Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 17

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

Second Test Run for Nexus Blitz

For anyone who missed it we put up an article recently talking about what's next for Nexus Blitz. Short version is:

• Nexus Blitz found an audience of players who really liked it, size of that audience was smaller than we'd been hoping for though, so we're not making it permanent, at least not yet.
• We'll be bringing it back for a second test run in 8.24, so it'll be available throughout the holiday period at the end of the year. We'll then assess what should happen next with it after that.
• We'll be acting on a lot of different types of feedback received, with changes including adding bans, revisions to events/rewards, clarity improvements etc.

https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2018/10/dev-up-next-for-nexus-blitz/

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Why we're not planning to have flat pen/lethality in Rune Stats

Come preseason we'll be making it so instead of getting stats based off your choice of Rune styles you'll instead be able to pick a few choices of stat directly. One question I wanted to talk about there was why we're not planning on having flat pen/lethality be an available stat there. They're stats you could get in the old runes system and we do see requests for it to be offered fairly regularly.

Primary reasons:

• Flat pen offers a larger damage increase to squishy targets than to tanky targets, in contrast to AD/AP which are more neutral. We're not looking to increase damage to squishies specifically.
• Itemization has been balanced around the removal of most flat pen from pregame. Adding it back in would mean another pass on Sorc Shoes, Lethality items etc to get to a similar end spot. Disruption versus benefit doesn't seem worth it.

Secondary reasons:

• Keeping number of stats lower leads to a easier and cleaner UI
• Understanding whether flat pen or AP/AD will provide more damage is often a really mathy choice, rather than a clearer trade off.

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State of Ezreal

Now that his update's been out for a little while wanted to share a few thoughts on Ezreal:

• His AD build's performing pretty solidly, particularly given the amount his play rate's shot up, which tends to depress performance for a while as less experienced players get on a champ. We estimate that build's in a spot where it's balanced, or possibly slightly strong long term once this players have more experience with the kit changes.
• His AP by contrast's looking weaker than it was pre update.
• We're looking at buffing his W rank up damage as a result, given AD Ezreal maxes that last and AP Ezreal maxes it first or second. That will likely be in 8.22.
• We're avoiding putting more power into AP ratios because we're already seeing the double tear builds be pretty powerful and giving him more value for AP pushes all his builds towards double tear as the way to go, removing variety.

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