Quick Gameplay Thoughts: May 9

Morning all,

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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

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Yorick subtle improvements

Mentioning these since they're harder to datamine. We've got some useability/subtle feel good stuff going for Yorick in 7.10, with Mist Walkers no longer perishing if they're too far from Yorick, Yorick's Q spawning a grave even if there are 4 out already and replacing the last one (instead of just not spawning) and the Maiden benefiting from R rank ups even if she's already summoned. Balance wise we don't really have any room to buff Yorick significantly, we do want to give him a bit of love though, hence the focus on things that are more feel improvements than power.

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More things we're particularly keeping an eye on post mid-season

In addition to the updated tanks, Rift Herald etc as previously mentioned there are some additional things we're now specifically tracking for possible work in 7.11 including:

• Thresh - Mid season's been kind to the chain warden. Belief is that that's the impact of the revised Ancient Coin in part, which gives him needed mana, reduces chances he costs his ally in lane CS with Targon's and gives him more E procs to harass with than Targon's does. Old coin offered most of those benefits too, but suspicion here is that new Coin's a better choice on him overall than the old.

• Sunfire Rushing Tanks - We're seeing a number of tanks who'd previously been in reasonable spots balance wise struggle a bit more after the Sunfire changes. That's not unexpected, indicating they had problems laning that Sunfire was covering up. Likely direction there is to adjust individual kits so they function more appropriately, rather than using Sunfire as a generic solve.

• Other items on watch - Death's Dance, BotRK, Banshee's and GA are all getting a lot of observation too. They're not necessarily in bad spots, but they're certainly worth tracking more than average at the least (high usage rates + high impact moments).

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Delaying Malz changes to 7.11

We've got a few larger adjustments underway at the moment to Rammus, Malz and Heimer. The Rammus and Heimer ones should be good to go in 7.10, we'll be holding the Malz ones till 7.11 (probably) however to take a bit more time to work on those. One likely change is adjusting the R so its damage is split between pool and beam, which amongst other things gives better counterplay when there are multiple enemies around (ability to interrupt) and therefore hopefully allows us to put a bit more power into its ratio.

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Elemental Dragons

At some point (next year seems most likely) we'd like to try adding another elemental dragon to the rotation if we can find one that's distinct from the other in terms of the gameplay it rewards, has at least an ok thematic fit, and doesn't excessively favor particular team comps. Curious to hear if anyone's got any strong suggestions? We've got some ideas kicking around of course, but also really interested in hearing other viewpoints.