Quick Gameplay Thoughts: July 6

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 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

Impact of 8.13b

We've been looking at the impact of the mini patch from earlier this week (8.13b). Looking reasonable so far, with moderate amounts of power as hoped added to Trist, Cait and Varus. We're keeping an eye on Aatrox, since we're starting to see some really strong performances from him on players who've got passed the initial learning curve. Also watching a couple of ADCs who were doing well before the changes who've benefited a bit from the Stormrazor change (e.g. Draven). No immediate plans to make changes to them, but want to make sure we haven't over buffed.

Lissandra

As mentioned previously we've been testing a new Lissandra passive internally for a couple of weeks. It's been going fairly well, so figured I'd share a look at it as a result, despite some risk it still might not work out. Given this is still earlier in testing I've also omitted some numbers and those that are listed are more to give an example of how it works than because they're necessarily what could ship.

"Iceborn

When a champion Lissandra has damaged within the last 3 seconds dies they become a Frozen Statue. Frozen Statues slow nearby enemies by 30%. After 2.5 seconds Frozen Statues shatter, dealing X (+Y AP ratio) magic damage to nearby enemies."

Intent is to help Lissandra's contributions to multi enemy fights after she's used her initial CDs. Use cases include getting a zone of control after diving in and killing a backline target and helping zone enemies after killing enemy divers or other front line. Doesn't have as much impact early game, but has proven useful in some early 2v2s when both junglers show up and early objective fights. If going ahead with it would be paired with some mana cost reductions to her kit. Statues also count as terrain, so they'll both block pathing slightly and can be combo'd with things like Gnar ult, Poppy E etc.

In terms of time frame, we'll probably have a clear enough read on whether the gameplay's solid pretty soon, so will likely make a call on whether or not to go ahead within a week or two. One of the downsides of changing abilities like this however is that, where it's a big departure from previous functionality, there's a need for a bunch of art and audio work. Not sure yet what the likely timeframe on that would be, would take a while though.

More 8.14 changes to hit the PBE today/next week

For anyone wondering why the PBE's been pretty quiet and where followup changes to various mages stuff's still coming. Should be some more balance changes to champions getting into the patch today and in the first half of next week. Since 8.13-8.14 is a 3 week patch we've been taking some time earlier in the cycle to work on other things, champ changes still coming though.

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