Quick Gameplay Thoughts: May 2

RiotMeddler·May 2, 2017·1 votes·47,629 views

Morning all,

Mid-season goes out tonight/tomorrow barring any last minute unexpected problems! Really looking forward to seeing how you folks find it and how it changes our perception of what needs work in 7.10 and beyond.

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 put 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

More 7.10 changes

7.10 should be hitting the PBE today, and with it some in development work. Since we've had to start development on that before mid-season was live it's more likely than usual that we may need to change direction a bit on some of this stuff. Changes include:

Ivern: Lowered movement speed, higher health and mana cost per camp taken. Dude's just straight too strong
Rakan: Shifting some power from his E (lower shield strength) to his Q (100 more range) and probably W (bit more damage at present). Looking to ensure his play's not too dominated by just ally shielding. Probably power neutral overall.
Rumble: Shifting some damage from Q to Overheat auto attacks, with the goal of making his laning a bit more interactive (Overheat autos require him to draw minion agro). Also aiming for power neutral, but with better game health.

PSA on Rift Herald

One thing I'd suggest watching out for with the new Rift Herald that goes out tomorrow is that the channel to summon it is interruptible. Hadn't thought about that myself much until yesterday when during a playtest I tried summoning it just as a teamfight was starting to break out for a bit of extra pressure and someone promptly CC'd me, stopping the channel which also consumes the item. Recommend learning from my mistake on that one and either hanging back a bit when summoning or taking advantage of opponents trying to do so too far fowards.

Mid Season Spotlight

I'd imagine most of you have already seen it, for those that haven't a Mid Season spotlight went out yesterday though. Worth a look, and also at the end includes a brief glance (super brief) at one of the screens from the 5 ban system for ranked/draft that's being worked on right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fl2Wg5rkew

ARAM Followup

7.8 contained some adjustments to ARAM. We've been analyzing how those have gone and will probably be doing a bit of further followup work, hopefully in 7.10. Details to follow.

182 Comments

ErdamonMay 2, 201715 votes

If you are indeed going to go with these Rumble changes, can you at least make his autoattacks feel less awful? I mean, sure Rumble isn't exactly the epitome of healthy gameplay, but the reason why majority of Rumble players prefer to just spam Q from range is because trying to actually make use of Rumble autoattacks nowadays is a suicide (compare Rumble's autoattacks to Yasuo , Camille , Renekton or Fizz ) .

In a world where every single champion in the top lane has really good trading ability and both miles better autoattack animations on top of having really responsive animation cancels, if you cut down Rumble's Q damage he'll just get piledrived by any top laner. I'm not taking into consideration just the Q nerf here, I mean, given that Rumble has already been immensly weakened by all the changes, I mean, Season 6 and latest changes still left a ton of scars on Rumble ( item 3156 completely shuts down Rumble no matter how ahead he is, Rumble doesn't benefit from Keystones as much as other champions, item 3107 and item 3190 basically make you question why the hell did you pick Rumble if a ~2400 gold item migitates your entire ultimate).

And now with the mid season update, we'll have much more ways to not let Rumble player have any satisfaction of playing Rumble (Adaptive Helm comes to mind most notably), on top of tanks getting more popualrity and from what we could have seen, majority of these tanks will still indeed have a really significant damage. By nerfing Rumble's most important damage source and shifting it to the most unreliable and the worst feeling to use part of his kit, what exactly do you want to accomplish? It should be pretty obvious that due to Rumble autoattacks just feeling outright SHIT. The wind-ups are way too long, the attack command seems unresponsive, when the animation finally finishes it doesn't even feel like Rumble even completed it in the first place, let alone did anything meaningful, even with the Overheat bonus.

So with all these unfavorable odds against Rumble, please, if you are going to go this direction, I believe it's finally time Rumble autoattack animation stop being so awful.

RiotMeddlerMay 2, 201710 votes

We're planning on looking at Rumble's AAs at some point. In terms of timing they're pretty reasonable, the way the animation's done makes them much harder than they should be to read though. That makes em feel awkward/clunky.

As with any champion we'll assess where Rumble stands power wise once mid season's out.

FızzMay 2, 20174 votes

Hey meddler, i have a question for you, do you think Rumble is a Tryndamere?

CorvidMay 2, 20171 votes

What do you mean?

ErdamonMay 3, 20174 votes

I guess he's asking if Rioters are aware that Rumble has little to no reliable mobility or cc or any mechanics that would enable him to actually just stand in one place and autoattack like a dumbass (which apparently they want him to do now) unlike the given tryndamere who has really good mobillity and strong survivability, which do allow him to AA people like a dumbass.

ErdamonMay 2, 20176 votes

Just please don't go on him too harsh just yet, I'm really concerned about how Adaptive Helm and the tank changes affect Rumble and I'd be more than happy to not go back to Rumble from the period of patches 5.16-6.7

Alesya369May 2, 20173 votes

why the hell did you pick Rumble if a ~2400 gold item migitates your entire ultimate

Uh... Have you seen those item 3123 item 3033 item 3165 ?

ErdamonMay 2, 20172 votes

Yeah, but I'm not saying that those fine.

DokkaebiMay 2, 201710 votes

Do you have any plans on giving buffs to some support items? item 3107 and item 3190 seem to be stomping the meta right now for every support leaving other items less worthy to buy.

DreampodMay 2, 201710 votes

With mid-season trying to put tanks back in the jungle, is there a plan to nerf down the excessively dominant junglers (Lee and Graves in particular) if they continue to crowd everything else out with their safe, fast clears and ability to still powerfully gank?

RiotMeddlerMay 2, 201711 votes

We might have some Graves nerfs in 7.10. Not sure yet on Lee Sin, though being discussed.

Jar Jar binks lMay 2, 201722 votes

{quoted}

We might have some Graves nerfs in 7.10. Not sure yet on Lee Sin, though being discussed.

pls Meddler nerf him already, he is just too strong and is on every game if not banned. Its redicilous! Lee sin is destroying the Jungle diversity

VenedictosMay 2, 20177 votes

Remember last year's Worlds patch? Lee got a very interesting buff and I argued a lot with my friends that this will definitely put him back in the meta. His 2nd cast W bonus lifesteal and spell vamp got doubled for Rank 1.

Have you guys considered reverting that buff? Lee Sin nowadays looks like he's got a lot of strength, since he's really good with single target damage and 2 out of the three single unit camps are buffs - which are very important.

Sun Wu RyuumokuMay 2, 20177 votes

Nerf his ms already.

ZerenzaMay 2, 20172 votes

I feel like he might have to much damage...usually jungler's that are so good at ganking have less damage to offset that, they have to rely on the laner. Look at Rek'Sai for a pretty good example.

But with lee sin if my opponent has half health i can just sit back and leave it to him cause he'll kill them on his own.

VayatirMay 2, 201713 votes

If you nerf anything about Lee Sin, it should be his ultimate cooldown. Lee Sin normally has around 30% CDR in a build, and his ultimate is up all the time in the mid-game. It's very frustrating for Lee to use it to escape being caught out, and then have it about a minute later for a big fight. Needs to be punished for using it flippantly.

Yl 0R D0DGEMay 6, 20172 votes

100% this

MakeItEasy4LolisMay 2, 20177 votes

Could you make some adjustments to Yasuo laning phase the same way as u did to Rumble? Yasuo can just poke the hell to you just by spamming Q and zoning with his tornado(without getting minion aggro) and its way much unhealthy than Rumble Q

DreampodMay 2, 20174 votes

I think that making the duration that he can hold his tornado start lower and scale up so that he can't zone people off the minion wave for as long while getting rid of his shield, which is thematically inappropriate since he should be using his dash and windwall to avoid damage, would give him actual counters in the laning phase and allows his opponent to interact with him in a meaningful way rather than him having all the agency in the lane and his opponent none.

iahim98May 2, 20176 votes

Meddler about the Gargoyle Stoneplate case with true damage and HP scaling abilities, why not just make it so it gives a shield instead of hp, as it would solve both.

RiotMeddlerMay 2, 20177 votes

We could do a shield equal to current health and I wouldn't rule out the possibility we decide we should at some point. There are some things about the HP increase though that we like (counter through % hp effects, different impacts on different champs with HP scaling that isn't on true damage, lack of interaction with healing/shielding increases etc).

6SfoolMay 3, 20174 votes

I get that true damage is not meant to be reduced by anything, but why can't you make stoneplate reduce it, given it has such a unique active already? I really like how it affects max health (and things scaling of of it) and I don't want to hear that Cho's ult will be the only reason that the item gets gutted. I've been looking at interesting builds all week for champs that could make balanced use of the item.

Variks the LoyalMay 2, 20176 votes

I live for these dev updates, man. Just wanted to say thanks to you and to Riot as a whole for being a much better communicator than other game devs out there. Keep up the awesome work :)

zaphod424May 2, 20175 votes

Hey meddler,

You mentioned future work on lb, any news on what and when that will be coming?

Leblanc item 3070

RiotMeddlerMay 2, 201710 votes

It's currently in testing, though I haven't had a chance to play it yet myself. Hoping to give it a look sometime this week so I speak more usefully about the details.

Kinky FizzMay 2, 20175 votes

why are you nerfing Rumble again? he is balanced...

VenedictosMay 2, 20175 votes

Rumble: Shifting some damage from Q to Overheat auto attacks, with the goal of making his laning a bit more interactive (Overheat autos require him to draw minion agro). Also aiming for power neutral, but with better game health.

I don't think you can call a change like this power neutral. Overheat is way less accessible and always brings huge risks. Unless you are compensating with some ridiculous numbers, it is going to be a nerf.

ZerenzaMay 2, 20171 votes

A nerf to his lane bully play style where he just sits there and uses Q continually, zoning off any opposition from the opponent? Or a nerf to the champion as a whole?

This looks pretty neutral to me guys, carry on.

ErdamonMay 2, 20173 votes

You'd need to actually play Rumble to know how dreadful it sounds that they'll shift some of his power to autoattacks without 100% confirming that they'll stop feeling like garbage

Angar RuiMay 2, 20174 votes

{quoted}

You'd need to actually play Rumble to know how dreadful it sounds that they'll shift some of his power to autoattacks without 100% confirming that they'll stop feeling like garbage

Yup, there's a HUGE reason rumble never jumped on the Gunblade bandwagon, Overheat is a debuff...it's rumble's OOM, rumble doesnt have enough mobility to not get kited into oblivion.

ggambinoMay 2, 20174 votes

Hi Meddler,

Those Rumble changes dont look neutral to me. Essentially you are gating some % of his current damage behind him silencing himself. You're nerfing his teamfight damage (Rumble rarely wants to overheat there), his zhonyas combo damage, his chase and his ability to precisely control his orientation. This is a nerf for every Rumble, unless I am seeing this wrong. Call a spade a spade, right?

That said, the extent of the changes I guess matters the most here so we'll see if its relevant after the new patch notes are up.

As an aside, is this due to Rumble dominating the current pro meta?

ƒrostγMay 2, 20174 votes

Meddler, are you still planning to change Lissandra 's passive? I'm asking because the current changes to the Abyssal and the introduction of new tank items will make her be less relevant than pre-rework Yorick ever was. Even with her recent buffs, her winrate is still below 48%.

AcidTheWarlockMay 2, 20174 votes

When are we going to see the Lissandra and Rek'Sai changes? I'm super hyped with all of these mini-reworks coming out but I don't see any news on either.

CrimsonReapsMay 2, 20173 votes

Is there anything planned for Xayah?

RiotMeddlerMay 2, 20176 votes

Nothing immediate at least no.

NekoJeanMay 6, 20173 votes

http://prntscr.com/f4tsia I hope my opinion is heard and considered. Rakan

I have been following the balance changes for the PBE for patch 7.10. I am in love with the Heimer change and Rammus change it will really make the champion fresh again. Now for my concern.

Rakan Rakan Q = Increase range by 100. I agree with this and fully support this. W= Base damage increased late game. I dont think this helps at all. Rakan is squishy and a support, we dont usually build damage and +20 damage late game doesnt do anything. If it was moved to early increase base damage maybe. E= Base shield lowered late game. Why....ok this is my opinion. You can lower the base value late game but why not increase the range of the shield more. I have been playing Rakan and when I dont have a Xayah adc i really am crippled cause my adc sometimes just a little bit out of range and I lose a lot of health after using my grand entrance.

Something else you can consider. lower the base shield, revert the W damage back to how it is on live and instead give the W a new effect. Damage reduction just test it out. When Grand Entrance is used Rakan gains um [[#]] damage reduction for 2 seconds. In team fight i get popped so easy when i W in and ult...the damage reduction can help him be less squishy when he dives in. I hope my idea is considered or listened to at least. Rakan is squishy and increase damage doesnt solve his issue. Giving some damage reduction or even bonus armor and magic resist in his W or Ult for 2-3 sec can really help him out.

pulledchickenMay 2, 20172 votes

7.8 contained some adjustments to ARAM. We've been analyzing how those have gone and will probably be doing a bit of further followup work, hopefully in 7.10. Details to follow.

how is it about to balance the game first? Summoners Rift aint balanced!

RiotMeddlerMay 2, 201751 votes

If we didn't work on things like ARAM until everyone online agreed SR was balanced we'd never get to work on ARAM ever. SR's still our main priority by a large margin but having a couple of people put some time into ARAM every so often is something we think's worthwhile.

PaperNayMay 2, 20174 votes

I miss the coin Items - not because of the bonus gold. The Passive HP Regen was rly nice and the **Talisman of Ascension **was also a great Item to play with. It had nice engaging and dis engaging potential - and with it gone **Raptor Cloak **has no Item to build into anymore.

Could there be something that could replace the Support Item function in its highest Upgrades? [ Talisman of Ascension | Face of the Mountain | Frost Queen's Claim ]

Illâoi Evê SiônMay 2, 20172 votes

Hey Meddler, what are you most excited about for the next patch?

I want to rush down a lane with Yorick, Herald and the Maiden as a sort of unstoppable force.

RiotMeddlerMay 2, 201711 votes

In terms of what impact it has on the game, Rift Herald, particularly how it shapes mid game objective play.

In terms of how I personally play though I'm really looking forward to the support starting item changes, coin especially (I play a fair bit of support, so that'll impact my own experience a lot).

Urane KingMay 2, 20173 votes

And a Zz Rot, dont forget a Zz Rot...

BârdMay 3, 20172 votes

Don't forget Mordekaiser's Dragon!

CannabisOverlordMay 3, 20172 votes

You mean Mordekaiser With Herald And A Dragon.

Illâoi Evê SiônMay 3, 20173 votes

With my luck and Mordekaiser's bugs? The two will glitch out and start fighting each other.
At least I'll get to be like... https://media.giphy.com/media/VzbN9gupkkXp6/giphy.gif

CannabisOverlordMay 3, 20172 votes

Here lately hes been bugging out and not attacking during a fight with other champs, ill have my q empowered and he just stands there, auto attack is even on in my settings.

robotmasterMay 2, 20171 votes

Have you thought about giving rakan's Q a 20% or 30% slow at all ranks just to make it more satisfying. This way he would have a bit more unity and you don't have to buff his heal on his Q.

RiotMeddlerMay 2, 201723 votes

That's uh, that's a lot of added power, not just satisfaction. Given the amount of mobility Rakan's got, and his two sources of hard CC, we don't think we can afford to put more utility on his kit, especially not on a low risk ability.

squingo44May 2, 20171 votes

{quoted}

That's uh, that's a lot of added power, not just satisfaction. Given the amount of mobility Rakan's got, and his two sources of hard CC, we don't think we can afford to put more utility on his kit, especially not on a low risk ability.

How about you add a rank scaling to his heal? I'm not sure why you would go for the level scaling like you did.