League of Legends: Wild Rift Dev Tracker

Because we would never ship champions anything if we waited for things to be perfect. That's a larger take on the question, but and we do explore if we can do a champion before we start working on them. Famously Veigo was a champion we started on but ran into unforeseen constraints that forced us to put him in the ice box.

More seriously to your point though, we don't always know what is needed for a champion when we start working on them. Particularly the kinds of things that come from working on a champion and after having played them a bit. Things like Lillia and Zoe's third abilities (E) drawing a line on the mini-map were not things we thought of when we started on the champions, but that we discovered would be good to have through playtesting. Lillia's R showing the number of enemy champions that it would affect didn't show up until very late in her development.

Other times something ends up being easier than we thought, or even more difficult, may...

It sounds like there is some confusion on how it works. This does not remove the timing requirement of Smite, you still need to deal non-DoT damage to the objective (we are experimenting with if this should include ability damage or just basic attacks). If your damage reduces the Large/Epic monster's HP below Smite's threshold it will execute it.

So if you have 2 champions fighting at Baron, and not damaging it, then neither will take the objective. However, if both are fighting Baron, the jungler who secures the objective is the one who brought Baron to the execute threshold. Just like on live the jungler who secures the objective is the one who last hit it.

Another part of this is that Smite doesn't have a cooldown, so this applies to every large/epic monster, and you no longer need to worry about using your Smite during the pre-Baron fight, on RedBuff before the fight, or to secure Baron. Or if you are not the jungler, you don't need to worry about if your jung...

We did try versions where the camera shifted a little bit while you were aiming E (even if not through walls) but it makes comboing a bit funky as the camera then needs to move out and then back Zoe, so it slows everything down in an unintuitive way. This makes using multiple abilities feel odd and is the kind of thing that is very difficult to explain without getting your hands on it.

As for a fully unlocked camera, that is not something the team is planning and we are very unlikely to change. A game's camera is directly tied to how the game plays and feels, and this would be a lot of work for something that I suspect most people would not use.

I don't have the exact date off hand, but I believe it turns on in 4.1 (the next balance patch) or 4.2. Regardless I'm sure you'll see it in the balance patch notes.

We had you in mind when we made this change.

It's not so much a tradition of WC3, though I imagine there is a lot of overlap as to why it should be limited. We have tried different zoom levels, especially early on in the game's development but changing it has a fundamental impact on the feeling and balance of the game.

The biggest reason is that zooming out grants you more vision of the area around you (ofc) this makes ganks more difficult, while reducing the importance of vision. Wild Rift is also a very tactical game and being zoomed out makes pvp combat and tactical play much more difficult and unclear.

This camera zoom was specifically chosen and does impact the range of abilities, if we pulled the camera further out we would want to increase VFX (especially for short-ranged abilities) so that players could still have a clear understanding of what is going on, while long-range abilities are adjusted/balanced with the camera size in mind (Notice how Blitzcrank's Grab doesn't go past the screen).

Sp...

Unfortunately, I don't know the details of role-swapping myself, but it is on our minds. This does add some power to junglers, particularly when ganking or in PvP, but in a way that should be more familiar to players trying out the position.

We do use the mini cam when you hit something off screen, but we also don't want to put too much on the mini cam. Not all phones can handle both cameras at once so it can lead to situations where the game ends up being unfair if your phone's hardware isn't top of the line.

Or confusing situations where you are panning the camera (thus it shows yourself in the mini cam) as you aim or fire E, what should the camera show?

Or worse you (and we saw this a bit when testing abilities that could use the mini cam) are aiming your ability and the mini cam pops us blocking your view.

We can ways make adjustments in the future if there are significant problems, but this is a high-level optimization on a very high-skill champion. Zoe is also brand new so I expect there is a bit of a learning curve that everyone is working through atm before we decide if changes to this are needed.

We have a few important goals, but to be clear we do not see this as a one-stop fix for junglers.

One major one is to make the Smite controls more intuitive.

Summoner Spells all just have a single value unit type (Yourself: Ghost, Heal, Barrier, Flash, Clarity, Dash/Snowball2; Enemy Champion: Ignite, Exhaust, Mark/Snowball). Smite has 2 (champions and large monsters).

Abilities will prioritize champions, this makes sense and you generally want that to be your target.

However, Smite breaks this rule in a somewhat funky way.

Tapcasting:

• Before Smite enhances it can only target monsters (ofc).
• When you are in combat without a large monster a tap-casted Smite will target champions (assuming it is enhanced).
• When you are in combat with a large monster a tap-casted Smite will target the large monster. If the large monster dies and small monsters are still around Smite will target the enemy champion.
...

This is something we wanted to do but we had some tech limits with it having a variable range that we couldn't solve in time.

We did try a few different variations with having the camera pan but it made things really funky when you were trying to quickly combo your abilities without sending E through a wall. Using the mini-map to pan the camera isn't a great experience, but we try to help compensate for that with the line drawn on the minimap.

Glad you are excited, I'm excited to see how she holds up once things settle down a bit.

She takes some getting used to for sure, but don't focus too much on super long range hits, she can do her job with a well placed bubble from just around the wall if you are clever.

They will be coming in one of the upcoming balance patches, so it won't be live today, but very soon.

That's a good breakdown, though I don't think I'd call it less skill expression, more so that it is shifted into other areas.

Smite timing still matters when it comes to using your ability (non-DoT)/basic attacks on the objective (we are still testing to see how we feel about abilities working or not).

But the skill test is, like you said, still about hitting the objective and the timing for the still exists. This is intentional to allow for exciting moments like stealing Dragon/Baron and make them less of a coin toss and more about champion mastery.

Where I actually think this does is shift the skill test out of PvE and more into PvP. By giving junglers access to ghost, ignite, or exhaust, (maybe a heal gank) the skill check is shifted to ganking and choosing the right tool for your champion/game.

As for loadouts I don't know the details here, but I believe it is primarily focused on updating default loadouts with new items and better rec builds,...

One of the things we are testing and hoping to get feedback on is how it feels when abilities (non-dot) can proc Execute Smite vs just basic attacks both have trade offs for sure.

Our goal is not to remove timing entirely, we still want to allow for hype moments like objective steals. Timing is still a valuable skill for junglers and we want it to remain that way.

The idea is that this is really shifting Smites power into your champion mastery rather than being something so ping reliant with cleaner controls and guidelines. While opening up new spell options such as Ignite, Ghost, and Exhaust.

The new spells should be nice for ganking focused junglers, and having Smite on every camp should also help when you are looking to power-farm.