Boards›Dev Corner

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: February 21

RiotRiot Scruffy·2/21/2020, 5:38:06 PM·1 votes·37,108 views

Disclaimer These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The work or goals could change depending on what we discover, and projects mentioned may get delayed or even stopped. That said, I believe it’s important to share as much as we can even if plans may change.

Matchmaking and Ranked future We’ve been collecting feedback and ramping up on many big and small problems that we’d like to solve around matchmaking and ranked throughout the year. After taking it all in, we’ve created a pretty exciting roadmap for the future changes we’d like to make to ranked and matchmaking over the next year. Expect a dev blog very soon with our plans for the future.

One update I do have for now is that we’re currently working on adding autofill parity to matchmaking - this means we can balance both teams to have a similar number of autofilled players on each team. Our results so far are very promising and we think we can ship this feature pretty quickly and see significant improvement.

Top Lane Impact With our long term goal of giving top laners higher game impact (ability to carry a game) in high elo, we’re exploring a few different strategies:

  • Carrying through items - We have a few potential changes to core top lane items like Black Cleaver, Sunfire, and the Hydra items to give fighters and tanks some more carry power later.
  • Early strategic impact - The dragon creates a highly valued objective that all positions other than top have a strong ability to contest. We’re hoping to get top more integrated into the early objective game through a more powerful teleport summoner or making Rift Herald more comparable in value to dragon.
  • Turning leads into victories - Finding some ways to slightly amp up the payout in the early game for winning top lane can make it more comparable to the other positions. We’re exploring things like increasing melee damage to plates.

Jungle Satisfaction and Personal Power With our long term goal of increasing Jungle satisfaction while not pushing their control over the early game too high, we’re testing a few things for upcoming patches:

  • Reduced Gank Power - in particular lowering the value of a gank (which is currently very high). This might sound counterintuitive for making jungle feel more satisfying, but the goal is to allow junglers to hold a bit more of the power themselves instead of donating it to their laners through ganks.
  • Introducing a new early game homeguards when you respawn after a death
  • Slight reduction in shared XP for kills by multiple champions
  • Slight increase in XP for solo kills (which is a small buff for invade junglers, too)
  • Increased farm XP
  • With the reduced gank power we can give junglers more XP through farming the jungle

How snowbally is the game today? Short answer - it’s in a good state.

Long answer - one of the key game statistics that we monitor and balance systems around is the amount of snowball in the game. Over time we’ve found that there is a sweet spot where we get the core benefits from snowball that we’re looking for:

  • There is enough snowball that early game leads matter (if the game had no snowball, you could sit in fountain for the first 15 minutes and still win)
  • There is not too much snowball so that early game decides the game entirely

Some interesting data to show - This is one of our metrics that tracks how decided (snowballed) a game is at 15 minutes. The three lines shown are

  • Red - Large Lead - One team has a 90%+ chance of winning the game
  • Green - Medium Lead - One team has a 75%+ chance of winning
  • Blue - Even Game - No team has a 75%+ chance of winning

We’ve found that this “sweet spot” for snowball in LoL is when at 15 minutes, roughly 25% of games have large lead, 35% of games have medium lead, and 40% of games are close to even. Currently we’re seeing a pretty good state of snowball.

https://imgur.com/a/6n25UHy

You can see that in the last few seasons there have been spikes and dips in snowball, and through systems changes we’ve been able to re-stabilize that game state.

Here are some factors that we commonly rely on when we want to change overall snowball a lot:

  • Kill gold/rewards
  • Early objective rewards (towers, dragon, etc)
  • Shutdown gold
  • Death timers

Thanks again for playing and engaging with us about the game. See you next time!

Scruffy https://twitter.com/MarkYetter https://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/9.24.2/img/champion/Sion.png

224 Comments

Shaian2/21/2020, 7:22:24 PM19 votes

There are alot of Zyra plant interactions that just feel super bad to play. Some of them are intended apparently and some are not

  • A single Ahri W-fire instantly kills any plant. So if you cast 3 plants on top of Ahri she just needs to press W and all plants instantly die.

  • Annie Q on plants for free

  • Cassio can use E on plants with the <1 sec cd on it, killing the plant onehit and getting the mana back

  • Corki E does both tick very rapid and does 2x of its intended damage (since its split magic and physical, this did not get fixed unlike the Corki autos)

  • Gangplank's R does like 4x its inteded damage. It's coded as AoE-ability over Multihit. A single Wave out of the many he has instantly kills an ulted plant

  • Graves oneshots plants with autoattacks

  • Heimers turrets deal 8x their inteded damage. A single turretshot instantly kills a Zyraplant

  • Irelia can Q plants and oneshot them to heal up, stack passive and it resets her Q as well so Zyra's own plants don't zone her, but give her engage opportunities and the plant can't attack her back

  • Same with Qiyana and Yasuo E, Fiora Q

  • Karthus can oneshot plants with isolated Q's for free

  • When Kayle is exhaulted she oneshots plants if she focusses them. Also her E oneshots plants

  • Kayn killing plants with one Q (AoE instead of Multihit)

  • Nautilus E kills all plants around him

  • Rammus W halflifes plants per auto

  • Ryze E onehits plants and spreads the flux. Like its not even an investment to throw it on a plant in lane, because it doesn't restrict his waveclear

  • Skarner's second Q oneshots Zyraplants

  • Every single Taliyah rock from Q can onehit a plant

  • Urgot passive onehits a plant, his W with its tickrate literally as well (needs 2 "autos")

  • Viktor Q to gain a shield, kill the plant and run fast into your face to trade back or enhance him to get in range of you to chase you down

  • Yasuo tornado oneshots plants

  • damage of DoT's depend on tickrate so Singed does 2x dmg than full AP Morg W, which sucks

  • if DoT abilities are Liandries enhanced (which is not unlikely midgame) the plants die even faster

  • If they have Ludens on top half of the plant HP is gone anyway aka abilities kill them instantly

  • Melee Champs can kill plants in EWRQW combo before they are buffed by R or even attack (if you have aa's without command enabled they kill them without input)

  • Champs like Rengar can get combod with EWWR but AA -> Tiamat -> W and kill all ulted plants around. Tiamat in general feels super unfair to play against

  • Doing this to kill plants is not an investment, Its always worth doing that because plants are where Zyra's damage lies. If you use one ability to deny her damage you still have enough for Zyra herself. She can't do anything afterwards. Thats why 7.24 which meant to buff her midlane made her actually worse in that role. They are so many tools which deny her as a champ and main carry of her team.

  • Putting points in W after level 13 is so pointless. 2 seconds less CD on W means nothing since you get a seedreset instantly per takedown in a teamfight. And you got a passive as well. It could be used to make these interactions not completely unfair later in the game. No scaling after level 13 except plantdamage per level and ult is awkward.

  • These things are super tragic especially in Master+ games, because even if they don't know it pregame they figure stuff out and abuse it straight up for the rest of the game. Instead of feeling zoned they charge in instead to kill the plants. Especially melee tanks or carries with alot of attackspeed.

Edit: Immolate is now a thing as well so tanks don't even need to autoattackoneshot plants anymore. They do half of their hp just by immolate, half any aoe ability they do. And even if they dont do any AoE, plants still get hit by the normal sunfire damage.

Its been more than 2 years like that and only MF + Corki autos got fixed yet.

Palaven2/21/2020, 5:54:17 PM17 votes

My concern about the top lane approach is that there are two thought processes which are IN CONFLICT with each other.

  1. Allowing top laners to roam and get involved (e.g., teleport)
  2. Rewarding a top laner more for winning his lane

The problem with plates being easier to take, or giving more gold, is that it assumes the absent top laner was "forced" out of lane instead of roaming. The more value plates have and the easier they are to take, the more punishing it is to roam.

My biggest issue with top lane impact is when the other four players on both sides play a fiesta on the bot side of the map. So much gold is thrown back and forth that both top laners are relatively much weaker in comparison.

My personal preference is to give top laners more agency in moving around the map. But if plates are easier to take or worth more gold, then roaming has a higher cost and you are forced to just sit in lane to deny gold while you pray your team wins the 4v4.

Another concept is to lower the gold and exp from kills FOR EVERYONE. Often in the top lane, both players recognize who is stronger and play properly. You don't have many kills traded. If kills were worth less, a fiesta bot side wouldn't put both top laners so far behind relative to the other players in the game.

lol you wild wyd2/21/2020, 5:39:40 PM17 votes

**Thoughts on this: **

There has been a constant homogenization of the game relative to champion (play-styles) and systemic elements such as runes/items.

The big worry from my end is stems from champions. Why are Riot pushing for champions to play similarly? The bloated systems I talked about prior have inflated damage, sustain (hp/mana), and cool-down accessibility which in turn has gutted unique identities of champions in favour pushing them to just be viable in this team-deathmatch meta.

For example: Sub-classes such as control mages have vanished and replaced by Riot's favorite, the burst mage. Please stop deviating from the design pillars that got the game to where it is today. I would link Morello's design philosophy article from 2014 that suited what LoL is; a hardcore competative mulitplayer game but your new shiny website has destroyed all archives of such /dev blogs AND patch-notes from previous seasons -_-

MR MEGA2/21/2020, 6:33:36 PM16 votes

Scruffy, I don't mean to sound impatient, but would you please say something about the state of assassins in the midlane?

Even anti-assassin mages like Lissandra and Malzahar are doing poorly -- assasins take up a huge majority of the playrate in midlane now, while still maintaining comparable or higher winrates than their unpopular mage counterparts.

I understand that these champions are funner to more people, and that keeping them good is important, but with more champions being deleted from the role (I used to be a midlane Karthus main...) and more and more assassins released and reworked into strong early game midlaners (Diana/Akali no longer abusable pre-6), it feels like the mage archetype is becoming obsolete, barring a few competitive staples.

We also don't have superior waveclear or teamfighting to bank on scaling towards, anymore, either. Qiyana/Ekko, for example, waveclear and teamfight (with hard CC) just as well or better than many mages.

Do you have any feelings on this...?

P.S.

Since y'all are testing jungle monster specific tuning, would you consider giving Karthus' Q reduced damage to monsters early, and undoing the nerf to his R? I mained him in lane for ~4 years, and then with one change, y'all completely deleted the champion from viability...there's no skill expression in Karthus jungle, because the majority of the gameplay is just farming and then pressing R, but lane Karthus impressed people when played well. Please consider passing this on...I miss the champion...

TheeTrueKeklel2/21/2020, 6:46:52 PM14 votes

D2 toplaner here. Buffing teleport would do the opposite, nerfing toplane.

Why is teleport a problem rather than a solution? 1. Teleport is currently a summoner utilized to nullify the negative consequences of your performance early game in the laning phase makes the early stages for toplane less important. Incentivizing flocking to other areas of the map instead of impacting top side of the map makes top side less important. Give reason for your teammates to play around the topside of the map to give the lane more impact. 2. Teleport needs a nerf where it can't be utilized immediately after death via abusing early game death timers(which were lowered). It's extremely exploitative and can make early lane consequences completely irrelevant. **Ex. **You get first blooded but immediately tp back while the enemy laner is likely at some sort of deficit like health. This leads to:

Ex A1. If the wave is in your favor and the enemy laner is too unhealthy to walk up, you can establish a freeze and close the gap between his first blood with an XP advantage(While he loses minion gold)

Ex A2. Even if the wave isn't in your favor you instantaneously re-establish lane priority These potential consequences is why matching TP is essentially required for Toplane currently. The lowered death respawn timers has indirectly buffed teleport.

Rift Herald **1. **Rift Herald is pretty effective, a good change to it would be to nerf it's HP so it's faster/less risky to acquire. Make having priority early game in toplane important. However something like a melee damage multiplier against it/ranged resistance would be ideal if you wouldn't want a sudden swap of bot lane duo's going top lane to take the more important objective.

Carrying through items - We have a few potential changes to core top lane items like Black Cleaver, Sunfire, and the Hydra items to give fighters and tanks some more carry power later.

Bruisers: Itemization too expensive or understat relative to the items of other classes. Overdue for an item update.

Tanks: Lacks MR itemization and appealing hybrid resistance items**(Armor itemization is not weak)**

Both classes need not only a buff to existing items but an item update, possibly more items with a rework to some. Both need more options.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with their items.

i like wafffles2/21/2020, 5:49:42 PM12 votes

Hey scruffy, Do you guys have any plans for akali for 10.5? Seeing as she is pretty weak in all levels of play, even in pro having only a 5% presence without much success,She could make use of some changes/buffs.

Kadexe2/21/2020, 5:48:46 PM11 votes

Does Kai'sa's ability upgrade system need to be changed? Small item nerfs like 5 AD or attack speed can sometimes have huge impact on her because of her thresholds.

baitangpukaohua2/21/2020, 6:23:28 PM8 votes

ornn nerf?

dark100dark1002/21/2020, 7:56:59 PM8 votes

I love these everything is perfect, everything is 100%, the game cannot be more balanced posts....

MikuSan2/21/2020, 5:52:43 PM7 votes

If only riot listened to the playerbase about what the issues are instead of pulling information out of nowhere.

if only.

PowerOfDrainAge2/21/2020, 5:56:28 PM7 votes

Not sure what your plans for bruiser itemization are but bruisers heavily suffer from lack of CDR beyond 20%. I'd say that titanic and ravenous only need 10% CDR to be impactful choices. It's a big reason why top laners lack impact and there are a few reasons for that:

  1. bruisers rely on the base damage of their abilities (and their effects) to deal dmg and stay alive since they have to go for defensive items so their dmg is heavily relying on abilities instead of pure damage items.
  2. All other classes (even some ADCs that need it, like Lucian) can easily get to 40% CDR while bruisers just stand still doing nothing but getting DPS-ed down by the enemy team.
  3. Most bruisers lately rely mostly on abilities and that's even more visible in newer champs who also have low AS ratio and AS/lvl. Older champs (like Jax, old Xin and such) didnt rely on CDR because their autos could be lethal on their own.
  4. not sure what else

TL;DR: Bruisers need more CDR options and Titanic/Ravenous Hydra are some great items to start on with this plan.

Ytawo2/21/2020, 6:58:42 PM7 votes

We’ve found that this “sweet spot” for snowball in LoL is when at 15 minutes, roughly 25% of games have large lead, 35% of games have medium lead, and 40% of games are close to even.

25% of basically decided games at 15 min seems a lot to me. Could you say a bit more on how/why you settled on these percentages please?

Zero Skill Tank2/21/2020, 6:45:07 PM7 votes

One update I do have for now is that we’re currently working on adding autofill parity to matchmaking - this means we can balance both teams to have a similar number of autofilled players on each team.

Like I want to be appreciative and say: good job, Rito!

I really do.

But somehow the only thing I can think of is: HOW IS THIS NOT A THING SINCE DAY 1?

Sire Hippington2/22/2020, 2:45:30 PM6 votes

**Top Lane Impact: **

Carrying through items:

Carrying through items mostly transfers to getting more value from the high(ish) gold income in toplane, aswell as better slotefficiency at fullbuilt. Imo the key for this is buffing lategame tankiness through items. They biggest issue BY MILES for toplaners later on is that they tend to excel in extendet combat patterns, but they rarly can spend more than 2 sec in a teamfights without beeing CCed till they are dead or atleast need to retreat. we need either lower CC uptime in generall or better anti-(chain)CC options for teamfights, and we need more tankiness especially in teamifghts, or less anti tqank mechanics. I think the best was to accomplish that without makeing toplaners to dominant in skirmishes is by giveing more items defensive effects that scale with the number of nearby opponents. Sterak's for example could have the delay of it's shield-decay changed to 1 sec per nearby opponent, so you're near guranteed to get full value in a teamfight while basically staying the same 1v1. Buffing BotrKs %hp damage is really not what we need, we need more tankiness, not more tools to combat tankiness.

Early strategic impact:

Objectives: I can see only two ways to make this work: Either give Heralds some kind of permanent reward, or chage/remove dragon soul. The big thing with dragonsoul is, once you havve it you have a permanent advantage that stays no matter what. Even if everyone is lvl 18 with fullbuilt and both teams only have their nexus standing, dragonsoul will still give an advantage that your opponent can never equalize, you will always be a little bit ahead. So either Herald can offer something similar, or dragonsoul gets removed or turned into a temporary boost, else dragons will always be more vlauable than herald(unless it's so overtuned that it creates an insane early snowball that ends the game befor dragonsoul ever gets relevant)

TP: For soloQ, the most important change would be to allow cancleing once again. In a non coordinated enviroment, TP plays are a coinflip between a heroic play and pure suicide atm. It happens quite often that you TP, and your team just disengage with you ending up 1vX and basically beeing removed from the game cause you die AND invest TP with no returns at all, setting you massively behind.

Turning leads into victories:

It's quite simple: BRING BACK VISION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Give us green wards, or atleast buff the vision totem and return warding items for junglers. As toplaner, if you want to push an advantage you need to play agressive, which leaves you open for ganks, so the only way to get agressive without feeding is haveing solid vision. Haveing solid vision however, is nigh impossible on your own and even with the help of your jungler it's barly doable. You need till lvl 13 to get a 100% uptime on a single ward, and a single ward is BY FAR not enough. And then there are sweepers and umbrale glaive aswell... At lvl 6, you'll spend nearly 50% of the time without ward even if you use your trinket exactly on CD. If your jungler doesn't track the opponents jungler and communicate, you basically have no way to go agressive unless your already fed enough to win 1v2. It also makes it hard to roam to other lanes, cause you always have to jurny into the dark when you go for a rotation, since all of your teams wards are usually around your 4man(which usually should be setup around an objective), and the path from the offlane to your team remains dark.

Also, if items and strategic impact are adressed properly, getting an early lead top will automatically translate more easily into a victory, so i wouldn't go for raw snowball increases like more plate damage untill we see the imapct of other changes.

Jungle Satisfaction and Personal Power:

Reduced Gank Power:

As a laner, the two biggest issues i have with jungle ganks are vision and their first clear. The firstclear gives to much xp to quickly, paired with double buff and on meta junglers not even HP loss. It's just disgusting wehn the jungler can walk at full HP with double buff and a lvl lead or atelast even level into your lane and 1v1 you without any help of his laner. Just lower the first lcear xp so you need one more camp for lvl 3, or maybe even so you need 2 camps for lvl 2(with lower damage on early camps so clears don't become to harsh) to lower the impact on those very early ganks. Also, as mentioned for toplane already, GIVE US OUR GOD DAMN WARDS BACK!!!!!!!!!!. The main issue with ganking is that you can't counter it through vision at all(unless your support). The state of vision is just pathetic and we're living in the dark ages of runeterra... If i head a decent chance on spotting the jungler when he comes for a gank, i could react, but atm i have to play totally save unless my jungler is nearby AND i'm 100% sure he reacts AND we win the 2v2.

I like the early homeguard idea though, might also make room for TP buffs, cause TP's advantage in getting back to lane early wouldn't be as sigificant any more. Atm, i take TP less for global plays(way to suicidal in soloQ) and mostly for lane cause a free shopping trip every few min is a massive advantage on the sidelane.

Jungle Satisfaction:

Increaseing xp(and maybe gold) for farming certainly will help. However, i feel like jungle items really need to be looked at aswell. They mostly feel like a crutch your forced to use and come to lategame, it feels bad to have either an inferior item, or no combat summoner. Imo The jungle item could work like old Eleisa's Miracle: Make it a 1k gold sink to limit early combat power of junglers like it's now, but instead of upgradeing it into full items, it has a quest(defeat X big monsters) that repays atleast a part of that gold and turns it from an iteam into a permanent buff so you get that inventary slot but still keep better jungleing and an upgraded smite(which might need some small nerfs with the lower opportunity cost) This would oppen up alot more flexibillity for built paths and more lategame statisfaction on junglers, and some items concepts like cinderhulk's %hp bonus or the %hp on hit from bloodrazor could be used for new items that are accesible for laners aswell. At the very least, change warriors into something less boring.

How snowbally is the game today?

I feel like you guys have a very different metric on that than i do. I would never call a 74% winrate at 15min a 'close' or 'even' game. 60% winrate max for close/even games, and even that is quite generous. 75% winrate is only a medium lead? Yea, we really have a different opinion on that. 75% winrate for me means the game is basically decided by that point, but there is that 25% chance that the winning team throwsbefor it can finish, but the loosing team basically has no agency other than staying alarmed to actually punish a throw of their opponents.

For me, the metrics would be: Close/Even = <60% winrate @15 Medium lead = <80% winrate @15 Large lead = 80%+ winrate @15

With my metrics, we'd have over 50% largeleads and only about 20-30% close/even games, and that ratio is unacceptable. It's no wonder the game feels like a stomp-fest if over half of the games are basically decided at the 15min mark.

I can atleast agree on the sweetspot, though i'd prefer ~40/40/20 over 40/35/25 However, with less generous metrics in terms of close and medium lead, we are quite a far shot from those sweetspots... Again, i can't understand how anyone can consider 60-75% win as an even game, it's just...not.

ThornyZyra2/21/2020, 6:12:57 PM6 votes

Is it possible to make Zyra viable in Jungle? @Riot Scruffy

ThornyZyra2/21/2020, 5:45:42 PM6 votes

Thoughts on Zyra?

pda8982/21/2020, 8:20:56 PM5 votes

Why there is one missing obvious step in so called "Rito balance"? I mean the cycle "random champion buff -> champion nerfed in other stats due to too high raise in WR/popularity -> buffs are reverted" (recent example - Sona). Isnt it more correct to revert nerfs from the second step too and if needed - follow up later on (so you could evade pattern of "delayed nerf of the undertuned champion" but still access the data "do you need to nerf champion due to new discovered strategy")?

TomiMan72/21/2020, 5:49:20 PM5 votes

Are you guys planning to help Brand MIDLANE anytime soon? He has been a support champ ever since his 6.9 rework.

AIQ2/21/2020, 5:59:27 PM5 votes

General questions Will we get a VGU tier list soon?

item 1416 Is very niche for specific champions, could it get a small Lifesteal buff at the cost of maybe 10% attack speed?

Has the idea ever been toss around of having junglers reduced XP from Lanes and more from jungle and Laners reduced XP from jungle. Additionally, invades could skew that by gaining a small bonus for invading, though this could lead to things like V-Jungling. Perhaps something to look into if the current changes don't work.

Recently I've played and been against a jungler that essentially got 3+ wave of XP due to ganks or whatever, the gap of EXP was impossible to make up until I simply taxed some allies for EXP. If Lane EXP had little effect on Junglers and Jungle had more, it could lead to ganks being more about being in/out vs in and push everything.

Some gameplay annoyances that might be missed due to rarity or champion popularity.

Akali Shroud enters Mordekaiser Ultimate even if her shourd was placed in SR not in DR. Warwick W stops if a healthy unit is between him and his target on the shortest path to the target. Shyvana Q in dragon for does not apply on hit effects twice, only the 20-80% ad bonus damage.

LanceTheJungler2/21/2020, 10:55:57 PM5 votes

Hey Mark what are you opinions on the current state of MR itemization? Currently Bruisers have really awful MR itemization and Tanks have situational at best MR itemization. Bruisers have to choose between item 3156 item 3065 and item 3091. In most cases Maw is simply worse than item 3053 while item 3065 and item 3091 have limited uses and most bruisers can't itemize them effectively. Simply allowing Hexdrinker and Maw's passives to stack with Steraks would go along way with helping top lane impact because it's fairly common to get fed as a top laner, but be unable to use your lead to win teamfights due to getting CC locked and bursted by mages. Then once it gets to the ultra lategame, ADC's simply have so much damage while you have been itemizing tank items that you can't kill them through their lifesteal.

.

I understand that stacking MR isn't highly needed on most tanks due to mages incapability to kill tanks anyway due to reliance on cooldowns, and for the ones that do we have item 3194. However the other two "general" MR options of tanks are very situation. item 3065 has wasted gold value on tanks without healing and item 3001 has wasted gold value on tanks that don't have magic damage or don't use mana. Another MR tank item would be nice to round out the bunch.

DCYOUNG8882/21/2020, 6:03:17 PM5 votes

Hi Riot Scruffy, out of curiosity, for top lane how are the item 3074 item 3748 Hydra items and item 3071 Black Cleaver get adjusted/buffed for the the fighters/tanks? Also didn't item 3068 Sunfire Cape and its variations get a buff already (which had to be hotfixed quickly)?

Are there also plans to change the mr tank items such as item 3065 spirit visage, item 3001 abyssal mask, and item 3194 or even add in a new option? While they do help against magic users they are very niche on their unique passives or are anti-synergistic (e.g. you lose a lot of benefit when you get a item 3027 rod of ages and an abyssal mask at the same time or spirit visage for tanks who don't have healing on their kit). The options overall feel very limited or not very satisfying.

EDIT: Are there also going to be any adjustments to the other tank armor items also such as item 3742 Dead Man's, item 3143 Randuin's, item 3075 or thornmail?

Arcixx2/21/2020, 8:26:39 PM4 votes

Just here to beg for some Black Cleaver buffs guys items been feeling terrible since ages now. Pls just change the buildpath or make the overrall item more rewarding. Seemingly everyone these days swaps to triforce because of buildpath and more rewarding completion.

warpenguin5552/21/2020, 7:36:45 PM4 votes

So last time you talked about how Swain was still am viable mid laner dispite seeing more support play. Is the same true for Brand and Karthus? These 2 have been kicked out of mid lane according to OP.GG. Does internal data show they are performing alright in midlane?

Dat Irelia Booty2/21/2020, 5:46:22 PM4 votes

Thanks Black Cleaver will be buffed,even juggernauts now are building triforce(Darius,Garen,Sett etc) and the main Black Cleaver users (Riven,Renekton,Aatrox) and a bit weak atm.Can u give me some thoughts about Riven,Irelia and Aatrox? how they are doing at the moment? Thanks in advance.

Cizzurd2/21/2020, 9:13:48 PM4 votes

I'd like to see another learning curve graph of champs, specifically Aphelios, did he turn out to be a high skill champ when mastered? I'd also like to see one for Xayah too, since she's my main. Can we get the chance to see that sometime?

armatsu2/21/2020, 6:11:33 PM4 votes

Hello! What about Zyra state as a mage on midlane? Zyra I think she need rework, back her old passive and w

Solari Fortune2/21/2020, 5:50:06 PM4 votes

I'm concerned over the saying of "more powerful teleport summoner" as I remember the days of all 3 lanes taking it over anything else. Also I curious how exactly you all plan to change the herald

Zerenza2/22/2020, 9:19:35 AM3 votes

I don't like the increase in Solo Kill EXP in the jungle. I understand that if early game jungler's didn't have a way to get ahead early they'd lose 90% of the time but at the same time there is 0 counterplay to being invaded constantly on a champion that isn't good at fighting or getting away pre-6.

There's also the fact that Olaf, Warwick, Lee Sin, Udyr and many other early game jungler's have been dominant since before summer of last year and haven't seen any significant nerfs while also getting buffs to the way they play jungle. Preferably i'd want the EXP buffs and reduced Kill EXP/Shared EXP to jungler's, that's it, because thats all you need you don't need the incentive to Invade because it's already there. Invade, take 2 camps, take a kill and your probably 2 levels ahead of the enemy jungler for the next 5 minutes.

Side Note: I'm still disappointed that there is no thought of adding more Mage's and AP Assassins to the jungle like fan favorites for the jungle role that simply don't work right now such as Neeko, Ahri or Katarina. I'd love to see them there, everyone would and it's not like they wouldn't work with a few really simple tweaks.

Tiure2/21/2020, 5:59:52 PM3 votes

Hi Scruffy! Thanks for the insights.

My question is: Do you have any good metrics to track champion enjoyment independent of their strength? I am part of the Swain mains community, and sometimes it feels like all they do is complain. While I do privately think some of their complaints are way off base, Mark Rosewater has said many times that "players are very good at detecting when something is wrong, even if they don't know how to fix it." Are there any champions who you believe are just not fun to play right now, or feel incredibly weak (even if they have an insane pick and winrate), or have matchups so punishing that they cannot be blind picked, or any other measures that might impede the ability to play a champion as part of a regular champion pool?

Thanks for being so transparent!

Waq2/21/2020, 5:48:40 PM3 votes

Excited for the ranked news, hopefully you will make changes similar to Rainbow Six Siege's ranked.

Also liking the jungle changes, with reduced gank importance junglers will be under less pressure and will make it easier for autofills to play their part.

Khârn2/21/2020, 8:09:09 PM3 votes

Just wondering something about this so-called "Autofilled Parity", will it only match the number of autofilled on each team or will it go even further and match their given roles as well, it would make for a much more balanced experience. An autofilled toplaner who picks a tank can manage lane and have a positive impact late, as opposed to an autofill jungler who will inherently be outclassed due to the mechanics of the role.

Would you guys ever consider those changes in the future? It would certainly bring more matchmaking parity, and I think that's for the better.

Dreamhare2/21/2020, 8:37:38 PM3 votes

Hello, Mark. Any chance on adding/modifying an item to give Enchanters a decent or viable armor item? Kinght's Vow and Solari are not so good on the likes of Nami, Janna, Lulu, etc, specially when facing the dual-ad botlanes (Pyke, Senna, MF, etc), in which the AD Support builds tons of (cheap) armor pen/lethality. So far we have good MR options (Athene's and Mikael's) but not even a single fitting armor item to rush or at least start building that offers something to help you through the lane and your team later on (Zhonya's too selfish).

Anything close to the second iteration of Zeke's Convergence/Harbinger would be (almost) great (50 AP, 30 armor, 10 CDR, 250 Mana). Maybe the flat Mana could be switched to Mana Regen. Maybe Mikael's Crucible could offer armor instead of MR? Maybe Shurelya's Reverie could do it in exchange for some HP and HP regen.

Things like high values could be avoided to keep solo laners from building it.

Fresh Snow2/21/2020, 9:52:06 PM3 votes

I was wondering how this data changes across different elo brackets; is it significantly different? The perception is that games are easier to snowball when the players are better.

Tin Obliterates2/21/2020, 10:39:52 PM3 votes

Anything on Aatrox?

Skier2/21/2020, 11:04:36 PM3 votes

Do you have any upcoming changes for Taliyah. Pretty much every taliyah main agrees that she is much less fun to play now than pre-rework. It would be amazing to see her aoe q added back with some numbers tweaked to her WE dmg and possibly lowering q dmg to minions if you’re afraid of her waveclear. It would also bring a lot more new players to her and players that used to play her back and since you all are releasing a skin for her this year that would also mean more skin sales.

eldritchbreadD2/22/2020, 12:58:36 AM3 votes

hey uhm question why not make TahmKench a juggernaut and rework his W and R since instead of a warden he feels more like a juggernaut with hidden potential thats just me and maybe turn his W into his R*[slayer-jinx-catface]*

Best Veigar FL2/21/2020, 6:15:50 PM3 votes

If you want junglers to be less impactful how about stop making the game be decided on dragons?