[2020] Quick Gameplay Thoughts: October 16 - Preseason PBE changelist

Originally posted by bz6

/u/RiotScruffy

Hello boss, hope you're doing well today. Thought it would be an appropriate place to shoutout Morello and New001 for the legacy they have left at Riot. They will be missed <3.

As we move to (a hopefully 2nd decade of LoL) I have a few pieces of feedback and questions regarding pre-season. Overhauling items is exciting and brings big changes to what has been very slow cadence of change in past couple of years.

1) Do you think the meta will devolve into a race to complete Mythics? Completely removing come backs, strategy, and just making snowball insane.

2) Speaking of snowball, you and team have stated multiple times that power creep is NOT the goal. Yet effects and (legendary extention) stats on mythics have true damage and tons of pen.

3) Apart from power creep, how are you going to battle a potential ability haste creep? The stat is too abundant on items.

4) Why has the item system overhaul injected a lot of movement speed?

5) Regarding item icon art, they are very inconsistent. Bad examples is BORK & Maw of Malortious (too mobile cartoony) good examples harvester and prowelers (gritty vibe).

6) General item feedback: All legendries are now unique whats idea behind that? And why is Hatchet dumbing down CS for marksman? CS'ing is a BIG skill expressive action for that role.

Thank you.

Have a good day.

Originally posted by bz6

Oh crap I forgot one point. Why is BORK now not an active but a 3 hit passive? Having it as an active I feel would be better suited in big team-fights where you want to selectively slow down a person. A target you may not be auto'ing.

/u/RiotRayYonggi

Originally posted by OromisOfficial

Hey, slightly offtop but I hope I can provide you guys some feedback since there's a lot of confusion regarding Viktor in preseason:

It looks like he went from a scaling mage into a bigger scaling mage into the current version where... he seems to have lost his identity as a late game mage? Surrender@20 is giving different information from what is currently up on PBE. The current iteration(no bonus AP) looks sharply different from his established theme and caused a lot of discussion. Would you guys mind trying an alternative? There's a lot of good ideas floating around, PLEASE don't just leave him as a "normal" mage without anything special

Originally posted by G0ldenfruit

I wonder how long riot have been already balancing the items and how long until they are in a normal state. The past couple years has been some of the best balance in terms of champ diversity(decresing recently since summer). It feels like a nightmare for their team thrown at them by the game designers

Originally posted by bz6

Do you think this overhaul will increase or decrease build diversity?

Originally posted by bz6

Right cool. I’m trying to use EVERY channel available to relay feedback. I am a bit worried tbh. Especially when it comes to changes that have dumbed down the game per say. I don’t think I will be able to participate in pre-season this year, as I am not keen on playing one shot URF.

Best of luck 🤞🏻 and have a good weekend boss.

Originally posted by G0ldenfruit

True, but historically riot has never has stuff worked out by the end of preseason. Whether its new dragons being slightly off -> cloud soul change, or changes that make champions too strong e.g the year Leblanc+a few others needed a nerf all the way through feb(cant remember year sorry).

This is potentially the biggest change the game has ever seen that affects balance, and while the balance team have been improving a lot, I would be very impressed if they had it even close to balanced by S11. I would expect more of an akali treatment where items are being tweaked and mechanics removed throughout the year.

Originally posted by G0ldenfruit

Sure, makes a lot of sense when that is the case, I can imagine how annoying samira is to work on at the moment or not work on as the case may be.

One problem I have is that Riot literally enforce the meta, like ashe senna at this worlds caused by various changes over summer, but we never seem to hear from the balance team to learn their goals. Like if there is a lethality meta, did they mean to case that or did it just happen becuase they tried to fix a tank rune? Would be great to get more gameplay thoughts/ask riots specifically from the balance team about how they want the game to be, otherwise we can only assume that stuff like that is a mistake.

Originally posted by LagOutLoud

Hey, In the post about reducing Crit chance and damage it was said that Marksmen would get compensation in base stats. Is there any news on when/how that is planned to happen? With the change to 20% crit and needing 5 crit items to hit 100% crit, it is now practically never viable to build defensive items, Since non of the crit items actually provide real damage resistance (made even worse by this nerf to shieldbow). Added to the fact that all legendries across the game are losing stats.

Originally posted by G0ldenfruit

Yeah considering league has a patch every 2 weeks which other games could only dream of it still seems like a lot to manage. Hey like I said the past few seasons have been really varied(quantity of viable champs) and fun(learning new game mechanics) for me so I appreciate the work youre doing.

Can I ask your thoughts on specifically the new warding item that lets you hold more control wards/place 4 normal+ 2 control. How is that ever going to be balanced in soloq and pro play considering the warding jg item was removed as it was too strong in pro, but this seems even better(Gotta say I am only talking theory and havnt had a chance to use it/see it in pro of course).

Originally posted by G0ldenfruit

Sure, makes sense, I like the idea of more level restrictions like blue orb at lvl 9 adding a cool item that just wouldnt work at lvl 1 like sweeper can.

Ty for the answers, this kind of stuff is sort of my dream job so its great to learn more from rioters :)

Originally posted by LagOutLoud

Can you comment on the the state of Jhin, and specifically is inability to effectively use the stacking aspect of some of these items? Kraken slayer attack stacks fall off so quickly Jhin can only EVER proc it on his 3rd or 4th shot. If he ever has to reload, the stacks completely fall off. It is completely unbuyable on him. Similarly, the new PD passive is practically impossible to use on him, as it requires 4 attacks and the stacks fall off before he finishes reloading. It seems like Jhin will likely be forced into Lethality with this item update.

Originally posted by LagOutLoud

I appreciate the response but I definitely disagree on most of those points. Galeforce seems like easily the worst mythic in the game. A 90 Second CD lucian Dash with 100-300 damage that requires you to dash at a target to even get the damage pales in comparison to a 45 second CD AOE slow/root.

Essence Reaver seems great on spell slingers, But Jhins Q CD is 5 seconds at max. A full build Jhin at level 18 has maybe 500 bonus AD, So 30/40% bonus AD is... ok. ~200 damage at absolute full build and full items.

Even Kraken slayer's AD ratio is decent enough that it's not always bad on him.

Like all of these things when looked at in a vacuum are fine, sure. But by comparison to all of the Marksmen that are getting AS on more items, which is only 25% as effective on jhin, and who will proc Krakaken slayer 3 times for every one time Jhin can, its bad. Jhin will fall significantly far behind in damage. Storm Razor lost AD, LDR lost AD. IE is strictly a worse item until after 3 Crit items, when most games are ending anyway.

Like Jhin is a champ that succeeds at ingdividual large hits, and it seems like every change and item significantly favors fast attacks and stacking attacks.

It would be fine for Jhin to be in more of a lethality role if that's how he scaled, but it isn't. He has crit scaling and there is only 1 Crit Lethality item.

I guess I just don't really understand what possible reason could exist for making the Kraken Slayer and PD stacks fall off so fast except to make it bad on jhin? Is it really broken for the stacks to last for 3-4 seconds?

Again, I appreciate the response. Just expressing concern for a well liked champ.

Originally posted by Savings-Infinite

Can Seraphine be played as a support? Looking at her abilities, she seems to have pretty versatile builds. If she is played as a support, which style should she be? Which rune should she use?

/u/RiotPhlox