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Patch Chat 6.10 - Taliyah, The Stoneweaver and Mage Update Cleanup

RiotSkarnye West·5/17/2016, 6:59:37 PM·1 votes·112,021 views

Hey all,

Welcome back to Patch Chat! We’re Riot’s Playtest Team, a group of high ranking League players whose job it is to play the hell out of things (lane tests, competitive testing, etc) and give actionable, objective feedback to designers.

Every two weeks - concurrent with the release of patch notes - we’re going to be hosting a discussion here on the state of balance on the current patch. Take this opportunity to ask us any questions about the state of the game.

This patch sees the release of Taliyah, and Blake Soberanis (primary playtester of Taliyah) will be fielding questions about her. For in-game footage of Blake on The Stoneweaver, check out the VOD from our recent PBE stream!

Blake “Sobe” Soberanis

Taliyah is one of my favorite champions because she’s easy to pick up but difficult to master (I always feel like I learn a new way to play Taliyah each time I play the champ).

She has some very high base damage and ratios, particularly on the Q; its high damage and low cooldown is scary, and is only gated by exhausted ground. This makes roaming on her extra satisfying; you get more damage because you won’t have been exhausting ground in bot lane.

Taliyahs that get ahead can use the extra AP they have to snowball extra hard, but Taliyahs that fall behind will tend to suffer more than usual. It’s probably not super likely that Taliyah will get solo kills in most matchups, so to get the AP she needs to make an impact, she’s going to have to make plays around the map.

Also, Patch 6.9 shook up the game massively with new items, champion reworks, and systemic changes. With so much new in the game, there will be consequences falling out for weeks to come. This patch has been our chance to see how 6.9 played out and adjust slightly. Feel free to leave any questions about the Mage Update or the 6.10 followup patch in the comments below!

What do you think about Taliyah? Curious what it’s like to work as a Riot playtester? Maybe some questions about Patch 6.10 as a whole? As usual, feel free to ask any questions about balance or what exactly our job is! We will be around for the next few hours and will try to answer as many questions as possible.

Adam "Afic" Cohen Ben “Cezium” Burkhardt Shawn “I Am The IRS” Currie Miles “Daydreamin” Hoard Bao “Bao” Lam Mattias “Gentleman Gustaf” Lehman Nicholas “Nickwu” Smith Blake “Sobe” Soberanis Trevor “ThEntropist” Thernes

298 Comments

L0ve Is Blue5/17/2016, 7:04:39 PM19 votes

Why did you guys decide to push mages towards flat mana?

I don't know if I'm the only one, but for me it feels terrible because all of the items give around 400 mana, wich is not a lot for a mage. The only way I can enjoy playing a mage is by getting 2 or 3 dorans so I have mana regen. Getting flat mana early on just feels horrible and restrains you a lot, especialy in a meta where ressourceless champions like Yasuo Zed or assassins that dont get mana anyway Fizz are thrilling in the mid lane and you are just standing there with your innexistant sustain against those hyper mobile opponents...

To be honest i wouldnt mind Morello losing its 20 AP buff if it had more mana sustain because 400 flat mana feels very lacking compared to the 100% mana regen it offered.

Dessem5/17/2016, 7:05:13 PM17 votes

You specified in Fizz's description that you kept a close eye on ults buffed by QSS's nerf, like Zed's Deathmark. As-is, Zed is still banned in most games, but how has it looked thus far in situations where he wasn't banned?

Latex Choker5/17/2016, 7:10:22 PM9 votes

The patch seems nice for bringing some of the struggling champions back up to snuff, but it feels like most of the champions who are too strong were left as is.

Top of this list is Alistar, who had changes on the PBE that seemed to have just vanished.

Other outliers like Trundle, Zed, Ekko, Ryze, and Lucian who have proven to be extremely dominate this patch were also ignored. I know there has been talk of Lucian and Ekko receiving changes for 6.11, but that seems a far ways off and it feels bad having to deal with the same batch of powerful champions for another 2 weeks. (Especially in the case of Lucian, who is in 60+% of games if not banned.)

This all flies in the face of Aurelion Sol, a champion who barely sees play yet enjoys statistical success seeing nerfs before any of the above.

Last point is just an interesting anecdote from the patch. Earth Drake was changed to not amplify True Damage for the sake of clarity (RIP triple earth drake Nunu), but at the same time Turrets now reduce true damage by 66% as part of their backdoor protection. Doesn't that seem a bit contradictory?

Cosnirak5/17/2016, 10:40:25 PM8 votes

No Zed changes, no Lucian changes? These are long overdue.

I read the Riot comments about them in this thread and to me they read like lame excuses. These aren't new issues, Riot has had LOTS of time. The fear of over nerfing seems silly when at worst they would be too weak for a couple weeks before you can give them some power back if needed. You often over nerf stuff despite not acting on it for more than a month at times anyways, are you really getting that much out of leaving blatantly obvious problems alone for several patches?

I get that in both cases it isn't winning a high % of the time that's the real problem. It's being highly mobile, spammy, bullying jerks that make the person playing them feel powerful while leaving opponents frustrated. While his play rate isn't as high as Lucian's and his ban rate isn't as high as Zed's, Yasuo is firmly in this category as well. All of these champions have had all of these problems for a very long time (generally since their release). If you won't buckle down and commit to bigger changes to them to truly fix those issues you NEED to accept keeping them crappy enough that we don't have to see them all the time. We're tired of dealing with them through bans.

No Youmuu's nerfs?! -_- The 45 second active cd is so absurdly low that it's often used to get to lane faster because it's safe to assume it'll be back up in time for a fight. The base stats are good. The build path is great. The fact that this has gone on for this long with not only no change but no mention by Riot as even something being looked at is downright silly. It's a good thing so few have caught on to how good Pantheon still is...

I'm sure you guys are aware of the current new Youmuu's + Black Cleaver based build for Lucian that seems to be catching on (at least I hope you are). When the most popular adc is building an assassin item and a juggernaut item while ignoring all crit something is probably wrong.

EDIT: The talk about Illaoi on the patch rundown podcast despite the stance given here in this thread about Zed seems contradictory. Imagine if Zed had Illaoi's win/play/ban rates (44.6%/2.1%/0.88% at plat+ in 6.9) and you were like "eh he's frustrating to play against so we've been a bit afraid to buff him." Instead he's at 50.75% win rate, 9.13% play rate, and 78.14% ban rate.

exigentomic5/18/2016, 5:04:42 AM8 votes

Xerath just got a slight bump this patch but I feel Ziggs still needs a little more help as well. I think he needs better scaling for how unreliable his damage is and it would also be nice if more offensive Ziggs plays could be encouraged. Currently, Satchel Charge has only a 35% AP ratio so Ziggs will not be inclined to use it offensively given his 325 MS unless a fight is already clearly won. For how vulnerable Ziggs becomes when using it offensively, along with it's 26 sec. CD, a much higher ratio is warranted. There's a lot more discussion about this here. What are your thoughts on the state of Ziggs, especially for those maining him?

BTW: I know he got some help in 6.9 but I think the ult. not 1-shotting waves is an underestimated nerf so it kind of balances out. Previously, you could just ult the incoming wave and back then meet your laner for the next wave without missing a beat. To do the same thing now, you basically need to run TP. Siege scenarios also aren't full blown stopped like before because the minions still live with a sliver of health and that's often enough for the enemies to take the turret.

LaughingStapler5/18/2016, 4:57:55 AM7 votes

After seeing some AP ratios sprinkled in for Nocturne and Shyvana, I'm been reminded that Mundo has only one ratio on his entire kit and that's a measly 10% AP for his W. Could we also get a little love for squishier but more offensive minded Mundos? Even a small AP ratio on Q could make Liandry's a lot more viable (especially when snowballing). It's strange that Mundo has almost no reasonable way of increasing his damage while champions like Malphite, Rammus, Nautilus, Sejuani, Amumu, Zac etc. all have decent ratios but simply shy away from them because it doesn't fit their primary task. Mundo's damage falls off quite hard late game and is basically just a nice lifesteal target rather than scary so I want to try some builds with more punch to them in order to make up for his lack of hard CC.

The Divine God5/17/2016, 9:57:34 PM6 votes

Why is it that a champion can build defensive items and be able to produce so much damage? I understand the whole scaling with health abilities and that's only on a few champions but shouldn't items that make you harder to kill make you do less damage? I've seen so many champions build sunfire cape into whatever other tanky item and they still are doing more damage than most carries. Shouldn't you balance it out? Instead of making tanks being able to build defensively and do a lot of damage still, they should have some defects to make it balanced. This may be a dumb idea but I think making some really strong items have some sort of defect it would make the whole meta better. So what are your opinions about it?

xRandomSome1x5/17/2016, 9:55:24 PM6 votes

I have loved Aurelion Sol since release, but you nerfed him into the ground in 6.9 and it doesnt seem like you even know you did it because most of them were indirect. You nerfed his cc, I get that, the 2 second stun was ridiculous. His direct nerfs were well needed. HOWEVER, you nerfed homeguards and removed tier 3 boots in the same patch. I dont think Riot realizes that this destroyed Aurelion Sol's late game. The Q E combo down mid that the contaminators called "Super Difficult" during MSI is near impossible, and even more dangerous to even attempt, now.

Now, you nerf him even more by increasing W's CD and decreasing his ult damage with no compensation. You are nerfing what makes him a unique champion. You created a zoning champion with a big obvious weakness: Champions with gap closures. There are a lot of them, and once they get on him there is almost no counterplay Aurelion Sol can do besides his ult, which has a 2 minute CD. While most gap closure skills are back 20 seconds at most. The bluntness of that weakness is the reason why his pick rate is so low but his win rate is so high. His design is counterplay through zoning: no gap closures = safe pick, gap closures = the most unsafe pick.

Try to think of Sol as a newer version of Heimerdinger(Whom hasn't been nerfed in a long long time and doesn't really need to). If you pick the wrong champ against him you won't be able to so anything solo. But, because he is new you nerf so that he is punished for being picked against his "safe picks" and punished for being counterpicked. We barely have had a chance to find a way to use him, and once we have we now have to find harder ways to pull off this champion, if they are even still possible.

wladzx5/17/2016, 11:56:45 PM3 votes

"Passive - Void Shift Malzahar

COOLDOWN : 23-6 seconds (at levels 1-18) ⇒ 30/18/10/6 seconds (at levels 1/6/11/16)"

Can someone please explain to me how exactly is this a nerf?

Onkel Malte5/18/2016, 7:50:37 AM3 votes

How is it that when everyone complains about the Malzahar passive in late game, but it gets increased in the early game?

I played the old Malzahar a lot - but the new one is just a frustrating enemy. Because of his passive, because of his spammable Q, and because he's going for CDR so he can ult your ass as much as possible.

I miss the old Malzahar. The old power of the Voidlings, and his old Space-Aids-Farming. ;-;

TheDelighted5/17/2016, 9:57:05 PM2 votes

Any plans for ziggs? 6.10 Doesn't include any change to him and he does seem to be quite underperforming than many mid laners.

P4H Niloc5/17/2016, 8:52:46 PM1 votes

Is sol wrecking people in challenger? Because I never see that champ and I am curious to why he keeps getting nerfed