilight Assault [ Q ] or Shadow Dash [ E ].

Active: Shen dashes in a direction, dealing 50 [+12% of Bonus HP] physical damage to enemy Champions in his path and taunting them for 1.5 seconds.

 

Energy Cost: 0 at all ranks || Cooldown: 180/150/120 seconds

Shen channels for 3 seconds as he prepares to teleport to an allied champion anywhere on the map. As he channels, he grants his target a shield that absorbs 250/550/850 [+1.3 AP] damage for 5 seconds. Once Shen arrives, he brings his spirit sword with him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shen’s also received updated in-client lore to complement his rework:

 

”The Eye is blind to fear, to hate, to love, to all things that would sway equilibrium.”

Leader of a secret clan of mystic warriors, Shen serves as the Eye of Twilight, entrusted to enforce equilibrium in the world. Longing to remain free from the confusion of emotion, prejudice, or ego, Shen continually struggles, spirit blade in hand, to walk the unseen path of dispassionate judgment.

 

 

• Cassiopeia
• Dr. Mundo
• Elise
• Fiora
• Gangplank
• Karma
• Kha’Zix
• Kindred
• Nunu
• Rengar
• Tahm Kench

 

 

Twin Fang [ E ]

• Casting the spell will no longer cancel Move or Attack orders.

 

 

 

 

Masochism [ E ]

• Bonus AD decreased from 40/55/70/85/100 [+0.4/0.55/0.7/0.85/1 per 1% Missing HP] to 20/40/60/80/100 [+0.2/0.4/0.6/0.8/1 per 1% Missing HP]

 

Sadism [ R ]

• Cooldown increased from 75 seconds at all ranks to 100/85/70.

 

 

 

• Base Movement Speed in Human Form decreased from 330 to 325;
• Base Movement Speed in Spider Form decreased from 355 to 350 (same change for spiderlings).

 

Volatile Spiderling [ W ]

• Base Damage decreased from 75/125/175/225/275 to 60/110/160/210/260.

 

 

 

 

Duelist’s Dance [ Passive ]

• Vital spawning now alternates between top-right and bottom-left sides, changed from spawning randomly.

 

 

 

Cannon Barrage [ R ]

• Cooldown increased from 140/130/120 seconds to 160/150/140.

 

 

 

 

Focused Resolve [ W ]

• Mana Cost decreased from 70/75/80/85/90 to 50/55/60/65/70.

 

 

 

 

Void Spike [ W ]

• Can now be ‘buffered’ mid-jump so that Kha’Zix can cast it slightly before landing;
• If Kha’Zix attempts to cast both Void Spikes and Void Assault while mid-air, he’ll buffer only the last one he attempted to cast (not both, that would be too much).

 

Void Assault [ R ]

• Same changes as with [ W ].

 

 

 

 

Dance of Arrows [ Q ]

• Mana Cost increased from 30 at all ranks to 35.

 

 

Mounting Dread [ E ]

• Base damage decreased from 80/110/140/170/200 to 60/90/120/150/180.

 

 

 

 

Ice Blast [ E ]

• Damage decreased from 85/130/175/225/275 [+1.0 AP] to 80/120/160/200/240 [+0.9 AP];
• Slow strength increased from 20/30/40/50/60% to 40/45/50/55/60%;
• Attack Speed and Slow debuff duration decreased from 3 seconds to 2;
• Mana cost decreased from 75/85/95/105/115 to 70/75/80/85/90;
• Cooldown decreased from 6 seconds at all ranks to 6/5.5/5/4.5/4.

 

 

 

Unseen Predator [ Passive ]

• When Rengar dashes, he will now land a small distance away from his target.

 

[ Context ] This is to prevent the mid-air Bola cast when on top of an enemy Champion.

 

Empowered Savagery [ 5-Ferocity Q ]

• Total AD ratio decreased from 1.5 to 1.3;
• Bonus Attack Speed and Attack Damage increased from 10% to 20%.

 

Bola Strike [ E ]

While Rengar is dashing, Bola Strike will have a small cast delay.

 

 

Thrill of the Hunt [ R ]

• Range for exclamation mark to appear increased from 1250 to 1450;
• When stealthed, Rengar will gain the Movement Speed buff, regardless of whether he’s moving toward an enemy Champion.

 

 

 

An Acquired Taste [ Passive ]

• Stacks now remain on the target for 5 seconds, decreased from 7.

 

 

Abyssal Voyage [ R ]

• Ratio on passive decreased from 4/6/8% of Bonus HP to 2/4/6%.

 

 

 

 

Athene’s Unholy Grail

• Recipe Cost decreased from 565 Gold to 465 (Total Cost down from 2800 Gold to 2700).

 

 

Cull

• Attack Damage increased from 5 to 7;
• Gold received for reaching 100 stacks increased from 300 to 350.

 

Enchantment: Cinderhulk

• Tooltip fix: now mentions the burn aura will only trigger while in combat.

 

 

Farsight Alteration

• Mouse cursor now changes color depending on where you want to drop the trinket:

 

Red – impassable terrain, don’t put trinket there over penalty of playing Teemo;

Blue – regular terrain, trinket can be placed;

Green – trinket will be placed in brush.

 

 

Frost Queen’s Claim

• Cooldown on active increased from 60 seconds to 90.

 

 

Morellonomicon

• Recipe cost decreased from 765 Gold to 615 (Total cost decreased from 2550 Gold to 2400).
  

 

 

 

Assassin [ Tier 2 Cunning ]

• Bonus damage when alone increased from 1.5% to 2%;
• Bonus damage now only applies to enemy Champions, not minions and monsters.

 

Thunderlord’s Decree

• Cooldown between procs changed from 20 seconds to 25-15 seconds (scales down with Champion level);
• Window to stack 3 attacks/spells to proc the damage decreased from 5 seconds to 3.

 

 

High Noon Jhin will be available for 1350 RP as soon as Jhin is released.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beast Hunter Draven will be available in store for 750 RP:

 

 

 

 

 

Beast Hunter Sejuani will be available in store for 750 RP:

 

 

 

 

 

Beast Hunter Tryndamere will be available in store for 750 RP:

 

 

 

 

A few eSports summoner icons have been updated for Patch 6.2:

 

   

   

 

We also have a new anchor icon, presumably for OCE’s Ocean week:

 

 

[ Note ] You can find the official Lunar Revel teaser and all the new themed content HERE.

 

The Lunar Revel login animation will be coming with Patch 6.2, as well as a Snowdown-type store. Here’s the video by frostyNinja:

 

Here’s the still from the animation:

 

And the music from the login theme:

 

Also, a Lunar Revel store is now in place of the Snowdown shop in the client. It functions the same way. Try your luck when 6.2 hits live!

 

 

 

Keystone Masteries are now visible during the Loading Screen:

 

 

As promised when we launched New Champ Select, we’ve been working to improve the system based on our initial live data. Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that our downtime wasn’t caused by bugs in New Champ Select itself (hence the relatively low number of fixes listed here). Rather, the huge influx of traffic from both New Champ Select’s launch and the start of the 2016 ranked season caused New Champ Select’s underlying systems to fall over.

Now that we’ve reinforced these systems and New Champ Select is back online, here’s what’s new:

Interface Improvements

Adding a few tools back into New Champ Select which weren’t quite ready to go when we launched.

Matchmaking Improvements

These changes were made pretty quickly following the initial release of New Champ Select. We’re just making sure you know about them.

 

 

This is a change that has some implications (most good) in terms of how you flash over walls or place wards over walls, so we’re going to be transparent about what happened. Before this change: when someone tries to flash over or place a ward over a wall, the game tries to place you at the spot you want to go. If it can’t, it starts spiraling out (don’t ask why it was a spiral) before arriving at a concrete location. It then plops you at that location. Technically this is consistent, because the spiral is always the same so if you know the right spots you’ll always end up where you want – it’s just a matter of memorizing where. After this change: same thing, except if you can’t find a home in the wall, the system checks for the closest available spot and puts you there. Period.

What this means: flashing over and placing wards over walls should be far more intuitive as to what will ‘work’ or not work. If something used to work and it no longer works, that’s because it wasn’t supposed to in the first place (insufficient range) but the system was cheating it. For those situations, you’ll need to re-learn certain ‘ways’ of warding over walls to get consistency, but it should make a lot more sense.

 

One major point of feedback we’ve gotten on ward debris is just how useless the information is. Basically, because these things stick around for so long, you end up with a lot of ‘junk’ data that doesn’t do much for learning habits.

This change is to streamline things. By showing clear, readable ‘phases’ in ward debris life, you should understand more about your enemy’s vision strategy and how it evolves over the course of time. This might not sound like a very exciting feature, but it totally is. We’re excited. Please be excited.

• Brightly glows in the first 10% of its lifespan!
• Stops emitting flames after 30% of its lifespan has passed!
• Particle visibly changes and debris shrinks after 60% of its lifespan has passed!

 

• HUD font size now properly scales with HUD settings, rather than system DPI settings. Sorry, 4k users!
• Fixed a bug where Sweeping Lens’s animation would play when walking into brush the enemy team swept earlier in the match
• Fixed a bug where Warlord’s Bloodlust’s attack speed buff was lasting one second less than intended
• Fixed a bug where Hecarim’s E – Devastating Charge R – Onslaught of Shadows combo wasn’t working properly. Hecarim can now cast E before R and will not lose the E buff
• Similar to Ryze, Cassiopeia now retains her previous movement or attack command after E – Twin Fang‘s cast finishes
• Vel’Koz’s R – Lifeform Disintegration Ray no longer does a variety of strange things if cast as Vel’Koz last-hits a target
• Fixed a bug where Malphite’s R – Unstoppable Force would sometimes knock up and damage units at the start position instead of end position when interacting with displacement spells like Trundle’s E – Pillar of Ice
• Fixed a bug where displacement effects would not displace Zac during E – Elastic Slingshot‘s travel time
• Fixed a bug where leveling up caused Graves’s E – Quick Draw’s armor and magic resistance bonus to become inconsistent until refreshed
• Fixed the vision-granting aspects of Malzahar’s Q – Call of the Void. Vision is now properly granted along the entire path and enemies hit on the edge of their hitboxes are now properly revealed.
• Yasuo’s W – Wind Wall now properly continues to blocking projectiles if Yasuo dies
• Fixed a bug where Yasuo’s third Q – Steel Tempest (and E > Q combo) could deal damage through spell shields in certain situations
• Fixed a bug where Leona’s E – Zenith Blade still rooted a target mid-dash even if they spell shielded the ability
• Pantheon’s Passive – Aegis Protection now blocks – and gets consumed by! – attacks by Annie’s Tibbers and Heimerdinger’s ultimate turret
• Fixed many cases of on-hit effects applying even when blocked by Pantheon’s Passive – Aegis Protection
• Fixed a bug that caused Zyra’s plant attacks to ignore a target’s dodge status
• Rift Herald now drops a soul for Thresh

 

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If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at @NoL_Chefo or e-mail me at [email protected]

 

 

• Followup on Juggernaut Items
• Cassiopeia Twin Fang Expectations
• Meddler on Braum’s [ W ]
• VUs for Immobile Mage Update
• Skins on Live Receiving Updates
• Champion-Specific Dialogue
• Illaoi’s View on Life & Rights
• Dev Blog: Updates & Splash Arts
• Fan Art Corner

 

• Free Champion Rotation: 26/01 – 02/02
• Champion/Skin Sale: 26/01 – 29/01

 

Hi folks,

Following up on the Juggernaut itemization changes made in patch 5.16, particularly the additions of Dead Man’s Plate, Titanic Hydra, and Sterak’s Gage, I wanted to quickly go over our thoughts on the current state of these items.

Original Goals (for the 08/20/2015 Release)

• Offer Juggernauts items that meet their specific needs and provide a foundation for future juggernaut item diversity
• Use stat bindings to ensure those items can be balanced for juggernauts, rather than being superior on other classes.
  • Stat bindings refers to the statistics that a champion kit encourages its players to itemize for, e.g. Marksmen with Attack Speed and Critical Strike

What’s Working (as of 1/25/2015)

• All the updated Juggernauts use some of these items in their builds to solve the problems they were meant to address
• No metagolem – stacking all these items together doesn’t dominate all other builds
• Clear item satisfaction created by thematic linkage (e.g. Black Cleaver on Darius) and visual effects/audio (e.g. Dead Man’s Plate’s trail)
• Non-Juggernauts aren’t using these items excessively or unfairly (stat binding works)

Problems to Address (as of 1/25/2015)

• Non reworked juggernauts have pretty hodgepodge itemization
• Dead Man’s Plate remains too strong and is crowding out other choices
• Unclear if Dead Man’s Plate and Black Cleaver correct an intended juggernaut weakness (immobility) too effectively
• Titanic Hydra has very few users (lack of health-bound, Basic Attack-oriented champions)

Known Tradeoffs

• Juggernauts are well-supported with core items, but have few choices to make other than order/build path.

Next Steps

• Look to improve bindings on other Juggernauts (e.g. Nasus and Udyr)
• Further reduce Dead Man’s Plate’s power and assess other similar items
• Assess who should use Titanic Hydra and changes needed to make it attractive to them
• Discuss frameworks for use of flat MS versus % MS and in what ways items should or shouldn’t offset class weaknesses.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

I’d like to look at Randuin’s Omen and Sunfire Cape as well. I do think Deadman’s is also overbearing, though.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Basically we’re seeing it in most games even on core Sunfire Cape users and core Frozen Heart users, even with Sunfire Cape having an identical stat-line – they just buy the Dead Man’s a bit later. It’s crowding out not just other armor options but other defensive options period, which points to it simply giving more for its price than items usually give.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Hi everyone,

As Cassiopeia is one of the mages we’re looking at for the mid season mages update and I’m the designer heading up her changes, I’m looking to get opinions/feedback from players on what some of their specific expectations for her are.

 

One thing I’m having a difficult time assessing is what players’ desires are as far as Twin Fang goes, and I do have some concern that opinion will be far from unanimous. I know a lot of players want Cass to be more “poison mage” than she currently is, and I think I have a good grasp on how that may be able to manifest, but I don’t really know what that means as far as what they want from Twin Fang. It may just be that you want Twin Fang to remain mostly as it is now, with kit changes elsewhere. It may be that you want there to be more times where casting Twin Fang isn’t the best thing to be doing.

Any opinions on the matter would be greatly appreciated. For what it’s worth, I’m probably not going to be able to invest time in hundreds of responses to this thread, but I will check in on it periodically to get your ideas.

Thanks,
Repertoir

Edit:
Thanks for all the input here. I’m not sure exactly what this means is going to come of Cass or Twin Fang, but I am going to try a some iterations based on what’s going on here. I don’t think this single thread can really provide a singular correct direction to take things, but it’s at least given me some perspective on how people feel about the ability. For what it’s worth, I’m probably going to test out some stuff where E has cool interactions on poisoned targets that aren’t simply a reset (and probably lower the cooldown baseline), and I’d also like to test out some different iterations that seek to put some more gameplay behind when it’s actually a good time to go in and E spam (unlike on Live, where the answer is basically always), and make those times really rewarding. Thanks again!

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

What Braum should and shouldn’t be able to jump to was something we looked at a lot during his development. We had some clear strengths and weaknesses in mind for Braum though, and those were really helpful in assessing what tools he should have. Gameplay wise we wanted to ensure Braum had a clear niche he was really good in, and that there were some games where he’d be an ok, but not great pick.

 

If what you wanted was a strong defensive front line, who worked well with frequent auto attacking allies, Braum would be a great choice, especially if the enemy was running a really missile heavy comp. If you needed really strong peel/disengage though, you’d want someone like Janna instead. Or if strong engage and reliable lockdown was what you were after someone like Leona was the better choice.

Those guidelines lead us to conclude that being able to ward jump wasn’t appropriate for Braum. In particular it gave him much more powerful initiation than was appropriate (disengage/wall hopping was a lesser concern). By gameplay goals, and by personality, Braum was intended to be a defensive, helpful champion first and foremost, so we wanted to put power into those aspects of him, rather than having to balance him around a reliable way of jumping straight onto the enemy. Early versions of Braum’s W went so far as to only allow him to jump to allied champions, not minions, that ended up feeling excessively constraining though. We also talked a fair bit about how much power Braum should be able to offer in a dive buddy situation (following another allied champion in, and then helping lock people down), ultimately concluding that was a reasonable strength and still fit well with his intended teamplay based approach.

As far as ward jumping on Lee Sin, Kat and Jax goes that’s something we ultimately decided to balance those champions around (it’s a significant strength, not a free bonus). It wasn’t originally an intended mechanic, and there have been some good arguments for taking it away at times, intuitiveness and the way it circumvents the intended weaknesses of unit targeted dashes/blinks in particular. The plays it allows though are good fits for the intended strengths of those champions, all of whom are strong on the offense and intended to be slippery. It’s also a strongly embedded part of their playstyle, which added a bit of extra weight to keeping it.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Yeah, there’s a good secondary argument there certainly. Even if Braum was a non support tank who didn’t buy Sightstone though we’d still feel not being able to jump to wards was definitely the right call.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

 

Current expectation is that there’ll be visual updates to support kit changes, but not otherwise. Same approach as with the marksmen update for example.

A lot of the artists on the Champion Update team are focused primarily, or entirely, on the full scale relaunches like Poppy, Taric etc. For those we target a full visual overhaul, whereas the class updates are gameplay driven work with art updates focused on what needs to be changed to make small to medium sized adjustments to kits.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

It isn’t too common. It’s generally done if it’s a project Champion Update takes on. Examples of that would include the mass texture rebalances that were done last year, or something similar to Shen’s update, where both gameplay and visuals were updated.

That said, changing content a player has already purchased is tricky because they’ve bought something they enjoy, and changing it could change how they feel about it, which isn’t fair to them.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

We are actually working on this. Both in terms of tech and artistry. So for instance. My first VO was dunk master Darius. –lots of taunts. But not as effective as he could be. We advanced the tech on Rek’sai. I then used that tech on Tahm. Then based on what we learn from that, Beefpunchbeef stayed up a bunch of late nites so I could give Illaoi a whole new style of interactions. Jhin then pushed that forward. An important gate to remember is this tech and techniques are developed on new champs and champ relaunches. We are gaining this stuff– and slowly it will make its way through the roster. It will very very probably happen and on a champ in 2016…. then begin to spread to other champs and relaunches.

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Keep in mind she believes in reincarnation, and unlike our world has empirical evidence that it exists and that there is life after death.

As for taking other people’s stuff, youre assuming that she would keep it. She doesnt want you to value stuff.. The common prayer for nagakabouros involves taking some of your money (or stuff) and giving it to the sea. Symbolically the gesture is saying, I wont hold onto things i dont need. I will find a way to get more if need more.

Her god is storms, the sea, and life. It assumes change will and must happen. Also life in the serpent isles is hard, you have to be strong and adaptable to survive.

Mini game was preharrowing, that man was stagnating and thus st risk of becoming a ghost if he died. (Endlessly repeating the same mistakes he made in life)

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

BY HUGENFAST

Hey folks, HUGEnFAST here, art lead and splash artist from the Champion Update team.

For a long while, we’ve been thinking about old splash art, specifically splash art belonging to the skins of previously updated champions. As you are likely aware, most champion updates have not been accompanied by comprehensive splash art reworks, creating a problem where certain splashes are outdated or inaccurate representations of what you actually see in-game.

Luckily, we have a solution to this problem: Do. All. The. Splashes.

tl;dr: We are including complete splash refreshes with all future champion updates, and we’re working our way back through previously updated champions to bring their splashes up to par.

Simple solution; huge problem

When we originally started updating champions, we didn’t really have the bandwidth to include a full splash refresh with each update. League has a lot of art needs; we couldn’t take a full team of illustrators and sequester them for months to work exclusively on old splashes. If refreshing splashes with every update had been identified as a must-have at the time, the lack of illustration resources would have bottlenecked a lot of content.

That said, new skin splash art has always felt like a missing piece of the champion update process – especially when major reworks can completely change almost everything about a champion’s appearance. Now that we have the right resources in place, we’re ready to start filling in the gaps, one champ at a time.

Poppy was the first champion to receive a complete splash art refresh alongside her visual and gameplay update. Shen, whose update was revealed last week, is getting the same treatment, bringing new or updated splashes to the Rift along with his flying magic ninja sword and oh-so-fashionable Crocs. This is the new normal; every champion update from here on out will include splash art to go along with the changes.

One note: Not all splashes need dramatic, obvious overhauls. Some of Shen’s splashes have simply been updated and improved to more accurately reflect visual tweaks, while some have been rebuilt from scratch. The goal isn’t reinvention for the sake of reinvention, but bringing the old splashes closer to in-game accuracy and League’s current artistic sensibilities.

About those old updates

In addition to shipping reworked and refreshed splash art with new champion updates, we’re going back through every previously reworked champion and making sure they receive the same attention where needed. It’s going to take a while to get it all done (there are a lot of updated champs and a lot of skins), but we’re hoping to ship a few of these side updates per year and already have a couple in the works.

We’ll keep you updated as we refine our timelines and work through League’s massive post-update-skin splash backlog.

In the meantime, we hope you’re enjoying Poppy’s and Shen’s new splash art, and we’re excited to finally be moving this process into full production.

[ Link to Post ]

 

As always, a few recent artworks by League fans:

 

Soraka by 雞飛龜走:

• Pixiv
• Source

 

 

Blade of the Exile by 放逐之刃:

• pixiv
• Source

 

 

Insane Jinx by skold:

• naver
• DeviantArt
• inven
• Source

 

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If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at @NoL_Chefo or e-mail me at [email protected].

 

 

• Thunderlord Nerfs in 6.2
• Value of Tooltip Information
• Update on Dynamic Queue
• The Problems with Vladimir
• More on the Immobile Mage Update
• Scope of Vel’Koz Changes
• No new Shen VO
• Fan Art Corner

 

• Champion/Skin Sale: 22/01 – 25/01
• Free Champion Rotation: 19/01 – 26/01

 

[ Note ] You can find the changes to Thunderlord’s Decree HERE.

“It’s still possible that Thunderlords is over-tuned after all this, but bringing the others more in line with the leader should help us gauge how big the discrepancy is”

This is enacting that part of the 6.1 patch notes.

Currently, though there has been a wave of experimentation shortly after patch 6.1, the trend isn’t towards significantly more diversity.

With Thunderlord’s we’re using it as a moving goal post, it’s the benchmark to hit. Move others towards it -> push Thunderlord’s back slightly -> move others towards it (and in that regard, there will not be a change to TLord’s in 6.3 but we will try to get more changes to other masteries in 6.3 or 6.4). There’s also a couple misses in the current setup we’d like to address. Deathfire has little to no sense of feedback to it and Warlord’s is realistically used by very little of the roster (notably because it has no value before your first significant item).

On this change in particular: I’m purposely avoiding hitting the damage at all because the burst effect is the reason you pick the mastery. Instead, these are in the line of tweaking the accessibility of the mastery. TLord’s right now has up to a 10 second window to get your full proc. This has made the mastery more of a “bonus damage rider” than it has a “intentioned burst effect” for pretty much every mastery. This can be a difficult thing to balance around.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

The duration of Thunderlord’s stacks that are applied on enemies actually resets every time they’re applied.

At 5 seconds, this means I can reasonably accidentally get Thunderlord’s to proc by just back and forth light poking with a single attack or spell every 5 seconds. Discounting the last stack (because that obviously procs it), this means that Thunderlord’s had an uptime of up to 10 seconds.

So that nerf is aimed at hitting “incidental” power in favor of “committed” power. For most multi-hit burst characters (and characters that free-proc it, like MF), this is a nil change.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

I’d prefer not to look at any mastery instead of another mastery but instead evaluate all, otherwise you create blindspots.

I do agree that Precision is running pretty powerful, and it might be candidate to drop a bit more. However (and this is just looking at Plat+ data), 1/3rd of Thunderlord’s users actually go Intelligence instead after the last nerf we did to Precision. With Precision, we need to be extra careful since it’s not the only mastery of significant power in that slot.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

[ Note ] You can find the experimental Warlord’s Bloodlust rework HERE.

We’re currently experimenting with a Warlord’s rework (this showed up on the PBE during the 6.2 cycle).

The distinct lack of any power at the start of the game for most champions makes it difficult to make it an option for many while not silly for three specific champions. So that’s the primary focus of the rework.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Yes, definitely. And I strongly believe the lack of any decent feedback is a major contributor to deathfire feeling weak.

This isn’t a slamdunk case of “well, we need to focus on satisfaction” for the other keystones though. We should and are looking at opportunities, but even looking at other tiers on this line Bone of Stone is actually used about 13% more than Grasp of the Undying. Especially noteworthy that Bond of Stone is distinctly lacking in strong feedback.

[ Link to Post ]

 

FWIW, from what I’ve seen of “optimal” cases, Grasp is almost every melee top laner and Bond of Stone is almost every melee support except Alistar. And then Strength of Ages is every jungler not running Thunderlord’s.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

 

I agree having more information available for not just Assassin mastery is ideal.

I’m resistant to having too much on the tooltip though. Long tooltips for a lot of players creates a “TL;DR, just give me what’s ‘best’ and let me get in game”. Short tooltips that are more scannable enables more players to make quick judgment calls instead of playing follow the leader.

However… for those willing to dive for information and optimize to it, that mindset is exactly wrong. To balance the two we’re actively trying to think of ways of having more “expandable” type of knowledge sources or ways of pushing that information to someplace that will help the information digging group without harming the scanning group. For example, the hover overs on item tips in the shop that was added with preseason is a clear example of this in action.

Mastery tips are a little more difficult, since they are already a hover over and thus we can’t use the same trick twice. So it might be a bit til we figure out where to put it.

[ Link to Post ]

 

I’d challenge how much that actually matters.

As a user, does it really affect you? If you’re hardcore enough, you’re already going to external websites for your build advice, rune/mastery pages, guides, etc. I find it ends up being a happy marriage between the official website giving you enough information to be able to play the game reasonably. And if you’re really looking for in-depth content, it’s totally fine to look elsewhere.

It does leave players feeling the distaste of it not being available to them first-party, but in terms of function over form, I feel the present-day system works.

Assassin tells you that you deal bonus damage with no champions nearby. So, not for a duo laner, and not useful in a teamfight. The specific number will really never change your gameplay. 1.5% damage is not enough to make you want to mis-position as Zed, or refuse to take your return flight on R after Death Mark.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

UPDATE 1/22 PST Evening:

Hey everyone,

Based on learnings from yesterday’s failed test in Vietnam, we’ve been improving our internal load test. This will allow us to better vet fixes before shipping them to live. We plan on internally testing the queue over the next two days, which unfortunately means you shouldn’t expect Dynamic Ranked or new champ select in Normal Draft this weekend. If tests perform well, we will look to roll out to one affected region (to be decided) on Monday. If that is stable and successful, we will roll out to all affected regions until service is fully restored.

ORIGINAL POST PST 1/21 EVENING:

Hey everyone,

We wanted to share an update on new champ select and Dynamic Ranked ahead of the weekend. We understand it’s been a frustrating week, and are committed to getting Dynamic Ranked and new champ select up and running again.

What’s Wrong:

New champ select and Dynamic Ranked runs on a brand new backend that performed well (after initial hiccups) during live tests in North America and Turkey. However, when we rolled it out live at the beginning of the 2016 Ranked Season, the high volume of games played knocked the new service down in some regions.

What’s Next:

We haven’t pinpointed a solution yet, but once we have a fix we’re confident in, we’ll be extremely deliberate in rolling new champ select and Dynamic Ranked back out to the game. The last thing we want is to return the feature to you, only for it to need to come down again. When we do have a fix, we’ll start in one region, and if successful, roll out to other affected regions.

FAQ:

Q: Do my ranked games count?
A: The placement games played in Dynamic Ranked and/or Solo/Duo queue do count and will transfer when Dynamic Ranked returns

Q: What about Party Rewards?
A: Party Rewards Weekends will be extended to compensate for Dynamic Ranked and new champ select’s downtime

We’ll continuously update this post as long as new champ select and Dynamic Queue remain down. Thank you for your patience.

[ Link to Post ]

After making improvements to how new champ select and Dyanmic Ranked handles high volumes of games, we attempted a fix last night in Vietnam (1/21 PST). The queue showed some improvement, but ended up failing again The team’s been digging into those test results since late last night, learning from them and applying them to our next test. That’s the absolute latest.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Our main problem with Vlad is his Q. It’s a low CD, targeted, resourceless spell that restores health. It doesn’t have much interesting decision making for Vlad, if it’s ever strong early he just shuts a lot of people out of lane and the main ways to deal with it are to either sustain even more or to punish Vlad really hard when he trades.

Vlad’s also got a bit of a ‘stat check’ issue, where he’ll just reliably outclick a lot of opponents 1v1 without sufficient avenues for being outplayed. That’s not ideal, it’s a lesser issue though since it doesn’t kick in until later in the game when 1 v 1 counterplay is less important than team v team counterplay.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Statikk and the other folks working on the mage update will be talking in detail about why these particular champs. At a high level our goal with these class updates is to increase distinction between characters. With the mage update especially we’re also looking at some champions that are distinct, but when functional aren’t healthy for the game or are in an ok spot already but have a fair bit of untapped potential for differentiation.

Ought to bring more distinct things to a team:

• Vel’Koz – Really distinct to play as, cohesive, feels fair to play against. Doesn’t bring enough distinct to a team though, so lacks a clear strategic niche or specialized tool offered. Goal with him will be to offer clearer situations where he’s the right pick when you want AP poke.
• Brand – Pretty similar to Vel’Koz overall, in that he lacks a clear enough niche, so primary gameplay argument for picking him is when he’s the most damaging AOE mage. Needs a somewhat more distinct toolkit basically.

Distinct, but have significant game health challenges:

• Vlad – Does distinct things, but can be really unhealthy. Work on Vlad’s going to involve a lot of ‘how do we preserve the core of what he does while adding ways to play against him’.
• Malz – More game health issues than anything else. Counterplay’s not great in particular, with Malz needing to just click on you and kill you given his squishiness, immobility, lack of reach, vulnerability to item system counters. Has a lot of distinctive stuff going on though.

Untapped potential/Confused identities:

• Cass – Confused identity, unclear niche (sustained damage almost marksmen like pattern, versus poison spreading potential, versus stacking power, versus counter initiator etc). Work on Cass will need to start with constructing a clear picture of what her concept should be (suspect that’ll include stripping out the stacking gameplay, though that’s a guess).
• Zyra – Does reasonably distinctive things, but has the potential for quite a bit more. Also ends up either a strong bully or struggling to function a bit too often.

Finally, as with the marksman update in preseason, we’ll also be making some small tweaks to a number of other mages at the same time as these bigger changes (things like the Q reset on Twitch for example).

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

We decided we’d be best off focusing on a couple of sub types of mage here, which are basically sustained damage mages and pick mages. Artillery mages (Xerath, Ziggs etc with really long range) and supportive mages (Ori, Karma etc) are groups we might tackle later, though it wouldn’t surprise me if there was more value in tackling a different group instead (assassins or some types of tank instead).

 

As far as Lux/Xerath/Ziggs go I do think there’s a bit more overlap there than’s preferable, particularly between Lux/Xerath on pick/burst a dude and Xerath/Ziggs on clear waves/poke champs repeatedly. Lux does bring a more supportive kit than the others though, Ziggs gets more area control/mobility but gives up reliability against champions, and Xerath’s got phenomenal backline access. As a result there’s an ok current state distinctiveness wise. Potentially means they might just need smaller adjustments, rather than larger scale work, to pry them apart a bit.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

 

 

• Immobile Mage Update
• State of Ryze, Syndra and Xerath
• Meddler on Irelia’s [ E ]
• State of Singed
• Dragon buffs to receive changes
• 2016 Ranked Season is live
• Party Rewards for Dynamic Queue
• Dynamic Queue disabled for all regions
• Champion Mastery Levels 6 and 7
• Fan Art Corner

 

• Champion/Skin Sale: 22/01 – 25/01
• Free Champion Rotation: 19/01 – 26/01

 

 

Hey all,

The next class update will be focused on “traditional” Mages and I’m here to give you guys and gals some of the initial details. Similar to the Juggernaut and Marksman releases, these updates aim to take look at an entire class of champions and accomplish 2 primary goals:

1. Ensure the class as a whole is relevant and satisfying to play
2. Differentiate each champion within the class

Why Mages?

Many Mages are intended to lack mobility but have not necessarily been given clear answers as to what they should do about it or why they work without it. For each sub-class of Mages (this is something we’ll dive into more in a different post) these answers will vary, but our intent is to make it clear that each of these champions is powerful in their own unique way.

On the flip side of the coin, many of them no longer meet our evolving gameplay standards of interactivity, depth, uniqueness, etc. This is also an opportunity to go back and adjust these champions (especially some of our older ones) making them more interesting to play as, with, and against.

Who are we working on?

Similar to the Marksman update, we’re aiming to release ~6 significant updates. The champions we are currently considering (but are still subject to change) are Malzahar, Vel’Koz, Brand, Vladimir, Cassiopeia, and Zyra.

For each of these champions we aim for them to be 3 things:

1. Distinct – offer a unique reason to be picked
2. Cohesive – deliver on their core thematic and gameplay fantasy
3. Healthy – balance-able and fun to play as and against at all skill levels

Note that given the scope of these projects, we won’t necessarily solve every issue on every champion – and fortunately we won’t have to since all of the champions already succeed in their own way at some of the above.

On top of the 6, we are again looking to do a sweep across the entire class (as we did with the Marksman) to find potential tweaks that will make them more unique, interactive, and exciting to play. The smaller-scale changes done to Twitch and Lucian are good examples of this.

What can you expect? When?

We’ve learned a lot from our previous projects and better understand the line between something unique and something unfamiliar. Our priority is to find ways to evolve and enhance the current direction of a champion while still accomplishing the above-stated goals.

In some ways, the feeling of change is unavoidable; we are updating these champions so things WILL be different. We’re confident that we can retain the things you guys love while adding new dimensions.

This is all still a far ways off, so don’t expect anything soon. As you can infer from the title, we’re aiming to release these changes around mid-year and we’ve only just begun to delve deeply into these projects.

How can you help?

We’d love to have your guys’ feedback and opinion on the Mages before and during their development process rather than only at the tail end – especially for the “big 6” (Malzahar, Vel’Koz, Brand, Vladimir, Cassiopeia, Zyra).

We are most interested in the following about your favorite champion:

1. What aspect is most core or sacred to their identity?
2. What issue bothers you the most when playing them?

This doesn’t mean we’ll be magically giving everyone dashes or any other instant remedies to all their problems (weaknesses often exist for a good reason). Instead, this information will help us understand which direction to take each champion and where the opportunities lie.

We won’t be talking in the short-term about exact changelists since we’re still in such a state of flux, but we hope you guys are as excited as we are about the updates ahead!

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I can’t guarantee voidlings will be exactly the same as they are now, but this perspective is something I’m trying to strongly consider when working on Malz.

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Swain was definitely very high on our “want to do” list. What it really came down to is that we feel he really needs a full-on rework (gameplay, thematics, visuals) similar to Sion or Poppy in order to really deliver on an awesome version of Swain.

A large reason why we have chosen the current 6 is based off our confidence that we can deliver a solid update given the more limited scope they will get being as a part of a class update. We’re being a lot more careful about over-reaching since it’s definitely bitten us in the past.

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Really substantial change for Swain’s likely to be quite a way off yeah (highly unlikely this year, can’t predict so usefully beyond that). We do think he’d benefit a lot from a full overhaul, he’s certainly not in Taric, Yorick etc tier though, they’ve got significantly bigger problems than he does.

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Vel’Koz is a great champion, but he honestly lacks Distinctness. He has some hints here and there of uniqueness (Q targeting, true damage from Deconstruct, etc.) but none of them are pushed to a point where it truly differentiates him.

Don’t worry, even within the 6, the amount of change each champion will see is pretty drastically different.

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I think you guys will be pleasantly surprised, we’re pretty aligned on where there is potential for Distinctness in Vel’Koz’s kit. We just don’t agree that he’s there just yet.

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We’re not going to be ready to talk details of what will/won’t change for quite a while. It’s likely that Vel’Koz’s changes will be at the small end of the spectrum though, he’s fundamentally solid apart from his lack of distinct enough outputs (what he does isn’t distinct enough, how his does it is very distinct though).

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Fiddle is also a champion we considered, but ultimately felt wasn’t the right fit.

To do a quick rundown on our perception:

1. Distinct – Fiddle is extremely distinct on the roster. Playing as and against him offer unique experiences.
2. Cohesive – Fiddle is decent in terms of cohesiveness. He has a somewhat niche thematic as a terrifying scarecrow, but it’s understandably cool. It could probably be pushed a bit further especially in terms of the satisfaction from all his base spell (Drain, Terrify, and Dark Wind).
3. Healthy – This is debatable, but Fiddle is certainly not the largest health problem in the game. Tactically, his spells’ gameplay could probably be more robust in terms of interactivity (counterplay). Strategically though, there are many ways to deal with Fiddle whether through vision, knockbacks, stuns, etc.

Fiddle is certainly a bit dusty and old-feeling, but that means he may be more in need of a visual / polish pass more than anything. It’s not like he wouldn’t benefit with some more significant work, but he’s a champion that we feel can be a put in a decent spot even with just some minor number tweaks.

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Really good point. We don’t intend to destroy Support playstyles, but truthfully many of these champions’ fantasies and gameplay manifest best in a role where they can get gold and be the primary threat for their team.

We’re very aware that Zyra, Vel’Koz, and even Brand to some extent all have identities in the Bot Lane.

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We haven’t yet started work on Zyra other than ideation, but one of the things we tended to be excited about was more plant interactions, like she brings the forest alive around her. Not sure where that means we’re going to take her, but I am excited to see what the team comes up with.

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The more we work on these group champion projects, the more I think we tend to find that if someone already has something going for them (like Zyra an “counterengage mage”), it’s usually a good idea to start ideation with how we might be able to crank that current strength up to 11.

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Simple is a great rule of thumb to lean on. We’re definitely keeping that in mind for these projects.

We agree with you on the “mini-games” thing. Mechanics start feeling like forced “mini-games” when they feel arbitrary, uninteresting, or simply don’t align with the expectations and desires of the champion. We understand this space a lot better after the past few projects.

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We think mini games, when well done, can feel like a really fun, natural part of a champion’s playstyle in a way that expresses their personality/theme. Draven axe catching for example taps into his show off nature, Bard’s chime collecting fits well on a weird dude that wanders and saves things etc. If the minigame doesn’t feel compelling, or doesn’t fit with the champion it’s on however then yeah, that can feel pretty jarring. I’d agree Skarner’s an example of that – if he had a reason to really want to defend the crystals in the jungle it might be another matter (e.g. if they contained others of his kind, frozen, that could eventually come out late game and join his fight).

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We’re going to try and tackle Ryze before the mid year, we think he’s enough of a problem we need to act sooner . Unclear whether that’ll mean some degree of rework or just significant balance changes.

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If I recall correctly, Syndra made it pretty far through the selection process, but I believe we determined that she either needed a ton of work to really spice things up on her, or that we could give her a little love on the mechanics side closer to release and still get pretty good mileage. As these projects tend to fall in between these two amounts of work, we ultimately passed on her in favor of others.

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I’m interested to know why you think Xerath is in a weird spot. Is it because of the state of the meta-game? Or is it that there’s something he’s failing to deliver that he seems to be intended to be doing?

As far as what we thought, Xerath seems to be up to par in Distinction, Cohesiveness, and Health. I’ve seen some people argue his gameplay is too similar to Lux to be considered distinct, but we actually see Xerath as more of an extreme range DPS mage, whereas Lux is more of an extreme range burst caster that relies heavily on catching squishies out and killing them with quick full combos.

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I don’t think it’s a great ability, in particular because it can be really unclear what result will happen before she uses it, leading to press the button and hope plays that can feel unfair (in a way you can’t influence) to one player or the other. It’s also an ability that, due to the way it can punish fighting back and its nature as a targeted spell, can leave opponents without apparent options.

Having said that though there are a lot of other champions/abilities I think we’d be much better off looking at first that need the work more. An Irelia rework someday’s a definite possibility, think it’s unlikely we’ll do one this year though.

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We don’t have any plans to make significant changes to Singed (almost certainly balance adjustments at some point, but none currently planned). He’s got a distinct playstyle, a deep mastery curve, creates great high moments and certainly isn’t a jack of all trades. He is a bit weird thematically, but not in a ‘this guy’s failing to deliver on his core fantasy’ kind of way.

I’m not personally convinced the root from the Fling/Mega Adhesive combo’s sufficiently relevant to justify its existence on the kit, could imagine a world in which we took that out and replaced it with something a bit less niche. I don’t play Singed much myself though, so I might be just unaware of a bunch of value that interaction provides.

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We’ve been experimenting with some possibilities over the last couple of weeks, including changing the 4th buff to something a bit more felt than minion/monster damage. Currently waiting to get some insight into how dragon’s being valued in the start of the ranked season/first couple of weeks of professional play though to inform how big our changes should or shouldn’t be.

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The 2016 ranked season is now live! Gather your allies and gear up for all new challenges as you climb the ladder in 2016. We’ve introduced a swath of changes over the course of preseason, as well as new dynamic groups — now you can queue for ranked play with any number of friends. With new champ select, you’ll queue up for your two best positions — you’re guaranteed to always end up with one of the two positions you select — and join a team of players who’ve done the same.

To learn more about the 2016 Season, visit the season homepage here or check out the patch notesover yonder. It’s a new season of GGs, and we’ll see you on the battlefield!

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Celebrate the launch of new champ select and the 2016 ranked season with Party Rewards. How’s it work? Simple. The larger your premade group, the larger the IP bounty you rake in. The bonus is even bigger for new champ select-enabled queues like Normal and Ranked draft. The All-Star bonus from Team Fire’s win at All-Stars is active in Taiwan, NA, and Korea!

Check out the details below!

Premade size	New champ select queues	Other queues
1	0%	0%
2	125%	50%
3	175%	75%
4	225%	100%
5	450%	150%

Party Rewards are live starting today (10:00AM PST on January 20) until 11:59PM PST on January 24. We’ll see you on the Rift!

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TL;DR Dynamic queue was disabled because of a load issue, Solo/Duo Ranked is temporarily re-enabled, and all matches played in this mode still count towards your future Dynamic ranking.

Earlier today, we saw an issue on EUW that required us to disable the dynamic queue system. This was due to an issue with player load on the servers. This has also affected the KR server in a similar way.

As a result of this, all ranked modes based on the dynamic queuing system were disabled and remained down while we continued to investigate. When deciding on a course of action we had two options:

a) Leave ranked disabled until the issue was resolved
b) Re-enable the previous Ranked Solo/Duo queue

We chose option b) because we wanted to ensure that those of you who enjoy ranked could still play your placement matches. As we did not have a clear ETA on a fix, we proceeded to re-enable Ranked Solo/Duo until the issue is resolved.

What does this mean for your placements and rating?

Any games played on the currently available solo/duo queue system will count towards your placements and ranking when the new system is back up. For example, if you already played 2 games before the issues began in Dynamic Draft and 6 more in Solo Queue, you’d have 8 games played – and these all count towards your placements.

Why are other regions not affected?

Before we introduced this feature, we used a simulated environment to load test the entire system. Live implementation was first conducted on TR and NA with no major glitches. However, some subsystems of the dynamic queues didn’t scale up correctly when running on a larger live environment.

What are the next steps?

Our engineers are actively working to fix and re-enable dynamic queues in EUW. As of now we have no ETA but our tech teams will provide an update when we have more information to share. Thank you for your patience.

UPDATE: To answer a question some of you may have regarding Party Rewards, a several day event that offers bonus IP for playing with friends. We’re holding this event back for EUW until issues are resolved. Once Dynamic Queues are back we’ll look to enable Party Rewards and make sure that players on EUW have the same amount of time to earn IP with friends.

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We don’t consider Live environments as testing platforms. That would be dangerous and unfair to our players. Most of our features go through similar process after the development phase: functional testing -> load testing -> initial deployment to previously selected environments -> few days of player behavior testing (collecting players usage data) -> full deployment everywhere else. The NA & TR deployments week ago just helped us properly understand player reactions, gather important behavioral data and eventually tweak and adjust the service globally. You know, hundreds of dynamic variables here and there…

There were some minor issues in NA, but in general the service was and still is stable. Load testing of large services is always tricky though as one has to simulate the load in development labs. You can’t just get millions of players to test your service live — it must be done artificially as a set of ongoing software trials. We always go much higher than the expected traffic, and usually get highly expected results, like the one with the months-long EUW load tests before the new data center deployment in AMS. No matter how precise you are, live environments can be unpredictable and sometimes even tiny unexpected factor is enough to get one subsystem’s thread on hold. Obviously there are larger systems out there in the internet, but they are usually distributed and can handle the load separately. Our environments work differently — there is a distribution in given service’ cluster, but in general EUW, NA, KR, etc, are single entities handling the entire traffic all by itself.

Sorry for longer post. We’ll obviously do our best to get back to you with fixed Dynamic Queues asap 😉

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Update: Dynamic normal queue is now disabled in all regions worldwide while we work on a fix (as an fyi, NA began to see similar issues despite the earlier launch on that server). Still no ETA to give but will be sure to have someone update this thread when that changes.

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Hi guys,

The PB team are the experts on this one, and their updates mean a lot more than mine. However, Lyte has been posted HERE with information – while unfortunately there’s not much to be said at the minute, the team are hard at work trying to fix this issue, get it tested, and get it out to you guys. We are as excited for this feature as you are – I honestly couldn’t wait to get home yesterday to play it, and I plan on leaving my placements until it’s back up and running due to the less stressful nature of things in the new champ select.

I know you guys want updates, and it sucks when we can only post “we’re working on it” – but that’s the truth and update we’ve got at the moment. As per Lyte, there’s no ETA at the moment, but I advise keeping an eye on the boards and Lyte’s twitter for updates as they’re available.

Thanks for sticking with us on this – we know it’s far from a smooth experience, but personally I truly believe the new champion select and dynamic queues are great features, and cannot wait to see them (back) on live to get some games with you guys on the rift!

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Hey all,

When we first announced that Hextech Crafting and loot was heading to PBE, we saw a few questions about how champion shards would work for players who already had all champions unlocked. We weren’t ready to answer those questions then, we are now at the point where we want to reach out to the community for feedback.

Here’s our current, leading design:

• All players (whether you have all champions unlocked or not) can use champion shards that are duplicates of champions you already own to increase the Champion Mastery level cap of specific champions up to level 7.
  • This will increase the level cap, but won’t increase your actual Champion Mastery experience or unlock any associated rewards (unless you already have enough mastery points on a champ to be level 6 or 7, in which case you’ll immediately unlock those rewards)
  • Example: You own Jax. Using a Jax shard, you can raise the Champion Mastery level cap to 6 for Jax.
• Alternatively, you can combine 3 champion mastery shards to unlock another level on any champion you choose.
  • Example: You spend three random champion shards to increase Champion Mastery level and a pop up appears allowing you to select any champion. You select Renekton, raising his Champion Mastery level cap to 6.

We also plan to offer chests in the store that can be purchased with IP that would contain specific types of champion shards. For example, we might offer a Demacian Chest for a limited period of time which would contain champion shards for champions associated with Demacia. We might also offer chests like these via other means, like rewards for accomplishments in ranked.

Our goal with this is to ensure champion shards drops always feel like a step towards something players care about and to make to the highest tiers of champion mastery feel exclusive and valuable. Ultimately we think this will make it more meaningful when you drop your mastery badge emote after a clutch (or not so clutch) play. It’s possible that there could be some other reward types associated with higher champion mastery levels, but this is still TBD. We’re excited to get Hextech Crafting and loot out to you all and curious to hear your feedback.

Thanks everyone for all the testing you’ve done so far!

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It’s the level 6 and 7 cap that unlock not the experience required for the levels themselves. So you’ll still have to earn your way up. Since the chests require strong performances (S grades) on champs, it puts more weight on unlocking these levels.

Somebody else pointed out since these rewards are more exclusive they should probably be cooler. That’s a good point also.

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As always, here’s a short collection of recent fan-art:

 

Zed by Citemer:

• Pixiv
• Tumblr
• Deviant
• Weibo

 

Swimsuit Lux by raichoo:

• Facebook
• DeviantArt
• Patreon

 

A New Dawn by haonguyenly:

• DeviantArt
• Pixiv
• Facebook
• Tumblr
• Commissions

 

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If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at @NoL_Chefo or e-mail me at [email protected]

 

 

• Meddler on Shaco and Evelynn’s VUs
• State of Galio
• State of Cassiopeia
• Balance mentality and  target audience
• Terrain Breaking & Flight Abilities
• Timeline for Team FIRE Diana skin
• Lyte on Voice Chat in Dynamic Queue
• Ekko’s time rewind and Hexatech villain
• Fan Art Corner

 

• Free Champion Rotation: 19/01 – 26/01
• Champion/Skin Sale: 19/01 – 22/01

 

 

We did do some exploration into a possible Shaco direction a year or two ago. That was a gameplay only update that didn’t hit the mark at the time however, so got put on hold (it was some opportunistic work to see what was possible in some free time, rather than a prioritized project). Evelynn we haven’t looked into a major gameplay update for since her rework years ago. I do think we’ll need to take a look at how stealth/stealth detection works again sometime in general though (possibly as part of an assassin class update at some point).

As far as VUs go I’d expect both to be pretty sizeable projects given the age of their current models/anims/VFX etc. Taric’s our current priority, and Yorick’s the likely full relaunch after that. After that it gets less certain. There’s some argument for Shaco or Eve certainly, some other champs we’d really like to tackle too though (Urgot and Warwick for example).

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We pulled those changes because they weren’t hitting the mark, in terms of solving issues on Galio or making him more satisfying to play. For one thing there’s not really any available power budget for an alternative passive. Galio’s not popular at present, but he’s pretty effective in the average game, so we don’t have space to add power to him without pulling it elsewhere.

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I’m not 100% certain as to the original intent, Galio was designed before my time at Riot. I’d be fairly sure the goal was to keep Galio further forward in fights by locking the healing to him, rather than having him potentially lower on health himself and therefore hanging back poking and buffing allies.

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We’ll be looking at more standard mages for the mage update mid year, rather than hybrids like Galio (mage/tank).

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Vlad/Swain lack the range, and in some cases the mobility, of other mages certainly, and get extended damage patterns and health sustain in exchange. That’s fairly similar to the trade offs a lot of juggernauts make, so yes, if that’s what you mean I’d agree with you.

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What does “debilitation” mean to you? I see suggestions like this come up from Cass players pretty often, but it’s usually not followed by much more than wanting DoTs to be emphasized on the kit, and Twin Fang to be de-emphasized. Do keep in mind I’m not saying this is incorrect. However, I do hope that if we were to do poisons or “debilitation” better, it would manifest in a way that wasn’t just stronger DoTs. Unique debuffs? Time delayed afflictions? More CC? Is it simply that you want your Q to be stronger in lane?

Please do keep it civil from this point forward. I’m interested in what’s going on here, minus a lot of the aggressive nature (though I understand it to a degree, to be fair).

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It’s not exactly what you’re asking for, but I put in some changes to Cass this last week that should make her no longer cancel her Movement or Attack orders when casting Twin Fang. It’s not something that could ever be data-mined, so it may not appear on PBE, but it should be there. Assuming it gets through QA bug-free, it should be there for 6.2. For those unfamiliar, this treatment was also given to Ryze a few patches after his release, and it seemed to make his play a bit smoother.

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That sounds like something that new tech would need to be created for, so it doesn’t seem like a quick easy thing at the moment, unless there’s an internal workaround that could do it that I’m spacing on.

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I’m not really one to field buff requests, sorry. If there was something about her gameplay that mechanically wasn’t functioning, I may be in line to help in the immediate, but despite her low win rate in solo queue, the fact that Cass saw pro play as recently as this week does suggest she’s not incredibly far off from a pure power level perspective.

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Balance and health aren’t really the same thing. Champions can be balanced without being healthy, and they can be healthy without being balanced.

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Because we don’t take such a binary approach to the matter.

Regardless, it would be great if this conversation could move back toward directional changes for Cassiopeia, and away from game balance. I came into this thread with the objective of learning what kinds of directional changes players are interested in for Cass.

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Honestly, it feels like a bit of both to me, where the allowable power level of a champion is something like the maximum of their power level in Solo Queue and their power level in competitive play. When the discrepancy between those is too great, we run into issues, issues that are a frequently a reason for doing Champion Updates. Ryze has some of this going on at the moment, where hisallowable power is regulated by the fact that he’s a competitive power pick despite being sub par for most players.

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We’ve talked about terrain destruction abilities a fair bit and do think there’s some pretty cool gameplay opportunities in them. Making such abilities look good enough’s the biggest challenge remaining at this point (still some technical and design issues to solve, but of a smaller scale). Given the way our maps are made there’d be a lot of work on the art side needed to support such abilities. I’m hopeful we’ll get there at some point, definitely won’t be in the short term though.

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It’s not so much the programming side, as it is making the destroyed terrain look good (rubble of broken walls, destoyed trees, appropriate ragged edges for still standing terrain etc).

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Some form of ongoing flight on a champion at some point’s pretty likely, and mainly a question of finding the right gameplay fit, rather than technical limitations. Would be a really different ability though to terrain destruction of course (changing one characters options a lot versus changing both teams’ options a lot).

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There’s lots of work to do on her right now, since she just recently got picked from all stars, but I assure you she will be coming out – we’ve just got to make it super awesome first. I’ve always wanted to make sounds on a skin for her. Sorry on the lack of specific dates, but you’ll hear more as it’s getting developed!

Is there anything you think would be awesome for this aesthetic?

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[ Note ] Today (Jan. 19th), Riot will issue a statement whether the new Champion Select will be used for Ranked queue this season. Stay tuned!

To be clear, I think you’re making a few assumptions. It’s pretty universally agreed among industry experts that voice chat introduces some amount of toxicity into an ecosystem or game; however, that doesn’t mean we are opposed to it.

We definitely understand the importance of communication in a competitive team-based game, and every time we talk about voice chat, we mention that we’re open to it, we’d just want to change some of the basic designs of voice chat to mitigate some of the known issues.

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The Bravo Ray designed the appearance of Jhin (concept artist =/= gameplay designer) and was excited about the idea of a ‘mystery box’. You see this creepy thin guy who is asymmetrical because of a huge shape on his shoulder, you have no idea what it is… until the final act.

What it is is four huge magically infused artillery shells racked up on a hextech accelerator built right into his mechanical shoulder (he’s sacrificed much for his art). When attached to Whisper (and the extended barrel for accuracy) it forms the final piece in the biggest, most powerful gun Runeterra may have ever seen! Kinda reminds me of Shen in Kung Fu Panda 2.

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A big key thing to understand about Ekko is that his Z-Drive doesn’t always work the way he wants it to, mostly owing to the fact that it’s homemade hex-tech that runs on the exotic properties of a shattered crystal.

In terms of Parallel Convergence, (story wise) is what happens when you wrinkle time too much — sometimes it tears and your parallel self lends a hand to seal the breach. I mean, he’s the boy who shattered time. That can have some unintended consequences.

With Phase Dive, Ekko basically blinks out of the timeline, returning at opportune moments.

As you can tell, he’s probably made (and broken) a few Z-Drives.

The Timewinder feeds off his Z-Drive. However, he initially designed it to have an entirely different function — probably a smoke or flash bomb — but… it didn’t quite work as intended. In fact, Ekko’s sort of unsure about how it works, but it works reliably enough (and with no lingering effects) for him to be cool with chucking it around all willy-nilly.

Thanks for making me think about this stuff. One of my 2016 goals is to write Ekko a long bio, and you’re inspiring me to put it before my other work that has deadlines (because I am a triple-A rated procrastinator — heck I’m supposed to be making my wife bolognese for dinner at the moment).

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WAAARGHbobo: If i remmember correctly, he’s an enforcer for one of the piltover owned companies in Zaun. Never had a real name, was called hexa-thug or something in script.
I think a sion skin for him would be dope. Giant arm acts as (and maybe even transforms into) the axe. Prob couldnt be a champ though as he occupys a space already covered by urgot and sion.

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Lastly, and as usual, fan art!

Acknowledgement (Nidalle and Rengar) by Arcanedist:

• Source
• Pixiv
• Artstation
• Deviant

 

Azir by Skence:

• Source
• DeviantArt

 

Chosen Syndra by mickking:

• Source
• DeviantArt

 

Jhin the Virtuoso by Aths-Art:

• Source
• DeviantArt

 

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If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at @NoL_Chefo or e-mail me at [email protected]

 

 

• Meddler on gameplay updates currently in progress
• Lyte on voice chat and toxicity
• The risks of MMR Boosting
• Fan Art Corner

 

Here are the most recent news in each category:

  

 

 

Hi all!

Wanted to share a few of our thoughts on where we’re up to on some currently topical gameplay stuff. Trying out a different approach here with just quick updates on a number of topics rather than a focus on a couple of things (feedback on that much appreciated!).

The Preseason:

• We’ve been putting a lot of work into updates for the upcoming preseason patch over the last couple of months, with changes to champions, items, vision etc. We’re getting very close to putting that stuff on PBE (all going according to plan).

 

• Kindred have been out for about a week now and we’re starting to see players get to grips with their kit. So far we’ve been really happy with the state of their release balance, so 5.21 won’t contain any buffs or nerfs, just some bug fixes. Really interested to see where they end up over the next couple of patches, there’s some definite learning curve there and we’re also seeing people experiment with them in a range of positions with a mix of success and failure.

 

• Morde’s a pretty topical dude at the moment. Our belief is that he’s too strong in a duo lane, despite previous nerfs, so we’re going to be reducing the amount of bonus XP he gets from his W in 5.21. Our hope is that that will then give us some room to buff his base stats, bringing his solo laning closer to his duo lane performance. That’s something we’ll likely do as a follow up change though (potentially in 5.22), once we’ve got a read on what the impact of the XP reduction was.

• Thematic side note for anyone that’s interested and hadn’t already heard – we’ll also be changing his title to ‘The Iron Revenant’ rather than the previous ‘Lord of Death’ (Iron Revenant being a player suggested title update that we felt did a great job of merging different thematic elements from Morde).

 

• Works heavily underway on Poppy. She’ll be the next really big champion update that goes out (Sion/GP sort of scale, so full overhaul of abilities, visuals, voice etc). Her E’s the only ability effectively ported over from her old kit, feel we’re going for’s still very much small, noble, determined warrior who smacks others around with a large hammer.

 

World Champs

• Worlds has been getting a lot of attention for the Gameplay teams of course. We’ve been really enjoying the diversity of picks in some positions (mid lane especially), though are seeing that some others could do with more help (jungle for example). Some outlier champions that definitely seem too strong (Morde, GP, Darius etc), some of whom we’ve already nerfed post 5.18, some of which we’ve got stuff underway for. A number of champions too that we don’t yet have plans for, but are keeping a really close eye on and talking about quite a bit (Tahm Kench for example).

 

Upcoming Champs

• We’ve had a couple of trends with new champions recently that have helped opened up new gameplay space (non damage utility ults) and thematic space (creatures of myth). We’ve been pretty happy with how those explorations have gone, we don’t have to overdo them though. Next set of champs we’ve got underway are going for a bit of contrast with that as a result, with a few more damage/combat focused ults and characters who are somewhat more a part of the regular world of Runeterra.

 

General Balance Changes

• Since a lot’s going to change in the upcoming preseason patch we’re generally holding off on smaller balance changes for a little bit, given which characters are a bit too weak or a bit too strong could change significantly in the near future due to systemic changes.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

I’m also interested in finding something along those sort of lines. Still trying to figure out exact format, frequency, style etc, with this post as one test of what works for people versus what doesn’t.

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I’ll be trying to do these every so often. Buffs/nerfs/updates are one of the things I’ll be best able to cover, new champ ideas by contrast we generally prefer not to talk about until the champion’s ready. Game modes and skins by contrast are outside of my own area of expertise, so I’ll leave discussion on those to the folks who work on them who are much more able to talk about them usefully.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Ao Shin got put on hold quite a while back, in large part due to technical issues with making a serpentine creature look like we wanted in game. Plan’s always been to look at Ao Shin again once we’ve got the tech to do those body animations properly.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Current expectation is that Kindred will not be the last new champ of the year.

We will continue to look for opportunities to get classes into less common positions, that’s not going to be a good fit for some champion concepts though.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Poppy’s Q is a very functional spell, but we felt there was opportunity to shift to something with more play and interest to it.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

She’ll be more focused at controlling a fight and fighting people over longer periods over time than exploding a dude really quickly.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Sightstone upgrades will be part of the changes. Intent is to still keep those in a position where they’re generally more appealing on supports than other classes though.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Speaking frankly about Cass:

• We don’t believe Cass is in a good state post rework.
• We also don’t believe pre-rework Cass was in a good state either.
• We would like to do some work (scale unknown, though extremely unlikely to be a full scale rework) on Cass next year.




• How that work will be prioritized hasn’t been determined yet. There are a number of other projects it’d have to be traded off against on either the Live Gameplay (balance) team or the Champion Update (reworks) team (projects like Ryze, Azir, Taric, Yorick etc).
• Even if we do do work on Cass next year I can’t offer any promises as to when that might be. Could be some small stuff early in the year and some medium work later, just balance/QoL changes at some indeterminate point, a moderate sized piece of gameplay work late in the year etc.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

Azir’s kit is sufficiently difficult to learn that it doesn’t seem to currently be possible to put him in a spot where he’s sufficiently balanced for experienced players without being extremely inaccessible to people unfamiliar with him. Learning curve and skill ceiling are great of course, in this case Azir’s skill floor’s too punishing though. Current intent is to look at ways to make him somewhat more accessible, with if needs be, some nerfs to his top end if those changes buff him there too.

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Crit’s definitely got some issues (feeling screwed by RNG when you did everything right especially), so at some point we do want to do some work on it. It does add some variance and risk to otherwise extremely reliable, consistent actions (right clicking/getting right clicked) though, and LoL’s arguably a little too predictable at times at present. We don’t want to simply replace it with a guaranteed damage multiplier as a result and, whenever we do work on it, would want to bundle that with some other systemic changes.

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I feel mana management’s a useful lever to have, both in terms of the control it offers over champion power at various points in the game and as an expression of player skill. Having said that I don’t feel that all characters should be mana gated equally. Some melee should arguably be gated in lane, but free to use spells generally on CD later in the game, given the challenges they have getting onto targets. Other long range characters, or healers, by contrast should generally have significant costs throughout the game.

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Resourceless characters and energy users are both types of champion I feel have a good place in the game in terms of the different playstyles, pacings (in lane and after) and abilities designs they allow. I do believe it’s healthy to have mana as the default resource however, with occasional exceptions and we’ll be going through a period of new champions who consistently use mana for a while (last non mana user was Rek’Sai, next 4 upcoming champions at least will probably all use mana).

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I believe it’s very possible for high and low mobility champions to coexist in lanes, I don’t think we’ve always given lower mobility champions sufficient compensation for the low mobility price they pay however. Being a low mobility champ should allow you to get access to some pretty powerful stuff that wouldn’t be appropriate on champs with dashes/blinks etc. Kog’Maw and Anivia are good examples to me of where that’s been done right, with both of them being options that more mobile marksmen/mages respectively don’t offer.

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We’d still like to make some improvements to Syndra’s passive, probably in a way that added a bit of power to her to. No short term plans for that though, that’ll be a sometime post preseason project (timing uncertain, since our current road map for balance type changes primarily reads ‘Get preseason ready and then follow up on preseason’).

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Those are currently on hold while the Live Gameplay team’s focused on preseason work. We’ll probably look at Riven against once that stuff’s out, unclear whether those specific changes are what we’d want to go with yet or not though. In the meantime we’re shipping a small nerf to Riven’s ult CD to take a bit of power off her.

[ Link to Post ]

 

 

If we were to nerf Tahm where we did so would depend on where he’s too strong. If that’s something we’ve recently buffed, then certainly, reverting a recent buff would make sense (e.g. if enemy Devour’s now too strong reducing the regurgitate range back down could be a good fit). On the other hand if the issue’s elsewhere reverting a recent buff might not hit the right issue (e.g. if his healing’s too strong nerfing devour range isn’t an appropriately targeted fix).

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Yes, Marksmen changes will be in the preseason. We haven’t decided yet which class we might tackle after that (enchanters also isn’t a name or clearly defined subclass we’ve got a consensus on, though it is a term some people have been using internally to describe caster supports like Janna or Nami).

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Ironically, I just answered a question about voice chat on Ask.fm, which is here:

QUESTION: Are you trying to make the game full PG? (Like even below PG-13) Couse it looks like you are trying to completely remove toxicity when there will always be people that act ughh… silly.Couse for example, voice chat would help immensly but your toxicity “excuse” ruins that idea…

League is a hardcore game, and it’s played by many adults so no, we’re not trying to make it a PG-13 game. In fact, we’re not against offensive language per se. For example, saying “Fuck I missed that skillshot” or “Fuck, that was a bad engage, sorry” is completely fine and is not punished. You’re only punished when you start focusing your language against someone else, for example, “Fuck you asshole, wtf was that play. Uninstll plz.” Of course, hate speech, death threats and more severe language is not OK in any context, and that stuff will be punished with pretty much zero tolerance.

With regards to voice chat, we’re not opposed to voice chat. A lot of research suggests that voice chat between friends is an awesome experience, but voice chat with strangers is more hit and miss. These are known problems with voice chat and these issues exist in every game. If we do voice chat, we’d like to try some new features to tackle these problems but right now, all our development teams are focused on other priorities.

To the OP though, there’s a huge difference between 3rd party voice chat and integrated voice chat. Players that already have a voice chat solution installed, and are willing to add a stranger to their personal voice chat friends list and voice chat in a game are a very different, self-selected population compared to the general playerbase. In many cases, you could say these players are more likely to want to voice chat with others and very few people would do this purposely to yell at someone or be toxic to someone. If we had integrated voice chat, it would be available for everyone in the game, which has very different player behaviors.

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Hey Everyone,

A couple months back I made a post regarding MMR Boosting punishments and the updated investigation and identification methods we created for the 2015 Season. Today I wanted to talk about something else in regard to MMR Boosting, the security of your account. By now I’m sure you are all aware of the announcement of the 2015 Ranked Season Rewards; and after seeing what waits for those who reached Gold or higher we have seen a large increase in the number of players receiving MMR Boosts. While it may be tempting to pay for a boost or getting your friend/family member to play a couple games to boost your rank up, there are some serious risks involved in receiving a MMR Boost.

First and foremost, you will receive a MMR Boosting punishment. Your account will be suspended for two weeks, any ranked rewards you may have earned in the past will be stripped from your account and you will be ineligible to receive the 2015 rewards. Now this isn’t an “IF” your account is caught this is a when your account is caught. No matter how elite a booster may claim their methods are, there is no hiding from us.

On top of the punishment looming over a boosted account, the security of the account could also be at risk. Far too many times have we seen players share their information with people offering to boost their account, only to have that person then run off with the account and either sell it to another party or use it for other nefarious means. There are boosters who will boost an account and then report it directly to us for whatever reason they may have. And then there are those who set up sting operations, offer to boost someone and report every player to us who says yes, and they aren’t even contracted through us to do something like this. This is something they do out of their own free will to ensure boosters are removed from the community they love.

But even after being boosted there is no guarantee that an account will remain in the ranking it was boosted to. Throughout the 2015 Season we have seen 35% of boosted accounts drop back down to the ranking they were at before being boosted or lower. So not only is there the MMR Boosting punishment being issued to an account, the numbers show you may drop back down in rank and expose your account information to unnecessary risk.

I will be checking this post throughout the day to answer any questions or concerns you may have.

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You shouldn’t have anything to worry about. We know players travel all the time and play from location other than home. When we investigate accounts we make sure to take this into consideration. The last thing we want to do is punish someone because they wanted to enjoy a couple League games while they were on vacation or visiting friends.

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Nah, you’re cool. Duoing with a friend is something we allow, even if they were the one doing the carrying. As long as you played on your own account you have nothing to worry about.

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As long as both players are on their own accounts it is not considered to be boosting. Though chances are a challenger player is not going to have a legitimate smurf account that can duo with a bronze player but by some chance they have a legitimate smurf able to duo with a bronze friend it is not punishable in regard to boosting.

Now if the challenger player intentionally lost games to have a lower ranked account in order to stomp lower ranked players or to duo with friends, then the account would be open to another form of punishment.

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We are working around the clock on MMR Boosting investigations and we still have a large list of people who are set to be punished for their boosting participation this season. While nothing anywhere is perfect there is a very slim chance someone may get lucky now to avoid detection, but sooner or later their time will come. Also if you feel you have information pertaining to someone who had their account boosted you are more than welcome to send a report to us through the support site. We appreciate these types or reports as it does help us ensure we can identify those who have received MMR Boosts.

[ Link to Post ]

 

We never punish anyone based simply because a report was sent in. When any reports are sent in to us we begin an investigation into the reports player, gathering our own information and comparing it to what the reporting player may have sent to us. Only when we are 100% sure that the reported player is guilty will we ever issue a punishment. There are times when players have been reported to me for being boosted and it turned out that the account wasn’t boosted, rather they just had a bad losing streak in their Diamond ranking.

[ Link to Post ]

 

You made it to the end! Here’s some fan-art to wrap up the red posts for Saturday:

 

Lux by Raikoart

• DeviantArt
• Tumblr

 

Haunted Zyra by dotswap

• Tumblr
• Source

 

 

Female Thresh by Gumae

• DeviantArt
• Tumblr

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If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at @NoL_Chefo or e-mail me at [email protected]

 

Patch 5.15 will hit live in the early hours of August 5th, assuming there are no delays. Here are its contents:

 

Champion Updates

• Fiora Rework

Balance

• Champion Changes
• Item Changes

Store Content

• Cottontail Fizz
• New Chroma Packs
• New Summoner Icons

Miscellaneous

• Tweaks to New HUD
• Ward Selection for Champion Select

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Health decreased from 593 [+85 per level] to 570 [+80 per level]
• Base mana pool increased from 287 to 302
• Attack Damage-per-level decreased from 3.2% to 3%
• Auto Attack range increased from 125 to 150
• Movement Speed decreased from 350 to 345
• Health-per-second increased from 1.37 [+0.16 per level] to 1.65 [+0.11 per level]
• Mana-per-second increased from 1.52 [+0.1 per level] to 1.6 [+0.14 per level]

 

Fiora identifies the weak spots – or vitals – in the defenses of all enemy champions she comes close to. If she manages to attack her enemy’s weak spot, Fiora deals 3 [+0.27-0.45 AD]% of the target’s maximum Health as bonus true damage for that attack, receives a 20% [30/40/50% with ranks in R] bonus Movement Speed and restores 20 [+6 per level] Health. Fiora reveals a new weak spot whenever she attacks one, or when a moderate period of time passes without it being attacked.

 

 

 

Cost: 25/30/35/40/45 mana || Cooldown: 18/16/14/12/10 seconds || Range: 400

Fiora lunges in a target direction before striking a nearby enemy, dealing 65/75/85/95/105 [+0.55/0.7/0.85/1.0/1.15 bonus AD] physical damage and applying on-hit effects. Lunge prioritizes enemy champions, and tries to hit enemy weak spots. Finally, 60% of Lunge’s cooldown is refreshed when the ability strikes an enemy.

 

 

 

Cost: 50 mana at all ranks || Cooldown: X seconds || Range: 750

Fiora enters a defensive stance, parrying all damage and hard crowd control abilities for a fraction of a second. After she’s done parrying, Fiora attacks in a target direction, dealing 90/130/170/210/250 [+0.6 AP] magic damage and slowing the movespeed and Attack  Speed of the first Champion she hits by 50% for 1.5 seconds. If she parries any hard crowd control abilities, Riposte stuns instead of slows.

 

 

Cost: 40/45/50/55/60 mana || Cooldown: 15/13/11/9/7 seconds || Range: 150 [melee]

Fiora gains 50% increased attack speed on her next two basic attacks. The first cannot crit but slows her target by 40/45/50/55/60% for 1 second, while the second is guaranteed to crit for 140/155/170/185/200% damage.

 

 

 

Cost: 100 mana at all ranks || Cooldown: 110/90/70 seconds || Range: 500

Fiora targets an enemy champion, gaining speed and full knowledge of their vitals. Each time she destroys a weak spot, she deals damage equal to a maximum of 4 times the true damage from her passive [15% of Max HP]. If she’s able to destroy all four weak spots in 8 seconds, or if she destroys at least one before her target dies, Fiora creates a large and long-lasting zone under her enemy that heals Fiora and her allied champions for 80/110/140 [+0.6 AD] each second for 5 seconds.

 

 

To complement her gameplay & visual rework, Fiora’s received a new short client entry:

 

”I have come to kill you for the sake of honor. And though you possess none, you will die just the same.” The most feared duelist in all of Valoran, Fiora is as renowned for her indomitable will and haughty pride as she is for her skill with the blade. She was born to Demacia’s House Laurent, a once-proud family whose reputation was tarnished by the actions of her father. In an unprecedented move, Fiora challenged him to single combat and, upon winning, took control of House Laurent. Defying the Demacian establishment, she has set about restoring the reputation and pride of her family name, one duel at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Z-Drive Resonance [ Passive ]

• Slow strength decreased from 40/50/60/70% to 30/40/50/60% [values for levels 1/6/11/16]
• Movement Speed buff increased from 40/50/60/70% to 40/50/60/80%
• AP ratio on third hit increased from 0.7 to 0.8

 

Parallel Convergence [ W ]

Shield value changed from 150/195/240/285/330 [+0.8 AP] to 80/100/120/140/160 [+1.5 AP]

 

Chronobreak [ R ]

• Health strength changed from 20/25/30% [+3.33% per 100 AP] of the damage taken over the last 4 second to 20% [+6.66% per 100 AP]

 

 

• Gangplank now additionally gains one Silver Serpet every second [3v3, ARAM and Dominion only]

 

 Cannon Barrage [ R ]

• [Tooltip Fix] Now mentions that ranks in Cannon Barrage increase Gangplank’s maximum planted Powder Kegs from 2 to 3/4/5

 

 

 

Javelin Toss [ Q ]

• Base minimum damage decreased from 50/75/100/125/150 to 50/70/90/110/130
• Maximum base damage decreased from 150/225/300/375/450 to 150/210/270/330/390
• Cast time has been increased from 0.125 seconds to 0.25

 

 

 

On the Hunt [ R ]

• Movement speed boost decreased from 60% at all ranks to 40/50/60%
• If an ally walks within range of On the Hunt after it’s been cast, they’ll receive 20% bonus MS [tooltip fix]
• If an ally walks into On the Hunt’s range after it’s been cast, they will gain bonus MS equal to Sivir’s bonus MS at the time [on live, they get the maximum value of the buff]. This value still decays to 20% over the duration

 

 

 

Camouflage [ Passive ]

• Attack Speed when exiting stealth changed from 40% to 15% + 5% per level
• Teemo now takes 1.5 seconds to stealth, down from 2
• While in brush, Teemo will enter stealth twice as fast (0.75 secs) and moving through brush won’t break the stealth.

 

Noxious Trap [ R ]

• Mushrooms now last 5 minutes, decreased from 10
• Cast range increased from 230 to 300/600/900
• Internal cooldown decreased from 1 second to 0.25
• Casting time increased from 1 second to 1.5
• Now has an additional function: if Teemo throws a mushroom on top of another mushroom, it will bounce up to 3/4/5 Teemos before being planted.

 

 

Teemo also received new spell icons. From left to right: Passive, AS buff icon from Passive, Q, W, E and R.

     

 

 

 

 Zeke’s Harbinger 

• Buff duration has been increased from 6 seconds to 8
• Now grants 4 stacks per basic attack, decreased from 6
• Stacks for spellcasts decreased from 12 to 8

 

 

You’ll be able to buy this insomnia fuel for 975 RP some time after Patch 5.15 hits live.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All chroma packs are available in store for 590 RP and can be found in the “Bundles” tab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A new poro has wandered on the PBE, holding what’s presumably a tablet pen. It’ll likely be a reward for the recent art event on Riot Korea’s official page.

 

 

 

Here’s the official list of upcoming changes to the new HUD:

Readability

• New font and styling
• Larger team frames, meters, and ult timers
• Full square cooldown indicator
• New colors differentiating “on cooldown” and “out of mana”
• Larger stat icons and text
• Larger Ping and FPS displays
• Scoreboard now has more padding, larger champ portraits, and larger fonts
• Added drop shadow to chat
• Brighter XP bar
• Larger Summoner spell timers on the scoreboard
• Active ability events have been changed to gold (level up, toggle, just off cd) to differentiate from unavailable (cooldown, OoM)

Animation and Audio

• Shortened and pulled back on many animations including “level up”, “just off cooldown”, and toggles
• Scaled back many audio cues

Layout

• CS, KDA, and Team KDA has rejoined game time in the top right
• Scoreboard improvements including larger and clearer summoner spell and respawn timers

Misc

• Added colored bonus stats
• Added cast bars for all abilities other than instant casts
• Swapped Crit and Attack Range in player stats
• Mute buttons on the Scoreboard are now always visible
• Minimap can now be scaled smaller

 

The KDA score and minion kills are once again displayed in the top right corner of the screen. Also, stats that’re affected by runes, items, masteries, etc., are now listed with a yellow color with in the Champion Stats [C] box.

 

Cooldowns on the new HUD now fill the entire icon, not just a circle inside it:

 [ Note ] The new HUD will also replace the old one for Ranked when Patch 5.15 hits live. You can read the announcement HERE.

 

You can now select the ward skins for the wards you won’t place from Champ Select:

 

 

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If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at @NoL_Chefo or e-mail me at [email protected]

 

 

PBE 31/07

• Tweaks to new HUD
• New Summoner Icons
• Champion Changes
• Tweaks to Cassiopeia’s Chromas

 

 

 

The KDA score and minion kills are once again displayed in the top right corner of the screen. Also, stats that’re affected by runes, items, masteries, etc., are now listed with a yellow color with in the Champion Stats [C] box.

 

 

A new poro has wandered on the PBE, posing in front of a Windows logo. No idea how you can get the icon (yet).

 

 

 

 

• Attack Speed-per-level increased from 3% to 3.2%

 

Bladework [ E ]

• Slow strength increased from 25/35/45/55/65% to 40/45/50/55/60%

 

 

 

Cassiopeia’s recolors have been changed to differentiate the chroma pack from Desperada Cassiopeia.

 

 

Here’s a complete preview of all the remaining Chromas from Patch 5.15, now with store assets:

 

 

 

 

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If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at @NoL_Chefo or e-mail me at [email protected]