Quick Gameplay Thoughts: June 14

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

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Teamfight Tactics

As you've probably seen we're working on a new game mode we're calling Teamfight Tactics. If that doesn't ring a bell, this link here's worth checking out:

https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/gameplay/teamfight-tactics

We're getting really close to PBE for TFT and are very excited to start getting direct feedback on how it's going from you folks. For context we'll be treating TFT when it goes live (not just PBE) as still being in beta. It'll be representative of the sort of experience we think it should offer and we think it's a lot of fun already. It's not finished yet though and plan is to work on it really publicly. That means you'll see some stuff that's looking really polished and some things that are clearly work in progress. There might be some art that needs polishing still for example, bugs you wouldn't expect from a finished mode, some units that haven't been balanced yet etc.

Our thinking is that it's better to get the mode into peoples hands, with some things still work in progress, so we can start getting wider feedback. Right now's the ideal time to be making changes, whether that's modifying some game rules, addressing particular frustration points, changing how particular units behave or whatever. Plan is you'll see frequent updates, both on PBE and in the patches afterwards, and a lot of communication from us around where things are up to, what we're planning next and what feedback would be especially helpful on.

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Looking at 9.12 so far

Ok, back to more regular topics now for a bit with some brief initial thoughts on where some champs have landed so far in 9.12:

• Mordekaiser

Clearly OP and by the time you're reading this we've probably already nerfed him. Looks out of line by a clear margin in at least two positions.

• Aatrox and Tahm Kench

Are both looking meaningfully weaker post changes, though not massively so. That's what we were hoping for this round, no immediate follow up changes planned.

• Karma and Zac

Other side of the coin, they're both looking quite a bit stronger, so far that change has also been to the extent we were hoping, so no immediate follow ups planned here either.

Sylas

• Looks significantly weaker. Plan at present is to let him sit for a patch (so no 9.13 changes) then reconsider for 9.14 once things have stabilized.

Yuumi

• Had a couple of significant bugs, in particular one where her mana cost for Q was doubled when attached. We've fixed that, now waiting to see how she's doing.

Ryze

• Seems to be performing about as well as previously in solo queue. Given some need to relearn his kit that suggests changes were likely an overall power increase and we'll see him looking stronger in the coming weeks. Remains to be seen if these changes have finally addressed how big his pro versus regular play performance gap is or whether he remains the poster child for problems in that regard.

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