Reign of Gaming

In case you missed yesterday's massive patch, you can find all the new items, runes, UI changes and Nami preview in our PBE Patch news post.

PBE Changes for 11/16

• Mercurial Scimitar - Now has a 90 second cooldown (up from 60)
• Chalice of Harmony - Now gives +25 magic resist (Down from 30)
• Heart of Gold - Now gives +250 health (down from 325) but now has a passive
• UNIQUE Passive: You gain an additional 5Gold every 10 seconds.

PBE Skin Preview - Arclight Varus (Not Finished)

Archlight Varsus is still locked on the PBE as the skin is not finished. Keep this in mind!

Season 3 Items in Twisted Treeline and Blackfire Torch Change

It looks like BFT will be getting some changes. However, it looks like the changes will not make it into this PBE Patch.

Season 3 Items Excluded

• Hunter's Machete, Spirit Stone, and its upgrades tend to be advantageous towards already-powerful archetypes. In addition, because of the smaller jungle, the increased jungling speed will not be necessary. This may change in the future.
• Homeguard Enchantment is not included due to the smaller size of the map.
• Liandry's Lament is a weaker version of Blackfire Torch, and will be left out due to differences in champion viability.
• Ohmwrecker will also be removed due to its skewed benefits towards bruisers and tanks.
• Sightstone and Ruby Sightstone will not be available, as wards are not available.
• Runic Bulwark will not be available to keep AP champions viable.

Twisted Treeline Items Removed

• Lord Van Damm's Pillager will be temporarily removed due to conflicts with Black Cleaver. It will be remade and repurposed.
• Wicked Hatchet will also be temporarily removed, as it's very similar to the new Executioner's Calling. It too will be remade and repurposed.

Awe no BFT nerf for Teemo......
BFT is getting nerfed.

Blackfire Torch
-Reduced magic penetration from 20 to 15
-Decreased maximum charges from 25 to 18
-Decreased the duration of the burn effect from 3 to 2 seconds
-Increased the delay between charge gains from 1 to 1.5 seconds
-Increased the burn amount from 1.67% to 1.75% of max health per second
-Fixed a bug that caused the first tick of burn to not consume a charge

Butcher's Blade and Soul Eater...?
Sorry, those were internal names. We like to call things Soul Eater as a joke.

I really like the new items Nome, and I'm a little disappointed to see such a large amount removed so quickly. I can understand most the items being excluded due to the imbalance on this map, but ohmwrecker seems like a phenomenal way to prevent turtling late game against champions that clear waves too well (And while it has been toned down, it does still happen, even at high ELO play). Is there a chance you could re-think the exclusion of ohmwrecker?
Everything can be re-thought; it's really going to be up to the community to decide. Our initial plan was actually to just keep the entirety of S3 itemization out... this meant even keeping things like Heart of Gold in TT, since TT was largely balanced and designed without (too much) of S3 in mind. I decided to do a sweep of S3 items anyway to see which ones we could bring over safely, and the items in the OP are the only ones I found to be potentially abusive.

Now keep in mind, TT is actually quite likely to be receiving more items soon. LVD's Pillager, Wicked Hatchet, and quite possibly Kitae's Bloodrazor and Entropy from Dominion are all going to be remade fairly soon. I'm of the opinion that TT (and Dom) should NOT have less options than SR--just different ones--so consider this a continuation of a transitory state.
It might be because Ahri's passive was originally called Soul Eater, and no one at Riot noticed that Nasus' passive was also called Soul Eater until she was released and the community pointed it out.
Yeah, it's this. We now call everything Soul Eater.

That's good to hear. Are we going to be receiving sanguine blade/overlords bloodmail buffs in the near future as well?
I wasn't aware they needed buffs.
ADC will likely get some boosts through new itemization. Overlord's Bloodmail may just be outright reworked at some point.

RiotNome, what was the idea behind taking out GA in the new map if you don't mind me asking?
I dislike the item from a design standpoint. It reeks of old 5.XX to early 6.XX DotA when Aegis was purchasable. All things considered, the team with GA tends to beat the team without, even if the team without has been outperforming them the entire game. I feel like this effect is amplified in 3's. Also, I dislike items with multiple resistances... I disagree with the notion that you should be able to itemize against all threats so easily.

dude your actually nerfing an item specifacally because of interferce with one champ LOL i called this out before BFT was even released
Hmm? The item's just imbalanced.

Season 3 Items in Dominion

Season 3 Items Excluded

• Hunter's Machete, Spirit Stone, and its upgrades will be absent due to the lack of jungle in Dominion.
• Homeguard Enchantment is not included because it'd likely have negative ramifications towards build diversity and strategy.
• Liandry's Lament is a weaker version of Blackfire Torch, and will be left out due to differences in champion viability.
• Ohmwrecker will also be removed due to there being no traditional turrets in Dominion.
• Sightstone and Ruby Sightstone will not be available, as wards are not available.

Nami - feedback and questions thread

It can be hard to get coverage on all the questions and feedback when they are in so many different posts, if you guys could try to condense your feedback and questions into this thread I can get more coverage on Nami overall.

I'll try to stay as up to date as possible on this thread and answer as much as I can, all of your questions and feedback are much appreciated!

What do YOU think about Nami ?
I find her to be quite fun, that in combination with the new items for support make it a really enjoyable experience.

What do YOU think about Nami ?
I'm biased because I main support, but I think she's the bee's knees. The fish-bee's' knees. Lots of fun positioning and disabling and enabling.

Who is the designer, was it you? The support hoard needs to know who to save their pitchforks for if we are displeased. :P

kidding of course... mostly.
Yes, you can send all the pitchforks to me 

What skill do you recommend making first. W or E? I was thinking W for the heal and damage but E also provides nice damage too but I was thinking it might be more useful mid/late game.
Depends on who you're laning with really, we found in testing that maxing your E when you're with someone like Caitlyn works VERY well. When laning with someone like Vayne who takes a lot of damage and has low range going W first helps a lot.

I am so excited for this champ, its not even funny! Classick and the Nami team have been working hard to get her in PBE tonight! Can't wait to read your thoughts

Not in PBE yet, can anyone who played her answer some questions?

1- Passive (Celerity) does this proc if your allies are in the area of effect of your damaging spells? IE, if you Tsunami through your team, do they get a mini-sprint?
2- Surging Tides - does the number of bounces increase with rank?
3- How is her base movement speed?

1 - Yes, so you can use it as an engagement tool and send it through your allies so they get hasted to catch the opponents when the wave slows them down.
2 - 3 bounces at all ranks
3 - 305 movement speed, although with the season 3 changes base movement speeds have been adjusted

It can be hard to get coverage on all the questions and feedback when they are in so many different posts, if you guys could try to condense your feedback and questions into this thread I can get more coverage on Nami overall.

I'll try to stay as up to date as possible on this thread and answer as much as I can, all of your questions and feedback are much appreciated!
Why didn't you name her "Romlariel" or some other similar name?

I've been playing her as a support

Passive - Only complaint I could possibly have is that I wish it lasted a bit longer

Q - This ability seems fine to me, though it doesn't have high base damage, which is pretty much my complaint for most of her abilities. 

W - I will assume it was supposed to be a combat oriented heal/harass where you cast it on enemies and it splashes to heal your ally. Unfortunately, it uses up way too much mana. I know this is to combat sustain, but the rest of her abilities aren't interesting enough or give us any reason to level anything else up. So, from my experience so far, if you get into a small skirmish in the bottom lane and use your W, you won't be able to fight again for a while because all of your mana is gone.

E - I don't really have much complaint with this ability either. 

R - I love it.

Because of her mana costs, I've been scrambling to get mana regen just so I'm helpful throughout long team fights. I feel like her W doesn't do anything in any stage of the game, except in the lane phase.. that one time that you can cast it. My thoughts are, she either needs to have more base damage on her abilities to make up for her high mana costs on her W or more mana/mana regen.

Edit : since all her skill icons are blue, its hard to tell when shes actually out of mana
I think once we get a new patch for PBE and fix the double mana cost bug on W this should help a lot with your concerns.

Thanks for the feedback!

Is she designed to be a good AP mid as well or is she getting hammered like Lulu?
It's a tough line to make a support "viable" middle and not overpowered, I'll try to get as close to that line as possible but it has proved to be quite difficult in the past.

For Nami's E, Aqueos Empowerment: I know it explicitly says "basic attacks"...so does that mean NOTHING else in the game procs it? Fiora ult, Gplank q, etc?

Can enemies be hit while they're in the air, either from q or ult?
It will proc with on next hits such as Gangplank Q, Ezreal Q, Nasus Q, etc.

May I ask for a reason why the design team bothers with ratios on supports at all? Why not high base values (for lane phase) and little to no ratios on her abilities so people don't take a high CC champion mid and destroy with them (second coming of Lulu).
This is something I've thought about a lot, one idea we've thought of is a more debuff heavy support where their AP ratios scale the duration of their debuffs as opposed to damage. More than likely Nami will have her AP ratios reduced some, but we don't want to make purchasing AP feel like a complete waste.

Preseason Gameplay Changes AMA

GiantR over on reddit posted  a wonderful google doc roundup of the full AMA on reddit today. You can find the Q&A below. Make sure to give him some love in his reddit post.

1.What is going to happen to junglers such as Amumu or Nautilus who were only able to survive in jungle since they do not have the tools to lane as effectively and the new jungle might be a tough place for them as well.
The new jungle items are meant to soften the blow of the increased difficulty. We've been testing both of these junglers and have had success with both. Due to the maximum Health damage of Amumu's Despair he actually isn't hurt as much as you would expect by the jungle changes. Nautilus does have a tough time before he hits level 3 (2nd point in Titan's Wrath) but after that it's honestly smooth sailing. For Nautilus specifically, we may consider doing a buff to his level 1 W so he isn't completely crushed by the changes. We'll be continuing to monitor cases like these and make changes to champions or the jungle as necessary. - Stat

2.is building crit chance worth it anymore? ie sotd work wonders in bursts

Building Critical Strike Chance is still the best way to have the highest sustained single target damage. -Xyph

3.So, about the masteries...are they gonna be significantly reorganized, or will it mostly resemble S2 masteries with new ones added in?

Depends on the tree. Offense has received the fewest changes while Defense and Utility both have substantial changes to individual masteries as well as their structure. There were a lot of good changes that came as a result with the S2 changes so I wanted to really focus this time around on the highest impact changes, adding new builds, and fun options. A complete overhaul was less important this time around. - FeralPony

4..Why do you default to saying X is toxic just because it takes more effort to balance it?
Will we see the new some of the new S3 items removed just because they are "toxic"?

You misunderstand this - taking effort to balance something is fine. Something that can't be appropriately balanced is the problem. If any of the items cause unsolvable problems, are fatally flawed (old Locket) or are bad items that trap players into buying them, then yes, we'd remove them. I think your assessment of it being because we don't want to is way off, though. -Morello You have to remember that our top priority isn't to items/variety/novelty or something else. It's to the player experience as a whole. If any item is causing the overall player experience to be negative - that item doesn't deserve to exist. Toxic items tend to overall "net negative" no matter what we do - so we typically remake or delete them. -Xyph

5.Is Helix going to make the PBE?

Probably not at the moment. Arcane Helix needs a lot more work before it actually gets out. It was intended to be a form of "Spell Vamp" for Supportive characters but was mostly getting hijacked by Mana Tanks (Swain and Ryze). The item needs a lot of polish before it goes out. - Xyph

6.Why didn't you just remove the crit chance on Atma for another stat ?

We thought about this - but one of the major goals of S3 was to ensure that your old builds still worked to a high degree of efficiency. While we did want to add more variable builds into the game, we are aware that players might be overwhelmed. Thus - a strong effort was made to keep all your old builds relatively consistent in function (if not slightly stronger / smoother) than before. -Xyph

6.Which champions do you expect (or even want) to see back in the jungle competitively?

It's more that we want to see different types of junglers. So you should see single-target and sustain junglers like Fiddle or Warwick return, as well as characters that need more gold to be good. I expect we'll see some other, stranger junglers also.-Morello

7.What do you think about the new Sword of the Divine, is it really balanced ?

It probably still needs a bit of numbers tuning. It's been a traditionally hard beast to figure out. I'm thinking the AS / Cooldown on the item is a bit too strong (or possibly the price). I'm a huge fan of how impactful it feels on single target assassin-esque carries but I'm mostly worried about it destroying the laning phase. -Xyph

8.Who are some unexpected champions that now work well in the jungle? :D

I've personally been having fun trying out different Malzahar builds in the jungle. Due to the leashing changes you can use the voidlings as tanks for the first clear or so. AD Malzahar actually clears pretty well! - Roku >>Level 6 Malzahar ganks are frightening! -FeralPony

9.How early in advance did you begin these projects for S3? (either specific times for each projects or a general idea of when for the whole thing is fine :D)

We've had a general inkling of what we've wanted to do for movement speed and resistances for quite a while now - but a large bulk of itemization was done in the 4/5 months leading up to the S2 finals. -Xyph

10.How do you guys intend to balance early game support strength versus how durable they are?For instance, you needed Sona's base armor and she's now at risk if she decides to go for that level one burst she's known for. Nami's q may be on par with blitzcrank's grab. Say you find that it's too strong will you need her base stats like Sona or need the ability?

Perhaps - I like to mess with base stats because they're effective for nerfing, but they don't take away fun stuff. For Nami, I'm not as worried about her Q. -Morello

11.What was the thought process on lowering the gold gain in jungle early, etc and upping the prices in a lot of items? It seems like you're going for more of a late game area now.

What we discovered in the price / gold calculation on a lot of items was that the high amount of premiums and bonus statistics you got for completing a lot of items were destroying a lot of the natural item flow. Basically, you got so much added value from finishing a tier 3 item that it didn't make sense not to build anything but rush your tier 3 item. However, the general gold income of the game has gone up slightly in SR to offset this effect. - Xyph

12.Why did you remove the ramps?

OSHA regulations. -Morello

13.How are these itemization changes going to affect dominion?

Ultimately, it will be up to Nome about what items he decides to bring into Dominion as Nome is in charge of that. If you like a particular item on SR, I'd heartily recommend you to try to flag him down on the Dominion forums. -Xyph

14.Are there actually any PHYSICAL jungle changes? Or just theoretical mechanics changes?

Mostly mechanics. We did move a couple mobs around (like the big Wraith being put further from mid-lane), but it's mostly numbers and mechanics. - Morello

15.With so many additions of new AD items, what is the reasoning behind not adding more spell vamp items (beside the one aimed primarily for AP junglers and not lategame casters)? (Keep up the good work, really looking forward to the future! ✖‿✖)

We've generally found that Spell Vamp as a whole benefits tanky fighters with split damage more than any physical damage character. This is due to the fact that Spell Vamp ignores the damage type you're dealing and is one of those weird 'in-combat sustain' statistics that favor sustained damage dealer that can survive for a long time. Thus, the addition of AD items didn't seem to also need Spell Vamp. (For an example of the above in action - look at Pillager on Twisted Treeline. Great on Lee Sin, not so good on Talon/Pantheon.) -Xyph

16.Is Arcane Helix going to be a Summoner's Rift item, or an item for another map? Or will we not be seeing this at all?

Probably not at the moment. Arcane Helix needs a lot more work before it actually gets out. It was intended to be a form of "Spell Vamp" for Supportive characters but was mostly getting hijacked by Mana Tanks (Swain and Ryze). The item needs a lot of polish before it goes out. -Xyph

17.Do you foresee changes in the lane preferences and roles, or will it still be best for most AP casters to go mid lane, for example.

Due to the ambient gold increase and itemization additions I think its pretty likely that things will swap around. We've already been seeing lanes swapping around at the end of Season 2 - I would expect that trend to continue personally.-Roku

18.When you say ambient gold change do you mean the gold income from time has been buffed?

Yes - the passive gold income on Summoner's Rift has gone up a bit. -Roku

19.The nerf on Athene why?

This was the gold efficiency sweep that we did. In the old system, the higher the tier of the item, you got very high gold efficiency on the items due to high premiums. We've lowered item premiums across the board for Tier 3 items as a whole so a lot of high-end items have had their stat valuations reduced. -Xyph

20.Why bother with a pre-season elo if the changes are going to be so dramatic? Why not reset elo again right at the "official" start of Season 3, which would be presumably after people have settled in to the changes?

Well, keep in mind that your ELO is also used to matchmake you against players of similar skill - so you can get a general sense of who your opponents are or how well you are doing. -Xyph

21.On the PBE right now it seems like EVERY jungler will probably have to buy Machete to do an initial clear and there's not gonna be much of a choice. Are you ok with this? I think players are going to default to using Hunter's Machete as a safe choice as that is what it is meant to be.

We've seen success with Boots starts on champions with early gank strategies (ex: Shaco). We also had pro players come in and test the changes and Saintvicious had a surprisingly good showing with Doran's Blade starts on some of his champion choices (ex: Tiger Udyr). Unfortunately, I think Cloth Armor is a fairly poor start, but let's be honest it's not that exciting of a choice to have to make. I think the door is still open on this one. I don't think any of us can figure out how the jungle or game will play in just one day. =) - Stat

22.It's great that you guys are changing the game so much, and I think you guys are going in the right direction. That said, are you worried about making so many changes to the game at the same time? I think it make balancing a lot harder since there's so many variables.

This is definitely true - However, the old system was starting to show a lot of inherent difficulty in balancing champions. The fact that starting items and end items were known and set meant that champion skills and powers needed to assume a standard item build set across these champions. Could champion X afford to rush a GP/10 item in the jungle/lane and survive? If not, then he's not very viable, etc. Consider what it took to be a top-tier jungler in Season 3 - Massive AoE clear, self-sustain shield, high movement speed and a CC. We're trying to find a better baseline for itemization and early game statistics so that balancing for viability is slightly easier. - Xyph

23.I got two questions, if you dont mind :D
Judging from the batch of items put on the PBE, I'm not really seeing any new on-hit items suitable for AD carries (outside of blade of the ruined king). I don't count Storm because its suited for AoE, where most AD carries specialize in single target dps. Are there more on-hit items down the pipe line
 Which single item do you think will be the hardest to balance and have your eye on?

1. Vamp Scepter is 10% Life Steal. We nerfed this a while back. 2. Statikk Shiv synergizes well for carries that want to kite a lot, due to the fact that charges build up rapidly if you're constantly moving. 3. Divine Sword, Mercurial Scimitar, Mikael's Crucible are probably the scariest thing on the PBE at the moment. -Xyph

24.After looking over all the new changes on PBE, it made me wonder if the meta game would continue to be as suffocating moving forward. It seems like the new items open up all kinds of options for role placement. Are you experiencing a lot of success with various laning placements internally in testing or are the typical laning meta placements staying largely intact?

One of the goals for Season 3 was to ensure that players could still play the ways they were familiar with and still be effective. While role replacements and lane swaps might be possible now - it was very important that the items didn't completely break the ways people were familiar with and that the lane setups that you are familiar with was still decent. -Xyph

25.Will tryn be viable again ? qq

He's probably in a much better state that before. Unsure about viability as I'm not the greatest on competitive affairs. - Xyph

26.Alot of this community sees many of the new items to be OP on certain champs. How responsive are you guys going to be to balancing the new items?

Very - this is really cool, but it comes with disruption whenever you mess with this stuff. We're counting on people finding broken stuff. We also want to let people try and find counters depending on the severity, but we'll be pretty aggressive with changes. - Morello

27.What was the strategical reasoning behind releasing so much content at once, rather than staggering it gradually?

Since all these systems are inter-related, we had to bundle them to do them right. The problems we're looking to solve with these game systems have a lot of complex and nuanced interactions with each other - so for example, making the new items without the gold changes and jungle changes would mean that all the prices would be off, since people will get more or less gold. With champions, you're right it's often good to isolate changes, but with systems, the opposite is more often true. -Morello

28.Morello, Xypherous.

What about the top lane de-toxification, which should be a level of change across the board like the old sustain culling. What's up with that? Or it should be "fixed" by the itemization changes? I mean, it's a change on the order of magnitude as what you've been releasing, so I can't imagine balancing the game and then without more changes to the whole ecosystem just changing all the top laners.

This isn't champion changes, as much as a whole category change. One interesting thing that looks minor, but helps a lot, is the removal of flat minion damage reduction. This makes lane-freezing harder and lets you fight more often when you have a bigger wave. -Morello

29.When an item states that it gives stats such as dealing more damage to monsters or taking less damage from monsters, does that include minions?

Monsters is our wording to describe neutral enemies in the Jungle. - Xyph

30.Do you think that all these new changes will intimidate newer players form playing?

Well, new players don't have anything to compare it to - they'll actually notice the least! - Morello

31.Do you plan on some of the "God" junglers from S2 being useless in S3?

Hopefully not useless, but "ungodded." :) - Morello

32. What's changed on Nidalee aside from her aesthetics? I could swear her jump is behaving differently. I was having trouble jumping over small walls that are never an issue. It felt kinda sluggish

Just her art. - Morello

33.Can you get me ahead of everyone else in the PBE Queue? :3
Also, why have you increased overall Move Speed of all Champions?

Boots give you less bonus MS, so total movespeed with boots is the same. What this means is boots aren't 100% required as your first buy (since you have a higher MS), so you have more options for your starting build. -Morello

34.Why did you feel the need to make the modifications you have to the S3 Jungle? What was "wrong" with the S2 Jungle?

The current jungle only allows for AOE, fast-clear, low-gold champions. Additionally, the low jungle rewards meant lane camping was the best strategy - making it so the laning characters couldn't do much with the jungler ganking so often. So, with these changes, we add more types of junglers and allow them to get gold - all while removing lane pressure. -Morello

35.are you worried that AD champions will be stronger than expected after these updates or what are your thought on that?

Perhaps - it's something to watch. We wanted to make AD cheaper, and AS more expensive, so non-carries could get AD too, but that could backfire if we've missed something big. - Morello

36.With the damage items being cheaper and tanky items more expensive. Are you looking for a higher kill count throughout games? And with this damage output to let players score kills easier.
Are you confident that snowballing won't become dominate and hurt the game?

The biggest changes to defense items are to the early raw mitigation items like Chain Vest and Negatron due to how much they can shut down an opponent especially in the laning phase. The high end tank items themselves should still feel like powerful investments that allow tanks and bruisers to fufill their job. A lot of the top end items across all roles have been reduced in effectiveness, so we should see a drop in snowballing rather than an increase. However, if this balance is off and we find tanks are unable to fulfill their role we'll adjust accordingly. I also agree SotD is probably on the OP side currently. :) -FeralPony

37.Were any of the changes done with the intent to break the 1-1-2 meta? or to further solidify it?

Not really part of the calculation for us. I think lane assignment is a byproduct of efficient use of lane resources, but it's not something we're attached to or against. I just want to make sure there's different types of team strategies and character diversity. -Morello

38.Will there be a another manaless gp5 that is worth something? Heart of Gold removal directly nerfs the following champions, > Shyvanna, mundo, lee sin, and shen. All of these are manaless junglers who are incapable of building a gp5.
What will you be doing to counter the fact that they will be facing a jungler who has 1-2 gp5's still?

The idea is that junglers won't be building max GP/10 every game because they get gold from jungling :) - Morello

39.Do you think Rammus will make a comeback as king of the jungle? I miss the days when he was a must-ban

I think we'll need to buff Rammus, but this jungle is much more suited to him because he'd be one of the earliest gankers - giving him a niche. - Morello

40.Do you guys intend for every Jungler to start with Hunter's Machete? Or not necessarily?
I've done a couple jungle runs with both AOE junglers such as Skarner and Single target like Gangplank, and found that on both,you pretty much need the machete to be able to clear without dying.
Also, was this jungle change intended so everyone should have to start with that item and not Boots and prevent some of the super early jungling that was causing the games to snowball out of control in the first 10 minutes?

Some junglers can take boots for a fast opening gank -a gambit play that can pay off, but has a slower clear. Gangplank needs that machete, though :) - Morello

41.Crystalline FLask. In what scenarios do you except players to get it? On the first back for lane sustain? Maybe junglers will get it along with some other starting item. Why did Riot decided to add it to the game?

Crystalline Flask was meant as a kind of catch if you lose your lane early. If you don't have much gold and you expect the lane matchup to be really difficult, I wanted the refillable potion there to catch those cases where players find themselves buying 4 health potions every single time they go back to lane. Additionally, it adds some interesting builds when you have the Wealth Mastery for Supports. It's meant to be a slight rebound item in lane. - Xyph

42.You've taken a lot of steps to ensure there are more build paths for mid-game items. Frozen Fist, which builds out of Sheen and Glacial Shroud, is an example of that. Now, Glacial Shroud does not only lead to Frozen Heart. Meanwhile, Triforce is not the only path for character who might want Sheen and do not build AP. As you know, this is good as it lead to more choice and different build paths.

You've also added upgrade for mid-game items who had no upgrades, such as Haunting Guise, Aegis of Legion and Quicksilver Sash. But, at the same time, you've repeated the mistake you originally did with Glacial Shroud by only giving each of these items one upgrade

My question is: Why? Shouldn't QSS and company also have more than one late game upgrade?

One of the things we tried to do was ensure that your mid-game purchases didn't lock in your late-game purchases and the Glacial Shroud / Sheen paths indicate. Glacial Shroud is a nice item whose statistics fit a wide variety of characters and so having more than one upgrade to avoid locking you into Frozen Heart made sense there. However, there are a couple items that are niche items, even mid-game. Things like Quicksilver Sash or Aegis of the Legion are niche items that don't upgrade into multiple paths because they don't need to. Take for example, Hexdrinker. You're buying this item because you need AD and MR. You don't want a more flexible hexdrinker. You want a more hexdrinkery hexdrinker that adds even MORE AD and MR - because it's a situational counter-build or a very specific build. Contrast Sheen - which is just a general damage flow amp that works well on a lot of characters - that shouldn't pigeonhole you the way that Hexdrinker or Aegis does - because it's just a more flexible item intrinsically and not situational. - Xyph

43. I like the "trend" into items with more active passives. And I really like the new Items, but can you tell what the decision process was behind Crystalline Flask.

I mean this item is nearly the same as in Dota/Dota2. But there it has Runes to recharge or you can use your courier to recharge your "bottle". And here in lol it can only be refilled at base. Did you consider to maybe refill it by killing neutral monsters or something along the lines?

Or you think the base refill is more than enough?
We went for the mirrored design approach for these on consumables. Since we wanted to add a refillable ward item - it just made sense to have a refillable potion item that worked on roughly the same principles. I didn't feel the need to have overloaded mechanics on this item. Too many items that force you to play differently can pull you apart and make you feel like you're not doing anything correctly - hence why the refillable items follow the same rules. In addition, the recharge conditionals typically favor people who are winning - which wasn't the intent of the item. They're intended to have a minor rebound effect rather than a snowball effect - and so favor people who are forced to recall a lot.
44.Been playing on the PBE recently, and have noticed alot of these new items are decimating people. Quick Example, the new Tiamats with a Fiora Ult, and she can ace teams if she gets even a little fed I'm talking like a 2 kills or so. I know you guys plan to monitor this stuff closely, but from a design decision, do you look at fixing the item first, or nerfing the champion? Another Example of things that this PBE Patch broke, is Kogmaw and Hurricane. It does work with BioArcane Barrage, and he shreds 3 people so fast its not even funny, ok well maybe its a little funny. Yet you decided to not allow vayne to get her Silver Bolts off this? Is there a specific reason why some champs are benefiting way more then others? Or was this just an un-intended result of some of the new items?

For Vayne and Silver Bolts specifically, if Hurricane worked with Silver Bolts, you would never get a Silver Bolts proc because she needs three consecutive hits on the same target to actually get the damage. As for the Tiamat + Fiora ultimate case - I'm not actually sure that's a thing with the new Fiora - as Fiora will decimate teams when she's ahead - But we'll be watching it closely. Tiamat has crazy damage fall-off the farther you are away from the primary target. -Xyph

45.Why was the health regen on philo stone nerfed so much (15hp5 to 7hp5)? The gold it costs to upgrade it from the base items takes 11 minutes and 20 seconds to pay back, so for certain supports it appears to make more sense to build a spirit stone to have better lane sustain.

We generally found that the high health regeneration made Philosopher's stone more powerful on top lane and junglers who didn't have innate sustain mechanics. We lowered the cost and shifted the statistics towards mana regeneration to make it more in line for spell-using supports. We've also readjusted health regeneration cost per gold to be more expensive early on and less expensive later so naturally early regeneration items got a bit worse. - Xyph

46. Are you concerned about the game having too much complexity? Tons of items are being added, way more than the amount being removed. Also, champions are being constantly added with none removed. It might get out of hand.

I'm not worried about complexity as long as we have the clarity to back it up. An interesting thing about complexity and complex topics is that as long as you present it with sufficient clarity, you can get people to understand really complicated things. Players are really smart in general - as long as you find the right way to communicate with them. So, instead of a lot of hidden mechanics to ensure people don't make mistakes - I'd rather players make mistakes - but then immediately understand that it was a mistake. Clarity helps to fight complexity by making things easier / fun to learn rather than things to look up in a guide.

47.What was the reason behind the removal of Force of Nature? It seems like there are several tanky armour building options, but now Banshee's is the only real MR option. Why remove that choice of item and, additionally, the ability to stack MR against an AP heavy team?

Runic Bulwark / Spirit Visage / Crucible / Banshee's are powerful MR options. Especially Runic Bulwark against an AP heavy team. Additionally, stacking health against burst casters tends to work much better than stacking health against sustained ADs, just due to the nature of the damage in question. As to the removal of FoN, FoN simply forced you into statistics that you didn't want for the sake of statistics that you did want which basically made it simply awkward. If you wanted movement speed as a tank, you were now suddenly immune to mages. If you wanted regeneration as a fighter, you were now suddenly fast and immune to mages. If you wanted MR, you were now suddenly fast and wanted to build HP for regeneration. The existence of a heavy MR item means that all other MR items have to be weaker because you have to be balanced around the stacked case. FoN wasn't helping the MR option so much as strangling heavy MR to a single item. It was also doing a similar thing to tank movement speed as certain enchantments like Alacrity simply could not exist if FoN was in. - Xyph

48.heres a few conserns of mine:
why are you adding so many actives on items. i mean, LoL is known for its relatively "easy" learning curve compared to other MOBAs/RTS. isnt there an easier to add diversity to items/builds rather than shove more items to learn down both old and new players alike?
also, when are we going to be able to buy action figures of our favorite Champions?

Active creep is a primary concern of mine - but there were a couple goals in Season 3 on actives directly.

1. Make sure all the old builds, sans actives, were still extremely powerful and felt good to use.
2. Make sure that the average number of active items per character didn't exceed a threshold. Hopefully, the average player never feels like they need more than 2 actives on a character, barring the support player who basically just wants either auras or actives.

We actually tried really hard to ensure that most of the items gave interesting passive effects - especially in a lot of the existing item reworks, rather than focusing on actives. While there are more actives in the game total, I don't want players to feel like they need a 3+ active item build to be viable. -Xyph

49.You didn't like stagnant item builds in some cases. However, it seems that for jungle it is now completely necessary to get the machete. How do you feel about it?

I'm not too worried about machete being a mandatory start - so long as you don't feel like you're pigeonholed into a final item based on your starting build. Machete is nice because it ends up in no less than 4 different end-items - so being forced to start Machete doesn't worry me that much. (Especially since I think Boots is still a possible start on some high-end survivability junglers like Warwick/Fiddle) -Xyph

50.Why did you keep in Nashor's Tooth? Seems like a noob bait item and is quite expensive for what it does.

This is going to be a little bit controversial - but Nashor's Tooth is an item that is so weird and offers such a mixed bag of stats that players seem to really gravitate trying to make it work. In MtG parlance, Nashor's Tooth is a combo piece that people try to figure out cool interactions for. (What would AP Xin Zhao do...) It's the most popular of the 'odd' items - and intrinsically, nothing seems wrong with Nashor's Tooth other than there aren't a whole lot of champions that synergize with the unique blend of statistics on it - especially with the new Malady / Spellblade masteries. -Xyph

51.I don't really feel like there was as much "extra gold" for supports as I expected. Does the pickpocket mastery really make up for the loss of Heart of Gold, do you have more gold than normal as support in season 3?

So the two primary changes for supports are:

1. Farming gold is 10% less and this additional gold has pushed into ambient gold.
2. Sightstone replaces the main expenditure that supports have (Ward costs).

Essentially, farmers will have the same amount of gold, accounting for the farming nerf and the ambient gold boost. The support players however, since they never participated in farming in the first place, just nets the ambient gold boost. This, combined with the decrease of the ward expenditure cost due to free refills in base - should allow you to have decent gold flow - but also remove your main gold sink. -Xyph
52. Why do GP10 items still exist in the game? They are the epitome of an "anti-fun" item. You do nothing to generate gold (very slowly), and the stats are sub-par to compensate. This seems to encourage passive play if the lanes are even, or snowball a champion even harder than before if they are ahead in lane. In either case, it is no fun for anyone.

Why not introduce ways to generate gold interactively? One idea I had was to make an item that gives a small amount of gold each time you positively buff (heal, shield, AS/MS buff, etc.) an ally champion. Or another way would be to make an item that stores a charge each time you buff an ally champion, and every 10 charges, it generates a ward. This seems like an interactive way to reward supports for playing well, and at the same time removes the anti-fun and non-interactive GP10 items that limit supports every game.

Gold per 10 items are generally fun in a lot of ways. They always feel good to have in your inventory regardless of situation since they're always generating value for you. With the new build paths for the Gold per 10 items, they've also gained an additional facet: They're inherently flexible and build into situational items - so you can wait to see which upgrade to your GP/10 would be best for the current game, whether it be added initiation power (Last Breath) or Scouting (Wraith Collar) or needing to shut down enemy healers (Morellonomicon). In general, not all items have to force you to shift your playstyle dramatically. Too many items of this short can kind of pull you in different directions and feel like you're not using any of your items well. -Xyph

53.What's the rationale behind putting lifesteal/spellvamp into the utility tree? For example, bruisers or AD carries--people who really benefit from lifesteal--would you expect people to sacrifice points from offense into utility?

If they want those stats, then they'll need to :P One thing we have to do to make everything actually have choice is have some strange optimization, otherwise just do the best thing every game, and do it the same way. - Morello

54.Could we expect more items as S3 progress similar to what we've seen with Athen's and the Lock of the Iron Solari, or post S3?

As needed/desired, but we can add individual items mid-season. We wanted to the major overhaul style work between seasons. -Morello

55.When your making changes, how much does community feedback affect your decisions?  Are riot employees expected to play the game a certain amount of hours per week?

Community feedback is good for pointing out problems and informing us as to what's bugging people. Occasionally we get good suggestions too! There's no requirement, but we never needed to worry about it since everyone at Riot is a player (not everyone's a pro, but everyone's a player). We don't like to hire people that don't like League :) -Morello

56.What's the reason behind making the jungle mobs aggro proximity- based, instead of keeping how it is currently in S2? To make the jungle actually have HP danger/cost, we had to remove leashing. -Morello

57.hi, morello. i want to ask something about new item 'ohmwrecker'. also you said in this thread b4 ' we want god junglers to be ungodded', that is clear surely; but this item seems will give a boost some god junglers like skarner, mundo etc. preventing from turret attack for 2.5 seconds is a huge boost for top tier junglers. doesn't this new item leave carrys more vulnerable in the field and make them more support depended champs? or with an another word, doesn't this item make god tier junglers more god, especially junglers having self buff? The effect is strong, but the stats are a bit weird for these junglers. I think that tradeoff could be interesting. -Morello

58.What, overall, was the goal for the major changes? It seems like there's a much larger emphasis on diveristy in item builds than before, and a lot of the newer changes seem like they favor crazy, drawn-out, highly mobile teamfights. Diversity and choice were our major goals, yes. Our old items were effective, but they didn't let you make decisions or change your playstyle - that's what we wanted to fix. -Morello

59.Will this new Jungle bring back the "Carry type" junglers that we had one year ago? Like GP, Udyr, WW, Jarvan, Lee, Master Yi, that were more concentrated into DPS builds Rather than GP10- Tank items with the increase in gold, and also open options for champs like Rengar and Khazix to perform on a much higher level?

That's the idea, yes. Now if it actually works that way or not, we will see :) - Morello

60.You have said that you expect to see more junglers that need gold to be good but from what I have seen in the PBE, the jungle is quite harder to kill and doesn't give very much gold. Since the jungle creeps hurt a lot more, it is harder to gank since a lot of champs won't be at full hp. How does this new system help junglers get more gold? The rewards scale much better now, rewarding farming of the jungle. This means you're not gold-starved 30 minutes in the game. - Morello

61.Since there are so many changes in champion balance and you have already released the (design wise) Nidalee change - are you planning on releasing any major champion reworks within the preseason/early season 3 phase? Small hint would do!

Just to clarify, with major champion reworks I mean something like Heimerdinger or Karma. I just think that it would make a lot of sense since it had so much less overall impact on the game balance.

Oh, who am i fooling... I just want to play the reworks ;D

Not for the early season 3 stuff - we had to double down on these systems changes (though these reworks will be coming sometime soon(tm)) - Morello

62. I heard fiddle has an incredible jungle speed right now.. What lvl 1 jungle fiddle item did you think of when "buffing" fiddle? Keep doing such great work!

None - it's just drain is really good at killing larger, single targets...and that's more a focus in the new jungle.

63. I don't really feel like there was as much "extra gold" for supports as I expected. Does the pickpocket mastery really make up for the loss of Heart of Gold, do you have more gold than normal as support in season 3?

We shifted some farm gold into ambient - giving supports more. But more importantly, ward dropper can alleviate a lot of gold burden from wards - putting more into your pocket.

64.Why did you change the name of your item to the "Morellonomicon"?

That was always supposed to be the name, so we just made it happen :)

65.I'm a QA guy for a software company, and I'm quite curious to know how the game QA people at Riot test such large scale changes like the ones you guys are implementing with the new season. I know you're more on the design side, but could you provide some insight on what the typical testing involves? Thanks!:)

I'm actually the point person for Game QA for the season 3 stuff. ^ For Season 3, with such a large number of changes we have a pretty hefty test plan to go through. We usually go about generating that plan first, making sure we don't miss anything, and then following through each step of the development. After changes start to solidify we step up coverage much more - trying to get as many eyes as possible onto the changes. This usually involves the company playtesting multiple times a day in addition to our sweeps. After we're confident that things are working we send the changes to PBE, where our players help us find any other issues that we may have missed (<3 PBE, you guys are awesome!) After we've verified that PBE isn't seeing any huge issues - we then go to live! We actively monitor after each patch goes out to make sure nothing surprising popped up (and to prepare a hotfix if something did) - Roku

66.Why do things like Jarvan's flag and Syndra's balls get aggro in this new jungle? Was this intended or a bug?

This is a bug. - Roku

67.How are the item changes going to effect the recommended items for champions?

We will be doing an entirely new pass of recommended items - as well as the new store allowing more different recommended items. -Roku

68.Xypherous mentioned on the official forums that Hurricane "doesn't work" with Kayle's E. Does that mean that the item isn't active at all on Kayle, or that is just doesn't work with the on-hit damage from E? Applying Kayle's passive and items like Black Cleaver/Frozen Mallet to multiple champions would fit her dps/utility role very well. It would be a shame if that item didn't work on her at all.

Hurricane shots should add the on hit damage as well as shred targets hit - but it won't splash off of each shot. - Roku

69. Why does it round to +9 bonus ad when I have +9.6 bonus AD at lvl 1 in the PBE? It make's my Akali sad :(

This is just a visual rounding for simplicity - you don't actually have any stats reduced by rounding. - Roku

70.what kind of impact do you foresee the heal and mana pot elixir(forgot the name, the one you can refill @ fountain) have in the early game? more or less aggresion? will it be an alternative to the current boots +3 hp pots? also, what's the status on viktor's ''evolution''?

The Crystalline Flask has a couple different use cases, which can be seen as either side of aggression. It can be a good option if you know you want to go aggressive on your opponent. For instance, you can go utility, start flask + rejuv bead, drop the 1 minute ward, and go crazy aggressive at the start. Additionally, if you know its going to be a tough lane you can do something like Crystalline Flask + Homegaurd, and make frequent efficient trips back to base. - Roku

71.Will both the "new tiamat" items work on kayle?

We do want to make them both work on her - but not at the same time. Since Tiamat is melee only it will work when her E isn't active. Conversely, Hurricane being ranged only means it will work when her E is active. - Roku

72.I might have found this AMA a bit too late to get my question answered, but here goes anyways:

What is the current "long-term" design plan for items? We're seeing a lot of changes, new items, removed items, and right now they're being tested in PBE. Once these changes have made it to 'live', should we expect items in general to remain fairly static (aside from obvious bug fixes or OP/UP issues), or will there still be a lot of playing around with numbers and possibly more new items?

There will still be a lot of playing around. We know that we're going to have to iterate, so we'll be watching that extremely closely. After we get things back into a more stable state we might explore some different items that we've tested internally. - Roku

73.Will all of the new weapons be available on Summoners Rift? Thanks :)

All of the new items will be available on Summoner's Rift. Other modes may be restricted more for items that don't make sense (Such as Sightstone on Twisted Treeline) - Roku

74.I thought top lane was the complaint during season 2, and I believe Morello said it was "Toxic" dont quote me on that. Is there going to be a change for top lane, or do you believe with the new masteries and added jungle difficulty fixed the problems with top lane?

We don't expect that we fixed' the issues with top lane - but we did hopefully alleviate some of them for the short term. Specifically, mastery changes that make minions more dangerous, jungle pressure reduced slightly, and items like Homegaurd that you can get if you need to recover often. For the future we'll most likely be looking at specific champion interactions as well as how turrets affect top lane in order to continue addressing issues up there. - FeralPony

75.Why does the Wraith Spirit Stone upgrade loose the HP Regen? Is it because of the Spell Vamp or is that a bug?

You got it. Spellvamp fulfilled the required regeneration from the item. We felt it was better to put the gold value of the item into stats a caster that is transitioning out of the jungle would want instead of making them pay more gold for HP5 which they really don't need in the later stages of the game. Because of this we were able to increase the amount of spellvamp the item gives and increase its effectiveness overall. -FeralPony

76. Personally it feels like AP carry's are getting left out in the cold and as ahri particularly I dont really have any new toys to play with (apart from the new DFG) are there any items we dont know about yet or are these items going to be viable on many of the popular AP champions?

Honestly, before we did the these items changes AP itemization was in by far the best place. There were solid go-to items (DFG, DC), niche items (ZR), lane safety items (Catalyst, UG) so their class items did not need as much work as some of the other archtypes. They do have a few new toys like Liandry's Lament but we've also made a number of adjustments to existing caster items like Catalyst, Rylais, DFG, and DC. -FeralPony

77. What's the thought process behind the Biscuiteer mastery? Do you just get the one and that's it? Indeed, just the one. Starting the game with an additional potion is a huge advantage. We've seen it used effectively in lane as well as by junglers who need the additional health and mana on their first clear. This health can often mean the difference between being forced out of lane, or allowing you to have enough health to perform a gank instead of going back to base. -FeralPony

78. What was the thought process behind putting a timer on Oracle's elixir?

Unlimited duration Oracle was a huge factor in snowballing and lane stagnation. By restricting the duration we can still allow it to be an effective item for sweeping objectives, like dragon and baron, but reduce the snowballing vision it causes. It currently has a steep cost for a losing team but this applies a substantial cost to the snowballing team as well. -FeralPony

79.How fast/drastic are you going to be in balancing the new items? Any predictions on what is going to be OP/UP?

We'll be iterating extremely quickly. We have a few predictions of our own but we'll be keeping them secret :D We want this to be a discovery phase for our players, though there are a few things we need to adjust already. SotD for example probably needs to be toned down. -FeralPony

80. I really like the variety of items that we're seeing for S3 and the unique actives. But what is the philosophy behind nerfing items' power levels in general? For example, many of the powerhouse items seem to be reducing in power, pre-S3 examples include Gunblade, DFG, warmogs, and atmas. S3 examples (from what I've seen) seem to include Deathcap and Phantom Dancer. Though there have been many other smaller examples, such as heart of gold and philo steadily becoming weaker (and HoG now entirely gone). I understand that you have to balance items, but I can't think of nearly as many examples where items were buffed. I'm seeing a negative "power creep" in items and while it's not necessarily bad, I'm confused as to why you're going this way. It seems to force team-play as without very powerful items you can't power your way through say a 1v3 as easily (as the base stats of the other champions is stronger relative to your base stats + items). While that's good in theory (it's a team game right?) part of the enjoyment of LoL comes from those games where you manage to outplay the other team and get ahead to the point where you can dominate. I'm not saying that's not still possible but you seem to be moving away from it steadily.

Currently when you upgrade an item into a higher tier item a few things happen - You condense the component items into one slot increasing slot efficiency, you gain a bunch of free stats (we generally refer to these free stats as the items "Premium"), and you usually gain some unique effect. The premium is the effect we are hitting with these changes on the items. We want them to retain their strong slot efficiency and powerful unique effects. While we still want premiums to exist and we want to reward players for getting that big item currently players are getting too many "free" stats in an upgrade. This effect currently in S2 stagnates build options as it is ALWAYS better to finish a top end item than build a second or third mid tier item. In addition, these changes should help reduce the snowballyness of the game and help champions who don't invest as much into raw stats. - FeralPony

81.Does Gangplank's Parley count as ranged or melee regarding the pickpocket mastery?

It counts as melee. - FeralPony

82.Will we still be able to use the Nientonsoh GP Tiamat strategy with Parley granting bonus gold to all the minions killed? Indeed, but don't tell anyone. It's a secret. And definitely don't use that strategy with the new avarice blade that grants free gold on kill. Definitely don't do that. - FeralPony

83.What is the status of the Heimerdinger rework? ETA or any information you can give would be awesome! :D

Currently we have been placing all champion reworks on hold while we roll out these changes. We'll resume work on champion reworks again, including Heimer, once these changes are out and have stabilized a bit. We want to be totally focused on these gameplay changes in the short term. - FeralPony

84.Are all these changes going to be rolled out to live together? If so, how will you be able to identify what change is having the negative impact?

Great question. The changes will indeed all be rolled out at once. If something is off it can be tricky to isolate exactly what the problem is. Thankfully, we have a ton of data at our disposal, and a team of great designers to analyze and figure out what the problem. Once we identify a problem we can test things internally with each feature changed or turned off in isolation and see if our analysis was correct and go from there. -FeralPony

85.What is your overall hope with the jungle changes? Not just for the jungle but for other lanes as well. My hopes for the game next season due to the jungle changes are many: 1) A return of the old iconic junglers - this includes champions such as Warwick and Fiddlesticks 2) A healthy dose of the same junglers - I still want to see champions like Maokai and Lee Sin be successful as well 3) The rise of new junglers - champions like Jax who were passable before may become "top tier." I also see a potential bright future for pet junglers such as Yorick or even Malzahar. 4) Jungle all-stars - I want to see players able to "carry" from the jungle from a damage dealing perspective. Junglers want pentakills too. 5) Increased diversity in the lanes - hopefully the reduced early ganks pressure from the jungle opens up more lane possibilities both aggressive (LeBlanc) and passive (Kassadin) given the right situation. - Stat

86. what do you think are the biggest changes you've made to make a Yi more viable? Seems he needs to snowball early to do well but at the moment the early jungle is not wroth as much as current (If I'm not mistaken)

Is it simply the idea that later on he'll get more gold or the new items that you think will make him more viable?

It's a combination of both the increased rewards in the jungle as the game progresses and the new items. To be completely honest with you, Yi may still be a bit underwhelming simply because there are champions who can do his job but better. Melee carry champions like Tryndamere are more likely to be in the jungle running than Yi. There's probably stuff we can do to touch up Yi and get him into a better spot, it's more about finding the time to do so. -Stat

87. Was the XP actually changed? I watched stonewalls jungle nautilus on the PBE and he ran the same normal route and didn't hit 4 off of one missed small wolf just like in the season 2 jungle.

Also excited for the return of TRUNDLE :D

Overall base Experience given by the jungle monsters on the first clear is relatively the same though we've shifted around a bit where the most experience comes from (away from the Wraiths as much as possible). It's more of the Experience and Gold rewards in the mid and especially later game which has been increased significantly. I feel Trundle has definitely improved with this new jungle, let's see. =) - Stat

88.In the new GUI and Shop preview, you included this image:

http://riot-web-static.s3.amazonaws.com/images/news/November_2012/2012_11_15_Item_Shop_and_HUD_Updates/Item_Shop_EN.jpg

In the top left corner, a turret is targetted, and it has an item in one of its slots.

Are we going to be able to buy items for turrets?

Unfortunately, there are no other planned interactions with turrets outside of the Ohmwrecker active. Infinity Edge turrets are pretty hard to balance... - Stat

Spirit Stone Changes

Not sure if this will make it into the next PBE build, but I changed both Spirit Stone and Madred's Razors to retain the Machete's Rend passive. The Madred's / Wriggle's passive proc is now renamed to Maim.

Wriggle's and the final Spirit Stone upgrades will still not retain the Rend passive.

Champion & Skin Sale: A Haunting Guise

Another wicked moon rises over this haunted forest. I see more foolish visitors have succumbed to the siren call of the Spider Queen. Tread carefully—where she would lead you deeper into oblivion, I will try and guide you out. First, you must escape the Twisted Treeline. Already, six doomed warriors clash among the treacherous paths and in the somber gloom of the underbrush. You do not want to join them.

• Look there: Warlord Shen creeps through the jungle, ever mindful of the monsters that dwell within. He sticks to the shadows, waiting to ambush the three champions that dare oppose him on this battlefield. 487 RP
• Do you see those glowing platforms? Menacing pools of power trapped in this glade, the team that controls the altars the longest will be at a distinct advantage. Tango Evelynn has made them her personal stages. Dancing around to the music of this spectral realm, her limber form entwines with the lost souls that linger near the dark altars. 487 RP
• I cannot help but shudder to see Lumberjack Sion tramping through the forest. His ungainly gait starkly contrasts with the delicacy of Evelynn’s dance, and worse, his ax slashes recklessly. I will not weep to see him fall like the trunks he wantonly cuts down. 260 RP

• As for the other team, their leader, Kassadin, looks as lost as you. He does not even sense Shen in that bush…and Shen’s taunt missed! Kassadin must have flashed away, leaving only rippling void wisps in his wake. The other team will be unsettled by the presence of a void walker here. 345 RP
• I recognize Vayne. The Night Hunter must be stalking the Spider Queen. She has not yet realized that this shadowed grove has transformed the hunter into prey. Those silver bolts may gleam brightly in the gloaming, but I fear the tables will soon be turned when Evelynn materializes from the darkness. 487 RP
• Like you, this last is an intrepid explorer. Ezreal’s caution has waned; Kassadin must have sent him a signal. Look! All three of their enemies have gathered around the altar. That channel—he’s preparing a Trueshot Barrage. I would warn the others, but this is our chance! 487 RP

Illuminated by the glow of the energy bolt, I see her. Alas, I am too late. Out of the reaches of the gnarled branches, Elise appears. I fear it will soon be my turn to cavort on her strings. These six champions will continue battling from November 16 to November 19, but who knows what the next moonrise will bring.

Black Ops 2 Outsells Harry Potter and Star Wars

In a slight bit of offtopic news the latest Call of Duty game Black Ops 2 has made half a billion dollars, in just 24 hours and has outsold the biggest franchises in the movie industry, like Harry Potter and Star Wars. This is not only a big win for Activision-Blizzard, but also for gaming in general. Our sister site FPSGeneral has the scoop and also a quote from Bobby Kotick. Click the link here or the pic below to read the whole thing.