Bedsy

Alois 🇳🇱 is now up to Aphelios in his A-Z Top lane League Challenge on stream. An unfortunate series of events from his recent Annie win👇

Patch 26.14 Full Preview! Mages Bot - we've pulled brand from the patch given the concerns around mages bot - that said, we know this is a contentious topic, and I'll give some high level thoughts on how we see the situation (and more detailed thoughts in the patch rundown) - we see mages bot as creating healthy diversity for the bot lane experience overall (roughly 4:1 ratio of traditional marksmen to mages), even though for some traditional marksmen, they can be quite frustrating - it's important that players experience a mix of games at high intensity (eg. Playing adc against rengar/talon + mages bot) and also games that are more comfortable and low threat (maybe ivern jungle) as it creates the variety and flow state that keeps the game fun - too much intensity or too little intensity would make the game unfun in the long run as you'd never really feel those spikes of cortisol and triumph (which is one of the reasons assassins need to be strong for example) or be constantly stressed - marksmen are still the most popular bot carry in both pro and regular play - mages bot also need to be viable picks to allow teams to undoom themselves in champ select for an ad mid pick like zed/yone/Yasuo - that said, mages bot have pretty high winrates (often the highest), so aren't they overpowered? - The winrates don't really tell the full story, but they are definitely strong for several reasons. Mages, especially simple ones like brand, veigar or Swain for example have quite shallow mastery curves (usually only gaining 3-4% after playing ~50 games and also starting very high on game 1) in addition to not being deeply played in bot lane (ie. many mage bot players haven't progressed the mastery curve that far when you encounter them AND the mastery curve is not that steep) -> a similar effect to if you played autofilled malphite top (high skill floor) - adcs by contrast are typically harder to play but also reward that mastery depth more, meaning their winrates are relatively suppressed compared to mages bot - I'm not saying that mages at high levels of mastery/skill are weak (see them in pro play or high elo ranked), but mainly saying that winrates don't tell the full story and we see them as relatively similar in power level overall, just often more forgiving and can be more tolerant of matchup - adcs also have accelerated 3 item spikes in this season (compared to the other roles) due to bot quest, which also presents an interesting strategic balancing point (the mages a bit stronger on early item spikes and weaker on later ones) - another balancing aspect of mages bot is that they typically represent a composition tradeoff. Eg. ori + yunara/lulu bot lane and win on 2/3 items or AD mid plus ziggs+engage bot and need to end the game fast - if struggling with mages bot, champs like ezreal/sivir/zeri can be quite effective against them (dodge skills and have strong 2/3 item spikes and out scale) - anyway, a nuanced conversation that I'll dig into more in a video later Azir - players have been complaining about a bunch of bugged functionality for Azir ever since we made the changes to make on hits work on him - the team has fixed the vast majority of these bugs, eg. Things like jungle monsters not getting shuffled, pta not working, conq stacks, etc. - thanks to all your bug reports in helping track these down and keep them coming! Proto Harness - when looking at our jungle nasus nerfs, we ended up deciding that a better nerf would be to target proto harness - other users like shen jungle are also pretty strong, so we think pulling the champ nerfs and nerfing the item instead is a better direction and helps retain the power level of top nasus for example The other changes in this patch are relatively straightforward, but lmk if there's any more detail wanted and I can cover them in the rundown next week

Patch 26.14 Preview! MSI is in full swing! Had some awesome games and we're pretty happy with the meta overall. There's decent representation across each class (assassins in jungle, a few LeBlanc picks). Nerfing down some of the strongest picks in bot lane have also led to mages bot being more present in the meta. We don't find this state particularly problematic right now, but we have had several conversations about the true power level of mages bots (especially when they carry high winrates). That said, there are a few that are over performing in soloq (seraphine) so she's receiving a nerf, but the overall conversation is a lot more nuanced (which pairings, familiarity as opponents, etc.) Locke - Locke has had a really resonant start - players have resonated with his executes, resets and stack into burst gameplay - he's shown to be a little skill skewed in the same way that a Katarina, akshan or other resetty, roamy champions might be, but not overly so - that said he's still a bit strong when account for mastery growth and true power level - his level of early game snowballing is a bit too high right now - that said, we think his damage is appropriate if he needs to work a little harder to access it. As a result we're nerfing his waveclear (currently) to hit his ability to access it so reliably - we know that one of the things that players find confronting is his damage output right now, but we think it's valuable to retain these types of unique edges in the game for champions Systems - Rocket belt has been one of the premier items for mages (especially immobile) at the highest level for several months now. - We like and embrace this type of innovation, but it's also providing a bit too much versatility and removing a core weakness of these champs (ability to be killed), so forcing a bit stronger of a tradeoff - The other major systems change for this patch is a nerf to the mid boots upgrade for gluttonous greaves - it's adding a nice texture for playing say, mid vs top riven, but it's also the strongest performing boot in that lane and lacks clear counterplay - again, the innovation here is great, but just a bit strong