[4.10 - 4.11] Systems Team Forecast

Note: As this is a forecast, this won't have many specifics in it. I'll have my usual style of post with the specifics of item changes on Friday when we try to coordinate a PBE push.

Attack Damage - B.F. Sword normalization

Items Affected:

We're going to be normalizing everything that builds out of B.F. Sword to have 80 Attack Damage with minimal price increases to compensate - as well as shifting B.F. Sword to have 50 Attack Damage at the 1600 Gold price point, instead of 45 Attack Damage at the 1550 Gold price point.

On the whole, we like what this does to the overall decision making when purchasing a B.F. Sword - you know it will eventually morph into an 80 Attack Damage item - the only question being what sorts of side utility you want out of the whole deal.

There's a slight caveat here in that this puts an unfortunate damper on Bloodthirster - whose presence is too dominant and skews the power between Ratio driven carries and more traditional basic attack oriented carries.

Essentially, BT goes down in power - everything else goes up in power - including the midgame where you build up to BT.

Attack Speed Itemization - Dagger Retuning

Items Affected:

Attack Speed isn't a particularly attractive statistic to overcommit to at the moment given the natural Attack Speed growth of carries. We're making some slight buffs to Dagger to help mitigate some of the mid-game power issues that carries are facing at the moment where Attack Speed only feels good at the final completed item rather than during the build-up, where it matters.

Basically, you usually do get enough Attack Speed by the end of the game with your build. It's just that the entire way to the end item, you don't have nearly enough. You can expect these items to have slightly more attack speed with a minimal price increase.

For example: Berzerker's Greaves giving 5% more Attack Speed and costing 50 more Gold.

Lifesteal

Going to start with a quick item preview as a framing piece:

Doran's Blade

80 Health --> 70 Health
8 Attack Damage --> 7 Attack Damage
3/5 Life on Hit --> 3% Life Steal

For a long time, we were trying to phase out early life steal as a statistic and replacing it with other mechanisms such as life on hit. However, with the rise of non-sustain supports - this avenue no longer makes sense. With non-sustain based supports being the norm rather an exception - Life Steal needs to be easily accessible from a variety of sources in order for the ADC to not be locked into a single early build path - the one that includes Life Steal.

With this in mind, it makes more sense for Life Steal to be more expensive overall but easier to 'stack' from a wider variety of sources rather than have Life Steal be a single specific path.

Hence, we're going to lower the life steal amounts of all items - but introduce it back into Doran's Blade in order for carries to have a wider range of possible % Life Steal values - this allows carries to basically build the 'right' amount of life steal for their carry type, their support and the power of their lane opponents - rather than having one single overpowered choice that tries to cover every situation in which you might need sustain.

On the whole, you can expect there to be less life steal on each of the life steal items but more available % life steal options. What we expect to see is a slightly wider range of potential first order buys - especially since this version of Doran's Blade has more mid game potential.

--> ?

Bloodthirster

70 Attack Damage --> 80 Attack Damage
12% Life Steal --> 15% Life Steal

Stacking Passive --> Removed
New Unique Passive --> Your life steal effects can overheal you, granting you a shield equal to the excess up to X (based on character level). This shield decays if you haven't dealt or taken damage in 15 seconds

Bloodthirster becomes a problem when its too commonplace as it creates a situation where it basically comes down to who acquires it first. This is both due to the power and build path of the item as well as the stacking mechanic on it. Additionally, it favors Attack Damage ratio-driven carries who traditionally have weaker end-games to begin with. We're retuning Bloodthirster to be a more consistent choice and to give other damage options a more favorable comparison point.

We know that this will leave certain ranged characters that rely on Bloodthirster Stacking in a bit of a bind at the moment - Certain heavy AD Varus and Miss Fortune builds will be in a bit of a pinch without a stackable Attack Damage source. However, given how Bloodthirster both supports these characters and suppresses them by being more favorable to other characters - it's not really contributing to a healthier ecosystem.

Melee will generally come out favorably as they have a very offensive life steal item (Hydra) and a more defensive one (Bloodthirster).

Mikael's Crucible

Lastly, I want to talk about Crucible - this item is too commonplace and negates a lot of decision making in the end game. Crucible does odd things where it devalues long cooldown initiation patterns in exchange for repeated pick patterns.

This heavily suppresses utility centric carries like Ashe or Varus who rely on these patterns to be strategically interesting.

We do like that Crucible is an option in the game but it is currently too broad of a pick and appearing too frequently on a much wider array of supports than intended. Mikael's is just as good as a buy on offensive tanky supports as defensive ones - which skews the balance of power even farther away from initiation based carries as their unique niche both gets countered and replaced by the same character.

We're going to both raise the cost of this item and adjust the statline to favor more Mana intensive supports to shifts Mikael into favoring more mage-centric supports rather than Tank supports. We'll be adding another support item in Mikael's price point in order to grant a wider breadth of items - the details of which will be on the PBE post on Friday.

Note - 11:43 a.m.: Gotta run. Won't be responding to posts for the rest of the night. I'll check back in this thread tomorrow.

Note - 1:11 p.m.: Can't.. respond to every post in this thread based system. Nested hierarchy too strong. Also need food.

Note - 3:55 p.m.: Okay - way too many comments. I actually need to work on the items some more based on feedback from this thread. I'll be responding again when I post the specifics on PBE. Probably won't reply to this thread - though I'll probably read it again - then my attention will be focused on the PBE post.

Notes - 8:34 p.m.: PBE specifics post is up! I won't be responding to this thread anymore. If you note the specifics - there's already some minor numerical adjustments based on concerns raised in this thread.

Link: http://community.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-gameplay-feedback