R0gueFool

Thanks for the kind words, the whole balance team works hard to try to keep everyone in a good spot. We over shoot at times, but that is why I'm happy we patch so often. =P

Ya I think Varus is one of the champions who does alt builds very well.

What are you interested in hearing about?

I'll share some of my personal thoughts on duel scaling champions, but these are just my thoughts.

I think it comes down to a per champion basis. We see many champions have multiple options of build styles (Tank, AP, AD, bruiser, enchanter, etc) when these styles offer something different.

Malphite, Gragas, Amumu, and Singed are all tanks with AP builds. The important thing to take note of is that these builds offer something that their tank builds don't. They play differently, and have noticable trade offs.

We see similar things with Seraphine, and Lulu with their mage builds behaving differently than their enchanter builds.

But AD and AP builds are a bit different in that typically these builds have the same or very similar goals (do damage) and the playstyle of champions trying to have both options tend to not change their playstyle between them. So it's harder for these to feel interesting when...

We are following a recent change PC made where you need to have enough bonus health. So tanks should be just fine.

This is something we have been talking about internally.

We agree it makes games take longer than they should, and are playing with some idea on how we want to solve it (and how critical the problem is).

The comment about backdooring is an interesting one, and not one I had heard before.

We also agree that the frequency we are seeing Warmog's Armor as the lone defense item for many nontanks in ARAM is a problem. This should be addressed in the next patch.

This was recently brought up by one of our designers in the patch notes discussion. LP gains are something we are actively looking to improve. His post also has some really good insights if you're interested.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wildrift/comments/p69jjf/wild_rift_patch_notes_24a/h9d3ald?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

We call this a kiss/curse mechanic, they can be a bit tricky to use for sure and often run into issues where they feel really bad.

Generally, they allow us to make the skill or rest of a champions kit stronger, because of the negative effect attached to it. In this case, it even provides a window of power (when you hit the button) and of weakness (when slowed), so it puts it totally in the player's control. We don't tend to use them often, because kiss/curse mechanics often feel bad, like you stated, even if they end up being really powerful.

We went with a grab damage increase because we were looking to buff him at higher elos where he has been struggling. The LoLPC team recently did a similar buff and it had a large impact to high high elo winrate. So this felt like something we could try, with that high elo goal in mind.

We didn't want to change his mana cost because mana buffs tend to be stronger at lower elos where players are spamming skills more often.

I do agree the mana cost on his grab is high, this is intended because of the amount of power behind it in the early game. I recommend getting fimbulwinter as his first item, it is highly underutilized by the player base. It gives him survivability (health, it's shield, and from his passive mana shield), solves his mana problem, and gives him a massive amount of ability haste to attempt grabs more often.

We are sympathetic to this, and get that it sucks when you can't play your main. Bans are a new thing in our game and we are taking it into account with our adjustments. Sorry, I don't have more than that atm, but I promise we are taking them into account.

I think you and u/Mr_Opel have some good points here and it's a tricky one for sure. In terms of item identity, I think it could be a bit better with clearer focuses for each item. That said with what is currently available to us mages like Orianna and Akali do have a bit of overlap in their core items. So it does feel bad to nerf the class as a whole, not that we couldn't and try to compensate in other ways, it just that it would be a rather large shift to try and lower the frustration of 1-2 champions.

Thats interesting to hear that you feel Akali's AoE on R2 is the big issue as it isn't typically the pain point I tend to see brought up. Normal I hear about her survivability, mobility, or single target burst.

I think you're right that a delay on Kat's resets would weaken her, but it would make her feel very clunky. This would be a huge pain point for experienced players and likely push us to include more durability in her kit to make up for this added time/risk she is taking.

There can be some truth to how this sounds, but we saw similar (actually slightly lower) winrates with these champions before bans were introduced. Because the game changes in other ways and player skill is constantly improving I can't this is directly related but it doesn't suggest these players are getting worse.

It's good to hear opinions, and very valuable to hear them from our players, and not many of them are devs.

However, this is exactly where we see many of these champions sitting. Evelynn, Akali, Yasuo, and Lee Sin all fall within that range, some falling below it depending on the Elo we look at.

With Irelia, and Katarina being between 49-51.

Rengar and Fizz are objectively strong, head and shoulders above the rest, and that is why we nerfed them.

Sorry for the late response, the day got busy and I wanted to give others a chance to weight in before I responded.

I do think 45 is likely a bit too low for them to still feel good (currently our rules say that if a champion is <45% or >55% they MUST get adjusted.

As for player retention, we definitely don't want players being so frustrated by their opponents that they quit the game (though everyone gets tilted and needs to take a breath from time to time), so it does cut both ways.

With all that said these champions sitting slightly lower can make sense.

When they do make it past bans we still don't see them overperforming. But even before we had bans in the game they were STILL underperforming.

Give Winter's Approach / Fimbulewinter a try as your first buy. This item is REALLY strong on its core users and is highly overlooked by the playerbase. With Blitz I think this is his strongest first item.

Lol Hardly,

Eve is actually the exact opposite, high elo Evelynn players know how to use her stealth to a terrifying degree, where as lower elo players don't take enough of an advantage from it.

Fizz was crazy powerful, and I hardly think this will dumpster him. He is likely just fine after these changes. Lucky for everyone we patch regularly so if we over shoot it we can adjust him in a future patch.

Diana is SLIGHTLY underpreforming in the jungle (part of this might even be Fizz eating her winrate, so Fizz nerfs are also a Diana buff). And we are trying out some lightly Diana jungle buffs to touch her up.

Gragas is another one not mentioned, but doing just fine and brings a lot of utility to the table.

Don't forget Nunu is on his way as another tank/AP jungler next month.

Your right 30% is a extreme. What percent do you think makes sense? Are you saying that 48% is where you think they Akali should sit at?

Sorry, I'm not on the team that handles skins and don't know much about their release plans. But I know they are hard at work making them look so good. You'll see more skins for sure, we showed some exciting ones in the last /dev diary.

This shouldn't have much of an impact on his rune/keystone choices and they should remain at the same powerlevel relative to each other. This could also be argued as the smallest buff to Phaserush, relative to conqueror, because now that his damage is lower conqueror's % damage amp is also lower, while Phaserush is unaffected.