Quick Gameplay Thoughts: September 7

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 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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Pyke Indicator and other champs

As mentioned in an Ask Riot post a little while back we've been considering adding an indicator like Pyke has to some other execute abilities. Current plan is to do so for some execute abilities, but not all. Abilities where judging the threshold isn't a core part of the abilities skill check should be good fits for an indicator (e.g. Urgot ult). On the other hand abilities where a really significant part of the skill expression is in gauging the reset we'll likely keep in their current form (e.g. Darius ult).

In terms of when we'll add those, first up will be Urgot, in 8.19. We're looking to do just one initially as a check on whether this adds meaningful power to a champion or not. Assuming that goes well we'll then look at other cases to do shortly after (Cho ult and Garen ult against villains are likely choices, given they've already got indicators which just aren't as clear as Pyke's).

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Smite as a default in matchmade games in 8.18

In patch 8.18 we'll be making it so, if you're put into a lobby in the jungle position for any map, you'll have Smite automatically put in as one of your summoner spells if you don't already have it. You'll be free to swap which key it's on, or even replace it with another Summoner Spell entirely (this isn't like Nexus Blitz where Smite's mandatory for those queued as jungle). Goal of the change is to avoid cases where someone wants Smite but forgot to take it, not change Summoner Spell usage at all otherwise.

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Nexus Blitz Alpha

Nexus Blitz's alpha test run comes to an end next week when patch 8.18 goes out. We'll then pore over all the data and feedback we've gathered to figure out what next steps for it should be. We'll let you folks know what our thinking is as soon as we've got a concrete plan to share. From a process perspective can say this style of experimental mode on the live servers has been really helpful for us, so regardless of where Nexus Blitz ends up I expect we'll try another public prototype someday.

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