Quick Gameplay Thoughts: Feb 21
Hi all,
Some stuff on our minds below. As a reminder some of what gets discussed in these posts is tentative, or theoretical, not a thing that's definitely happening that we're just failing to share all the confirmed the details about.
Rek'Sai
Rek'Sai's mini-update (similar in scope to Shyvana and Alistar's ones last year) is coming along well gameplay wise. Goal is to shift her so she's more fighter/less tank than she currently is, with more focus on personal kill potential and less on CC/team initiation. Also looking to improve satisfaction on the ult, with that likely being the spell that changes the most.
10 Bans in Pro
We're still monitoring the impact of the new ban system on pro play. So far it looks pretty good from our perspective, with some increase in champion diversity and champ select interest likely attributable to the ban changes. We've still got some caution that the setup of the second ban phase might be overly favorable to red side long term though. Some degree of that's deliberate to offset blue advantage earlier and map geo that often favors blue. At present there's also a pro team consensus that certain champs are must ban for red side, which makes pick/ban pretty rough for red. Some skew in red's favor later in the draft's helpful on those grounds too, at least right now.
As a side point we're also currently looking at what work we'll need to do so that the 10 ban pro system is available in tournament draft custom games once the new client ships. Regular matchmade games will use a different 10 ban system. We do want to make sure players seeking tournament style practice, or looking to run their own tournaments, have the option of doing so though.
Mid-Season
Mid-season looks like it'll probably be patch 7.9 or 7.10 based on our current planning. We'll be doing a Vanguard update, some changes to defensive items and probably a couple of other things that aren't far enough into testing to talk about yet.
** Default Recall Animations**
For anyone that missed it yesterday Ququroon made a post yesterday (link below) that talks about how we'll be making it so champions who don't have a recall animation use one of their other ones when recalling so they're not just standing there awkwardly.
