Quick Gameplay Thoughts: January 19

Hey all,

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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

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8.3 Balance Changes

As previously discussed 8.3, like all odd numbered patches for at least a while, is going to be a small patch in terms of balance changes. Even numbered patches will be larger than normal. Things we'll be looking at for 8.3 below. Unlikely much else gets added and possible some things get pushed to 8.4. For small patch balance changes we're generally focused on things that are either in urgent need and/or are fairly straightforward to work on (e.g. base stat buffs), though there'll be some exceptions to those rules of course.

Nerfs

• Jarvan

• Katarina (previous nerfs didn't do enough)

• Magical Footwear

• Kalista (potentially taking power from her ult)

• Manaflow Band (less certain on this one, but looking at it again at least)

Buffs

• Master Yi

• Tryndamere

• Caitlyn

• Volibear

• Viktor

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Counterplay

Figured it might be good to talk a bit more about part of our philosophy on counterplay. To start by stating the obvious, we think it's really important that champions have counterplay. There should be things you can do to foil your opponent's plans, ways to counter their actions and accomplish what you want instead. That's not the same though as putting counterplay in every element of a kit and every moment playing against it.

Champions as a whole should have counterplay, they should also have moments of reliability though, moments that give them a payoff for successfully dealing with their weaknesses. Any easy example of that's Nasus Q. If Nasus is on top of you and has a bunch of stacks you're often just screwed - it's a basic attack modifier there's no way to outplay at that point. There's a lot of counterplay to Nasus as a whole though around keeping distance from him and shutting down his ability to build stacks and needed items in the first place. Counterplay's spread different parts of the game, from how you mechanically use your abilities, to how you play strategically (e.g. when to roam), to what items to build, to what champs you pick, to taking advantage of long enemy CDs etc. Sometimes conversations around counterplay get really focused purely on 'can I dodge the ability' and/or 'what can I buy to counter this champion'. Both of those can be good types of counterplay certainly, tunnel visioning only on those risks ignoring a lot of other good options though.

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Stuff on PBE that doesn't ship

Something you might see a bit more of, particularly during small patch development cycles, is content on the PBE that doesn't ship in the next patch. It's likely some things end up on the PBE during the 8.3 cycle that will end up in 8.4 for example. That could include things like Rengar changes or items with Frost Queen's/Talisman's actives. We'll be putting things like that on there earlier to get both more visibility into bugs and feedback on gameplay direction.

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