Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 18

Hi 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

PBE Sign Ups

First off, for anyone that missed it, PBE sign ups are open again:

https://support.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/201751904

Second, for anyone testing on PBE, feedback on the PBE Boards is particularly appreciated.

https://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/general-pbe-feedback

Feedback anywhere's good of course, the PBE Boards themselves get a lot of attention from developers working on stuff currently on PBE though, so visibility there tends to be quite high, especially given it's not too busy a forum. It's also a place where we can be sure whoever's offering feedback at least has a PBE account, so it's much more likely feedback being offered is from in game experience, not just reading about changes.

In terms of type of feedback how things feel/useability is particularly helpful from PBE play, as are bug reports. Balance feedback doesn't tend to be very useful, given so many games have people not trying or large skill discrepancies in them there. Feel feedback on the other hand can be really good even in those circumstances (e.g. how smooth spells are to use, whether a Rune tooltip is intuitive, how easy or difficult a missile is to see etc).

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Evelynn

We're still watching Evelynn. She's performing better as people get more experience on her, and we believe she'll be stronger on Runes Reforged than current runes/masteries. She's still underperforming a bit relative to how we'd expect her to be doing at this point though. We'll likely be going with some light buffs in 7.21 as a result, aimed at things that we're confident are good changes regardless of her current power level (good feels impacts that aren't things we'd nerf if she later ended up too strong).

That currently looks like:

• Passive not put on CD when hit by minions
• Q CD down, refund on jungle monsters down significantly, damage up slightly (bit of extra performance in lane, bit less frantic button mashing needed in general)
• E gets a minimum amount of damage on % health damage (ensures E kills mini Krugs in particular)

We've also been testing some flat damage buffs to E, still considering pulling those though, since as above we're not looking to buff too much and those are just power, rather than a feel improvement as well.

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Ornn

We had some more buffs for Ornn in 7.20, given he's struggled more than we've expected despite repeated buffs. We think we've got him to about the right point finally so don't have plans for any further balance changes beyond whatever, like other champs, he will or won't need post pre-season. We've been worried about overbuffing him for a while, but haven't yet at least seen indications that that's happened.

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Locket

We're also looking at some nerfs to Locket, though uncertain whether those will ship in 7.21 yet or not. Big concern is about how much Locket shuts down burst champs that have to commit to a fight (assassins and divers mainly). By itself Locket's not so much of a problem, when stacked with other ally defending effects however it can make otherwise vulnerable targets excessively hard to kill. One of the directions we're looking at as a result is pushing it so it's still a strong option on tanks but isn't nearly as effective on enchanters.

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