R0gueFool

Gwen jungle has been strong since her release, and I don't expect she'll ever be weak in the position. As a good rule of thumb Baron Lane champions perform well in the jungle and the Baron Lane.

It was fun to write, I just hope I didn't do an unkindness and murder anyone's hopes for their favorite champions.

Months ago we made a balance change to the active on W, in part, to make sure the active was called out in the patch notes and it had a bit more visibility. Not everyone is going to check out the patch notes though.

But now think about how good you are on going to be with Vayne when you weren't even using your full power before.

This is amazing, and I love it!

Looking at our data the VAST majority of players stick to the default rec items at all levels of play. Some players will adapt their builds to the situation, and we do what that, but the default loadouts represent a large amount of what players are likely to build.

It's highly unlikely we would create a warding boot enchant. Players really like how tactical the boot enchants are, and we don't like the idea of creating a highly strategic option that supports, or their team, feel supports MUST pick up.

Thanks! I'm always impressed with the drive/dedication of the team. We can't always get it right 100% but it is nice to hear that the care shines through.

Sion is showing his midriff.

Could be crows, could be ravens. I didn't really get a good look, I was generally afraid to get close, but when I was drawn in they would fly away.

I'm getting mixed emotions seeing "story" in quotes...

Oh is that who I met on my journey? I need to be better at asking for names.

AD is a stat you get from items, generally this relates to physical damage, it's on swords, bows that type of stuff. If your champion focuses on dealing physical damage they likely want a bunch of this. It also increases your basic attack's damage.

AP is the same but it typically scales magic damage dealing, or enchanter type effects. This doesn't increase basic attack damage (with certain champion specific exceptions).

Really what matters is looking at your champion's abilities and see what icons show up. Or use the recommended/top 3 builds as a reference point and look for similar items.

So normally I wouldn't take the bait and only respond to people who seem interested in hearing responses, rather than arguing, but I'll bite.

First, the balance team does not take skins into account, they don't even know what skin release plans are, and are not judged based on the success of skins or revenue.

God Fist Lee Sin was the last example I used, so I'll stick to it here. We have wanted to Buff Lee Sin for a while, (he isn't doing great), but players feel he is strong. The skin came out, we didn't buff him, because of player perception even though (from looking at just winrate data) he needs it.

Second, it really depends on what brackets you are talking about Winrate isn't universal across the board and it really comes down to how you look at the data, and this is particularly true for Kai'Sa. Because of how our loadout system works the VAST majority of players just build the next item in line. This means they will rush Stormrazor, when you should...

When I see it quoted the data is often very far off from our own data (no champions are anywhere close to -40% in their intended roles). I haven't looked at what is shown on playrate, so I can't speak to that.

We do look at Chinese winrate data, but that doesn't mean we only look at that data, and ignore the rest of the world.

We look at everything we can when making changes. Chinese champion data isn't always 1:1 with the rest of the world, but it is generally similar.

This is intentional, we don't want players to be forced into taking X rune to help with their jungle clear, that is why they are focused around pvp power and explicitly avoid procing on monsters.

Fun fact this was developed after I was playing with a friend and I watched him rub his face into the wall while lining up a Pantheon ultimate.

The champions we added to new roles were added because they already were seeing reasonable success in those roles. Ashe wasn't seeing much success as a support, however it is possible that the new items change that, if that is the case we will likely update her roles to add support.

That is an option, but it does add complexity to the system (knowing that these don't stack or not letting players buy both, confusion with the shop and being locked into mid tier items). And even ignoring that it ignores all the other points I brought up, for unclear gains.

I guess let's start with why is hybrid attractive in the first place? What does a hybrid build meaningfully differently?

Slow down slow down, let me grab my pen.

Buffs to Gunblade would have made it a good purchase on a few champions, unless we went over the top. We can buff anything into being strong, the issue is that is it healthy for the game? And we don't think a strong Gunblade is particularly good to have. But even if the item itself was in a spot where we liked it the system can't support multiple magic vamp items because they can be stacked.

When you think about this as an isolated item then I think you have somewhat of a point. But the issue is that this is part of a larger system and in that system you run into issues where someone could get both this hybrid pen item and VS/LW or Gunblade and Riftmaker.

It is something we could choose to support, but it seems unlikely given the small champion pool, the fact that these champions still play the same as if they went full AP/AD, we create abuse cases for dipping into both the hybrid+focused stat item systems, and it would greatly increase the size of the item shop. ...