Quick Gameplay Thoughts: June 6

Morning 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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Azir

We've been talking about a small ish Azir update for a long time. We think he's a really cool champ, but he's been very hard to keep balanced due to a lack of sufficient weaknesses in his kit. We've recently started exploring possible approaches in game on him, with best guess being an update around the scale of Rek'Sai's recent one. That'll likely involve reducing his mobility, range or burst and then adding power in somewhere else. It'll also likely be at least a few months off, so possible other small updates come out first. Mentioning it nonetheless since it's one we've talked about in the past as needed but haven't been able to offer anything more concrete previously than 'someday'

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Tournament Draft available in custom games

For anyone interested we recently (last week I think?) made it so you can select the LCS style pick/ban in custom games. Thinking there was that that would be useful for people wanting to run their own tournaments using it, teams who want to scrim using it etc. Mentioning it here since while it's already out we didn't say much about it at the time so I figure there are probably a few people who'd like to know about it and missed it.

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7.11 followup

Looking at the 7.11 changes now that they've been out for nearly a week there are a few things we'll probably followup on in 7.12. These are guaranteed changes yet, since we're still watching how players adapt

Kindred - Are probably too weak. We're testing buffs to base AD (54 -> 57), Q ratio (0.65 -> 0.75), W wolf speed (1200 -> 1400), a slightly increased W duration and a cheaper cost on E (70 -> 50).

Rek'Sai - Also looking weak. Testing base AD buff (55.6 -> 57.5), Armor per level (3.4 -> 3.75), unborrow AD ratio (0.4 -> 0.8), R reliability improvements (should be much harder to avoid the damage).

Malz - Directionally is looking better (healthier playstyle). Not certain, but suspect he may now be too strong in solo lanes. Talking today about whether to do anything for 7.12 or wait and consider again for 7.13. Would involve trimming a bit of power (probably added a bit too much, so toning that back a bit).

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Rakan bugfix

We've been testing a reduced CD on Rakan's E based off the belief that he's underperforming a bit at present. We noticed a bug with his passive this week however where it wasn't getting benefit from Healing/Shielding increasing effects. We're removing the E buff, at least for now, until we've seen what impact that bugfix, since we weren't looking to add a major amount of power to Rakan.

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More new runes

We'll probably talk about a few more new runes early next week. Let us know if there are particular sorts of effects you're interested in hearing about. Can't make any promises those will necessarily be the ones far enough along to talk about, will see what we can do though.