Quick Gameplay Thoughts: February 16

Hey 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

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Some 8.5 Changes

Like 8.3, 8.5 will be a small patch, with quite a bit less in it than large patches like 8.4 or 8.6. It's also likely there'll be some things on the PBE during the 8.5 cycle that don't ship until 8.6 or later. 8.5 will have some changes though of course, likely including:

• Nerfs to Tristana. She has insufficient weaknesses at present, so looking to introduce or sharpen a weakness most likely, rather than just hitting power generally.

• A nerf to Duskblade's proc damage and potentially some clean up to the rules around how the Blackout passive work.

• Changes to make at least some of the dragon buffs more desirable/fought over early game. Not sure on any details here yet.

• Azir, Ryze and Galio nerfs. Ryze particularly challenging given how stark his discrepancy between regular performance and pro performance already is.

• Nocturne and Olaf buffs.

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Baron Buff and Bug Fixes

For 8.4 we concluded we should be increasing the amount of damage Baron Buff gives to Cannon minions, since at present their damage contribution's often irrelevant. At the same time however we also ended up fixing a bug where Cannon minions weren't properly considering their total AD in some circumstances (most relevant: Banner of Command buff). That meant a situation where what was intended to be a moderate damage increase became a massive damage increase when the two effects multiplied each other. We've got some tweaks going in for 8.4 as a result so that the extra damage Cannon minions offer is increased as originally intended by a moderate rather than enormous amount.

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Blast Cone Timing

One change in 8.4 that's easy to miss is that we increased the initial spawn time on the Blast Cones near each Gromp camp and behind Baron and Dragon pits significantly (was in the 125-140s range, now 300-330s range). Goal there is to provide a longer period where laners aren't being threatened by its use by junglers, meaning they either have to pop it, can't play as aggressively or have to ward its location. Mentioning in part because also wanted to hear people's thoughts on plant spawn times and frequencies in general. Are there other plants you think should spawn earlier/later, more or less often, in different locations to where they do at present?

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