Reign of Gaming

RoG Article Recap

• Free Champion Rotation Starting 1/1/2013 - Nami Free Week

"Revolutionize Your Game" -  Win an Alienware X51 PC

Alienware is sponsoring a great contest this New Years asking Curse users what their gaming resolutions are! This can be anything from "Wanting to jungle better" to "Being a better support." (Not limited to just LoL). Submissions must be 100 words or less and be well written. The contest is open to NA only. You can check the official rules over on Curse.com

Post your gaming resolutions in the comments below!

Champion and Skin Sale

It looks like the next champion and skin sale started a day early. Check below for what's on sale!

Champions

• Lux - 395 RP
• Leona - 487 RP
• Jayce - 487 RP

Skins

• Gragas Esquire - 487 RP
• Mythic Cassiopeia - 487 RP
• Explorer Ezreal - 487 RP

  More on the Jungle Including Darius Talk

There was even more information to be had in yesterdays thread about the jungle. Read below to see some discussion about Darius along with some more overall jungle talk as well.

I think the question is, what attributes does a champion need to have to be given the jungler tag.

like the difference between hecarim and malphite where hecarim has the jungler tag and malpgite doesn't.

Good question. My understanding is that our tagging system is designed to guide newer players. Champions receive a "Jungler" tag so that if you want to try them, but have no idea what they do, you can get an idea of where they work, and what runes/masteries to use, by looking at the tag. Additionally, if a newer player wants to jungle, they can look for champions with the Jungler tag and enter the game confident that they won't die to wolves.

So while AD Malzahar may be a viable jungler, we would never give him that tag, because it takes a fairly sophisticated level 30 player to pull it off.

As to Malphite specifically, I think he would be a fine champion for a newer player to pick up. That is possibly just an oversight.

Staying absolutely on topic: Why u ignore jungle gold starvation topics like the problem does not exist?
Because it is not my area of expertise. I can say that Statikk is still iterating on the jungle. Remember, this is the pre-season for a reason: the game is in a huge state of flux that will hopefully make it much more dynamic and interesting. If any Rioter promised you it would be perfect on release or that there would not be hiccups along the way, please direct them to me ;-)

I'm pretty sure Xypherous has argued on the forums before that having multiple viable roles for a champion isn't ideal for reasons including it can confuse your own team if they have certain expectations of what you'll do (team expects you to be ad kog/trist, you go ap, is the example). I don't quite remember the exact wording, it was quite a while ago.
The issue of AP versus AD is about whether you will focus on magic or physical damage, not what space within the game you intend to occupy.

As to Riven being a champion that is only viable top lane and no where else, I would just say that I strongly disagree with these sort of design goals. Creating champions for specific reasons leads to a lot of stuff we later regret -- in Riven's case, her inordinately high base HP regen and her incredibly low ultimate cooldown.

In Darius' case, I regret including an attack speed slow on Crippling Strike and making Hemorhage damage type magic. I did these things as last minute reactions to concerns from our live designers about his viability (at the time, Draven would just 1v1 him even in the rare case that Darius could get to Draven and Darius was considered hard countered by cloth+5pot starts). I should have just designed him in a way that was logical and let our player base figure out where and how to best use him.

if thats the case how come

characters like soraka, sona, janna, taric havent really been buffed to allow them to play other roles

instead they are almost always told to play support if a player picks them. If they do not want to they are told by teammates no thats a support character you're a troll etc.
Allow me to clarify: I favor champion designs that can function well in multiple roles. Once a champion's abilities are set, it is very hard for the live team to tweak the numbers or re-design abilities so that the champion can work in different roles. Take Janna: With a 0.8 AP ratio shield and the ability to insta-clear waves from 1700 range, it's difficult to make her a compelling addition to the League as a solo laner.

Really? Have you tried jungling Nautilus or Sejuani lately?

Good luck with that.

I have. They are very good.

@CertainlyT- 

One thing that's been confusing me lately, is why you think "being able to do more than one thing (proficiently)" is a mark of a well-designed champion? ....
Is deliberate flexibility in kits a good thing? ...
I didn't quote your entire post because it is rather long.

Flexibility is important in my opinion because champions that are designed solely to fill one specific role in the game may end up looking silly as the game evolves. It is important to remember that the most common current team composition in LoL is not the only possibility and that in a year, it very well might be replaced by a completely different setup. 

Designing to a particular metagame can leave a design feeling awkward when the metagame evolves. Consider Rammus. A Rammus that is ahead is capable of completely taking over games. His tower diving power is incredible and he offers the longest duration hard CC in the game. When Rammus is allowed to play his game, he's amazing.

Unfortunately for Rammus, extremely fast clearing junglers with strong counter-jungling potential became dominant for much of season 2 -- exactly the kind of people Rammus didn't want to see on the opposing team. Since Rammus is not really viable outside of the jungle (his bread and butter kit centers around enemies standing next to and attacking him for long periods of time), this left Rammus without much of a place and he has languished in obscurity for quite some time.

[Fortunately, Season 3 has given Rammus a new lease on life -- He's quite strong right now -- try him!]

Now consider Zyra. Zyra is a fragile, low mobility mage with strong CC and high team utility. She is vulnerable to high mobility assassins and strong against low mobility opponents, who she can hit with her skillshots and trap in a thicket of plants. Unfortunately for Zyra, mid has become a playground for assassins: Diana, Eve, Talon, Lee Sin, etc are some of the most commonly seen picks in mid these days. If that were the end of the story, Zyra would be without a home. Fortunately, since her kit is robust, she can also be played in other roles. Now, she's seen more often as a support than as a mid.

Does this give a clue as to what changes you might make to darius in the future? Surely if they're mistakes you won't just leave them in the game?
Potentially. It's unclear what should be done to Darius. He's balanced, has clear strengths and weaknesses, and is much less matchup dependent than the average forum post would have you believe. Even if we remedied some of the specific complaints about him now, any bruiser that does not lean heavily on raw statistical bonuses to be successful will often generate a lot of frustration from their opponents. Raw stats tend to play out almost unnoticeably over time whereas abilities manifest their power in dramatically noticeable moments. Take Jarvan's Demacian Standard -- it's primary power is in the armor/AS boost it gives, but a good number of players don't even notice it exists.

I would say that, in the case of changing Darius' bleed damage to physical, be careful what you wish for, you might not like it.

Itemsguy -- You basically just describe the benefits of the current dominant set of lane assignments. I would say that what you have left unaccounted for is the possibility that the idea of lane assignments is itself sub-optimal. It's possible that in a year or two the dominant way to play the game will not involve placing specific people in specific lanes for the entire first half of the game, but rather moving them around in response to changing conditions or game time -- e.g., we already see some pro teams running two top until the game time at which dragon can feasibly be taken and then swapping them bot.

Why don't u get rid of these things then? Especially the atk speed slow. You could consume the dot stats when you ult the person too. I mean there's plenty you could do to change him a little and make not so incredibly hard to lane against as melee. Nor can u build against him, free armorpen% & magic damage bleed & true damage scaling ad ult.
I will get rid of them. It takes time to test changes and to assess what needs to be done to compensate for them. They also weren't possible prior to Season 3 when armor was ridiculously undercosted relative to its power. 

It's worth noting that we have a lot of lane bullies, of which Darius is only one. If you straight nerf Darius, then people who want the lane bully experience will just play Garen or Renekton, champions that *actually* counters all other melee champions (Darius does not... a lot of melee champions have decent matchups against him).

Yes, I know the live team is not happy with Udyr's state. Season 3 was not kind to him, and slow resistance has not proven as helpful as anticipated. We are fortunate to have access to two live deisgners who play Udy at a near professional level -- jungle and top respectively -- so I am very confident in their ability to put him in a good spot. That being said, Udyr is hard to balance because he is *extremely* team dependent. Given the right opponents and the right teammates, he completely takes over the mid game. I believe the Nami champion spotlight shows a pure terror Udyr dominating a game on a team with the CC to support him and an enemy team lacking in lock down.

As to a bunch of posts above -- keep in mind that my position is not that every champion needs to have extreme flexibility in the role they play, only that making inflexibility a goal is.... bad.

Wow, this is the FIRST clear answer I got all day :P But one thing still remains unanswered, why have all the jungling champs been more fitted to play in top lane than in the jungle? Is there any primarily jungle champions in development currently? Not expecting any big spoilers mind you :P
I feel like T hit this one pretty well, but we don't just say 'Time for a jungler, guys!' Or 'We definitely want this person to go toplane!' We have things like 'fighter, mage, assassin' and all sorts of subtypes that influence the design, but other than 'AD Carry' i think they are all pretty open to lane assignments (Varus as well was playtested midlane quite a bit from what i hear).

It's usually more important to our champ designers to create an experience - get a cohesive kit down, then figure out where it fits into the grand scheme of things. Mages and supports (Mid and botlane) are often times interchangeable. Toplaners and junglers are as well, in a lot of cases. For Vi, i remember having lots of conversations with Gypsylord about her production and not really until the last month and a half did we sit down and say 'okay where do we 100% expect to see her?'

Sometimes we push boundaries, and sometimes we don't. Looking forward to the future, we have some really cool designs that, in a co-ordinated setting, could lend themselves to changing up lane assignments or working in different teamcomps, but i think we've always done that. The meta is the meta, and we don't really decide it. Xypherous i think did this really well with lulu and nautilus specifically, in that Naut is a tank/initiator and Lulu is a support/enabler no matter where they are played. Both champions can be played multiple builds and in multiple roles, but the kit defines what they do, not where they go.

Echoing CerT, having champions 'be good at one role' isn't always the best - Shyvana is my example. I wasn't around at the time, but that champion feels like she was designed to be a jungler through and through - which means her state of balance is binary. 'Is she good at jungling?' If yes, she's probably top-class due to her mechanics. If no, she has no place on a team. 

We definitely have a lot of characters like this (usually one build/role) that can be balanced, it just means it's often times trickier than saying 'X mechanic/build is abusive, but at least they can still perform with Y build/in different role to compensate', similar to how Zyra players used her as support after the nerfs to midlane. She was still incredibly potent after the first round of nerfs, but the option for her to play bottom was still there as something alternative she can do if her pew pew gets nerfed.

I like the fact that lulu's w gives an ap bonus to her allied targets, making it functionally useless on most ad carries. I've always thought it was put there to try and get a mage+support lane going. The fact that it never materialized isn't for lack of trying on Riot's part I feel, but lack of innovation on the part of the playerbase.
It's also important to note though that supports aren't just made for the lanephase - a lot of AP carries absolutely love AP + Movement speed - Lulu's kind of got something for everyone, no matter what stage of the game or character class you are. Pix for Ad Carries, Ult for Initiators, Whimsy for Mages...and then of course the offensive cases. 

I remember when she came out people were like OMG LULU EZ OR KOG CAUSE AP RATIOS and then everyone realized 'wait why am i not maxing glitterlance'.

More on Leona and Diana Lore, and The Future of Lore

Yesterday there was an interesting post about Diana's lore. IronStylus posted adding even more to this topic today, along with executing some new ideas for Diana's lore in the new year!

I really love this, and I also really like what Harvester said. I do think it nails on the head what I think Diana was before her transformation. She was a pure soul who wanted nothing more than the love of her peers, yet at every turn she was stuck down. I know it might seem unrealistic for a nice person to be shunned every time she spoke up, but I feel that if the Solari are as doctrinal as I suspect, her fluidity would have been seen, at the very least, odd, and at the very most the stuff of heresy. Again, this is hyperbolic and irrational. But that's what drama is of course 

Diana being an extrovert before her ascendancy and someone who's genuinely good, maybe of a similar disposition of Leona, makes it even more tragic when she is met by an unjustified sentencing to execution. This is a farthest and most intense extrapolation any story can have with someone just starting out as inquisitive and innocent, a society bearing down on them for no rational reason due to doctrine or ignorance. 

Diana is the tragedy that no good deed goes unpunished. At the end, we have to feel for her. I think most of us have grown up to see at least some of what Diana goes through play out. I myself felt ostracized at times when growing up. We've felt peer pressure and felt like we haven't fit in all the time. We've felt rebellious and maybe bitter when all we want is to feel acceptance. In the worst case scenarios we may lash out or hurt others, maybe ourselves. While not everyone is going to bring the situation to such lengths, I think many people of this generation know their fair share of personal social injustice at some level. That's a theme we wanted to capture, to make it relatable.

I think what Harvester said is important too. She has found new purpose, and new convictions, but its not necessarily something out of a book, it's a power she has been granted, a price she's paid for immense power. She is reinvigorated this way, regardless of losing herself or not.

I'm glad you guys are compelled by this story. If I had my druthers I'd like to continue this storyline. I see some opportunities actually to do that, it's just going to be a matter of time 

If I had read this description of the vibe you wanted to give future champion, I'd think you would end up with an angsty teenager. I do not mean this as disrespect towards you, but instead I want to show it as further proof of how stellar Diana's finished version is. Truly, a terrific job and I hope to see more champions with as much love and passion in the future.
The next champion that has my fingerprints on it I hope will have as much depth as Diana. The Diana/Leona arc is hard to match sometimes because its sort of an Olympian conflict between characters that are near godlike. The next character you'll see from the Diana team (myself, Volty and Runaan) will be a bit more humble most likely, but have depth nonetheless, but in a different way, probably more subtle. 

What I very much like to do is to tie characters into other characters. Whether its a direct relationship, being of a same faction, or being an adversary or ally. Also, if you haven't noticed, I'm all about build-up 

I think build-up and setting intrigue for players helps with the immersive experience. It's not going to appeal to everyone, especially considering I can translate the little things I do into a lot of different languages, but I like to provide immersion where I can, and I hope people join in.

man screw all that noise, i just wanna know if Leona and Diana were really lovers when Diana was still a member of the solari ( no im not some perv making this up, there is some text in lore that hint to this)
There is indeed reason for you suspect something of the like. If not directly, some connection, possibly unrequited from one side.

Again, tragedy!

Awesome thread and awesome input from Ironstylus. We really need some more lore for Leona and Diana.
The Diana team has a lot of ideas. We're hoping to execute on something in the new year. Not quite sure how yet, but we'll see 

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What interests me in this sort of story is a continuing theme that people seem to attach to. Leona, that she's sought after but never quite returning of the affections. In my eyes this stands pretty true with where I think we want to go with her. Pantheon might indeed have a deep love for her, something not obvious or overt written into the lore, but Leona is otherwise oblivious or, dunno the right word to use, "pure", to show interest.

I sort of view Leona in this odd puritanical nature, sort of "above it all" concerning mortal love affairs. That's not to say she's ambivalent, I think her Solari calling just tends to trump a lot of her emotions concerning romance, but the human urge can always be calling. Personally I like that because it causes tension with her, Diana and Pantheon. I can see some pretty cool stories coming out of that triangle. I can see alliances and other turns. I'd love to see if we can flesh it out more.

I like that people glom onto things we've been able to subtly plant or hint at. It can be hard to solidify story sometimes when you're dealing with this many main characters. I'm glad players can fill in the blanks which we try to leave room for.

Well while a red is replying...Is Riot planning on anything more for the lore? I hate the Journal of Justice got canceled.
That's really a question for the Creative Designers. I work with the department a lot but they have their own initiatives and timelines. I'm really not sure what they are enough to make an educated statement. I think what we saw with the Shadow Isles is a good indicator of what's to come, but there are indeed efforts to figuring out the best delivery mechanisms and cadences. I myself am not completely up on any larger plans, I can only comment on what I work on directly with them.