The Preseasoning Day 3: Worlds is Tomorrow

RiotPWYFF·Oct 30, 2015·1 votes·22,929 views

You've read the excellently written dev blog: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/preseason-2016-crests-horizon

YOU'VE READ THE COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT PRESEASON POST: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/GjsdA9Zq-commonly-asked-preseason-questions-aka-why-manual-solutions-are-the-worst

You're not here to ask opinions posed as questions, because that will make me sad.

These things definitely drop off as people check out the PBE and so forth, so this will just be an open discussion - for players and for designers. I'll be keeping an eye on this over the weekend to see if any bigger questions emerge that warrant a larger discussion.

We won't be doing an open forum on monday, but you'll hear from us soon.

154 Comments

KeevalroyOct 30, 20157 votes

Yasuo will have 60% crit chance from his first item alone now that Shiv is getting 30% crit. Was this overlooked, or are you guys aware this is happening and planning on dealing with him soon?

Edit: So this along with the crit mastery synergizing too well with him isn't concerning to anyone at Riot? You're not worried that he's going to be even more oppressive and toxic to face with the new changes?

Guy Fox TeemoOct 30, 20152 votes

He'll also lose 15 Damage when building infinity edge.

KeevalroyOct 30, 20153 votes

Because that makes this okay.

jg is slaveryOct 30, 20154 votes

Why are you guys gutting every jungle item except Warrior enchantment so hard?

Warrior get a 15 AD buff in exchange for losing its armor pen, which is a net buff, I believe.

Cinderhulk doesnt get any stat changes in compensation for its price increase, shafting tanks alongside the Frozen Heart price increase. Tank junglers usually don't net in as much gold as more damage-oriented junglers because tanks dont focus on the farm-and-carry playstyle, rather they focus on snowballing other lanes and selflessly helping their team, which is why tank items have always historically been cheap.

Runeglaive not only didnt get any stat compensation, but it got NERFED by 10 AP. This is a poor excuse for a nerf if this was targeted at Elise, because now Evelynn, AP Amumu, AP Ekko, Diana, and Nidalee suffer as well. The Runeglaive nerf along with all these AP item nerfs and the fact that BV/SV give 70 MR and Maw is overpowered as hell now make AP as unviable as when Runic Bulwark was a thing in Season 3.

Price increase on Devourer without stat compensation hurts Devourer junglers for no reason because now they need more gold to get Devourer, which not only denies them gold from building items they need to buy due to being farm junglers, but also delays the period of time where they can start stacking their Sated.

And with all these gold increases for our junglers, you take away the bonus gold on jungle items. You said that you wanted to make this game diverse, so that picking your roles and champions had meaning. You had to think hard about choosing what would fit right in your team composition. What roles would play well vs other roles. But all you're doing is forcing the meta to "take turns" between roles. You forced the tank meta, you forced the bruiser meta, and now you're shoving a Marksmen-oriented meta down our throats, with the shafting of top lane, jungle, and mid lane items along with the overpowered ADC items like PD, Death's Dance, and the LW upgrades.

Also, nerfing everything but Warrior makes the jungle meta a stale, copypaste AD jungle meta yet again, just like what happened in Season 4 and what you did a good job of circumventing in Season 5 with how good Cinderhulk/RG/Devourer were.

Why is it necessary to nerf all of these items?

what you deserveNov 1, 20152 votes

Price changes aren't actually that big of a deal. You'll still have to clear the same amount of camps to get the jungle items. Gold income is being buffed heavily

LuciferOct 30, 20153 votes

Why is the Windspeaker's not available as a self buff? It would be nice, as a support main, if we could buff ourselves as well. This encourages better decision making, imo, because you get to _choose _if you or the ADC get the resistances. Just my two cents, butI think it becomes a much more engaging mastery that way with more strategic decision making involved. Going along with this, is there going to be a cooldown on the Deathfire Touch Mastery? As it stands, I think Thunderlord's is almost always inferior to it, though both seem pretty cool.

Why all the massive nerfs to Zhonya's in particular? It feels like a double whammy to be buffing ADCs and AD items so hard, and then to be nerfing Zhonya on top of it. I can see Zed and Yasuo becoming more overbearing than they already are. What are your plans to keep AD mid lane honest?

RiotPWYFFOct 30, 20159 votes

1.) The concept of self-heals buffing yourself would almost immediately make guys like Mundo or lifestealers very interested in taking the mastery to double down. I think the bigger issue with it is along the lines of this: a healer should have their own recognizable weaknesses. If we were to give this kind of mastery to, say, Soraka, who then goes full tank and heals with Windspeakers, the question of who to focus gets very convoluted. There should be a decision point there at least. If Soraka wants to tank, she has to give up some of that utility, like from Windspeakers.

2.) Thunderlord's is far more about the AoE wombo than Deathfire Touch, but perhaps something to consider? Armchair balance is tough, mang. Just checking you - that's an opinion posed as a question.

3.) We'll talk about this more with the the itemization gold efficiency balancing as we go. Turns out that's a fairly nuanced topic.

LuciferOct 31, 20152 votes

That's true, but if Mundo does this, he has to invest 18 points into the utility tree, vs 18 points in the defense tree. Maybe not apply it to heals, but only shields?

;P It's hard not to do an opinion posed as a question sometimes! It's hard to tell which is objectively stronger, because one is in the utility tree, and one is in the offense tree. It almost feels like this both belong in offense? Sorry if it comes off as armchair balance x: Honestly not my intent!

ZerglinatorOct 30, 20153 votes

With the large changes to so many champs and items, is the Co-op vs. AI bot AI getting a once over? I'm hoping they'll remember how to ward...they seem to have forgotten ever since the Summoner's Rift Update.

RiotPWYFFOct 30, 20154 votes

Interesting - probably not our highest priority during preseason but definitely something to remember. Thanks!

WeirWulfOct 30, 20152 votes

I also noticed that since the change to alistars combo, ali bot now misses it quite alot XD

AndarelOct 30, 20153 votes

Can you guys go into a bit more detail on the gold flow changes? I'm seeing item efficiency equalized across AD/AP/etc and a few comments have talked about more gold being added into the game but I'm not sure where that extra gold is coming from. Is passive GP10 getting increased?

RiotPWYFFOct 30, 20156 votes

Yeah we should probably talk about this a bit.

RiotRiot SotereOct 30, 20153 votes

Heyas! Gold is being introduced in a number of ways. Most notably: creep gold, ambient gold, and bounties. More specifics will be forthcoming but the general trend is that you're getting more money, and it should be fairly noticeable.

SKOBODOOct 30, 20154 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot Sotere,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=8LEMGEHX,comment-id=000e0001,timestamp=2015-10-30T20:41:03.118+0000)

Heyas! Gold is being introduced in a number of ways. Most notably: creep gold, ambient gold, and bounties. More specifics will be forthcoming but the general trend is that you're getting more money, and it should be fairly noticeable.

Are you guys doing this for Twisted Treeline, Dominion and/or Howling Abyss as well?

aperson1Oct 30, 20153 votes

If Ashe's autos get the "critical slow," will their damage be reduced by Randuins? Also, is the "critical slow" bonus slow amount affected by +crit damage (IE and runes)?

SlnaOct 31, 20153 votes

In Season 5, when you backed, you could buy one of four consumables: Health Potions, Mana Potions, Stealth Wards and Green Wards. Reducing the variety down to two consumables, doesn't it look like you are going backwards instead of forward?

YellowCougerOct 31, 201519 votes

When they said they didn't want opinions posed as questions, this is exactly what they were talking about...

HellioningOct 30, 20152 votes

Have the mana changes gone in yet for compensation of mana pots? I hope not; had so many complaints in my PBE games about people running out of mana.

kitcat300Oct 30, 20152 votes

Why give everyone homegaurd after 20 minutes? Seems like something that could needlessly drag out games.

Heal and ForgetOct 30, 20152 votes

I've seen that respawn timers are longer now, so if you pick someone off, they will be dead for a long time, allowing you to siege/teamfight 5v4 easily.

Nobody likes (being chunked past 20 minutes and) having to recall to base and walking 30 long seconds back into the fray. Contrary to what you say, it can actually end games faster since people will be able to get to teamfights faster.

dEAdbUsOct 30, 20156 votes

There were 4 ways to balance Homeguards:

Remove it from game
Nerf it, so nobody will buy it
Make other enchantments OP, so nobody will buy Homeguards
Make it permanent

4th is least painful

ParcevalNov 2, 20151 votes

They've balanced jungle augmentations, with struggle. But it's getting there. Option #3 is viable, with careful tuning.

However, 4 seems like the most fun.

Heal and ForgetOct 30, 20152 votes

While the keystone masteries are great for laners, there are only 1 or 2 keystone masteries that I see are useful for junglers. Most of them only become useful as they get into the mid-lategame and the map "opens up." Was this intentional? I would like to see some keystones adjusted to either cater to or account for jungle interaction.

RiotFearlessOct 31, 20153 votes

We originally had more masteries that had jungler interactions, and what this did was force junglers to take very specific options. To ensure junglers could actually have choice in the system, we kept the options focused on the champion vs champion options, and tuned the jungle down a bit to compensate for the jungler power that used to be in the system.

SKOBODOOct 31, 20152 votes

{quoted}

We originally had more masteries that had jungler interactions, and what this did was force junglers to take very specific options. To ensure junglers could actually have choice in the system, we kept the options focused on the champion vs champion options, and tuned the jungle down a bit to compensate for the jungler power that used to be in the system.

Have you adjusted Twisted Treeline's jungle as well?

MordepoolOct 30, 20152 votes

Question about Runic Armor Incoming health restoring effects and shields are increased by 1.6 / 3.2 / 4.8 / 6.4 / 8 %.

Will this Mastery work with Mordekaiser's Ironman passive.

SnaketitsOct 30, 20152 votes

Is there a reason you're omitting Cassiopeia from pre-season changes entirely? I just checked the latest PBE changes and still nothing for her, meanwhile everyone and their grandmother received some form of update.

You didn't even care to adapt her mana-regen like for everyone else. Even champions with built-in mana refund mechanics received buffs, so why not the one champion who's been in need of changes for the majority of this season now?

How much longer are you going pretend she doesn't exist? This blatant neglection needs to come to an end.

Indeets VasiliyOct 30, 20152 votes

I have questions about reworked Essence Reaver:

For what types of champions this reworked version designed? Improved CDR and mana regeneration suggests that it is for AD casters, or am I wrong?
Why adding crit chance on it? Why pairing CDR with crit chance? Is it deliberate decision to make this item undesirable to AD champions who don't make much use of crit?
What's the reasoning in removing lifesteal from it?

what you deserveNov 1, 20152 votes

They're trying to make it something you pick instead of IE, not something you pick over BT. I always rush ER on Varus because he's so mana heavy and I don't really like taking IE on him because it's so expensive and his Q does more damage than his autos anyway. At least on Varus and Ezreal, this is definitely a valid choice. I don't play a ton of other ADCs so I'm not sure who else, but I could see it on the new Ashe as well.

SlnaOct 31, 20152 votes

Why does it seem like this new season is focused around making the games play out faster? Way increased death timers, more gold, etc. We didn't need more gold, we don't need to reach full build earlier. By adding more gold to the game you just make early game compositions weaker, since "late game" comes faster for scaling teams. I don't get the goal of most of these changes, and you pretty much didn't explain them

Lao Fu the TigerOct 31, 20152 votes

Where will Yorick fall as far as mana changes go?

I know he's slates for a rework, but the lack of mana potions severely hurts his laning at present. Are there any short term compensation plans for him?

Celestial Lion12Oct 31, 20155 votes

Probably not he's kind of being left in poppy's camp where they leave champions with toxic, overloaded kits olafed until they can rework them. (still haven't done it to lee sin though rito favoritism ftw)

CarnicoreOct 31, 20152 votes

Why are death timers longer?

SaltyKrackaOct 31, 20152 votes

Actually, I've got a pertinent question.

What the hell are you doing to Merc Treads? Sure sure, 100 less gold, but you're removing 15% Tenacity from it.

kung fu killerOct 31, 20152 votes

this is something I really want to happen and I think a lot of people need it to happen if there is a way to make the surrender button reset when someone quits instead of making us wait for another whole 3 minutes with only 4 players some players vote no and then quit afterwards making it far more difficult for a come back and more miserable than it already is. not fun when your losing and everybody is trolling

TeCoolMageNov 1, 20152 votes

How balanced do you think traditional mages like Anivia Velkoz Xerath Karthus will be in S6 compared to AD champions? The champions who aren't like Veigar and can burst as fast as an assassin, or Morgana who is more utility, but instead use lots of AoE to hit the backline and poke them to death over a moderate amount of time?

More importantly, how do you plan on balancing AP items for S6 considering these champions and high burst AP champs like ?

And finally: With the current updates now focused on starting items, will it ever be possible for ability based and not auto attack or extreme spam based (mostly non TwistedFate , Diana and Evelynn champions) be able to jungle effectively, and why are the current mage jungler items made only for clearing camps and not for ganks, utility or teamfights? Will this eventually change so mages in the jungle can have two effective summoner spells when approaching full build (sell Trailblazer runeglaive for Lich Bane, mostly)?

Waifu LacusNov 1, 20152 votes

Hey guys, I'm sorry if this has been mentioned etc...but im worried for midlane based on these item changes. Maybe im overreacting, but most AP items have increased in gold, but there has been no increase in AP, usually there is a decrease. ( item 3027 is i believe the only AP item to gain AP)

On the other side of the argument, most tank items have a little increased gold cost but they also give an increase in MR. Late game, it just seems like AP mids are not going to really contribute as well as they do now. Is this going to just revive the Bruiser/Tank meta? Sorry for the long post, I'm just concerned because it seems like AP is going to have an even worse time trying to kill them and we dont have anything that will help against tanks except item 3151 . Please correct me if i am missing something in my observations. Thanks guys.

NarabugNov 1, 20151 votes

Take a look at the new masteries, and I think you'll be happy with what you see. As a quick example, here is a listing of the current "bottom-of-tree" abilities that AP midlane champions may be interested in:

Deathfire Touch: Your damaging abilities cause enemy champions to take 6 + [(.5 Bonus AD)+(.2 AP)] in Magic Damage over 3 seconds (AoE effects apply half damage over 1.5 seconds)
Thunderlord's Dance: Your 3rd attack or spell on an enemy champion shocks the area around them, dealing 10 damage per level plus [(.2 bonus AD)+(.1 AP)] as magic damage in the area (30 second CD)
Windspeaker's Blessing: Your heals and shields are 10% stronger. Additionally, your shields and heals increase your target's resistances by 15% for 3 seconds when used on an ally other than yourself.

KingKong2350Nov 2, 20152 votes

Is it just me or are those lackluster?

Meep ManNov 2, 20152 votes

Will the size update come during the Preseason? As in champion model size?

Hardstuck G4Oct 30, 20151 votes

Why did you prioritize Graves over Lucian in terms of an update? Do you feel the Rift Herald could potentially cause top smite making a comeback? On a scale, how strong is the rift herald buff compared to Baron? i.e.: 4 Rift Heralds equal 1 Baron?

RiotJagOct 30, 20152 votes

Have to let some of the update dudes handle that q.
Nope, the Backstab mechanic is actually better at securing it than Smite now.
You'd probably rather have Baron Buff on 5 people than Rift Herald Buff on 5 people. The amount of global gold on Baron is also 6 times what Rift Herald's is (300 vs 50).

WeirWulfOct 30, 20151 votes

Hello Riot-eteers! I am pretty curious to find out; What have your playtesters/pbe folk been building on the new corki? Seeming as he being pushed more into the magic damage side of things, are player building a mix of AD and AP, or is going somthing like Essesence Reaver into Triforce pretty normal on him? Was wondering if the new Gunblade would be any good on him.

~ Ciao

Battlecast SonaOct 31, 20152 votes

my experience playing him on the pbe has been essence reaver -> triforce with sorc shoes being pretty effective, cause it takes you to 40% cdr, gives you mana return on crits + crit chance to take advantage of, and huge burst potential with triforce procs. I don't really know what's most effective after that point - I was thinking Rapid Firecannon because it gives you an increased range shot for moving around, could help you poke and you have magic pen for the magic damage, unlike most adcs?

CritkeeperOct 30, 20151 votes

Why is rage blade so much more gold efficient than any of the other items?

My opinion is that if its going to be that efficient at full stacks then it shouldn't have any stats at zero stacks.

RiotRiot AxesOct 30, 20155 votes

You don't average full stacks over the course of a fight, obviously, especially since with the reduced stack duration it's actually possible to lose your stacks mid-fight. For a melee champion, five or six consecutive basic attacks is actually pretty rare in a fight, while for a ranged champion, you're making 8 consecutive attacks to get to that fully stacked state. If you're attacking for an extended enough period of time to make great use of full stacks, you've done something good and the item should reward you quite well for it.

It's possible Rageblade is still too strong at that price point, of course, but that's something we plan to watch and react on if it occurs.

Penta PenguinOct 31, 20151 votes

I'd like to ask about the goals behind Death's Dance and Phantom Dancer. I'm really interested in seeing how these two items in particular change bot-lane. Reading the stats alone, makes it seem like Marksman are gaining a potential buttload of defensive capability and maybe even an incentive to build more defensively, than offensively, after those two items.

WeirWulfOct 31, 20152 votes

I think death's dance is going to more of an AD caster style item. It's second passive of turning damage you take into a bleed instead is certianly quite interesting, but overall i think it's not going to be stronger than any lifesteal that is available in the game right now. Considering Death's dance will only heal you for 12%, and then 4% of the damage when using spells that hit multiple targets, compare that to BT where you can get 20% lifesteal instead. Cooldown reduction is also alot more easy for marksmen to get with the new Essence Reaver, so that pushes marksmen away from the item even more. All that said, the second passive may be enough to justify buying it/may be a stylist choice for some players, but I think there are definitely atleast some trade-offs. Perhaps something a midlane varus might like, or an ezreal, but it's definitely not going to make any character indestrustible.

As for the new PD, that does sound strong to me, and will really help when dealing with a single frontliner like a shyvana/mundo who are just running at your face trying to melt you. I think this is some power that Riot want to give marksmen. But you are still going to vunerable to burst or being focused down by the enemy team. And you will have to opt into buying PD over alot of the other choices you are going to have; Shiv,RFC,Runaan's,Tri.

Penta PenguinNov 1, 20152 votes

The thing with Deeath's Dance that I see is it seems like a huge buff against bursty champions like Rengar. Reason being, 20% is a big number and 5 seconds is a long time for a champion like Rengar, Khazix, etc. For you survive the initial burst then have 5 seconds to start life-stealing or an ally does something to you, or you pop heal etc. instead of just dying.