Quick Gameplay Thoughts: September 12

Hi folks,

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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 put 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

Frost Queen's line in 7.18

We've got some late changes for the Frost Queen's line right at the end of the 7.18 cycle I though it would be good to give some more context on. We want to put a bit of power into the FQ's line of items, given they're underperforming relative to Coin/Targon's even on aggressive champs who should be much more drawn to FQs. We also want to offer non direct damage power where possible, both to reduce creep on number of high threat damage dealers on a team and to allow differences in how champs play in different positions (mid versus support for a number of mages). That meant adding AP or additional proc damage was something we wanted to try and avoid. CDR's is somewhat better approach as a result, focusing champs more on frequent casts (more sustained damage, more utility uptime). There are some cases where that contributes to CDR glut on some champs, most of the core FQ's users however are often buying non CDR items regardless however (e.g. Rylai's and/or Liandries).

We added CDR to T1, T2 and T3 of the Frost Queen's line as a result. We then started running seeing some mid laners swapping to it. Flexibility of item use across positions isn't in and of itself a problem, in this case it looked like it was at risk of making some champs (e.g. Cass) potentially too dominant. We made some late changes to FQ's as a result, uping the CD on minion kills by a couple of seconds and changing it so it gets extra CDR at T2 (now 10%), but doesn't increase further at T3. Intent there is that it's a better choice for supports building it and then going for other items, without pushing it to T3, without being too warping if picked up by others. Making it a support item that you're happier leaving at T2 also then gives a bit of extra distinction versus Targon's/Coin potentially too.

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Brand

We mentioned we'd take another look at something small to help solo lane Brand out a bit sometime post Worlds patch. Still planning to do that, potentially in this next cycle. Something small's likely to mean something like a small bonus (e.g. mana restored) when CSing with particular spells to give us a lever to put power into non support Brand specifically when needed. Give him some better harass and wave clear if he's CSing well basically. Not expecting that'll solve everything Brand needs, but would like to get something quick for him before pre-season if possible.

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Thinking about another prototypes blog

Last year we put up a blog that showed prototype versions of various champions:

http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2016/10/dev-on-champion-prototypes/

I was thinking it would be good to do another one of those, look at some of the champions that have come and since and maybe a couple of older ones we didn't get to cover last time. Would be interested in people's thoughts on which champs you'd be particularly interested in seeing. One disclaimer though - it'll likely only be covering champs released from around Gnar onwards (getting access to prototype files older than that's a more difficult process alas, easy to get old patch versions, harder to get old WIP stuff).

In terms of timing on that dev blog it'd likely be a late this year or early next year thing once pre-season work's settled down. Takes a while to get everything in order though, hence the inquiry now.