Quick Gameplay Thoughts: January 16

Not all of these projects will be visual. **Our next target after that's likely to be redoing the VO for a champ whose voice over is pretty lacking relative to their other elements. **More details on that soonish, all going according to plan.

YES Please

Is it possible that you guys could make it so pinging Kayn's portrait when he has a transformation ready could ping to his team that he has it ready and/or how much time the other has left? There's times when I really wanna get back to base to transform but my team is insisting on forcing fights and I can't afford to leave them.

Hey Meddler. I'd like to bring up a serious concern that I think has flown under the balance team's radar.

It is about Karthus - but not about him being too weak. Our concern is that every change made to Karthus (or indirectly to Karthus) over the past couple of years has lowered his skillcap drastically. Each change ends up 'power neutral' on average but neuters his best-case potential, which is essentially all Karthus has - very passionate one-tricks interested in mastering him. He's become drastically less rewarding to master, losing his level 2 all-in potential, his level 6 kill possibility (with the advent of stopwatch), and his mid-game 1v1 power (with the halving of Rylai's effectiveness on him...)

A couple of such changes were, for example:

1. The Wall slow nerf, which made landing Q's more difficult, was said to be because he should have to chain it into his Rylai's slow. But then...

2. Rylai's was lowered to 20% slow after years of applying a 35% slow on isolated Karthus Q's. His most skill-based (Q-dueling based) playstyle was crippled by this change, paired with the wall slow nerf.

3. The removal of DFT being compensated with by a 15% AP ratio increase on his R. This change summarizes my entire concern - Karthus before used to be able to poke enemies out with skillfully isolated Q's, due to its single-target nature applying the full DFT burn. The removal of DFT removed his ability to duel early, but the team compensated by dumping more power into his lategame walk-into-the-enemy-team-and-press-R playstyle. The generic, AFK farm with RoA and never interact with enemies, beginner Karthus playstyle

This is my concern. Every change has made landing Q's on him less and less rewarding, or more and more difficult, while pumping power instead into ambient damage from his late-game suicide playstyle. I won't even mention what Stopwatch did to Karthus at a high level. But it may be worth considering. The removal of DFT wasn't the only hit to Karthus. His only playstyle left is 'afk farm for 30 minutes without ever interacting with the opponent, then suicide and press R'. He used to have so much versatility and threat early.

Even popular high-elo Korean Karthus streamers have dejectedly been forced to abandon the champion, such as Trisexual and Zousenpai. He just doesn't fly at a high level anymore...

Is there any chance you could bring this up to the team -- possibly look into shifting some power back into his actual skill-based playstyle (Q, W) rather than his ambient 'you die because im standing by you' (E, R) playstyle?

It'd be a very small reverse-Azir/reverse-Ryze project. (Increasing his performance variance based on skill/experience instead of leaving him so mediocre at all levels and bad at high ELO.)

Thank you for your notice & response!

Be Kind Rewind

Any updates on Swain? I won't take "soon" for an answer [slayer-jinx-unamused]

What are your thoughts on Rumble? You mentioned a while ago he could take some buffs

Any update on the potential changes you hinted at a while back?

Hey

What are your thoughts about Brand after the buffs? Also could you head over to this thread on Reddit to confirms 3 seperate buggs regarding Brand ? I'm trying to get in touch with you guys for over 2 months by now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandMains/comments/7q0oxf/tripple_brand_bug_in_a_39_second_video/

A lot of times I'll notice these threads a few hours after the fact, is it still worth commenting later in the day, or will it just be missed?

Hi again Meddler.

Can Riot share a little more of information about the Bruiser-related keystone mentioned in the 01/10 quick gameplay thoughs that's currently in internal testing? A bit of information like how it works (stacks, 3 hit, instant effect) or which tree it will go? Thanks for any response.

{quoted}

New keystone went into internal testing yesterday. I haven't played it myself yet, like it on paper though. If that goes well should be able to at least share tooltips within a couple of weeks (would take longer than that to get into a patch given need to build art for it). It that doesn't go well timing's uncertain.

Hello Meddler Any update on Gragas? You guys tested E Flash combo removal you were talking about few months ago or maybe you did other tests or have other plans? Also what are your thoughts on his current state (and that this state seems to reoccur every year since his rework)?

Hey meddler, good morning (just wake up) why equalize Lucian between mid and bot? Lucian is suppose to be a lane dominant adc if you equalize that for both mid and bot in the long run he will get picked in the mid lane which has just led to him being nerfed to the point it is a joke as an adc

Would you say you will do Voice Over Updates on champions with... an OK voice over right now?

Would you say that?

This is probably outside your wheelhouse a bit, but is there any team at Riot that has ownership over the new player experience? The tutorial seems to languish in a rather outdated state, for example, and there's some pretty basic parts of gameplay that you can't learn at all by playing against bots: bots don't gank, jungle, go for dragon or baron, use vision, etc. (Did anyone teach Ryze bot that his ult got reworked yet, by the way?)

Obviously it makes perfect sense that you (Riot) would devote most resources to the things that are important to the existing playerbase, but I have to presume that bringing in new players is important as well to sustain the playerbase in the long term, let alone grow it. Could you give any insight on whether there's any team focused on this sort of thing, and maybe see if some of those people might drop in on the boards or Reddit at some point to give some insight into what they're working on?

I have so much much much questions to you meddler but it's impossible to bring them all in one post

i'll just take the most important ones

is going to be heavily nerfed in next patch. Coin is statistically worse on thresh, and it's easily understandable since it makes him squishy and thresh doesn't have an inbuilt sustain making him an easy target for poke supports Problem is that he's going to either build coin, or build targon which will be nerfed on ranged champions

buffs got cancelled months ago, and now he seems to be the most terrible adc even more terrible than jinx

i'm pretty sure that the balance team didn't plan anything, i'm just asking your own thoughts as a person about those champions

Multiple weeks ago we were told (by you) that we would get reasoning on why Heimerdinger RQ was being gutted by half (less damage at max than before at one). No one has posted about it or numbers or anything of the sort.

Why promise something and never come back to it?

Xerath lost a bit power due to Sorcery rune nerfs. Do you still plan to nerf him?

LCK doesn't ban or pick him anymore.

Don't know if it's the right place to ask, but have you guys considered bringing back the twin ghosts item? With some decent tuning it might turn into a real viable item, given the fact that most mages are building Frost queens right now and it's getting "removed" soon.