RiotAxes

Oh yeah, I'm super hyped right now.

This is a good problem to have on PBE... but still irritating when you run into a long queue and we get that.

100% agree with the value. It's a lot more work than one might think and we aren't able to have it ready for this run (same for custom games). Whether it's in the next run or not would come down to what the other features it'd cost.

10 minute queue times should be alleviated on next deploy with additional hardware.

EDIT: We doubled server capacity, and so many people logged in that we're back to long queue times to save the hardware from just dying. We're working on ramping it up further, it will take some time to do that. There is a limit to how far we can readily push the PBE servers given we're only talking about a 3 week PBE here.

I manage the Summoner's Rift team, Modes team, and Champions team game designers.

A chance? Yes. It's not the current plan though. We'll see how it's received.

Our current intention is to run it for the duration of the summer event, and hopefully be able to bring it back in the future. But at the end of the day it's going to be about how you folks engage with it. If it has a huge and lasting appeal I'm sure we'll be having those conversations about either leaving it up or bringing back an improved version to make permanent, if it doesn't, it doesn't.

Stacking champs have some bespoke logic to ensure they do ramp up over game time.

"Are all champions viable" - that is the goal. The balance of the mode is so different from other modes, though, that I'm quite sure we'll still be learning things through the whole run of the event.

No Nexus Blitz for the summer event.

They're not champion specific. You could get a doublecast Syndra ult or a doublecast Galio ult or whatever (though they're not all equally common and there's a pretty large pool of them...)

...and now I can't either. Thanks for that.

Lots - should be on PBE soon. Stormrazor and Bloodthirster both have significant changes.

Discussing what we can do there. We're taking a look at Maw of Malmortius and Force of Nature degree of hardcountering, and one of the motivations for moving Shieldbow out of the Mythic space was that a rushable AD + Lifesteal + anti-burst item on Irelia, Yasuo, etc has really dramatic repercussions on how Mages feel to play in mid lane. But this isn't the same as feeling like your own items are more fun or more balanced. Mages are harder to do simple numbers tuning on, because there's such a gap in their solo queue vs pro play performance - in pro they're already the top of the meta. So, we're looking into it, but there's no guarantee of a direct item change to Mage items at midseason.

We're considering a nerf or change, but I'm not willing to net nerf Fighters in top lane at this time so preferring a buff-the-competition approach.

Yes, with a goal to ship alongside the item changes. There's some risk that the patch date slips still, but we understand that she needs it.

ARAM players don't deviate from the Summoner's Rift item set often enough to yield much data, even when the ARAM items are grossly OP, unfortunately. They'll play alt builds using SR items at a very high rate, but ARAM-only items are apparently a really tough sell to that audience.

I'd still like to do some more of it someday, but its hard to prioritize something we know won't impact the experience very much.

Looking at straight buffs to Sterak's Gage, Goredrinker, Trinity Force, and Stridebreaker, and possibly something for Hullbreaker. Those will be direct buffs to existing mechanics - not really what this article is about.

Galeforce has significant changes in place to ensure that it still has a place in the system.

She could be - but I will say that engagement with Nilah looks pretty different from, say, Rell. She found an audience, it's just not a huge one. Rell, on the other hand, is one of the least popular champions in the entire game, and not particularly deeply played even among players who play her.

So if we can find something cool, awesome, but it's not mandatory in the same way. Nilah's in an ok state in terms of audience; the point I was making is just that Nilah didn't move a whole bunch of melee carry players into bot lane or anything like that.

I'd definitely agree that distinction between Fighter Mythics is a problem (and yes, Sunderer could stand to lose a property). Suspect we'll just be looking at simple tuning

But another problem they have is that they're not all that important to the patterns of Fighters - you'll buy them because they're very efficient with the stats you need to operate, but is it actually important that you have to choose between Goredrinker and Trinity Force, other than the fact that being able to buy both would make you statistically overpowered?

This ties into some of the problems we're having with the Mythic system in general, which we'll be talking about in the not-too-distant future.

Eventually yes, this year almost certainly no. We'd like to be able to change the environment more than we currently can (almost not at all), but it requires people with pretty specific skillsets, and our tooling in that area needs improvements for us to be able to do it more regularly.