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Pretty simple and straightforward Gameplay Thoughts article, but glad balance team is communicating more in general. Also shout out to Phreak for his Mortdog-esque patch rundowns, I hope he keeps doing them.
Pretty simple and straightforward Gameplay Thoughts article, but glad balance team is communicating more in general. Also shout out to Phreak for his Mortdog-esque patch rundowns, I hope he keeps doing them.
Still figuring out the best format for these, seems like this one went pretty well though.
I just don't understand why certain items are immune to this treatment e.g. Galeforce giving immobile ADC's a dash? I mean it's identical logic to why they removed the dash from Stridebreaker but somehow Galeforce is immune....
So, I'm not sanguine that Galeforce is ok in the long run, but it generates pretty different outcomes from Stridebreaker.
The actual problem with Stridebreaker as a dash was - a primary point of satisfaction for juggernaut-type champions stems from how powerful they feel once they're in melee range. Giving them a readily purchasable dash meant they reliably closed to melee range, and if they're reliably closing to melee range, they can't just win fights once they get there. So we were going to have to start balancing all the juggernauts to not be juggernauts anymore, and lose some of their core satisfaction.
When Galeforce is the best, it escalates how much self-defense ADCs have, which necessitates some pretty scary diver and assassin patterns to cope with it, with either very high burst or some pretty crazy (think Death's Dance) defenses. But it isn't transformational in quite the same way for ADCs. If it ever catches on as the default item for skirmishers like Yasuo/Yone, it's pretty likely to be quite concerning, though.
Interpretive dance VODs are obviously the most effective format.
Maybe shred guitar instead?
Speaking of Strikebreaker, what do you think of the fighter mythics? One direction I'd prefer is if these mythics instead matched the potential outputs team/solo oriented strategy for my fighter that I'm playing towards. One idea I like is something like this, each powered up but locked behind mythic constraint:
- Steraks - Team fight engage
- Hullbreaker - Split push solo
- Death's Dance - Reset finisher
- New defensive mythic - team fight peel/bulk
- BoTRK - 1v1 duelist item
I feeel like they're not very interesting these days with how much power down they've gotten to be healthy over the past two years. I'd rather see the fighter mythic set match the gameplay I'm going for and not be a required first item either.
I think the Fighter mythics suffer from not doing anything particularly essential for Fighters - they're statistically good and fill nice holes in build paths, but if we didn't tell you that you had to build one by making them that gold-efficient, a lot of champs probably wouldn't. I've actually had pretty similar thoughts about them as Mythics - Steraks/Hullbreaker/Deaths Dance would make a neat trio, maybe Goredrinker for a different version of front lining or something. With all that said, they're not the squeaky wheel right now.
We're considering a fairly different model of Mythic item content design (i.e. what items exist in the system), but it's pretty early stage exploration right now, would be post-MSI for a pilot project at earliest and pretty likely not to go anywhere.
Now I do think lethality mythics need some work, and I dont disagree with the direction but, youd think they would start with Eclipse, since that was supposed to be an assassin mythic that ended up being pushed even further into bruiser territory than before, and is now basically exclusively bruiser.
It's a bruiser pattern, though. It's an item that is about heads-up duels. Papering that over with a pure Assassin stat profile doesn't make the game better. Bit of a misfire on the holistic design, though it's doing good things for some other spaces, and assassins don't hate it.
We're looking at redesigning both Duskblade and Prowler's Claw (or replacing Prowler's), potentially to ship after MSI if everything goes well. Also a chance that those changes hit some unforeseen problems and it takes longer, though. Definitely agree we can't leave Assassins stranded forever, and Prowler's Claw is doing some deeply uncomfortable things to the game right now.
Still figuring out the best format for these, seems like this one went pretty well though.
Haiku format next pls
This has definitely been my favorite read in the QGT reboot so far. I'd much prefer QGT be this look at the conversations being had even when it's not locked down yet.
With Prowlers, what is it that you're debating about the item? Is it specifically the dash, or the mobility focused mythic in general? What about the damage amp? Generally it seems like the community has a problem with both the dash and the amp, and arguably both parts break counterplay thru target access or dmg output. Even if nothing is set yet it would be nice to know what you are considering as answers to these questions.
For Prowler's, it's more about finding a good replacement. I wouldn't rule out some version of a dash staying, but I don't think it's super likely.
But again, this is stuff that's quite a ways out, almost speculative to talk about.