Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 27

RiotMeddler·Oct 27, 2017·1 votes·163,781 views

Morning 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 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

Balance team is silver, lol

Been seeing this statement, or something similar to it, crop up quite a bit recently. It's been a common enough joke at times in the past of course, feels like there are quite a few people treating it as fact right now however. Figured the easiest way to talk about it as a result was just to link a bunch of accounts from people on the Live Gameplay team who are fairly highly rated this season.

Note that I've used op.gg below simply because it's a site I personally use, not because Riot endorses it any more or less than any other similar site. Divisions listed are where people are in solo/duo, some people have higher ratings in Flex, others don't play flex at all.

Sotere Diamond 3 - Designer - http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=RiotSotere
Repertoir - Diamond 4 - Designer - http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=Repertoir
Trading Stance - Diamond 4 - Designer - http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=TradingStance
Wav3break - Diamond 5 - Designer - http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=wav3break
Wittrock - Diamond 4 - QA - http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=riotwittrock
Azubk - Diamond 2 - Designer - http://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=azubk

A few other notes:

While the Live Gameplay team is the team that does most of the patch to patch balance changes they also do a lot of other stuff too (e.g. item changes, smaller champion updates, runes work etc). They're also not the only team that does balance work (the new champion team for example is responsible for the release balance of a champion, with Live Gameplay taking over after that).
This isn't the full Live Gameplay team. There are some lower ranked folks on the team too, and some other Diamond+ players as well. We've generally found being good at LoL makes it more likely someone will be good at designing on LoL, but also frequently had people who don't do so well in game perform really strongly as designers.
We've also got a separate team called Playtest with a higher average ranking again (generally high diamond to masters) who are focused on assessing upcoming changes and how they'll impact the game.

Health Bar Improvements

Most people have probably seen this already, for anyone that hasn't, we've got a bunch of health bar changes coming soonish (not in 7.22, but soon after):

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/2x0eKJkU-preseason-healthbar-update

In addition to general feedback on those changes thoughts on other ways we could improve health bars further would be really useful too. We're planning a second round of work for early next year, looking at things like conveying HoTs and DoTs well for example. Since we're working on health bars already that makes that the ideal time to add any other features to them that would also be really valuable before the people looking at them move on to other work.

Bandit on the support items

For now at least we're putting the old Bandit mastery on the support items to avoid hitting support income in pre-season. Longer term we may look at better ways to deliver that income, at least at present we'll be delivering it there though.

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

444 Comments

Malicious MetalOct 27, 201741 votes

Don't let these awful claims drag you down, you guys are doing your job pretty well apart from a few outliners here and there, but then again, we're all human.

Speaking of Outliners, how does Galio fare now after the hotfix? Also, why wasn't there more emphasis put on his passive, colossal smash being some of his main damage? i think thematically it'd fit since he likes punching things and an AP bruiser wanting to maximize that cdr refund while brawling seems more intuitive than the Q poke spell.

RiotMeddlerOct 27, 201715 votes

Thanks.

We'll look at Galio again today, not sure yet.

One of the reasons for putting power into the Q in particular was to try and get back a bit of the old Galio playstyle, create a larger distinction between tank and AP builds. The passive by contrast doesn't help as much there, especially given it also requires him to be in melee range in the first place.

QuephaOct 27, 20174 votes

What was the "old Galio playstyle"? Poking with a long range AP ability? Isn't that just every mage?

RiotMeddlerOct 27, 20177 votes

Somewhat mage like poke, on a kit that had powerful PBAOE CC, with some reward for being picked into magic damage and a moderate amount of baseline tankiness regardless of itemization.

DeadUnbornOct 27, 20173 votes

is PBAOE Player Based?

GRIMThousandEyesOct 27, 20178 votes

Point blank I would assume

RiotricklessabandonOct 27, 20173 votes

yup -- pbaoe refers to an 'area of effect' that has a fixed cast range of zero, or in other words an area of effect that must be cast 'point blank' (which is where the 'pb' comes from).

SheeOct 27, 201728 votes

Shaming people or judging their skills just by their rank is stupid anyways. I'm tired of people of higher elo thinking they are the big thing and feeling superior to the ones that aren't that high in the ladder or that don't play ranked at all.

Sun Wu RyuumokuOct 27, 20175 votes

feeling superior of to the ones that aren't that high in the ladder.

??? but they are better. A gold is higher than a silver or a bronze. And you can more or less judge someone skills based on his rank (picks and numbers of game/seasons)

DeathBurstOct 27, 201727 votes

Their gameplay skills, yes. Their skills as a designer? Not so much.

As Meddler said: there is usually a correlation, but it's far from perfect, and a Silver/Gold player can have a great understanding of the game, even if they don't perform well in-game.

DarkRitualOct 27, 201714 votes

It's hard to know how large of a shield a player has. They don't last long enough to count health bar lines while also maintaining battle awareness. With the healthbar being worked on, has there been any work to add clarity with shield strength?

RiotMeddlerOct 27, 20175 votes

Not sure if it's been considered, I'll pass the thought along though. Can personally see arguments both for and against showing more precise shield values. On one hand having information lets you make more informed choices potentially. On the other the difference between a 300 and 400 point shield won't necessarily change your play and communicating it does make it harder to communicate other stuff (only so much real estate on screen and ways you can split people's focus).

Glory ln DeathOct 27, 20177 votes

I know the reasoning doesn't entirely carry over to other champions, but it is really nice that I can see the exact current shield strength I have as Sion. It's more important for Sion than other champions, since a lot of his damage is linked to detonating his shield before it breaks, but just knowing how much I have left in a fight is very helpful. Knowing that I have 100 shield remaining, and their autos are only doing 60 can be useful to know how much longer you can trade before backing out, especially when you are low health.

It wouldn't be a massive change, but it would be nice for players if other champions could see their shield strength like Sion.

The Yetii RiderOct 27, 201711 votes

Going to echo Malicious here, Andre. You and Repetoir and Sotere do great work and I think the Boards kids don't realize how grateful they should be that you write these Quick Thoughts pretty regularly for the benefit of a tiny fraction of your playerbase that actually reads it.

Let me take the opportunity to thank you for that here.

Still haven't heard from you regarding Nunu's lack of access to Aftershock, but I'll let that go. You've probably read at least one of my comments on it, even if you didn't respond.

As to the concern about gold and warding, I still think the burden of vision being placed on one player is inappropriate. It works in pro games but it's not fair to put that on us in solo queue. The existence of SS basically gives the rest of my team an excuse to flame me if i choose not to buy the item.

Obviously your balance team has no problem with mandatory items ( item 1001 ) for some reason, but the entire team needs vision, so tying our access to vision to one player's income and priorities is pretty harsh.

I want to play support for several reasons. I like the fantasy of saboteur and buffing. I like the reliability of healing and shielding. CSing is a chore that pisses me off. None of my reasons for wanting to play support include vision, but that is forced on me.

TomiMan7Oct 27, 20178 votes

Bandit on the support items For now at least we're putting the old Bandit mastery on the support items to avoid hitting support income in pre-season. Longer term we may look at better ways to deliver that income, at least at present we'll be delivering it there though.

I had an idea waaaay back that if you have a fully built warding item(eye of the....., or ruby sightstone) and you place a ward and it spots an enemy, you(who placed the ward) would get for example 5 gold/enemy spotted and some lets say 10xp/spotted enemy. Each enemy would have a seperate CD till they could be spotted again. Either each ward would have a max limit of "spots" therefor a max gold/exp income, or each enemy could only be spotted lets say twice.

Any thoughts? This would encourge ppl at lower ELO to build support items and give a little bit more gold for those supports who can place wards in the right spots.

For the other support items(non warding) I cant come up with anything but im sure you guys could handle it ;) ** EDIT: After reading your response about placing wards where they would always spot an enemy(in the middle of the bot lane for example), the wards could have a radius where if you have vision, which is not provided by the ward it would not spot the enemy. So example to make myself clear here:If you ward the enemy blue it would spot the enemy jungler BUT if you place your ward in one of the bushes on bot lane it would not since minions and or your tower would provide vision there.(maybe you could count champs there too :) )**

RiotMeddlerOct 27, 201710 votes

Putting incentives like that on wards results in some pretty warped behavior unfortunately where people end up putting them in spots where they'll constantly be spotting people rather than where they'll provide the needed tactical and/or strategic vision. It does add a new optimization challenge for the use of wards and likely some satisfaction, but the cost to overall vision and quality of team play ends up being really high.

kargishOct 27, 20178 votes

Think the balance team is to be respected, it's not easy to keep 140 champions balanced along with all the items.

Except for Repertoir. The Rengar mains have a total vendetta against that guy.

chumchummOct 28, 20174 votes

its not be respected. they posted 6 players who 5 of them are 1 tricks who only have decent win rates on 1 champion and ok win rates on like 2 others on top of that they rarely ever play. only 1 player has more than 10 games on their history in the last 2 MONTHS. on top of that not all the roles are represented on that list there isnt even a single person who secondaries adc let alone mains it. to top it all off they are low diamond with a barely 50% win rate. sooo the design team is lead by a bunch of hard stuck low diamond 1 trick players who only play enough to avoid demotion and multiple of them were gold last season and have struggled ever since they got into diamond. This is the best design they can come up for a game that brings in billions of dollars.

kargishOct 28, 20173 votes

I mean I'd argue with you about this and all, but since you happen to be talking shit about the design teams rank, while you yourself are gold IV and gold last season, I am just going to rest my case and ignore your points.

chumchummOct 29, 20173 votes

lol what a shock a rito fan boy who cant make any valid points. even if my rank was gold 4 it has nothing to do with my points. I was critizing the design team complete lack of experience in the game they are balancing. literally 3 of those accounts meddler listed as shiny examples have not played a single game in 2months. I never said i should be balancing the game or could balance better i said that they balance team should include skill individuals who idk actually play the game on a regular basis so "but ur gold 4 comment makes no sense". second of my main was jinxgaming and was d3 adc main before i took 2month break in the summer which is a higher raiting than literally 5 out of the 6 members on their balance team so lulz. I took a break because i gave up on rito completely and utter scorn for competitive integrity. watching tobias fate literally int feed for 12hour straight on stream that had rioters in the stream yet no ban proved to me that rito couldnt care less about competitive integrity or promoting a healthy competitive environment so i have completely given up on being competitive in this game and have gone to being competitive in games and i only play around on league any more to mess around in ranked like 90% of the league community who treat ranked as a casual game mode and rito who will suspend you if u dare say a curse word to a guy who is first timing a champion released that day and goes 0-18-3.

kargishOct 29, 20175 votes

https://i.gyazo.com/f815bec504be7edae95098feac891c63.png

RaxistaichoOct 27, 20176 votes

Also Riot Meddler is a Janna main. Keep that in mind when you see Janna's balance state.

RiotMeddlerOct 27, 201731 votes

{quoted}

Also Riot Meddler is a Janna main. Keep that in mind when you see Janna's balance state.

*Was.

Cmon, if you're gonna imply bias at least use more current examples. I used to play a lot of Janna, but haven't for the last couple of seasons.

PennsOct 27, 201712 votes

Thats why Nami got buffed in 7.15. We see through you guys

Kappa

Hyrum GraffOct 27, 20178 votes

{quoted}

*Was.

Cmon, if you're gonna imply bias at least use more current examples. I used to play a lot of Janna, but haven't for the last couple of seasons.

REMEMBER, RIOT MEDDLER IS A NAMI MAIN, THAT'S WHY NAMI'S WINRATE IS SO...

https://i.imgur.com/tVAcsAA.png?noredirect=true

...oh.

(obviously there's more to strength than a single number from plat+ koreans)

MadCast VoShayOct 27, 20173 votes

Any thoughts on where Galio should be? His rotation is still one shotting people post hotfix if he just gets a bit ahead, even bruisers with MR. Every Galio I've seen is still building glass cannon and using W to last long enough to do his rotation. I liked Mage Galio back in the day, but I think Assassin Galio is nucking futz.

Sahn UzalOct 27, 201714 votes

If he's building damage he should be dealing damage. Shocker.

TomiMan7Oct 27, 20174 votes

Yeah? Dealing 94% MAX HP at 1000AP? Yeah thats balanced. That was pre hot fix, but still its too much.

PennsOct 27, 201711 votes

The damage got thirded tho

if thats a word lul

RalanrOct 27, 201710 votes

It’s 1000AP. It’s not something you really get every game.

Off Meta ZileanOct 27, 20173 votes

Hey Meddler! Been asking you this ~6-8 times or so over the past month, not sure if you're ignoring me because the way I'm asking isn't polite enough(?) or if you've just been too busy to respond to me!

Unlike Karma, Zyra, etc. Zilean got only armor buffs on the PBE in place of his seals. Previously you mentioned that such mid/support flexing mages were being switched over to HP, so that they were equally effective in Midlane, but Zilean seems to have been forgotten.

Are y'all deliberately removing him from midlane since his support is more popular? :L Or was this just an oversight?

Hope to hear back soon, thanks!

RiotMeddlerOct 27, 20176 votes

We'll be giving Zilean an Armor/HP split to address that (doing the same thing on Zyra too). Those are cases where we're confident we need to give them some armor to continue to function well as supports, but want to try and help them solo lane too.

VeraskaOct 27, 20171 votes

Do you have any insight on the pbe change to eves E? The passive and r changes make sense to me but the E change has me puzzled

RiotMeddlerOct 27, 201710 votes

We're looking to make AD Eve, or at least Hybrid Eve, a bit better, especially given Eve's historically had some value from AD/hybrid builds.

Linna ExcelOct 27, 20173 votes

Considering she no longer has the AS steroid on her E, I question if she really needs an AD build anymore. Reav3 mentioned she can't be healthy that as a hybrid because she tends towards bruiser and not skirmisher, which I think some people wanted. Also, without the tanky- initiation ult again, I have to ask if supporting AD evelynn is a good idea anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I preferred the old hybrid Evelynn but if we want to be honest, the old evelynn is dead and gone. Part of me says we should let her rotting corpse lie buried.

RiotReav3Oct 27, 20178 votes

Overall this should be a slight buff to Eve even if she doesn't build AD at all, but it should at least allow her to buy some AD items if she wants to go that route. Gunblade, for example, could fit into her builds if she wants it now. The change is still in testing though so no guarantee it will go through at this point.

Linna ExcelOct 27, 20172 votes

That's good it'll be a buff either way. I'm fine with buffing weaker champs that have room for a buff, it is just that I'm more than a little surprised you guys went the AD route on the new evelynn.

RiotReav3Oct 27, 20173 votes

We still might not ship these changes. We are just testing them out currently

ZER0 2Oct 28, 20171 votes

What I don't get is why you would repeatedly enforce that you won't be making her hybrid and go through the whole process of being harrassed over it and then give them what they want after they don't care anymore? I get it's an overall buff and I apologize if this comes off as rude, but it just doesn't make any sense.

RiotReav3Oct 30, 20173 votes

The main reason is a shift in design philosophy we have had recently. Overall we feel that we have been a bit to restrictive with build paths and positions in the last couple years. Going forward we want to make it so Champions are supported in multiple positions and in many cases multiple build paths.

With Eve we were also worried that the AD path would lead to a bruiser/fighter builds but we don't think these changes will lead to that as she still doesn't have any ad ratios (E still scales off AP) but it will give her a bit more flexibility. That is the thought at least, though we still haven't thoroughly tested it yet so there is no guarantee that we won't pull these changes if we find Gunblade makes her unhealthy with these changes.

EROTIC RAID BOSSOct 30, 20171 votes

Doesn't that lead to a danger of unhealthy gameplay emerging like tank ekko and fizz or whatever

RiotReav3Oct 30, 20173 votes

Depends. We wound't want to support unhealthy play patterns, but if we can add healthy ones that is great. For example, Galio going top even if he is best Mid isn't really unhealthy, or even Ekko as a jungler, given he is building squishier is probably pretty healthy as well.

Linna ExcelOct 30, 20171 votes

Was Evelynn ever looked at as a hybrid skirmisher?

A few people are wondering if that would have been better for her overall. If you think about it, she wouldn't need the janky new charm mechanic that's weak because she has stealth, not having a big gap-closer wouldn't have been an issue or she could have had a slightly better engage tool, and you wouldn't have to compromise the stealth because she wouldn't have had CC in her kit.

With Eve we were also worried that the AD path would lead to a bruiser/fighter builds

I feel like that was an unnecessary fear because that probably would never have happened without an ult to give her extra tankiness. If you look at the assassins that were able to become bruisers, it's because they had a lot of cheese in the kit that enabled the playstyle while still putting up damage numbers. Old evelynn didn't have the burst in her kit to put up big numbers, she was more DPS unless you wanted to really expose yourself with a sheen build, and the only thing she really had going for her was the shield on her ult.

RiotReav3Oct 30, 20174 votes

We did talk about her being a skirmisher early in development but felt that we would have to sacrifice to much of her thematic for her to be a skirmisher. We value Thematic Cohesion a lot here, which means that when you see a Champions Art and then play them there playstyle reflects the art, and then there narrative lore supports both as well. Skirmishers generally need to look a bit tougher as they are generally tankier. We felt that we would have had to push her theme/art to look more Tankier/flightier and we felt it was important to keep her theme pretty intact (Which we felt reflected more of a squishier Assassin)

The Yetii RiderOct 30, 20174 votes

This is only half of the situation.

Evelynn has the lowest level of target selection for any assassin in the game. It's almost debatable if she's an assassin at all, given her seemingly poor target selection. Though of course, I wouldn't know that for a fact because Riot has still not done a Dev Corner on what target selection actually means.

We asked Meddler in one of these recent Quick Gameplay Updates what he thought the important differences were between divers and assassins and he gave us barely anything (divers in general have more CC, though obviously that's not the case when you have champs like Evelynn and Shaco), assassins have more burst (again that is very hard to see on our end, especially with a champion like Evelynn being billed as the latest assassin) and divers are tankier.

The overall move away from immediate, 0.5 second burst patterns of assassins seems to lend them to being built for sustain tank situations, like Ekko, Fizz and Akali have all done in the past and like Diana and Elise always will do. In what way is blurring the lines between assassins and divers, and then canceling the diver class update, a good thing? We as consumers do not understand these decisions at all because it looks like you hate tank assassins, then you make an assassin who only functions as a tank Ekko , then you make all assassins into really delayed burst diver types like Ekko, then you say "oh, well, assassins are all about target selection, and they somehow have more target selection than divers but we won't explain how", and then you follow that up with Evelynn.

Please answer me here, Reav3. I don't think I'm making any bad points here and I want to understand the thought process.

VekknaOct 30, 20174 votes

Please answer me here, Reav3. I don't think I'm making any bad points here and I want to understand the thought process.

DItto, and your points are strong.

If you compare the lists of Assassins and Divers, it's pretty clear that Divers have unarguably better target selection. Almost all of them have point-and-click cc and dashes, and lots of them are literally immune to peel.

The only common theme of the Assassin list is that they have some sort of exit strategy (except Nocturne). So it sort of begs the question of why the new Evelynn qualifies as an assassin when "divers" Lee, Elise, and Wukong all have higher burst and more reliable disengage.

Linna ExcelOct 30, 20171 votes

I'm glad you at least looked at it. Thank you for exploring all options.

I see where you are coming from on this. I mean you could have pushed it with her because technically fiora, yi and yasuo are skirmishers too and they don't look that tanky. If you kept the old, polarizing bondage outfit it would have worked.

That said I agree with the idea in general that a champ should pass the eyeball test.

My only problem with thematic cohesion in the specific case of the new evelynn is that her stealth aspect and her charm aspects are tugging too hard at one another in general, and when I look at the kit, it feels like it's a jimmy-rigged nightmare waiting to bust apart because of that decision. It's like they are water and oil.

I honestly feel like she should have been turned 2 different champs, one for each aspect.

RiotReav3Oct 30, 20175 votes

I think Yasuo does look a bit more tanky (With the whole metal armguard) and Fiora is literally wearing armor.

Yi was made in a time before we were really striving for thematic cohesion and Yasuo was made in a time before skirmishers were even a thing. The fact that some of our Old champions are not thematically cohesive isn't a great reason to ignore it for future champions.

As for her stealth/charm we feel like that is part of what makes her unique and sells her "Shadow Stalker" fantasy. Much like in her lore she stalks her victim and entrances them overtime until they fall for her and then she goes in for the kill. The way we reflected it in the gameplay is that she is stalking her victim from stealth and then chooses her target (puts the W on them) and then they slowly succumb to her until they cant resist anymore and that's when Eve goes in for the kill. It does lead to more cat and mouse cerebral gameplay, but we feel that is also what makes her different from other Assassins, that just see there target and immediately go in for the kill.

DeadUnbornOct 27, 20172 votes

Are you concerned she will bypass some of her intended weaknesses by building items like Yommus and TriForce?

RiotReav3Oct 27, 20174 votes

She could, though I doubt those items will be very optimal on her