Quick Gameplay Thoughts: September 20

Hi folks,

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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

Not doing starting items in pre-season

We'd previously mentioned that we'd taking a look at starting items (changes and new ones) during pre-season. After some investigation into options there we've decided not to do so, instead putting more time into runes, base stat changes and some other systemic changes. Starting items still looks like a good space to work on later, with things like an item for bot lane mages as an alternative to marksmen particularly promising. We'll give it another look next year as a result.

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Jungle Ezreal

Been seeing a few questions about our thoughts on Ez getting jungle play crop up. Looks really cool so far to us is the short version. Nice to see a champ getting play in a different way. Early days yet, but counterplay seems fine, the lack of which is what's lead us to nerfing/changing champs out of certain positions in the past (e.g. Malz bot lane or Janna mid). If it ever starts to look too strong we'd tone it down, but wouldn't want to squash it if we could avoid it. If Ez did end up as a jungle only champ we'd want to do some work to let him lane again without pushing him out of the jungle if possible too. Similar situation to Ziggs as both bot laner and mid laner.

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Ornn Balance

Ornn's been out a while and received a fair few buffs after a weak release. We're still seeing a lot of people struggle with him, at the same time though a lot of Ornn play is still coming from people getting their first few games on him in. We won't be buffing him further in 7.19 at the least, want to avoid overbuffing him and we think there's still some learning curve going on. Planning to check in on him in each of the next couple of patches though, see how things are going and if we should throw a bit of power his way or not.

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Bramble Vest

We're testing some Bramble Vest stuff at the moment, with two possible directions. Main issue is that Bramble Vest is too powerful for its cost as a general item, rather than a more specific niche buy. We're considering either increasing its cost significantly (around 300g) with a slight stats increase, both nerfing its gold efficiency and delaying its lane impact. Or reducing its stats a bit and pushing its cost up slightly, nerfing its gold efficiency but still leaving it fairly accessible in lane as a counter item if desired (rather than by default). At time of writing one of those versions should be on PBE, possible we test the other as well shortly, though might still go back to the first one depending on how things go.

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