Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 3
Hi all,
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
Scoreboard Pings
In the 7.19 patch notes we mentioned 'You can now ping everything on the scoreboard, so knock yourself out'. As a bunch of people have noticed, that's not the case though. It's also not what was originally intended, with miscommunication resulting in a misleading patch note, our bad there. What is in, and was intended, was that you can now ping any item on the scoreboard, regardless of player or team. That seemed like a useful communication tool to offer, being able to repeatedly ping someone's KDA by contrast for example, not so constructive.
DFT uses and Runes
We've talked about this in some threads already, seems to crop up a lot as a question though so figured was worth giving our thinking a bit more visibility. There's not a direct replacement for DFT in the new Runes system and that might mean some champs have a bit of a hard time as a result. We looked at various options for something that filled the same niche, but didn't find something we felt was both helpful when it comes to balancing champs and had at least some gameplay to it. What we'll be doing as a result is looking at current DFT users and seeing how they perform once the system goes out. A lot of them should have good options already in the new system, with Phase Rush being particularly appealing on some. If some champs don't find good fits though we'll then look at a combination of individual champ buffs (if only a couple meaningfully affected), at prioritizing a new keystone that meets the needs of the champs not having their needs met, or a combination of the two.
Janna
Janna's changes in 7.19 added quite a lot of power to her and as a result we micro patched nerfs out twice. We're also testing further nerfs on the PBE, odds are high though that those don't ship. They're being tested in case we need them, current estimate at time of writing at least though is that they likely won't be necessary.
Azir, Xin Zhao, Caitlyn
Touching on the other larger changes from 7.19:
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Azir - Is looking pretty strong, though for the first time his performance isn't extremely skewed between average and high skill players which is a good sign, since that suggests mastery as him and mastery playing against him may be scaling appropriately together. Suspicious we've made him too strong, still watching to see if that's actually the case or not though.
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Caitlyn - Looks to be about the right spot power wise, too early to say much more.
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Xin Zhao - Also around the right ballpark power wise. Seems to be performing quite well for an updated champ, normally there's a relearning period for a while and we're not seeing as much of that here. Might suggest he's on the strong side, could just mean he's still a fairly accessible champ as intended so that relearning period's not as rough as some.
http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/6.24.1/img/champion/Ziggs.png
upgrade? It's long overdue. At least, could we separate Grievous Wounds from 
and put it on an item that you need to consciously build toward, rather than an item that is the de facto best first choice on the vast majority of mages? If Grievous Wounds is going to stay in the game, mages should have access to it somewhere. That "somewhere" should not be in their core item.
? It might be gold-efficient (barely), but it doesn't feel like a useful item to have. The active has a monstrous cooldown for not even being as effective as 
, which is cheaper and builds into an item that feels far more useful to have. Slow immunity and some bonus Movement Speed is nice, but not even being able to get rid of a Malzahar R with it is not, and having the person you used it on immediately being caught by any number of other stuns, roots, knock-ups, or displacements that any well-rounded team is going to have feels even worse. Whenever the anti-shield item gets added in, it'll basically devolve to joke status.
at some point? Repeated nerfs have made it terrible to get as a first item, which lead to 
becoming problematic as enchanters had to get it first instead. With how bad Mikael's is, and Redemption having 750g of its price allotted into Mana Regen with an active that's barely noticeable until you have multiple Heal/Shield Power modifiers, Ardent Censer only really has 
as competition for a first purchase, and it's not exactly good on most enchanters — especially not as their first item. Mikael's and Redemption need to be buffed so there's any reason to get them before Ardent in almost any situation.
along with niche cases (usually meta trends) with 
as well. And with the new 
giving tenacity it should be even less of a problem to have that slow. Reind that rangechamps, even minignar, have the disadvantage of being realy squishy. Just a frozen helps not that much.
. Ashe gets movementspeed from all these juicy 
. Gnar can jump to get in range, throw his q. Ahse can ult as an engage (gnar needs to eb in big fotm for this), and use w to slow already. Ashe has the slow already lv1. Till gnar has bc/mallet a lot of time is gone.
Ofc mallet is an oppresive item and maybe strong on certain champs. But this counts for other items as well. Why fixing mallet if the far stronger items bramble, knights vow, gargoyels and rightous glory exists?
Also adding to my frozen counters: glory (engage only vs kite) and deadmans.
??
I think he deserve a VGU,the MR buff was pretty cool but he feels outdated in gameplay because he's too much of a stat check champion(Health Regen,Bonus Ad,Tenacity,MR) and his visuals are very outdated... He's the same for years and years
Anything is planned for him in the next year?
