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Preseason Dev Update Number 3!

RiotRiot MapleNectar·10/23/2018, 5:09:00 PM·1 votes·354,491 views

Hey everyone,

Welcome to our third preseason dev update! We’re going to be sending all of our changes to PBE later today, so we wanted to touch base once more with some fleshed out goals, tactics, and current tuning! Our previous updates (Update 1, Update 2) went into quite a bit of what we’ll cover today, but to summarize our preseason: We want you to feel like your time playing League was well spent, whether you win or lose.

Preseason ships on patch 8.23 which is still a month away, so a lot of the finer details are still subject to change! For example, you’ll likely see more particles and sound effects for turret plating show up over the PBE cycle, as well as numbers tuning for a bunch of the systemic updates. I'll say that one more time just in case - NUMBERS TUNING IS STILL SUPER SUBJECT TO CHANGE!

Let’s step through the changes:

Laning Phase is improved and slightly longer

https://i.imgur.com/2xiqHut.png

**Goals: **

  • Turrets will much more rarely fall from 100% to 0% early game after one gank or recall attempt.
  • Players that lane aggressively and take risks in the early game are rewarded.
  • Bad matchups don’t feel like a surrendered lane. You may be pushed under turret, but you’ll have more time to CS safely before your turret falls.
  • Lane matchups are less influenced by success or failure in other lanes and you have more time to outplay your opponent in an even matchup early game.
  • Players should be a little more likely to leave lane phase having completed their first item.

Tactics:

  • Outer turrets are now reinforced with "turret plating" at game start that resembles a shield that is divided into 5 sections called "plates".
  • Destroying a plate grants local gold but also increases the turret's resistances until all remaining plates fall off (currently 14:00). Additionally, when a plate breaks, the turret gains 20 seconds of extra protection called Bulwark if more than one enemy champion is sieging it.
  • With turret plating in play, we've also adjusted outer turret base stats. We've increased their health and their AD scaling but their resistances are now tied entirely to turret plating.
  • Turret plating provides a baseline amount of resistances in addition to the resistances gained when a plate breaks, but once turret plating falls off, they're left with 0 armor and magic resist.
  • The overall impact here is that outer turrets will much less frequently get run over in the first few minutes of the game, but will be more fragile past the 14 minute mark. This gives us a much stabler laning phase.

Current tuning - SUBJECT TO CHANGE:

Turret Plating:

  • Each Plate represents 1000 Turret HP
  • Armor and MR provided by Turret Plating :: 40 + 30 for each plate destroyed
  • Gold reward per destroyed plate :: 160 local gold (divided among nearby champions)
  • Bulwark :: + 25 Armor and MR per nearby enemy champion past the first on destroying a plate

Turrets:

  • Outer Turret HP :: 3800 >>> 5000
  • Outer Turret Armor/MR :: 55 >>> 0 (replaced by turret plating)
  • Outer Turret Armor/MR scaling per minute :: 1 >>> 0 (replaced by turret plating)
  • All Turret AD scaling per minute :: 4 >>> 9
  • Outer Turret AD cap :: 180 >>> 278
  • Inner/Inhib Turret AD Cap :: 250 >>> 305
  • Nexus Turret AD cap :: 230 >>> 285
  • Turret First Blood :: 300 >>>150 (reduced due to turret plating gold)

Rune paths no longer dictate stat bonuses

https://i.imgur.com/62To0du.png

Goals:

  • Players can take the runes they want without feeling restricted by path style bonuses, better supporting creative (Glacial Augment Jax?) and strategic (double MR shards vs Rumble top) decision making.
  • Slightly reduce early-game damage potency via 1 enforced defensive stat choice.

Tactics:

  • We'll be referring to these bonuses as Stat Shards from now on
  • You'll select three Stat Shards, one from each of three rows on your rune page
  • We're preemptively adjusting some minor runes to accommodate Stat Shards.

Current Tuning - STAT CHOICES AND VALUES SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Stat Shards:

  • Row 1: 10 Adaptive (6 AD or 10 AP), 9% Attack Speed, 1-10% CDR (lvls 1-18).
  • Row 2: 10 Adaptive (6 AD or 10 AP), 5 Armor, 6 Magic Resist, (We’re debating adding a 4th here).
  • Row 3: 15-90 HP (lvls 1-18), 5 Armor, 6 Magic Resist

Important note for clarity: Rune paths themselves no longer grant style bonuses; you now get those stats from Stat Shards.

Comebacks are more achievable and satisfying

https://i.imgur.com/TEBPdzO.png

Goals:

  • Make the path to staging a comeback clearer for the team that’s fallen behind
  • More accurately assign bounty levels to account for leads that don't come solely from champ kills
  • Make the system more forgiving when you're playing well on the losing team

Tactics - SUBJECT TO CHANGE:

  • Bounties will now be visible in the scoreboard to help you pinpoint your next target
  • Minion/Monster gold earned is now a part of the bounty system
  • Payout of bounties is capped at 1000 (700 from bounty, 300 from baseline kill) with remaining rolling over to the next kill
  • Bounties for champs on the losing team are reduced so as not to punish the one person trying to carry their team from behind.
  • Champion kill bounties will scale higher at higher kill counts.

Current tuning - SUBJECT TO CHANGE:

  • The actual math behind how bounties are calculated is really dense, so we’re not going to get too deep into specifics - at the end of the day all you need to worry about is the value that you see in the scoreboard if someone is doing well.
  • In games where CS is skewed heavily, bounties will be accrued approximately 70% from champions kills, and 30% from minion/monster gold. In even games, bounties will be made up almost 100% from champion kills.

Decided games resolve faster

Goals:

  • Teams with a sizable lead should be able to close out the game without Baron Buff
  • Idle time should be minimized (waiting for a minion wave to be in position to siege the enemy base, waiting for next Baron/Dragon to spawn)

Tactics:

  • Scale up minion health, turret damage resistance, and movement speed to make them better at soaking damage during Baron-less sieges.
  • Increase spawn rate of cannons earlier in the game
  • Decrease respawn timers of major objectives (Dragons, Baron, Elder)

Current tuning - SUBJECT TO CHANGE:

All minions:

  • Damage to towers :: 60% >>> 50%
  • Movement speed :: +25 at 20:00 >>> +25 to +100 between 10:00-30:00

Melee minions:

  • Max HP (reached at 37:00) :: 1200 >>> 1500
  • Max Armor (reached at 37:00) :: 0 >>> 16
  • Max AD (reached at 37:00) :: 12 >>> 80

Caster minions:

  • Max HP :: 425, reached at 27:00 >>> 485, reached at 37:00 (27:00 value unchanged)
  • Max AD :: Scales infinitely (60.5 at 37:00) >>> 120.5 at 37:00 (no longer scales infinitely)

Cannon minions:

  • Switchover to spawning every 2 waves :: 20 minutes >>> 15 minutes
  • Switchover to spawning every wave :: 35 minutes >>> 25 minutes
  • Max HP :: Scales infinitely (2300 at 37:00) >>> 3200 at 37:00 (no longer scales infinitely)
  • Damage taken by turrets :: 14% max HP (8 shots to die) >>> 14% from outers, 11% from inners, 8% from inhib/nexus (8/10/12 shots to die)

Super minions:

  • Base AD :: 306 >>> 225
  • Base AS :: 0.694 >>> 0.850
  • Aura :: No longer grants nearby minions +70% damage

Baron buff:

  • Minion protection from champ damage :: 75% champ damage reduction for melee minions, 50% for caster minions >>> 65% for melee and caster minions
  • Minion protection from turret damage :: Removed

Pushing advantage:

  • Removed. Minions no longer gain bonus stats based on your team's average level vs the enemy team's average level

Epic Monster Respawn Time

  • Elemental Drakes :: 6 minutes >>> 5 minutes
  • Elder Dragon :: 8 minutes >>> 6 minutes
  • Baron :: 7 minutes >>> 6 minutes

Thanks for those who’ve made it this far! I know that was a lot to digest so feel free to hit us up in the comments with your questions. Before wrapping up, I want to stress again that the numbers for a bunch of things listed above are still subject to change, whether on PBE or after preseason ships live.

We’ll be writing up another post in the next week or two to go over some of the usual assortment of additional preseason changes, but we wanted to get your feedback on these primary areas now that we’re much closer to what we want to ship.

Thanks! MapleNectar

442 Comments

DarkRitual10/23/2018, 7:48:39 PM105 votes

Don't forget to change Forecast Janna's line about dragon spawns. 6 minutes >>> 5 minutes.

Kei14310/23/2018, 5:16:07 PM76 votes

Haven't read through your whole post yet, so I apologize if it was addressed in the post already. But how would those tower plates interact with Tristana's E or Zigg's W?

Specifically looking at the interaction of when Trist places E, AA and destroying a plate, would the E stay and destroy the next plate? Or would it disappear like when the tower gets destroyed?

Would Ziggs W interact with plates at all?

Would a naked tower be affected by Wit's End MR steal, and I can get the turret to -42MR?

Is there a change in how a plated turret interacts with Lethality, BC and Last whisper items?

Reaper VX10/23/2018, 5:42:49 PM41 votes

Question, has riot ever considering making towers do % of health to champions to deal with tanks being too safe at diving? I feel like a 3000+ HP tank should be able to dive better than a 1700 hp ADC or something but should also be worried about taking too many tower shots.

ModThe Djinn10/23/2018, 5:25:31 PM23 votes

Loving pretty much everything, but a few short questions on this:

[{quoted}](name=Riot MapleNectar,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=NPBRPjqf,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-10-23T17:09:00.290+0000)Each Plate represents 1000 Turret HP

Does this mean that when the last plate falls, the tower dies? Or is this a 5000 hit point buffer on top of the actual turret health?

Armor and MR provided by Turret Plating :: 40 + 30 for each plate destroyed

Do you find this is difficult to convey? For me it seems odd that less visible shielding actually results in a tougher tower.

Gold reward per destroyed plate :: 160 local gold (divided among nearby champions)

160 gold per plate is 800 gold. Do you mean 160 gold across ALL plates, or are early towers now worth nearly 1k gold? If so, is this entire 800 gold value lost if the plates are not destroyed before 14:00?

Bulwark :: + 25 Armor and MR per nearby enemy champion past the first on destroying a plate.

  • Does the visible effect change to make this difference clear in the presence of multiple champions?
  • Is there a specific reason you opted for this over something more visible like a shield on the health bar?
  • Is the range long enough that this isn't easily abusable by popping in and out of range when a barrier is about to fall?
Lil Homie busta10/23/2018, 6:23:31 PM16 votes

Why the middle line of the stat shards does not have attack speed or CDR while having adaptative AD/AP? This seems unfair, since we would have 2 Adaptative choices possible but just one AS/CDR.

I thought you guys said on the last preseason post that this line/tier would be the joker one, where you could pick any stats from the options.

Velasan10/23/2018, 6:31:51 PM16 votes

I was imagining the new stat shards as being:

  1. Have to choose an attack stat
  2. Have to choose a defense stat
  3. Free stat

Looks more like it's limited to specific options on both the last two. For example, I only see HP being an option once in there. Was there a specific reason for that decision?

That would drastically cut the amount of HP you can have on a character, because the current page bonus for resolve first into say precision/inspiration would be 135/270 respectively vs. the 90 currently listed.

I realize the numbers are changing, but I'm asking because a potential difference of 180 HP is a big change and seems like a conscious decision.

Thank you for reading.

M1A3 Abrams10/23/2018, 6:30:43 PM12 votes

Why does the HP stat shard give hardly half a ruby crystal worth of HP - at lvl 18 - ? Do you have any intention of upping that number?

Makos10/23/2018, 5:26:00 PM12 votes

Any plans on making the cdr scale faster? (0-10% by level 11) Having an non-integer amount of cdr until lvl 18 would feel weird

Apex Support10/23/2018, 10:19:15 PM10 votes

Would it be a idea to make the cdr rune 1-10% from levels 1-10 instead of levels 1-18. I feel like this would be a really nice one on supports but it just feels kinda bad on sups. On sups you hit level 18 so late that you are stuck with a incomplete amount of cdr or you still have to over cap it and take transcendence with it.

DontTouchMyBall10/23/2018, 7:06:03 PM10 votes

We won't have any HP or Mana regen stats or even MS Stats to chose from won't we? [cass-cry]

DarkSpiritslayer10/23/2018, 8:58:39 PM10 votes

big fan of turret plating! sounds like i will fix a lot of issues! (no more 100% to 0% turrets just because the enemy jungler ganked - yay!)

but:

You may be pushed under turret, but you’ll have more time to CS safely before your turret falls.

yes try to cs "safely" under turret as a melee champ toplane vs a ranged champ they just harass you under turret without even taking a turret shot

Stat shards sound like a good improvement! way better to pick what you rly need

the only thing that seems rly weak and kinda unnecessary stat is the SCALING CDR

1-10% CDR (lvls 1-18)

  1. the gold value is rly low for this stat: 26 - 260g (lvl 1 - 18) stats like AD, AP, AS give a gold value of ~200g AT LVL 1! (scaling HP gold value is also low for a SCALING stat: 40 - 243g but with HP you just cant give to much for free - otherwise everyone would have to much HP at lvl 18)
  2. we need a way to get EARLY CDR not LATEGAME CDR there are more than enough items to get to 40% cdr lategame but some champs need EARLY cdr - and there is no way to get that right now besides the Cosmic Insight rune 1% cdr lvl 1 is nothing - that wont help at all imo it would be better to make it something like: 5 - 10% cdr from lvl 1 - 10 that way you have a good amount of early cdr and dont have to wait until lvl18 for the 10% cdr
BlackTecno10/23/2018, 6:28:18 PM9 votes

What about champions that scale better into late game? It feels like the games are getting shorter and shorter, and less focused on Macroplay, which is one of the things I really like about the game. Are we going to see more utility/resistance buffs in pre-season, or are tanks (especially in jungle) going to keep on going on the decline?

Jack Dalt10/24/2018, 2:09:46 AM8 votes

Unless I'm blind and missed it, are new bounties still going to be claimable during combat? It's really dumb when you make a great play in a fight, grab a multikill at the cost of your own life, and then get "shut down" despite the fact that you couldn't even spend any of that kill gold yet. This is especially bad for divers. AFAIK the villain mechanic works in an intuitive way where it waits for the new villain to be out of combat before marking them, the bounty system should be the same way since they're both designed with the same ideas in mind.

Support 4 Lyfe10/23/2018, 5:33:09 PM8 votes

These all sound like amazing changes, I especially LOVE the turret changes and the rune stats addition, they will make laning phase play much better, it's one of my favorite phases of the game.

I'm really looking forward to this pre-season, thank you all for doing your best! [sg-lux]

Fízz v210/23/2018, 5:19:37 PM8 votes

Personally I dont really like having scaling CDR from runes because you never actually reach max cdr with it which feels kinda weird. Tho 5% would be too bad and 10% would be too good, so idk what to do other than just not letting people get cdr from rune bonuses

Daddy Ants10/23/2018, 6:44:55 PM7 votes

8% Attack Speed?

We get 9% as it right now.

Intentional?

Zerofux10/23/2018, 8:07:01 PM7 votes

I gotta say, as a guy who has mostly moved onto other games but still vaguely follows this game, does Riot have any value for elegant design?

Ever since the laneswap meta, Riot has been feverishly tweaking turret mechanics (along with dragons and jungle camps) to try to get the game flow they want. It has become a tangled mess of difficult or impossible to visualize mechanics.

I couldn't even begin to explain how a League of Legends turret works, but I know it will involve a lot of "well, before X time it has Y armor unless Z champions are around. It deals A damage (before X minutes), each hit increasing by B up to C, then at X minutes it scales by E up to F. When it's destroyed it grants M gold to a one champion, N gold to other champions, unless it's the first turret in which case it grants M+O gold and N+P gold respectively..."

Hey MOBA designers, if that's what your turret mechanics look like, you done fucked up.

Smeagiul10/23/2018, 10:13:40 PM7 votes

Hi, Resolve + Inspiration gives 30-270 HP based on level, new stats are 15-90 HP, there is already a lack of HP items for support ( FoTM removed, Ruby removed, and now even less HP from stats shards)

MrB00mbastick10/23/2018, 6:32:52 PM7 votes

I've logged thousands of games on league, and I never knew that minions sped up like that at all (or that supers nearly doubled damage). Makes me wonder what else I'm missing. Some sort of cleanly presented compilation of all these hidden-power things in the game (for minions, towers, champions, items, bounties, etc), updated each patch, would be nice to reference.

Moody P10/23/2018, 5:45:25 PM5 votes

90 HP at level 18 kinda sucks, that's way too low compared to the relatively solid bonuses every other choice is offering

If it's not going to be a flat value of HP can it at least scale up to something higher?

>Riot is keeping bounties

gross, what a lame mechanic

The Green Gamer10/23/2018, 5:41:11 PM5 votes

Turret plating to gate the time at which laning phase ends honestly seems like a pretty heavy-handed mistake to me... I don't feel like teams or individual players should be forced to stick in their lane, because the game forces them to be there. Part of the strategy of the game is making macro plays and working with your teammates to create advantages around the map. Being able to take an early turret and rotate to another lane to try and force an advantage there is a core method of gaining an advantage in the early game, and this would completely eliminate that as a possibility. Idk. I'm excited for stats from runes, I can tell you that much, but I don't like this turret plating at first glance.

Salvor Hardın10/23/2018, 5:34:04 PM5 votes

Referring to Stat Shards, 5 armor is very little, compared to 6 AD. (Speaking of cost in gold of such statistics)

Baj10/23/2018, 10:27:51 PM3 votes

Are you going to remove the transcendence rune since you can now get 20% cdr from runes or will it stay?