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Waveclear work for 8.6 or later

RiotRiotRepertoir·3/8/2018, 1:28:20 AM·70 votes·39,625 views

Hello!

It's been noticed that there are some changes to minions on the PBE, and those haven't been socialized at all, so here's a place to discuss those things.

Basic Idea The changes are primarily aimed at making it more difficult to easily clear minion waves. I think that some version of that is good primarily because it means you'll have to spend more time in your lane actively managing the wave, resulting in increased time for you and your opponent to interact with each other. The more opportunities you have to interact with your opponent, the more you can demonstrate your own skill over them, and League could use a more opportunities to demonstrate skill over your opponent that don't necessarily manifest as "push and roam" strategies or other map-influencing strategies. This aims to improve the ability for players to beat their opponent in lane. There will certainly be balance outliers created on the top end as a result of this work, and they will need to be addressed if we move forward.

There are additional changes to minion gold value that concentrate it into cannons without meaningfully altering the amount of gold gained from minions (especially pre 20 minutes). This is another tactic to create regular conflict between lane opponents.

Straight up, I do NOT expect these changes to be immediately popular. Still, I could see doing them if I thought they increased the quality of the game over the long term especially. Both those things said, I'm not necessarily convinced this is the perfect list to get the best results. It's on the PBE regardless so that there can be conversation around it before things are finalized.

Here are the changes: "Upgrades" occur every 3 waves, so using the melee minion example below, they go from gaining 18 Health (plus 0.3 per upgrade) every 3 waves to ganing 21 Health every 3 waves.

Melee Minions
Base HP :: 473 >>> 480
HP Growth :: 18 +0.3/upgrade >>> 21
Gold Value :: 20 >>> 21
Gold Value Growth :: 0.125 >>> 0
Caster Minions
Base HP :: 296 >>> 320
HP Growth :: 6 >>> 14
Gold Value :: 17 >>> 14
Gold Value Growth :: 0.125 >>> 0
Cannon Minions
Base HP :: 828 >>> 900
HP Growth :: 23 +0.3/upgrade >>> 50
Gold Value :: 45 >>> 60
Gold Value Growth :: 0.35 >>> 3

Thanks in advance for any input.

257 Comments

Akali is SO HOT3/8/2018, 1:58:04 AM64 votes

So what I'm getting from this is that the goal here is to make it harder to clear waves early on in the game so that champs will have a harder time pushing a wave and then leaving to roam and will have to stay in lane longer. I think one potential problem this could have would be that if someone is in an unfavorable matchup and their opponent is able to push the waves to your turret faster than you can push back, then this will leave them with a larger opportunity to be able to roam freely than at present because you'll take longer to clear the wave or have to leave and miss all that cs. I'm not exactly sure to what degree this would be because it doesn't seem like the minions are getting too much beefier than they are now, but it might still be noticeable.

Also, if you did this you would probably have to adjust how much damage turrets do to minions again. Even though turrets do a percentage of the minions health they will still be leftover with more health than at present which would make csing a lot harder to do again under turret like last time.

Slythion3/8/2018, 1:37:56 AM30 votes

Heyo Mr. Repertoir, I have a few worries (or at least subjects) that I'm hoping you guys will consider when making these changes:

I'm hoping that farming under turret isn't shaken up by this. You know, the whole 2 autos + turret for melee and 1 auto + turret for caster (I think that's what it is anyways). I know they are relatively minor changes to the minion health, but it'd still feel bad if a minion was left with 1 health after this combo.
Are you guys considering the effect this'll have with the recent baron-buff changes? Not worried about the banner+cannon minion situation, more the "50% reduced damage on caster minions" aspect. Just hoping that these 2 changes doesn't make it down-right impossible to slow a baron push.
Do you think these changes will have any meaningful effect on split-pushing or nah? This isn't really a worry but more looking for your take on how this could effect split-pushers.
Is this your guy's way of trying to get away from mid-lanes meta of "push the wave and don't interact with your laner" strategy. I know Azir, Ryze, and Galio got recent nerfs because of this, but I suspect the meta will still persist with Anivia/Malz/etc
On a related note to the last, will some champions get compensation buffs? How do you plan on handling Q, E, and other such pushing abilities if they can't do the job anymore?

Artemia3/8/2018, 2:58:59 AM25 votes

The logic behind this change is absurd. You want to force midlaners to stay in lane and to encourage interaction between midlaners with this change. Your intentions are fine, except you failed to realize several things.

**The only way for a midlaner to have a major impact on the game is through roaming during the midgame. **

This meta is dominated by ADCs and Supports. Whichever team has the better botlane will prevail in the end. If your botlane feeds early on and the enemy ADC can just take down bot turret, dragon, and then rotate mid to siege, there is nothing you can do as a Midlaner. If your botlane wins, then congrats for the free win as long you played decent in your own lane.

However, midlaners spike during the midgame and they have a chance to help their ADC get fed and carry the late game. That is done through roaming. By limiting the number of opportunities to roam, you are taking away even more leverage that midlaners have over the game. You are essentially forcing midlaners to play the 1v1 while they have no realistic way to control what the botlane will become. And guess what? It doesn't matter how fed you are as a midlaner (unless you're playing hypercarries like Vladimir, Cassiopeia, or Azir); your botlane is the one deciding the game. And you need to help your botlane overcome the enemy botlane. By taking away roam power, you are actually REDUCING the macro knowledge required for midlaners to thrive in the current state of the game.

If you want to fix this problem, then fix the absurdity with how ADCs are scaling so fast. Fix the insane number of ways that supports can peel for their ADCs while providing them with steroids. Playing ADC is just too forgiving with the number of protection items existing in the game, while midlaners are forced to either act as secondary supports for their ADCs or engage in an assassination where one tiny mistake will screw everything up while perfect play won't necessarily yield any rewards.

If extended 1v1s favor any particular midlaners, it's going to favor those who can potentially 1v9. Look at the competitive meta right now: Azir, Cassiopeia, Ryze, Corki. All of them are hypercarries. You are only strengthening those who are already strong and nerfing the weak ones even further.

**This change will heavily favor midlaners who have insane waveclear and can still easily clear the wave despite these changes (eg. Taliyah). **

You are pushing through a change without considering what the current meta is like, who has the greatest leverage in deciding the game's outcome, and what midlaners need to do in order to make an impact on the game. Increasing minion HP growth won't change the fact that midlaners need to roam in order to have an impact.

This will favor champions whose waveclear is already above average and can probably still clear the wave with ease despite the change. Taliyah is a notable example, since she can already one shot the entire wave with one single rotation. She's going to be fine with these changes. But other midlaners won't. This makes Lux, who is practically the only midlaner who cannot one shot caster minions even if she keeps up with her items, is going to become even worse. This also punishes champions whose waveclear is just strong enough to kill caster minions with one rotation.

That makes the midlane meta even less diverse. You want to promote diversity by encouraging interaction and mechanical skill, but in the end it leaves fewer midlaners as viable choices. If the enemy picks Taliyah and clears the wave with ease, who am I going to pick in response? The champions who used to clear waves with ease are no longer an option. And if I pick a weak waveclear champion, Taliyah is just going to outroam me, have a greater impact on botlane, and make their ADC extremely fed while my ADC is left to dry after being dived over and over while I cannot do anything because I'm farming under tower!

So if you want to encourage more interaction in mid, then reduce the leverage that botlane has on the game. Fix the state of affairs in bot before you keep making midlaners worse than they are right now.

nm10103/8/2018, 1:31:16 AM16 votes

Oh god I never get cannons, please give +500 aa damage vs cannons as compensation.

Bern3/8/2018, 2:57:36 AM10 votes

This is just going to have too much collateral effect on the game in unexpected places to make sense as a change.

-There are too many champions that are designed around being able to hit a certain threshold to clear waves so they can roam (almost every assassin and taliyah, to name a few).

-The gold changes screw with the efficiency of backing on cannon waves a lot. I'm not sure of the end outcome, since the cannon does have more HP than before, but I'd be leery of this.

-As others have mentioned, it makes it harder to stop pushes.

-It makes you feel weaker as a player, because you aren't oneshotting waves.

-It makes lanes more interactive, sure, but it makes the game as a whole less aggressive because if you can't shove as well early, you're in a worse place to help your jungler invade, discouraging aggressive jungling.

-Last-hitting is going to feel wonky for a good while.

-Strongly increases the desirability and powerlevel of dematerializer, if it lets you break thresholds again. If you can't break thresholds even with dematerializer, it's useless outside of keeping competitive level timings with your opponent. Either way, dematerializer will need to be looked at.

-Pushes several matchups out of soft counter territory and into harder counter territory, because you can no longer avoid getting countered by roaming. This has the really undesirable effect of making pick/ban more important (it's already pretty goddamn important).

-If any champions will still be able to waveclear well, it'll make them even more desirable than they already are.

There's also the fact that putting these changes on PBE while testing other champion changes is going to screw with how the champion plays in a PvE context, skewing testing on that champion. Ruins a control factor on PBE.

IMO, you're changing something that applies to every champion to fix what, to my ears, is largely a (perceived?) problem with the current mid meta. Yes, it's only a small amount of HP on paper, but we both know that what really matters here is whether or not you break waveclear thresholds, and you assuredly are tuning around them. Mark me concerned.

Yenn3/8/2018, 3:29:00 AM9 votes

What do you mean by 'interact with your opponent?'

Damage is so high in this season that for the majority of mid lane match ups, the only 'interaction' I encounter is one of us 100 to 0'ing the other. Match ups are fairly binary and trades rarely happen with the common mid champions, only all-ins.

Alternatively, I don't want to interact with my opponent, because I have no kill potential or it's too risky; I'd rather spend that mana clearing the wave. Or as something like Ziggs or Vel'koz, the longer I spend managing the wave, the more risk I am at being 100 to 0'd by more bursty lane opponents.

This doesn't sound like a very good change.

redniwediS3/8/2018, 1:33:47 AM8 votes

Do these changes effect the feel of farming under a tower at all? If they do, will any changes be made to towers to bring that feel back in line?

I know how to farm under tower right now (two tower shots on a melee, then hit, hit before tower on ranged, hit again after) for my main, but I'm curious as to whether the health changes will mix this up and force me to relearn how it's done.

CyberBalt3/8/2018, 1:47:43 AM5 votes

I understand why you're changing the HP, but not why you're changing the gold value per type of minion. Could you explain again what you're trying to accomplish with the gold changes? How does concentrating gold into cannons create more conflict?

Rayjay Redfang3/8/2018, 1:33:52 AM5 votes

How do you think this will influence unfavorable lane matchups where it is hard to farm/duel the opponent? For example, Teemo vs. Kled or Heimerdinger vs. anything melee.

CrazedPorcupine3/8/2018, 1:47:32 AM5 votes

if these changes go through, would there be compensation buffs for champions like Veigar who rely on minion farming to really effectively reach their highest potential? Veigar right now struggles to maintain the ability to farm minions and also interract with opponents, and this will simply push veigar further down in the ability to succeed by making his early game truly unbearable.

Death by Glamour3/8/2018, 1:40:11 AM4 votes

You may wish to shelve the targons brace gp5 change if you are placing more gold on the cannon and melee creeps.

Spideraxe3/8/2018, 1:41:33 AM4 votes

Hey Repertoir how do you think these changes will affect alternate waveclear methods like proxying, Zzrot and Banner

Thee Pie Man3/8/2018, 1:37:05 AM4 votes

So players will be skirmishing more and the punish for keeping them off minions such as the cannon will not be anymore "vital" as much as just damning to the other player? That's fairly interesting. Does that make freezing much more damaging however? The damage of the minions aren't increasing or at the very least they don't do more damage to each other and with higher HP values they are going to be easier to freeze in my opinion with more HP on Cannons. Given the gold value is going down on casters it feels like this is what is being encouraged. At least to my view on it.

I love skirmishing don't get me wrong, just feel like if I get behind then it becomes less about skill and more about the item relevancy that the enemy laner has. Would this in turn call for more help from the jungler and overall more communication for the team? It feels like we're going to be punished a lot harder for getting into positions where we're behind which is going to force objective control that much more.

DeathBurst3/8/2018, 2:31:45 AM4 votes

So, I'm a bit worried by the impact of these changes on the established meta for Level 1-2.

Most obvious example is Singed proxy farming the first 3 waves and then executing to come back into lane quicker with more items than his opponent, but Garen, Mordekaiser and plenty of others will be impacted as well.

A lot of Champ with weak Level 1-2 but potent wave clear relied heavily on that to get the upper hand in lane, and won't be able to leverage that waveclear properly after these changes, I fear.

Sherrl3/8/2018, 3:24:20 AM4 votes

This just sounds like it's just gonna make some champs feel terrible to play in lane.

LilBadWitch3/8/2018, 6:18:07 AM4 votes

I'm not a fan of changing minions or the habits we have for farming this drastically. It feels way too forced of a change, and the game is better off not being touched than any of these changes to ever make it to live.

Sure, I think (as a main of her) Lux - level of farming where you have to use multiple abilities and interactions to farm a wave would be better across the board and more balanced for the game.

But doing it this way is terrible and should be delayed.

CoolKnightST3/8/2018, 11:56:13 AM4 votes

I agrea on this change on only one condition:

#Buff item 3302 line minion execution

Ifneth3/8/2018, 4:16:18 AM3 votes

Yikes. Don’t miss that cannon. Have you thought about adding +5 on-hit damage to minions to Doran’s Ring? All the other Doran’s items offer a last-hitting aid.

I Main Swain3/8/2018, 5:01:23 PM3 votes

i think its a good idea but probably not quiiiite the right way to do it. for one, im concerned that it could have the reverse problem of how its intended and make it harder for the champions who are weak with waveclear and the champions that have strong waveclear just have to adjust a tiny bit (malzahar for example with his e and voidlings would barely be fazed by this). additionally, it could make snowballing in lane phase even worse because so much is placed into the cannon minion alone that its a lot easier to press your advantage and make someone get behind in gold quickly. the increased hp could also make taking towers early game easier since the waves will survive for longer, which could additionally add to snowballing. idk, maybe its just me. i think its a really good idea and its needed but this particular way seems like it could just as easily be harmful rather than helpful

ps, we very much appreciate all the interaction and communication you give us, youve given a lot of us some faith back in riot

Spacesuit Spiff3/8/2018, 11:13:02 AM3 votes

I like the idea, but my suspiscion is that the meta will dig its heels in and regress to whoever is STILL able to do the uninteractive shoving after this goes through. And then playing a champ who feels these changes properly against one who can easily shove with a resourceless or low-cost move is gonna get even tougher.

Just something to keep in mind.

mk DILLY3/8/2018, 6:04:21 AM3 votes

My concern is this will make champions with wave clear even more valuable rather than the opposite. Champions with poor wave clear are going to have a hard time now even laning and will be even less viable. Your still going to get the situation where one champ pushes harder and can roam while the other struggles to clear the now beefier wave before he can follow. I'm not sure this is the right way to go about this.

Penta Penguin3/8/2018, 3:41:29 PM3 votes

inb4 it becomes impossible to last hit under turret

Sergeant Wea3/8/2018, 4:56:20 PM3 votes

Great idea! I like this a lot, actually.

However, do you feel like this will make Minion Dematerializer mandatory? If Inspiration becomes a pseudo-mandatory rune again by needing to take Minion DMtzr, I'm a little worried that it's not going to encourage different rune/playstyles, at least for mid laners. With more stopwatches, boots and free gold from Klepto, I fear that mid lane might turn in to how top lane was back when everyone took Klepto a couple of months ago.

Sire Hippington3/8/2018, 2:36:02 AM3 votes

First off, i like the idea of makieng minoins overall tougher. More emphasis on the direct laneing matchup instead of uninteractive waveclear into roaming certainly is something i want aswell Especially as a toplaner, who usually is responsible for controlling the minionwaves on sidlanes in mid/late-game, this will feel good and increase the subtle impact that good toplaners can have on the game. A built up minon wave might be a big advantage instead of a mage looking at it funny and it's gone or adc sneezing at it with SS..

However, there are also alot issues that have to be adressed:

does it impact CSing underneath the tower? i can imagin that some mages will fail killing melee minions after two towershots with one AA by like 1-2 hp if that goes through.
more powerfull minions might make sunfire/tiamat mandatory on toplane to deal with the waves. Sivir and any hurricane user probably also will become alot more valuable
Cannon minons might become to though for casters or other champs without meanignfull singletarget dps. This will put even more power to marksmen that then are not only the supreme objective dps, siegemasters and reliably teamfight hyperdps but on top of that mandatory wavecontroll to take down siege minions.
not only cannon minions, but all minions might be to though for chamipons that reliy on clearing waves with one spell or rotation that has a high cd, like Lux E. this will shift the meta even more towards dps mages mid like azir, ryze and cassio.
putting so much of the gold from minions into the siege minion can be problematic. It'll be quite hard to take down for many champs like mages and tanks with those significant buffs, and it creates a scenario where you can fail CS on 3 ranged minions and still loose less gold than failing that one cannon minion by 1 hp which feels rather odd. It also means that cordinated jungler/laner duos can time ganks to simply deny cannon minons and easily strave the opposing laner.
freezing waves will get easier and more punishing
if you can outpush opponents and get a big wave to their tower, you get a even bigger window for roams, so it might backfire for solveing the situation with uninteractive lanes and roams.

I think both, shifting so much gold into siege minions and makeing them so tanky is going to cause issues that need to be adressed when doing such a change, in the very same patch and not a few patches later. Champs that currently lack meaningfull singletarget need ways to deal with those big minions or they won't be aböe to sololane given how much gold you loose if you can't get the cannons while also beeing nailed down under your tower as you can't push the wave. It might also be usefull to give some mana/hp restore effect to killing them so you can commit a bit more mana onto the cannons while also eating some harras to take them out. But all in all, i don't think it's a good idea to shift so much of a waves reward into a single minion. Wiffing a single cs shouldn't cost you more than missing half a wave.

Northmund3/18/2018, 7:49:02 PM2 votes

You are a joke right now Riot "Balance Team". NO! Not even a joke, a meme.