Rekkosed

We're a plush company now. who's coming next?

Patch 25.4 Full Preview! Item Changes - As mentioned yesterday, we're trying to make ADC's feel better through the IE changes and hit some of the outliers on Tank items - Primary IE crit carry builders, especially in higher levels of play have not been particularly strong in the meta compared to say Kalista, Varus, Ezreal, Corki - This IE change is intended to be a light buff to those archetypes (who are typically more popular in solo q) without sending them overboard in optimized/high skill play in particular - Tank items are feeling like they have a pretty good systemic foundation baseline to build on currently, so hopefully we can leave them here for a while Atakhan - This patch we're making some changes to impact the rate at which Voracious and Ruinous Atakhan spawn in games - Our intention is to do some tuning changes that make Ruinous Atakhan more likely to show up in Pro games without changing the rate that he shows up in regular games much (which is about ~15% of the time in slow games) - We hope to get this balance in a good spot by the time First Stand comes around Mel - Mel's winrate this patch is being tanked by her W being erroneously suggested to be maxed 2nd (which we're fixing for this patch) - She's getting a significant influx of new players, which is tanking her winrate somewhat, but she's still very popular which is great - Changes this patch are targeting at opening up moments of vulnerability, through early E duration, lowering her effective range and W duration - This should require her to get in range more, stay in range to build up R stacks and be more vulnerable when doing so - We're intending her to be weak into beefy frontlines that she has to stack up and a bit more friendly/enemy comp dependent (setup for E, needs a good reflect to scale well) - In solo Q she's intended to be a lot more effective and she is intended to start to fall off around 3 items-ish, but have pretty comfortable ramp up until then (this may need to change at some point in the future though) Ashe - Ashe took a pretty significant hit from the changes on 15.1, so we're looking to pull that back a bit Kalista - Has been extremely high presence, even in fearless world, so we're pulling the changes back there a bit Warwick - Warwick top has emerged as a pretty strong pick over a pretty extended period of time, so we're looking to take him down a tad there with a top skewed nerf

Patch 25.4 Preview! Tank Items - After an extended period last year of being quite weak and unsatisfying, tank items have found their footing in a strong way, especially for normal play but also in high levels for some of them - A lof of tanks in those times were opting into things like Thornmail 2nd item (in particular), which indicated that they don’t really have any good item choices - Being able to opt into specialized items like Thornmail 2nd sometimes is OK, but it feels pretty unsatisfying when it’s the option in most games, especially when playing against magic damage compositions - Unending Despair was reworked to be this 2nd baseline item to allow players to pivot off this foundation if an option is better (eg. MR heavy vs magic, AR heavy vs phys) - From our player surveys, champs like Mundo, Kench, Skarner, K’Sante, etc. who prominently use these items and are high on “perceived strength” will be nerfed Boots - We’re also doing a small pass to the boot options to ensure they are better balanced; these and the changes above will also systemically help ADC’s do more damage in most games - Steelcaps in particular has been a bit too good at shutting down these types of damage Attack Speed Cap - With the buffs to attack speed cap last patch, Kog has been pretty happy with that - A bit... too happy; so we're taking him down a peg Mel - For Mel, we are looking at some changes this patch to reduce her frustration, by bringing down her range and reliability slightly, lowering the forgiveness on her W a bit, now that players have had time to learn her, reducing her rank 1 root duration and making her R damage more dependent on having stacks - Mel sports a pretty low winrate on her first game in particular, but after players have played a few games, this rapidly increases Elise - Elise is a champion who’s had a dramatic rise in the support role; we’re not looking to swat her out of there too quickly, but her jungle has been slightly weak and we’re looking to distribute a bit of power into that role without removing her from support

Patch 14.20 Preview! Game Monitoring: - This patch we've seen a pretty good reduction in the amount of snowballing while keeping game times ~constant. - Additionally, we're noticing that champions are dying on average 3-5% slower than on the previous patch, which is helping skill expression shine a bit more - We're still waiting a little longer to see which roles have come out on top power wise, but AP has been floating up closer to the top Systems: - Our general strategy here as with previously is to get systems into the right spot first and then follow up with champions changes - Lethal Tempo seems to have found a pretty decent spot overall, not overpowering other options in a large way, some champs are flexing around on Grasp, PTA, Fleet, etc. Still some optimization to do here - AP has initially proven out to be quite strong with Stormsurge and Pen builds rising to the top again. We're not looking to give it a large nerf like last time, but a small tap down seems warranted. We're also going to continue to investigate some of the proc damage values with some being a little on the high end - Additionally, Liandrys has been pretty strong for Junglers, but seems to be in a reasonable spot for other roles. Part of this is because combat is a bit slower and so the burn is relatively more powerful both against camps and champions - Finally, ADC first item space needs work. Despite being a more powerful option in many cases, IE first has proven to be pretty unexciting and not really an item that players are excited to buy. - We're making some changes to the first item space to make Yun Tal, Shiv and Collector more appropriate relative to each other. We know that the space needs a lot more work to make Crit vs Non-Crit builds more satisfying and clear reasons to be picked - Grasp has landed in an interesting spot; with it showing up on a lot more champs than Tanks (especially some of the squishier fighters). - While this is sometimes OK, it's meant to be more of a niche option and pretty expectation breaking to see some of the light fighters or ADC's with really high HP values - We're doing some specific champ follow up on some of the fighter oriented Eclipse users, or Crit users (Yone, Yasuo) that don't have good alternatives. As mentioned earlier, we're looking to mostly tune around these item values for now More on champs tmrw