Champion Update...Update - 4.9 & 4.10

Hey guys,

RiotSeb back with some info on Champion Update projects headed to Live / PBE with the current patch cycle.

Karthus

The Karthus Visual Update is headed to live! With the help of your feedback we made several changes to Karthus during his time on PBE, mostly centered on clarity but with a little swag mixed in for good measure.

Some of you had expressed concern about losing Karthus’ abilities within each other due to color similarity, and internally we wanted to make sure players could tell the difference between abilities cast by friendly/enemy Karthuses (Karthi?). We decided to kill two Teemos with one axe by adding friendly and enemy team-color indicators to Karthus’ basic abilities, so they should be more distinguishable when you’ve got spells flying all over the screen. We’ve also done some optimization work on Defile, as it was originally a bit performance-heavy and visually noisy given how often it’s used.

We also saw some requests for global VO on Requiem; the main issue there is that Karthus’ R lines are pretty dang long so as to match the channel time, and long global VO could turn annoying very quickly when you’re hearing it (not to mention dying to it) every couple minutes. We definitely liked the idea though, so we added a global, evil laugh to Requiem that’ll crank up the feeling of impending doom no matter where your enemies are on the map.

As I’ve mentioned previously, we’re committed to following through on Champion Updates post-Live and making sure their foundations are solid. With Karthus, we’re keeping an eye on couple areas such as whether his frenetic casting causes VO overlap and whether his clearer Q effect results in the ol’ lich needing a bit more power.

Skarner

We’ve been working on Skarner for a while now, and in addition to some of the gameplay updates we’ve discussed previously we also had time to flesh out his thematic through some art upgrades and a brand new passive.

While continuing to avoid Skarner’s old gameplay problems, we’re looking to increase his power with more CC and stickiness as well as enable him to consistently bring value to his team even when behind. To that end, Crystal Slash now grants Skarner stacking Movement Speed, and the scorpion is sporting a new passive that stacks on enemies every time he hits them with a spell – at 3 stacks, Skarner’s next attack applies bonus damage and a short stun.

Skarner’s new passive obviously required some new VFX, and we decided to take the opportunity to roll together some other key art updates. In addition to the obligatory passive particle, Skarner has received a Texture Update as well as a touched-up shield particle on his W.

If you’d like to dig deeper into Skarner’s approaching update you can head on over to his PBE thread.

Nidalee

With her nuclear-tipped spears and incredible escapability, Nidalee's been a contentious champion for a long time, and we’ve been working on a Gameplay Update focused on toning down the frustration of playing against her and giving Nidalee players more diverse gameplay options and decision points.

To that end, we knew we wanted to reduce the damage potential of Javelin Toss as well as tone down Nidalee’s overall safety (especially in prolonged chases) and force her to balance escape potential against the ability to finish off opponents. Doing so gave us the opportunity to diversify her offensive arsenal and make Cougar form a more co-equal partner in Nidalee’s engagements – furthered by the fact that Cougar form is now available right from level 1. The defining feature of this update is a new ‘Hunt’ mechanic , which is applied by Nidalee’s human-form abilities and both increases her speed towards Hunted targets and provides additional options and power to her Cougar-form abilities. Along with some other changes, this mechanic links Nidalee's two forms into a more cohesive package and gives her the chance to feel incredibly agile and dangerous in her ability to close the distance and take an enemy down.

Head over to the Nidalee PBE thread if you’d like to see the current specifics of her upcoming Gameplay Update.