Tonight's red post collection features a heads up on an update to the PBE health bar rework that's currently testing on the PBE, a Q&A round up regarding the upcoming preseason jungle, runes, and game flow changes, a comment on why the TTL/Dom vision items were nerfed in 3.13, and IronStylus musing about a Caitlyn VU and discussing visual upgrades in general.

PBE Health Bar Updates

Rayven



"Thanks for the huge response to our last thread. We are back with another round of iteration.

Recap of our Goals:

• Enable instantaneous identification of self, ally, and enemy

• Elevate vital information

• Move towards unified player views for colorblind and non-colorblind

What's New?

In trying to meet the above goals, we’ve had to balance functionality and style. We think this iteration strikes that balance well – firmly grounded in the LoL universe by drawing cues from the surrounding HUD and hitting our clarity goals.

Look for the update soon on the PBE and leave us more feedback below.

Story time:

• If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a Rocket Grab you probably know that moment of panic where you try to figure out, “Where am I?”

• In a team fight you may have had a split second of confusion – unable to differentiate between friend or foe in the scrum.

• When you’re dueling the enemy Ashe and your eyes are locked onto her Health Bar, you need to know how close you are to death with only a glance so you can pop Barrier at the right moment.

• Maybe you’ve watched a stream or LCS match and then jump into your own game where things look a little different.

When we approached this Health Bar rework these are the issues we were looking to tackle and improve. They boil down to: identification, info priority, and unified views."





Preseason Round Up - Game Flow, Jungle, Out of Game Strategy

Riot Pwyff

"Round 2 of our roundup of preseason communications (say that three times fast)! We've been collecting your questions from around the globe to shed some more light on our upcoming preseason changes. Keep in mind that during this time our specific changes are still being worked on, but the core philosophies for this new preseason will remain about the same.

If you haven't had the chance to check out our recent preseason posts, this global roundup covers our biggest questions on:

Game Flow Jungle Out of Game Strategy We've cleaned up some questions to make them more concise, but we've given a little hat tip to the players around the world who asked the questions. Let's get on with it!

Game Flow Tower Rewards Q: How does tower kill participation work? Is it based off of damage done to the tower?A: Nope! Tower kill participation rewards are based off anything to do with proximity to the tower, damage to tower, or even healing / buffing a teammate who destroys a tower. If you do anything of the above within a long window of time, you will get credit for participating in the destruction of that tower and you will get a split of the local tower gold (150g).

Q: How is local gold split? Is it 150g per champion who participated, or 150g split amongst the participants?A: Tower gold is split evenly between the players who destroy the tower (not granted on a per champion participation). In other words, it's either 150 local gold for a single destroyer, 75g for two, 50g for three, etc.

Q: What about teams that try to "game" the system by stacking all tower gold on a single player? Are you concerned with that?A: Not particularly. If you really want to optimize the system so that your marksman or mage is always taking a tower down solo for the extra 75g (and that's all the gold they miss out on if they destroy it solo versus with a teammate), it requires additional risk taking. Not only does the supporting champion need to leave the lane well beforehand to "clear" their participation, most methods leave towers up longer, giving the enemy team time to react and defend accordingly.

Q: What happens if minions destroy the tower and nobody is near (or has dealt any damage to the tower)? [makun]

A: If a tower falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make a sound? But seriously, if nobody is around, you'll lose the local gold (which is about 20% of the total reward). That said the time window for participation is pretty forgiving.

Baron Buff Q: Are you afraid of the new Baron buff being a little too powerful for teams to close out games if they just rush the enemy base with Baron buff after winning a team fight? [Luzac]

A: First, we've currently reverted the Baron buff changes because they weren't entirely doing what we wanted. We'll revisit it eventually, but just to give a heads up here.

Second, we've actually found that without that massive stat boost on baron, defending teams often had a much better chance of actually winning a fight or at least taking out a few key members of the opposition.

Game Start Time Reduction Q: If you shorten the time between minions spawning and the start of the game, doesn't that reduce the amount of level 1 strategies teams can use?A: Not particularly! With these changes, every level 1 strategy should work just fine - the goal of this change was to reduce the amount of down time a lot of teams had, even after they got into position. We want to leave options open for level 1 strategies, but not give so much time that teams can accommodate for and change their strategies a number of times before the game even starts.

Q: How will the shorter start times affect junglers like Shaco or Maokai who need a little more setup time in their jungle? [WildVariety]A: You'll be able to reach the camps to set up. The current timing is 1:35 for the buff camps, so there's plenty of time to get there to start trapping.

Jungle Q: If the jungle gives experience and gold comparable to solo lanes, won't more farm-oriented "hyper carry" junglers, like Jax, become more dominant? [ 倪、藐 视 ] A: The tradeoff here is basically asking if your team is willing or able to keep the game close enough so that the jungler can just stay and farm. Having a jungler presence in the early game can often decide the lane, and opponents will become more skilled at reading which junglers want to stay in the jungle versus those that want to roam more. We'll be keeping an eye here but teams will also learn to adapt to different kinds of opposing junglers.

Q: Is it going to get harder for junglers at early game? His teammates won't be able to help him and his Smite must be used for the first camp. [ 耒 綄 戌の歌 ] A: Our approach here was to keep the jungle relatively the same in terms of difficulty but with a few changes - specifically with Smite being on a lower cooldown so that farm junglers can use it more often and don't feel like they need to "hold it" for when a major objective (Baron / Dragon) is up.

Q: With the new bonus experience for players who are behind, is it viable for teams to "swap" their jungler and laner to get their laners back into the game? [IndridCipher]A: Strategies like this are examples of good and creative teamwork. It'd be great if this happens regularly!

Q: What do you think about double junglers? They can invade camps and threaten the solo lane as well. [ 右手函心 + Jaco]A: Another cool strategy! We're really excited to see what teams come up with this season, but we've already seen some double jungle compositions attempted.

Q: What happens to the average jungle monster levels if you have an AFK in your game? [CaliforniaRoII]A: AFKs will be excluded from the averaging equation.

Runes Q: If you change a rune completely or delete it, what happens to the rune? [FireStorm921]A: You won't lose everything! If we delete any runes, well first use refunds for them. If we change a rune (like change a seal into a glyph), then the most likely follow-up would be to refund / delete the old version, then create a new version at the same price. We don't fully know exactly what we'll do here, but we'll talk about our plans once we have everything laid out.

Q: Quintessences will have no focus on offense / defense / utility, right? [TinoLP]A: Correct! They get to be anything and ideally would be equally good across all categories so that you have a real choice in what you want for your champion / build / playstyle.

Q: How will Quintessences match up to normal runes? [vantharion]A: Unless we have a reason to do otherwise, we'd like to move Quintessences to more of a "3 quints = 9 non-quints" system so that players don't have to math out whether it's better to take a certain number of marks and quints versus a different set of quints and marks to maximize their gains.

Q: Are you worried that changing flat armor / magic resistance (the biggest culprits) will lead to more early game all-ins to take advantage of defensive weaknesses? [Gogglor]A: The current plan is to readjust champion base armor / magic resistance to account for this. Part of the reason why armor seals are required right now is because champions are just too frail at level 1 (most notably in competitive play). We're very aware of this concern!

Q: Will any rune changes also affect the old seasonal runes (Halloween, etc)? [Kuri001]A: If the standard version of the rune is changed, then the seasonal rune will share the same fate."

Why nerf Dom/TTL Vision items

ManWolfAxeBoss

"The reason cast range was so greatly reduced is that there was no gameplay previously (same goes for the reveal length). It was 1200 units cast range, meaning the splash effect went even further. At 800 range I feel that it actually requires some thought now.



All the vision items are still cost effective, just not completely insane anymore. It will take time to adjust, but vision control is still incredibly important."

More Future Cait VU & General VU Discussion

IronStylus

"This actually would be Relaunch's biggest reason to approach a Caitlyn VU if it ever happened. It's not so much that Caityn is "bad" in her current form, it's that the game, the world she inhabits and the characters related to her, have evolved past her, making her feel a bit dated. Nail on the head there with new characters being fleshed out, leaving some of the older champions feeling like they don't quite fit as the IP and visual styling of the world solidifies.

This sort of thing is kind of what I might refer to as "stylistic balancing" or "thematic balancing". Matching the art style (proportions, materials, technology) and the theme (intended fantasy, personality, story) with the world of League as we tighten it.



Personally, these are my favorite to do because it means we're working with something that's really strong, and it mainly equates to us making it stronger!"

IronStylus

"Good question. Those types of VU's are easier to pepper in and possibly slow burn on, so that we can stagger them in between straight up Relaunches or Rework/VU's. Both of those are a bit more daunting than straight up VU's. They require a lot of design support and are a little more subjective.

A VU like Cait, and that's not saying she's up for one anytime soon, would be medium-low priority and might follow a VU/Relaunch/Rework/etc that was more intensive. So, hypothetically, let's say we throw someone like Sion into the pipeline, who needs a **** ton of support from all over the place, someone like Cait might be good to follow because it's more craft/polish/quality/new-coat-of-paint tweaking than full on blowing up the building and reconstructing it.



Ideally though, we want to get the biggest challenges out of the way fast, but that can really burn out a team fast, doing one resource intensive relaunch after another."

IronStylus

"No problem! It's been a pleasure to answer what I can.

Let's see. Honestly we have a lot on our plate. I'd say we have at least 30 big ones on our hit list. That's not to say that we're going to crank through those in order from "worst" to "least worst", it's going to be a process and a staggered one at that. Throwing the more subtle quality/theme based VU's into the mix with the more ambitious ones.



A lot of us see opportunities too. So, while something might not be screaming for attention for quality's sake, we have ideas about existing champions in terms of art, design and story. There also might be times where an important balance change, or design rework, could prompt something to get expedited. Maybe we have a bundle of content to release which could really be served by giving an older character some much needed love. Relaunches of opportunity, we've called them in the past.



Lots of variables are factored in. The list is honestly surprisingly long, but that's just because the current quality bar is so high. We also feel that relaunches are a great way to provide content that we didn't have the capacity, bandwidth, or ability to do before. Champions and skins are of course staples, but relaunches have become an important part in keeping the content pool fresh!"

Continue reading for more, straight from the Riot forums!The Health Bar rework that's currently being tested on the PBE has received an update!Here'swith more information Just as he did before,has prepared a quick roundup of some of the most popular questions and answers on the recent preseason Game Flow, Jungle, and Out of Game StrategyWhen asked why Hextech Sweeper and other vision items on Dom/TTL had their cast range was was reduced in patch 3.13 Continuing to muse on what he would do with a Caitlyn visual upgrade,When asked if how the relaunch team values "stylistic balancing" vs champs who are "just plan bad" but need VUs,When asked for an overall impression of how many champions "badly" needa visual update or some work,