Quick Gameplay Thoughts: December 8

Hi all,

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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

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Forbidden Idol

We're testing a nerf to Forbidden Idol, and items that build from it, where they give less Heal/Shield power. That's driven by the belief that too much of Enchanter power especially is coming from that stat, which was previously balanced at those numbers when Enchanters had less gold income and therefore weren't stacking the effect as much.

We feel pretty good about that nerf long term. A complicating factor though is that Enchanters aren't generally looking out of line at present. We're confident it's a good change overall, but not necessarily in the short term however. We're still discussing whether it's something we should ship now, and then adjust around it in following patches. Or whether we should hold it until we have other changes to go with it. Or until enchanter strength is high. Or at the least we until won't have as large a gap between patches as the upcoming holiday period, so if follow up is needed it's not as delayed.

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Grasp of the Undying

We're also been testing out a possible change to Grasp of the Undying, where instead of giving bonus health permanently on hit it gives temporary, stacking, adaptive AP/AD. Primary goal of that testing has been to see whether we can better serve various fighters as well in the Resolve tree, without overly penalizing existing Grasp users. We've also got a secondary goal of seeing whether the permanent health gain on Grasp is ultimately a problematic mechanic, given how variable it can be game to game (e.g. amount you stack in a melee versus melee fight, versus amount you don't get to stack laning against a ranged opponent as melee).

If that revised version of Grasp doesn't work out we'll then most likely go back to existing Grasp and try testing a gradual stacking Adaptive AP/AD Resolve keystone at some point. Some of the interest there is that a ramping power/outlast your opponent approach potentially makes more sense being time based and in the tree about living longer (Resolve), compared to the previous infinite stacking of Press the Attack in the precision tree.

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Resolve Style Bonus And for our third thing in testing discussion - the resolve tree style bonus. We're going to be testing that as a mixture of HP and the stat from your other tree, rather than all HP. For people going resolve primary that should give a bit more early offensive power and, sometimes crucially, last hitting ability. For people going resolve secondary that should help deliver a bit more baseline defense, which is generally what we're seeing be wanted from Resolve as a secondary pick. We're hoping that proves to be particularly helpful for fighters feeling they can't at present get the right split of offense and defense.

This is still a pretty experimental change, that's barely been into any tests and may not hit the PBE for a while (or ever, if it fails initial testing hard enough). Really interested to hear people's thoughts about the concept though. At least for now other trees stat bonuses won't be getting split, this is just a change being tested for Resolve at present.

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