Quick Gameplay Thoughts: May 19

Morning all,

Smaller bits and pieces today. We should be in a spot where we can start talking about some of our plans for the rest of the year soon, for now we're still in mid-season followup time though.

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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

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Zac

Looks like we definitely overbuffed Zac in 7.10. We're looking at the best way to tone his power down at present, and figuring out just how out of line he is or isn't. Possible that happens in a hotfix, more likely 7.11 changes though unless we get a clear read on what exactly the biggest issue is and it looks urgent enough to not wait.

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Guardian Angel

We've been testing a nerf to GA on the PBE, exploring a approach where it's less effective on champions doing really well already (higher CD, CD reduced if you're dying repeatedly, thereby bringing the total number of 'deaths' it procs on somewhat closer for winning/losing teams). That's shown some promise, we're going to hold off on shipping it or other changes for now though. It's not clear enough GA's a problem, rather than just really popular but overrated. Planning to reassess for the next patch.

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Icon Updates

Should be a few more of these coming soon. Up next, Amumu and then, if memory serves Ahri.

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Yasuo

Mid-season was kind to Yasuo, leaving him noticeably stronger. We're taking some power out in 7.11 as a result, reducing the duration he can hold his Q buff after hitting a target (both the initial buildup buff and the knockup buff). Some of that's reducing the duration Yasuo can threaten with the Q3. It's also intended to make Yasuo more dependent on allied knockups, making him a more or less attractive pick based off team comps. That's likely a direction we'll continue to investigate in future as well.

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L e B l a n c

We got back to looking at LB this patch. LB definitely needs work, she's been a problem since her update in pre-season. The changes we've been testing aren't hitting the mark at present however. We'll be looking at possible directions again next week. Apologies for ongoing lack of details on this one.

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15 minute unanimous surrender

The early surrender option went out a few days ago in 7.10. We're seeing a bit of early friction around it in some games, based off the earlier test we ran in Oceania for a couple of months that's not unexpected. What we saw there was, after a settling down period, surrender rates before and after the introduction of the earlier option were unchanged. Effectively some games that would have been surrenders at 20 became surrenders at 15 instead. Other things we were measuring (afk rates, number of reports per game etc) didn't meaningfully change. We expect we'll see a similar trend in other regions, going to be keeping an eye on that though. If that's not the case would certainly be worth discussing adjustments (is this a feature that's a good fit for some regions but not others? Is 15 mins the correct time? Etc).