Quick Gameplay Thoughts: February 8

Hi folks,

Usual Disclaimers

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get delayed or even stopped. If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler

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Loading Screen

As some of you will have seen by now we've got the first update to the loading screen live in NA at this point. We’re working on a couple of issues that have cropped up, expectation is we’ll be able to turn it on elsewhere as well fairly soon once everything is functioning as intended. We're still aiming to add some additional features to it as well, like a team chat window, in upcoming patches. Those patches will also be a great time to make any other needed changes, so feedback on what's there already much appreciated.

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Rek'Sai

We've got a pass on Rek'Sai underway at the moment, hoping to ship some changes in 9.4. Focus is overall on feel more than power, aiming to improve how it feels to play her primarily. The other piece of work we'd like to do on Rek'Sai is some power shifting so she's not a bit weak in average MMR while strong in high. While it's possible some clarity/QoL changes might help out a bit in that regard expectation is that will probably need to be separate work still at some point too.

Biggest changes are:

• R only being dodgeable if someone teleports a larger distance away (1000 units +, so similar behavior to other targeted dashes).
• Burrowed Q grants 25 Fury like other spells do

Those are then paired with some smaller adjustments to things like Fury bar color when full, clearer Tremor Sense VFX for champions, auto burrow on respawn.

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Conqueror

We've got some Conqueror changes likely for 9.4. Those are part of our ongoing work on hitting problematic damage cases or lack of effective enough defensive options, alongside things like the Ignite/Smite upgrade changes, revised crit items, nerfs to out of line damage heavy champs like Brand/Zyra etc. They're also targeted at addressing some more Conqueror specific problems:

• Lack of windows playing against Conqueror (it's almost always up)
• Conqueror negates intended weaknesses on some champion's kits too strongly (bad against tanks primarily)
• For a rune intended to be chosen for its sustained damage Conqueror's output's often quite bursty.

Direction we're trying as a result:

• Gives Adaptive stacks on damaging champions with spells or abilities, making damage output backloaded and not something you can prepare with minion combat.
• Now requires max stacks (5 at present) to trigger true damage conversion and converts 10% instead of 20%, substantially reducing Conqueror's ability to negate defenses by itself while still hopefully serving as a useful safety valve on defense stacking.
• At max stacks also heals for same amount converted to true damage, moving some of its power to keeping users healthy enough to stay in sustained fights longer, rather than in dealing enough damage to make those fights shorter.

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9.3 follow up Thoughts on a few champs post 9.3 now it’s been out a few days

• Akali - As expected is in a very weak spot. Our plan is still to put power back in once we’ve got a good on the most appropriate ways to do so (don’t want to just reintroduce her as a major problem). Looking into that already, timeline’s uncertain (9.5 more likely than 9.4)
• Kai’Sa - Seems to be struggling a bit post item changes. Not confident yet how much of that to attribute to items just leaving her in a weak state versus builds having not yet shifted to whatever her new optimal is. She tends to get affected harder than most by changes to items given the breakpoints she needs to hit for her abilities. Open to buffing her if needs be, but don’t want to do so before we’ve seen a bit more play and adaptation to the changed state of things.
• Yasuo - Looks too strong post crit item changes, also not unexpected. We talked about whether we should bundle nerfs in with 9.3 but concluded we were better off seeing where he landed to understand how much power to take out. Nerfs expected in 9.4.

http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/6.24.1/img/champion/Ziggs.png