ricklessabandon

Meddler

Q&A on upcoming Miss Fortune changes

ricklessabandon

"okay, looking through the comments i'll take a quick stab at answering some general questions for now. further discussion (at least on my part) will take place on the pbe forums once the changes are actually on the pbe. :3



Quote:

why isn't double up just an attack reset + on-hit effect?

the differences are kind of minor, but i like the current model since it allows for us to make an updated texture for the range indicator and i'd like to look into getting a custom one made for double up that better shows the bounce mechanics. aside from that though, it could go either way. in cases like that it's usually better to opt out of change.



Quote:

will impure shots deal physical damage, or magic damage? if magic damage, why?

it will still deal magic damage, as on live. the reason it's still magic is because changing it to physical would be fairly significant and require further changes. also, this bonus damage isn't meant to crit or life steal, and keeping it as magic makes it a lot more clear that it won't do either. the long and short of it is that it doesn't seem necessary, and the gains themselves are questionable without getting into a cost:benefit discussion.



Quote:

will impure shots keep its ap ratio as well?

nope. if you're interested in the 'ap miss fortune' play patterns, you'll have to get your fix from ad + cdr itemization, though admittedly you'll have to focus more on double up bounces and make it rain will not scale.



Quote:

will strut be getting any changes?

it's not a priority at this time, but it's possible. i'm more interested in getting her core abilities in a better spot first, and then seeing if her passive needs changes to align better with the rest of her kit.



Quote:

will make it rain be getting any changes?

it's in the same spot as strut (see above). it's already a pretty powerful spell (which should totally be learned before 6 and not after 12 as some people have been claiming to do) but that doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit from a bit of retooling after the rest of her kit is updated and locked in.



Quote:

why did you nerf her ult? her ult should be relatively the same strength, but scale better into high damage builds and have a stronger followup from miss fortune. when using bullet time to apply impure shots to targets with zero stacks, you end up doing 180% total ad (as magic damage) that wasn't there before so she lost a little bit of base/scaling to balance that out."

Baron VU not forgotten

Meddler

"It's something we'd like to do yes. If you've seen the cinematic 'A Twist of Fate' the look for Baron Nashor that appears there is the direction we've been talking about for Baron. Can't talk timeframes,definitely not something we've forgotten about or put aside though."

Shapeshifters and Hitboxes

"No, he's the same size for gameplay purposes in both forms."

"Nidalee is the same in both forms. Elise, as I just found out, is actually slightly smaller in spider form, which doesn't make much sense, will correct that."

"Also identical"

"Jayce swaps animations, but not models. His hitbox is constant as a result."

Meddler

"Skins have no affect on champion hitboxes"

"Shyvana's hitbox is quite a bit bigger in dragon form than in human"

"Large champions generally have larger hitboxes, both because that ensures gameplay and visual expectations match up and because, as you point out, they're usually front liners who'd rather be hit than the rest of their team. We do keep hit boxes within a set of standard sizes as well though, in particular to ensure that gameplay with skillshot/AOE abilities isn't being made excessively easy or difficult just by the hitbox of a particular champion.



Lulu ult does indeed increase hitbox size (ditto Cho ult, Nasus ult etc)."

Meddler

"I'm pretty happy with AP Varus overall - it can lead to some fun builds and somewhat different skill use/target selection, while, if played well, being effective enough to be useful and not ruin your teammates experience. While it would be nice to support it a bit more at some point I'd hate to put power into it in a way that created an abuse case or required power be cut from other parts of Varus to compensate.



Do you have any particular thoughts/feedback/suggestions on AP Varus yourself?"

Some short thoughts on Diana from a previous post. TLDR: Would benefit from a more defined niche and power that supports that. Adding raw power (damage, tankiness etc) would likely recreate issues we've had with Diana's balance in the past."

Talon Discussion

Meddler

"Decoupling the damage from the vision on Noxian Diplomacy and making the DoT shorter would certainly remove a point of frustration from playing as Talon (in exchange for a slight thematic loss, with the reveal effect no longer being explained by the concept of Talon tracking a target by the blood trail it leaves behind). It would however also end up buffing Talon's burst damage, which would concern me given he already deals most of his damage over a short window of time relative to the amount of counterplay available to the target.



Something that would be good to investigate at some point would be increasing both Talon's highs and lows (increase his potential best case power without increasing his average power basically). Could see this sort of change being a good fit in that context, will pass it on to anyone working on Talon in the future."

"Passive's a prime spot to put something with a bit more gameplay, definitely. E damage amp similarly, would want to find something for rank up incentive on that if replacing it.

Also quite agree with you r.e. giving him some more options in team fights, we've found that assassins tend to be healthiest when they've got some fallback or alternative options so aren't quite as 'all in or nothing'."

Riven after the 4.1 Changes

Zileas

"It's not a 5% drop. If you look at mid elo its a decent amount, and probably correlates to people adapting, but it was like 1-2ish% for higher tier play. My assumption is that things will catch up as people adapt, but I assure you that the core gameplay team is monitoring this situation closely and won't be comfortable in a world where Riven is actually not playable.

The other elephant in the room here is that Riven doesn't have great counterplay, so she runs a risk of when she is OP at all, becoming a snowball steamroller. Shield duration is one such intended change that should improve counterplay somewhat by providing a better window for opponents to exploit, and more of a need for Riven to time it's use.



- Zileas"

"I have direct server data in which I can slice out different game types, elo bands, and so forth, and be looking at 100% of games played across most of our servers worldwide. I can also see trends over time, etc. Indications point to some learning occurring, and mid-elo being hit harder than high elo."

The Tribunal and Toxic Players

Zileas

"The system does take a little while to work -- you have to get reported, then the tribunal has to process you. I would be shocked if he didn't get banned if he did that sort of thing with any frequency. We do use some machine learning algorithms, but it's really a question of asking where we aren't catching people, and how we could do so more quickly. And of course, this stuff IS going to happen. People are going to troll. The question is -- how long do they get to troll before they are stopped, and how often is this stuff happening?



Our efforts are around making the experience as positive as possible. We've seen that banning is honestly a pretty weak hammer to make games more fun compared to encouraging people to be great teammates in the first place, and that's why we are focusing a lot right now on fostering positive teamwork (rather than writing additional optimizations on bans). But when we do think about bans, we try to focus on the cases that are both frequent and are not being caught. This is a case where we think it WOULD be caught very quickly in most cases."

"Two reasons. First, it's hard to write a system that would do that accurately and correctly, and getting it wrong would be a lot worse -- just as would missing it. Getting a loss prevention/win prevention on a game where it wasn't called for would be awful, as would not getting it when you thought you were normally entitled.



Secondly, we don't want to make stuff like leaving, being a jerk, etc socially "OK". If we reduce the downsides too much, some of this stuff might become even funny to people rather than indicative of (basically) being a bad person, at least for 30 minutes. We want to stand with the community as having a high standard on this stuff, so that this game is a place where people with great teamwork and attitudes thrive, and those without either change their tune, or find the game unrewarding to play."

Maokai Bug Fix in Next Patch

Meddler

"Small power increase coming in the next patch courtesy of a bug fix. His ult's currently not storing as much bonus damage as it should be, based off the amount of damage absorbed (will charge 25% faster post fix). Nothing beyond that at the moment though."

Today's red post collection featureswith some Q&A on his tentativetalking about the hitboxes of shapeshifting champions, a note that the potential Baron VU has not been forgotten, a note on the Tribunal and why using loss prevented isn't an option for combating toxic behavior, and much more!Continue reading for more infomration!Following yesterday's post on his upcoming changes to( which should be on the PBE soon! ) returned to the thread to answer questions and respond to feedback.Over on the OCE forums, mentioned that the alleged visual update for Baron Nashor, to make him more like the version seen in this video , has not been forgotten.Meddler jumped in to a discussion about champions who can shapeshift and if that change their hit box.He started out withWhen asked aboutand, he replied What about when he swaps stances?When asked if skins every affect hitboxes,As forhit box in human vs dragon, he commented He continued , explaining why large champions generally have larger hitboxes:Within this set of posts,also briefly discussed both AP Varus and::and foralso posted up a few, brief comments onin response to a summoner suggesting they seperate the damage and sight reveal on Talon's Q to smooth out his damage:He continued , the VP of game designer, popped into a thread discussing how Riven is doing after her recent to share his take on the data after a summoner suggested her win rate dropped 5%.He continued , explaining the depth of his data:also commented on the promptness of the Tribunal system and shared a little insight to the player behavior teams thought process:He continued, commenting on why it's not as easy as just making loss prevented or forgiven when trolls are afoot:When asked if the balance team has any plans for commented he's getting a small bug fix in the next patch that should help him a bit: