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Hey Axes I know preseason is still a ways out but would the focus be on the role tuning (like how this year’s was on jungle) or would it be a side project part of preseason
We're still scoping things.
Hey Axes I know preseason is still a ways out but would the focus be on the role tuning (like how this year’s was on jungle) or would it be a side project part of preseason
We're still scoping things.
Turns out Vayne top isn't broken as Reddit anticipated.
It's understandable that top lane players aren't happy when they see Vayne in their lane - but significantly exaggerated impact, yeah.
One of the really understated facts (good or bad) about role select is that players have sorted themselves based on what kinds of laning experiences they want to have. It doesn't matter which role Seraphine is highest win rate in or best in pro play in - players who like Seraphine as a character almost always queue support. It doesn't matter if Darius beats Teemo (he doesn't right now, but there've been many states of the game where he did) - Darius players are queuing up to have the melee 1v1 experience. And it doesn't matter how many mages are viable in bot lane - players who want to play them are mostly not queuing into bot lane.
I would love to know how they determine the relative strength of top and bot. From playing as well as watching high elo + pro games and seeing the consensus of those players, Riot always underrate how strong bot is and overrate how strong top is, especially this season. I've seen Rioters talk about the roles in the past and they seem to look at how likely a role is to carry a game with X gold lead as an indicator for how impactful it is. I wonder if they don't consider how much easier it is to get fed playing bot lane and that leads to them misunderstanding the game.
We have several different things we're looking at - sentiment, odds of victory given X lead at Y time, differences in odds of victory based on MMR gap within a lane, things like that.
The biggest confounding factor here is that bot lane's value to winning the game scales steeply with player skill and top lane's does not (unsurprisingly, since a lot of these measures are zero sum). Which means that when most ADC players feel fine, influencers and pros feel like we're in a pure bot lane meta, etc.
Is there any plan to reduce snowball? I am quite surprised snowball can be this crazy even with numerous comeback mechanics in the game, with Riot adding more in the form of obj bounties.
Drake change should be pretty meaningful there. Remember that high objective value doesn't just give you the snowball of claiming the objective, it also prompts bigger fights which means more kills giving gold and XP.
That said, snowball isn't that far out of its historic levels right now for most players. It's pretty high for top tier players relatively, but for average play we're pretty close to historic levels.
I was referring to his words around 42 ish minutes, where he states that ADCs weren't weak before, but they buffed up them anyways for "feel good" reasons, via Item/Runes and ended up making the role overpowered.
Also i titled it with the items because that's more clear, as those 3 are the biggest Changes that made ADC stronger, with the Crit Changes and BT shield adjustment.
Obviously there other things in the patch, but not everyone here konows what 13.1b contains, unlike what BT/IE/Navori are and do.
So, I'm gonna disagree with him a bit here. And one of the things I want to get across here is that Riot game designers are not a monolith - we each have a different perspective on things, and that's a strength of the organization, not a weakness.
ADC was relatively a bit underpowered on 13.1a, in addition to having some systems design that was not optimized well to feel good. Since then we both buffed their items and nerfed one of the competing carry classes quite hard in mid-late game carry potential (Fighters), which is also a relative boost for ADCs, so a solid buff ended up landing them relatively somewhat overpowered.
Dragon changes will also have an impact, but that one's complicated - it's lane-to-lane balance and how snowbally the game gets at the same time.
This has definitely been my favorite read in the QGT reboot so far. I'd much prefer QGT be this look at the conversations being had even when it's not locked down yet.
With Prowlers, what is it that you're debating about the item? Is it specifically the dash, or the mobility focused mythic in general? What about the damage amp? Generally it seems like the community has a problem with both the dash and the amp, and arguably both parts break counterplay thru target access or dmg output. Even if nothing is set yet it would be nice to know what you are considering as answers to these questions.
For Prowler's, it's more about finding a good replacement. I wouldn't rule out some version of a dash staying, but I don't think it's super likely.
But again, this is stuff that's quite a ways out, almost speculative to talk about.
Now I do think lethality mythics need some work, and I dont disagree with the direction but, youd think they would start with Eclipse, since that was supposed to be an assassin mythic that ended up being pushed even further into bruiser territory than before, and is now basically exclusively bruiser.
It's a bruiser pattern, though. It's an item that is about heads-up duels. Papering that over with a pure Assassin stat profile doesn't make the game better. Bit of a misfire on the holistic design, though it's doing good things for some other spaces, and assassins don't hate it.
We're looking at redesigning both Duskblade and Prowler's Claw (or replacing Prowler's), potentially to ship after MSI if everything goes well. Also a chance that those changes hit some unforeseen problems and it takes longer, though. Definitely agree we can't leave Assassins stranded forever, and Prowler's Claw is doing some deeply uncomfortable things to the game right now.
Speaking of Strikebreaker, what do you think of the fighter mythics? One direction I'd prefer is if these mythics instead matched the potential outputs team/solo oriented strategy for my fighter that I'm playing towards. One idea I like is something like this, each powered up but locked behind mythic constraint:
- Steraks - Team fight engage
- Hullbreaker - Split push solo
- Death's Dance - Reset finisher
- New defensive mythic - team fight peel/bulk
- BoTRK - 1v1 duelist item
I feeel like they're not very interesting these days with how much power down they've gotten to be healthy over the past two years. I'd rather see the fighter mythic set match the gameplay I'm going for and not be a required first item either.
I think the Fighter mythics suffer from not doing anything particularly essential for Fighters - they're statistically good and fill nice holes in build paths, but if we didn't tell you that you had to build one by making them that gold-efficient, a lot of champs probably wouldn't. I've actually had pretty similar thoughts about them as Mythics - Steraks/Hullbreaker/Deaths Dance would make a neat trio, maybe Goredrinker for a different version of front lining or something. With all that said, they're not the squeaky wheel right now.
We're considering a fairly different model of Mythic item content design (i.e. what items exist in the system), but it's pretty early stage exploration right now, would be post-MSI for a pilot project at earliest and pretty likely not to go anywhere.
Interpretive dance VODs are obviously the most effective format.
Maybe shred guitar instead?
I just don't understand why certain items are immune to this treatment e.g. Galeforce giving immobile ADC's a dash? I mean it's identical logic to why they removed the dash from Stridebreaker but somehow Galeforce is immune....
So, I'm not sanguine that Galeforce is ok in the long run, but it generates pretty different outcomes from Stridebreaker.
The actual problem with Stridebreaker as a dash was - a primary point of satisfaction for juggernaut-type champions stems from how powerful they feel once they're in melee range. Giving them a readily purchasable dash meant they reliably closed to melee range, and if they're reliably closing to melee range, they can't just win fights once they get there. So we were going to have to start balancing all the juggernauts to not be juggernauts anymore, and lose some of their core satisfaction.
When Galeforce is the best, it escalates how much self-defense ADCs have, which necessitates some pretty scary diver and assassin patterns to cope with it, with either very high burst or some pretty crazy (think Death's Dance) defenses. But it isn't transformational in quite the same way for ADCs. If it ever catches on as the default item for skirmisher...
Read morePretty simple and straightforward Gameplay Thoughts article, but glad balance team is communicating more in general. Also shout out to Phreak for his Mortdog-esque patch rundowns, I hope he keeps doing them.
Still figuring out the best format for these, seems like this one went pretty well though.
Hey Axes I know this is OT, but are you able to share if the team is going to spin up another CGU soon or do you guys have to evaluate ASol more
Can't talk about anything like that right now. ASol is looking good though.
so is yuumi a newbie champ or does she have the same skill floor as akali? which is it?
She had the skill curve of an Akali and that made many players deeply unhappy, so we're working to change it.
Yuumi in the lowest and most accessible tier is going to create an entire new generation of new League players who don't have a grasp of basic concepts of the game such as positioning, kiting, spatial awareness, map movement and so on.
Mark my words.
A brand new player isn't trying to learn the nuances of how to position in lane or kite - they're trying to find the fun. It's definitely true that Yuumi isn't going to teach all the skills you need to learn to be a good League of Legends player, but playing Yuumi with a friend turns out to be an effective way at figuring out why you want to bother learning those skills in the first place.
To be clear, this is very much NOT the plan
I think you might be having too much fun today. What can I do to make you sadder?
/u/RiotAxes Boss ASU’s are great, but my biggest fear with them is the possibility of reducing skill expression. Now after hearing Lee is getting one, this raises my worry. Caitlyn for example had some bugs that were “fixed”. But that resulted in mechanics to be removed, mechanics that overtime became innate to the champion even though they originated from bugs.
Please tell me this won’t happen with Lee who is an EXTREMELY skill expressive champion
We are aiming not to have a situation like that happen again. Additionally, there is no general goal to reduce skill expression, and I 100% agree that it's core to what makes Lee Sin who he is.
So it’s all part of Riot’s plan to justify future Ryze’s nerfs
Oh sh*t they're onto us
Meddler wanted it but one pricing meme was enough ;)
We need to talk...
Read moreWhether mid lane mages are supposed to specifically start with very low base armor, iirc this is a carryover from old rune page preferences (same reason tanky supports have particularly high starting armor, as players ran both defensive seals and quints on those specifically).
Low armor makes these champions weaker in lane/early game against physical damage sources (lane minions, jungle monsters, AD bruiser and assassin champions). Thus there may be unexplored space here as I see many mage players complain about laning against assassin and bruisers in mid lane (despite ultimately not having a bad winrate in those games), as well as mage players perhaps wanting to explore jungling.
Or I could be completely wrong here and changing their early physical durability would lead to completely different design space problems (mages dominating top lane leaving bruisers stranded, AD assassins having to have their power curves massivel...
Not sure. Slayers (skirmishers + assassins) have no consistent damage typing, so MR and Armor aren't clear levers between them. And mid lane isn't a rock-paper-scissors relationship. Bruisers beat Slayers and lose to Mages, but Slayers and Mages tend to be matchup-specific. Some mages crush Yasuo, some lose to him.
The biggest thing their level 1 armor is modulating is how dominant they are in bot lane, both support and bot lane carry. So it'd be pretty challenging to up their armor - upsets a lot of mid lane balance while moving more of them out of mid lane entirely.
Suspect tinkering with Slayer base stats is more promising - if they all gained some base armor in exchange for something else (MR, health per 5?), we potentially move the needle on how much Bruiser mid win rates get inflated by countering very popular champions, which makes it easier to allow Bruisers to be present in mid lane without nerfing them. Would have a side effect of moving Slayers towards to...
Read moreRead moreA bit about skill floor and skill ceiling.
Lucian's maximum potential is completely ridiculous, but you don't need to do any of that to see some basic success with him, especially if you are playing with an engage support instead of an enchanter.
All you really need to know is: Engage happened? -> (W+)E forward, AA, Q, AA, continue to walk forward and autoattack. That is enough for not just Iron and Bronze, but also the median player.
And teamfights or more generally post-laning phase isn't that much harder - sure you have a shorter range than a lot of ADCs, but you get a lot of additional mobility and the ability to deal damage while moving (Culling), so you will be fine if you just play him as you would any other ADC. Of course you aren't going to get the Galeforce forward into Culling chunks that Lucian is supposed to do at high level play, but you don't need that.
Now compare that with Yorick: Sure, you can just waddle up to people and bonk them ...
A lot of it is - if I pick Lucian for the first time, I'm gonna fall flat on my face. But I'm gonna do a lot of cool stuff where it's obvious why I failed, what I need to practice to do better, and why it will be awesome once I do learn to do it.
If I'm a new player, the important thing is whether I'm excited to play the next game. Doing well in my current game can definitely help with that, but it's far from the only factor.