Preseason 2015 Q&A -- PART 2
Hello!
Now that preseason has been live for a few days, we're back to answer questions!
We'll start answering around 2pm PST, and wrap up around 4pm.
Thanks!
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Do you want a cookie? 
Riot, This is a REALLY serious question, it's of the utmost importance. Please, I need to know...
Gnar, Lux, Teemo, and a Poro are having a Picnic in mid lane. How long will it take for the outer tower to explode from adorableness?
Do you have plans to fix the issue with laners taking smite as a summoner and using it to grab buffs such as the Gromp poison in lane?
What about champions like Warwick who benefit far beyond what's expected with skirmisher?
Do you plan to address the prevalence of high sustain junglers such as WW, Udyr, and Fiddle who are able to full clear the jungle while other champs are often forced to recall instead, falling very far behind in farm?
Wall-o-questions!
Some jungle questions:
What is the thought process behind the contradiction of your stated goal of making it more worthwhile to counter jungle (and recommending Poacher's Knife on so many champions), and the increased respawn timers making counter jungling nearly impossible because the camps are never actually up?
How exactly does making the jungle stronger "diversify" possible jungle picks, when even several of the previously viable junglers can no longer (or just barely) survive in the jungle long enough to actually jungle? (Evelyn, Kha'Zix, Amumu, Yasuo, Mordekaiser)
You specifically called out Lee Sin as a champion that doesn't do so well in the new jungle. I disagree completely. His built in lifesteal/spell vamp lets him manage the jungle nearly as well as he could with the old one (possibly even better, with the Krug/Gromp buffs), without any hit to his ganking abilities.
Was removing the bonus spell damage from Hunter's Machete a deliberate nerf to mage junglers? (RIP Jungle Karthus, Jungle Heimerdinger, Jungle Malzahar. We knew thee well.)
What happened to staggering the initial spawn times?
What happened to the stacking Dragon debuff?
Why are the Dragon buffs ordered the way they are? It seems like the first one (+8% AD/AP) is actually the strongest (not counting the 5th), and just lets teams snowball into even more of an advantage and better Dragon control, and then the second (+15% damage vs monsters) just cements the Dragon control.
How did we go from Wraiths being the weakest camp damage wise, to Raptors being the camp for most people to avoid on their first clear because they just put out that much damage?
Some item questions:
So... what strategic role is Unholy Grail supposed to fill now? How exactly is it not flat out worse than Ardent Censor or Mikael's as a mana regen item with the changes?
Does upgrading to Mikael's intentionally decrease MP/5, or is that an oversight? (Chalice 50% + Idol 60% = Mikael's 100%)
Are there any plans to look at MR itemization? As it stands now, it's rather hard to fit MR into most builds outside of Abyssal, Maw or GA. Most of the rest of MR itemization seem to be awkward balls of stats, and much more expensive than equivalent amounts of armor.
What was the thought process behind removing Negatron Cloak and increasing the price of Null-Magic Mantle, instead of just letting Null-Magic Mantle build into Negatron Cloak like you did with Cloth Armor and Chain Vest?
Do you think that the new Banner of Command might be a bit too strong? Not necessarily the stats (LOVE being able to get it for tanky AP builds!), but the permanent Black Shield on the promoted minion? Kinda completely blocks out a lot of mages from being able to kill it at all.
Raptor Cloak/Ohmwrecker. Is it intended to work near dead turrets or not?
Are there any plans to look at edge cases of lane-Smite like Skirmisher's Devourer Warwick top?
Some map things:
Towers feel really weak now. In general they seem to fall a lot faster than they used to (my last game I had a Cassi and Yi manage to take one down from full with a single minion wave at level 5), and the lasers on the base turrets seem... underwhelming. They start so low and take so long to heat up that it's usually pretty easy to dive under them and get out with taking even less damage than you would have before the change.
Was there a reason for leaving the armor shred out of the in-game tooltips on the laser towers?
Love the touch of Dragon flying above top lane at the beginning of the game.
Kalista stuff for completion's sake:
Dat passive. Is she intended to be basically uncatchable by melee (and most ranged) champions once she gets some AS?
You can still buy her Black Spear in the store to change your soulbound partner later in the game? I thought that was supposed to be removed when she left PBE?
Other (annoying bugs):
There seem to be a lot of people experiencing increased lag and frame drops since the new map was released, despite claims of improved performance.
Hitboxes seem really off since the patch.
Taunty :)
My biggest problem with patch 4.20 is with the removal of 
. I recently played a game where the enemy team had 2 ADC's a Warwick, and an Aatrox. Needless to say they each had at least a bloodthirsty for lifestyle, if not more. I feel that if I had been able to buy the Executioner's Calling it would've boasted our chances of winning greatly, as no matter what we did in team fights we just could not kill them.
Also IMO the removal of the Executioner's Calling goes against your theme of "Strategic Diversity" because players could make the strategic choice of buying the Executioner's Calling for it's passive, instead of buying another item with better raw stats.
I feel that the removal of the Executioner's Calling makes teams with lots of healing too strong, as there aren't NO other ways for an AD champion to apply grevious wounds who doesn't already have it in their kit.
What are you going to do about some bugs. for example one game at the beginning of the game nobody could leave the fountain until they disconnected
Now that preseason is out on live and the data is rolling in, any specific junglers you see as coming out of the gate way too strong or too weak?
Hey! Special shoutput to Riot Axes who listened to our feedback and rebuilt enchantments to fit the common types of junglers a little bit better :)
#Jungle
- General consensus is that the bonus for smiting Wolves is useless, unless you're doing it in the enemy jungle. Are you fine with that, or can we have a bonus from smiting wolves in your own jungle?
Poacher's Knife doesn't work on river monsters (Rift Scuttlers, Dragon, Baron). Couldn't it be the way to improve the item?
Ranger's Trailblazer is useful even in the enemy jungle. Isn't cutting power from counterjungling the best way to nerf this item?
#Items
- Is Negatron Cloak coming back to other items than
Guardian Angel? (Abyssal Scepter, Moonflair Spellblade, Orb of Winter) - Why isn't
Chain Vest bulding into 
Warden's Mail? It would be really handy for some wannabe tanks to be able to choose their item after the game develops. As it is Chain Vest has no real theme behind it, unlike other Cloth Armor upgrades. Sunfire Cape, GA and Thornmail have nothing in common besides armor. Not all three, but by pairs they have - Sunfire and Thornmail have magic damage, GA and Sunfire are anti-burst. By having Chain Vest build into Warden's Mail, it's a clear design: heavy armor items build out of Chain Vest. Also, Thornmail could build out of two Chain Vests to help out in edge situations. - Similarly, could we have more upgrades for
Crystalline Bracer? It could build into Aegis, Banshee's Veil and Guardian's Horn.
#Strategical items
Banner of Command is a great option against AP waveclear from the likes of Ziggs and Xerath, but isn't it a little bit expensive for supports?- With
Righteous Glory granting less combat stats than its price, aren't you afraid that supports will be forced to get this item so that other roles can buy more gold effective items? - Is
Raptor Cloak supposed to be built in lane or not? As it is, it grants less raw combat stats than its price - other utility items like Zeal or Aether Wisp are gold efficient. - Why is there no elixir with CDR? If there was a fifth elixir granting CDR and mana, some mages might prefer it over raw AP.
#Other stuff
Are there plans to address items and roles outside the preseason scope, like immobile burst mages nonexistent in LCS (Brand, Velkoz, Malzahar, Cassiopeia) and underused supprot items (Zekes Herald, Ardent Censer)?
will we see the fighter project come true?
Not too many questions about Pre-season personally. I've really just played a lot of bot games, so issues people have like Warwick being too strong, or laners taking smite, etc., are ones better asked by people who've experienced them.
Do you think the jungle changes might eventually put 
Maokai back into being a jungler?
There's supposed to be a thing where 
Fiora and 
Pantheon can solo dragon at VERY early levels (Even at level 1, if memory serves) because of their ability to block an autoattack; do you feel this is something that should be looked into?
Apparently, there's a bug with 
Tryndamere's ult, where 'enemy champion targeted' smites will kill him during it.
This isn't DIRECTLY related to preseason, but can we look at Kalista's 
Black Spear? I'm CERTAIN there's supposed to be a choice in taking it or not, but as it is now, the whole thing is pretty automatic, and you don't really get the choice to accept OR reject the spear. It just kind of happens, and people who'd rather NOT be binded to Kalista are clearly frustrated at not having a choice in the matter.
Perhaps change it so she simply puts the spear down, and if an ally doesn't click on the spear, Kalista can click on it herself to pick it back up and save it for later.
As well as this issue, there's a weird interaction with Kalista's W passive and the 
Relic Shield line: The just of it is that because it credits any unit killed with Kalista's W proc as Kalista's kill, the supports Relic Shield does not actually proc on a unit if the execute+Kalista's Sentinel Passive kills it.
EDIT: Also, I believe there's a bug with 
Chalice of Harmony/
Unholy Grail where they actually restore 1.5% of missing mana every SECOND instead of every five seconds. I should hope this is being looked into, since one of the goals with changing the item was to change it from being the 'trivialize mana as a resource' item it was before.
EDIT2: Actually, these are quite a fair number of questions about preseason... my bad...
What I want to know Riot honestly, what are the plans to deal with (Toxic Behavior) in Ranked, the Low Elo within the last day feels like the worst day of my life nothing but toxic and what plans are there to deal with it.
Lobby Chat,
. Refusing to communicate, is a major problem ( I think there needs to be a way to punish this behavior.) . Players not talking when a question is asked a lot of times no one says where they are going. . Auto Locking, creating in game problems (No Communication) . In game Trolling Behavior taking lane after they clearly know its called in Lobby more than once even with Pick Order and don't say anything in pre-game about it.
I have experienced this type of behavior many times today gotten maybe 3-4 decent games but mostly toxic players even in some lobby which sometimes someone actually dodge.
When are punishments going to start being dealt with for this type of behavior let alone the type of behavior toxic's bring into game chat starting harassment after trolling in pre-game and harassing all chat.
It would be better if you could make all champs equal. For example in this preseason pantheon can solo drake at lvl 1. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj7GhxL8C9E&feature=youtu.be)
In no particular order...
Negatron Cloak returning? Is it going to be like chain vest a build out of the lesser counterpart?
Any plans for Runaan's hurricane? It's one of those outlier items that seems to have slipped under the pre-season item re-tool radar. I could fill 5 threads with discussion about this item (it's one of my favorites) and how/why it should be reworked, but I wont get into it here. I'd just like to know a little more about Riot's opinion on/plans for it.
Why you no grievous wounds AD item? I'm not making an argument for Executioners Calling to return - That item was garbage - But I really feel like AD's should have an option for dealing with high sustain types.
Was there anything interesting or crazy that didn't make it into the pre-season? What kind of ideas and changes did you guys toss around the office before landing on the pre-season we now have?
I'm excited for this new season; and thanks for taking the time for this Q&A!
My question/concern: It's been stated (excessively) that this upcoming season is all about "Strategic Diversity". After reading the patch notes and experiencing the changes first-hand, it seems that Smite is now pretty much required to be a jungler, and pretty much required to not take it if you aren't jungling. (Yes, there are niche instances where a team might want a non-jungler to take Smite).
Sure, you can opt to not take it, but that pretty much neutralizes most of the strategic options that are now available. So, my question is:
How does the near-requirement of taking a specific summoner spell to complete a specific role promote strategic diversity?
Was Fiora's Riposte/Pantheron's Aegis supposed to block the dragon's attack? If not, are you okay with them being able to solo dragon relatively early? If not, what are you going to do to correct it?
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Do you think removing conservation on jungling items was the right choice? Although smite now has a damage output and the jungle items give huge stats upon completion, do you think that in the longrun it will revert back to when junglers dind't have enough money to contribute.
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Poachers knife seems lackluster at the moment, I was curious of what situation you guys were invisioning when you created it. I think poachers knife had a really good idea behind but is lacking compared to other junlge items.
For example, someone who is actively invading the opponent jungle will more likely than not find the enemy jungler therefore would benifit more from skirmish sabre. This is where i would assume you would say go poachers here, but I think getting skirmish sabre gives you a safe and more efficient use of smite.
Someone who is doing a mix of farming and ganking will probably be better off going skirmish or stalkers because they are only invading the enemy jungle to punish the enemy jungler showing on the map.
Someone who is farming more than ganking would probably go for rangers trailblazer.
FInally someone who is trying to be a duelist is going to pick skirmish sabre.
I made this so much longer than i was expecting....
So about our new friend Scoots the Rift Scuttler. It's hard to tell how long his ward lasts when a team forcefully causes him to take a nap. Could we maybe get a tooltip to tell us how long that vision lasts? Or maybe a line like normal wards have?
Hi my i ask if you plan on reducing that HARDCORE snowballing ? (From my last 30 games they're won after 15 min) Imo, what causes half of the trouble is bot lane. Bot lane snowballs too hard (due to IE/botrk rush i guess ? not sure) which means free drakes. And if you get one, you get the second, your bot is free to push other lane and end the game quite fast without ennemy team being able to react due to the pressure on bot lane. You can't even imagine how thanksful i am for what you're doing to improve game diversity and make it less boring to watch/play even if there are quite a lot of changes to do. Such attitude encourages me to play.
It's really hard to sustain in the jungle nowadays because the health regen from the jungle items doesn't give enough sustain. Hunter's machete costs quite a bit too much, I feel like 2 pots aren't enough to sustain in the new jungle. I used to jungle with Jarvan really well with the old jungle items, and whenever I recalled to shop, I only needed 1 pot. Now, I have to buy 3 or pots to keep up in the new jungle and not gank with low health. Add some more sustain to the jungle items. 
only gives 10 health regen per second, which I feel like it's not giving enough. Spirit stone on the other hand, heals you based on damage you do. Riot, I think you guys should implement a passive to the jungle items that heal you based on damage. Thanks.
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It's been a few days, what is your stance on
I know the big issue with 
last season was the on hit healing.
With it removed, I feel it could be fine, but many people still feel that it lacking a damage cap is far too strong of an item.
I'm curious how Riot feels about this. -
With all the talk about
lately, I'm curious if this might push forward the rework that you guys have been working on? -
With the removal of
is it possible to ever see an item with a similar active again or are the days of crit 
at an end?
What upcoming tweaks or reevaluations will we be seeing regarding the preseason 5 jungle?
As with the last couple of pre-seasons, the question should be asked again: Will there be an increased focus on fixing game-breaking bugs that have been hanging around the game for years (as well as newer game-breaking bugs, for that matter)? As far as I'm concerned, the level of buggyness in League of Legends sort of invalidates all of the other interesting additions, cool as they may be.
I don't know how many times I've seen big bugs in game and have people say (or myself say) "Oh yeah, that one, that's been there forever"
I have a few questions regarding the changes to the new jungle, in particular for the items..
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Last year the spirit line was implemented which gave more junglers the sustain that they needed and some extra gold income so that they didn't get put far behind for ganking. Why were neither of these retained on a wide scale?
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With the new jungle being a lot harder for most champions to clear, and with the lack of extra sustain given from the spirit items, why did you also choose to lengthen the respawn times of the small camps? It seems like it would be to encourage more ganking, but with the beefier jungle camps and the low sustain I often find myself too low to do anything to help a lane, and this ultimately ends up in me spending a lot more time going back to base.
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If the jungle continues to be problematic for many champions, or if the fighters that were dominant last season are simply replaced by tank junglers being the most viable, would you guys consider re-implementing some devices for sustain and/or extra gold?
Thanks!
why did you choose to change the whole jungle? I understand that you guys are trying to get more variaty in jungle champs, but instead of messing with the meta, why dont you just nerf lee sin and elise and buff everybody else? A solid buff on naut might make him more viable, and ect. Also, when do we get urf?
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