Boards›Dev Corner

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: March 30

RiotMeddler·3/30/2018, 3:34:57 PM·1 votes·87,492 views

Hey 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

Some 8.8 stuff

We're working on a number of things for 8.8 and also working on midseason right now. Couple of lists below as a result that split 8.8 into things highly likely to happen and things we're hoping to look at but may or may not get to depending on how other work goes.

Likely to ship:

  • The kill streak bounty changes previously mentioned (solo gold instead of team)
  • Kit adjustments as previously discussed to Leblanc and Ahri.
  • Some trinket adjustments. At the least we'll be making it so Oracle's is available from level 1 instead of Sweeping Lens. Original reason to not to that was concern at how much lane brush control it would offer, we believe we can address that by having the Oracle's duration scale by level. Also considering some other possible things, including yellow trinket wards having a longer lifespan and longer CD (give a longer period of safety when you do use them, need to be a bit more deliberate about when that is however).
  • A Tahm Kench nerf aimed at giving opponents more ways to deal with him when he's saving allies. What we're currently testing is that he no longer gains bonus movement speed when moving towards enemies if he has an ally devoured. Original intent was that that would encourage more aggressive ally devour cases. It mainly seems to result in TK running away faster because there's often an enemy along the line of his retreat (or close enough to, the directional check's pretty generous in its angles).

Smaller balance adjustments (or at least investigations) if time permits. Not all of these will happen and some of those that do will show up later in the patch cycle:

  • Buffs to Pantheon (post minion agro changes), Spellbinder Orb (underperforming compared to comparable AP options), Nautilus (needs larger work too, but is also just weak), Vi
  • Nerfs to Archangel's (new build path and stats have made this a bit strong), Janna, Xayah, Caitlyn, Warwick, Braum, Sion, Kog (though also need to see where Rageblade nerfs in 8.7 leave him)

Might also be some midseason changes we pull forwards from 8.10 to 8.8 to test a few things earlier, still figuring that out though.

Varus

A few of you might remember a change to Varus I talked about around a year ago that never ended up happening which would involve changing a bit of his kit's functionality. Was intended to ship around the same time as the addition of the Attack Speed ratio to his passive, ended up getting delayed repeatedly however because it needed visual effects/sound changes and other things were higher priority. We finally had a chance to get round to doing that art/audio work though, so will have that change in 8.8. That change is the addition of an active to his W that looks like this at rank 1.

Active: Varus' next Piercing Arrow deals bonus magic damage equal to 6% to 9% of the target's missing health (scales with Piercing Arrow charge). 40s CD. No mana cost.

Magic damage scales up to 12%-18% by W rank. It's still going through final balancing, so numbers aren't final. First goal is to ensure that, no matter what his build is, some of Varus's Q shots are still really impactful. Second is to offer an additional skill test, rewarding those who can call the shots that are both most important and likely to hit (long CD means you need to pick the right Q).

This change does add some power to Varus, so depending on where he ends up after the Rageblade cost increase in 8.7 might take a bit of power out elsewhere.

No posts for a couple of weeks

I'm going to be out of the office for a couple of weeks so I won't be able to do these posts for a bit, apologies. Should be back mid April.

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

371 Comments

Nicozzz3/30/2018, 3:38:20 PM27 votes

Will miss these posts until you resume in April, always a pleasure reading :D

astralwit3/30/2018, 7:43:06 PM20 votes

{quoted}

Smaller balance adjustments (or at least investigations) if time permits. Not all of these will happen and some of those that do will show up later in the patch cycle:

  • Buffs to Pantheon (post minion agro changes), Spellbinder Orb (underperforming compared to comparable AP options), Nautilus (needs larger work too, but is also just weak), Vi
  • Nerfs to Archangel's (new build path and stats have made this a bit strong), Janna, Xayah, Caitlyn, Warwick, Braum, Sion, Kog (though also need to see where Rageblade nerfs in 8.7 leave him)

  1. TK is good or at least valued in competitive play due to his reliability in saving allies. This is understandable but I don't like the "River King" being pigeonholed into the support role. I want Riot to officially support him as a jungler too. I'm happy that you guys have tried doing this with Ekko to an extent even if he's not quite there yet. Everything about Kench's lore and kit screams "jungler" to me. I bought him and fell in love with him when he was a GOOD jungler (before his mini rework). His kit is overall pretty good for a jungler (except the falling off due to a lack of AoE). The biggest issues are his atrocious clear and high mana costs. Allowing the increasing bonus damage with 3 stacks to work in the jungle would instantly make him viable.

  2. If you're trying to balance properly and keep champions viable at all brackets, it should be clear that WW isn't the issue. His win rate is a reflection of careless players failing to adapt. He excels in SQ but isn't objectively that strong (you'd see him a lot in competitive and top 10 Challenger if that were the case). A lot of his cheese, such as doing the enemy top JG @1:15 wouldn't even work there. Moreover, he doesn't have the mechanical demands of something like Lee Sin and thus, his win rate isn't dragged down by bad mains. He's also a generalist jungler that fits most comps. so again, this will artificially make his average win rate higher despite him not being OP. His passive alone helps weak junglers understand what to do better and building tanky means he'll never be completely useless if he messes up (unlike a Rengar, Kha etc.). Even when he's perfectly balanced, he's likely to have an above average win rate. While he has a 43% ban rate in NA, that drops to 1.3% when you look at KR. He's a predictable champion with clear weaknesses. People too often play into his dueling & skirmishing strength while not respecting his early (or adjusting against it by taking different JG paths).

Some tips: Grievous wounds, splitting less/more carefully, kiting & disengaging properly (saving CC for R), not hanging around at low HP, warding his JG (he doesn't have the flexibility over walls of a Kha or Sej), and not giving him an early lead. Everything about WW becomes so much more awesome with an early lead. His healing becomes difficult to deal with if you don't have time to get grievous wounds, his tankiness becomes overpowering and he can start to dive. WW's Tiamat dependence for proper farming is one of his balance levers and this is negated as well. Random early leads are the way WWs dominate. WW can't properly farm Krugs or Raptors and yet he frequently gets a kill top ~2:45 after 3 camps. This gank timing is so common and reliable. That's not WW being strong as much as players being bad. Nerfing WW in any sizeable capacity appeases bad players at the cost of true balance and viability through the entire skill tier. It's a band aid fix that makes your game objectively worse just to shut up some whiners who refuse to learn. Vs competent teams, he's already very hard to pilot properly late game so at the very least his scaling shouldn't be made worse. Right now, he's good just because he's a snowball champion with a high chance of actually snowballing. His whole kit is built around it with his passive, R, E, duelist & skirmishing kit with minimal teamfight effectiveness etc. How can you NOT expect that he will have a good winrate especially in weaker regions? That doesn't make him OP. If you want to nerf him for average players, at least provide something more for skilled players to compensate at the highest tiers.

  1. I enjoyed Kog as an AP mid in Season 4. He's not really viable there anymore. Again, if you nerf him, I'd like to at least have his secondary role be more powerful. ADC Kog is just boring to me but I doubt he'll be strong after the Rageblade nerf (outside of the Lulu pairing).

I don't play the others enough to have many opinions.

I just want a balanced game I can rely on and not this non-stop band-aiding whenever the whining gets loud enough or win rates go up. Win rates don't mean shit by themselves unless they're dramatically out of line. Even then and when a champion has a good pick rate, it may still be just that the skill floor is low so people don't screw it up so badly but a champion's strength should really be judged by the skill ceiling (aka as optimal play). That's the real test and that's how you create a balanced game that doesn't need futile band aids every few weeks... the holes in such a strategy will inevitably leak because it's 100% unsustainable and wrong. If you manage to do that and aim for it, people could just accept they suck and it isn't really the balance holding them back. Doing the opposite of this just makes players arrogant and always expecting that anything with a higher winrate gets gutted regardless of the objective balance state or reasons. They don't even bother to adapt besides banning. They expect hand holding. They don't try to think "why am I actually losing to this champion? what are the weaknesses/strengths? how do I adapt to his strategies/kit? etc." People want you to balance around the "majority of players" but the majority of players don't know shit about the game or balance. I played a normal game and people were complaining about how OP Garen is because of his ult. is... these are the people you want to listen to? They're good only to understand what most people find fun. Would you pick your heart surgeon or systems architect randomly off the street just because they're the "majority?" That's how a game is ruined. If people could just trust that Riot were focused on objective balancing around optimal play - not because Riot cares about competitive more but because that's literally what balance is. You don't balance around someone making a ton of mistakes... that's just useless. What if every chess game I started 1. h4 2. h5 3. h6 and then predictably white had an awful winrate. Would we now give White 2 moves at the start to compensate for this bad play? No one can take a game seriously and invest in learning it at a higher level if they can't trust that balance is being done properly and that the game actually has depth.

Spideraxe3/30/2018, 3:38:31 PM13 votes

Hey Meddler its been roughly around one year since you started doing these posts so I can ask a meta question about how you feel about them in the last year or so

EdgyLady3/30/2018, 5:03:38 PM10 votes

Hi everyone ! Just little thoughts about item 3102 and item 3056 : (I already sent this post last week, but to be sure you saw it)

item 3102

Short one : Is there a reason for item 1057 not being in the recipe ?

Long one : Just thinking about item 3102, that is the "ap anti-ap" item, but when you need to build fast MR, you have to buy item 1033, then stack gold until item 3102... To compare, other "similar" items have at least a "tier 2" item in the recipe : item 3155 and item 3140 for ad VS ap, item 1057 and item 3211 for tank VS ap, and even for support there is item 3028 and item 3105... All these item are better than a single poor +25 MR item 1033... And total MR given by item 3102 is 60, so a +40MR item 1057, or another new "tier 2" item can be added (something like an AP/MR item).

item 3056

Objective : Make item 3056 an AP-destroy-turret item !

Context: ADCs have already high AD and AS (and more with item 3094 + item 3087), tanks have item 3512, item 3060 and demolish, but if you are AP you cannot destroy turrets that easily (exept if you have insane amount of AP (Veigar), high AS (Azir) ou destroy-turret abilities (Ziggs))

My thoughts : Make this item an active channelled ray of destruction that deal DoT scaling with your AP and increase over time (something like old Void Ray in Starcraft 2)

It will be something like that :

  • AP (of course)
  • Armor (to deal more easily with minions/turrets)
  • %HP regen (consistant with item 2053) OR(/AND) CDR (maybe, if balanced with other AP items)

UNIQUE Passive : Point Runner (who didn't want to run like crazy near turrets ?) UNIQUE Active : Channel a destructive ray that deal DoT to turrets, scaling with your AP, and doing incrasing damage while you are channelling. Move or cast spells cancel the channel.

What did you think about that ?

Thanks for reading ! (and sorry for mistakes)

Crocodilo Maroto3/30/2018, 4:02:13 PM10 votes

What about Lissandra? You talked for a new passive in 8.4, and then keep making bulshitt excuses for delaying what u promised

ModThe Djinn3/30/2018, 3:40:41 PM9 votes

{quoted}Magic damage scales up to 12%-18% by W rank. It's still going through final balancing, so numbers aren't final. First goal is to ensure that, no matter what his build is, some of Varus's Q shots are still really impactful. Second is to offer an additional skill test, rewarding those who can call the shots that are both most important and likely to hit [long CD means you need to pick the right Q].

Is this castable mid-Q, or must it be pre-cast? I can see some benefits to each model, and am wondering which you opted for.

Wukong Airlines3/30/2018, 5:34:02 PM8 votes

@Meddler, happy holidays for you and the rest of hardworking Rioters. I want to know your opinion on Talon's current state. and why not give him Rengar and Leblanc's treatment?

The damage is there, but it's not much satisfying playing with him, specially with the -15 Movement speed nerfs, his low range [Q] and narrow + easily dodge-able [W].

The compensation buffs were good, and kept him in the same spot, but he still deserves a little bit of love as in QoL changes.

Ajimu Najimi3/30/2018, 3:40:36 PM7 votes

Hey, just wanted to ask what you thought of the current state of Kindred? If I remember correctly I think you said that they’d be reassessed after runes reforged released. Do you think they’re in a good spot, or do you think they need a little love?

AirKingNeo3/30/2018, 4:40:06 PM6 votes

Buffs to Pantheon (post minion agro changes)

What? Why would you ever buff this uninteractive piece of garbage? He's not fun to lane against. This is like buffing Teemo.

Nerfs to... ...Sion...

Sion is fine now. Everything else you listed needs nerfs (though Warwick, only a small one).

First goal is to ensure that, no matter what his build is, some of Varus's Q shots are still really impactful.

The issue is that his Q requires the target to have Blight stacks on them or else the cooldown is 4 seconds longer. If you just reverted that change alone, Varus's Q should be more impactful. As for where he needed nerfs, have you tried his passive at all? Getting 2.5 AS at 2 items isn't exactly the most balanced thing.

Ivoryreaper3/30/2018, 3:43:01 PM6 votes

Do you intend to buff a certain play style of nautilus or only a certain role? I'm really disliking him as a support

A Mirrors Image3/30/2018, 4:08:54 PM6 votes

Hey Meddler. Regarding the nerf to TK, why not just change his directional check instead of removing the mechanic entirely? Is it that the mechanic itself is a problem or the scenarios that result from the direction check's size that are causing the problem?

ÑINE3/30/2018, 11:38:19 PM6 votes

If you are going to nerf TahmKench W movespeed, can you at least put it back into his base movespeed?
Because unless you get item 3009 his movespeed is always at 390(with boots). But the whole point of his W movespeed was to help him get a quick getaway by saving his teammate since he lacks movespeed and so many other champs can easily catch up to him.

idk... this is just my opinion since I play him a lot and see how so many champs can just abuse him with slows and cc and he cant even get away.

Nausicäa 3/31/2018, 1:41:31 AM6 votes

Kha'zix nerfs where? Insanely broken 70% ban rate in korea. Wtf was your balance team thinking.

RÉÁL HÚMÁN BÉÁN3/31/2018, 2:31:03 AM6 votes

Rather than talking about how to nerf Warwick how about making the champion work properly half the time? Fixing the pathing on his blood hunt to not randomly take away your movement speed when youre moving directly in the blood trail. If your enemy is running in a straight line down mid lane, and youre following the exact same straight line, the speed boost should work every time, not only sometimes.

Syllvanas3/31/2018, 10:37:10 AM4 votes

Any thoughts on Syndra and Zyra?