League of Legends Dev Tracker

You really have no idea who August is do you? He’s by far the most acclaimed designer, creating unique actionable ideas without the certainlyT touch of unbalancable, and by far the best champ designer at riot, jinx gnar jhin and many others are examples of top tier design and fantasy fulfillment beyond their years while maintaining peak balance.

You really have no idea who August is do you? He’s by far the most acclaimed designer, creating unique actionable ideas without the certainlyT touch of unbalancable, and by far the best champ designer at riot, jinx gnar jhin and many others are examples of top tier design and fantasy fulfillment beyond their years while maintaining peak balance.

August is awesome, excited to keep working with him and delivering bad news about how his new champ(s) are OP.

You really have no idea who August is do you? He’s by far the most acclaimed designer, creating unique actionable ideas without the certainlyT touch of unbalancable, and by far the best champ designer at riot, jinx gnar jhin and many others are examples of top tier design and fantasy fulfillment beyond their years while maintaining peak balance.

Yeah, that's the tricky part about balancing ARAM in particular. It's really hard to find the balance where assassin mains don't take over the game, but people who roll into the champion can still have fun playing them. In other modes we know that assassin players have opted into it, so that makes things a lot easier.

It's still an imperfect process and we're always trying to make it better!

I really appreciate how thoughtful this comment is, I'm definitely seeing some recurring themes you've captured really well here that we're thinking a lot about. The biggest thing that stands out to me in this list (and most of these threads) is the comparison to a bundle. Internally through development, it has felt like a lot more than a bundle to us but of course that doesn't matter nearly as much as how players actually feel about it.

We'll keep watching through PBE and see how everyone is feeling as more folks get to see and play as the champion and with the skin.

Yeah, Akali came REALLY close to getting a nerf this patch. About as close as you could possibly get without hitting the line. She has a medium size high/low MMR split. She's pretty balanced in low MMR, but RIGHT up against the line of our definition of "OP" in high MMR.

Hello! Leblanc actually has a very low split between low/high MMR - she wins 0.5% more games in high MMR than low. (The top 3 are Kha'Zix, Rek'Sai, and Lulu, who all win >7% more games in high MMR)

That being said, we're trying a new framework to incorporate high elo statistics in ARAM, which resulted in the Ezreal, Nidalee, Nocturne, Ryze, Sona, Vayne, and Yorick changes this patch. We're always trying to improve our balancing strategy, and hopefully this iteration will make ARAM games at high ELO more balanced and enjoyable.

Hello! I'm Jag, and I'm a Game Designer on Champions Team.

Seraphine, League's Starry-Eyed Songstress, is taking the stage and will be available on PBE starting today! She'll officially launch to Live in two weeks, and the team is looking to collect feedback and fix any major bugs that are discovered by PBE players. If you stumble upon something strange related to Seraphine or her KDA skinline in your games, you can us know by leaving a comment in this thread. This can be anything ranging from strange SFX/VFX to incorrect ability behavior. As always, detailed information (e.g. bug repro steps or video clips) are very helpful at helping us fix issues before release.

Thank you!

Hey, our team has been working on trying to solve this issue for a while now, we have introduced a couple of fixes over the last few weeks, and it did resolve the issue for a good amount of players from reviewing our support tickets, but some have reported that the issue is still occurring. It did not make the patch notes, but we are deploying one more fix in this patch, to help try and alleviate the issue.

This has been a pretty complex one for us to solve, and we are putting in metrics to determine how widespread this issue is for our global player base. Hopefully, this new fix yields positive results

Thanks

These are great notes, especially the expectations on Ultimates - I totally get that this doesn't deliver the same fantasy as in game swaps. I am hoping that once seen and played on PBE players will feel like we've packed in a lot of value by keeping the swap out of game but it's super valid and we're definitely keeping an eye on this feeling.

We're excited about the stories we can tell using quest skins and will learn a lot from the first release and from feedback like this.

That's a ditto with a cowboy hat

This thread has a lot of good thoughts, and wanted to chime in on this line of thinking a little bit. Since Elementalist Lux I agree that expectations around Ultimates understandably ballooned and we've been trying to find more sustainable ways (see the original posting for more context on that) to deliver the best possible fantasies on a champion. While not for everyone, we know Ultimates are really special and important to many players. I agree the initial reception to GGMF was rocky, because of those expectations and for a lot of the reasons you mentioned.

With Seraphine, we really wanted to deliver more features than MF could by separating her forms out and giving the team a lot more space to work in for each of them. This also felt like it could be a strong direction because we typically see players gravitate toward one form and not actually swap very much (of course that's not everyone and I totally get that swapping in game is a big value add too). As a result, Sera...

OK

True, Karthus and Bard and kind of musical as well

I would pick Serphine if I was playing midlane and Sona id I was playing support. Don't get me wrong I think Serpahine will be playable support, but I think she will be primarily a mid lane mage, which is different then a enchanter. Mid Sera plays like a wombocombo AoE ranged damage mage, which feels pretty different then Sona imo

I don't mind actually, I have pretty thick skin. I love Seraphine as well, she is super fun to play in game :)

I mean its our 2nd music champ. We have like 20 Champs with swords, 2 samurais now, several fire mages. I think its ok for champs to have thematic overlap as long as the champs feel different enough from each other. Music is a huge theme, and we could probably make another champ with a music theme and it could still feel different from both Sona and Sera. For Sona she is hitting the music aura theme. She is playing music and its effecting the allies around her. For Sera we went with a more rhythmic music theme, where you are casting spells and every 4th spell echos, kind of like how music is made on 4s.

I think people should try her out before judging to much from a ability breakdown video. Many people had similar reactions to Lillia, Yone and Samira but once you play those champs in game they feel very unique and different. I have played plenty of Sona, and also I have played a ton of Seraphine internally, and I don't think she feels anything like Sona to actually play in game. For one, she is a VERY skillshot reliant champ which feels way different then Sona. The big reason she feels unique though is her music passive which makes each 3rd spell you cast, cast twice. This leads to having to think about which order you use your spells in to get different effects, and gets you into like a musical 1, 2, 3 and 4 rhythm when you play her that feels really different then any other champ. Idk, that's just my thoughts playing her of course, I think you should try her out for yourself before jumping on the Sona 2.0 train though.

We believe she will be played support as well as mid, and we are ok with that. Her ratios will make her more the viable in mid, and since all her damaging abilities are skill shots it should be pretty reasonable to tune. There are other examples of champions that are tuned to be viable in both mid and support (Lux/Morgana for example)