Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 11

Hi folks,

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 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

Garen and Shaco changes so far

Shaco:

• Directionally changes seem promising, with the E and R changes especially working as hoped in terms of the gameplay they create.
• Looks like he's too strong, though probably at nerfs next patch levels not hotfix levels of too strong. First thing we'll test is weaker level one boxes, aimed particularly at hitting how quickly he's clearing his initial camps and hitting level 3.
• Power wise our minimum goal is to ensure he's not weaker than before the changes, even if we have to pull back on some of the just added power.

Garen:

• Is also looking too strong and a candidate for nerfs next patch. As expected with Garen he’s less out of line in high MMR, though still on the strong side even there.
• Not sure yet how good attack speed as a build path is for him post E changes. Our goal was that it should be an option, rather than mandatory or always a mistake.
• Another goal was to shift power to his early game, the belief being that that's both part of Garen's historic identity we wanted to bring back and generally an appropriate pattern for juggernauts. Does look like that's working so far.
• In terms of overall power as with Shaco we'd like to ensure that he doesn't end up weaker than before the changes at a minimum.

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SR/TT Victorious skin if you don't own the champion?

Since this is a topic that comes up every year - if you hit Gold+ in SR and/or TT and qualify for the Victorious for the year, you will get the skin even if you don't own the champion it's for. You'll then also get the base champion unlocked as an extra bonus.

In terms of who that skin's for we'll announce that a bit later this month.

Why doesn't the ranked season start in December?

This is another question we see pop up fairly often. A lot of people have time on holiday in December but, because we start the ranked season early in the new year, they can't start their ranked climb or play in as competitive a queue. We did try starting a ranked season in December a few years back to see if that was a better overall experience. Our conclusion was that it wasn't worth the trade offs though unfortunately. The gap between preseason going out and ranked turning on being so short means there's not enough time for followup on the preseason changes, leading to a significantly less stable game state for the early parts of the season. That's particularly problematic since there's also a patch at the end of the year that's live for longer than normal (around 4 weeks usually instead of the usual 2), so any issues take longer to get addressed as well.

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