The PBE has been updated! As we kick off the 7.17 PBE cycle , today's update includes our latest champion Ornn, the Fire Below the Mountain, new Star Guardian skins for Ahri, Ezreal, Miss Fortune, Soraka, Syndra, Neo PAX Sivir, new summoner icons, new emotes, and much more!

Continue reading for more information!

Continue reading for more information!





New Ward Skin

Mimi Ward

640 RP





New Horizon Ward

640 RP

New Summoner Icons













New Game Mode - Invasion

NOTE : Does not appear to be up for testing today (yet?). Full preview article pruned to save space - click here.] : Does not appear to be up for testing today (yet?).





DefaultChar

Emote Assets

NOTE

Here's a look at all the assets for 22 upcoming emotes included in today's update. These will be part of the upcoming emote over haul

Check out the recent Introducing Emotes article for more on upcoming emote changes, including a new emote UI, new ways to use emotes, and more.

Miscellaneous

Star Guardian Ahri Summoner's Rift Announcer Pack





Balance Changes * NOTE *: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, & experimental changes. Be aware that what you see below may be relative to other changes earlier this cycle! These are not official notes.



Champions

Devastating Charge's (E) buff duration will be refunded for the time that Hecarim is in Onslaught of Shadow's (R) charge.

buff duration will be refunded for the time that Hecarim is in charge. Onslaught of Shadows (R): Flee duration changed from 1 second to [0.75 to 1.5 seconds based on charge distance.]

Howling Gale (Q) cooldown increased to from 14/13/12/11/10 to 17/16/15/14/13.

Zephyr (W):

Damage lowered from 60/115/170/225/280 to 60/105/150/195/240.



Mana cost lowered from 40/50/60/70/80 to 0 at all ranks.



[ New Effect ] "Damaging a champion with Zephyr restores mana and reduces Janna's cooldowns"

] "Damaging a champion with Zephyr restores mana and reduces Janna's cooldowns"

Mana Restore: 40/50/60/70/80 mana







Cooldown reduction: 2 seconds

Eye of the Storm (E)

Mana cost increased from 70/80/90/100/110 to 90/100/110/120/130



Cooldown increased from 10 seconds to 13 seconds.

Sunlight (Passive) :

: Duration lowered from 3.5 seconds to 1.5 seconds.



Damage based on level increased from [20-105] to [30-166]

Shield of Daybreak (Q) cooldown lowered from 9/8/7/6/5 to 5 at all ranks.





Tumble (Q) :

: [ not sure on this, effect not mentioned on tooltip - Q enhanced auto applies two stacks of W - THIS IS A BUG, WILL BE GONE IN NEXT PBE PATCH ]

- Q enhanced auto applies two stacks of W - ]

Bonus damage no longer crits.

Silver Bolts (W) :

: Bonus True Damage increased from 6/7.5/9/10.5/12% to to 6/8/10/12/14%



Minimum Damage changed from 40/60/80/100/120 to 50/65/80/95/110

Final Hour (R):

New Effect: "While under the effects of Final Hours, Vayne is revitalized when enemy champions she has damaged recently are killed, healing for 20% of their maximum health



Vayne must have damaged an enemy champion withing 3 seconds to earn healing."

Attack Speed increased from 0.644 to .658.

increased from 0.644 to .658. Living Shadow (W) duration increased from 4.5 to 5.5 seconds!

Context & Notes

BBBBBEEEEEECCCCCCCCCAAAAAUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSEEEEEEEE con-text rocks. con-text rocks.

Meddler

"Hi folks,

Usual Disclaimers

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped.

If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler

Azir

We're still working on the Azir update, with a focus on reducing his ranges to give him more meaningful weaknesses, especially during the laning phase, and then putting power elsewhere. That's looking promising, and still feels very Azir like, though we've got some concern it may not necessarily go far enough. Next step is getting a bunch of really experienced Azir players in to the office for some testing, see what their experiences (and the experiences of people playing against them) are like.

Kayn

There's a change in 7.16 that makes it so that DoTs don't stack Kayn's passive extremely fast, which was allowing him to access his transformation much quicker than intended. That will probably have a minimal effect on jungle Kayn, but might hit lane Kayn pretty hard. If that's the case we'll be going back soon and taking a look at lane Kayn and whether we should be giving him some power in some other way. We've always expected Kayn to be a good pick as a jungler given the way much of his kit works, from what we've seen so far laning Kayn also looks like it might be balanceable alongside jungle as well though. Can't make any promises yet, but going to be digging into that more, especially if the fore mentioned change has a large impact.

7.17 Balance changes

Brief context on a number of upcoming changes. Note there's other stuff as well coming for 7.17 too of course.

Draven Nerf - Currently looking at the passive, in particular considering more stacks being lost on death (greater difference in performance between a Draven who's cashing those in well and someone who's dying more).

Hecarim Buff - Testing having the R fear duration scale with distance traveled, rewarding longer and riskier R casts. Something like 0.75-1.5s, rather than the current flat 1s.

Leona Buff - Trying Sunlight dealing more damage, but having a shorter duration. Leona struggles especially in higher MMR games, so looking at something that rewards good allied coordination. Also looking at a Q CD buff.

Janna Nerf - Removing overall power and looking to add a bit more skill expression to her kit. At present we're trying higher CDs, with W reducing CDs/restoring mana on champion hit to reward more aggressive/risky use of that. Not yet sure if that'll be the final direction though.

Zed Buff - Zed's underperforming a bit, with the exception of periods where any of his core items are overtuned. His damage is still pretty solid though, so we're looking at other buffs instead, with a W duration increase (4.5s to 5.0s) currently on the cards.

Ornn's Upgraded Items

Brief note on these. Any team should get some decent value from having Ornn's upgraded items available to them, some combinations of champions will certainly benefit more than others though. That's something we believe's appropriate with Ornn. All champs have synergies with others, and in Ornn's case some of the 'who do I want to pick in combination with Ornn' decision revolves around those upgraded items. We'll likely adjust which exact items get upgraded at various points, and what stats they give, goal isn't to add enough so that every single champ can get a really good choice for themselves though."

Squad5

"Oh, just to add - for Ornn's item's we'll be adding in Wooglet's for TT. Not in yet though."

ricklessabandon

"double W procs on tumble-empowered autos

that's a bug -- will be gone tomorrow"

Along with the new Star Guardian recruits, we also have newandward skins!Several new summoner icons included in today's update, including a Star Guardian set, an honor themed set of five, and anicon. No details on availability yet.Check out's post from earlier today for more info onWhile the new mode isn't enabled for testing just yet, here's a look at a few assets included in today's deploy:Art assets (LCU + Loading Screen):Here'swith his quick gameplay thoughts for August 8 , covering, and more 7.17 balance changes:2)has mentioned will be added for TT in a future update.3) comments onQ change: