Patch 8.11 Early Look

Riot·May 7, 2018·21 votes·149,350 views

RiotAether and DyQuill here on behalf of the gameplay devs! Everyone's heads-down getting these changes ready, so we'll be your guides through this early look at patch 8.11.

Two patches from now, we're releasing a bunch of changes to marksman items, runes, and stats. While we aren't shipping any champion ability overhauls, these changes add up to a significant shift in item and rune builds. Once everything's live, you'll see more marksman playstyles that aren't "late-game crits or bust".

We're sharing an early preview of those changes today so you have plenty of time to theorycraft. For more traditional dev blog-style context on everything here and on marksmen in general, head to the dev corner.

A quick note on Midseason

The past six months have been a lot to keep up with for you (and a lot to follow up on for us). Last preseason brought us Runes Reforged, the largest update to League gameplay we've ever released in one go. Since then, we've also packed big changes into even-numbered patches—think the AP item overhaul in 8.4 and the Conqueror keystone rune in 8.6—changes that would've normally had to wait for midseason.

Launching a big, flashy feature like Rift Herald or Elemental Drakes on top of all that felt like overkill, so 2018 won't have an uppercase-M Midseason patch. The lowercase-m midseason timeframe will still have big changes like the marksman work we're talking about here, but 8.11 is as big as patches will be until preseason toward the end of the year.

Runes

NEW

Hail of Blades (Domination keystone)

"For quick fights."

Your first three basic attacks against champions in combat gain bonus attack speed. These attacks can exceed the attack speed limit.

Fleet Footwork

"Less safety early."

Less movement speed at early levels
Same healing at levels 1 and 18 but less in-between

Items

updated

Infinity Edge

"Crit-focused marksmen will have to wait longer to scale up."

(B.F. Sword + B.F. Sword)

+Attack Damage

UNIQUE Passive - Razor Sharp: Doubles your Critical Strike Chance.

UNIQUE Passive: A portion of Critical Strike damage is converted to True Damage.

removedNo longer grants Critical Strike Chance.

removedNo longer increases the damage of critical strikes.

Zeal & All Upgrades

"These cost more. Crit chance won't show up as early in lane."

removedCloak of Agility

"Both its upgrades are being reworked, so it no longer has a home. Goodbye, Cloak of Agility!"

NEW

Stormrazor

"Hit hard, then hit fast."

(B.F. Sword + Pickaxe + Dagger)

+Attack Damage

+Attack Speed

UNIQUE Passive: If you haven't attacked recently, your next basic attack will critically strike.

UNIQUE Passive: When you critically strike, gain a short burst of attack speed and movement speed.

updated

Essence Reaver

"Ultimate spell-slinging synergy."

(B.F. Sword + Caulfield's Warhammer)

+Attack Damage

+Cooldown Reduction

+Mana

UNIQUE Passive: Basic attacks refund a portion of your missing mana.

UNIQUE Passive: After casting your ultimate, your next basic attack grants bonus attack speed for a moderate duration. During that time, basic attacks refund a portion of your non-ultimate cooldowns.

removedNo longer grants critical strike chance.

removedBasic attacks no longer refund a portion of maximum mana.

removedNo longer grants cooldown reduction based on critical strike chance.

updated

Lord Dominik's Regards

"Now it punches through base armor, too."

(Last Whisper + Pickaxe)

+Attack Damage

UNIQUE Passive - Last Whisper: Gain a large amount of total armor penetration.

removedNo longer grants increased damage against enemies with more maximum health than you.

Last Whisper

"This also grants total penetration now."

removedGiant Slayer

"Lord Dominik's doesn't need this anymore, so like Cloak of Agility, it's retiring."

Executioner's Calling & Mortal Reminder

"TBD. Stay tuned!"

Blade of the Ruined King

"It's cheaper."

The Bloodthirster

"It's cheaper."

Guardian Angel

"You'll be sturdier while you build this."

Builds out of Chain Vest instead of Cloth Armor
More attack damage
More armor

Maw of Malmortius

"Better stats and a shield scaling nerf marksmen won't care about."

More attack damage
More magic resist
Magic damage shield no longer scales with magic resist

Stats

These numbers vary from champ to champ, but broadly speaking, bot lane marksmen are trading away some lane strength for more power later on. (Quinn, Kindred, and Graves play in other positions, so tuning them around bot lane felt like it'd do more harm than good.)

"Lane fights hurt more, but you won't get blown up as fast later on."

-5 armor
-2 base health regen
Between +6 and +15 base health (champs without poke damage get the bigger numbers)
+6 health growth

"Less AD early, more late."

-4 base attack damage
+0.7 attack damage growth
When 8.11 ships, if you miss last-hitting a minion by 4 or less, we'll give it to you anyway. The training wheels will come off gradually in the patches after.

The 8.11 puzzle has a lot of pieces, but if you've been itching to try new marksman playstyles, this'll be your moment. Let us know what you think the best setups will be!

724 Comments

SmawqqMay 7, 201867 votes

The game will never be balanced with how often they make large changes like this.

ZepshunMay 7, 2018104 votes

That's kind of the point. They make biannual changes striving to improve the game as well as keeping it from getting stale. It's just the nature of a game that has patches.

PrometheSMay 7, 201821 votes

"keeping it from getting stale" with ~140 champs and countless possible strategies? NO, just no.

they're keeping it from getting balanced and that's what's making it stale. even now for most roles the meta is heavily constrained at top level and even for lower levels you have to work 2x as hard or be 2x as good to make a non-meta pick work out as well. let's say someone goes Trundle JG... easy effective, good scaling, good from behind, you go Ekko or Diana or some other shit like Fiddlesticks and Wukong. You're useless by comparison unless you pop off hard. They're useful all game and in all situations. if this game were truly balanced, it would be so much richer, more expressive, more interesting and more fun than any of the changes they can make to shake things up. and the meta would still change anyway but it would do so organically not because 4 more patches happened and now they want to make all your theorycrafted effort and builds useless again.. now yet again you have to find what you enjoy/if anything etc. it's like if someone took your girlfriend every few months and then gave you a random new girl with the same name.

I don't mind the changes if they lead somewhere but I expect them to actually "finish" this game at some point and have balance after that. this game's most successful seasons and its height of popularity I think was probably S4 and they changed it far less during those times. it also felt like you were less dependent on the meta to carry and win. now even in mid MMR I have to go fairly meta picks or undiscovered but strong picks or I can't carry. and in general, being so team dependent creates a cancerous environment. no shit people rage when they feel that that they're so dependent on others for their own performance. give people the tools to hard carry any game if good enough and no one would bother berating their team. they'd realize that it's all up to them so it's just a waste of energy. now, you really need your team and even the best jg picks are team reliant. it's horrible and feels unfair but maybe it's because I wanted league to be a skill game more than a team game.

YareYareÐazeMay 8, 201810 votes

Have you ever heard of Arcsecond?! He’s a challenger 700 lp Ekko jg main with a 70% winrate. Even on top of that I main Jhin mid and constantly win lane and carry my team in majority of my games by putting in the same effort as I would with any other champion.

ToruuuMay 9, 20189 votes

exactly in my opinion this game right now is probably the most "balanced" its been since i started playing in 2011

SpyglassMay 7, 201816 votes

While generally I'd agree with you and point out that the point of many many of the changes in league are just to promote diversity and change without seeking short-term balance at all, in this case I don't agree.

This patch is absolutely addressing a real problem, and should lead to a better overall balance. We probably won't see the full impact until they get some work in on some problem support classes, but even with just this, ADCs builds are going to slow down significantly (at least crit ones are) - and that should cause a meta shift away from win bot win game.

UD Blue HenMay 7, 201854 votes

Would Hail of Blades work on Darius to achieve really fast hemorrhage stacks?

lumbergiantMay 7, 2018149 votes

I like where this is going but I also don't like where this is going

[darius-angry]

FiddlerMay 7, 2018

we just had jhin fixed and now hes going to need some work with these changes. UD Blue Hen; Have u not looked at lethal tempo for Darius? its pretty much the same thing. I wouldn't play it with him but if u want stack of DOTS then there u go. you dont have to wait for the next patch. Riot, Will lethal tempo be removed? this new rune seems to be too similar to lethal tempo. At the same time how does having Dark harvest and Electrocute in the same rune category make sense? there isn't much point to harvesting Dark souls if Electrocute is adaptive based of of your overall ap or ad ratios.

ShahamutMay 7, 201823 votes

The two runes function very differently and have different purposes.

Hail of Blades (think burst) is a quick 3 autos, then you dont have a keystone. It will be great for trades in lane, or for bursty folks who only want three autos (think Ekko, Diana, etc).

If you are building for later game and longer fights,Lethal Tempo is better. It has a short ramp up time, but you should be able to get more than just 3 sped up auto attacks off in a team fight.

xObiWanJabroniMay 9, 20187 votes

I am so excited for something other than electrocute for burst damage

J0YORD3RMay 7, 201833 votes

Mordekaiser Seems like his kind of keystone

warpenguin555May 7, 201849 votes

Stormrazor is going to get abused so hard. Good thing I already permaban zed

MajorDangerMay 7, 20186 votes

[deleted]

BlackTecnoMay 8, 20189 votes

Holy shit I don't need to build crit on my Armor Pen Jungle Quinn anymore.

RedomicMay 7, 201841 votes

You might as well delete Yasuo

BøneDaddyMay 7, 201832 votes

They're buffing yas with this

IAmTheSorrowMay 7, 201837 votes

Hail of blades top kench. TahmKench Fast food at its finest!

JynsinMay 7, 201835 votes

Putting an end to the critical strike RNG era of League is a great step in the right direction. Fighting someone with 10-70% crit chance is just a gambling play and has no place in such a fine tuned and mechanical game like League. I'm really glad Riot is addressing this.

R47 K1NGMay 7, 201811 votes

70% is not gambling lol, that's reliable. 10-40% is gambling

ShinjusukeMay 7, 201826 votes

You need to drop the crit chance on all finished crit items by 5% and shift that power elsewhere in each of those items.

The current options do not allow for 100% crit chance builds without going over and wasting gold, and so there will be no net change in the frequency of RNG-sucess crit builds.

IE + Crit Item + Crit Item = 100% crit chance needs to be an option. It isn't now with all the 30% crit items.

Currently your only options are

IE + Crit Item + Crit Item = 120% crit chance, or

IE + Crit Item + Stormrazor or Essence Reaver = 60% crit chance, which does absolutely nothing to change the status quo or the problem of overly frontloaded ADC damage.

Give us a 20% crit chance item, or make the 30% crit chance items only provide 25% crit chance, so 100% crit chance slots neatly into builds.

Otherwise, nobody is going to waste gold on that extra unused 20% crit chance by building IE + 2 crit chance items, which means RNG Crits still decide way too much.

DapperWolfMay 7, 201821 votes

{quoted}

You need to drop the crit chance on all finished crit items by 5% and shift that power elsewhere in each of those items.

The current options do not allow for 100% crit chance builds without going over and wasting gold, and so there will be no net change in the frequency of RNG-sucess crit builds.

IE + Crit Item + Crit Item = 100% crit chance needs to be an option. It isn't now with all the 30% crit items.

Currently your only options are

IE + Crit Item + Crit Item = 120% crit chance, or

IE + Crit Item + Stormrazor or Essence Reaver = 60% crit chance, which does absolutely nothing to change the status quo or the problem of overly frontloaded ADC damage.

Give us a 20% crit chance item, or make the 30% crit chance items only provide 25% crit chance, so 100% crit chance slots neatly into builds.

Otherwise, nobody is going to waste gold on that extra unused 20% crit chance by building IE + 2 crit chance items, which means RNG Crits still decide way too much.

I'd say thats kind of the point.

It seems like they are trying to discourage people from going more than one zeal item with the 30% crit chance + IE and make it so that you need to waste gold on stats if you want a 100% crit.

It just seems like riots way of saying "stop building more than one zeal item", will it work? that remains to be seen

mvmlegoMay 7, 201812 votes

I don't see why they'd be against 100% crit chance, though. If marksmen can viably and reliably 100% crit chance, then it effectively takes away the RNG that a lot of players have been complaining about.

JoshtheliberatorMay 7, 201824 votes

This is a Master Yi main's favorite dream, items that are just like his ult [slayer-pantheon-thumbs] Let the fun begin

SmokityHerbmanMay 7, 201813 votes

As a Master Yi main with half a million exp on the champ I can say I'm super pumped. Finally an AD+AS item other than Tri-Force.

grarrrgMay 7, 201863 votes

item 3153 [cass-cry]

PsiGuardMay 7, 201848 votes

item 3124 [sg-janna]

RaveolutionMay 7, 201813 votes

Seriously, Master Yi wins whole games on his own right now 5v1 the moment he finishes this item.

TransferToKoreaMay 7, 201833 votes

item 3384 [sg-soraka]

XurrealMay 7, 201824 votes

Fairwell, item 1018 .

Say hello to Atma's Impailer and Heart of Gold when you get there for me.

Also, I think you may wanna take a look at the Master Yi video PantsAreDragon posted on youtube this morning. It's about Essence Reaver. yeah.

Tri1StarMay 7, 201815 votes

basically making true damage extremely accessible now

BonipherusMay 8, 20185 votes

first cdr and now true damage. nothing can go wrong.

KeshaunMay 7, 201815 votes

Really wish they stopped adding more true damage. Building little armor doesn’t really help against conquerer/infinity edge anymore since that is like 40% true damage or something if they stack. Since critical strikes do not deal more damage, the % converted to true isn’t that big of a deal anymore, but when facing those infinity edge & conquerer users, tabis isn’t even useful at that point for a carry like champ. I do like that they’re nerfing the price on zeal items though so it takes a bit longer to spike.

TransferToKoreaMay 7, 20185 votes

yah Vayne was unique as the "tank shredder" or the "true damage champion", but now look at all these new true damage items; runes. [vayne-pose]

Link McNootMay 7, 201815 votes

How is the new Infinity Edge going to sync with Ashe ? Specifically I'm looking at her passive, will every hit deal true damage or just the "crits". Will the same portion of a "crit" be converted to true damage, or maybe is she just gonna get left behind and not deal any true damage? As a long time Ashe player I must know these things.

xcurssedgunsxMay 7, 201814 votes

tbh after looking at the patch notes some things like getting rid of any crit on ie is bad ideas like that's one of the oldest items with best stats and the reasoning to use it for for the crit advantage now we have to build something alot less awesome just to get by seems legit.....

RRagerMay 7, 201883 votes

IE is supposed to be like Deathcap for mages. Currently a lot of champs can rush IE first for big payout. This way it becomes a better second or third item that scales better because of the true damage

Jakal176May 7, 20186 votes

disagree.

Jakal176May 7, 20186 votes

crit is an rng based system ie can be really good or really useless at early points in game its all about rng mate

WHO IS TIREDMay 7, 201835 votes

That's not how the game is supposed to work though.

MailrosMay 7, 201813 votes

As long as this makes win conditions other than "Get your adc fed" more viable than the changes are good. Adcs have been way more powerful than any other role for ages. It's really time for some parity.

LelantoskMay 7, 20187 votes

When are you going to tune WW's Base AD stat back, he wasn't overly strong in base ad in the beginning, and now he just feels underwhelming in all phases of the game and Im rather upset about that

edwsfhgjMay 7, 201835 votes

lol the bias, WW has been top winrate for months while being braindead easy

WraecIastMay 8, 20186 votes

you'll see more marksman playstyles that aren't "late-game crits or bust".

Makes Crit chance double on Infinite edge. Makes another item that grants attack speed and movement speed when whenever you crit. Plus, gives you a 100% chance to crit when you haven't AA'd a while.

W h a t ?

iiSeyMay 7, 20185 votes

GOD, THINK ABOUT YASUO! How can every single champion in the game have Yasuo's passive? WITHOUT EVEN GETTING THE 10% CRIT DMG REDUCE! like gawd. No for real though, i really hope these IE changes don't get through, if they do, damn Riot, "Every champion passive is unique" my ass.

grarrrgMay 7, 201814 votes

{quoted} How can every single champion in the game have Yasuo's passive? ... "Every champion passive is unique"

??? Aatrox Anivia Zac item 3026

Ashe item 3022

item 3151

Cassiopeia item 3009

DrMundo Garen item 3083

I can keep going.

FortColorsMay 8, 20188 votes

Aatrox 's passive even has the same animation as item 3026 LOL

DarknesTheDragonMay 7, 20183 votes

WHY WOULD YOU KILL LORDS REGARDS! THATS THE CORE ITEM ON ALL MY AD CARRIES ITS THE ONLY THING THAT LETS ME FIGHT TANKS THE CHANGES YOU MADE COULDVE EASILY BEEN IN MORTAL REMINDER WHY NOT JUST TWEAK THAT?!

Teemo MidMay 7, 201844 votes

Can I ask what you're thinking when you think the item gets killed?

New Recipe: [Last Whisper + Pickaxe + 625 gold]
Total cost increased from 2600 to 2800
Attack Damage lowered from 50 to 40
Armor Penetration changed from [35% bonus armor penetration] to [35% total armor penetration]
Giant Slayer passive removed.

TOTAL ARMOR PEN IGNORE. It means you do more damage to squishy champs and tanks altogether(since tanks often have decent-high base armor).

Kaisa FeederMay 8, 20185 votes

So its old/pre-rework last whisper (pickaxe + LS = 35% total armor pen + 40 AD) with the price nerfed by 500 (2300 -> 2800). Considering BF sword gives 40 AD for 1300 gold, you're basically spending 1500 gold for the armor pen passive, pushing the item to a 5/6th slot situational item for its ridiculously poor gold efficiency.