To be clear the patch has not gone live, and we have no made any changes to Smite otherwise. What I assume happened here is that the player has Smite and Flash already then accidentally chose to swap places rather than replace a Smite, or tried changing too late. Though obviously I can't be certain and there is always a chance of a bug, though if this was the case I think it would have shown up much sooner, and more often.

As for the upcoming Smite changes, I didn't work on this system, and don't have all the details, but I believe it just sets your starting loadout to Smite. As the player assigned the Jungle role you could still change your loadout. Like the situation above, where two people swap positions, you would just need to manually do it yourself.

I'm not sure what bug fix you are talking about, but I believe we have the ability to disable a champion should a game-breaking bug occur.

I don't have the notes in front of me right now, but if I remember correctly it is 15%+1% per level up to X level.

I don't know when, I assume shortly after the patch/patch notes go live. It might be the next day depending on when that is.

As for if I'll be on, I think that is the plan. I'm the past, when I've been in the chat, it has been a bit impromptu when I get bored and happen to see on Twitter he is streaming. But we did talk about me coming on to talk a bit about Elemental Rift.

For some context, these changes have been planned for a few months, after a few people that pointed out that Jhin's passive didn't scale.

The reason it took so long is that anything that requires localization can take a bit of extra time and often can't be done in a typical balance patch.

Lol that is not the case, if you want to think that way then go right ahead. If feedback points to it being needed it can always come back. We are still not convinced it is, and this surfaces more of the exciting dragons and more feel able mechanics, while also meaning less mental burden to worry about.

LoLPC didn't always, and their team is much larger and working on their game for much longer.

We are watching all champions with this change, but we don't expect ASol to be disproportionately affected by this. And it doesn't make sense to compensate him, or any champion, when we don't even know what the final changes will be...Especially with removing Cloud Drake being a test, and it might come back.

Like many movement speed focused champions, (Rammus, Singed) Asol is actually on the stronger end right now. But it is difficult to feel these champion's power and these are regular thought of as weak by the playerbase, this happens in both Wild Rift and LolPC.

Shyvana's passive literally calls out Cloud Drake, and if Cloud Drake is removed it must change to be functional.

There are a few longer term issues that we hope to address with supports but I suspect these goals will still help them a lot. Larger individual carry power should still help with supports, when you choose the correct ally to enhance or enemy to lock down.

To be clear I don't want to give the impression that this is some silver bullet, but I suspect a step in the right direction.

Not wrong, your experience is not the average of all players and will reflect your playstyle and champion pool. First Drake is very powerful, and that stress you are feeling is exactly what I meant when I said it is something we want to address here.

This goes along with that perception of dragon power I was talking about and is actually the opposite problem of cloud drake. Where infernal dragon's effects are easy to over value. Early game % damage isn't going to do much for you, but it is a powerful lategame buff.

It's been a while since I last looked, but when I did all 4 dragons seem to translate roughly into the same likelihood of winning (obviously individual champions have their own drake preference). But Infernal is valued very highly because it is damage, and cloud drake is undervalued because it is difficult to feel.

I want to make clear that the version of Elemental Rift that Alan talked about is a test. Things like the number of dragons, what dragons, the buffs themselves, when the map changes, Elder Dragon, and Dragon Soul can and will change based on player feedback.

We are expecting to get a lot of feedback from you all once you have a chance to play it. Depending on what feedback you all have, things will change.

With that in mind our major goals to guide this feedback are:

1 Increase the power of individual carry potential.

Meaning a player should be able to feel like they are better able to carry on their own. This doesn't mean all games should be 1v9 carries, but if you are dominating you should feel a bit better about winning the game even if your team is struggling.

2 Reduce stress, particularly in the early game and around team coordination/objectives.

We feel there is a lot of stress caused by the power of the early game, and objec...

Depends on how you want to define good. He's a fun and powerful champion. I don't know if Megadrive is his ideal item though.

Yep, this is still true. We don't think players should think of vision as primarily the support's responsibility, nor supports thinking of vision as something they must understand more than the rest of their team.

So it really comes down to how you want to categorize Flash, yes when compared directly to another summoner spell it is very strong. However, we like how Flash shapes the game so we don't treat it like other summoner spells, and instead think of it as a default tool each champion has access to, and some (like you said with Yuumi) will opt out of it. This is why you see it in every default loadout (other than Yuumi).

This means it isn't just for low mobility champions, but a tool for all champions. Maybe that is safety in the laning phase before they get their mobility, or as a tool to make plays later in the game. But you are right that it is a very popular, basically mandatory, summoner spell.

Ziggs, you're thinking too small =P. Many supports have multiple ways to immobilize multiple champions while adding in a mix of healing/shielding.

From the player's perspective, it all happens at the same time. But it does apply multiplicatively as if they had been applied one after the other (56%).

Note this graph only shows if you hit a 5 person Immobilize the same second you use your active item. It doesn't account for other CC or healing effects, or if you let time pass.

It's also possible I made a typo somewhere below, I couldn't find a good way to copy/paste my excel into this post.

It doesn't apply to slows, but if you get a 5 person knock-up on Ziggs Satchel Charge it will apply the refund effect 5 times.

Here is how slows are calculated.

• Raw Movement Speed = (Base Movement Speed + Flat Movement Bonus) x (1+ Aggregation of Haste Percentage) x (1 - Aggregation of Slow Percentage)

• Aggregation of Haste Percentage

  • Hastes stack fully

• Aggregation of Slow Percentage

  • Slows stack with 30% efficiency past the strongest
    • Ex: 10% Slow + 30% Slow + 20% Slow results in
    • 30% + 3% + 6% = 39%

• If multiple slows are at same strength, all except the first one stack at 30% efficiency

  • Ex: 30% Slow + 30% Slow

The goal is to try and keep these champions in a relatively balanced state, but even with these changes, Rengar is a bit weaker than we would like. I do agree that making him tankier and dealing increased damage isn't ideal, but the alternative would be for him to be VERY weak, with our current tools.

It is something we have talked about, and do want to expand our balance tools for maps and modes. Things like damage to/from turrets/minions are likely ones, though it comes down to prioritization.