[2021] WARNING (AGAIN) patch released 2 day early!?

Sorry that this happened everyone, looks like we made a mistake again. Here is an overview of some of the key balance changes and where we were targeting.

Champions

BUFFED
Akshan (all elos)
Thresh (All elos)
Wukong (All elos, targeting the Baron lane)
Kennen (All elos)

ADJUSTED
Rakan (Due to power with Xayah)

NERFED
Akali (All elos, targeting the Baron lane)
Gragas (Elite/tournament level)
Katarina (High elo)
Kha'Zix (High elo)
Master Yi (All elos)
Xin Zhao (All elos)
Soraka (All elos, mostly high elo)
Ahri (Bug fix, slight nerf)

Items
Solari Chargeblade (Nerf)
Luden's Echo (Buff)
Awakened Soulstealer (Buff)
Liandry's Torment (Nerf)
Haunting Guise (Nerf)
Warmog's Armor (adjusted)

Runes
Font of Life (Nerf)

I'll try and stick around for a bit and answer some questions for a bit. Keep in mind I'm on the balance team and don't know/say much outside of that.

That's a big part of why we wanted to bring them down a peg. They are both high frustration champions so we are looking for ways to tap down some of their frustrating aspects without removing who they are. We are looking at some follow-up changes if they end up still being needed.

Our hope is that we can keep them as viable champions, with a reasonable banrate for players who love them without totally gutting them and removing their ability to be assassins. Assassins by nature are highly frustrating to play against so this isn't an easy thing to do.

Ya, he was released in a very weak state. We expected him to be slightly below average and he would quickly climb up as players learned how to play him. And while this did happen to some extent it hasn't been enough to make up the difference.

Some of these changes will also help him with the transition to Wild Rifts shorter game times. We are increasing the base soul drop rate, and recharge time of Flay's passive, this should help him see souls drop a bit more and not need to wait around so much in lane for a meaty hit.

There is some durability in there too.

She definitely makes good use of the item, but I don't think we would want to delete it for the sake of a few champions who are tuned with it in mind.

You are right that her damage would go down without the item, but that is because it is an intended item for her. Its like saying that marksmen damage would drop if we removed IE, while this is true it might not be the best course of action if we were looking to nerf marksmen damage.

Another thing to note here is that on LoLPC assassins have access to Sorcerer's Shoes that give them magic pen. In Wild Rift we removed this from boots and instead made a full item, so if you are looking for magic pen you need to invest a bit more to get the stats you are looking for. This also means that mages are not as strongly bound to a particular boot, and instead get to choose their boots each game.

IO can be strong, and nerfing it is always on the table. The problem is that if we hit it too hard it no longer feels worth purchasing, and it effectively nerfs all champions who might buy IO. Maybe this can be a good thing, but hitting these champions directly means we don't need to adjust the item, and they are still nerfed even before they buy the IO.

Oh if only I had that kind of power =P. The changes have been reverted and without players knowing about the changes its hard to get feedback on them. Though I suspect we will be getting lots of feedback on the changes. I'm all for player feedback if you have thoughts to share.

We also need to lock changes much sooner and a day or two isn't enough time. Typically we soft lock changes about a week in advance but leave wiggle room incase something pops up. We need time to account for: testing, approval, QA, patch notes, translation, and making builds, and anything else that might pop up. And even before this patch goes live we are planning for the next one, it doesn't mean everything we plan will make it in, but it helps us react to things when we have such a quick patching cycle.

Ban rate is a big part of it for sure. Typically we see a high ban rate as a sign of high frustration when playing against a champion, though it can also indicate power or perceived power.

In the past Akali has been slightly weak (when looking at winrate), but recently has just crossed over into slightly strong (and decently strong in Baron Lane). So while these are aimed to reduce her ban rate we geared it more towards the Baron Lane because that is where she has been preforming the best.

We are toying with some follow up changes if her ban rate is still too high. The trick is hitting things that hit her frustration more than they hit her raw power, but yes we want to push her into a place where you can play your main more often.

(P) Assassin’s Mark Movement speed :: decreased from 50% >>> 30% Base damage :: decreased from 40-180 >>> 28-140

Her passive, we are primarily aiming to target frustration and Baron Lane power.

Liandry/Haunting Guise is partly to do with Akali and Kat, but really the item has been a bit strong on all of its users. So while Akali/Kat fall into that, it isn't just because of them. Basically a 10% damage amp is strong when you give it to anyone.

Ya these shouldn't change her mechanics. We are hitting her passive MS and damage. Experienced Akali players should still feel good about mastering her.

Kat has actually been much strong in higher elo, and rather weak in low elos. People tend to think she is stronger in low elo because she is "easy to counter" and tend to forget that an experienced Kat player knows to watch for those counters and knows how to play around them, while also knowing how to pilot a mechanically challenging champion.

Despite reddit player's feedback, Asol has actually been one of our strongest champions each patch for the last year. His play style just isn't as broadly appealing or flashy so not as many players are drawn to him, though his theme/fantasy are broadly appealing so he only tends to be popular when he is CRAZY OP, instead of just OP. This is what makes him so challenging to work on.

If Asol and others end up needing some love after these changes they'll get it, but given that Liandry's champions where very strong with this item I expect they should still be fine.

Rammus is a tricky one. I agree he is actually very strong (53/54% depending on elo). But he isn't as flashy/frustrating/with as much solo carry potential as many other champions so players tend to undervalue him. Nothing for him in this patch, but we are keeping an eye on him to see how he preforms.

Both MF and Jhin are doing generally fine, but they tend to be a bit more team reliant. If you pair them with a bit of protection/lock down they can do crazy thing for sure. The nerfs to Chargeblade will also help them a bit as it will be nerfing many marksmen, and others will climb as a result.

Here's hoping, unless you're playing against me. Then I would prefer you don't play your main, deal?

Sure, I can take a stab at it. There was a release making some behind-the-scenes adjustments to normal game matchmaking that mistakenly pushed the balance patch out early. It is very unfortunate that it happened twice in a row, I totally agree. As it happened around 1-2am LA time, it required the EU and Southeast Asia teams to wake up and notify the engineers to roll the patch back.

Patch notes are scheduled to come out at a specific time every two weeks. We do this because we support around 20 languages in WR, and don't want to give any specific language early access. Earlier on in WR's development, we got a bunch of feedback that the notes were too early before and ended up confusing players, so we pushed them to be closer to the release timing (around 7pm LA time). Sometimes, articles do slip out early, almost entirely down to human error.

Minor patches (2.4a, 2.4b) tend to come out roughly the same time every two weeks, and the patch notes come shortly beforehand. These patches don't require approvals by Google, Apple and Samsung, as they're just numerical tweaks and occasionally small content or code changes.

Major patches (2.3, 2.4 etc) are a little more fluid, timing wise, but we push the button around 5pm LA time. Ultimately, it's at the behest of the 3rd party platforms to distribute the new build, though - for some it can take up to 2 hours across the world.

So for this one, it sucks, I agree. It's never our intention to push out major changes without communicating them, and it's something I hold our team to a pretty high expectation on.

We're working our way to up 5 bans per team. We started with 3 due to the size of the Wild Rift roster, but it will grow as we add more champions.

O.o I have wanted to get better at Pantheon (Baron and mid lane mostly), got any tips?

I haven't looked at data on this, but have you tried crit Pantheon at all? I feel like ER, IE, Quickblades, and Shiv(?), have been a lot of fun and makes your empowered 2 really strong. Though I haven't played it enough (or at all in ranked) to have a good read on it.

Thanks, but the whole team works really hard on these changes and I'm just the one who needs attention the most =P.

it's more like they fatfingered the big red button while trying to press a medium sized green button

You are right though it's a tight rope to walk, we don't want anyone sitting that low. Currently, Akali is sitting right around 50% so she has a bit of room to drop before we hit that point. But bringing down her frustration is the primary goal here.

Master Yi (everywhere) and Jax (everywhere, but mostly in the Baron lane) had been under preforming for a bit (at all elos) so we wanted to give them some buffs. We over shot it a bit with Master Yi in this last patch, hence the nerfs in this patch.

Yi has only recently become strong after last patch, and we are nerfing him in the very next patch (this one), so I'd say he hasn't been stomping games for too long, just recently.

Tank Garen was in a similar situation. If I remember right (I could be wrong) he started popping up right at the tail end of a patch after the next patch had been locked but he was nerfed as soon as we got a chance.

Rammus is a special case in that I have been saying he is strong for a while now, but he isn't seen as nearly as frustrating as many others. I also wouldn't say we have sat on him, he has popped up in the patch notes a few times. This is where things like pickrate play a role as champions with a smaller playerbase tend to have a higher winrate. We also want to account for how much of an impact they are having. As a made up extreme example Jax in the Dragon lane might have a crazy high winrate, but only a handful of games and we wouldn't want to nerf him because the sample size is so low.

Tanks also tend to have a higher winrate because they are a sign that a team is taking team comp into account, I don't have an exact number for this but I'd be willing to bet that just having a tank on your team gives you a +5% increased chance of winning the game. Obviously other factors come into play, but a team of carries might make flashy plays but they don't have the tools they need to win every game.

Skill is a factor we take into account, and it helps us target balance changes for different elo ranges, but like any champion they get buffed and nerfed as needed. Thresh as an example requires a bit of skill and he is getting buffed in this same patch.

Its a soft nerf for sure, actually something I think you had suggested in previous discussions about Kat =P. However Kat hasn't been struggling at higher elos, that's actually where she preforms the best. She is a highly skilled champion and it turns out highly skilled players can take advantage of that.

Your right that she doesn't benefit from many of the other AP item buffs but the goal is to nerf her at high skilled play and lower her frustration, so it feels warranted. As always though we have follow up patches and if she ends up being too weak/strong we can respond.

It is worth noting that those same Kat players know to watch for what can stop them and get to choose when they go in. So it is a bit of a dance of who can get better first.

Its very possible those players have jumped off of Kat due to her high ban rate. Its also a very small sample size from a single region of players that you notice. Its not to say its nothing, the highest levels of play will always have a small playerbase but that it is still a small data set.

When I say high elo I'm not referring to a players in any particular tier, but rather their elo and percentage of the playerbase.

Lets say these changes reduce Kat's ban rate, they then get to play this champion some more, she'll be a bit weaker and IDEALLY they get to keep playing a champion they love.

To be clear there are no nerfs to Rammus in this patch. I simply am pointing out that he is likely the most undervalued champion in Wild Rift.

He is going to be strong into full AD teams for sure, but he is far from bad in more balanced team comps.

Oh ya I was going to respond to that other post =P.

Basically I over did it with the Soraka buffs, she jumped up in power, but she won't be gutted by these nerf, and I expect she'll land in a fine spot. Nami is a touch strong too, and I wouldn't be surprised to see her popping up in the patch notes (not hinting at anything, just a my personal take).

Font of Life isn't give him Singed much survivability when it goes to split pushing regardless of map size. It could even be argued that on a smaller map it's even more likely that an ally procs it and heals Singed.

Liandrys will hurt Singed, but he, like all core Liandrys users, have been over preforming for a while. I wouldn't say he is in a rough spot, just harder to play given his unique playstyle. If you understand that style you tend to do really well with him.

What interaction are you referring to? I just tested FoL+Ardent Censer Singed on live and was able to get the bonus AS whenever an ally proced the heal.