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Quick Gameplay Thoughts: November 22

RiotMeddler·11/22/2019, 5:44:50 PM·1 votes·75,456 views

Hi folks,

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 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

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

Preseason so far

Hopefully preseason's treating you well so far. Thoughts on a range of topics below.

  • Bugs

Getting high impact gameplay bugs addressed is one of our main focuses after each preseason ships. We've hit the highest urgency ones through hotfixes (Fiddle R missing its visual effects, Death's Dance and Infernal Soul interacting incorrectly, Elder sometimes executing at too high a health threshold). Aim is to hit a range of other preseason associated gameplay bugs in 9.24.

  • General Balance

Early indicators suggest the game's in a reasonably good state so far for just after a large patch. Champion win rates have changed at most one or two percent generally, with most not moving much at all on average. A few specific categories covered below, next up we'll be looking at how the difference SR types (Cloud, Ocean etc) affect the win rates of different champs (e.g. how much does an Ocean game actually help Rengar?). After that we'll also be digging into various other things not touched on below (e.g. impact of RH changes or side lane alcoves, how jungle and top lane agency have changed etc).

  • Kleptomancy and Oministone Balance

Klepto users look to be down meaningfully in power as expected. We'll be putting some power back into some of their kits as a result, starting with a hotfix (probably out already by the time you read this) to Ezreal who's been the most affected.

Early indications are that Omnistone is too weak so we're discussing a potential hotfix buff to it. It's not the optimal choice on any champion at present, though is moderately close to being so on a few champs (Kayle, Kennen, Illaoi, Twisted Fate).

  • Balance impacts of Crit, Lethality, Support item changes

Crit changes so far seem pretty power neutral to crit users. Lethality users seem to be somewhere between neutral and slightly weaker. Support item changes don't seem to have shifted the balance of power substantially between different types of support, with no clear trend yet for how tanks versus enchanters versus damage supports have been affected and win rate changes almost all below 1%.

It's early days still though when it comes to assessing these sorts of changes. Things like players adapting their builds, the meta being a bit uncertain and team comps being less optimized with ranked off will likely impact assessment of item changes somewhat. We're going to keep digging into them as a result, early signs are things are pretty balanced though.

  • Infernal Screen Tint

We'll be toning down the amount of screen tint the infernal SR transformation creates. Feedback on that's been pretty clear that it's overly dominant. We'll have some changes on the PBE the next time it updates and would love feedback on whether the change feels right, goes too far or doesn't go far enough. Plan is to then ship a change in 9.24.

Worlds Champion Diversity

One of a number of things we look at each year post Worlds is how champion diversity compared to previous years since we believe that's one of the components that supports both a great viewing experience and a good competitive experience. 2019 was overall quite a good year in that regard, even if a few champions (Panth, Qiyana, Kai'Sa and Xayah) were much higher profile than ideal, leading to some meaningful staleness of champ select/team comps at times still. Some slides one of our analysts (thanks Blaustoise!) put together below that show some of the ways we look at that sort of data.

https://imgur.com/a/0J125gD

For those unfamiliar, the Gini Coefficient is a statistic usually used to measure income inequality. In our case, we're using pick/ban presence instead of income. A score of 0 means perfect pick/ban equality among the entire roster, so lower's better.

https://imgur.com/a/KChXZaH

TFT Ranked Season start

TFT ranked kicked off on Wednesday with the new set. For this set we opted to go for a complete LP reset and a partial MMR reset. From discussion we've seen so far that's creating both some confusion and some frustration, particularly in cases where LP and MMR feel very far apart (e.g. LP climbing slowly for Masters players because max LP is capped per game at one division's worth). Feedback on how the reset's felt to you much appreciated, we'd like to refine our approach here. Since TFT seasons are much shorter than SR ones issues will be felt more often, though on the positive side it also means we've got more opportunities to make the sort of large improvements that can only happen at a season start.

178 Comments

Scarletmeow11/22/2019, 6:06:20 PM31 votes

Everywhere else I've tried people have hated this opinion but I play support and feel the need to get my thoughts out there anyways:

As a Nami main, the new spell thief line feels really, really bad. Yes, we now get the third item for free and the ward passive as well, but before preseason upgrading to tier 3 never happened unless the game was more or less already over, and upgrading to Frostfang was more then worth it because of the stats it gave, not just the wards. The lack of early mana regen means you can't poke regularly, and I've talked to many other Enchanter mains who seem to have come to a consensus that Spell Thief isn't worth the risk of going up to auto vs. the safety and quicker gold gen of Relic Shield.

I believe Riot intends for this group of champions to use Spell Thief and not Relic Shield, so I'd like to ask what your thoughts on it are and if there's any chance Spell thief might get its mana regen back?

If you read this, sorry for poor formatting and thanks for your time (Writing this in a rush to try and have a chance to get a reply)

Daddy Ants11/22/2019, 6:52:01 PM22 votes

REMOVE SANGUINE BLADE

Who was high on the design team when they thought this item would be a good idea?

It's as unhealthy as Spear of Shojin especially on champions like Rengar and Nocturne.

Quáx11/22/2019, 5:48:02 PM19 votes

Remove elder dragon execute please ^_^

Kampsycho11/22/2019, 5:54:49 PM15 votes

Hai Will we ever got introduced to other MR items that are worthwhile? Considering There is a lot of MR pen ontop of 40% from Void and 40% AMP from Deathcap. Will we get more Splitpush oriented now that Raptor Cloak's Item line is Gone...? Like Maybe Atmas or something else along the path? Not even sure why I bother asking when I haven't gotten a reply in years.

Zilean X Ryze11/22/2019, 5:56:14 PM14 votes

The support item changes completly ruined my favorite strategy to do with my friends, a bruiser or tank bot with either another bruiser or a regular support, the healing from targon's brace allowed us to successfully stay in lane along with supplementing the cs we would lose due to being a melee in the bot lane, however since the healing from the targon's support items have been removed this strategy has ZERO chance of working anymore, is there a chance we could see the healing be returned to the spoils of war passive?

lol you wild wyd11/22/2019, 5:59:50 PM10 votes

Why are you guys purposely accelerating the LoL experience? Is the PTSD from Season 7 THAT bad? The game has lost almost all it's strategic nuances and for what? To cater to the young audiences that have zero attention spans? That is where League: Wild Rift comes to play; the MOBA genre thrives on that chess like game-play which LoL had in abundance and that was the secret sauce.

Now it has just devolved into this brawl fest with the victory handed to the team who plays the broken champions better than the enemy team. It's so tragic man, truly.

We just want our game back.

Redesignated11/23/2019, 8:26:15 AM8 votes

While I appreciate the AD/AP split for support items, and the removal of Ancient Coin's hyper-passive playstyle to coincide with the range allowance on the new defensive support items, there's a few big pain points I want to mention:

The removal of mana regen from the aggressive items and health regen from the defensive items have made laning phase in particular feel incredibly dull and difficult to survive. In the aggressive case, that lack of mana sustain combined with losing the on-proc damage means you not only have much less likelihood of winning the trades you take, but can barely perform them at all; in the defensive case, melee users can't afford to approach minion waves for procs without getting smacked to all hell by anyone with a range advantage, and then they're left with no help to recover except devouring any consumables they have, with this also meaning that it's much harder to sustain poke in later stages of the game since most previous Relic Shield users would rush tier 3 that brought 200% health regen.

The majority of tanks don't care about the AD or AP coming from the defensive items, and would much prefer additional health and health regen. While there are certainly outside cases who enjoy the added AD/AP, the majority of the champions benefiting from this are ranged, and would rather be going for the aggressive items if they gave better stats to facilitate their playstyle. Getting rid of the heal from Spoils of War was good to prevent tank supports in particular from getting to act like mini-enchanters, but that, in conjunction with the lost health regen, has proven very damaging. There aren't any tank support items that grant health regen, and even with increased gold income, telling a support they basically have to get Warmog's or Righteous Glory every match seems counterintuitive to the goal of giving them more gold freedom in the first place.

Making the support items upgrade automatically was a good change, but the stats that were lost from that have gravely diminished the ability for a wide swathe of supports to be interactive in the laning phase. Mana-reliant supports simply can't afford to be proactive unless it's an all-in, and their ability to be reactive is down as well; melee supports are even more vulnerable to poke than before, and have gained basically nothing to show for it.

Overall, the support experience feels worse right now. Having access to slightly more gold than before more quickly than before does not compensate for just how little agency is being felt, particularly in the laning phase. The only type of support that seems to have truly been benefiting with these adjustments are damage supports that want high-budget mana items early anyways, or all-in/one-combo ranged supports that aren't going to feel a mana burden.

mabarry311/22/2019, 5:59:46 PM7 votes

Hey meddler, i was wondering if you knew why air Drake ultimate cdr does not apply to the three primary transformers? I know their ultimate cdr isn't as impactful but it seems weird that it just doesn't work at all for them.

As a nidalee player I can very much appreciate a lower ult cooldown so I can transform to human faster after a rotation and was really disappointed to see it didn't work.

Natron11/22/2019, 8:25:13 PM7 votes

Hey Meddler, have you seen any reports on performance issues? Ever since the updates my game freezes for about 2 seconds everytime I enter a teamfight. It is really hard to play like this, whenever my screen just freezes

RAWRARAWRAWRRAWR11/23/2019, 9:28:58 AM5 votes

Can Shyvana get something extra for killing cloud drake? Feels pretty bad that her dragonslaying gameplay paradigm gets absolutely no benefit from one of the four drakes. Feels SUPER bad on cloud maps, where as many as 3 objectives are literally useless. Extra fury/sec, perhaps?

Also whatever you did to her Q in this patch broke her dragon form Q on wards, which is now only doing one damage. And her dragon form Q on turrets is still doing very small amounts of physical damage with an AP build.

Queš11/22/2019, 5:59:13 PM5 votes

What about Jax and Renekton after Shojin removal ?

Snowywhite NiBBA11/22/2019, 8:23:09 PM5 votes

Slightly weaker? Every lethality user dropped 1-1.5% winrate (discluding nocturne abusing sanguine), lethality just got even worse, you straight up took vision control from duskblade, nerfed dirk by removing its passive, made edge of night completely useless. And we got literally almost nothing to compensate that (sanguine works best on champions that arent supposed to build it). Why would you get an item that gives lethality which gives dusk passive for 2400 gold that gives 12 lethality which is not even enough to negate armor from cloth armor worth 300! gold when you can get dominik and red sweeper? When I look at gunblade now I see it more clear than ever, ap champs are heavly favorised in this game. It gives far more damage than dusk more usefull and reliable slow, revolver costs 50 gold less than dirk but it can give more damage yeah fair, and its scaling is better than dirk ever was and does more damage in every single point of the game (40 damage vs 50-120), but dirk now gives absolutely nothing. WaiT BuT iT gIveS LeThaLity, yeah so much of it that armor per lever compared to mr per level completely negates it because base resistances are heavly skewed in favor of magic damage. It just sucks I cant be treated as fair as mages are

SirGank11/22/2019, 7:20:40 PM4 votes

Hey meddler,

What kind of direction are you looking at for the omnistone buff? And what is the real intended audience for it? It seems kind of awkward since most people will rather just pick their best stone for a particular match up than randomly be issued one. If it gave a stronger stone than normal at a high cooldown and random then I'd get the appeal, but for now it feels off.

Jaibamon11/22/2019, 5:59:44 PM4 votes

Hey Meddler, can we talk about Teemo?

This patch changed some behaviors the runes had around Teemo's E, the poison passive. Before this patch, the poison would trigger runes like Aery and Dark Harvest, but after this patch this is not longer the case; probably because some adjustements around Conqueror, in order to avoid the poison to apply stacks.

There are other issues too. While using Glacial Argument and Cheap Shoot, the poison won't trigger Cheap Shot even if the opponent is slowed. This was working before the patch.

So please Rito fix these bugs.

Teemo Teemo Teemo Teemo Teemo

GEZZEY11/22/2019, 6:05:28 PM4 votes

any changes to ap items coming any time in season 10? Also what happened to ap bruiser items you guy were talking and any updates to diana rework you could share?

DanTM11/22/2019, 6:15:10 PM4 votes

Sanguine blade imo feels really broken on champs that get the full value out of it, especially for sidelane matchups, where it can cause the buyer to completely run away with a previously even matchup on completion. Even champs like Irelia, who cuz of her magic dmg shouldnt be buying a lethality item, use it well enough to make it worth buying. Imo the item is really really unhealthy

Ulkusus11/22/2019, 8:12:17 PM4 votes

Hello, thoughts on Senna? Super high pick rate, high win rate and the top ban currently, at least according to lolalytics.

Mr Penguin11/23/2019, 9:42:44 AM4 votes

Can you just remove Omnistone and make a real rune? Please? Thank you. Klepto was idiotic and this rune is both idiotic and useless. No hate but just do something less RNG based with the excuse of making it "a rune that makes you adapt depending on the situation". I said it before and I say it now. It's USELESS.

Krozoid11/22/2019, 5:49:09 PM3 votes

What are your thoughts on toplane / toplane impact after the patch?

Muh Meh11/22/2019, 8:28:45 PM3 votes

Hi Meddler,

Thanks for the continual updates. What exactly is the goal of Omnistone? It seems like such a gimmicky keystone with no clear intent other than being unusual. While I feel the removal of Kleptomancy was the right call, at least this keystone had a clear purpose- hitting gold based power spikes faster as the expense of immediate power.

astralwit11/22/2019, 8:46:49 PM3 votes

Please bring back a variant of S8 Dark Harvest. The new one removed the fun soul pickup game and changed the rune's identity as well as core users (despite keeping the name!). There's no skill to it anymore. It's just more damage for your damage.

The old DH really changed my positioning in fights, my pathing and my approach to the game (even invades could be different if I had a chance to outsmite a camp and get a double proc.). It was also less tilting when teammates died because I could at least use their souls to possibly turn things. And of course, it had an actual late game. It wasn't just a snowball rune with no fallback mechanic. You could really see it evolve and there was a huge difference at 150+ stacks when the timer changed. Right now, there's hardly a playstyle decision or any thought in using it. It's just about which one is better on a particular champion.

As far as the "Omnistone". I just don't see this as a useful addition. If the CD is low enough, it will be used a lot just because it would be overtuned. However, if it is balanced, almost no one would prefer it over an alternative rune with an actual clear purpose.

Finally, I think making the Rift channel time so much shorter is a step back. 4 seconds gave some counterplay to it if you could land CC. It was sometimes even worth sacrificing a summoner spell to do it. Why eliminate the counterplay to it? It's essentially impossible to interrupt now.

BTW: Even if you don't want to bring back Smite buffs as a whole, it would be cool to have at least side camps or buff camps have them. Of course, it would need a lot of thought so that it's not too complex or gimmicky but I think there's some potential there. Although, S10 already has a lot to learn so maybe for S11! :D

Mysticman8911/22/2019, 6:06:08 PM3 votes

Is there a particular reason why TFT is a game embedded within the league of legends client, and not a stand alone game?

Spideraxe11/22/2019, 5:58:55 PM2 votes

Hey Meddler is there enough time to balance Aphelios since he's being released on the last patch of the year, not including the B patch, since he sounds hard to play

Waka FIocka11/24/2019, 9:01:52 PM2 votes

hey there. popping in to say that botlane isnt fun to play anymore. there's too much going on botside now, with several solo laners roaming botside for easy kills since we are so underleveled and gold starved. you guys added the alcove which is even more pressure, plus more bushes near river= less secured vision control. the new supp item as a mage/enchanter support is horrible gold income, especially so if you are behind. i hope you guys will consider takings ome of the nonstop clown fiesta nonsense out of botlane and let us play the game again (aka actually enjoy it, win or lose). ty.

Feurin11/23/2019, 6:21:26 PM2 votes

Hey Meddler,

The support changes seem to have greatly shaken up the dynamic of botlane. Was reducing the viability of Mage poke supports an intended goal? Supports like Brand/Xerath/Vel'koz have less capacity to be bullies in early laning phase and fall off harder mid-late game due to loss of gold income. Was this intended?

Killer of Night911/22/2019, 7:57:13 PM2 votes

Since TT is gone, There will be any chance that another mode come to take it's place? I mean we had good and well (probably) designed mod that could do the trick such Nexus Blitz or Black market Brawlers. Otherwise since now we have only 2 mode, what about reintroducing the rotation game mod like 1 at month?

Angels Mercy11/22/2019, 10:07:04 PM2 votes

Will there be any bug fixes for skins? SG Xayah has been bugged ever since the skin came out, her voice lines and her R is bugged :/

Trava Tsunade11/22/2019, 11:58:46 PM2 votes

Hi, @Meddler how are you? I was wondering if we'll have skin for Syndra, she's been forgotten for so long. Syndra item 3070 [sg-syndra]

Dunkeroos11/23/2019, 3:05:34 AM2 votes

I believe there is a bug resulting in massive frame drops quite often. I have been playing with over 100 frames consistently until this patch, but frames have dropped numerous times into <10 frames whenever it feels like it wants to.