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[4.12] Live Gameplay Patch Forecast

RiotLive Gameplay·7/4/2014, 1:36:32 AM·15 votes·46,658 views

Hey all,

Welcome to another Patch Forecast from the Live Gameplay team! With the World Championships coming up, our focus for the next few patches will be aimed at competitive play - both in increasing the diversity of picks and hitting those outliers who beat down all meaningful choice in champ select.

As a reminder: these are not promises for what will be in Patch 4.12, rather, they're a forecast of what we are currently working on and the problems we see.

ONWARD!

Ahri: Ahri's a cool fox gal that we'd like to see more of, but she's currently sitting just below the top-tier mid picks. We're investigating ways to make Ahri feel better to play without just tipping her into the perma-pick category (hello S3 worlds).

Alistar: OH BOY. We really want to bring Alistar back up as a support, but our big challenge is to make sure he doesn't also become an insane jungling cow god, because that gets obnoxious. Access to what's essentially a mini-Malphite ult at level 2, combined with powerful tower dives and displacement makes for a worrisome combination that keeps us up at night. Worrying.

Kassadin: This guy. Man.

Lucian: Like we mentioned in the 4.11 patch notes, Lucian is still strong and his super well-rounded nature makes him less of a strategic pick and more of a must-pick. We're really exploring ways to give Lucian meaningful weaknesses while also highlighting some of his core strengths. At this point we probably can't bring along all of his advantages, but we're looking to maintain Lucian's mobility / burst while also highlighting his spellslinger archetype. You'll see more as we go!

Them aggro junglers: Depending on who you talk to, there are roughly 3-5 competitive junglers in the 'very strong' category who are outshining entire categories of dudes (see tanky jungler buffs). That said, we're balancing our approach here to make sure we don't just hit one so the others become default picks, but this gang has such high early aggression that they're still inhibitive in the game. Chances are high we won't have anything for these in 4.12 as we're still watching how the 4.11 jungle item changes have affected the scene, but we have a strong inkling that these dudes will still be around.

Up today we've got Riot Hongyou from the Live Gameplay team to answer some of your questions / comments on the forecast.

569 Comments

01785765927/4/2014, 2:11:47 AM37 votes

Why are we so apprehensive to nerf leesin even the slightest bit? He's clearly the biggest issue killing jungler diversity. Why play another jungler when he's amazing early and mid, doesn't need blue, has a reasonable clear, great dueling, great utility, etc?

RiotHongyou7/4/2014, 8:11:11 AM16 votes

Hey guys, please use paragraphs more. Walls of text are terrible on the eyes :\

Lets go in 4v57/4/2014, 1:38:42 AM12 votes

What if Kassadin's ult charged up instead of his E charging up whilst also having a longer cd, but refreshing if it hit a certain stack threshold (6)? That way he has to think about using it when he's not in a teamfight, i.e. in lane. That way in teamfights he's still effective, but after everything starts to die down he has to be more conservative about using it since it's on a longer cd.

Canastus7/4/2014, 4:00:07 PM9 votes

Soraka Wait, you still don't have ANY updates for Soraka? How much longer are you going to pretend she's 'healthy' after the last gutting she recieved?

What we need are immediate fixes until the rework is done, as soon as possible.

Hadriel7/4/2014, 2:02:51 AM8 votes

Any chance of Quinn bugs getting tackled? Here is a list, bumped daily: forums.euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1709974

On another topic, I think your approach to competitive junglers is flawed. They're not overpowered in terms of... power... but their power curves fit infinitely better the competitive gameflow. If you hit 40 minutes with Lee Sin, you'll be painfully weaker than Wukong, for example. So you're facing a dillemma where nerfing these champions based on competitive means screwing people across all other levels of play since they aren't strictly OP, and if you choose to shift their power curves, you'll homogenize an entire class of champions. I don't know the answer (maybe it is a matter of empowering the alternatives) and wish you lucidity to know how adress this or when to leave well enough alone.

Sulfuric7/4/2014, 3:00:34 AM8 votes

Karma, and probably a bunch of other champions, has a thing where her abilities "disappear" after she dies. For example, if you Mantra > Q, and then die, the mantra-aoe circle goes away. This sometimes causes me to lose a kill that I would normally have gotten if it didn't go away. Think you could fix this bug for me?

Also, since Karma's ult isn't a true "ability" in the sense that casting it alone does nothing, can we make Karma's Mantra castable while affected by CC similar to GP orange or Alistar ult? I wrote a short article explaining why here if you're interested but the tl;dr is that it's a hoop that only Karma players must jump through and causes the player to fight game mechanics rather than their opponent: http://supersulf.tumblr.com/post/73753880627/league-of-legends-and-game-design

Sheerow7/8/2014, 6:56:35 PM6 votes

For Ahri, why not make her Q be able to be recast making it return early? It's completely awkward to use when you're in the opponent's face and trying to all in them quickly. Ahri is about punishing her opponent drastically when she charms them so why should she be punished herself (especially since the opponent walks closer to you when charmed so its harder to use your orb and get both hits)?

I think this would be good as it doesn't really buff her since she doesn't do more damage, it just allows her to do it more consistently.

RiotRiot King Cobra7/4/2014, 2:30:15 AM6 votes

Why have there been no moves to give Cassiopeia some QoL changes? I don't think she needs any significant buffs, but why is Ahri prioritized when she's been seen in and outside of competitive play for the past 2 seasons? Cassio has made about 3 appearances in the last 2 seasons combined and one of them was as a "fun" pick on OMG's team in World's.

XJake MasterX7/4/2014, 3:16:07 AM4 votes

Hi i main Lulu support and i would like to talk about her.

A few patches ago when you nerfed lulu mid, you said you felt like you were overnerfing lulu support and that you were going to change her again to improve lulu as a support but since then no changes were made to favor lulu support.

She is still obvious very strong as top or mid laner, so you only acomplished to nerf her as a support.

I feel like her overall kit and cc is amazing and shouldnt be changed because that is what makes lulu.

I believe you should nerf her overall ap ratios on her skills and buff the base damage values a bit.

This would make it so that lulu would be able to be more impactul as a support without being able to stomp at other roles.

I would really love if you could give me an answer on what are riot thoughts about her and if you are planning on changing her soon and what would be your focus when changing her.

Ps: My formating sucks and english is not my mother tongue so dont expect much xD

Im Not Maokai 7/4/2014, 7:16:46 AM1 votes

Why can't we just let Alistair be a jungle? He could be a top tier jungler.