Quick Gameplay Thoughts: May 11

{quoted} More solo carry potential work

We're continuing to work on changes that get a bit more solo carry potential back in the game. 8.10's got the bounty changes (solo gold, not team gold) and jungle changes (junglers not being able to level 3 gank as early). For 8.11 we're looking at shifting some tower gold, on both outer and inner towers, from team gold to solo gold, focus that increased power more on whoever's gained that advantage for their team.

One important thing to note is that increased solo carry potential is going to result in more cases of single champions snowballing and deciding the game. We think we've pushed too far on teamplay, hence some movement back in the other direction. Does mean there'll be more cases of one person doing well, getting fed and dominating though. If your actions as a single player can carry the game, so can other people's. We think that’ll be good overall, but will come at some trade off.

This is probably the worst aspect of the game right now. It's not fun feeling at the mercy of your team to win the game. That creates toxicity because people feel that they don't have agency to carry if they get 1-2 truly clueless players. Their performance is intricately tied to that of their teams and when there's a huge disparity, it creates enormous frustration. If you've got a troll or someone not really trying or playing in a selfish way (hello full AP Sona), it's even more demoralizing because it feels like you got trolled and despite being serious and doing your best - perhaps even playing near flawlessly, these players robbed you of the game. They have that power over you and in S4 it didn't feel like this was the case as much. I remember using hypercarries like AP Kog and being able to win 6-25 games if the enemy team was toying with us too long (hello Zeds spamming laugh in base for 5 minutes straight). It's also not fun to watch and makes people appreciate high ranked or pro players less. Even watching pros, it's often "oh, he gets the worse team so he loses" or "oh, his team is quite behind" so he's useless. No flashy plays, no outplay from a 5 year LCS veteran.. just waiting for the FF vote or trying hard but being ineffectual.

On top of that, you've got this massive snowball meta where being behind is a death sentence (again making it really hard to win if you RNGd a worse team). It's not enough that the enemy team has way more gold/levels/dragons etc., they also get more pushing minions, nearly unstoppable Baron/Rift pushes and so on. Watching a tennis match with a lopsided score can still be exciting because each point exists in a vacuum. There have been comebacks from 2 sets down and match point. The better player that day wins but it doesn't feel like "because he won the first set" now his opponent has no chance. No, he won the first set because he was better but now if his opponent is better, he can just as easily lose the next set and the match. You're not artificially rewarded.

League shouldn't be this extreme since you want players to be rewarded for good play/to be able to close out but the discrepancy created by Baron/Rift, the easily killed turrets, the pushing waves when behind etc. make comebacks few and far between even if the other team is playing like monkeys. It feels like getting ahead almost guarantees a win no matter how badly they play after that (as long as they don't get Baron stolen). They don't have to play well the entire game and this makes it a horrible match when it is a bit destabilized by one lane or something like that. It also makes luck far more important. A good player can only really exert his skill in the first 15-20 minutes because after that it just snowballs like crazy in either direction and the quality of decisions has little influence. In a tennis match or other sports, you have to play well the entire time to beat a player (no matter the score). You don't get to chill just because you're ahead. You can afford to lose more points but you're not handed free advantages in each individual point.

Coming back even with a scaling comp. is not just an uphill battle but a near impossibility. Even competitive play shows this. It's just win early -> clean/efficient stomp, first securing baron vision + a pick if possible -> baron -> unavoidable game winning push. Comebacks shouldn't be artificial like how catch up XP made it a while back but they should ALWAYS be possible if the enemy team makes enough mistakes. Why would I want to watch or play a game where if my team is shit I'm useless and also stuck there another 10-15 minutes? If at least I feel there's a solid 10-20% chance to scale up, outplay etc. I'd have my head in the game more and people would rage/blame less too. Raging and blaming happens mostly because a player has mentally given up on winning the game.

Right now, it's just terrible when behind. You can't even leave base or fight if you get the perfect engage. The base just crumples, the minions kill you during the fight etc. It's mentally draining and not fun. It also warps the meta for champions and strategies. S4 and S5 were both FAR more interesting to play and watch. I still remember the amazing CLG matches with split pressure.

Now, competitive especially is like watching paint dry and that's coming from a devoted fan. I don't see the solo carries like in the past with SKT's Bang holding the base and acing the enemy team with 3 inhibs down almost by himself on Ezreal... amazing match and skill. I don't see the nail biters and the tension. I don't see the outplays (reducing JG gank options won't help this). I see one team stomp or one team get stomped. It's almost robotic. There were super tense matches I linked to my friends years back and I haven't for a single one this year.

Even small leads snowball way too hard because you just can't do anything. Turrets are taken easily/dived, you're zoned from objectives, what do you even do? Every mechanism artificially makes the game unwinnable after a lead is created. That's the key word ARTIFICIALLY. It's not just their items and level advantage. You can try to play around that or scale. It's everything else. It's like if someone playing tennis and up a set then gets a "fun new mechanic" where his ball speed on hit is increased by 50%. Now, it's not just the opponent having to battle from behind a set. They are also having to play a really unfair match. This is how League games feel when behind.

I think Baron and Rift probably just shouldn't exist in their current form. They make the game a lot worse. Even if you want minions to push/takedown structures, maybe don't make them do so much damage to champions too. Let the other team have a chance to at least fight and hold their ground rather than just autolose. There's just so much artificial help for the winning team and it makes the game much less fun on either side. Even removing base turrets completely but not having Baron/Rift or artificial super strong pushing would be so much better. Maybe at least give the enemy team some options to counteract it if you keep it the same? Perhaps something like shrines which can disable baron minions in a particular lane etc. Create ways to give the team from behind a chance to outplay. A fair chance that they need to earn not just "oh here's some free catchup XP and a lot of shutdown gold". Shutdown gold is maybe OK but it seems to overly punish you for being ahead and making a mistake. It's not an equivalent exchange. Your mistake becomes bigger than the enemy team's in the same situation even though I see no reason why this should be the case. It's another artificial mechanic.

Your goal should be to make the game require fair but quality play at all points. No artificiality, just skill (with multiple dimensions required and less down time). When being ahead is all that matters, there isn't even much skill expression possible when significantly behind. It rewards getting a lucky lead rather than outplaying. This even makes matchmaking worse if a few players managed to RNG that 5-10 games in a row and are then placed way above their true skill. This reduced skill expression because of how critical it is to be ahead also makes it much more important to play meta junglers who are strong early/mid game. It all becomes so constrained.

Being ahead needs to give advantages but nothing insurmountable and it shouldn't be this "oh, we get a free win now because we got baron/are ahead". The behind team should always have options to come back that if ignored/not managed properly will allow them to turn the tables. If your game seems like a foregone conclusion just off a rift or baron, there's something really wrong with it and it leads to the "I give up mentality" that's so prevalent. Players give up as a result of their experience and seeing that should be a huge red flag for Riot that the game is NOT fun when behind because the ahead team gets too many artificial advantages just by virtue of being ahead, not any real sustained outplay. The complaint will be that "how will games end then?" "won't people be really risk averse and just farm all game?" "won't teams outplaying for 20 minutes be overly punished for one mistake throwing it all away?" This is fair and that's why it has to be well designed so that there are important objectives for both sides and in both situations. I think fallen turrets providing some sort of shrine you can capture to offset baron/supers somewhat could be a way to deal with it. If the enemy team wants to keep pushing, they have to take over that area of control and fight for it. Right now the game is only fun in the 25% or so games that are balanced. The stomps are kind of fun but not really because they are just too easy to win. Getting stomped sucks and is draining, especially if you had no agency. 25% of games being fun is not good. I want this to be a high skill came that is worth mastering but artificially winning from an early lead isn't OK.

Re: Celerity

Before Rune Reforged, it was possible to get +4.5% MS from Quint. This was not free, this was a big trade-off with a big opportunity cost. Yet, it was the right choice for some champs. Some champs desperately need that MS. Celerity was already weaker, and if it is going to be made more situational on top of it, I'm really not convinced it will be enough.

I don't like to write negative posts so early before we even see what's the replacement like, but if I wait too long, there will be no time to consider those champs that need it.

Don't nerf Celerity, make it a bigger trade-off.

Considering the feedback you guys have gotten, what changes can we expect to the marksman changes coming in 8.11? Some notable calls I've seen are for:

A nerf to Ezreal, Jhin, and maybe MF.

Reducing or removing the True Damage from IE.

Lowering or removing the innate CDR on ER.

Possibly not reducing BotRK's price, and keeping it as is?

Also noticed you guys pretty heavily reworked Stormrazor. Any chance we'll see a different version of it in the future?

Fix Athene's Unholy Grail

It builds out of a Fiendish Codex which gives 35 AP but Athene's only gives us 30

???????????

@Meddler

Would you guys ever concider making some reverts to Zyra? Like returning her to her old kit pre mid year mage update. I feel her old kit was much better then the current kit and her power was better distributed to areas of her kit where she could display skill rather then the RNG machine she feels to be now. I PERSONALLY feel her old Q Deadly Bloom was better prefering the range over the width. Also I feel having less plants that were more impactful was better then having a bunch of them that werent that impactful. And if not that change.... could you concider increasing Zyra's ROOT duration rank 1 so that its on par with other Mid Lane mages. ATM her 0.75 second root is not enough to peel a gank. I just see alot of area of improvement for Zyra as a champion and I feel like improving on her CC is smart as thematically Crowd Control fits her... Another idea I thought of was maybe lowering the Cooldown of her ultimate so its on par with other mages with similiar abilities. Orianna comes to mind... she has a fairly short cooldown on her ult and its much more reliable then Zyra's. OVERALL i would really like to see Zyra reverted to old, cause lets be honest... most of the mid year mage updates didn't hit the mark... and i feel zyra is one of them.

Edit (Also an idea for her plants. You could buff their range back to 750 and it would allow her to position her plants further away which would in turn make them last longer.)

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/lRJANqvm-dear-riot-please-revert-zyra-to-pre-mid-year-mage-update

ahem KARMA

that is all

https://clips.twitch.tv/HonorableMagnificentTardigradeNotATK

talking about zyras plants. its most important that players killing plants without playerinput just by how snares work gets fixed. especially unlucky interactions like mf corki graves still onehitting plants while being ranged

Hello Meddler!

Maybe it's worth it to revert? And already on the old Zyra to make trial changes? Now it is too badly balanced with this current passive. Sounds too much about the support position. A primary role does not take into account?

Celerity's currently a strong all purpose choice in its row that drowns out other options too much. As always on movement speed it also contributes to creeping up average speeds. We were going to make some changes to it in 8.10 with the other minor runes balancing, but concluded something a bit larger was needed than just numbers tweaking. Going to be looking at modifications like MS only in combat, or after every ability cast, rather than on all the time as a result.

Is it really contributing that much to average speeds? It provides slightly less speed than Movement Speed Quints did in the old rune system, but seeing as how it is probably more accessible in the new system I can kind of see why you might think this.

Hey Meddler,

Love the idea of changing bounty from team gold to solo gold. However, I'm a support main, and one concern I have is that if I, as a support, get a shutdown with an ignite, there is a strong likelihood that I will get flamed by my adc. Have you guys given any thought to making shutdown gold available not to the entire team, but only to the participants in the shutdown? If a top laner solo kills his fed opponent, his bot lane wont benefit, but carries wont get screwed by having shutdown gold taken by their jungler ganking their lane.

No one installed this game because they wanted to be impressed by team play. They played it and were attracted to it because they wanted to carry or appreciated amazing displays of skill by other players. Team play is not interesting and just breeds toxicity. I want to see and demonstrate individual skill above all. Most people want an audience, not a team. I want to see Faker's LB shit on everything not Faker's team carry him through "team play." Plus, team play just makes duo abusing even stronger and now you guys even allow Masters and Challengers to do it. I think it's pretty ridiculous that even top 25 challenger can have people duo abusing a lot. How can you even have players be "worshipped" or really impressive if you don't even make top 25 challenger just about individual skill? You tried team play, you tried the dynamic queue cancer that took a dump over competitive integrity and made this game a joke in many people's eyes, now bring it back to what people ACTUALLY want to see. It's a hell of a lot more fun even when stomped to watch some Ekko 1v5 rather than his team be all stronger everywhere and the people who contribute to the 'team" aspect most often don't even get any credit.

You might ask why I play a team game at all. Well, I enjoy the feeling of carrying them, of having an audience and of seeing different roles/champs all try to outplay each other. I sure as hell don't want to be dependent on them though. The social aspect is kind of fun too but again, the minute you make me highly dependent on them, you suck the fun out of it for me and make it feel like a chore. Even the people who play support mostly do it because they win more, it's very impactful but the competition is less fierce and they get a lot of positive feedback from the team. A lot of them would want a carry role if they were equally effective on it. It's just that support is more impactful than a lot of carry champs. But if you discover that you can be a Janna main and get Gold pressing just E while sitting behind your ADC, maybe you won't bother trying something else.

Also, the way the bot now punishes even banter from competitive players or criticism is just insane and that kills the game for people that actually are dedicated to it. It takes half the fun out of a competitive game. People even talk shit in spots all the time even if they might not do it on TV. Punishing plays for that kind of stuff so much just makes it a bland experience. Outright hostility, harassment etc. sure but not "your build is garbage" or "that was a derpy as hell play."

I think Celerity needs the trancendence treatment. I mean you probably should increase the MS to 4.5% but make it available at lvl 10

Also, what are your current plans to do on Shurelya's? And, any thoughts on Galio?

Please look into buffs for

She's still struggling after the recent buffs she got and she's a super early game reliant champ that struggles in the new "delayed ganks" jungle. She even loses machete's attack speed making clears slower and overall now she has no real options to make up for her season 7 runes pages (attack speed, scaling health primarily). Her level 2s aren't good either so she can't fight for scuttles over most champs.

Consider buffing one of the following: her human Q ratio, Base AD, or Base violatile spiderling W damage (you can nerf the ratio here for all we elise mains care).

Base AD would be highly appreciated since that nerf for worlds really hurt us Lane Elise players.

and pls pls PLEASE give her the MS back that she was nerfed from in 6.2 as a result of runic echoes's release, which in the new jungle update no longer gives the MS that got her speed nerfed in the first place.

{quoted}

Celerity

• Celerity's currently a strong all purpose choice in its row that drowns out other options too much. As always on movement speed it also contributes to creeping up average speeds. We were going to make some changes to it in 8.10 with the other minor runes balancing, but concluded something a bit larger was needed than just numbers tweaking. Going to be looking at modifications like MS only in combat, or after every ability cast, rather than on all the time as a result.

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

Ugh, Celerity is my favorite rune by far and the only reason it's taken so much is that the others are weak/situational. Level 10 especially for a JG takes ~15 minutes. Absolute Focus is really conditional and favors poke champions but poke champions are more vulnerable to ganks, more dependent on good positioning and value CDR highly, thus even those champions frequently favor the other runes above it. The exceptions are mostly when hitting break points for waveclear.

I really don't want Celerity ruined. It's by far my favorite rune in the tree and now you've already taken MS off Runic Echoes. It makes it even harder to be useful jungling. We can't even level 3 gank. It's like lanes are becoming hermetically sealed from JG interaction and we're reduced to PvE. I like planning out efficient pathing and good strategy but I also want to be capable of early pressure if required (such as vs Nasus or Yasuo).

Just make Transcendence come online at level 9 and give Absolute Focus 1 more AP early, up to 5 more late. Then, you wouldn't see Celerity quite so much except on junglers and supports. It is NOT OP and it's a rune that you really get used to too so it's very disruptive to change! It's just generally useful while the others are far too conditional. Of course the "generally useful" option becomes meta and outpeforms (outside of the niche scenarios). That's more or less normal and if it's too extreme, it's because the others are too delayed in their power. You've created a snowball meta where towers are paper vs Baron/Rift and even AP champions take them with ease. There is no "waiting for level 10" to have a useful rune or for Absolute Focus to be truly impactful.

The rune system is looking fairly incoherent in terms of paths and what each one is supposed to accomplish at the moment. Sorcery, the path that is supposed to be about promoting spellcasts gets overloaded with movement speed and even its rune, Ultimate Hat that does exactly what is expected from the path gets removed on PBE to make way for... even more movement speed with the Nimbus Cloak rune. Shouldn't assassins be the ones primarily that go fast? Speaking of which their path, Domination, feels like a support path that happens to have assassin keystones. Why the hell are they placing wards and poros while reducing item cooldowns? And why was Ultimate Hat added to Domination? It even got nerfed through the hunter mechanic. Not to mention Manaflow Band was still getting used over it most of the time especially after mana changes. Inspiration (aside from some of its keystones) has some of the most boring runes despite being the path that is supposed to be the "whacky" and "playstyle-defining" one. Most of its runes are just "wait for a free item".

Also are there any plans for runes like Absolute Focus and Unflinching? Those are just 2 examples of runes that are a bit too situational and unreliable to the point where almost nobody makes use of them.

@Meddler

JUST want to put this out there one more time in case my post before wasn't seen. But THIS IS HOW MUCH I CARE about Zyra! I would reallly REAAAAAAAAAAALLLLY REALLLY like to see Zyra reverted to pre mid year mage update. I feel she was far more balanced then she currently is and much easier to tune. Before Zyra had less plants that were allowed to be more impactful and last longer because there were less of them to deal with for the enemy. Her old Q had further outward range allowing her to be safer in mid lane her being an extremely fragile champion she deserves to have that bit of outward range that she lost. Also the skill was a bit harder to land but also allowed her to manage her waves a bit better AND it allowed her to set her Seeds up in favorable positions without accidently spawning all her plants instantly when she uses her Q to farm or poke. Sometimes its not always favorable to pop all your plants. Regardless though, she had less plants which is a good thing but those plants were more impactful, their only issue at the time that most players had with them was their buggy targetting system. Really the mid year mage update didnt need to be this big for her, she just needed her plants targetting code to be fixed and maybe a bit more interesting passive. But the passive she was given was a huuge power budget waste on a passive that is RNG and has little thought or player imput in controlling. OLD zyra only needed a few changes to modernize her, not this huge kit change that she got and became very annoying to deal with when strong or really useless when weak. PLEASE RIOT give us old zyra back... id take OLD passive over the current any day of the weak as well as the old Q Deadly Bloom.

Zyra holds a VERY VERY SPECIAL place in my heart... ive loved this champion for many seasons... and it devastated me when you guys changed her. I STILL hold hope she will get reverted like the other mid year mage updates. AND IM LITERALLY BEGGING U GUYS AS A DEDICATED MEMBER... please. Id do anything to have her back... so that i can love this game again.

Hi @Meddler, is it possible to got a small preview about fighter item changes ?

I don't like these changes to solo carry potential at all. I'm not sure if I agree with the goal or not, but I definitely don't like the methods being used. Who gets a shutdown kill and who gets a tower kill is far more about random luck or which champion you're playing than a player's actual ability to carry. These changes feel lazy and uninspired with likely little to no positive impact at best.

For me personally the solo carry issue is being addressed completely backwards. You should be working on ensuring we are paired with teammates who have similar understandings of how to work as a team and a desire to do so. But that's a big, complicated issue involving far more than the live balance team, so we're back to shutdowns to the killer which even if it works decently well comes with costs and is obviously the far worse solution in the long term...

I feel that Celerity would be better as a flat ms increase that either goes up with level or with boot tier (I prefer boot tier). Balance it around giving as much ms as it currently does to typical slow champions. Not sure what to do with the AP/AD it gives but maybe just scrap that and add a tiny bit more ms on top of what I just said about the speed? Also as others have said, part of Celerity's issue is that the competition is a bit lacking.

Kha'Zix changes are very welcome but also very late. He's been a 5 alarm fire that has been treated like a smoke alarm with dead batteries. Taliyah changes are far later but also a lot more acceptable due to her level of impact on most players.

possible suggestion for shurelia's: does a search of nearby allies and increases movement speed gained per ally affected. solo MS like 10%, team MS like 40%

What about Syndra? The buff to q passive helped, but she's still really weak. Is there any work planned for her?

I really enjoy the route you guys are going in regards to true damage on IE, but as a bruiser player, we itemize alot of health, even more so than tanks, and I feel that % hp true damage is a bit to relevant in the game right now. And I feel that the intention was to combat tanks, where it's a fair mechanic, but it ends up really hurting the Garens, Kleds, or any bruiser who builds alot of HP and little stats like Titanic, Sterraks. Any thoughts on this, it's extremely frusterating going against someone with % hp true damage as these champs due to lack of counterplay because they double dip since we also have only base resists.

Kaaarmaaa

Are those Kindred changes that were talked about ever gonna happen?

Hi Meddler,

I think the changes planned for 8.11 are generally good, and fix a lot of the problems with crit ADCs. My question is, will ER-rush ADCs, namely , be getting compensation buffs? She already spikes later than other ADCs, and with the changes planned she'll be stuck on <50% crit chance until 3 items, at which point other ADCs will have 100% crit chance. Which seems like too much of a nerf considering she isn't as problematic as the others at the moment. Thoughts?

Celerity is not "drowning out" other choices. The other choices are just terrible.

Why would you ever use Absolute Focus? It's unreliable.

Transcendence is ok, and has some uses, but it's a late game rune. Generally we take early game runes unless you completely gut them like you did with Scorch.

If you want people to pick the other two runes make them reliable and useful throughout the whole game like Celerity is. And how about making them more interesting than stats?

Guys consider lowering the CD on supports items if you want to change the meta

@meddler why do you always end your post with that ziggs picture? hes not even your most played champion in the last 2 seasons

Give Champions like WuKong , an identity, the champion pool overall should be bigger.