League of Legends: Wild Rift Dev Tracker

EDIT: Some great suggestions here. Thanks so much for your help! Gonna mull over these for a bit.

Hey folks,

I see the feedback a lot that the communication from the Wild Rift dev team is bad. (Yes we released the balance patch early again here's an explanation on that i'm sorry ok).

For those that I haven't met yet, I'm the communications lead on the team - my role is to help the devs tell stories and provide updates about the things they're working on. Part community manager...

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 beforeh...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

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. K...

I'm not even sure what changes you are referring to. But to be clear I'm not justifying any changes based on a friends skill level. Going off any one person's opinion or skill is a terrible way to balance the game. I'm simply just sharing an anecdotal story because Rammus continues to be underestimated. If you struggle to play him, don't enjoy him, or don't find success with him than ya you don't need to pick him up. Play who you enjoy.

We do play the game daily, both for work and for fun, we account for jungle clear speeds and we know this has a larger impact at higher skilled play (did you see we gave him a decent clear speed buff?). All changes we have done have been build off of actual data based off of games played on the most recent patch(s) when looking at all elos, positions, regions, winrate, pickrate, banrates, and player perception. Its a lot for a team to manage and any changes will have some (even if its small) effect at all levels of play, and have an effect o...