AzuBK

Mastery is and always will be a design pillar, but that cannot mean that more mastery is always better, or it follows that we should always look to maximize the challenge and reward of every aspect of the game, which would come at an unacceptable cost to other design pillars, or even to the mastery pillar taken as a whole. This is especially true in a team game like League. If the output of a mastery difference in the jungle (or, sometimes, simply a few unfortunate events in a row) is too frequently deciding games, it undermines the output of a mastery difference from other players in other roles. The simplified benchmark here is something like "being better at jungling should be an incredibly high skill ceiling endeavor that preserves important skill tests jungle players value (pathing, ganking, tracking enemy junglers etc.) and it should be worth making the effort to improve and perform well," which doesn't require that the outcome of overperforming is single-handedly winning the...

I pitched this name with the reasoning that "Fantasy should sometimes teach people cool new words." Mission accomplished, you love to see it.

I think something was lost in translation between the original internal context and the patch notes. The context was meant to say that we began looking at Anivia because she felt very underwhelming even when technically balanced. Then, she lost a lot of power in preseason midway through that work, so the resulting changes were shifted to be more power-positive than the original plan. I can see how that did not come through in the final wording, sorry about that.

Right, but there's still value in having late-game not entirely solved all the time. Games being 27 minutes on average doesn't mean long games don't happen, and long games should also be of the highest quality we can deliver—they make up a lot of the most memorable and momentous games. "I need more damage" is a really valid desire at 4th item, even if in a lot of gamestates it's incorrect. If you have a lulu protecting you, or if they're short on divers but heavy on tanks, it's good to have an item that fills that need. The issue we ran into here was a dearth of valid second items that felt good for some marksmen, which, as you're identifying, is a much bigger problem because games always make it to that point. That's why Runaan's is moving back to that slot. Choice is more valuable early in the game because you always get there (hence one of the reasons Mythic items can offer a lot of value to the structure).

This one. Patch notes originally incorrectly wrote the Mercurial changes under Mortal Reminder and left out the Mercurial changes altogether. Both items were buffed. Mercurial more stat efficiency, Mortal Reminder less cost. Patch notes still seem off though, I've passed it along and it should be corrected (for real this time) soon.

Awesome to hear. Thanks for asking thoughtful questions.

A lot of items have different efficiencies compared to last season overall, because we care more about the ecosystem than individual items' power level. Items exist to create interesting and compelling choices and power progression/fantasy, and each individual item can range pretty broadly as long as it's balanced enough against its competition in-slot. In other words, if the subclass (basic attack-heavy marksmen) remains weak after the 10.25 and 10.25b changes, we'll try to find the best way to buff it, which might be through Zeal items or might be through something else. If it seems that Runaan's specifically is failing on either of those axes, through being unsatisfying to build or complete or through simply not being powerful enough to be a competitive purchase on champions who should consider it, then we should figure out a way to accomplish that (which very well could mean buffs).

One reason many items lost some amount of efficiency is that they also grant mythic pass...

You can check my other comments for context if you're interested.

10.25b is actually a micropatch. Riot leaves the office for two weeks immediately after, but we still want to put out a smaller, low-risk balance patch. We're missing localization resources and don't deploy a new game version at all.

I would say that it's currently optimal for non-marksmen to buy Grievous Wounds. If you do have to buy it, it's intentional that you have to give up a property (lacking defense and utility is the expected tradeoff in most cases, though not always). Would love to find a way for GW to actually feel actively good to buy, but alas today is not that day.

I think armor is tuned pretty appropriately atm. Don't think LW items are optimal until pretty late in the game unless against multiple tanks or unless inability to kill a single tank is impeding your ability to fight.

Zeal items should be powerful for DPS on champions that are mostly basic-attack reliant, and generally stronger (comparatively) as you progress towards third item, picking up more AD. Phantom Dancer is a very high DPS item if you can actually basic attack. RFC offers a unique property in attack range.

I can't overstate the amount of feel difference a couple hundred gold on components and finished item can make. One of the main reasons that AD items felt more powerful before was they actually were just much more powerful.

Basically this. Preseason is a time to try some things out—turns out that other champions weren't really interested in Runaan's later in the game, even if it's technically powerful. At that point, the choice is to try and figure out a different way to execute on it being a late-game item or to go back.

The delay on changing it back was because the rest of the marksman ecosystem also clearly needed some changes, in more obvious ways. Zeal items were underpowered and peoples' purchasing behaviors' take time to catch up. By 10.25, the other Zeal items are almost certain to be often better than Runaan's second on the usual Runaan's suspects, which was closer to the originally intended purchasing structure. However, it was pretty clear by this point that many people really like having Runaan's properties on certain champs every game and, especially given the long-shot odds of landing the broader late-game appeal, I decided there was more value in trying to tune it competitively ...

Nope. Since the 10.25b patch has technical limitations, it will probably have to read as 40-40% until 11.1, when we can change it properly.

<3 Unfortunately, I'm quite inactive on Twitter for the last year. I do hope to try again sometime soon, because it's so good for disseminating information more broadly, but I've found it pretty bad for my mental health in the past. I'm much more comfortable being able to insert myself into smaller conversations like this, because I feel like I should reply to everyone, which gets exhausting quickly on a platform like Twitter.

We expect some of the systems changes here to favor them. The lethality marksmen are suppressing them somewhat and some of their items are getting buffed (Essence Reaver for Sivir, Zeal items + Zeal itself for Jinx). Still talking about the best path forward for Runaan's, which obviously will affect Jinx heavily, though Phantom Dancer is very likely to be a better second item on her next patch (it's very close already, when you account for the inflated winrate data on Runaan's from being an expensive item—similar to how Deathcap has always had very high winrates in slots where it wasn't actually particularly powerful).

Basically, if a champion isn't way out of whack and we still expect to be doing systems work in the very near future on things they buy, we're going to prioritize the systems to avoid e.g. buffing Jinx, then buffing her items, then nerfing Jinx again. The goal is to get to stable as quickly as possible, and we're paying close attention to marksman items right...

No problem. Sorry for any confusion or alarm! This could have happened when I fixed a bug yesterday where her crit anim was still slow—but it's still working fine for me locally. QA is hunting it down as we speak.

It's not reverted. Must be something funky going on—wall is reverted because of visual issues with some of the skins at non-100 increments (since that's the size of a wall chunk), and the rest is all going through with minor tweaks if anything.

Edit: Just tested on PBE as well. Seems like the change is correctly still in, not sure what's up there.

Did think about passive. Didn't feel like putting power in it would help as much as the other places it could go, especially when we're looking for play-feel improvements.

Ah, I see. That's unfortunate, but I don't really have the capability to fix that as a designer (or to know how difficult it even would be to fix, I think). Thanks for the info.

I think removing the cast time on her wall would be a bad change for the champion. Being able to consistently stuff movement skills would require her to be weaker in other areas of her kit and would also be most powerful in support, because that utility doesn't scale with gold, along with encouraging her to hold on to her wall to use it reactively instead of proactively setting it down to define the battlefield.

If you have specific reproduction steps for people walking through the wall, then I can take a look, but I haven't seen it myself.