League of Legends: Wild Rift Dev Tracker

Your right the shield is a little less valuable for Blitz here, it'll still come into play in team fights but ya the shield is really the least valuable part for him.

He makes good use of the health, and the Mana means he can use abilities more. But he is also converting mana into his shielding with his passive, and ability haste so he can be even more if a CC bot. The Fimbul shield is really icying on the cake for him.

Yes,

I HIGHLY recommend getting this first with Blitz.

Where are you hearing Teemo was nerfed due to people not wanting him on their team? Teemo was nerfed due to his ban rate, he has been a powerful pick for a while, last I saw his banrate was nowhere near the top.

This is why, like I have said throughout these posts, that the balance team uses multiple metrics to guide balance changes. It's not just a champions winrate, nor is it just their banrate.

The team actually starts working on Patch B before Patch A comes. Basically by the time the team locks a patches content we start working on the next one (but don't lock anything in) based on expectations or things we couldn't get to.

Then when patch A comes comes out we look at day early data to get an idea of what we should be working on. This might mean we discard work we had been planning for that patch, or we add things things. When first planning work for the patch the team plans for some amount of wiggle room so that we add things or adjust as needed.

It can be, but that is why we look at more than just their winrate. When looking at their winrate we don't look at at their overall winrate, but winrate at different skill levels, positions, winrate by game length, and builds. Then tailor balance changes to those, aspects. Things like pickrate, banrate, player perception, and difficulty of the champion also come into play on top of just a champions winrate.

Ya he is a fun one. He is one of my go to champions when I'm mid lane.

I wouldn't assume thornmail on Corki, but PD, GA, or BT seem like decent options.

I am surprised by the results I'm seeing, no winning out by a decent amount. This likely explains why so many people struggle vs assassins. Zonyas, RoA, Seraph's, Reflector are all really good for surviving a rough lane.

And anyone will tell you a dead dps deals no dps so you might trade a bit of up front burst but that extra time can go a long way. Maybe you only get another spell or two in a team fight, but maybe it means you don't need to back as frequently, get poked out before a fight, or give away a kill that lets the enemy snowball.

Seems unlikely the balance team would do that, Asol has always been strong, he might just not be the champion for you, if your interested in playing him I suggest checking out some guides and roaming with him more.

As for Rengar, he has been on the stronger end for a bit and is always a frustrating champion when he gets ahead. If your struggling with him too then it maybe don't dive in 1v4?

It's not much of a placebo if it actually help his winrate vs certain champions. But as the the idea itself, players are smart there isn't a buff that we could do that would make the average player FEEL he is strong that wouldn't also make him crazy OP. And something small wouldn't make average players better at him without boosting the power of an already powerful champion.

Even if there was a placebo buff we could do the issue isn't his power level. It's a combination of things that basically boils down to him having a high skill floor, with low satisfaction for most players, and an unclear way to judge success/express power.

He was more popular, still not very popular, when he was even more crazy OP. That was when the game was brand spanking new and he was sitting at around a 60% winrate across the board (higher than any champion has ever had in the game). That winrate would likely grow as players became more familiar with him, and for hardcore Asol players his winrate must have been through the roof.

Players weren't playing him because of the fantasy, it was basically a free win to pick him they were being bribed with his power. Like I have said plenty of times he is still one of the strongest champions, and likely the strongest in the right hands. Yet he is unpopular.

You are right that the average player prefers micro over macro plays. Macros plays are harder to appreciate, and feel, and that is what Asol is all about. A buff to his power level doesn't change that.

No problem I love these kinds of topics and he is a very interesting champion. He has a lot of things going on that make him a tough champion design problem. Like you said cosmic dragon is appealing and we do wish that he was appealing on the mechanical/gameplay side to match it.

Though he is far from under-powered, he unquestionably strong, and I suspect even strong than we think.

I wouldn't say that, the two games are different and we have champions with tweaked abilities. But he has this same problem in PC so if either team could find something appealing that worked to broaden his appeal, while still appealing to Asol players I suspect both games would want to move in that direction.

We aren't actively working on him right now, but he is a topic that comes up a lot. It's really a matter of finding what we can chance without changing him too much. Basically it's a narrow target that everyone has ideas about, but nothing that gets everyone saying "hell ya, that'll do it!".

The low playrate high winrate is an interesting case. I was actually talking with another designer, who has worked much closer with the PC team than I have, about this the other day.

It's one of those things that's tricky for me to explain in text, but here is my attempt.

Facts His fantasy (Space Dragon) is broadly appealing. He has a unique/unfamiliar play pattern with a high skill floor. Success with Asol comes more from large strategic plays (roaming/ganking/macro plays), than smaller tactical plays (1v1 lane combat, mechanical outplays, flashy highlight video type stuff) that is generally appealing.

This creates an interesting (and actually more common, than I expected) situation.

A player finds the idea of the champion appealing and tries them for a few games.

Because his gameplay is unfamiliar and his high skill floor, the player does poorly and likely loses each of these games.

They drop the champion and try someone else.

It really depends on how you want to define viable here. In terms of power he is (and has always been) one of the strongest champions.

This goes a bit deeper into skill curves, but he has a high skill floor (and his skill tests are not highly mechanical, that is easier to read/appreciate, but are very strategic). On top of that he is very different than other champions so his skill tests (mechanical, tactical, and strategic) don't transfer to other champions very well, and familiarity with other champions don't transfer over well to him.

This is to say that for hardcore Asol players his winrate is likely MUCH higher than we are seeing, and his currently high winrate is likely lowered by new Asol players giving him a try. To be clear, I haven't looked into his one trick winrate or anything to verify this, but I suspect this to be true given what we have seen, and we saw something similar happen on PC at one point.

So when thinking about how do we make him v...

Ya, the trickiest part is that his theme (space dragon!!!!!!) is very attractive, but mechanically he isn't the most appealing champion to most players.

For Asol players he brings something interesting/unique that isn't overwise offered. This can be a big plus, but it makes any sort of rework tricky when the primary goal of the rework would need to be to broaden his mechanical appeal.

Sorry for the delay.

Ban rates are all relative. There isn't a strict number that is used because as the champion roster grows everyone's banrate shifts. So really what matters is a champion's banrate when compared to the average ban rate. Even within that some champions are just more frustrating to play against and have a higher banrate. So I don't have a great single number for you

This is why banrate is generally a better judge of frustration than it is of power. Champions like Rammus/Amumu have had some of the highest winrates (regardless of elo) but are rarely banned. Where as Akali was rather balanced (from a winrate perspective), but can be highly frustrating to play against and had a massive ban rate. Assassins tend to be frustrating to play against and I expect will always have a higher than average ban rate, the grey area comes in when discussing the bounds of what that should be. Then also factor in their winrate, pickrate, elos, player perception etc. B...

We're going to roll out better AFK detection for non-participation. It's actually live and running behind the scenes, but we've been hitting some tech problems getting replays of games to verify that it's working correctly. Once we're confident it's not detecting players who are actually playing, we will start rolling it out to everyone.

you think we're that coordinated?

OP delivers, thank you for making our day.