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Quick Gameplay Thoughts: December 6

RiotMeddler·12/6/2019, 5:24:19 PM·1 votes·79,032 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 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

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

Looking into the effects of preseason on jungler performance

We're looking into jungler performance right now, with the goal being to make some adjustments if needs be in 9.24b. Primary angles we're considering are:

  • Average level before preseason and after at different points in the game. When combined with kill participation this serves as a fairly good proxy for overall jungler influence.
  • Variation in jungler performance. The removal of catch up XP was intended to bring about bigger differences between high and low performing junglers. We do want to make sure we haven't swung too far the other way though, make sure small mistakes or good plays aren't leading to large advantages/disadvantages.
  • Whether particular classes and/or jungler styles are over or under performing (e.g. tanks versus carries, farmers versus gankers etc).

9.24b

Speaking of 9.24b, a brief timeline:

  • Patch 9.24 next week will be the last normal patch of the year.
  • We will do a server side only (so no download needed or new content like skins/champs) patch called 9.24b about a week after 9.24 goes out.
  • That patch will contain balance changes for SR and TFT, particularly to things that need some follow up after 9.24 (e.g. things that got hit too hard, didn't get hit hard enough, in retrospect should have been in 9.24 in the first place). Some current users of Conqueror are a likely group of candidates for changes for example if the Conqueror changes in 9.24 don't take off the predicted amount of power.

Support Items

In addition to looking at jungling we're also doing some analysis on the effects of the support item changes right now. Questions we're particularly looking to answer are things like whether the drop off in income post quest completion is too punishing (more GP10 on the item or less farming penalty?), whether the Ward portion of the quest is potentially being completed too quickly in some circumstances, whether the stat lines for the different items need some adjustments etc. No specific changes planned just yet though.

Champion Win Rates by Rift Type

One of the first things we wanted to find out after preseason went out was how the different elemental rifts + dragon souls impacted the power of different champions. We have seen some meaningful win rate differences depending on the champion + map type combination, but nothing particularly dramatic overall. Examples of some of that data below. Note that this is before the Ocean Drake regen nerf. It's also a combination of the impact of the terrain changes, the dragon buffs potentially acquired and the dragon soul potentially claimed.

Some trends seem very much as expected (e.g. poke champs tend to do a bit worse on Ocean maps, given regen around and brush to hide in. Others are a bit more surprising (e.g. Rengar not actually doing better on an ocean map, with other factors offsetting power he gains from more brush pouncing). Tahm Kench, at least pre Ocean nerf, was the champion with the biggest win rate change based off a rift element, with the next most impacted champs around half his win rate change. Possible he just really wants regen, also possible a small sample size could be skewing data though (he's a less played champ and this is data from just a couple of days). More recent data suggests win rates are likely within 1% across elemental rifts for all champs, Tahm included.

https://imgur.com/a/KK5eJcU

Prestige Points

On a different note, for anyone with Prestige points sitting around, we've got the Prestige Point shop coming up next week on the 12th of December. That will contain a range of stuff purchasable with less than 100 Prestige Points like skin Jackpot bags, Hextech Keys, Orange essence etc.

Some more details in case you missed them the first time around can be found at the link below. We'll also have some more details to share when the shop itself goes live.

https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/prestige-updates

Last post of the year

This will be my last post of 2019, hope the year's treated you folks well! I'm heading home to New Zealand for a couple of weeks, so will be out of contact for a bit. Riot Scruffy's going to get a post here instead though next week covering things like where our jungle/support investigations have led, context on changes in 9.24b etc.

205 Comments

SilverSquid12/6/2019, 6:33:27 PM23 votes

Quick Karma question: Is there a reason she still has tankscalings on her mamtra W?

To me it seems to be the reason for her oppressive toplane nature if she is ever any good. You obviously nerfed her Q to keep her in check (i.e. unviable), which incidentally gutted Midlane Karma too. Wouldn't it have been better to make that RW scale better with AP instead of HP?

PrettyPinkPutin12/6/2019, 5:57:41 PM22 votes

Hey Meddler,

Is there anything currently planned for Urgot? Several changes made in preseason felt awkward for him, Auto attacks with passive only accounting for 2 stacks of conqueror despite his passive applying spell affects, Dshield and now the conqueror changes are about to hit him a bit, although he seems to barely struggly in lower MMR at all and I don't see any changes for him coming unless that'd change so I wanted to ask if just anything is planned for him in general.

Zoli Ben12/6/2019, 6:04:12 PM19 votes

Any plans for Urgot for yet again being gutted thanks to longer range abusers?

Jabalor12/6/2019, 6:00:59 PM8 votes

Meddler, since the support items no longer give lane sustain. Could it be possible for the 50g cost increase nerf from patches ago to be undone? So supports can buy 3 pots/refillable potion at the start of the game?

Witch of Babylon12/6/2019, 7:14:15 PM8 votes

How come we got a shield buff for Karma instead of a Q scaling revert? Many Karma mains are disappointed with it.

Magma Chamber12/6/2019, 6:05:23 PM8 votes

Meddler, is there any opportunity to visit Riot to discuss some very old material? I've been doing a lot of research on the game's data from Alpha week 6 (and slightly before this) to present and there's a lot of things I would like to discuss. Champions, concepts, things removed, things that were tried and failed, and one rather specific Mordekaiser question.

I've spoken to a few rioters about them showing off some old stuff but I hear the tools are not able to handle stuff as old as I talk about, so hopefully there's room to maybe work out a day to meet up? I am LA based as well so it's not that hard to show up. I've also managed to get the front page of the league subreddit multiple times with my findings such as original Ezreal, Lux, pre-beta turrets, item shop stuff, cancelled champions, cancelled skins (Dark Crusader Mordekaiser) etc.

My current project is documenting every single change in the patch history from beta til the original patcher was discontinued for RADS. You can see my progress here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MJOl4P2zfw4WpcJ_yDIzB9pFd5KRH6GDpOhK6p9Q1iM/edit?usp=sharing

It's missing a lot (like all the air client data for every patch) because I didn't know all the branch names until things got more locked down but I do plan to document EVERYTHING

RAWRARAWRAWRRAWR12/6/2019, 6:19:53 PM8 votes

Can Shyvana get some benefit from cloud drake? Your dragonslaying paradigm champion gains absolutely no benefit from one of the four drakes that can spawn, feels very bad and counter to her fantasy. Cloud maps are super depressing.

DCYOUNG88812/6/2019, 5:51:37 PM7 votes

Is Sanguine Blade item 3181 still broken/unhealthy even after the hotfix? Also is there going to be any future changes planned for the elder drake buff?

Scarletmeow12/6/2019, 5:32:28 PM7 votes

Hey Meddler, Support main here. On the topic of support items when I first saw the changes I hated them, not going to lie. I thought they were awful, and while I still think punishing overall gold gen for getting an Item that wasn't fully completed anyway in most cases is far less then ideal; I will say as long as you and you're team are ahead it doesn't seem to hurt.

(Keep in mind this is in regards to spell thief line mainly, I don't find much use for Relic Shield and don't play AD supports)

However, when you are behind or are in a lane where you can't proc the item much, it becomes very very evident very quickly and it feels really bad to hit the point of the game where the enemy support has wards and you're no where close. Supports NEED their wards as early as possible, especially with Mid laners being such a higher level. 3 man's are rampant and there's been more often then not games where I can't even manage to get wards out early enough to prevent them or at least give me and my AD some sort of time to react.

Another thing I was wanting to talk about is the blackout passive. It's genuinely broken. It gives way too much vision control when combined with sweeper, just compare average vision control of Senna/Pyke who build the item commonly to supports who can't use the Item. It's to the point where I'm considering building it on Nami just so I can keep up the same level of control. Any chance Enchanters get something to let them keep up with it's level of vision control or the passive being nerfed? Thanks for reading if you do as always and hope your day is going well!

Regalia12/6/2019, 5:36:14 PM7 votes

Hello Meddler, Is there any chance that the team is gonna take a look at a smaller scale kalista gameplay update especially to make her finally playable any time soon?

Lae12/6/2019, 6:05:43 PM6 votes

If a support has an adc that is dying in lane repeatedly, exactly what are they supposed to do? Do they farm the lane until they are punished with the "support rule" and then just wait doing nothing? Do they not cs and farm their support item, allowing the turret to fall since they cannot push the wave in fear of farming minions and disabling the quest? Do you back and sell your support item so that you can farm after your laning partner dies? Exactly what is the play there? All options seem like trolling. Why is the support role so heavily punished for the actions of others? You must understand that the majority of people are playing in solo queue where this happens frequently. I don't think its fair to even have this support rule in place at all. Learning to farm and doing it well on all roles is a skill needed in this game and now suddenly being able to farm when no one is in lane is heavily punished.

Additionally, remove the blackout passive. It's insane to me that you can clear a whole quadrant of vision with a single item while with sweeper you can clear a maximum of 2 wards on your own. Another option is to add the damage to wards part of blackout to support items to compensate and allow non-ad supports to compete for vision. As is, though, its ridiculous.

Deathfall12/6/2019, 6:52:12 PM6 votes

There has been a overwhelming response that players want Karma’s AP nerf to q and mantra q reverted. Yet you don’t listen and buff the shields. Address concerns with her kit or revert the nerf last patch cycle. The shields have already been buffed and nerfed. At least the AP scaling on a and mantra q made karma a fun solo owner. You killed solo lane karma and keep making her a shield not.

Give her a GU or revert the AP nerf.

Frosted Tips12/6/2019, 7:30:10 PM6 votes

A few quick questions:

  1. When will we be getting updates on AP Bruiser items that were promised years ago and specifically were not implemented in the middle of season 9 because it was not an opportune time, but for some reason are not being tested this preseason. A Rioter, maybe you, I don't remember said the internal testing and the PBE testing were going well?

  2. Any time frame on Fiddlesticks and Volibear Reworks?

  3. Ryze has still proven time and time again to be unhealthy and Meta defining, will we see another Rework or atleast some substantial nerfs until a new small kit update since this one is not working out?

Canadian ODST 212/6/2019, 5:31:09 PM6 votes

what ever happened about the larger changes for Akali and Aatrox that were talked about before worlds?

Redesignated12/7/2019, 11:39:54 PM5 votes

Might be a bit late to add this, but —

a big issue with the support items is the removal of the regen stats. It's forcing a lot of supports to have to dip into Dark Seals and Doran's Ring/Shield for regen stats if they want to have laning phase agency, which completely negates the point of opening up their early income — particularly for champions that went for the old Spellthief's Edge, as you typically delayed your upgrade to Eye of the Watchers until after your first completed item, at the earliest.

For the Spellthief/Sickle line, it makes previous Spellthief's users have to be incredibly uninteractive in lane before their first recall, and still less interactive in general before their second, because they're simply not getting enough mana regen to risk wasting a single spellcast, and even with the amped gold income, you don't have the luxury inventory space to just be overloading on Fairy Charms when your support item, boots, Control Wards, and Health Potions are all taking up slots too; for the Relic/Shoulderguards line, there are no tank support items that give health regen, which means against a poke team, you're just completely screwed unless you go for Righteous Glory at the cheapest (and that 2600g is not only basically being spent on a dead item for defensive tanks, but only provides armor), or you decide to pretend to be an enchanter and nab Redemption. Tank supports need health regen somewhere in their items, Eye of the Equinox used to give 200% and was a rush item for tank supports because of its incredibly beneficial early statline. It could very easily be added onto Knight's Vow as-is, considering that's geared toward defensive tanks that would be the most in-need of it.

Another issue is the removal of the on-proc effects. For Spellthief/Sickle, not only do you have less mana to maintain trade patterns, you have no bonus damage from your Tribute procs, meaning you have much less incentive to actively engage in trades to begin with. This pushes a lot of them to just going for Relic/Shoulderguards, because they can be as uninteractive as is necessary, and still see basically the same amount of relevance for the laning phase. On Relic/Shoulderguards, while I support the removal of the ally healing effect, the removal of the self-healing combined with the loss of health regen has left tank supports far too vulnerable to incoming damage, especially if they're defensive tanks that can't just threaten an all-in.

Finally, Relic/Shoulderguards simply take too long to recharge their Spoils of War stacks. Combined with not even starting at full stacks anymore on-purchase, and recharge rate not decreasing with item tier, and the increased vulnerability due to loss of regen and on-proc healing, tank supports can fall drastically behind for income, even if they're playing as optimally as they can.

tl;dr we need regen rates back at least somewhat (maybe 25/25/50% for Spellthief/Sickle, 25/50/75% for Relic/Shoulderguard), tank supports need health regen in their items, and the proc effects need to be differentiated better so that your decision actually feels like it matters. I think the majority of Spellthief's Edge users would be fine with seeing Shard of True Ice's AP taken down to 50 or even 40, if it meant we had early mana regen back in the item.

KyattsuAi12/6/2019, 6:36:15 PM5 votes

Hi Meddler,

Thoughts on enchanters being hit the hardest by supp items and bot lane changes?

nakkadashee12/6/2019, 11:45:08 PM5 votes

Here's to 2020 and Meddler doing what he does best: forgetting Taliyah exists

Spideraxe12/6/2019, 5:30:18 PM5 votes

Hope you enjoy your time back in New Zeland Meddler, you deserve it, if you're still going to answer questions for this post. Could I ask if we expect any video from you or Jess or Brightmoon for the gameplay goals and directions for next year

Linna Excel12/6/2019, 5:36:03 PM4 votes

Hi Meddler I've got 2 questions:

  1. What's going on with Sona? It seems odd that her pick rate is terrible despite being easy to play and having a 50% win rate.

  2. Is riot doing anything about the bots flooding ARAM and Co-op vs AI?

Anyways, Merry Christmas and hope you enjoy your summer vacation.

insejuaniwetrust12/6/2019, 5:34:21 PM4 votes

Hello meddler, any changes in seju? The last "buff" is not good to seju, any plans to revert seju like lb ?Sejuani

Rathar Dashing12/6/2019, 9:47:43 PM4 votes

YES. Support income drop off is WAY too punishing post completion. Getting more GP5 would be the best way to fix it, as lots of supports can't, or want to avoid taking CS.

Zullar12/6/2019, 8:41:45 PM4 votes

Any thoughts about the state of high burst and high mobility that has crept into the game over the last few years. Do you think it's in a good spot or are there plans to tone things down? Thanks.

DCYOUNG88812/6/2019, 6:33:08 PM3 votes

Personally I miss having the support items give me regeneration stats and cdr over the current iteration of giving me extra ad or ap. Having the current version makes me feel like supports have a harder time contributing to teamfighta back to back in the long run.

BadgerDrool12/7/2019, 6:48:18 AM3 votes

Hey Meddler. Two comments/questions.

1: Botting in Co-op vs AI is totally crazy atm. More bots then players by a wide margin. To the point is drastically impacting the integrity of co-op vs AI. I consider co-op vs AI a very important supportive queue to LoL's success. Do you have any comments about this at this time?

2: Yuumi's PBE form. What if boots reduced the new 25s attach channel time? Give Yuumi reason to have boots and that would really shift her power spikes/ability to escape.

JoeDTrader12/6/2019, 7:44:59 PM3 votes

Hey thanks for these. But yes the gold fall off for supports is too high. It ruins ap supports

Sagee Prime12/6/2019, 6:29:41 PM3 votes

I am personally not a big fan of this preseason. too many things were changed that have to do with the map.

I feel like dragons were better when they just gave gold because everyone that got the dragon could effectively use the gold for whatever role/playstyle/matchup they wanted to. I know we aren't going to go back to a lump sum of gold but the current dragons are very inconsiderate of the champions using them and I believe there are a lot of changes due to be made to them.

Storm Dragon buff and Soul for instance do absolutely nothing for champions without true ultimates. EliseElise, JayceJayce, NidaleeNidalee, ShyvannaShyvana, UdryUdyr, and I'm sure I missed others that get nothing from these effects. ULT CDR is really strong and personally I don't think it has any place on a dragon buff and the nimbus cloak idea while cool still basically ignores these champions and I personally think that is very poor and inconsiderate design on your part.

How do their win rates look based on elemental dragons?

I also don't think elder should have an execute or that dragons need to provide as massive of effects as they are currently giving and that if they are to provide they should be all inclusive rather than catering to specific champion types especially when the effects are largely based on an RNG mechanic.

I have two suggestions for Storm Dragon and Elder I think should be considered:

Storm drake should grant regular CDR that does not stack with other CDR options. This would allow champions to opt into other item choices that they would otherwise skip in favor of a similar item that grants CDR. The nimbus cloak effect should apply to regular abilities with no cooldown but grant significantly less movement speed or act like the old red boot enchantment that grants attackspeed for single target attacks.

Just a general statement about all dragon bonuses: I believe they should grant bonuses to base and bonus stats rather than simply bonus stats so that champions not building those stats get some decent benefits from them still.

Elder Dragon should be a mini ignite like burn once the target is below 20% hp rather than a full on execute. it should still provide a comeback escape chance for the opponent.

I like how creative you are being with the elemental rift changes but if we're being honest you need more 5v5 rift style maps not dynamic shifts to the already existing map. The rift plants already kind of served this purpose and now that you've pushed the changes to the map with dragons you honestly have no reason not to have different maps for the same 5v5 game modes. I hope you read this and really consider what I've said.

The game feels imbalanced and thrown into chaos which I expect from a preseason but this one feels exceptionally more chaotic than previous years.

Side note it would be cool if we had more items in the game and especially so if there were more items that catered to particular champion types and niches. I feel like quite a few champions are forced to compete with items that are only the best choices they have because no other options exist. AP bruisers for instance don't really have good itemization and ultimately have to play a feast or famine game where they try to build as assassins.

Jack Dalt12/6/2019, 5:59:45 PM3 votes

Are you guys satisfied with Black Cleaver? A long time ago you changed its build path to try and convince Lucian and Ashe to stop getting it second item every game, but I feel like those changes left the item in an absolutely horrible spot for the intended champions. It's not the end product that's necessarily bad, but the build path just plain sucks.

While champions like Darius, Renekton, Kled, etc do want health in their build, early AD is their biggest priority. Black Cleaver has an alright finished product(mostly because it offers 20% CDR) but backing for 1250 gold knowing that the 15 AD from Phage is all the AD I'm allowed to build for this item just makes me feel awful. I then have to wait another 1750 gold to just to feel any more powerful past that point. To put it into perspective, the 350g Longsword that builds into Phage is 66% of the AD in the build path for a 3000 gold AD item. Isn't that kind of backwards for the champions Black Cleaver is meant to support? Waiting 1750 gold leaves you in a huge power trough until Cleaver is finished.

Black Cleaver and Triforce used to have this dynamic where Cleaver was cheaper to rush and offered you the nicest flat stats to play with in lane and use for short trading, whereas the more expensive Triforce would eventually outscale with the attack speed and powerful Sheen procs. But right now, Triforce offers the better components for laning and scales into a better item. When we both get our 1250 gold, we grab Phage. Then the next back the Cleaver user can only spend 800 gold on what feels like a health potion with some CDR, while the Triforce user continues to buy dueling power.

It's no surprise that even after the Conqueror changes to remove the true damage that Darius/Garen are still rushing Trinity Force instead of Black Cleaver nowadays. If you're going to have to wait so long to get an actual powerspike then why not just build a more useful item overall?

mikeov12/6/2019, 6:03:44 PM3 votes

Since the dragon changes in 9.23 you are no longer able to see the amount of drakes taken by teams in spectator mode. Are there plans to add that feature back?

Duça12/6/2019, 6:59:39 PM1 votes

Hey Meddler, thank you for the updates!

2 questions:

  1. S10 is going to be a tank meta giving no true dmg from conqueror, no gold poaching from cleptomancy and mountain drake buffs. Will you give us back any tank counterplay or you just want a tank meta?

  2. Do you agree that if something is picked up by ALL CHAMPIONS in the game, EVERY GAME, is therefore unbalanced? Please consider taking out flash from the game, it would shake things up in a very interesting way. I am interested in your opinion. From my point of view flash skews towards flattening player experience and champ diversity. Flash adds an incredible tool to champs kits that are not supposed to have it, such as poking ranged champs. This bends the meta towards only this "most-safe" approach to the game obliterating the remaining category of champs and game strategies especially early game.

[katarina-love]

MalrothDragonia12/6/2019, 5:41:17 PM1 votes

Hey Meddler,

I was wondering if you could give insight on some of the Yuumi changes on PBE?

Particularly curious about the discussion around removing Yuumi follow only on teleport, vs making that logic more consistent.

I feel like it could lead to a lot of confusion? As to when Yuumi will follow and when they won't