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Quick Gameplay Thoughts: June 1

RiotMeddler·6/1/2018, 3:18:52 PM·1 votes·68,446 views

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 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

Thoughts on 8.11 shortly

At time of writing the 8.11 patch is getting deployed still so we haven't yet had a chance to see how it's landed. Thoughts on that to come shortly. Over the first couple of days we'll be looking in particular at champions and items that are so out of line (whether strong or weak) that we need to prioritize work on them for 8.12 or potentially just micropatch them before that.

Gold/XP Funneling

There's been some increase in gold/XP funneling recently, both in game usage and discussion around it. Thoughts on that below. It's an an ongoing thing we're keeping an eye on, so these are initial thoughts, not a strong statement of our position.

For anyone unfamiliar with it funneling here refers to when you try and give a champ much more XP/gold than they'd normally be able to get so they're really far ahead of everyone else. Right now that usually involves one champ taking most of the minions/monsters from two positions with things like Taric/Yi in Mid/Jungle, or Karthus/Nunu also in Mid/Jungle. We've also seen it in the recent past with cases like Kayle/Yi in Top/Jungle. It's a non standard strategy getting play on SR, which, all else being equal, we think is pretty cool. Would like to support different playstyles more than we have in the past.

Having said that, it's not clear yet whether there's sufficient counterplay to it or not. Not seeing people use it optimally or play against it optimally yet (does demand adaptation). We're also unsure how effective a strategy it really is. It's looking like one of the stronger ways to play as a smurfing duo, unclear how well it will perform once it's better known against equal skilled players.

We're certainly seeing some player frustration with it. Need to determine whether we’re seeing temporary pain around the state of the meta changing as something new but healthy is found, a flavor of the month strat that will vanish by itself or a strategy that even long term will lead to a less fun, deep game.

Funneling of resources also risks creating game states where one or more players gives up a lot of their agency and fun so someone else can be stronger. Some of that can be fine, possible this crosses the line though (not personally sure yet). If it starts to become the primary way to play, versus a niche option, that would be pretty concerning (Twisted Treeline suffers in that regard).

Early Game Snowball*

As mentioned previously we're going to be looking at early game snowball in the near future. We've seen snowball rates gradually increasing statistically over the last couple of months. We’ve got a number of ideas about what might contribute to that increase so will be validating things like:

  • Have gameplay changes like those to gold bounties, scuttle, mage mana, resolve health contributed significantly? We didn’t see similar snowball increases looking at last year’s data and 2017 also had meaningful gameplay changes.
  • Are there behavioral changes that are contributing? Things like an increase in ‘open mid’ as an attitude would also contribute to statistical measurements of snowball.
  • Are there any other factors we might be missing? Things like bugs in the data set (unlikely, but want to keep checking), matchmaking changes etc could also be really relevant here.

On the gameplay side changes like those above that might have contributed have been targeted at other things we also believe are important, like solo carry potential, broadening team comps, reducing early lane passivity etc. If looking to tone down snowball from a gameplay perspective we’ll be aiming for approaches that don't clash too hard with other goals as a result. Things like reducing team snowball more than solo, potentially reducing the cost of an early death, changing tower tankiness by game time (does it still make sense for them to gradually get tankier versus starting tanky?) etc.

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

236 Comments

VlRTUOSO6/1/2018, 5:51:01 PM15 votes

u just have a question about stormrazor item 3095 and jhinJhin interactions, i tried it a little bit on pratice tool and this is what i found :

  • It overrides 4th shot. and since stormrazor crit deals less damage before you have 60% crit chance you end up with a weaker 4th shot.

  • Jhin's passive (-25% on Crit) affects Stormrazors already modified crit. Drops it down to 120%.

  • Jhin's attack speed can only be increase through levels. Stormrazors passive cooldown scales with attack speed and not bonus attack speed. Since Jhin doesn't gain attack speed from bonuses, Stormrazor passive cooldown caps at 1.99 seconds at level 18. Which is good enough, but still.

is this how it's intended to work? because right now it feels like a pretty underwhelming item to rush on Jhin

RiotMeddler6/1/2018, 3:26:02 PM9 votes

A few things we're looking at 8.11 wise since this was written:

Potential micropatches (not guaranteed, but likely enough figured they're worth mentioning):

  • Yasuo's taken a solid hit from the item changes and, unlike others, doesn't have alternate builds he should be migrating to. Likely targets are Q crit penalty (to -10%, like his AAs) and base AD up a couple of points.
  • Taliyah's performance is also down quite a bit. We're looking at Q falloff on champs on repeated hits, base AD and E trigger damage.
  • Ezreal by contrast's doing very well given the reduction in early game power many marksmen have felt hasn't affected him at all. Potentially lowering his passive attack speed.
  • Kai'Sa's also overperforming. Looking at lowering her passive damage, both base and ratio.

Other

  • Banner of Command's potentially too strong on SR. We've disabled it as a (probably) temporary thing on ARAM, given it's clearly ruining games there when stacked. Looking at how it behaves on SR (could well be a problem too, context is different however).
Metal Janna6/3/2018, 3:41:19 AM5 votes

Has anyone really been complaining about the duration of Orianna's shield? Janna and Lulu for sure, but Karma and Ori's shields both last 4 seconds and their winrates have been under 50% for some time now. Bringing their shields down to 2.5, or even 3 would be a fairly heavy nerf for champions that are already undertuned. You can do it, but they'll definitely need compensation buffs.

Besides, the goal is to add more skill expression to those braindead "point and click" shields right? Fair enough, but first consider that Orianna's shield has two extra forms of skill expression that the others mostly* lack. These are:

Travel time: Ori's ball must first reach the target to shield them. This creates an opportunity for counterplay by the opponent in the form of hitting whichever champion the ball is not currently on before it can reach them. No other shield support has to worry about if their shield will land before the attack it's supposed to block. *Except for Lux, and sort of Rakan.

Exclusivity: The ball cannot be used for both attacking and shielding at the same time (exception: when the opponent is on top of the shieldee). This creates windows of opportunity for the opponent to poke, as well as upping the skill level required to get the most out of her shield during a given engagement. Do you throw out your Q first, then shield your ally? Or shield first and hold your Q until the very last second to secure the kill? The correct answer depends on many factors.

Speaking of exclusivity: Lux and Karma's shields can be applied to more than one champion, under the right circumstances. Janna, Lulu, Ori, and Morg's can only be used on one champion, making all of them weak to counterplay by AOE and multi-target spells or "fake outs" (pretending to target one champion, then switching targets the moment the support's shield is baited out). As an Orianna support main, Sona's Q is the bane of my existence. But I digress. The point I was getting to is that there's a dearth of support champions who can shield both themselves and their ally. Maybe that's a direction you could take Karma in, since she's got an identity crisis and the niche is mostly unfilled.

Just my thoughts. If you'd like any clarification don't hesitate to ask, and thanks for the time you spent reading this.

Spideraxe6/1/2018, 3:26:42 PM5 votes

Hey Meddler Maple mentioned you guys planned on flattening all gifted shield durations to 2.5 can I ask if that'll apply to non support shields like Stand United or Safeguard and if there'll be any compensation as well what about Black Shield since it's only magic damage shielding

Spideraxe6/1/2018, 3:27:33 PM5 votes

Also any thoughts on how Swain and Irelia settled being our most recent VGUs

TheOnlyBruce6/1/2018, 3:27:33 PM4 votes

Hey meddler,

What are your thoughts on vision right now, with changes over several patches (support item changes, trackers knife removal and most recently increase in warding trinket cooldown)?

Also, I would really like to see a dev talk about what happened to clash this weekend, and how Riot responded to it, similar to the one yall made awhile back about the tiamat/Riven bug that shut down ranked for awhile several seasons ago. It's really cool to see the thoughts of those dealig with the problem and the process of how yall do it.

HappyLilAccident6/1/2018, 7:43:09 PM4 votes

Hey Riot, you want to know why you're seeing increases in snowbally games? Consider taking a look at the general trend of increasing mobility and increasingly overloaded kits. Mobility creep speaks for itself: the more champions that can jump in and out quickly, the more valuable upfront burst damage and super aggressive builds become. When you have 2 seconds to react to a threat you can prepare a counter much more efficiently than when you have 0.5 seconds to react. Look at all the meta champions that build pure offense and have 1 or more dashes/blinks/leaps ect. to get onto their targets.

New Xin is a prime example that weaves into my second point of overloaded kits. You wanted to keep Xin as a champion that had to commit to a fight, yet gave him an overloaded ultimate that allows him to dash in, burst a squishy, and literally walk out while his target's teammates can't damage him because they're outside his circle. That removes Xin's core weakness while simultaneously encouraging him to go max damage snowbally builds, because he no longer needs the 1 defensive item to survive his retreat, or live long enough to allow his team to support him.

When you force players, particularly carries to react within the 0.5-1.0s counterplay windows or get gooched, you create interesting outplay potentials in 1v1 fights. But in skrimishes or teamfights things get too difficult. With all this mobility and jack-of-all-trades updates/new kits the burden of the outplay is almost always disproportionately in favor of the aggressor. That means its better to go full offense and have 3-4 snowball champions independently trying to carry rather than try to build a creative team composition where everyone has a vital role (think back to Season 3-5). Seige comps, splitpush comps, poke comps, etc. are much MUCH less of a thing now than just 5v5 smorc-fests.

You want to reduce snowballing, stop letting all champions do everything. Cut down the game's mobility and bring back defined weaknesses.

braveheart3166/6/2018, 8:52:40 PM2 votes

I know that a bunch of other comments have already addressed this, but Karma and Orianna both rely pretty significantly on their shields and both have had sub-50% win rates at pretty much ever elo multiple patches in a row. I understand the need to nerf the shield of a champion like Janna who has had a ~53% win rate for who knows how many patches, but nerfing already weak champions doesn't seem to be the answer to balancing the shielding champions, even though I understand trying to balance evenly. Can you explain the thought process behind this and when/if/how you plan to compensate for these changes for the weaker champions in other ways?

Demonblade Talon6/1/2018, 10:24:34 PM2 votes

I think the dom tree could use more assassin oriented runes. This new rune is pretty much trying to turn it into an adc tree. Here are some ideas(some ideas will be similar to other trees since you guys do this already)

  1. dangerous game (just like triumph but in the dom tree without the gold)
  2. eyeball box sucks ass but it's the only good rune in 2nd row. I think this should give lethality/magic pen or be reworked into something else. Also, ghost poro should be made into a ward and removed for something else since literally no one uses the adorable little bastard.
  3. cheap shot and taste of blood definitely need reworks since NO ONE uses anything other than sudden impact.
HavingAGoodChime6/1/2018, 3:23:25 PM2 votes

Wow this is the earliest I've ever been to one of these...

Which runes are in the best state and are there any trees you still want to work on by adding keystones etc. - if this applies to all which wild be highest priority :) thinking bard should go for inspiration first but not really as much scope for him there as I would like..

Grandpa Zil6/5/2018, 11:56:17 PM2 votes

Meddler, I main toplane and it's my experience that certain tanks, specifically Ornn and Cho'gath have far too strong of a laning phase for how well they scale. (I am fine with them scaling well for the record). Ornn and Cho each do far too much damage and have too low mana costs on their abilities and it seems that its just an auto loss if you play a bruiser against them. Almost every toplaner I know is in agreement that if these champs are going to outscale you, they need to have a weakness at some point in the game which should be in the laning phase. Please nerf these champs, at least during the laning phase. Thank you.

Deathfall6/1/2018, 3:58:22 PM1 votes

A pass needs to be done on all Enchanter shields in general. I would like to see every champion that has a shield use it in a unique way. Right now we have a bunch of champions with shields that all do practically the same thing or exists in the game already.

Karma item 2065 + item 3190 Item actives = Karma's shields.

Lulu item 3504 = Lulu's shields.

Other champion shields that are not that unique.

Sona Only viable when an ally is in her field and Aura's in general were removed from items years ago. Why is her kit not being looked at?

Janna It's just a shield with an attack steroid attached to it. Is it unique?

When you compare shields like Lux, Ivern, Taric, and Rakhan to the above, they all offer unique ways to use shields. Are we really going to sit here and say the only interesting gameplay Karma, Lulu, Sona, and Janna can have with their shields is something that increases attack speed, attack damage and movement speed? Sona's shields are not even that interesting. The mechanics attached to their shields already exist on items and offer it to someone through an item. It's not very exciting. I understand you need to do actual work on how strong shields are in game, but you are not actually looking at the champions that it is going to effect. You nerf their shields, they are going to be left with low play/win rates and offer nothing unique to the game or the class.

It's about time you start addressing problems with champions instead of working around the problems with champions. Great, you are addressing problems with shields. Are you really though?