Boards›Dev Corner

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: February 13

RiotMeddler·2/13/2019, 4:43:02 PM·1 votes·147,239 views

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

Support Item Restrictions

As you might have seen we've just hotfixed some changes to the Ancient Coin and Spellthief's items so that they require a nearby ally to generate gold coins and gold on damage procs respectively. That's in response to rapidly growing use of them in top lane that removes a lot of CSing skill test for the user while offering little counterplay to their opponent. Usually we'd prefer to let emergent strategies play out where we can. Our feeling in this case, as with gold funneling last year, was that the overall result is a less interesting and deep game though, hence the quick response.

Also as per gold funneling we're taking what's admittedly somewhat heavy handed action to quickly fix the problem. Plan is to then look at whether there's a better solution available in the moderate term. With the Monster Hunter debuff for gold funneling for example our initial take was sometimes pretty punishing on junglers who got ahead but didn't want to finish their jungle item. We then made an adjustment later that changed it to account for amount of gold taken from lane minions to target the debuff specifically at problem cases. Goal would be to take a similar approach here if we see unintended issues emerge.

Crit items, their users and marksmen in general post 9.3

We've been watching how things have settled post crit changes in 9.3 for a bit now. Feeling so far is that the changes have landed pretty well overall, without leaving most crit users too strong or too weak. Where we're up to on some specific cases:

  • Still got Yasuo nerfs planned for 9.4. Current approach is reverting most of the buffs we gave him after midseason's Infinity Edge update since that update's mostly reverted.
  • We'll also be bringing back the Lucian nerfs we held off on previously while we waited to see where 9.3 landed, in part given he was already strong and crit item buffs are sometimes further power positive for him at 3-4 items.
  • Unlikely we do anything for Kai'Sa at this point, she seems to be doing pretty well with IE/Hurricane builds. Updating her recommended items so players stop rushing Stormrazor, though.
  • Want to see where Ezreal sits after some more play before deciding whether he needs nerfs or not.
  • Looking at a small buff to ER in 9.4, it's in the right ballpark but a bit weak relative to IE.

Spectator Bugs

We'e looking into a couple of categories of spectator bug that have been cropping up a lot recently. Should have more to share on that shortly. 9.4 should have fixes for some issues, still determining whether there's anything not covered by that work though.

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

306 Comments

GrandMastrOfCool2/13/2019, 4:45:30 PM44 votes

Have you guys considered making AP bruiser/fighter items? Now that Sylas is out and Mordekaiser's VGU is around the corner, I think it would make the most sense to make them soon.

Phroxzon mentioned exploration way back here:

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/8iZVJvTA-preseason-development-update-1?comment=00000002

IxtaliKing2/13/2019, 5:55:24 PM19 votes

Hey Meddler, I was wondering if you're at all concerned with the devisive nature of the upcoming Karma rework?

Many of us feel that the direction taken with her is the total opposite of what we wanted for several reasons:

  1. It favours a burst playstyle. The most of us view Karma as a Battlemage/Enchanter, always has been. We were mad whenever changes occurred which pushed her away from that and now this rework kills her Battlemage identity for good.

  2. The rework picked a side. This rework was opportunity to unify her divided playerbase, but instead dividing it more. There's zero attempt at a compromise and all that says to us is that we're not valued.

  3. It addresses almost none of her issues. The only problem this rework solves is giving her something that isn't currently in the game, which happens to be discarded mechanics from Zilean Soraka. It attempts to solve RE's issues by discouraging its use on a full team, instead of bringing back shield bomb in some form - like I'm sure you know most of us wanted.

Zaghyr2/13/2019, 4:48:10 PM17 votes

What are your thoughts on Xayah? She has been fairly weak for nearly 7 patches now and the ADC changes have done little to help her. Do you have any plans for buffs for her?

Frosted Tips2/13/2019, 4:57:08 PM12 votes

Hey Meddler, I have and idea for Ohmwrecker. What if item 3056 active was a field that disabled traps and pets like Zyra plants and Heimer turrets? It would probably be really strong, but I think that if the size was pretty small if could really help melees lane verse them while also hindering they're build by not offering the greatest stats. I would still like it to work on towers as well. If it were too strong with the disabling of pets then maybe ulted Hiemer turret, The Maiden of the Mist, and maybe ulted Zyra plants would be unaffected. Or some variation of that.

Snowbrand2/13/2019, 5:08:36 PM9 votes

_Hi Meddler! Are there any plans or thoughts about adding AP bruiser/divers items into the game? _

For me, the addition of Sylas made it obvious that there isn't a lot of good options for champions like Sylas , Mordekaiser , Diana , Rumble and maybe Singed .

AD brusiers/divers have access to item 3078 , item 3071 , item 3161 , item 3053 , item 3748 and other items.

I think these champions would be helped a lot by having acess to AP versions of these items. Right now it is as if AD champions only had access to assassin items and tank items and that would feel pretty bad.

Is it because you are afraid that champions like ekko or fizz could abuse it or is there other reasons? What about then changing base ap and and ap scaling ratios for those potential abusers? Would be interesting to hear yours and Riots stand on this.

Salvor Hardın2/13/2019, 4:49:45 PM8 votes

Anything on Neeko ? Her interaction from the W basic attacks to the towers was broken again in this patch.

I would also like to thank you very much for the changes to RekSai , I think they are very good and well oriented.

Ars Arcánum2/13/2019, 5:14:48 PM7 votes

With the change to Crit items as well as the small rework to Stormrazor, isn't it about time Quinn's armor and scaling nerfs from Season 8 were reverted? She's primarily played top, against champs with higher base stats, and even now has a 0.15% pick rate in the bottom lane.

RammBorghini2/13/2019, 4:50:48 PM7 votes

hi meddler don't you think that tank items needs a bit more health to synegies with cinderhulk better to help tank junglers, even if you have to reduce the resistance cuz with this much true dmg and penetration in the game it feels like wasting gold when buying a tank item with just little health on it or has no HP, and cinderhulk Won't feel so weak compared to warrior and bloodrazor

Tarcathos2/13/2019, 6:54:08 PM6 votes

Good Morning Meddler,

In your previous post, questions were being asked about the Karma rework, and you said that you were going to be getting back to those teams to see what was going on. Any word about the Karma changes that were announced these many months ago?

Sir Nope2/13/2019, 4:48:30 PM6 votes

Is there a reason most AS items are tied to crit chance? I see a few outliers in Nashor's Tooth and Rageblade, but what if a champ just wants to build AS?

Spideraxe2/13/2019, 4:46:08 PM6 votes

Hey Meddler can I ask about the Neeko buffs Maple tweeted about last night, I think Repertoir mentioned something about looking into her E but may not make in for 9.4

Leaf of the lake2/14/2019, 12:44:53 AM4 votes

Regarding the support item changes: The whole problem emerged because support items aren't being credited as income for the bounty system, when in practice, they're a small but existent income source.

I think a significantly cleaner approach would be to count all gold from cs or generated through items as the value used in the "cs -> bounty formula," possibly exempting cull and klepto (so as not to further punish the tradeoffs they make). By counting support item gold, this would effectively add another half-source of gold income to the bounty system via the support line, making the total number of gold sources 4.5, not 4.

With this change in place, if a player tries to circumvent the bounty system by opting out of CS and into a support item, their actual gold contributions are still counted, and the game would correctly see that the opposing team is not drastically ahead.

Nameless Drifter2/13/2019, 5:29:06 PM4 votes

Please take a look at Xerath. His Q bugs out sometimes during the match, getting him stuck in the animation channel without being able to cast the spell.

His abilities mana costs are too high. Either buff his mana pool and mana growth or decrease his mana costs

Mage itemization needs a overall rework and give clear item paths for the AP champions to choose depending on the class of the champion.

Sorceress shoes needs to be nerfed back to 10 Magic Penetration. No AP champion should have a easy access to the highest magic penetration item by only 1100 gold and so early in the game.

Support items are abused by other laners the same way Kleptomancy is. Making them only be triggered when allies are nearby was a good idea, but Kleptomancy also needs to be a more Support Keystone only, than a exploitable rune.

Ahris2/13/2019, 8:08:18 PM3 votes

anything Ahri?

Lossondro2/13/2019, 5:00:21 PM1 votes

Hey Meddler,

Did the Lissandra nerfs have any effect on her? I don't feel like the nerfs had that much impact (aside from making me unable to do really wacky stuff with glacial path). Is it likely that she'll get nerfed again in the future? I am also wondering whether there is a large difference in performance between aftershock and other keystones, is there a difference? (in low/high elo and proplay).

7empoDagger2/13/2019, 4:50:34 PM1 votes

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