Meddler

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Coven & Eclipse Leona teasers

"Can you hear them? The Old Gods are calling and our coven is here to answer."

UPDATE 11/26

The coven has reassembled in the name of the old gods. Eclipse Leona is ready to meet them. pic.twitter.com/Ilj8bkgeXJ November 26, 2018

"The omens are clear: The coven has reassembled in the name of the old gods. Eclipse Leona is ready to meet them.

Make them answer to your light with Solar Eclipse Leona and Lunar Eclipse Leona for 1820 RP each (2821 RP for both), or reclaim the wilds as Coven Lissandra and Coven Camille for 1350 RP each, all available on November 27, 2018, at 11:00 a.m. PT."

Quick Gameplay Thoughts : November 22nd

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 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

Overall Game State

We're getting some initial impressions of how the preseason changes have landed. Thoughts on those below. Early days still, so not putting too much faith yet that what we're seeing is representative of how things will necessarily settle down. Still getting some really useful early data and observations though.

As a quick repeat our big goals were:

Reduce cases of outer towers going down too quickly, while still rewarding early aggression/advantage

Make comebacks more achievable

Have games that are a foregone conclusion end quicker (less time waiting for a statistically inevitable loss)

Allow more flexible rune choices by decoupling rune stats from paths What we're seeing so far:

Outer towers are falling a minute or two later on average, resulting in fewer laning phases over extremely early

Average game length hasn't changed meaningfully however, despite those later outer tower falls. That suggests some of the game resolving changes, like those to Epic Monster spawn times, are helping decided games get closed out.

Looks like teams aren't quite as likely to win as they were previously after taking early/mid objectives, suggesting early snowball might be down/comeback chance up. Need to dig into data here a lot more though, more on this next week most likely. Once we've got a clearer picture on things we'll dig more into how each individual change in 8.23 is working, see whether we should be adjusting numbers on things like turret plating gold, tower stats, bounty calculations, individual camps etc or not.

Champions in 8.23 so far

Stronger Champs

Ezreal is looking a bit stronger, though not enormously so. Initial impression is that the Klepto change doesn't change its attractiveness that much for him, which might suggest we need to refine Klepto's CD, trigger rate etc further. We did also just straight buff Ezreal this patch though, so don't want to judge prematurely until we've got a better handle on what did what.

Lissandra also seems slightly stronger. We're expecting Lissandra players will also get better at taking advantage of her changes, playing around things like changes to her mana access, E speed, new passive. Wouldn't be surprised if she looks a bit stronger again in a week or two. Having said that also expecting opponents to get better at avoiding Frozen Thralls (seeing a lot of people ignoring them and paying for it right now), so possible those two effects cancel each other out power wise. Looking at the different positions she's played in mid/top are still dramatically more effective than support, so so far at least doesn't look like her scaling's too weak or her inherent utility too strong.

Karthus is performing noticeably better too. Could just be small sample size, also possible changes to game pacing like the extended laning phase are particularly beneficial for him though.

Weaker champs

Gangplank has been hit pretty noticeably. Possible that reflects changes to Runes. Klepto's likely less effective on him given difficulty getting the second proc off. The Resolve tree's potentially less appealing to him too, given Chrysalis's removal, and we're still seeing him take Grasp and Klepto roughly equally. Also possible something's just bugged with him though, we did rescript him a bit behind the scenes to fix some other issues. Digging into those possibilities and more to see what's going on, seeing him weaker's not something we were targeting.

Irelia is looking a bit weaker in mid specifically, which is encouraging given her over performance there. Need to investigate more, both to understand what's driving that change and assess her overall state now.

Taliyah jungle seems to be quite a bit weaker so far. Possible we hit her too hard there, expect her to bounce back though as junglers adjust to the changes. Cautiously optimistic that this set of changes will have helped with balancing her for both mid and jungle.

All Other Champs

Most champs have had their performance impacted a bit, those not listed above don't seem to have changed significantly though. We'll be back to looking at regular balance in patch 8.24 and onwards. We don't have 8.24 changes planned just yet, going to let things settle a little more and then pick targets early next week.

Runes in 8.23

Dark Harvest was clearly out of line. We hotfixed on the first day as a result, hitting both base damage and scaling. Now assessing it again.

Klepto wise we're waiting a bit before drawing any conclusions. Possible Ezreal's still too bound to it. Seeing some new champs perform reasonable with it but nothing out of line. Lucian for example is effective with it, but it's certainly not mandatory for him or excessively powerful so far."

Meddler

"Update since time of writing: Looks like a lot of the GP issue was a bug with his ult. That's been hotfixed, we'll see how he does now and whether other stuff's also hit him too hard."

Meddler

"Entirely understand the desire for something that feels like it caps out before the game's over. We spent a while trying to find other versions of a CDR rune to offer. Eventually concluded though that this was what we'd need to go with for it to be balanced relative to the other options. Looking at early data CDR seems to be performing really well already statistically as choice in that slot, so doesn't look like we've got room to buff it."

Meddler

"Galio, Sejuani and Ornn are all still being worked on. Initial tests showed some promise and some problems, so we'll be putting more time into them. Not sure if any will make 8.24 though yet."

Meddler

"We haven't seen preseason have a major effect on her so far. She'll be one of the champs we consider early next week."

Meddler

"We don't have a version of it we're happy enough with yet. Planning to revisit it sometime in the next month or two once preseason follow up work's dealt with. Don't want to make any promises at this point though."

Meddler

"It's possible we find a version and ship it in 9.1, don't want to assume so at this point though.

8.24 is out, since we'll have to lock changes for that by Wednesday next week. We will do an 8.24b patch mid December. That will be a balance changes only patch though, not one that includes new content (whether items, non gameplay things like skins or other stuff)."

Miscellaneous

Riot Rovient noted more Dark Harvest changes coming in a later patch:

"Going to assess the Dark Harvest data on Monday, but I'll certainly be removing its ability proc off of other procs. It's intended that you have to put in effort to proc it when enemies are below 50% HP."

In case you missed it, here's a changelist for the mid-patch update that went out on 11/21 including bugfixes for Gangplank, Akali, and Yorick!

Has the time of man come to an end? Probably so due to this BLITZCRANK MIXCRANK - the latest LoL champions remix thanks to community collaborators!

Captain Gameplay here jumped on the katarina mains subreddit to comment on a small Katarina change aimed for 9.1 -

[1] "It's definitely a buff. But it's a small one. Generally don't think she needs a buff, but currently looking at making the teleport immediate but with the same total cast time (so entirely backloaded) and adding some extra buffering logic for gunblade into shunpo. Think these will be good QoL changes worth the added power. Probably for 9.1 since Thanksgiving squeezed validation time."

[2] "Same total cast time of .15s, so you won't be able to cast other spells or move/attack. Though you will pick up daggers since that happens the moment you get in range of a ready one. Live: cast shunpo>0.075s>teleport>0.075s>free to act New proposal: cast shunpo>teleport>0.15s>free to act"

For those seeking more information on the latest live incidents and issues from the NA server, check out Morgageddon's latest The Good, The Bad, and the League: 11/16 - 11/22 on the Live Incident Breakdown board for more info on game disconnects and server stuff.

Reminders

To round out this good good red post collection, here are a few reminders on current promotions or limited time events! Nexus Blitz will be returning for more testing in Patch 8.24! Check out this post for dates and details, or check out the Current PBE Coverage for details on its' PBE testing! [BACK TO TOP]

Today's red post collection includes a new teaser calling out on Riot's social media,with more discussion on the game in 8.23, a new champion remix to crank up, and much more!Continue reading for more information!A mysterious teaser has been calling out from.... perhaps our upcoming Coven skins from the 8.23 PBE will answer that call!: A second teaser video was released on Riot social media channels:It's also up on Youtube - Answer To Her Light | Eclipse Leona Skins Teaser Look for their upcoming release on November 27th!Here'swith a set of gameplay thoughts for November 22nd , covering current thoughts on overall game state, thoughts on a few specific champions in 8.23 so far, runes in 8.23, and more:When asked about the scaling CDR rune,When asked for an update on the tank work that was testing on the PBE last cycle,When asked aboutAs for Spear of Shojin,