Zyra's Skin Prices, More on Team Builder, Xerath, Heimerdinger, Map Skins, Game Balance, Sivir's VU, Turret Indicators, and More
Important: Unofficial PBE Patch Notes for 10/16/13 - Sultan GP, Haunted Zyra, Zed, Kassadin, Turret Indicators, The Harrowing Approaches, and MUCH More!
Zyra's Skin Prices
I am actually fine with it. Zyra skins do take a lot of work...just look at the pbe boards ..her new skin is causing bug splats .. wildfire causes older comps to lag..Creating a Zyra skin is quite an undertaking, so it would seem..
Quick, straight from the mouth of our Lead Character Artist:
"Zyra is probably the most work-intensive and challenging champion to make skins for."
Now, back to me.
Zyra is.. no pun intended on the new Harrowing skin for her.. a nightmare to make skins for. Every single plant, vine, spell, etc, is a new particle, which in and of itself is a new model, with new animations. That's.. what.. like 5 models with 5 animation sets/effect on them at least? I'm not sure how many assets are in her file.
We have a pile of concepts sitting around for Zyra, there are also great community skin ideas, but they area daunting task to be made.
I'm not a pricing guy at all but I will speak for Art when it comes to how intensive a skin is to make. Other characters which constitute big challenges are champions with different states, transformations, etc. So, Udyr, Swain, Shyvanna, etc, are basically two champions in one. If we want to make the transformation, or other states be a different animal, or creature or whatever, we have to model that, animate it, do a VFX pass, all that.
VFX alone has had huge scope creep in the recent years because now instead of just being a static effect, we have huge animations coupled with whatever the effect might be, whether it's a spell like Zyra's orbs, or animating spirit models like SG Udyr.
I'm not belittling the issue of price, but I do want to provide a peek into what sort of production goes into skins like these. It's basically a Legendary skin amount of work.
Hope that clarifies things.
Side note: I'm sort of transitioning away from the old forums here in GD, and am becoming more active on the community beta site. I probably won't be back into this thread to follow up or answer questions, so if you'd like to discuss subjects like this, make your way over to http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/ and transition the conversation.
Thanks!
"Zyra makes me have to actually do my job" is what I read this as.
Ah, this attitude.. Thanks for giving me one more reason to transition off of GD.
no one likes that site. We are just getting use to the NEW forums. Don't leave us, parrot! <3
And I say I won't be checking this thread anymore..
Sorry, it's become hard to mitigate some of the negative feedback to address questions about process and whatnot. On the beta site I can more easily see which questions rise to the top. I can only go through so many pages in one day. It's easier to have people upvote the question/comment, have it rise to the top, and answer it when it has some momentum. Just an easier way to give as much info as I can in relation to a question a lot of people would like to see addressed.
So basically you want to avoid any negativity at all because you're way too sensitive. Sorry, but this new Zyra skin shouldn't be 1350. None of the Harrowing skins should ever be that price. It's a special event, the skins should always be higher quality but at the normal price, kinda like a gift to your players. But with Riot's recent track record, not surprised they only care about profit now.
You make it sound like avoiding negativity is a bad thing. I'm not talking about justified critiscism, or actionable feedback, I'm talking about negativity. Posts like yours which refer to us as lazy, or somehow resting on a "pile of cash". It's not productive, straight up, sorry, simple answer there.
Also, anything taken out on me for pricing, it doesn't apply. Hell, I'm not even on the Skins team, I just am privy to the production process. I don't have to explain things, but I like to because I feel players are justified in knowing what goes into the process, and I think it's valuable to give insight.
You're accusing me, or us, of being sensitive, I mean.. you're proving my point there. I'm not sure how we as a team could assuage your fears, rebut that, or otherwise respond. In a different format, such as the community beta, your comment might not make it very high as other questions/comments that could actually help out, or clear things up. Sorry, no offense, but I want to give as much time to people who would like clarification, insight, and context the same amount of time, or more, than I'm giving you. Don't you think it's a little unfair to have so much mud slung, and have to spend energy on that, and have that sidetrack or otherwise dissuade myself or other team members from even engaging in a thread?
I don't think any of us who make content want to be mired in negativity, sorry. We want to be a helpful developers that add some value, not have to defend "sensitivity". All we can do with comments such as these is sit here as it falls in our laps, feel bad about ourselves, and then get discouraged from coming back.
I think the community beta is a great place to start over.
So Stylus, you have been on these GOOD forums for a long, long time now.
As you may have seen, the feedback on the Community has been strictly negative. At least check both. I'm not saying 2 hours of both, just check them up.
We want Rioters HERE. Not the new (gonna be blunt here) ****ty Community.
I'll always check. This is about a transition which I think the whole company will eventually make. (not sure on specific plans or dates) But I'm guessing the community beta won't be beta forever. Where appropriate I'll chime in, but honestly, despite the format, I have a lot of great interactions on reddit, from AMA's to general engagement which lets a lot of good, and often hard, questions rise to the top. I really like the upvoting/downvoting system there. It helps the community itself weed out or bring to the top what questions we as developers can comment based on the demand of the people casting that vote.
I dunno, try putting this thread over there. Let's see what happens. That's what beta is all about, testing to see how things play out.
do you guys ever go on the ideas and feedback section? I have many questions about leblanc on there and I'd love to start a discussion about her. PLease take a second and read it.
Just read it and commented, though I'm not a designer. I'll see if I can send a designer that way though.
See, this is my question.
You said you like that forum because you can see which ideas quickly get upvoted to the top, so you know which is the most relevant to comment on.
While it's great you answered GladOS's thread, his/her thread was the one with one upvote.
While my +6 one just gets... ignored.
Is it only because you're the only red that browses the beta forums? I understand what I wrote probably isn't your area to answer.
Some things to note:
1) The beta isn't terribly old, it has yet to be the go-to.
2) The format is new, it's going to be scary at first, certainly was to me.
3) GD and this forum is what we know, we're going to be more inclined to check it. Rioters have known it well for a long time, going to be hard to transition.
4) Season 3 crunch is winding down, hopefully more people will be able to engage again as we move onto more content.
Just some food for thought.
I have two statements.
I feel that these questions, while hard to deal with, are questions that should be answered, even if it's not the popular answer to hear.
That's just my two cents.
Oh absolutely. They're not hard to deal with when someone from the dev side comes along with info that can help answer questions or clarify. Those questions should be asked, and answered, if there's someone who can actually do that on the Riot side. Though, not every question has an expert who's available to come answer it.
I think the big issue is that when things get into mud-slinging, insults, or other negative comments, it just dissuades developers from even trying their hand at the difficult questions, even if they have the expertise, for fear of getting pitch-forked.
Everything you've just talked about is great in terms of what it's asking, how it's being asked, and the format. Now, I don't really know how to answer 90% of it because I'm not in sales or on the Skins team. I'm just throwing out what context I have handy.
What I think we'd all like is questions like yours, well phrased, polite, succinct, and actually positive in how it's framed, despite you passionately disagreeing with how we're handling something, should rise to the top. It's really hard to find the posts like these in this format. Right now, it's very difficult to sort through this thread and answer questions like these. My hope is that maybe the new format will bring these comments to the top where someone can respond appropriately. That's the perspective from my end at least.
Also, lack of popularity shouldn't be correlated to whether a question is answered or not. I find myself able to find niche questions and provide answers in the other format just by how the thread is being sorted.
Now if only they didn't keep throwing away painstakingly animated finished models...
Which ones are you referring to? I'm curious, I can't seem to recollect.
Scorched Earth Renek comes to mind
Re-prioritized because of Pool Party Renekton being an opportunity we wanted to jump on. Fan inspired, seasonal, etc.
SER is around I think, we don't just chuck good content away like that, he'll probably need a once over in terms of QA and touchup depending on when his release will be, which I'm not sure of.
IronStylus,
Since you're one of the lead artists at Riot, I can only assume that you have some influence in which skins get made and whatnot. My question is: why was the obvious (and highly fan recommended) pumpkin-themed Zyra skin brushes aside for a graveyard themed one?
People have been voicing their desires for a new Zyra skin for a long time now, and many of the issues of new Zyra skins were how niche of a character she is (with the whole plant theme not being very exploitable, etc).
So, it just seems baffling that a Halloween themed skin that seemed so obvious, hard to screw up, and almost expected in the fans eyes came out as something so different. If you guys were to have told us that Zyra would've been getting a Harrowing skin, but not what it actually was, 100% of the speculation would've let people to think of a pumpkin-themed Zyra with little pumpkin roots and seeds that had different faces carved into them for whatever spell she used. Her ult could be a pumpkin patch, etc etc.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: why was her actual skin direction taken over the much easier, more expected, and generally (arguably) better skin proposal? It just fits so well with Halloween that it is just crazy to think of the reasons why Pumpkin Zyra wasn't picked over a graveyard theme.
Also, one more quick question. The human form on Victorious Elise has some really big issues in terms of visuals. The red undertones do not go well at all with her blue trims (these colors together are the definition of visual clash), and some colors on her armor do not even match the promo art that was given to us. In addition, her armor doesn't really feel or look like armor. In addition, her purple skirt really needs to be done away with to a more royal / deep blue color to keep in theme.
I'm a senior, not a lead, just to clarify, and I'm not on the Skins team, so I don't really attend many of the ideation/production meetings. I think what you're suggesting is a delightful idea, but I'm not sure why the Skins team didn't go this direction.
What about Cyber Katarina?
http://www.surrenderat20.net/2012/08...be-update.html
Not sure on her status, but I'm pretty sure we weren't really pleased with the outcome, and we felt there were better themes to use on her.
Ironstylus, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us as we know not every Rioter do so you are certainly not forced as part of your mandate to enlighten us time and again with some info. Given the subject of the thread however, would it be at all possible to have someone from the pricing team to come and say something? Skin prices have been an issue for a while now and it would be great to have some sort of back-and-forth with someone who could bring our concerns to the table.
I'd say that this thread, if it maintains some traction, will attract attention of people more qualified than me. I mean, some of our stats indicate that any red posting in a thread will up the visibility of that thread, causing other players, and other Rioters to take notice. The effect of my posting in here does some positive things for visibility, that's why I post in threads such as these.
Three Sivir models, much of the work on Quinn, a Viktor skin, Battlemage Soraka. Please correct me if I'm misinterpreting your posts, but to an observer like me it seems like you are junking a lot of time-intensive work for quality reasons when that probably should have been decided earlier in the process.
Models are very different than rigged models with animation sets. Models are a different kind of work comparatively depending on the complexity of the character to the process of rigging and animating. They're not "easier" but they're earlier on in the pipeline. It's easier to throw them away than something that's had a lot more production time in it.
Models alone also come in various stages of development. We threw out work on Sivir in the sculpting phase, the high-poly Zbrush sculpt, no texture, no re-topo, none of the actual work to make it a game asset. Quinn was iterated on but nothing was thrown away. I'm not sure what Viktor skin you're referring to other than one way back in the day that just wasn't up to quality, not nearly as cool as Maker Viktor is at least, and the Battlemage Soraka felt sub-par to us when we completed it. I was dissapointed because I worked on it, but it was the team's call and I reached the same conclusion once we all reviewed it. Soraka however.. at least I don't think.. was fully animated and rigged. I could be mistaken though.
It's not normal at all for something to reach that level of completion (low-poly model, rigged, animated, etc) and then to throw it out. It has happened, but it's very rare.
I can understand the Cyber Katarina skin. But, the Crimson Elite Katarina skin?
Very much not up to par. It was my work and I totally admit it.
Hey ironstylus, not sure how you will feel about this question, but here we go.
Is there something about the game itself that makes it really hard to design content for it? I really feel like that seems to be the case. It seems like a painstaking process to make even one champion.
What are the other companies doing that make producing content such a breeze? I'll be honest, I'm an airhead on this topic. I'm just curious what the real differences are between this game and say, Skyrim when it comes to making models.
Design? No. Produce? Depends. It's a lot of steps.
Champion creation:
Ideation
- Concept (Art, Creative & Design iterate on the idea of the champion)
- (potential prototyping)
- Approval
- Exploration (mechanics, tech requirements, production side of prototyping)
Production - Art
- Proxy modelling (enables exploration)
- High-rez modelling
- Retopo/AO/Texturing (lots of adjustments happen here)
- Rigging (done using the proxy)
- Animation
- VFX
- Sound
- Splash
- Motion graphics
Production - Design
- Mechanics exploration
- Mechanics solidifying
- Tuning
- Balance
- QA
Production - Design
- Personality/Character fleshing
- Bio writing
- VO scriptwriting
- VO recording
- Promotional exploration
Other
- QA
- Promotion
- eCommerce
- Community
- Tons of technical team stuff that I have no idea on how it functions.
- Release/deploy
That's off the top of my head for champions alone. Each team has a similar process from Skins to Relaunch. It's truncated in certain areas, as in skin concepting phase is much shorter than Champion or Relaunch. Skin production can be on a tighter timeline as well. Relaunch has a general timeline, but we operate our concepting differently and we have a much smaller team.
Challenges in the general sense are technical limitations of the engine, tech that might have to be created for a champion/skin/relaunch, IP considerations and a lot of crafting around making robust characters. Teams are also not huge, by design. We're sort of like strike teams, lots of stuff operating at one time, cranking on different stuff. Not everyone is interchangeable. Someone making assets for a CG trailer isn't necessarily appropriate for in-game asset creation, that's a specialty thing.
We're a big game, with a lot of moving parts, which are all moving at different speeds sometimes. We're also a growing company, looking to streamline processes and iterate. These challenges are not unique. We're also not a boxed title, the game is always evolving. We essentially ship a new game with each patch in some sense depending on content and balance.
Anyway, that's a very general laundry list. Boils down to there just a lot to be done, with a lot of steps.
More on the Team Builder
Davin's research showed that a fairly good margin of players want to be supports. If that doesn't turn out to be true, then I'm confident there's things my team can do to help make support a better experience. 
Davin's research showed that a fairly good margin of players want to be supports. If that doesn't turn out to be true, then I'm confident there's things my team can do to help make support a better experience.
So Lyte, you said that a premade 5 would be better playing a blind pick. That made me think, usually the blind pick matchmake is ''unfair'' by a 5-solo VS a 5-premade. Given the ''strategic solo-selection'' of the team builder, matching a Blind-pick queue premade with a team-build queue could be ''even''. Did you guys consider this option? And the team side (Blue/Red), would that be random also?
And another cool thing (I do hope you read this Lyte!):
How about showing the honor badges? Like, you're the team leader and a jungle ezreal pop's up in your queue. You notice he has the ''Teamwork'' badge. This could be a positive effect like: ''Oh hey, maybe this guy knows what he's doing!''
Well... That's it... I guess :3
I like the idea of showing Honor badges... in fact, we have a few ideas with what we want to do with Honor and Team Builder. But for now, let's focus on getting the Champion Select re-design out to players 
I have a few questions about this system.
First, is the role attached to the champion, or would you be able to pick a champion and then a role? This could be an issue for champions with viable alternate builds like AP Tristana, or Tank Gragas.
Second, is there a 'roam' role? I haven't seen mention of one, and it seems pretty important that it be included. The position isn't popular in the current meta, but that doesn't mean that we will never see a re-emergence of dedicated roam champions.
Roles are not attached to the champion, and you can choose Mage-Gragas for example. It's also very trivial for us to add a "Roam" role, if such a role were to emerge as a popular option.
When will the chatting with your teammates be available during the teambuilding process?
For example, does my entire team have to be present and agreed upon before I can talk to my team or can I say to the one other guy in my team at the moment, "Hey, you wanna accept this tanky Thresh top?"
As soon as someone is in the lobby, you can start chatting. Basically you can talk strategy from beginning to end.
While this all sounds great in theory, I worry that it will devolve to nothing but confusion, longer wait times, and troll heaven.
What's to stop a team from kicking people for no reason just to troll? Or to have their queue set for an odd position only to have the person that's been waiting for that show up, get laughed at, and they all leave? And what if you queue up for a position expecting a common meta and get something crazy (i.e. I queue up for my typical Ezreal - bot - ADC and get matched with a four mid composition? I didn't ask for that I asked for a nice "normal game"!) What about less played champions; how long do you think an Urgot is going to sit waiting for someone to ask for an Urgot player?
And I don't care that "15% of people are willing to play support". Do you know how often (over a few dif accounts of mine) I have to play support simply because I'm one of those nice 5%? I have seen it called maybe three or four times out of one hundred games and then they usually aren't even good but looking for a free ride. All I see with this is longer queue times, more troll comps, and less strong teams because frankly you are still paired with a load of strangers and you never know when that leader is really a troll queuing up to make your life miserable simply because you believe that AP mid Janna is viable.
I'd really feel better and more at ease about this new system if some of this was addressed. Thanks for listening to my concerns
There are a few anti-abuse systems in place that will combat players or team leaders who intentionally kick players non-stop.
I'm not sure if you play mainly Ranked Modes, but one of the things we saw in Ranked was that a lot of cognitive biases are at play. For example, there's been research on companies that show that the average employee believes they are above average--statistically impossible, but a very robust cognitive bias that exists in all humans. In Ranked Mode, this cognitive bias exists too--as a player, we have no data on anyone else but ourselves, so we tend to believe we're the best player in the lobby. Statistically, we can't always be the best player in every lobby because everyone is typically close in skill-level, but we feel strongly that we're always the best. Because of these cognitive biases, players in these modes tend to want to play the perceived "carry" roles, which is why there are less people opting to play Support. Because Team Builder is currently an independent, non-Ranked queue, we're more confident that more players will opt-in to playing Support.
Cognitive biases like these are one of the reasons why competitive modes are tricky--we have to design a solution that not only makes sense from a game design sense, but also from a psychological sense.
I'm sorry I havn't had time to check ALL the posts for this question, but I havn't seen it addressed so far:
As a solo player, is it possible to chose a role/position and desired team strategy but NOT choose a champion until you see the rest of the team? This strikes me as one of the main things I would want to do. Say I want to play support for a mid duo lane support/marksman with a jungler and top/bot solo lanes, but don't want to choose my support champ until I see what champions are in the other roles, is this possible? Or say I want to play jungle tank, but I don't want to choose which jungle tank champ til I can see how much other CC is on the team. This seems like really vital choices to be able to make.
Is there a way to defer champ select until the rest of the team comp is set, or perhaps to allow champion changes approved by the team leader after the solo player was initially accepted to the team? I would very much like to see such an option if it doesn't exist.
In the playerbase, there's a large % of players who are willing and happy to select their Champion first before seeing the rest of the team composition. However, we also know there's a % of players who want to see the team first, discuss strategy, then choose a complementary champion--this is especially true for Marksman or Support players.
However, when designing Team Builder we had to balance the flexibility we were offering players with the time it's going to take to build a team and get into a match. In an ideal world where decisions are all made at lightspeed, we could offer players every single decision point we could think of; however, we start approaching scary long times just to build a team together because you're thinking about 100 decisions every single lobby. Not only do more decisions lead to longer team building times, we also begin to deal with the psychological effect of too many choices possibly overwhelming players who just want some flexibility but ultimately just want to have fun.
We're still trying to find the right balance of flexibility and cost of time, which is why we've decided to initially offer features like allowing team leaders to select "Any Role" as a role option. We'll collect data and see how the flow of the experience is and decide if we need to add more flexibility features as we test on PBE.
Alright I would just like to start off by saying I have read every red post, and every quote they had inside their post inside this thread and I am a strong supporter of this idea. Love it Riot, great work.
I have one question however, and two suggestions to help this be even better.
I'll start with the question. Do you select your runes and masteries once you're matched with your team, or before? I think it would be MUCH better to select them after you've had the opportunity to speak with your team mates and know how your lane or jungle is going to go and what you need to bring to the table in that field.
Now, onto my suggestions. I'll start with the ban suggestion. I think it would be very nice for the team captain to be able to select 3 champions and stick them in their ban pool for the queue. Just like normal draft, this will prevent that team from running into those champions. This also means that if both team captains pick the same bans, there will only be three bans on the table for that game instead of the standard 6 that you see in draft or ranked. (This number of ban picks for the captain should remain the same number as the number of bans in draft or ranked. I know there are no plans to increase the number of bans right now but that may change in the future.)
My other suggestion is that when queuing up for this, you pick your role, your position, and then 3 champions you can choose from once with your team. This will allow players like myself to pick say Sejuani, Nautilus, and Amumu for my options to switch between to help strengthen the team comp once I'm with my team and we discuss a little. To add to this, the team captain could potentially have the option to accept a player, but when doing so mark one of their champions as someone they don't want to be played giving that player 2 options to mesh with the team, instead of 3. I feel this would promote team strategy before finding an opposing team and help with queue times if they have a small pool they picked before going into queue.
If one of you lovely rioters could acknowledge this post, even if you don't agree with it, I'd greatly appreciate it. I very much look forward to reading your views regarding these three points and I am very much looking forward to seeing this game mode.
You can change your masteries and runes at any point in the lobby, and can definitely chat with your teammates about what pages you'd like to use.
A lot of players have asked whether Team Builder will have bans, and it will not. Team Builder is a new re-design of Champion Select, and is focused on the core experience. We've considered how a Team Builder "draft mode" might look like, but that's not the focus of the initial experiments.
I agree that there's a lot of potential value in allowing players to multi-select Champions or Roles, and allow team leaders to choose which one they are interested in; however, there's a lot of complexity to these designs--especially from the tech side. For example, if 2 players are suggested to a party, and both of them have Miss Fortune as a proposed champion, then we now have to consider additional collision cases. From a Game Design side, if you allow multi-select Champion designs you now force team leaders to choose the preferred champion among a mix of 3 (or however many you propose). If you propose only 1 Champion, say a B Class Champion, many players will say "OK, that's fine, let's play!" If you propose 3 Champions, a B Class with 2 A Class Champions, you now actually hurt champion diversity because you force team leaders to make a value judgment here and many will opt to select the A Class Champions even if they were OK playing with the B Class.
These are all solvable problems, but we wanted to focus on getting the core experience to players first. Then collect feedback, and iterate as we go.
As someone who would like a chance at playing Hiemerdinger, I would expect with the current Donger for queue times to hit the 2 hr mark on a regular basis.
Fact of the matter is, champs with poor treatment from riot get poor treat ment ingame. Go figure. On the few times I have managed to grab heimer mid, It has been a pretty consistant experience:
1. Have team trash talk me out of the gate
2. do well in lane, team keeps talking trash
3. get ganked repeatedly with increasing amounts of players till I die or lose tower
4. still no help from team, moment I die/lose tower, my whole team jumps into attack heimer player mode
5. get no help all game
6. end up backdooring because team refuses to play with me, and makes plays that intentionally screw me as heimer(pretend to go in, then as the enemy team comes close do everything in their power to offer me up. I'm talking trundle pillars, anivia walls, Blitz pull then walks, I've even had a Janna flash behind their team to ult them into me.)
End of the day is that any champs that Riot forgets get screwed hard. I don't see this system as a good thing, because this is pretty standard treatment. Anyone who wants to play their fav champ will get screwed if that champ is not popular, or is popular as a troll pick.
We believe perceived less popular Champions will get increased play and better experiences in Team Builder. In the current environment, you're choosing a Heimerdinger and forcing that intention upon other players--sometimes players are cool with that, and sometimes players are not. That's hit and miss, and not an ideal experience for any of the players in the lobby.
In Team Builder, if you choose Heimerdinger and get accepted into a group, you're already in a group that has seen your intentions to play Heimerdinger and said "Hey, we're cool with that." In addition, the research shows that players are very willing to play with a diverse pool of champions. davin's group did a lot of research on non-standard team compositions and champions and over and over again, players were happy to play with them.
Lyte, it may be slightly more difficult for it to emerge as an option if the teambuilder doesn't include it.
Perhaps on account of people being unable to ever queue up for it.
Haha, well, I mean if it emerges from data on Normal or Ranked Games, or tournaments.
So I gather from a few posts that there is no option to change/swap champion once on a team. Is this true?
I have a big complaint with this as you may often want to switch champions within the same role (say, still a fighter top, but choose a different one).
Could you allow leader approved champion changes?? Like it pops up similar to the normal queue champion swap request to the leader, just asking them to approve previous champ -> new champ. This way there is no abuse of switch from soraka->Renekton for lolz, but you still have the choice to make legit swaps at the leader's approval.
I feel this would be the most significant lacking feature. I often have a specific role and type of champ I want in mind, but I need to be able to switch champ slightly to compliment team.
If we wanted to allow Champion swapping, having the team leader or group vote for it isn't a bad idea; however, we didn't want to take on too many features too fast. We want to iterate on the core experience with player feedback, and build the system together with players.
@Lyte
I love the idea of Team Builder but I think it's a mistake to not allow some sort of an option to change your champion once you've been accepted into a team. I play a lot of support and I like to pick my champion to complement my ADC. Do you have any thoughts as to how to incorporate something to allow players to change their champions in order to better form a cohesive strategy?
The Team Builder you see now, or the one on PBE, won't necessarily be the final version with all the features. We're working on the core experience, and fully intend to add features to Team Builder over time.
I misunderstood what you said there because I'm currently on the PBE an no Teambuilder is available D:
It's not there yet 
We're working on it but don't have a timeline yet.
The more I think about this system, the more excited I get. Do you, as devs, forsee this overtaking the normal queue as the dominant game mode? Let's consider the facts: the majority of the playerbase plays normals and never even touches ranked because it's too "hardcore;" They feel like playing gangplank mid and don't want to be told that it's against the meta or worry too much about the perfect team comp. However, in normals you can get the situation where you aren't able to call mid fast enough and don't get to play your preferred champ/role for something like 10 games in a row. In ranked you'd be able to play your role at least some of the time thanks to pick order, but in normals it's a crapshoot. This solves the problems that hold normals back while not offering any downsides (that i can see). So what are your thoughts? Bigger than normals?
By any chance, were the role definition changes done in anticipation for this rollout?
You guys have been teasing a solution to champ select issues for a long time, and I must say, you delivered big.
I'm pretty excited about the feature myself--as a player and as a scientist.
There's been several long discussions about whether Team Builder might become the dominant queue, whether we should leave it as an independent queue and all sorts of similar issues. For us, the most important thing for launch is that Team Builder can be a healthy queue, and that Normal Blind Pick and Ranked Mode can be healthy queues that co-exist with Team Builder. Depending on the data, there are several directions we could go from there, but it's really too early to predict.
Regarding role definition changes, we definitely worked closely with Morello's team on those. The reason we worked on those was not just because we had been researching Team Builder, but because research showed that lower level players really had no clue what terms like AD Carry or AP Carry meant and it didn't really give players a proper expectation of a champion's potential playstyle.
What are your plans for implementing this to ranked games? I was thinking that you can have it so you pick the champion and positions you want,as well as the bans you want, you are then paired against a team doesnt have the same champions to prevent any clones and then if your champions was selected as a ban you are forced to change your champion
I have an additional question if you happen to really click with your teamates could you have an option to re-que with them again?
We really, really want to add some features to Team Builder that make it easier to make friends and queue with them again; but, for now, you have to just add them to your friends list post-game and queue up with them in a new Team Builder game.
The thing is that once you give players, or in this case a Team Leader, the option of saying, "No, I do not want that champion in that role" it changes the whole dynamic of the interaction. In reading your posts you have repeatedly said that "you" (Lyte) would happily accept non-conventional champions in certain roles and that your internal research (davin's group) has shown that "many" players are of a similar mindset, which is all good to me, I love to see odd champs in odd roles however I see several problems with this line of reasoning.
a) You may not represent the majority of the League community, and simply saying "many" feel the same way doesn't really mean anything. For example with the government shutdown, you may feel that shutting down the government to defund Obamacare is the right thing to do, and "many" other far right conservatives might agree, but it doesn't mean the majority agree with you or that it is the best course of action for the community as a whole. (Sorry to bring in politics, but it's what came to mind when trying to make a metaphor). So even if 10% of the League community (which number wise would definitely be "many") could say they would be happy to have a mid that is perceived as weak or underpowered that would still mean you are getting denied from 9/10 of potential games.
b) Internal research and polling individuals of the community is definitely the way to go to get a good sense of how this new system will be received, but without knowing the questions asked in your internal research the statements made could be completely misleading. This is a large issue in political polling (again politics :/) where the way the question is asked is just as important as the answer itself. There is a huge difference between asking "If you were in champ select and a player claimed mid-Heimerdinger, would you dodge or flame?" and "If you saw a mid-Heimerdinger in your game would you prefer that they were playing a champ who is currently perceived as more powerful/stronger/standard in the mid lane?". With Team Builder you now give people the power to say, "Hmmm yea I prefer a more conventional mid... no Heimers." And once you to start to give people the option, it is hard to not desire the strongest picks if you want to win, which most people want to do. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you simply polled people based on the current system it would not give an accurate representation of how they would behave when you change the system such that they can actively decide which champions they don't want on their team. I know people can prevent champs from being selected with bans, but who uses bans to prevent their team from trolling?
c) Who are the "many" that are open and willing to have what are thought of as troll picks on their team? It's probably the individuals who are also looking to troll or pick odd champions, so then you just have a complete troll team versus a potentially legit team. Which I guess is actually not really an issue if that's what they wanna do. But then you end up with a situation where the people who really want play and get good at obscure champions get paired with those who just want to dick around.
I'm just afraid that in the end you would simply end up creating an environment that encourages playing champions/meta that are perceived to be OP. And even if "many" people say they are fine with having a mid-Heimerdinger on the team there will still be a shift in general towards not allowing obscure champions into unconventional roles ending up with either 1) longer queue times for those trying to play those champions or 2) individuals who might want to play those obscure champions seriously getting matched with those who just don't care and want to troll it up.
I agree, research is very nuanced, but we did try several variations of research that were all tightly controlled. Although I don't remember the exact numbers (davin is the one that would know!), one study for example asked players to rate their satisfaction with a specific team composition. Through subtle manipulations of the presented compositions, you can determine some interesting effects such as whether players hate being on a team with a champion that isn't popular.
From what I've seen in all the studies, generally the results all trend to the fact that many players are OK with playing many interesting combinations. When I say "many" I don't mean 10% or a minority either; for example in the team composition preferences study I mentioned above, the average ratings for team compositions with unpopular champions were generally always still positive.
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Hello Lyte!
Can i give you a suggestion? If you make this happen, what if you can select a secondary role, like:
I'd like to play top, but i'm happy with mid too. This way, the queue time would be lowered by a lot, and there would be more supports too.
Personally, i'd happily pick adc/support since i like bot lane exclusively, but if i had only one choice, i'd probably go for adc.
To start there will be one role, we'll be looking at improvements from the get go and what we can do to make building a team even better but we'll be combimg over all the data and feedback you give us. It's always good to start out simple and evolve.
davin's research I mentioned earlier showed there is a good amount of players who go for support and jungle, so it will be interesting to see it in practice.
So as long as people don't start crying again, and thus riot caves in again, and makes it mandatory.
This is the result of a whole mass of research and effort from a team who saw issues with the current Champion Select.
If something has the potential to work and work well, specially when it comes to promoting cooperation and respect amongst players before they even enter a game then it 's worth exploring! That's exciting, that can make the experience better for everyone, and this wasn't done with a heavy heart in anyway.
After reading Ymir's posts....I kept throwing lots of money at my screen but i still can't try this, rito pls ;(
We don't take bribes on features!
I can't wait for you to try it out either, but careful iteration is key and we'll have more info as time goes by.
@Lyte & Ymir
Been reading through some of the thread and I feel you guys should have provided a lot more information to start with.
You guys should try to make a step by step guide of what the system would look like so that people would fully understand what to expect and ask questions that make sense.
A simple numbered list that take us through all the steps of the pre-game experience this new system will provided. Don't forget to include the 'kicked from room' thing...
Some thing like;
1 - Player (game Captain) creates game
2 - .... (your turn now)
3 -
4 -
5 -
6 -
...
X - Game starts
Having done this, I think it would provide a much more usefull discussion arround this subject.
We'll be releasing a lot more as we go into the PBE, sometimes initial reactions are good with a conversation about how things work. An info dump can actually be a negative, despite having more clarity.
I saw the first pic very briefly in the Irish LoL page and my reaction was
"nope, looks like enforcing the meta"
then I came here and read the info and it looks to be fairly good, (and a similar idea to one I had when all this talk about wanting a "choose your que role" started a while ago)
I know proper data will be revealed eventually on how this works, but from what I'm seeing I assume this is how it works:
pick role + lane
pick role + lane you want other people to fill
search and wait
as long as there's a "Don't mind where I go or what crazy strategy you want to try" option, I'd say I'll be happy
There's an Any option for the Captain, we'll actually be looking at what else makes sense to add and how that could work for individuals.
A big part of the system is communication, it's built to help you get a team that shares your ideas and vision for how the game should go but a huge part of that is communication and cooperation free of a time limit.
Also what about my idea on notes when queueing? Just a small text why your pick might work to persuade players to accept you.
It doesnt seem as complex to implement before release as above idea and might be helpfull...?
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Been waiting for this for a long time, i just really like some champions and hate it when i cant play them ^^
This was something that came up as a discussion point, there's potential there but what that potential is needs to be informed by how the system is used. In less fancy terms, we want to see how things look before blinging it out.
I think it has potential myself and it feeds the goal of cooperation through information.
Okay, let me see if I'm understanding this correctly.
I select something like Cassiopeia-Mid-Mage. After the system searches for a while, I'm offered a team that's looking for a mage in the mid lane. However, if the team composition does not appeal to me (for instance, they want to send three people down the mid lane), I can see that composition in advance and tell the system to keep looking?
Yes upto the point of seeing the composition, if a team sees your Champion and choice as you queue and accepts you'll join them, but if the strategy or choices there don't feel right for you, you can then continue the search.
@Ymir / @Lyte
I've been reading this whole thread and for one I think it's great EUW is involved in this discussion as well as having an active rioter in this thread!
However, could you possibly give more info on this whole captain role? What does the captain have above the other members of your group, how does one become a captain, and will this captain role have so much power that everyone wants to be a captain? Can a captain join another captain's game and who will be the captain then?
Thanks
The Captain is the name given to the person who starts the lobby up. Captain isn't a constant term if simply refers to the person who opens the room and decides on what roles and positions they would like to see.
Think of it as the first person to start a room up in Practice or the friend who invites you to duo. They also get to click Yes/No on Champions entering the room, this is typically and ideally going to be decided with others but they are the ones with the button.
We're currently questioning whether a Captain needs a buddy to start a room and fill out the remaining 3 players. Of course there's going to be a lot based on PBE feedback and practice, but Captains are the people who give the blueprint for a Team.
LOL the thread is already unstickied.
I did that, stickies don't get a lot of visibility during peak! Strange as that may sound.
I want to make sure as many people read through and get to see if their questions are answered as possible.
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Will you guys have a duo top option or are we expected to play strictly by what's played by professionals?
You can pre-make and set up whatever lane allocation you want including duo top. The only limit.... is yourself.
We took a lot of inspiration from zombo.com
http://www.zombo.com
whats preventing people from leaving the lobby every time they join ur que with duo top or some wierd comp?
Nothing, though, the more people you invite, the more likely you will find the last few you need to fill in. Also, our assumption is that a lot of you guys would LOVE to try things that aren't 'standard meta', but the current matchmaking process doesn't give teams time to get that buy-in. Our hope is that a lot of people, when they encounter non-standard lane positions, will want to try it out and have fun. We are talking about a non-ranked queue after all. People want to try things and have fun, what you are describing (top lane duo) sounds interesting and fun to me.
- Zileas
WTF why am I still at that site!!
#GETOUTOFMYHEAD
The only leemit... is yourself!
Xerath Changes Justification
Hey guys,
Simmer down a bit, I appreciate the amount of passion going on here, but that's not justification to start attacking each other.
To explain our logic on the passive:
- There were concerns the super high spell pen lead to poor counter itemization
- We wanted to try an alternative growth path that encouraged escalating power towards the late game (in this case boosting item purchases)
After trying it out, we actually felt like it snowballed him harder, making an already win-or-lose champion win-or-lose even harder. In fact, 15% bonus AP is really just a fancy way of saying his AP Ratios are higher than normal, that squishes squishies too hard.
We've totally acknowledged that being 100-0'd by his ultimate is not fun. So we're going back to the 20% Spell Penetration passive, but this time with linear scaling, instead of geometric scaling. However, this time, it will only apply to his basic spells.
This way, if a Xerath gets out of control and snowballs into AP, you can buy MR to prevent yourself from being obliterated at a range you can't respond, but Xerath retains his ability to poke down tanks over time. (Assuming mana enough to pull it off)
This kind of iteration can be confusing in a vacuum. I'm sorry I haven't been able to communicate more with you directly, but I'm in pretty bad shape at the moment. While Zenon is heroically taking on the effort of finishing up Xerath, implementing new ult visuals with Bitsplosion and generally being awesome, my time is split between communicating about Xerath, handling some season 4 changes that we'll be announcing soon and also doing some heavy work to adjust support itemization with Xypherous.
I understand your frustration with the lack of communication, but hope you understand.
That said, here's some stuff we're going to try out:
We're going to try making Xerath's E path a little more clear before it fires, make the stun scale up to 2 seconds at max distance.
This is pretty experimental, but expect to see it in Xerath V4 or V5.
I have, though.
You could look at my other posts in the thread a couple pages back about how he doesn't have a clearly defined optimal range or how his ultimate is toxic.
Locus is gone, his flow is different because he doesn't get to set up an E and land an Arcanopulse or Arcane Barrage right as it lands, you don't have to watch your position while you ult and it feels strange to have a bunch of wasted range if you ult after a combo to kill a fleeing opponent.
Mostly though, Locus is gone. That's Xerath, he enhances his spell range, and it's what gives him his unique flow and high skillcap.
Yep. This is correct. After much review, we felt that locus as a core spell added a dramatic amount of clunkiness to the kit that requires massive amounts of over-budget AP ratios, 40% spell penetration and a nearly unstoppable stun on an 8 second cooldown to compensate for.
The amount of power Xerath required to keep that one ability was absurd. He's utterly broken to the core. Yes, the uniqueness brought value. No, it did not justify that much power. It was only a matter of time before Xerath was given the Poppy treatment.
Instead, we are trying to figure out the healthiest, richest and most engaging parts of Xerath to keep, while keeping the important parts of his kit that were fun - e.g. a pass through base nuke. Then preserving mechanics that players recognize on Xerath, e.g. % Spell Penetration, where possible.
I just had an amazing game tonight were I survived a Varus/Blitzcrank 2v1 lane in midlane today. Yes, skillful use of Locus lead to me dodging some cool hooks. However, that wasn't what won the game. It was that one time I landed a full combo on the entire enemy team... then the one after that... then the one after that... ultimately resulting me dealing 4x more damage than any other member of my team.
Broken AP ratios and spell penetration have been on Xerath for years. Locus has been around for years. People will never warm up to abilities that just feel that bad. I hope instead that I've expressed the feeling and vision of what Xerath SHOULD be to fill the long-range siege role we want to explore with him in league of legends.
Based on the other replies in this thread - I really feel like we have.
I think you explained yourself quite clear yes, I disagreed before, but I see what's going on and im putting my bacon behind it.
I used to play Xerath for a bit, liked him a lot, but got really really bored of him, and just didn't like to play him, which was a damn shame because I love the way he looks, the way he sounds, and just the idea of him. But the gameplay is was so.....bleh. I mean I love long range. Just something about Xerath....
Cant wait to see Xerath Mk.12 hit live some day so I can play him. I love playing mages.
Thanks Terminal, I think you're exactly the type of person we want to reach here.
I appreciate your kind words.
To be honest, Xelnath, I'm just getting feeling that you are just ignoring those who are opposed to this rework.
I want to believe that you aren't, but I think most people who are opposed to this rework didn't got any answers from you. Not small amount of people are saying to not touch him, what will you gonna respond to them?
You will just throw then away? OK, as LOL is the biggest game in the world, it won't be a big problem, anyway, I'm gonna left this game if Xerath is f***ed like this.
There are some who always flatter at you, but remember they are not the only people playing Xerath. As a game designer, you should be more communicative with people, it is more important if it is about rework.
Well, I'm just hoping this rework to be cancelled all the time. I had hope once, but I realized there are no hope.
(Don't care downvotes)
We will not be cancelling Xerath's rework. Thank you for your patience thus far, but if you disagree with this core goal, we will not be able to collaborate. I hope that you try the final reworked Xerath or can find another champion who embodies the mechanics you enjoy, who hopefully isn't just a stealth OP.
I understand that I don't have the most positive posts, but I'm trying to explain myself clearly here and understand why this rework was started in the first place, and why it needs to be so drastic that it replaces all of his abilities, passive, and overall theme.
You're saying that a person who dislikes playing Xerath is exactly that kind of person you want to reach; that's really offputting, and it's what I've seen from the start of this rework. You're making things better for people who don't like playing Xerath or are bored playing him, and removing his core ability because they don't enjoy or understand it.
That just feels so wrong to me, especially in a game with this many champions.
Crown, you *are* negative, but you have also provided useful insights and I've made adjustments to how I handled the character as a reflection of understanding the things you enjoyed and identified with the character.
At the same time, I am also reconciling the poor usability the character had with other play patterns that fill the same niche with greater satisfaction. I know you can't at a glance see that you've had a positive influence on this rework, but you have. I greatly appreciate that your responses have been well-phrased and reflect some soul searching.
I feel strongly like I've bridged old and new Xerath rather well, short of keeping Locus as a short cooldown effect. Yes, its there. No, it's not the same. Yes, it was dramatically powerful to compensate for its clunkiness. No, you won't be constantly mode switching.
I'll kinda miss it too, from that purely novel designer itch that exists in me and the expert who unleashes devastating power with OP Xerath Live.
Hey guys! I thought I'd pop my head in here real quick. I'm also working on Xerath and would like to give you some more insight as to where we are right now.
Xerath V4, who is coming to PBE soon[tm], looks roughly like this:
Passive: Xerath gains 3%-20% spell penetration on his basic abilities. Every 10 seconds, his next autoattack restores 45-130 mana, or three times this amount when autoattacking a champion.
GOALS AND THOUGHTS: The biggest problem with giving a character free spell penetration is that it makes the enemy feel like they have no/fewer options to play against this character. This comes down to counter play, really. If having your tank build MR and drawing out Xerath's fire is not a good option, your tank will feel pretty silly. We feel that at 20% spell pen this won't be the case. Additionally, we do not grant the spell pen on the ultimate because if Xerath does get ahead and uses his ultimate on the enemy ADC every teamfight, then building MR on the ADC should at least feel like a worthwhile investment.
The mana restore is meant to gate excessive long range spell patterns in the lane. Or in less designery words: if Xerath wants to hang back and farm/harass with 1000 range Q/W in lane, he WILL run out of mana, by design. If he wants to get in minion range (or be cheeky and ward wraiths so he can use them to proc his passive safely) he'll have decent mana regen. If he wants to go all out and fight his enemy, he'll have plenty of mana to do so.
Q: Unchanged from what you guys have seen already. Charge up and release like Varus Q. I've been fiddling with the slow amount a little (it was 25%, is now 35%) just to make it less guaranteed to hit this ability on a fleeing enemy and to possibly give Xerath a window of vulnerability in lane. The range of this ability at full charge feels punishing to Xerath's enemy but is central to Xerath's identity as a long range caster. He gets up to 1400 range, which is 100 more than Corki's missiles. If you have your camera centred on Xerath, he will literally shoot off screen.
GOALS AND THOUGHTS: I consider this ability stable, in that I have great confidence that it produces fun for both Xerath and Xerath's enemies. If anything I see us tuning dodgeability on this: the delay between drawing the warning particle on the ground and actually doing the damage may change. Other than that, I am super happy with the ability.
W: Large circular AoE damage spell which slows a tiny amount in its outer ring (10%) and a large amount (40%-60%) in its inner ring. The higher slow decays down to 10% over its duration. The inner ring also does 60% more damage than the outer ring.
GOALS AND THOUGHTS: I also consider this ability stable, meaning I like the structure of it and the game play it creates. Damage numbers and damage amp in the middle may need tweaking. I also like the strong slow that decays down. The goal here is to make it very clear to both Xerath and his opponent that Xerath hit a bullseye; no better way to do that than with an "oh ****" slow. However, most of Xerath's power budget is in his range and his damage, as it should be, so I couldn't get away with a 60% slow over 2s; hence the decay. I also like that this ability immediately makes you think in terms of combos. Open up with E to guarantee the W center hit or fish for a W hit to guarantee the E?
E: After casting for 0.5s, Xerath sends out a very fast blast of arcane energy, stunning the first unit hit. We recently took some damage off this, but most importantly we turned it from an 0.25s cast with an 800 speed missile into an 0.5s cast with a 2200 speed missile that draws its projected path on the ground à la Jinx W. The ground particle you will see is a placeholder I whipped up in inkscape. Obviously we won't ship something that looks like this, but while proving the ability pattern I like to overcommunicate gameplay to see if the ability is fun to dodge/land.
GOALS AND THOUGHTS: This ability is somewhat in flux. I'm going to say I'm pretty happy with a Dark Binding like paradigm where the skillshot is hard to land but puts a significant CC on the first unit hit. It's a very simple ability, which is great on a kit that is otherwise very involved and complicated. I'm open to a lot of discussion on exactly how this is expressed.
The most recent change attempted to accomplish two things: make Xerath more divable while normalize hittability at long range. Xerath's strength is great range, and his intended weakness is that when a melee does get to him, the melee should have an advantage. In the old version of this skill, that was not the case. An 0.25s cast time is not dodgeable and once Xerath put some ranks into this skill, the point blank stun duration (up to 1.8s!) made diving Xerath a very bad idea indeed. He'd put an E and a bullseye W on you while barely slowing down himself. Both the 0.5s cast time and the path indicator on the ground should make it more realistic for a melee to sidestep the missile and catch up with Xerath. At full range, however, the missile gets to its target faster than before.
We've only tested this in one game internally so far, but Xerath still felt sufficiently safe as long as he held on to E. There's a few other things I can try here as well, most obviously a missile that speeds up over its duration. We're currently wider and slower than Jinx W to make this less about sniping and more about area denial. I would very much encourage you all to give me feedback on this spell in particular.
R: Xerath roots himself in place and shoots four arcane artillery rounds over a very long distance. Recently we changed this ability to no longer give vision of the full area affected, which was a LOT of excessive power. We hope this will encourage the kind of teamplay where Xerath's team spots for him or sets up fights with deep wards. We might experiment with bringing the radar pings back (if you remember: it used to show red radar pings on the minimap and in the fog of war where enemy champions are), but I first want to see if we can do without.
GOALS AND THOUGHTS: While exact timing, damage, number of shots, duration, and visibility concerns are still in flux, I am overall happiest with this implementation so far. Let me talk about the fantasy and goals here.
Xerath is meant to be the archetypical long range siege mage. Basically a Lux who doesn't instantly delete you from the map if she lands a Q, someone you can fight against. For the Xerath player, the power fantasy has to be this uncontained power. Who else gets to fish for artillery hits at such a range? For the enemy, however, it cannot be the feeling of playing against live Xerath, which is if he gets ahead he will stun and instakill you from the fog of war / behind a wall before you can react in any kind of way. To achieve this, we spaced out the damage and gave hints about Xerath's position and distance in the shots.
Now before we talk about the feel of this ability, please keep in mind that the visuals you're seeing right now are very much work in progress. Our awesome VFX artist Brian is going to dedicate all of next week to making these shots feel sufficiently epic and impactful. The current version was created for an old iteration of the spell, where there was a constant stream of shots that needed to be toned down because they came down so rapidly.
We're currently trying to find the right damage numbers and delays for the ultimate. At 0.65 seconds fixed travel time (read: no matter the distance, a shot will always spend 0.65s en route) we find the ultimate not dodgeable in internal testing. Even a boots 2 Ashe has no way of avoiding the damage of a rank 2/3 (the AoE grows with rank) ultimate. I would like to hop onto the PBE one of these days and see some games there. Perhaps you guys are much better at dodging than we are?
There are a whole bunch of reasons why Xerath only gets this one spell during his ultimate, rather than getting long range versions of all his spells. First and foremost it's simply intensity. It's already very stressful to play against this version--having to also worry about slows and stuns and massive rectangular AoE? Nerve-wrecking for both Xerath and his enemy. Secondly, I really don't want Xeraths to feel like they have to hold back on important spells from their base kit for when they want to ulti. If they see a target of opportunity they should have the ability to go for it, right away. Next, balancing of the entire basic kit would have to be very different if you could go into ult and use all of your basic spells at crazy ranges. The "oh well I guess Xerath just burst me to death from two screens away" problem would crop up again no doubt.
I want every shot of the ultimate to feel impactful and I'm sure we'll get to the right numbers through a process of trial and error. I have two or three questions for you:
1) As Xerath, did you feel like you made clever choices about leading your targets?
2) As an enemy of Xerath, did you feel you had the choice to dodge his shots?
3) As either, did it feel like Xerath landing all 4 shots was a significant chunk of damage? (please indicate if you were playing as or playing against).
Sorry for the long wall of text. Hit me with questions you have, but remember Xelnath's words: be civil to each other (and preferably to me as well).
So would you guys be giving xerath more beam like vfx, or lightningesque effects like he had before? And would you guys change the ulti to be more explosive?
Yeah, not sure yet, I can try and get Brian to post here and share his current thoughts. I think he's going to start ideation this week. Definitely much more explosive. From a gameplay perspective I really want to maintain directionality and distance through missile arc.
I'm going to miss the old locus feel where all of your spells get silly range, but seeing as that is now a built in functionality (charging q) AND you get even sillier range on the ultimate, I'm okay with it. I do think that you should keep us in the dark when ulting (unless we have allies/wards ofc.) because I want as much power budget to be in the bombardment and not ancillary stuff like vision (bah, that's what wards are for). Thank you for explaining why we don't get all of our spells on new locus clearly. If you ever find a way to make it such that we do without nerfing the rest of Xerath to the ground let us know.
Thank you! This is spot-on: the less power I put into vision, the more I can dump into damage. Also, if Xerath teams start running deep wards beyond the enemy's blue/red when setting up for a baron fight so Xerath can pick off stragglers after the fight, I think that would be quite awesome to see.
Today, one of our testers (who's somewhere in Diamond) pulled off a triple kill with the ult where he sniped targets that were each more than a screen apart from each other. There's NO WAY I could click so many distant places at once, but for people who are really good at the game there's potential for super clutch plays.
Any Chance we can see a faster Chargeup for complete root on Q? Maybe even a speedup afterwards? I really dislike to be able to move when firing Q.
Also, please remove the CC on Ult... just make it hit harder instead with an increased chance of dodging it.
Sorry, I'm not sure I understand--what CC are you thinking about? There's currently no CC on the ultimate.
The W doesn't feel that great to me, however. On paper I like the mechanic of having a stronger effect at the center, but the effects outside the center are so weak (especially the slow, does it really have to be that measly at all levels?) and the center so small that it seems like a waste to even cast it unless you have stunned the enemy beforehand.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm absolutely open to the possibility of bringing up the slow floor of the W (meaning both the flat amount it slows for in the outer ring and the lowest amount the center ring slow decays to). The reason I've been hesitant to do so so far is that I want as much of his power budget to be in damage as possible, and CC is EXPENSIVE.
So one reason I really like the E being simple is that it allows Xerath to pay more attention to the rest of his kit, but I hear you: fishing for that long range stun to set off a chain of unfortunate events for the enemy feels awesome. I question whether a super super long range siege mage should have that ability though? Secondly, as Meddler pointed out to me today, even Dark Binding (which is SLOWER than the E you're currently seeing on PBE and a LOT slower than the new E at range) is used to fish for good snares and set up fights.
There were a bunch of paradigms for the E, including a "passes through minions and only damages them, stops at champions and stuns them" paradigm, but we found this very very hard to teach to Xerath's enemies. I would like you to test the new E (which I'm currently 50/50 on, aka really not sure) and give me feedback on that. At full range your stun gets there much more quickly than before.
I think the feedback we've gotten so far on the move-while-charging paradigm has been overwhelmingly positive. Personally I also enjoy doing it a lot. We may need to find the right tuning for both the slow amount and the total charge duration, but I doubt we'll go to the extreme of fully rooting you for a very quick charge up.
Hey Zenon; welcome!
I've been playing Xerath a lot on PBE over the past couple of days (albeit against bots) and I would love to answer your questions, particularly in regards to the more recent changes. I made a post a bit ago that discussed these changes but I'll bring them up again now in a more constructed manner.
Passive V4: I rather enjoy this passive especially when it was compared to the 15% AP version. I really like how the passive turned out but I have an issue with cases involving the passive trigger on champions. From my Testing it appears to only trigger on champions if Xerath's mana pool is missing that much or more mana. While I understand why this was implemented (maximizing the efficiency of the regen)I have to admit I HATE how it plays out. I'd much rather lose out on some mana because when I later return to farming minions after harassing with an auto attack it triggers on the minion so I lose out on some mana.
Great feedback! I've changed this so Xerath will only hold on to his passive if he's missing less than the minion restore value, even if he's attacking a champion. Will be on PBE tomorrow.
Q: I agree that this ability is good as is; I noticed the movespeed felt slower so I'm glad I wasn't imagining things. That being said; with Xerath's new E, I don't feel like this is a problem (at least against bots xD). The high projectile speed allows me to land the stun and catch up and I like how that feels.
W: With Xerath's current kit I feel like this ability is absolutely bonkers. I find Xerath's new stun significantly easier to land so I feel the bulls-eye damage is really high. So high in fact, I feel it out shines his ultimate in it's current state.
You will, I suspect, find both E and W much harder to land against human players. Our bots unfortunately aren't very good at either dodging, ducking, diving, dipping, or dodging.
E: ABSOLUTELY love the changes that were made to this ability. The stun feels natural to use and I find it very rewarding to land. It simply feels awesome. It ties his basic kit together nicely because of it's burst combo potential either by clearing minions with q, landing the long range stun, and following it up with a bulls-eye W feels great and so does E->W->Q.
R: I feel like this ability is almost too weak at the moment; I find comboing Xerath's basic kit infinitely more rewarding than landing all 4 shots of his ultimate. In my previous post I mentioned how I've been finding the ability to cancel Xerath's ultimate almost unnecessary because there is very little incentive for a properly positioned Xerath to do so. To remedy this, I was tossing around the idea of allowing Xerath to get a cooldown refund based on how many shots were used during the ultimate's duration. Back when Xerath's ult had the large vision effect I thought it would be a cool idea to use Xerath's ult for the utility it provides rather than the damage it deals. I'd really like to see a version where his ult's cooldown was reduced for, let's say 10 seconds, for each shot that wasn't fired. This way Xerath could use his ult as a utility spell, but wouldn't be hampered by the HUGE base cooldown. If this were the case, with 40% cooldown reduction and no shots fired with a lvl 3 ultimate, Xerath would have a 32 second cooldown before he could use his ultimate again.
What are your thoughts on this possibility?
So this is an example of a pattern we like to call (and again, sorry for my designer-speak!) "unclear optimization"--do I fish for an unlikely hit or do I save a chunk of CD? We don't like it when players have to make tiny, potentially insignificant decisions like this and end up feeling bad because they assume it was the wrong decision. We like patterns that are all in: you're in siege mode, go crazy!
As for the vision, we actually found that this amount of utility was grossly excessive power on the ult. It'll be gone by tomorrow, hopefully forcing more teamplay around spotting for Xerath. I like this a lot in Starcraft II, where a lot of siege tank standoffs come down to which player can get vision of the enemy first / more consistently. If that low health Ashe can retreat into the fog of war, then maybe she is safe, maybe Xerath will pick her off with a lucky guess, or maybe Xerath's support put in a deep ward into the enemy forest and Xerath gets to snipe her off from half the map away.
To answer your questions:
1) The new E allows for very clever use of his kit to clear minions before attempting a stun or area denial. I REALLY like how the new stun feels.
2) Back in Xerath's initial run on the PBE his ultimate was very frustrating to play against; once Xerath got ahead he could snowball pretty hard with his ultimate. Now I'm not so sure, which brings us to qustion 3!
3) His current ultimate feels REALLY weak compared to his basic kit which now seems to outshine it. It doesn't feel satisfying to land all 4 shots on a single target, not as much as landing a stun does. This may be caused by live Xerath's ultimate's burst potential, so by comparison it feels almost wimpy. Maybe reward Xerath for clever leading by increasing consecutive damage? This way a skilled opponent could increase their survivability with an artful dodge. Likewise a skilled Xerath could increase his damage potential simply by accurate leading and thoughtful placement. I'd also love to see that experimented with.
Apologizes for the wall of text XD!
I'm not sure if I want to front/backload the damage of the ult (backloading would be consecutive hits give more damage; having consecutive hits give less damage would be frontloading). Neither of those seem to improve matters. I think we just need to find the right base values here. Maybe we'll shrink the AoE and buy ourselves some more damage that way?
Do his ult shots reveal at least? Possibly in a larger area around them then their actual spell range so we can "Flare" with a 1-2 before landing the remainder?
The instant you fire off a shot, a 500 radius around the target location is revealed to your team.
More on Heimerdinger
TL;DR on Heimer balance: I'm very interested in what data comes out of PBE, but final balance will have to come from the first patch or so he's live. The rework makes him healthy enough to keep him at a high power level, and we think he's there now, too--but he's also a very high skill cap champion. He needs time for players to learn strategies, etc.
I understand that a few of you feel very passionately about your vision for where his power is at, but I have to consider everyone's viewpoint, the data at my disposal, and the big accuracy gap between balance information from PBE and balance information from live. I think it's very important for Heimerdinger that he be viable--but making big power changes from individual anecdotes is not the way to do that.
but if the passive still works while the turrets are shut down and works on allied champs, then it can be a good thing for team fights after you have been dived on (and killed). it would be a better passive if it affected enemies (decrease enemy speed). but basing everything around turrets has its downside (kill them easy and 2 abilities are in the can).
a fair amount of ideas of been thrown out there for passives in the past 50 or so pages, i doubt 20th has seen them all and forum searches are pretty poor right now. and as for anything that has to do with turrets, they are bugged right now, so we have to guess at how they will be when fixed (i for one feel their charge up time is way too high, especially on the ult, which only gets one shot, though maybe they will be tanky enough to compensate for this, doubtful though).
I read every post in this thread, and almost all Heimerdiner posts generally ^^
Also, I'm fairly certain I've got the turret bugs fixed (cue comedically timed proof that there is still turret bugs)
Frankly I feel we've hit a dead end as far as balance feedback is concerned.
The passive at least can still get some work.
I share the huge desire to see Heimerdinger balanced as viable, but we can't simply discuss it until we find his balanced state. That isn't enough :[
Notice that the number of unique posters has dropped as the thread has gone on. Looking at the posts concerned with balance, we actually see a very small number of players having these concerns, interspersed with a larger number of less motivated players who perceive him to be average or higher strength.
This is exactly what I'd expect to see. People who think their champion is weak are waaaaay more motivated to talk about it, post analysis, etc.
At the end of the day, balance doesn't come from a forum. You guys are doing great work in bringing me your data, perceptions, and analysis. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask for your trust in balancing Heimerdinger--I will do everything in my power to see Heimerdinger viable mid, but I can't simply take your word and make it law.
I can't balance from reasoning alone. I need data ^^
Indeed. I personally have faith the design team will do a good job of achieving overall balance in the end. Values on his existing abilities will be tweaked, people will cheer and whine, yadda yadda yadda.
However, the talk of changing the core mechanic of his passive,,,,, that topic is far more interesting.
Indeed!
The challenge is thus: Hit these points below as well or better than the current passive. I should also point out that this is according to my own completely biased judgment, but that I'm very strongly motivated on this front. Difficulty of implementation is not a concern, I can throw my hours at this until it's solved.
Bear in mind also that this is more of a 'bonus objective' as far as Heimer is concerned. Gameplay-wise the current passive does good work, it's more about making it feel cooler.
So with that out of the way, here's the goals!
- Low mindshare cost: Heimerdinger already has a huge amount to pay attention to, the passive should 'just work' without him having to babysit it
- Low power budget: Heimerdinger's identity is strongly tied to his turrets and active skills, weakening them for a passive is (probably) a poor trade
- More awesome than current: Self-explanatory
- Good for recovering from mistakes: I'd prefer passives with a gameplay goal of this type, but I'm open to other options here
Oh and for support Dingers: I buffed their deactivated sight range, two of 'em can cover river and one can cover tribrush now.
tbh, his passive is really just boring. You liked the HP5 when under 65% HP, what about having Heimer's passive be: "Increase health regeneration of allies in [bigish number] range by 1% for each 1% missing HP." (i.e. Veigar passive, but an aura and for health)
idk, but having an overly-simplistic passive doesn't seem right for Heimer. I know you want to keep mindshare low, but the effect should at least be more interesting.
I like this type of thing in theory, but in practice it ends up with Heimer getting bursted hardcore, especially given ignite's heal reduction.
I've got you guys set up to spin on passive ideas for a while--feel free to discuss with each other, especially with regards to knowledge-sharing about passives we talked about earlier in the thread. It's not reasonable to expect other people to read this threadnaught, haha xD
I'm gonna be diving into the rest of the Heimer bugs now, my posts will be slower for a while as I deal with the results of the bug sweep. I'll be reading every post and replying to some, but I don't think I can maintain the crazy pace of replies. It's been fun and awesome, though. I'd take a couple days to post a million times again in a heartbeat, more communication with players = better than ^^
EDIT: Maybe have it be more like a spectre's cowl passive in aura form. Like every time an ally in a given range takes champion damage, give X HP5 for Y seconds. I think this would especially help support Heimer more than miderdinger.
Ooo, I'll need to think about this but at first blush I quite like it. It doesn't do as well when Heimer is behind, but it's more appreciable and kinda cool.
Great, now where's faux to critique my idea...
Still reading thread, just too busy to post xD
Turret tankiness buffed! Won't be in today, but should get in soon.
Armor now scales to 80 at level 18, MR now scales to 65 at level 18.
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RAISE YOUR DONGER, expecially in euw...seems that there is a lot less interest here than on NA forum. Too bad that the "discussions" can't be merged in some ways.
...
Also, there is a method to share this with NA, without making another account and reposting? So to have more feedbacks?
Not as far as I know, sorry :X
The passive's power level has some strict restriction i see, expecially the one on the "mindshare" required to be low, that for an genius inventor...don't seem fitting enough. And if i remember correctly 20thCentyuryFaux, you want heimerdinger to concentrate on the playing of turret,missile and granade.
That's certainly a point that'd change quite a bit. If we lifted the mindshare restriction on the passive, and let Heimer have something that demanded more of his thinking, we could do way more awesome stuff with it. I'm not sure what we could streamline to make room for it, though. E is already pretty simple to use. Would Q or W get easier to use, or is there some other way to give people the mental space to fit a passive they'd need to manage?
Passive: Heimer has a "radiocontrol" item. This item have some auras/stat (regen or similar, + some scaling bonus to replace the missing slot item). But the interesting part: ACTIVE: all your active turret in range shot at a designed point.
Hehehe, we did think about something like this, actually--it also would have had the ability to "pick up" Heimer turrets and move them around, Syndra style xD
We ended up not going with it for a handful of reasons that ball together. Complexity, of course, but also item slot questions--does the item upgrade like Viktor's? How big does it get? Or is it something small you sell later? Etc.
Giving Heimer direct control of the beams brings questions too. It's awesome for the lane phase, pretty much 100% doing what we want, but we found it broke down in teamfights. When Heimer is kiting away from his turrets, frequently having them shoot while they're timing out while leads the enemy team on a merry jungle chase--how can he beam? Do they beam on their own without his input? If so, how do they decide when to beam on their own or not?
It's a cool idea that I'd definitely explore in a PvE game, but the pressures put on a player in PvP are much higher. Using turret AI that's optimized for cases of "people diving Heimer" lets Heimer focus on stuff he'd rather pay attention to: Turret placement, rockets, pushing objectives, and kiting the enemy. At least, that's where we ended up going with our reasoning on the topic.
Sorry for the long post, the idea is actually really simple, make an inventor tied to items.
That definitely comes through, I'm just starting to think it's not Heimerdinger. Heimer is a turrets-focused champion. An items-focused tinkerer could definitely make for a cool champion in its own right!
Reading na forum, i see a strange interaction of the ulti:
It gives you more power if you use the ulti on an not-maxed skill( The exception being Q with the low cooldown)
E+RW is more burst if i max E. RE+W is more burst if i max W, so if i want power i have "less choiche" on the ulti based on my build. Strange interaction based on ulti not scaling with non-ulti skill point and the separate cooldown on ultied-version (triple Q rengar ok, triple W heimer with that cooldown i still don't see anyone staying in range after the first W+RW).
Yeah, this was very intriguing to me too. It does warp choice slightly, but only if Heimer is maxing W in lane--Q's cooldown being only one second, Q Heimer isn't in danger of this.
Near as I can tell, I have three main choices: Do what I did, do what Karma does, or make the ult-enhanced skill power based on the skill's rank. Both the Karma "ult + base" and the "all base" options leave the Heimer player with fewer choices than the "all ult" option, so I'm inclined to stick with the current implementation, but it's a very interesting puzzle from a design standpoint.
The only way to make it completely ignore the base skill would be to make it "all ult" and have it reset the cooldowns, but that would make me weaken the ult considerably. So the choice then becomes "stronger ult" vs "more choice for W max Heimer", with the choice benefit going away as Heimer finishes maxing his second skill. Viewed in that light, I think the no cooldown reset + all ult scaling best fits our goals.
Morello on Map Skins
I've been mentioning that for a year. A recap on map skins!
1) Map skins are awesome things that we're pretty damn sure players would love!
2) Map skins are massively resource intensive because we've upped the quality of maps a lot (Hello, Howling Abyss!) Making maps of the launch quality of original SR is faster, sure.
3) The environment team is busy working on other things that are more important currently, which is awesome, but sad because we can't have map skins yet.
4) We can't reuse the old map skins because Summoner's Rift 1.1 was released a year+ ago, and those skins can't work on the new map.
so you're saying there will be no themed map this year for harrowing and even Christmas?
and possible for "map skins" which we have to pay to play?
For this year, no. I've been trying to let people know that, but forums move fast.
We want to do them, this year is out though. And we hear how much you guys think these are cool (though we think they're really cool too!)
i understand but i still dislike it =\
You and me both It's the right decision, but doesn't mean I like that we can't do it right now!
ive never done environment work before and have no clue what im talking about
ftfy
Game Balance Discussion
My intent was not to imply there's nothing to improve or fix, it was mostly a jab at the hyperbolic THIS IS TERRIBLE feel that's based on limited data sets and popular opinion to try to position it as an attack from the OP you quote here. Let's talk brass tacks:
League of X: Balance will fluctuate naturally, especially as we make fundamental changes to the game. The new item system (today) has better item variance than previous seasons, but we had to suffer some temporary issues to get there. This is much like when you launch a new game and it's all over the place, except that players are much better as the game's skill floor has gone up due to more mastery. I think there's something to be said for needing to react faster on that stuff, though.
2) Only X of Y characters exist in Z lane: The real metrics on balance (IE: how we judge if we're being successful or not) comes down to a combination of possible picks (total variety) and lack of domineering picks. This is both related to tournament play and what's usable generally speaking.
Variety has been similar (~65%) this season consistently, including Worlds, but we've done a little worse on domineering picks, with Zed, Corki and Shen being on the must-pick list (compared to only Ezreal in Season 2). We're going to institute methods of getting in front of this easier for this season and have learned some good techniques on how to watch these trends.
Additionally, this is only in tournament play - which we do take seriously when doing balance of course - but what that means 99% of players can play most characters and be successful. Very few characters are actually in a bad spot. Even the variety between Diamond 1 and pro games is pretty different.
3) Counterplay needs more work continuously, and counter-examples tend to speak of more work to do. Silver Bolts is a terrible example though because the countering strategically != counterplay. If Vayne is overpowered because of her target selection freedom, that's a different topic.
So should we never try to do anything on counter-play unless we can change every champion to ensure 100% of champions are as successful as we'd like here? That seems like it creates a worse problem that chipping away at it, to me.
So if your goal is to get me to admit that League of Legends has problems we want to fix, then you got it! That's never a hard admission to make. The work is interesting because there are so many problems to solve, and it's not possible to be finished, ever ever. That's the reality of working on game health.
Reasonable conversations about game health, balance, design and other subjects that effect play are great. They're the reason we get on these forums. But let's also be real for a second: a large number of people think they're an expert on balance, and frankly, very few people are (and if you actually are, I'm hiring!). That's why we want to use reasoned conversations, structured problem-solving, data, and objective analysis to discuss these problems in detail.
As far as how balanced does the game "feel", I agree with something here. While any gaming forum is talking about how unbalanced every game is, there's a more balance disruption when we do season changes, and the "feeling" of how balanced the game is is risked when more must-picks appear in competitive play. And that makes sense. It's easy to read a story that says "play this champion, or don't show up as a serious contender," and that obviously feels really bad. We agree and are working to address this more aggressively.
Does this help clarify things, a little?
Hey Morello you threw in a line about silver bolts that i just didn't understand, could you clarify, do you think it's a good or bad mechanic and why? Thanks.
Silver Bolts is an interesting topic, but it's not a counterplay conversation because counter-play is more tactical than strategic. "Buy armor" is countering something, not adding counterplay (admittedly a bit confusing!). I think %HP True can be problematic because it kills everything faster, but this is a problem with bases being high (Marksmen) on abilities like this.
Basically, Silver Bolts is a conversation that has a lot of good avenues of attack, but one of them is not counter-play in the way we talk about from a kit level. Itemization is strategic, where counterplay lives more in the tactical and immediate (not long term) strategy realm.
You should hire Hashinshin, allow him to go crazy with all the balancing with the community backing him up. Then sit quietly has he screws up everything, that way people like him can finally shut up.
I admit, I lol'd.
Clarifications on Sivir's VU
Alright, hi folks! As a disclaimer, we cannot make every change. At the end of the day, getting Sivir out delivers far more value than iterating for a longer period of time. In addition, we have a large backlog (as I'm sure you know), so that's also another challenge to balance.
I feel that Sivir is in a great state right now, but there are a few polish points that could be explored, so that's what I'd like to talk about.
So just to start out with some of the more said ones I've seen...
1. Bandit Sivir looking green: We'll deliver some antacids to her. Her texture isn't actually green, it's just a weird lighting issue. We're looking into it.
2. Warrior Princess Sivir looks blurry: I think it might be due to the texture being slightly complex, but I'd like more information. Where specifically does it look blurry? To me, it seems like it'd be on the weapon.
3. Bandit Sivir lacks a 5 pointed weapon: This one is harder. Much harder. If you haven't seen, Sivir's weapon expands and contracts with animations, throws the blades, etc. It's a lot more than just a static object now, so changing it would take a rather long time.
4. PAX Sivir: We'll explore more blacks/whites. There are issues with using too much of these colors that I can get into more if people would like.
Thanks for dropping by I'd appreciate explanation(s) of point 4 if you're still willing!
Sorry for the delays, I'm workin' on the side.
Blacks in our game aren't something that show up that well. While black itself is a cool color, and leads to good contrast, true black has poor visibility, or contrasts too much with the normal palette of the game. Whites tend to blow out and look too bright, or struggle to not make the character look like they have grey hair instead (which could lead people to believe that the character is old). These aren't impossible challenges, but they do tend to be things we avoid.
What about appealing in regard to the dance due to legacy/history? I know that's a lot more work, but I feel like Sivir deserves at least that much. Seeing as how she dates back to the 13th champion (over 4 1/2 years!)
Simple dances are good. They're loopable, and they're a good way to infuse a little bit of humor or grace into a character. I feel that in this case, Sivir's dance isn't really tied to her legacy, as most people can't even tell what her old dance is meant to be.
My apologies, but I'm a little confused as to what your point on the dance is. Could you reiterate your feelings?
If not now for this (and perhaps the 5th blade) due to backlog & more value with releasing sooner, perhaps in the nearish-future(tm) post-release?
I'll bring it up. Could you try to convey why you feel the fifth blade is cool?
Also, besides more black/white for PAX Sivir--what about the hair specifically returning to white? Or the red-glow on the "blade" (giving it that d-pad appearance)? To me, those are very important aspects of the skin.
I think we've addressed this now. You should see it soon.
Kha'Zix/Ziggs Comparison
Throwing down abilities while in mid-air was one of the most entertaining parts of playing Ziggs. It was a unique mechanic that was not only entertaining and fun to pull off, but useful for chasing and kiting, and really added to his personality.
Can this mechanic make a comeback so I can start having more "death from above" moments?
Corki can cast Missile Barrage when he flies through the air...
Just checked and this still works for me, it's not something we've intentionally tried to remove either.
If you're seeing certain situations where you can't cast mid air (and aren't CC'd by something else at the same time) let us know, will give that a look.
This was removed for khazix but its ok for ziggs to do it?
The issue with Khazix was how it compressed his damage into a really small window. In Ziggs' case that problem doesn't apply - 99%+ of the time using Satchel Charge to land directly on an enemy to burst point blank isn't even remotely a good play, particularly since it involves sacrificing a damaging spell. Ziggs' casts while airborne instead tend to be getting in a parting shot while disengaging or trying for a kill shot while chasing neither of which has, so far at least, proven to be problematic, especially given Ziggs' damage output has a fair degree of unreliability.
They said something similar about Vlad's ult bug. Then they made up a reason saying that it was intentional. Now they consider it a bug again.
I don't want to know if you're lying to us because that's a given. I want to know when we're going to get a real answer.
We had some internal confusion about the cast lock on Vlad's ult which resulted in different attitudes to it being a bug or not being discussed on the forums. Apologies for that, agree that sort of inconsistency's frustrating to deal with and it's something we want to minimize, it's one of the occasional costs of discussing that sort of issue publicly though, which we overall feel's a net positive.
Regarding Ziggs' casts while airborne not sure what else I can say. The original design intent was that he could, it's been that way since launch (and still is) and we've currently got no plans to change that
Isn't that what bust damage is about, lots of it, small window?
So you take the burst away from the burst assassin? I mean I loved that mechanic on him just as this one on Ziggs, I do not even play Kha'zix anymore because I feel he is broken.
Yup, burst is damage concentrated into a small window. That's not to say the smallest possible window is always appropriate though. Being able to unload your full combo over 1s for example is still pretty bursty, but offers substantially more opportunity for play by the target than a 0.5s window (numbers hypothetical, not familiar with Khazix's exact timings pre/post W change).
sometimes q doesn't launch until you land, that's pretty annoying
Doesn't start casting until you land or doesn't launch until you land? Even when cast in the air the Q still has a cast time, so, particularly if you start the Q cast after the halfway point of the W knockup (approximately) it'll launch around the time you land.
Reasoning Behind Assassins' Nerfs
We're not "blindly" nerfing these champions, we're looking at damage curves for assassin-style characters overall. I'll let the team speak to the details on it.
Overall, though, these items are pretty balanced on a number of characters, and I don't think we'd want targeted changes to these characters to effect others. I don't think we'd want to nerf good uses of Lichbane on TF or Ziggs just because Fizz uses it and causes problems. Lichbane is a great core item for mages who weave in auto-attacks.
DFG is...well, DFG. But historically, I've felt DFG is a bad item for League overall, so we might need to have some discussions about that DFG isn't egregiously OP, I just worry it creates more 100-0 cases with no more interaction or skill to require it.
Lol they have already nerfes the **** out of dfg
Yeah, too bad no one uses it or anything!
More on the Future of Fighters
If you want to remove her power, maybe it's better to instead just make it more readable.
She heals from two sources, for different proportions based on what she's hitting, and under what circumstances. An opponent won't know this--they see an HP bar rising at puzzling amounts, or worse, failing to drop as much as expected. For me at least, it took practicing Irelia myself before I understand where the power was in her kit, and how to fight her. In particular, I never realized how much damage and healing was packed into her ult. when used against champion, because while I was watching her lane, I would always see it healing for 2/5ths the amount, which is a weird proportion.
For non-Irelia players, they face this big cloud of uncertainty which realistically makes her difficult to fight. Little things that mess with a person's expectations such as her Tenacity going up in the presence of multiple enemies. Hard to tell if that stun lasted 0.1 seconds fewer, or did a lag spike just occur.
Normalizing all this stuff is going to make fighting Irelia less irritating, without forcing her to be a weak at her defining role--Fighting. Dying in lane doesn't have to lack satisfaction. But it will if the player doesn't understand why they lossed, or how they were outplayed.
Readability's really valuable, completely agree, and improving that on Irelia would help her playing against case. There's some overlap there with an insufficiently clear niche, they are different issues though.
Removing invisible power's an important thing to do, not because it nerfs a champion, but because it lets you add visible power in exchange. A champion's power being visible makes them more satisfying to play as (you can appreciate the effect you have on the game and make skilled plays as a result) and improves readablity playing against (resulting in better counterplay and less enemy frustration).
Does this mean that Irelia will be seeing changes in your S4 fighter project?
She's an example of the sort of bruiser we're looking at yes.
Meddler, I don't think this is derailing as the thread I'm about to link is asking about Irelia's current state, but could you or Morello swing by IreliaCarrysYou's thread about her and answer some of his questions?
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com....php?t=3950109
The thread's steadily gaining traction, and quite frankly as an Irelia player myself, I'm be curious.
I'm not up to speed enough myself on Irelia's intricacies of play at the moment (someone else is looking at her kit for S4). We'll definitely talk about her closer to the time though once we've got something a bit more concrete we can talk about.
Elaboration on Turret Indicators
my worry is that there might be an exploit found to make it available in any game mode.
Don't worry, we thought of that too!
Love it. I also wonder why, if Riot wants to "reduce burden of Knowledge" it's not there in PvP already. Good players should know the range, playing guesswork based on a learned probable hit spot is silly when the skill should actually revolve around manipulating the tower mechanics themselves.
We totally agree. Right now, we want to make sure this is an effective teaching tool. We are not completely against the idea of seeing this in PvP one day, but we also wonder if there aren't better, more subtle ways to do it. For now this is in bots modes only, which new players are now exposed to for a little longer due to some changes we made a couple of months ago to how game modes unlock. Based on reception, data and feedback, we'll take a look at how players interact with turrets in PvP.
If attach and true-sight ranges aren't the same (shouldn't be from what I'm finding) can there be an indication of the true-sight range so we can determine where to place wards so they can't be seen by the turret?
At this point, we do not thinking true-sight range is a pain point for new players to warrant making the indicators more complicated. Our goal with these indicators to make it very intuitive to understand for a player just starting.
Teaching the concept of true-sight will likely be delivered through a different method. We have some plans to continue to provide digestible ways for our new players to learn.
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Posted 10/17/2013 4:04:39 PMPeople complain about the prices too much, be happy its not SGU price and get over it...
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Posted 10/17/2013 3:57:29 PMTheres been a popular reddit post stating how people can be able to change their map skin through changing client files. What if someone made a mod that makes it so there are turret range indicators drawn onto the map, or even an indicator on where to ward? The mod can be abused and should be stopped in normal and ranked games
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Posted 10/17/2013 3:06:56 PMThey said the same thing about Udyr as well, so yeah, and just because it's "harder to make" shouldn't mean it should be expensive as fk, it should be justified as in actually having the redeeming qualities and features to be 1350 or more, and it should be actually be 975 too seeing how it's permanent and not even Legacy.
And lets not forget how it's only ONE SKIN, it would make sense a bit more if it was 1350 if multiple skins were being worked on for Halloween, but no, the whole skins team worked on ONE skin, so it should not be fk'ing 1350.
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Posted 10/17/2013 5:07:59 AMJust a note: this post is gargantuan and impossible to read on a mobile browser if you want to read anything below the Zyra/Team Builder discussions. Really wish ROG had some sort of 'jump to topic' function on these kind of posts.
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Posted 10/17/2013 7:24:59 AMYea we should just be able to expand and collapse topics.
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Posted 10/17/2013 4:24:15 AM"Wildfire zyra causes older computers to lag"
I thought that's happening exclusively to me xD
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Posted 10/17/2013 4:04:07 AMI remember Quake 3 Arena times when skins and models (sometimes very complex) and maps (even whole mods) were made by fans for free and those had really high quality value. Now for every single little s**t they want a tons load of money. What happened? Why people now are so greedy?
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Posted 10/17/2013 11:22:32 AMQuake 3 Arena isn't a free to play game. If Riot didn't charge for skins they would be making next to nothing and couldn't afford to run the servers, much less do anything else. I guess wanting to be paid for your work makes you greedy, but only if you don't charge $50 for the entire game before hand.
Also you can (or could, I don't care enough to check) get free skins for LoL characters made by fans. No one else can see them except you, mind, but it's still something you can do that Riot doesn't give a shit about TOS-wise.
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Posted 10/17/2013 6:50:14 PMYou got point :P but I don't mean riot only ;) more like about CoD, Saints Row etc. :) I love LoL and Riot :D
I just wanna show the contrast :)
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Posted 10/17/2013 3:40:40 AMEven if it is mean, I agree about the "It isn't because it is hard that you should make a price more expensive".
Skin should cost about what they give.
New voice sound and/or heavy effect? 1350.
Totally new animation and stuff like that? Legendary, 1850.
Making like a totally new champion even if it is the same kit? Ultimate.
It isn't because Zyra or Rumble are hard to make that they should cost more than other. If it is as hard as they said, at least make them with feature that will justify the 1350. Everybody will be happy, when you are at this point, you can do it.
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Posted 10/17/2013 3:40:00 AMEven if it is mean, I agree about the "It isn't because it is hard that you should make a price more expensive".
Skin should cost about what they give.
New voice sound and/or heavy effect? 1350.
Totally new animation and stuff like that? Legendary, 1850.
Making like a totally new champion even if it is the same kit? Ultimate.
It isn't because Zyra or Rumble are hard to make that they should cost more than other. If it is as hard as they said, at least make them with feature that will justify the 1350. Everybody will be happy, when you are at this point, you can do it.
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Posted 10/17/2013 3:10:42 AMcan u ask for teemo plz? anything would be great
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Posted 10/17/2013 3:33:44 AMDo you think we need more Teemo skins? ^^
I think there are still champ with 1 skin. they should get new ones.. example: Diana, Nami, Vi (officer Vi is comming I know) and so on...
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Posted 10/17/2013 9:22:03 AMfirst of all, he dont ask only for skins, so u need to learn how to read, second of all, he dont have a new skin for 1 year and 3 months right now, and last i never said he need a new one, and if they do, ppl still gonna buy it, still, i mean a rework, a buff or a VU
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Posted 10/17/2013 2:30:00 AMSo, it's wrong to be dissatisfied about pricing because certain stuff takes more effort to make?
Is this some kind of joke? Just because your work is hard it gives you no reason to be a dick about it. You chose this extremely successful field of work. It is very profitable. Some things are harder to do than others, but just because a champion himself is very hard to make models for is no excuse to start pricing every skin of his 1350 or more. It only shows you're greedy deep within and you aren't actually enjoying your work, which is in effect a piece of art in the eyes of most people. I don't mind paying a bit extra when it comes to certain stuff, but it's incredibly unfair to get mad about people saying the truth, especially when certain skins that require downpricing havent recieved one (pink taric anyone?) just because they are popular and you don't wanna lose that extra 2 dollars worth of RP for them.
Would post on the focums but i dont have an account there.
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Posted 10/17/2013 2:59:48 AMyou're right about the pricing but I saw some comments that were rly toxic.
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Posted 10/17/2013 12:23:42 AMWhilst I don't always agree with GD's attitude, IronStylus's behavior is just horrid at times.
He came across as a kid who got his feelings hurt, so he stuck his fingers in his ears and went 'lalalalalala'.
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Posted 10/17/2013 1:40:53 AMI personally don't mind it; I'd be irritated if I were him, too.
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Posted 10/17/2013 2:18:26 AMI mean I agree. He gets a lot of shit and it's not his fault about pricing or skin schedules. He's just the concept artist and stuff, he doesn't control that, so its unfair how he's treated sometimes.
That being said. Sometimes you need to just suck it up and say "well the general populace isn't taking this well, I'll realize its not a personal attack and they're more or less at the situation itself".
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Posted 10/17/2013 2:23:15 AMI can understand him. I would be much more pissed than him. This community can't give fair feedback.