This morning's red post collection includes a look at the August 10th patch update, Scruffy and Meddler noting Poppy's update will include a new passive and R, Repertoir commenting they are planning follow up changes for Miss Fortune after her 5.14 changes, discussion on several champions and the Juggernaut updates, and more!

Table of Contents

August 10th Patch Update

" Fiora balance changes

8/10/2015: Fiora's update launched in a bit of a weaker state than we had anticipated. We're sharpening her up with a few straightforward buffs.

General

HEALTH GROWTH STAT - 80 ⇒ 92

80 ⇒ 92 ATTACK DAMAGE GROWTH STAT - 2.5 ⇒ 3.3

Q - Lunge

COOLDOWN - 18/16/14/12/10 seconds ⇒ 16/14/12/10/8 seconds

18/16/14/12/10 seconds ⇒ 16/14/12/10/8 seconds COOLDOWN ON ENEMY HIT - 7.2/6.4/5.6/4.8/4 seconds ⇒6.4/5.6/4.8/4/3.2 seconds

7.2/6.4/5.6/4.8/4 seconds ⇒6.4/5.6/4.8/4/3.2 seconds COST - 25/30/35/40/45 mana ⇒ 20/25/30/35/40 mana

W - Riposte

COOLDOWN - 21/19.5/18/16.5/15 seconds ⇒ 19/18/17/16/15 seconds

8/10/2015

Yasuo

BUGFIX - Fixed a weird instance where Yasuo's Q - Steel Tempest could hit enemies in random spots of the map

Frost Queen's Claim

COOL IT - Fixed a bug where the cooldown of Frost Queen's Claim's active effect was resetting improperly"

Koalifier

"Unfortunately the tooltips won't be updated until the next patch :( We decided not to include new tooltips because that would have required players to download a new patch, and the base functionality of her spells is still the same."

Miss Fortune Follow Up

Repertoir

"Quote:

Are there anymore plans to follow up on Miss Fortune after her recent update?

Yes. Statikk's on it, but we don't have anything ready to talk about just yet."

"Quote:

So you guys are looking to improve her/give her some buffs?

Really want to focus on hitting her identity as some kind of run-and-gun aoe marksman as far as I know, but that's about all I know for now."

"Quote:

Run-and-gun? With her cast times and channeled ult, and mobility that turns off the moment a fight starts?

Your apprehension makes sense, and while she's unlikely to become the 'mobility marksman' or anything like that, we can do lots of different stuff with cast times and strut tweaks to get closer to that feel."

"Quote:

one thing that frustrates me about MF is that it feels like her Ult does garbage damage. If i'm understanding her abilities right, it's meant to stack impure shots, which then makes her autos better? That's all well and good, but then why have such a long channeled ult that does so little damage when i can take Graves and do MORE damage in a much shorter burst, all on a much safer champion?

just my 2 cents

When we first started talking about MF and what we might want to do for her, we had all these ideas, and Scruffy stepped in and just said "Guys, seriously, just double her ult's damage and go from there."

Now, Statikk didn't do exactly that, but it at least gives an idea of where our heads are at with her."

Repertoir

"Double-Up is unlikely to change outside of numbers tweaks."

Poppy Champion Update to include new passive & R

Riot Scruffy

"Her old ultimate is not staying sorry to say. There is something to be said for how unique it is but the amount of frustration/confusion/abusive edge cases that it adds to the game outweighs the amount of fun/interesting gameplay that it brings.

Hopefully the new ult we have in the works will be much more exciting and interesting while not bringing with it so many negative costs. Wait and see just a short while longer and let us know what you think of it when it's done."

Scruffy

"we're keeping a few other things from her current kit (E being a big one, also her "low health tankiness")."

"Quote

ok but you also said in the past that that Ultimate was the reason you couldn't buff her lane and other things. So now please confirm that removing it you can buff her base stats (MR per levels and mana above all) and give her some sustain and wave clear

Can confirm. With the new and healthy kit her laning, mana costs, ability to CS can be significantly buffed."

Meddler

"We'll be replacing Poppy's passive. We are thinking about keeping a ittle bit of 'tough when low on health' on the kit though, just in a much more apparent and balanceable way."

"Quote:

To me she's this little tenacious yordle ball of hate, will that still be present or is she becoming just another bruiser? We're aiming to preserve her personality - determined, heroic, sincere etc.

Must admit 'ball of hate' isn't the vibe I get off Poppy at present, 'ball of stubborness', 'ball of determination', 'ball of smash' and so on being the sort of stuff I associate with Poppy. Curious as to other people's thoughts though as to which few words you'd use to sum up Poppy's personality overall?"

Taric Champion Update discussion

Repertoir

"Taric's design work was actually finished early this year, but he's getting the full deal as far as updates go: model, animations, effects, sounds, lore, icons, gameplay.

He'll be a Sion-level rework, and he should probably come late this year or early next year.

I did his game design work, so if you hate it when it hits PBE, feel free to let me know then."

IronStylus

"Trying to. It's an interesting balance, and one not without its inherent dangers. A lot of people have attachment to Taric for various reasons. Since he's such an old asset, there's more space for individuals to project their fantasy onto him.

Expectation is different in everyone's eyes, even internally. I and other artists have been working on him for a while also. We've gone through LOTS of iterations and are still probably a little ways out from settling on something solid. We have some cool ideas for just what is "gem magic", how it manifests, and what makes Taric Taric. It's been a journey, that's for sure.

Right now we're hoping to have his concept locked later this month, or sometime next month. Not sure at all about release, since we've got some other large projects in the pipeline now we might not hit the end of the year for him, but here's hoping!"

Repertoir on Quinn

Repertoir

"I am actually actively doing some work on Quinn. One of the things I want to address is that Harrier just seems like it screws me over when playing her sometimes. We're supposed to be a dynamic duo. Please mark more useful targets, Valor. Please stop taking your time to mark things, Valor. And Quinn, maybe people would take your attacks seriously if they felt like they were aiming to injure someone.

That's my general attitude on Quinn, anyway.

We're not at the point yet where I can discuss full details, but they're high up on my personal radar."

"Hi Tygger7, thanks for the thoughts on Quinn.

Quinn is a bit of an oddball, in that identifying what lane she belongs in isn't an easy task. However, being an adc and being played in a solo lane are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as we have seen from some other guys like Ezreal, Varus, and occasionally Corki being played in solo lanes.

If the meta were ever to shift away from marksman in a duo lane, Quinn's value would probably be a lot higher, but that hasn't been the case for quite a long time, so it's hard to say with certainty if that's ever going to come back.

It would probably be the safest thing for us to figure out what is unique and/or cool about Quinn and see how we can amplify that and make it something useful that teams care about having. If we could make "ranged carry that becomes melee carry" provide a different output that you wouldn't just get from another melee carry, then that would probably serve the character well. If we couldn't, we'd probably have to look to other facets of Quinn to emphasize as her cool and uniquely powerful thing(s)."

Repertoir

"I've mentioned it in some other threads, but I can leave it here as well :)

I'm currently finishing up the Juggernauts release, as well as starting up some Quinn stuff and waiting for the Champion Update team to be ready to go into production on Taric in the next few months.

I'll probably also have some Garen/Skarner follow-up to do in the next month or so.

Aside from that, I'll have maybe one other main project to work on in the next few months, but I don't really know what it is yet.

Meddler could probably speak better to larger scope stuff than individual projects, but as an individual contributor, that's about all for me for now :D"

Talon Passive Discussion

Riot Scruffy

nothing is planned at the moment

"Quote:

I would like to know if there are any plans to give him something more meaningful. Ever since his last nerf there hasnt been any mention of him. If anything is the name of his E going to be changed because it doesnt fit the ability anymore.

Not repertoir but I agree that Talon's passive is pretty lackluster in both satisfaction and just how interesting it is compared to some of the stuff we can do now.

No plans for just a passive rework on him though as he is probably a champ that we would want to take on all at once. Build some more unique identity into the character, fix some of his one dimensional play, and create more clear opportunities for him outskilling his opponent and vice versa."

Scruffy

"No timeline to give, we haven't started him yet. But when it comes to assassins Akali and Talon are probably our top 2 in terms of "could be so much cooler" with a rework.

We will let you know when we are working on him and what to expect."

Meddler

"Quote:

When I asked Ezreal on his AMA page a few years ago about Talon's passive, he said Hephestopheles's intention with Talon's passive was to make his autoattacks mean something to his gameplay rather than just his spells. It isn't really a full success on that part, but that's what Heph's intentions were, and I doubt he is going to let his coworkers change that part of his champion without his permission (assuming he still works there.)

Giving Talon a reason to auto attack a bit more's a solid goal for a passive on him. Very with you that it's not accomplishing that at present though, it's not core enough to his play pattern in terms of its contribution, his own ability to set it up or his capability to auto attack for an extended period.

As a side note Hephestopheles does indeed still work at Riot. Original developer intent's something we like to refer to since it can offer useful insights into how to improve a champion and we'll certainly tap Hephestopheles for his thoughts when doing work on Talon at some point. Working on a champion puts you in a great position to help maintain and develop them after they go out, it doesn't mean you continue to control everything about them based off your personal preferences though. Doing what's right for the character/game is the most important thing and means that if we grab Hephestopheles to chat about changing Talon his response is almost certainly going to be something along the lines of 'awesome, how can we make him better?'."

Repertoir

"Actually, I think an auto attack passive makes a lot of sense on Talon. That isn't to say his current passive is very good or fun, however. As you've mentioned above, Talon only has one real spell (maybe E does too if you're fast enough?) that triggers his passive, which (again as you've mentioned), for such a measly reward, just leaves it feeling like it's not even there in most cases.



It would be pretty cool if we could figure out a way to modify his passive in such a way that it felt like there were good, rewarding payouts to doing it correctly, because give its current state, satisfaction really just doesn't seem all that possible."

"Sorry, I wasn't very clear about one part of my response, and that's that I think he would feel and play better with a passive that didn't suggest to him to build Attack Speed to optimize it, but more something that emphasized one significantly stronger attack rather than several slightly stronger attacks."

Continued Juggernaut Discussion

Riot Repertoir

Gypsylord

"Quote:

You guys also mentioned Shyvana and Olaf in the Dev Blog- How far off are they and can you share anything about their updates?

End of year maybe? We know that we want to work on them, but we don't yet know exactlywhat the output should be per champion yet.

Are there any plans for Galio, Aatrox and Tryndamere? (Is Aatrox considered a Juggernaut?) Aatrox is probably closest to a Juggernaut here, but even then, his mobility profile (free target dash, specifically) is pretty contradictory to our expectation for these guys, so working on him would probably come at costs to that or something else that players see as important to his identity. That said, Gypsylord was recently looking into giving Aatrox some love unrelated to 'juggernaut' work, so he may be ready to shed some light on that in the coming months.

Are there more Juggernauts in the works that aren't Shyvana and Olaf? Currently, no."

Meddler

"We've put time aside for follow up work on all four juggernauts, and the new items, during both 5.17 and 5.18's development in case it's needed. Morde's definitely the highest risk project of the four, both in terms of scope of changes and change in playstyle, so it seems a reasonable assumption he might need more follow up attention than average.

We'll make sure to give you folks some visibility into how we think each of those reworks is going post launch and what we are or aren't planning to change in response to that. One thing we do want to watch out for though is reacting too quickly to day one performance. With any rework a lot of people that aren't familiar with a champ, or haven't played them for a long time, give them a try to see what they're like now. That temporarily pulls a champ's performance down a lot briefly, as the need to learn new mechanics even for more experienced players. Day 1 win rates noticeably below a champ's previous win rate are basically expected as a result, though there's certainly a limit to how much lower they should be (Fiora for example's just too weak at present, in addition to going through that learning curve/new player period)."

NA Chicago Server test on August 11th

~4 PM PDT Update

~2 PM PDT Update

Riot Ahab

"Server testing complete! Everything should be back to normal.

Thank you everyone for helping out with playing games, sharing information and posting trace routes. Your information is critically helpful, and as we work through live deployment we'll be back to lean on you for information and help hammering out kinks in the data routing that pop up.

We're going to take this test data back into the lab and assess next steps. Keep an eye out for more updates from the NA Server Roadmap team in the very near future!"

"On August 11, we are testing the NA game servers from approximately 6:00am to 12:00pm (noon) PDT. During this time, ranked will be temporarily disabled for approximately 3 to 6 hours."

[ UPDATE ] "At 6:00am PDT, we will begin testing the game servers and will disable ranked. Only a small percentage of games will be routed to the new server for testing, so you may not see a difference in ping. Testing should be complete around 12:00pm (noon) PDT."

[ UPDATE #2 ] "Server testing has begun and ranked queues are now disabled. Only a small percentage of games will be routed to the new server for testing, so you may not see a difference in ping. We estimate that testing will end at approximately 12:00pm (noon) PDT."

[ UPDATE #3 ] "Testing is still in progress. Ranked queues are re-enabled at this time. Only a small percentage of games will be routed to the new server for testing, so you may not see a difference in ping."

Riot Ahab

"To further clarify - for this test we'll be pulling in a small percentage of live game traffic, and sending those matches to be played on the Chicago server rather than Portland.

It's an automated test (selection-wise), but will utilize live player connections. So yes, YOU will be testing the servers for us!"

Riot Games API Challenge 2.0

Riot Tuxedo

In April, we hosted our first API Challenge not knowing what to expect from the developer community. It’s safe to say we were blown away by the submissions we received. Our last winner, microtony (NA), broke down the differences between URF games and Normal games with his submission; URF Play Styles. We’re back again with another API Challenge, and we can’t wait to see what developers create this time!

If you have free time over the next couple weeks, we encourage you to stop by the Developer Forums and check out the Riot Games API Challenge 2.0!

Skins and Balance Changes

Repertoir

"I know the perception isn't necessarily this, and that you have no evidence to really prove this is true, but never in the almost 4 years that I've been here have I heard someone say "hold off on those nerfs until after that champion gets its skin." To say it always happens just can't even be close to true; we've released a ton of skins this year.

In Riven's case in particular, if the balance team decides it's her turn in the next couple of patches, then the events would line up as a data point to support your claim theory. However, even as someone that works at Riot, it's hard to say exactly what should be done about potential situations like this that arise. I don't think it would be any better for us to do a balance pass on a champion every time they receive a skin (would result in a lot of nerfs out of being overly cautious), or not release skins for champions that are on the high/low ends of balance. Putting the balance team in a situation where they have to do their job differently because of the skins release schedule really seems like it would have an adverse effect on them being able to keep gameplay first.

Anyway, if Riven gets a nerf in the next couple of patches, it really doesn't seem like it would have any correlation to her upcoming skin, especially given some of the reasons OP cites."

"Sorry, I'm not denying that these instances occur where a skin for a champion comes out and that the champion gets nerfed within a patch or two. With how often we release skins, and how often we make balance changes, these things seem like they are bound to overlap. All I'm really saying is there isn't some guy behind the scenes at Riot requesting that we hold off on nerfing a champion on account of its upcoming skin release.

As for Riven-specific suggestions, I'm not sure exactly what we should do if we end up nerfing her, but hopefully it would be something that ends up making her feel more fair, since that seems to be the biggest complaint about her."

Repertoir on AD Caster Itemization

Riot Repertoir

"If you ask me, the AD caster/assassin guys could probably use an optimized version of Ghostblade (or other Brutalizer upgrade), and maybe one or two more items specifically for them. Black Cleaver gets close, but building that Kindlegem is painful, especially since most of these guys are trying to snowball as early as possible, and 900g on a Health item doesn't really cater to that need.

This isn't something we have planned and is closer to something I'm just thinking out loud, but these guys would love to have an AD Zhonya's. It would be a real task to make it not a marksman favorite as well, though maybe that's not the worst thing in the world since it means they're not basic attacking for a few seconds?

Anyway, I think it would be cool if AD casters/assassins had another item or two catered more specifically to them. They seem like they just use stuff meant for other people that also happens to work on them, despite not being optimized."

Changes to OCE's Patch Day

Agent Mindstar

"TL:DR Starting with patch 5.16, Oceania will be the first region in the world to receive future patches. Our patch day will now be Wednesday mornings instead of Thursday mornings.

Hey everyone,

I want to share an upcoming change to Oceania’s patch timing. Starting with the next patch, Oceania will be moving up from Thursdays to Wednesdays. We’re also taking the opportunity to shift downtime a bit to better match when most of you are offline. (Neat side-note: this means Oceania will be the first region in the world to receive future patches)

We'll provide more timing updates as we get closer to enacting this change.

If you have any questions about this let us know in the comments below!

Mindstar"

Continue reading for more information!The 5.15 patch notes have been updated to reflect the August 10th hotfix, including bugfixes forplus several buffs forchampion update.Forchanges, it's important to note the tooltips have not been updated. Here'sWhen asked if there are any plans to follow up onafter her champion update in 5.14 commented they are looking into gameplay changes:He continued He continued He also added also noted Whilegetting a new R is something that has been brought up in the past posted again that her current R will be replaced in her future "Sion level" champion update:As for what from her current kit they may keep,He also added When asked about her passive,He continued As withabove,is also up for a "Sion level" rework as mentioned bylast week:Over on a a reddit thread about this comment, commented the journey of crystallizing Tarics thematic concept and personalityalso mentioned that he is actively working on, particularly on her passive :In a different thread, he continued thediscussion in response to a user's thought out post about her current state:Speaking ofandalso noted When asked about changingpassive,chimed in to commentbutcould potentially use some changes:When asked about a timeline,also chimed in: He continued To continue on the discussion of Juggernauts from the last red post collection reiterated thatandare also on the radar at some point and thathas been recently working on unrelatedwork:For those concerned for the pending live release of the, andjuggernaut reworks in 5.16,also reminded they will be following up on them post release: New Road map update out! They are planning to make the move to the Chicago servers "within the next few weeks".- looks like test has wrapped up for the day.]Here's with a message on the test finishing up:The NA service status page has been updated to include the NA servers will be undergoing a test on August 11th between 6 AM and 12 PM PDT. elaborated on reddit , noting this will be a test of the centralized Chicago server:While this is just a test, more on the future NA centralized server move to ChicagoHere'swith a heads up on the new Riot Games API challenge - a contest for community developers to use Riot's API data to create league tools and applications!In a thread discussing the upcoming Arcade Riven skin and claiming that a new skin implies that Riven will receive balance changes in the future,He continued When asked about his personal thoughts on AD Caster / Assassin itemization,Here's sharing the OCE's usual patch day will be moving to Wednesdays instead of Thursdays, making them the first region to patch in the future,.