[2021] Wild Rift Patch Notes 2.4a

High elo is where she has been performing the best. This should make a rather safe champion with a powerful engage tool a tad more vulnerable in the early game where higher elo players tend to be a bit better about capitalizing on the early game.

She'll still be totally viable, and if you are enjoying and her keep it up.

Good question! Honestly, this could be a whole talk and it can be tricky for sure. I'll try to use crit users as my examples because of their recent item changes, and they have a prominence right now.

Depending on the class of champions we see different levels of item variety. Some classes should have plenty of options (crit users) but if they tend to build the same few items then it's likely that those items might be a problem.

Champions within a class. Even within a class different champions care about different stats. Even within crit users, there are different secondary stats that champions care about. Draven and Miss Fortune don't really care about attack speed, they are about large amounts of AD (for Draven's basic attacks, and Miss Fortune's abilities). So buffing Bloodthirster was a good way to buff them while also buffing an item that felt like it was still being underrepresented in the class as a whole.

Conversely, we are seeing crit users with frequent abilities uses (Corki, Lucian) performing very well with particular items (Essence Reaver, and Solari Chargeblade). We could instead nerf these champions but that would hard bind them to these items, meaning they would need to buy them each game to perform well. Some amount of item binding is expected, and even healthy for champions but if we can tweak things in a way that champions can choose different items depending on the situation it makes for a deeper and richer system where you are still bound to a subset of items, but have choice within them. For example, you know I want AD+crit, but should that be IE, ER, Quickblades, or BT? Ideally, this comes from the unique effects each of these items has and how it plays with your champion and the game state.

I do want to stress not all item binding is bad, it can be helpful for guiding new players (and existing try new champions), help avoid decision fatigue, or an item is just a perfect fit for a champion. It's also sometimes unavoidable and a single champion eats that binding cost for the rest of the roster.

Sometimes an item just provides too strong/too weak of a power spike. Rabadon's Deathcap might be the best example here. Clearly, this is a powerful item, but its effect makes you think it should be purchased later once you have some other items for it to build off of. But what we were seeing is that players were getting a huge power spike when they built this as a 1st or 2nd item. So we wanted to tone it down a bit so that it is more appropriate of a power spike if you build it early.

We also take into account fantasy items vs core items. Core items tend to be some general power-ups that we expect many players to build, Think Infinity Edge, there isn't really much of fantasy here but any crit builder can feel good about building this. Fantasy items (like Navori Quickblades or Essence Reaver) tend to be a bit more niche, they are exciting and tend to have a bit more to do with your champion's playstyle and can shape how they are played. But if we see a fantasy item with a high purchase rate (especially with champions that shouldn't like the item) that might be a sign it's too strong.

Mostly because Lee Sin and Akali aren't actually preforming very well at higher elos. They are popular and frustrating for sure, I won't deny that, but they don't preform nearly as well as many players on reddit think.

Honestly it doesn't matter what elo range I look at with them. When I look at the top 50% of players, the top 10%, 5%, or even when I watch progames the seem to preform fine but are not oppressively powerful.

Obviously there is some frustration/perception with these champions, and we are looking into it, but in terms of raw power we just don't see it.

The new items did help him, but he was still in a weaker state than the rest of the champion roster. We are hoping that these help push him up a little bit, without pushing him over the top.

As for the idea of pushing him into the "must ban" category. That is not our goal, and we don't want any champions to be sitting at that point. We want players to be able to play the champions they love, and will try and find ways to adjust/nerf them if they are banned to often (though this can be tricky).

Yi has never been much of a high elo jungle pick, and tends to dominate in lower skilled play while being a bit too predictable at the higher levels. That is what has always made him tricky to balance, if we make him balanced at high skilled play he dominates for the rest of the player base. So we tend to be carful with balance changes for champions like this.

We do worry about over buffing them for sure, that is why we have been hesitant to give them any buffs before the crit item changes went live.

A large part of the reason that Yi is so tricky is that his identity basically requires him to be a low elo stopping stat checking champion when balanced for higher levels of play. So the trick really comes down to what areas do we think we can buff that higher skilled players are better at taking advantage of.

Ideally, we can reach a place where all champions are viable at all elos, but that will always be tough. In order for champions to feel different, and have skill expression, some will inevitably perform better at different skill levels. In the past, this has often been a major reason for champion kits to receive new mechanics or reworks that focus on a bit of skill expression. A great example in this patch is Soraka. While not a stat checky champion Soraka had been underperforming at the highest levels of play but was fine at lower skill levels, so this new (or old depending on how you want to view WR's relationship with LoLPC =P) mechanic was added to help her out in skillful play. Whereas lower-skilled players are less likely to land her first skill and take advantage of the synergy, higher-skilled players are more likely to land the skill and take advantage of the bonus.

There is also something healthy about "graduating" from a champion and trying new ones. While we don't like it when a champion isn't viable, it can be nice to try out new champions when you feel you have mastered one and are looking for something new.

There is also something healthy about "graduating" from a champion and trying new ones. While we don't like it when a champion isn't viable, it can be nice to try out new champions when you feel you have mastered one and are looking for something new.

Yes as we get into higher levels of play the player base shrinks and an individual's performance carries a larger weight on the total data for sure. As you know, this is especially true when looking at pro play where certain players just mesh with certain champions, and even if that champion is thought of as weak the right player piloting them turns them into a force to be reckoned with. Asol and Singed players are a great example of this, where they have a small player base but when you see one there is a good chance they have 100s of games on the champion.

But at some level it is also a good thing, we wouldn't want brand new Akali players to have a sub 30% winrate just so that skilled ones are balanced at 50%. So finding where we are happy with those extremes is good, and something I think we could be a bit better at. At some level, this comes down to the different balance levers we have talked about, where we want to find levers to buff a champion (like Akali) at lower skill levels and less so at higher ones.

With assassins it can be a rough spot because they are so hyper-focused on 1 thing, killing the priority target. If they can't do that they are garbage, so I tend to like assassin kits that take a hit to their damage to provide something new can be very healthy for their frustation levels. Fizz (though he has been overturned) provides a way to start a team fight, that most assassins can't, and takes a hit to his damage for this (recent power level notwithstanding, I'm talking about his kit design). But not every assassin can or should be this way. Its part of what makes the class so tricky when compared to other classes.

Thanks! And thanks for making such great content, its always fun to check out your take on patch notes, even if I disagree and get frustrated at times =P.

Its just nerfing his Ad growth per level, so it will effect each shot, though I wouldn't expect it to be drastic.

We are looking at champions with high ban rates. Some champions will always have a high ban rate due more to frustration than to power. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts as an Akali player.

Would you rather Akali being objectively weak but less frequently banned or balanced but with a high ban rate?

I suspect players would rather be able to play their champion favorite champions even if they are on the weaker end. But what are your, and anyone else who mains high ban rate champions, thoughts?

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.

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.

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?

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.

I can confirm that this is caused by a known issue and that we have a solution planned. We are currently prioritizing improvements to matchmaking wait time and quality over this particular VP gain issue, but the fix is in the pipeline as it were.

This is a side effect of two features of how Ranking system works that affects Master and higher players:

1. VP gains are determined by where a player's MMR sits relative to the rest of their rank. So if you are a Master player and your MMR is higher than most Master level players, you will gain extra VP because you are playing better than most Master level players. Likewise, if you are a Challenger and you have an MMR below most Challengers, you will receive less VP for a win than you gain for a loss because you aren't playing like a Challenger. Meaning, you are losing matches that a Challenger would be predicted to win, so you will drop down to Grandmaster where your VP gains will level out. If instead you were to win more than the system expects you to (e.g. 66%+ consistently against hard opponents), your MMR would rise and your VP gains would level off because now you are playing like a Challenger. This alone wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the second feature.
2. Master -> Grandmaster -> Challenger promotions are done once per day, and not right when you deserve them. Meaning, a Master you can cross the VP boundary for where Grandmaster or even Challenger would start, but they won't be promoted until the daily promotion process runs. This is also fine on its own and the way League PC works. We look at the top X/X% players by VP and promote into GM/C. However, this also means that a Master player's VP gains stay the same even if they have passed the GM or even Challenger boundary. This means a Master can sometimes bump up into Challenger even though they don't technically belong there. Then, after the process runs and the player is put in Challenger, their LP gains switch to where they are relative to the rest of the Challengers rather than M or GM.
   

Either of those two features are fine on their own, but together they create an issue where it's possible for a Grandmaster level player to briefly get into Challenger, and then have their VP gains lower because they are more GM level.

The solution we currently prefer is to go the League PC route which changes (1) above to look at a player's MMR relative to the entire population between Master and Challenger to determine VP gains, rather than just the population within their Rank. The net result is the same --- players gravitate towards the rank of other players with similar skill, but instead of having VP gains change a bunch over night, they would slowly change as VP climbs to where other players of the same skill sit, and level off at, e.g. +/-15, rather than continuing to climb all day. So a Master player could start at +20/-10 and then it would change to +19/-11, etc., until it reaches +/-15 in the middle of Grandmaster and at that point, the player would have to start winning unexpectedly to raise their MMR, which raises their VP gains, which would land them in Challenger at +15/-15 instead.

This is basically a smoother version of how it works now, and it results in a relatively similar but smoother experience, while having less chances of VP gains bouncing around unintuitively.

To be clear, the current system will still get players to the right Rank, but in a less smooth way.

And, to be clear, we are prioritizing polishing the matchmaking changes we made in 2.4, and the improvement coming in 2.5 over this particular change.

Also to be clear, I'm relatively new to the team, and making may way through the skill, matchmaking, and ranking systems as I go. I haven't touched the Ranking system as much yet, while prioritizing the other two, but we will definitely continue improving all of them and have some good stuff in the pipe.

By polishing in 2.4 I mean we have already made that change to speed up matching, and now can do minor tweaks to improve the pairings you are speaking of.

We don't look at Ranked for PVP matchmaking because players play the two differently enough that PVP has its own skill system that we match on. But we are going to improve the quality of the matches you are having soon with some tweaks.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.