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Pre-Worlds Early Game Update

RiotScarizard··1 votes·177,001 views

Hey folks,

As we get closer to Worlds, we’re looking to make some key changes to the state of pro play. One particular area of focus is the unopposed laneswap meta of the previous patches.

Laneswapping, while difficult to do successfully, is starting to feel pretty formulaic with few strategic tradeoffs. As it’s become more prevalent and teams do it more efficiently, it’s led to passive turret trading and less direct early conflict. When laneswapping becomes a default opener, it creates a non-interactive early game with. We’ll be making some changes in the upcoming patch to address this.

At a high level: we’re adding factors that heighten the risk of laneswaps. Our goal is not to eliminate laneswapping but to make it a strategic choice with actual tradeoffs.

For reference, here are the changes:

First, incentivize attacking and defending turrets. The first turret taken now grants a ‘First Blood’ reward, but turrets are now better at defending their allied champions.

  • New: "Turret First Blood" gold: +275 local, +25 global (400 total gold across the team)
  • New: Turret AI has been updated, and are better at defending allied champions (coming in 6.16)

Second, target a lane that’s ideal for fast push strategies. Bot lane’s outer turret defenses are no longer identical to the other lanes, and cannon minion spawns now rotate between lanes.

Fortification (temporary damage reduction buff on turrets) changed

  • Duration: 7 minutes -> 5 minutes
  • Damage reduction: 35% -> 50%
  • Fortification removed from bot lane turrets (we’re investigating a more nuanced approach to this)
  • Outer turret HP: 3300 -> 3500

Cannon minions now spawn differently

  • Each team gets one cannon minion per wave, rotating lanes.
  • Specifically, Bot gets a cannon minion in lane at wave 3, Mid at wave 4, and Top at wave 5. This then repeats.
  • Post-20 minutes, Mid has a cannon in wave 40 then both Bot and Top get one in wave 41. This then repeats.
  • Post-35 minutes, all lanes have cannons in each wave.

We know the timing’s not great and ideally this would have landed sooner to give teams time before playoffs to adjust. With that said, we think it’s important for the state of the game and something worth implementing now versus waiting until the offseason. We also want teams to qualify for Worlds in the same general meta that they’ll be playing in this October, meaning now’s our only chance to make these changes. While we’re be iterating over the patches to come, these are the last **major **changes coming to the game before Worlds.

294 Comments

Shadòw38 votes

#BRINGBACKSOLOQ

xRayka10 votes

{quoted}

#BRINGBACKSOLOQ

*Why is poeple downvoting this ? *Why is people stupid

We don't know ?

[zombie-brand-clap]

Shadòw4 votes

this is a Riot threat.. ofc all Riot fanboys come here first ;)

Aeszarck29 votes

{quoted}

this is a Riot threath.. ofc all Riot fanboys come here first ;)

I downvoted you because what you said was completely irrelevant to the topic that Scarizard posted about.

Aeszarck25 votes

Whoa, this is interesting. I'm not really in the know about laneswapping, so how will changing bottom lane's turrets make laneswapping less attractive?

ModWulf Helhammer12 votes

Because you can't turret trade bot and top anymore, as bot lane would push much faster

RiotMeddler17 votes

That's the general thinking yeah. You can still trade towers, and there may be situations where avoiding even lanes is worth it (really late game focused team with weak laners, champion picks that get pretty countered early, a strong enemy player you're trying to shut down etc). Price for doing so will be a lot higher though, so intention is that lane swapping isn't something you'll want to think of as a default choice.

LeeroyHeraldo2 votes

If this system persists through the preseason with no plans to change, will there be any art assets to compliment (either SR or turret models)? I know it's a lot to add on, but after the SR update I know the art team spent a lot of time making things pretty and matching gameplay

RiotMeddler4 votes

If these changes do what we hope then yes, we'd want to look into the best way to visually represent them. Clearly different towers for different lanes, clear shielding effects or something like that to make it feel like a more intuitive, natural mechanic.

In the short term we'll also be getting a 'you hit a shield' visual effect in on towers protected by fortification to get some of that going sooner. That's very much a partial solution though of course.

Awerp5 votes

I think its the first blood part that they are adding. If you swap away from bot lane your turret is going to go down before you can take their top lane turret thus you are forfeiting gold to the enemy team.

The Yetii Rider30 votes

{quoted}

Whoa, this is interesting. I'm not really in the know about laneswapping, so how will changing bottom lane's turrets make laneswapping less attractive?

Well, take this into account:

Currently, both teams just want map pressure and gold, so they send all of their players into top lane and the other team sends them all into bottom lane. You get a turret, enemy team gets a turret, no risk, plenty of reward.

Now, however, the first turret taken in a game gives extra gold. So, swapping lanes and trading turrets is no longer an even strategy. It becomes about who can push faster.

To make it so that the team with Jinx doesn't automatically get it every game, bot lane specifically is now weaker and easier to take. So both teams will want to put at least two members bot lane. If a team just lane swaps and goes top, they lose their turret faster AND the enemy team gets more gold.

By heavily favoring taking bot lane turrets faster while simultaneously making them easier to kill, you force players to actually defend the turret or risk falling too far behind in the early game.

BLACK HALO V104 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Yetii Rider,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=B2y4p4vE,comment-id=00040003,timestamp=2016-07-20T19:31:50.049+0000)

Well, take this into account:

Currently, both teams just want map pressure and gold, so they send all of their players into top lane and the other team sends them all into bottom lane. You get a turret, enemy team gets a turret, no risk, plenty of reward.

Now, however, the first turret taken in a game gives extra gold. So, swapping lanes and trading turrets is no longer an even strategy. It becomes about who can push faster.

To make it so that the team with Jinx doesn't automatically get it every game, bot lane specifically is now weaker and easier to take. So both teams will want to put at least two members bot lane. If a team just lane swaps and goes top, they lose their turret faster AND the enemy team gets more gold.

By heavily favoring taking bot lane turrets faster while simultaneously making them easier to kill, you force players to actually defend the turret or risk falling too far behind in the early game.

The only thing I'm worried that this will affect is making bot lane much more significant than top lane in general. Top lane carries will probably fall out of meta due to teams not wanting to put any resources into them and instead all of their resources into bot lane for the easier tower take. It's a really good idea to stop lane swapping and I'm happy for it, but I guess we'll see.

The Yetii Rider8 votes

[{quoted}](name=BLACK HALO V10,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=B2y4p4vE,comment-id=000400030000,timestamp=2016-07-20T21:47:39.971+0000)

The only thing I'm worried that this will affect is making bot lane much more significant than top lane in general. Top lane carries will probably fall out of meta due to teams not wanting to put any resources into them and instead all of their resources into bot lane for the easier tower take. It's a really good idea to stop lane swapping and I'm happy for it, but I guess we'll see.

In the pro scene? Absolutely.

Tanks are generally better for initiating anyway. Top lane carries have a hard time actually getting to the back line unless the enemy team misplays in pro scenes. I admit I don't watch as much as I used to, but I think Irelia is the only actual threatening top lane carry these days, right?

In the solo player level, the difference in gold is low enough that it probably just doesn't matter in the long run.

autofiIIed mid3 votes

Top turret becomes just as easy as bot turret to take after 5:00, so I see no reason that teams would place more resources into bot unless you could take the turret pre-five, which would be hard with a 2v2 bot.

RiotAesah11 votes

Traditionally, teams were generally happy to lane swap and trade turrets in a reasonably symmetrical manner. Now with the first blood turret gold in conjunction with the asymmetrical map (bot tower doesn't have fortification, and a cannon spawns earlier there), it should at least be a little more incentive for teams to not completely abandon their bot lane.

Gummî Bear10 votes

Iirc, teams "traditionally" laneswap to avoid bad matchups. Don't you think this will hit champion diversity hard. What is your opinion about giving each team 5 bans instead of this?

Pimpinabox3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Gummî Bear,realm=EUW,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=B2y4p4vE,comment-id=000400050000,timestamp=2016-07-20T21:25:53.622+0000)

Iirc, teams "traditionally" laneswap to avoid bad matchups. Don't you think this will hit champion diversity hard. What is your opinion about giving each team 5 bans instead of this?

Your comment is the whole point. They want a tactical trade off, give your bot lane (who picked into a bad matchup) a good lane with laneswapping, lose the turret FB. Turret FB isn't a tremendous gain vs getting your adc a good lane matchup. Afterall, which is worth more, 400 gold early or having a useful adc?

Danskheart8 votes

Iirc, teams "traditionally" laneswap to avoid bad matchups. Don't you think this will hit champion diversity hard.

It doesn't - that's a misconception. It opens up different champion diversity, not more. Laneswaps actually hurt champions that excel in early game matchups and favor champions that scale well mid/late. You're just trading one set of champs for another.

Linna Excel21 votes

So basically 99.9% of the players have to deal with these changes because LCS?

At this point I have to ask, why not just have a separate rule set (and maybe even balances) for LCS play?

Obscurica27 votes

LCS practices on live servers. Talent recruitment comes from live servers. The game cannot be cleanly split between competitive and casual play -- the two are too fundamentally and intrinsically reliant on each other. Also: this rewards more macro-aggression in solo queue anyhow, which further helps bridge the two.

To quote Deman: hit the damn turret!

RiotMeddler20 votes

We believe these changes will also be neutral to good for regular games (pro play's driving the timing on them).

We think tower first blood especially's a good addition. It means that a turning early success in lane into an early tower's more rewarding. The enemy laner will still often take your tower moderately soon after, instead of that equalizing things though there's still some persistent reward for that initial success. It also adds an extra dimension to the risk/reward trade off - how much more are you willing to risk to get a tower down ASAP? What if the enemy jungler's missing? What if their top lane's about to race you for first tower kill?

The cannon minion and fortification changes by contrast aren't things we think will have a significant impact on regular play, given the average times towers go down outside of pro play.

Linna Excel8 votes

Fair enough.

It also adds an extra dimension to the risk/reward trade off - how much more are you willing to risk to get a tower down ASAP? What if the enemy jungler's missing? What if their top lane's about to race you for first tower kill?

As a counterpoint, what if you've got a teammate who is feeding? Doesn't this put extra pressure on a team who might be getting tilted by the fact their toplaner just gave up first, second, and third blood and now is going to give up the first tower? What about the jungler? Generally you aren't supposed to help lanes falling behind and some have limited impact pre-6. This forces you to make a bad decision either way.

While this might be an interesting gameplay decision, I think it also highlight's LOL's fundamental flaw when it is viewed as a sport.

RiotMeddler7 votes

It does mean the potential impact of a single lane is higher, yes. That's got the potential to be a positive or a negative. Worst case scenario for you as a player is that another lane feeds a lot of kills and tower first destruction gold that you can't respond to. It also opens up the possibility though for you to deny a successful enemy in another lane the tower gold by taking a tower yourself first, giving a way for you to indirectly interact with another lane where you couldn't previously.

There is some risk of snowball increasing off this change as well of course. If so that should be individual snowball (X champ is really strong, how do we deal with or take advantage of that) more than team snowball (they're all just stronger) given most of the reward is local gold. Gives both clearer play/counterplay and allows a bit more potential for solo carrying.

Linna Excel2 votes

Okay, I get where you are coming from in a theory standpoint, I'm just looking at it from a player standpoint. I mean this could be pretty rough.

Let's say my mid is feeding and I'm playing Vayne, Jinx, Kog, or one of the other lategame ADCs. I'm going to have limited ability to force a tower myself unless the other bot laners screw up. Pushing hard on my part also means their fed mid could roam bottom making that early tower a risky proposition.

Or let's say I pick Ahri and the other mid laner picks Malz or Swain or Annie after I make my pick. Those are difficult match ups for Ahri. Now I've got the pressure of a bad match-up and the game is forcing me to do something that'll get me killed because I don't want the enemy's riven top to be even more fed than she already is.

In theory this is a good idea. In reality, the game is trying to tilt me even harder.

zierky28 votes

League of Legends is a team game and is desired to be a team game, therefore work with your team to solve problems.

Enjutsu4 votes

How about making that only 1 first blood can happen? I mean if one happens the other can't, because either one of them alone is pretty big deal for the side that got it, but it does make easier to get the second first blood and just continue snowballing even faster. This suggested change would just guarantee stronger snowball effect, because i don't think people like in this game too strong snowballing effect and 2 first bloods definetly increase it.

Also with my suggestion you would still have the turret swap tradeoff you want(unless because of early invade they got first blood) without increasing the chance to snowball.

RagnaDaddy 13 votes

As a diamond jungle main, I feel like your making the game even more linear for me. I already have no incentive to jungle the top side of my jungle since the meta is so dragon centric, and rift herald is more of an after thought. Now that bot lane tower is going to be focused so heavily, I feel like I have absolutely zero incentive to play around the top side of the map until Barron spawns. If you must make these changes, may I suggest you switch dragon pit to topside, and herald to botside? That way there is at least some sort of counterplay?

TheSingularity5 votes

Agreed. Walking up to top lane feels like such a chore at the moment compared to last season where bot lane was the chore.

Vistha Kai8 votes

Because objectives are shit, Riot has to force asymmetrical crap like one sidelane tower weaker than the other (Season 4 anybody?), just to shift players into the Riot's "intended" playstyle.

Great game design.

Not.

Xenos von Faneli7 votes

As a top laner I have some serious concerns with this change, namely that of the siege minion spawn times, as this denies me both gold and health if I take Strength of Ages, this feels like a very unfair changes that changes the core nature of the game, honestly just because you don't like certain pro strats. This change also makes it more likely that bot lane gets first blood gold, creating a further shift in power.

Quinn Dantrin6 votes

you still get the same amount of cannon minions..they just spawn a tad later

Sailor Mint7 votes

Doesn't the cannon change effectively mean that top lane needs to stay in lane a full extra minute to be able to match current gold income from cannon minions (or at the very least match the recall timing)?

mSticky7 votes

I SERIOUSLY think that Riot is missing the big picture behind the lane swaps.

Players are lane swapping because the early game objectives suck. They're not worth fighting over compared to safe gold and map control. Riot is trying to cover this issue by adding MORE early objectives (specifically, the bot lane turrets) into the game, but this is just clumsy design that doesn't address the core problem. Riot reinvented the laning meta with their objective changes, but when players adapted, they disliked the result and are now forcing the old meta through contrived means. I'm disappointed.

In classic LoL, the point of sending two players bot lane was so your team could contest Dragon and get early team gold. The moment Dragon became an "arbitrary buff" creature that could be ignored, lane swapping became a viable strategy. Now, with Elemental Dragons, the once-formulaic arbitrary buffs are now RNG based and less consistent, making lane swapping even more lucrative. Ironically, while Riot desperately tries to remove "hidden power" from champion kits (Kayle, Taric, etc.), they've made every Elemental Dragon effect some microscopic garbage that doesn't actually mean anything until it's compounded by an Elder Dragon buff, which players can't get until 35 min in. In other words, there is rarely any reward for an early Dragon kill, nor any penalty for giving up an early Dragon. Killing Dragon does not give me a buff that IMMEDIATELY helps my team make a powerful follow up play (like Baron), nor does it give my team gold that also would let us make a follow up play (via team fighting). With no incentive to fight, safe, consistent play generally wins out in most shotcalling scenarios, and thus you have the LCS lane swaps you see today.

If Riot REALLY wants to promote early game conflict, they need to give players a Dragon worth fighting over early on. Giving early Dragons team gold, a noticeable team buff, or some combination of the two would work, but there are surely other ways to accomplish this. In any case, making bot lane turret "the new 'old' Dragon" and breaking map symmetry is an awkward design concept that introduces way too many arbitrary "answers" for a relatively simple problem.

TL;DR: Make early Dragons worth fighting over and lane swaps will disappear. Easy.

RAVEL0RD AZIR5 votes

Skt skin update?

RiotMeddler16 votes

No clue, I get a lot of my skin news off S@20, Boards or Reddit these days (company's now big enough can't have everyone tracking everything).

Riot Feithen4 votes

Not in this patch (6.14), but work is progressing on the skins. I know the team are excited to share once they're ready.

RoodToob5 votes

Why don't you appear as a red? Is it a bug or are you new/never posted on the boards

Shíny3 votes

Are there any more details on what direction the Turret A.I. changes will be heading in? Seems sorta vague?

RiotMeddler9 votes

Couple of things planned:

  1. Make towers acknowledge calls for help if the ally being hit's outside their range, but the enemy hitting them is under the tower. At present it's unintuitive and really punishing that if you're zoned really far back from your tower enemy champions can stand under it and hit you without risk.

  2. Give towers some concept of champion aggression memory. Basically towers won't go back to shooting minions until there aren't any enemy champions in their range who've recently damaged one of their team's champions. Main impact of that is expected to be on champions that dive at low levels using untargetablity effects (Elise, Fizz etc). The ability to swap agro onto another champion's still there and still powerful, trying to defend a tower in those circumstances shouldn't be as lopsided though (risk just isn't there for the attacker at present). As with lane swaps we don't want to remove early tower diving, we don't think the risk being taken/price being paid's high enough though, leading to a situation where you just don't bother trying to defend at all (tower still goes down, you just go down with it).

TPro832 votes

Pros just need to make sure to have sufficient time to learn how this system works. It's so sketchy this is happening before worlds without any real time for competitive showings.

RiotMeddler9 votes

Yeah, that was a really big concern on our minds when talking about these changes. Our conclusion was that two and half months till Worlds was sufficient time for Worlds itself, particularly given the enormous number of games that will be played in August especially on 6.15.

This timing does however give teams pretty limited time to adapt before Playoffs, which is a significant downside. We felt it was really important that Playoffs/Qualifiers and Worlds all had a very similar set of conditions though, so needed to make these changes now if we wanted to do them before the pre-season. Doing so post 6.15 results in the sort of frustrations we saw from the Juggernaut changes last year (significant impact, but almost no competitive play on them seen pre Worlds). We concluded we did need to make these adjustments given how non interactive the early game often becomes in top tier play, completely agree there's a significant cost to doing so at this time though. Ideally we'd have made these changes a patch or two back once the dust had settled on mid-season.

CliffHanger072 votes

Each team gets one cannon minion per wave, rotating lanes. Specifically, Bot gets a cannon minion in lane at wave 3, Mid at wave 4, and Top at wave 5. This then repeats.

This is a terrible idea. The only thing that makes laning phase interactive at all is the fact that there are so many minions to kill. However many champs can insta-clear waves after the first back and there will no longer be a laning phase, it'll be bot lane insta-clearing with velKoz/karma sivir/lucian and taking jungle camps. If we even lack a cannon minion, then there is no reason to poke or play late-game carries, just clear your 6 creeps and get out.

If anything, we need more minions per wave to force us to fight. I've always hoped we got neutral minions or temporary minions like Scuttle that we could fight for bonus farm without power-ups. Another idea is to make enemy minions deliver bombs to your tower so you have to kill them before they reach it.

**TLDR: Farming needs minigames to become interactive, not less minions to fight for. Make it a challenge to fight the other laners for a lane Scuttle. **

Solideus10 votes

Actually, this change does not reduce the number of Siege Minions at all; I don't see why it'd be a terrible idea if it's not gonna change anything much. they'll just spawn in one lane at a time now, rather than in all lanes at once every three waves.

Johann172 votes

What patch will worlds be played on? It would be pretty boring if all of playoffs and Worlds is on the same patch, since worlds was so interesting last year due to the champion diversity.

Lanceworks5 votes

I'm pretty sure playoffs and Worlds will be on different patches. Just that this is the last MAJOR change before Worlds.

RiotMeddler2 votes

Current plan is that Qualifiers/Playoffs will be played on 6.15, maybe a little on 6.16 depending on the region. Worlds will then be played on 6.18.

Changes in 6.16-6.18 are intended to be broad but small, so a number of small adjustments to individual champions/items to bring more of them into viability/trim down the excessively dominant a bit. Hope there is that as per last year we see a lot of variety in Worlds, early games especially, as a result, without introducing anything in those last 3 patches that changes things at a bigger level (like these 6.15 changes do).

Keldeo19972 votes

{quoted}

Current plan is that Qualifiers/Playoffs will be played on 6.15, maybe a little on 6.16 depending on the region. Worlds will then be played on 6.18.

Changes in 6.16-6.18 are intended to be broad but small, so a number of small adjustments to individual champions/items to bring more of them into viability/trim down the excessively dominant a bit. Hope there is that as per last year we see a lot of variety in Worlds, early games especially, as a result, without introducing anything in those last 3 patches that changes things at a bigger level (like these 6.15 changes do).

What Patch do you guess the Yorick Update to be released?

RiotMeddler18 votes

Somewhere in the 6.19-6.21 range approximately. If it were in 6.18 he'd almost certainly be disabled for Worlds.

SpecterVonBaren1 votes

Does what you're seeing from the team working on him look exciting?

RiotReav36 votes

I'm excited!

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