Reign of Gaming

HS Ashe's Ult To Get A Visual Change

Turns out it's pretty hard for some colorblind people to see it coming among Summoner's Rift's colors, so CertainlyT popped up on reddit to save the day!

Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

I can't play against Heartseeker Ashe! I am colourblind and so can't see her ultimate at all. It is kinda okay in lane, because I her the cast of the ultimate and see the direction she is facing but it is still very hard for me to keep track of it. The red kinda gets absorbed by the ground on summenors rift. Is there any way of changing the colour for that specific spell? Please help :<

We'll fix this. Really sorry man. That sounds frustrating.

[Planned 4.3] Itemization Changes

Includes: Boots, Duo Lane Gold Items, Doran's Shield, Ruby Crystal and more!

Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

Hey, just a quick heads up over changes that will be coming soon to the PBE (Next major PBE Deploy) just so that I don't catch anyone offguard and you guys will be able to focus test a little.

Goals: Retune, rebalance and clean up a lot of early game purchases - especially for support characters. There's a lot of items that are slightly too big for the early game budget and we wanted to do a pass to clean up whatever superfluous costs that might exist that impede early game purchasing power.

This isn't intended to be a long term solution to anything, we just wanted to do a cleanup pass for the items on live. We do want to streamline and enhance support itemization more in the future (as current support items are functional but really aren't synergistic with the individual support champions) but as that project will most likely take a while, we'd rather ship what minor improvements we were iterating on.

 

Boots

Boots of Lucidity
15% CDR --> 10% CDR
1000 Total Gold Cost --> 800 Total Gold Cost

Notes: I'm aware that Lucidity boots can be used to "smooth" over the extra 5% CDR from masteries / runes etc. However, the usage rate of Lucidity Boots seems to indicate that this is, at best, viewed negatively as an optimal strategy compared to any other boot option.

We want some cheap boot options, especially cheap boot options that would be useful for supportive roles. We'll have to figure out the dangling 5% CDR problem somehow - perhaps we can add 5% CDR to some niche items.

Boots of Mobility
Base Movement Speed 45 --> 25
Enhanced Movement Speed 105 --> 105
1000 Total Gold Cost --> 800 Total Gold Cost

Notes: Boots of Mobility have consistently been a powerful option, to the point where it can dictate a lot of Jungle or Support games. While that's not entirely true at present - it presents a sizeable obstacle in terms of controlling out of combat movement speed at its current power level.

That is, if you can reasonably put Boots of Mobility into your build, you should. We could have just straight nerfed Boots of Mobility but this would have put it out of reach for secondary uses such as duo roaming or ensuring slower characters catch up to their team. We opted instead for a more tangible tradeoff - slightly worse combat potential in exchange for a potential incredibly early pickup.

Starting Support / Duo Lane Items

We want to clean up some of the mini-games and do a polish pass over some of the gold items. We're not entirely happy with the current system and would like to revise the support gold system when we do a larger support item pass - but for the present, we want to clean up some of the items and get them into a cleaner state.

Coin Line

Ancient Coin
3 HP/5 --> 0 HP/5
Favor: In addition to the 2 Gold, now also heals you for 5 health whenever a nearby enemy minion that you did not kill dies.

Nomad's Medallion
11 MP/5 --> 10 MP/5
10 HP/5 --> 5 HP/5
2 Gp/10 Unchanged
Favor: In addition to the 4 Gold, now also heals you for 5 health whenever a nearby enemy minion that you did not kill dies.

Talisman of Ascension
Stats Unchanged
Favor: In addition to the 4 Gold, now also heals you for 5 health whenever a nearby enemy minion that you did not kill dies.

Notes: Coin's general game is one of holding out - you are rewarded for staying in lane as long as possible. The additional regeneration is an additional incentive to persist in lane.

As a side note, Tier 2 Coin is probably generating a little too much gold at the moment, we'll probably have to address that.

Spellthief Line

Spellthief's Edge
10 Ability Power --> 0 Ability Power
3 MP/5 Unchanged
2 GP/10 Unchanged
Tribute:

• Your spells and attacks deal 10 additional damage to champions and towers and generate 4 gold.
• This can happen up to 3 times every 30 seconds.
• Tribute is disabled for 12 seconds if you kill a minion.

Frostfang
20 Ability Power --> 0 Ability Power
7 MP/5 Unchanged
4 GP/10 Unchanged
Tribute:

• Your spells and attacks deal 15 additional damage to champions and towers and generate 8 gold.
• This can happen up to 3 times every 30 seconds.
• Tribute is disabled for 12 seconds if you kill a minion.

Frost Queen's Claim
Recipe Changed: Frostfang + Fiendish Codex + 330 Gold = 2000 Gold Total
50 Ability Power --> 40 Ability Power
0% Cooldown Reduction --> 10% Cooldown Reduction
10 MP/5 Unchanged
+4 GP/10 Unchanged
Tribute:

• Your spells and attacks deal 15 additional damage to champions and towers and generate 8 gold.
• This can happen up to 3 times every 30 seconds.
• Tribute is NOT disabled if you kill a minion at this upgrade level

Active:

• Free Target instead of Enemy Targetted
• Increased Cast Range to 850 from 600
• Area of Effect size decreased to 300 from 400
• Magic Damage increased to 50 + 10 per champion level
• Now applies an 80% slow that decays over 3 seconds from a flat 50% slow over 2 seconds
• Updated particles

Note: Spellthief's Edge is the riskiest of the three options, one which commits to total harassment. We've retuned the Tribute passive to support harassment styles as well as make it trigger on towers. If you harass successfully and push enemy champions out of lane - you will then be able to use excess tribute cooldowns on towers.

Previously, Spellthief's Edge was an option only if your character could harass at all favorably. We've retuned it to augment harassment patterns and so you can now opt in to a harassment heavy style if you choose to on champions that might be slightly ill-suited for it.

Targon's Line

Relic Shield
50 Health --> 75 Health
6 HP/5 --> 0 HP/5
Spoils of War:

• Heals your ally and yourself for 40 Health upon killing a unit.
• Grants gold equal to the kill to your ally, but does not grant the additional +5 as on live.
• 2 Max Charges, 60 second CD Unchanged

Targon's Brace
175 Health Unchanged
12 HP/5 --> 8 HP/5

Spoils of War:

• Heals your ally and yourself for 50 Health upon killing a unit.
• Grants gold equal to the kill to your ally, but does not grant the additional +5 as on live.
• 3 Max Charges, 30 second CD Unchanged

Face of the Mountain
Recipe Changed: Targon's Brace + Kindlegem + 300 Gold = 2000 Total Gold
Stats Unchanged

Spoils of War:

• Heals your ally and yourself for 50+1% of your Maximum Health upon killing a unit.
• Grants gold equal to the kill to your ally, but does not grant the additional +5 on live.
• 4 Max Charges, 30 second CD Unchanged

Active:

• No longer costs Health to activate
• Damage now scales based off of 150% of the target's total Attack Damage

Notes: We want to position Targon's as for the all-in characters but we also wanted to provide a bit of healing for the user as going to last hit a minion exposes yourself to serious threat. Looking at this initial stat pass - HP/5 values are most likely off by a bit.

The additional bonus gold scaling was initially put on there to smooth the transition as we feared Targon's would have a hard acceptance rate but currently is deemed unnecessary for its future.

Probably over-simplified on the tier 1 a little. It probably needs some of the HP/5 back but we've been streamlining.

Ruby Crystal
475 Total Gold cost --> 400 Total Gold cost
180 Health --> 150 Health

Most items that build out of Ruby Crystal have been adjusted to keep the same total cost and total statistics.

Notes: We don't expect Ruby Crystal to suddenly be a good option to start with. This is mostly a cleanup change as Ruby Crystal is a bit too large of an item to work with as a basic component. Although I have heard of some theorycrafters out there attempting to make this work.

Sightstone
925 Total Gold cost --> 850 Total Gold cost
180 Health --> 150 Health

Items that build out of Sightstone have been adjusted to keep the same total cost and total statistics.

Notes: We just want to chip away at Sightstone's cost a little, while keeping the overall flow of Sightstone intact. We'll probably look at Ruby Sightstone in the near future in terms of slot efficiency and make it more of a worthwhile upgrade.

Doran's Shield
100 Health --> 80 Health
10 HP/5 --> 5 HP/5
Block Passive Unchanged

Notes: I'm just reiterating the current DShield nerfs that I posted a while earlier. I suspect that HP/5 nerf is too harsh, but I just wanted to bring it up again so that it fits better within the overall context. Full context can be found in this earlier thread: Doran's Shield

Could you elaborate more on the reason for Mobility boots and Lucidity Boots changes?

Sure.

Boots of Mobility

Boots of Mobility has always sat at the edge of overpowered/unhealthy. Additionally, the price point that it sits on heavily favors one Jungler being far behind the other. In that, somewhat slower Junglers who cannot afford mobility is costing his team dramatically in terms of sheer presence and roam potential.

The changes are intended to give an actual tradeoff for the jungler with full-map presence. There is almost no combat advantage that is bigger than outnumbering someone 3 to 2 or 2 to 1, for example.

Conversely, for the support player, Boots of Mobility allow players to reach areas of the map with experience and gold gain. This again means that any support who can take advantage of Boots of Mobility should certainly do so, as no amount of boot statistics can really compete with levels and assist gold.

Given this, we could nerf the boots by raising their cost - but that only partially solves some of the problems. So this approach instead tries to opt for real trade-offs and some counterplay opportunities from the opponent.

You will suffer the loss of some combat-mobility in exchange for a greater map presence but there is a larger window in the game where if you rush Boots of Mobility and your opponent has not upgraded because of the gap in boot prices, you can capitalize on that window.

It also subtly encourages you to build some form of %MS with the item - Not only would %MS items bring you back up to par in terms of combat mobility, but %MS synergizes fantasically with the large flat movement speed increase on it. (We've been poking around at better supporting some generic movement options in items as well)

Boots of Lucidity

This one isn't so wall of texty. They're not really useful in terms of players actually using them.

When they are bought, we're not particularly happy about who is buying them and why they are doing so. Also not particularly happy with the state of 5%'s in the world due to the granularity of our mastery/rune structure.

There's some rationale behind making cheaper boots and enabling some early enchantment strategies - but that benefit will mostly come after doing a pass on enchantment costs.

I only say this, because doesn't scaling off total AD only make it one sided to be used on someone that has alot of AD and leaves it moot for it to be used on anyone else that might not have any AD like a mage/support/tank?

As you and several others have brought up - this is most likely true. We want to avoid Face of the Mountain's active being optimal to cast on a Tank if at all possible. That leads to some terrible pre-cook burst damage scenarios that the health cost was trying to keep out.

And then everyone bitterly hated the health cost approach to it.

This is also a mess and needs improvement. There isn't much incentive to upgrade your sightstone to its final tier.

That depends on how okay you are with certain item upgrades being luxury - or simple improvements to improve slot efficiency - at that point though, the slot efficiency has costs of its own.

There's no real reason to upgrade to Ruby unless you need more health at zero slot cost - which is kind of the point of it now. There's a real concern that increased incentives towards upgrading Ruby Sightstone would delay meaningful purchases towards stuff that is cool and enabling (like Chalice).

For the captains boots issue, how about making it something of a miniature Raise Morale? No bonus while out alone, but as soon as the player is within range of [X] allies, they all gain [X] movespeed. Could scale on the number of players nearby, or just have a threshold of 2+ players to proc. Would certainly incentivise /someone/ on the team picking them up so that teams to charge into team fights more easily.

There's talk of that - I'm unsure where the balance of it is.

Essentially, you turn it into something like:

'Wolfpack' Enchantment

• Grants X MS when nearby allies within Y range.
• Grants an additional Y MS for each additional ally with 'Wolfpack'

That's kind of a team meta-strategy enchantment, which is kind of interesting but it becomes a similar to distortion in use case - only if you're planning something eeeeee-vil across well coordinated players. Not necessarily a bad goal.

I'm not sure which way I was going with that line of thinking, whether it's better to reduce talisman's mana regen or increase frostfang's. Of course, since the theory behind frostfang line is that your spells hit harder at the cost of going oom eventually, it makes sense that frostfang line has less mana regen overall. But when looking at it from the perspective of mages vs supports, it seems counterintuitive that the ap item which mages should favour doesn't really give all the stats in a complete package like talisman does.

On a somewhat offtopic note, when season two item changes came around, you said that you liked warmogs as the goto defensive item for bruisers. Over time randuins seems to have eclipsed that while warmogs has been sidelines. How do you feel about that? Any plans to bring warmogs back?

I did like Health being the goto defensive item for bruisers - mostly because it seemed like a statistic that both had the most counterplay from life leech and the most sensible for bruisers given that they have to wade through every type of damage.

Unfortunately, that sentiment is not shared by the community and I can see why - Warmog's doesn't quite have a special enough niche for it to be viewed as an item with intelligent decision making.

We do have ideas on Warmog's - the leading one being Warmog's regeneration acts similarly to Garen's regeneration (Strong OOC regeneration) but it's not clear that they would be decent changes in the current state of the game.

If you want the thing to be more effective on AD carries than on everybody else, why not make it so that it scales on the higher of a percentage of the targets AD and a percentage of your HP. I don't see the reason it needs to be more efficient on AD carries, though. Giving them an exploding shield if they have somebody in their face is good enough in my eyes...

More of a desire to avoid the item simply being a 400 damage self-nuke.

Targon's current active has the problem of simply adding more burst damage to tanks - which is why the high health cost is there to begin with. One of the major points of feedback was that no one actually likes using the shield due to the health cost - but without it, you can't stop this case from being the ideal.

(I.E. Leona precharges Targon/W and goes an annihilates a carry well past the phase of the game where she should be able to.)

While you might get more or equal damage from the additional damage effect, you gain no bonus on your heals/shields

Many people have indirectly hinted at this - but you're the first one to do it directly that I've seen.

There's some other various concerns with non-typed AP buying it that I agree the next iteration should probably try to figure out how to get some amount of AP back onto the item, even at the cost of the damage proc on the item.

and you are even more heavily penalized for killing a minion, something that is easy to do as Karma or Lulu and basically impossible to avoid for Sona.

Charges still accumulate even if accidentally kill a minion - which does take the edge of this case compared to live.

The active change is also terrible. In addition to forcing the meta of 'one support, one adc' it also penalizes you if your adc is not the one being focused. Maybe your Lucian is having a bad game but your Orianna is 5/0/3 by 20 minutes. When teamfights start, they're going for that Orianna, and if you do your support job and shield her, you gain a lowered benefit because your adc wasn't the one being focused.

While that's true - the main purpose of Targon's is to shield a target, not to inflict burst damage around them. If the desire for damage overcomes the desire to shield or save an ally then for all intents and purposes the item isn't doing its job and clearly needs more shielding and less damage in terms of overall functionality.

That said, enough people have suggested the AP idea - which I suspect will mean that if I add the AP scaling, people will then ask for hybrid scaling. Worth trying out duo scaling I suppose.

You need to either buff those two to obscene levels, nerf talisman to the ground, or just bring back Shurelia's and change Talisman's active. I know making it a support only item screwed over a lot of junglers that needed that move speed to gank, like Skarner.

I know. There are severe issues with this current system. This step isi ntended for cleanup only and to better streamline the mini-games/items. I don't think for an instant that this will solve the underlying problem with the system - but removing Reverie from the equation necessitates some other fundamental changes which would be a much larger project.
---------------------

We tried Spellthief's Edge with mana restoration at some point. It's basically a feast or famine scenario when Mana Restoration is tied to the proc itself. If you are able to hit spells, you can hit more spells. However, if you can't hit spells, you lose out on the spell and mana for more spells.

The item was much more binary that I would've liked it to be considering that it's already fairly binary to begin with.
---------------------

Going to catch a couple hours of sleep as I've been stalking this thread for around 12 hours now~.

Thus far on, based on your feedback, the list of issues that I have to address next week are:

• Doran's Shield - Hp/5 Adjustments, potentially to 6 or 7
• Tier 1 Targon - HP/5 Adjustments, most likely oversimplified
• Tier 2 Spellthief - Readjust stats to make room for Ability Power on the item
• Tier 2 Coin - Gold generation relative to the other items needs to be re-evaluated
• Tier 3 Spellthief - Potential end-item stat efficiency adjustments
• Ruby Sightstone - Greater slot efficiency for complete items

Curious ones to dig through that need more explanation:

• Multiple nerf perceptions/comments on gold items without pointing to specifics

Discussion points I'll have with my team are:

• Closer examination of usage rates and data points around Boots of Lucidity.

Good night. Keep leaving comments, I'll be intermittently checking on this thread over ze weekend.

What about creating another tier of boots? What are the pros/cons to this idea?

I think the thinking behind boots being slot inefficient is essentially that if they're required in every game, then they're not truly slot inefficient. If something was truly slot inefficient - you'd opt to skip the item entirely.

The price of flat Movement Speed is artificially low because of the needs of the game (Map Size needs to shrink over time for better game flow) - not because of their actual combat effectiveness versus gold ratio. It's also why there isn't some hypothetical Boots 2 that is only 600 gold and 45 movement speed for example.

Following up on your point directly - since boots are generically available to anyone - it's kind of the default way to make sure things are available to anyone - but without any kind of control over who gets it, the statistics you get from boots are generally pricier than if you get it from any other source, minus ones that already lock you into a class.

You balance the boots for the class that is most likely to benefit from it - to the detriment of everyone else, because if you don't, you've just locked the class that most benefits from it into that specific boot. That's not to say that our boots are doing well - but if we wanted variety on boots, it'd be easier to go and make the MPen on boots non-stackable with Haunting Guise or something and then create some other items that have the mobility or tenacity passives.

There's probably a hole in that logic somewhere (it's late, forgive me.) but I'm unsure turning the boots slot into yet another slot to get more stats is a good way to go about 'creating variety' in boots. More likely, you simply lock every champion into the boots with the stats they want - superficially, they have different appearing but they all really just have some random +stat item wedged into their boots.

It's true that you could create variety by inserting new and unique passives - but you could do that just as easily by removing the statistics from boots entirely - you don't need to jump through the hurdle of adding a bunch of superflous stats to do so.

So the Change to Ionian's was made based off of the support champs not the other champs who used them? Such champs that also used them were Kha and Talon on occasion? And one has to admit unless they are blind that it is hard to justify playing talon in his current state.

So does this mean you will be adding more AD based CDR itemization or leave them in the dust like previously. As right now it seems you have no intent to help AD casters.

Given the rate at which Khazix or Talon purchased these items - it's probably a safe bet to say that they won't really be affected regardless of how Boots of Lucidity change.

You're probably right that this change is not intended to help them. Bluntly, Talon won't really be healthy or good for the game unless he stops single target assassinating people with massive AoE damage. Being totally honest, if AD/CDR was better supported - you'd most likely see intermittent nerfs to almost all AD Casters. Most AD Casters are fairly overbearing now to play against and better itemization for them would push them over the top.

That's not to say they shouldn't have better AD/CDR itemization. That's more of a statement on the size of the project and what would most likely have to change around it. It'd probably be a healthy change to the game overall though if they had better itemization.

I feel like the nerfs on the support items are a bit too much. For people who like to play somewhat more aggressively, I can see this as really discouraging them from being aggressive in the first 5-8 minutes of the game, when all they potentially have is that lvl 1 support item.

It's a bit late - what I really want to know is, if you think these changes are a nerf, you're going to have to point to the direct nerf and call it out. Saying 'these are nerfs' don't really help me drill down to what you're actually concerned about.

Essentially, it's qualitative feedback - but I also can't act on it.

For example a statement like 'Coin's regeneration is nerfed, thus I cannot be aggressive in the first 5-8 minutes' is something I can act on/respond to because then I actually have an idea of the situation you are referring t.

Or perhaps a statement like 'Spellthief's edge AP removal hurts because I rely on a combination of shielding and harass on my characters' is a completely valid statement also something that I can act on/respond by adjust numbers or price point to return AP to the item.

However, without calling out specifics, I cannot actually address your concerns, which is really the point of the thread / PBE tests to begin with. More than happy to iterate on stat-line and numbers though. There's more than likely a lot of number tuning that has to be done.

Lucid nerf is going to hurt on non SR-maps. Dominion wise, it's a rather important item given lack of blue buff.

Though, perhaps-maybe a good time to get that CDR enchant for boots idea going.

Hrm.. Interesting point. In a map where regeneration isn't favored, the AP/CDR options also look fairly stale. I'd hate to use Lucidity Boots as a crutch for CDR in that case though as that just speaks to the fact that we should really plug up some holes in itemization (and delete some redundant stuff. :P)

Originally, the concept of the boot enchantments themselves was that they would all be movement related bonuses so enchanting was basically optional based on what kind of strategic movement you needed. People tend to view them as 'throw stats anywhere' kind of option - but mostly because I was probably too timid on their actual effects.

I'm still not convinced that having 40 more ability power is worth having 10% reduced cdr and reduced mana regen as well. It seems to me like going oom while running spellthief line is a real possibility while going oom with talisman line is just not possible. Who needs to spend 800 gold on a chalice when you have all the mana regen you need from your gold gen item?

Probably an accurate statement, given differences in playstyle and champion preference.

There are other problems with the current gold generation items / support itemization lines but evaluating the scope of that change seems to imply that it's probably a larger scope project. I highly doubt that these items will be purchased in parity (and it's probably unrealistic to expect them to be purchased in parity).

That said, this cleanup is intended to smooth out the other routes, rather than trying to perfect parity. I don't actually think aiming for parity is necessarily a realistic goal, as Coin is more universal than either Targons or Edge's playstyles.

That said, you're looking solely at the end result of the items. This is more focused on cleaning up the Tier 1 and Tier 2 of the items themselves.

I know the Tier 3's are horribly unfavorably stacked against each other - but that's kind of a known issue with the core system itself. They kind of always will be. However, attempting to resolve that with any force in this system would probably entail making something really dangerously OP or gutting an item that is probably okay without other major changes.

"nobody uses ionians, so we're nerfing them"

ok

As with any ironic statement, there's more than a grain of truth to it.

Over time, it's been apparent that CDR on boots isn't actually enough of an identity to make it an actual option in terms of boots. There is a point where you might potentially be able to put enough CDR on them so that they'd be bought - but you'd pretty much just have an overpowered item there.

Then when appropriately priced, you go straight back into never bought territory as they'd look something like 2k gold for 25% CDR or something inane. :/

So we're opting for a different tactic here and simply making them one of the cheapest boot options which allows tactics like earlier enchants or earlier movement speed rushes.

However, no change is final. Essentially, they aren't bought - we're not happy with their current niche and we're going to change them until we get to a point where we are happy with them.

Are there any plans to change CDR from being better the more you already have (so it needs a cap that is reached really fast) to something like increased cooldown recovery rate so odd CDR numbers would not be a problem (for instance from runes or only 3 points in CDR mastery)? Or are you fine how CDR influences choice right now?

I'm personally fine with CDR being better the more you already have. It's an exponential statistic that makes it so that CDR can be powerful without needing excessive quantities of it. I'm not sure I'd really want to progress towards a world where CDR is like Attack Speed where you build until you have 'enough' but you're never really sure what 'enough' is.

And the corresponding headaches with CC. :/

While I like the idea behind the 5 health/minion death I'm left to wonder what's your opinion on things like in-base teamfights or built up minion waves and the potential burst health gain.

The health recovery on minion doesn't improve with tiers so hopefully it'll just reduce down in the late game to some bonus health recovery in siege situations.

I have to wonder though if items should be re-balanced because of one mastery and people's desire to hit 40% instead of just leaving it at 35%.

Yeah - this is more of a problem with the fact that our masteries/runes are so granular so you can never enter the game with even values that mesh well with other systems. It's probably something we'll have to clean up in a seasonal thing.

Speaking of boots, could we see potential changes to the Captain enchantment? As is it's kind of expensive and that big 750 price tag is really off-putting for its situational benefits. Could we see the minion speed increase reduced or removed in favor of a lower cost or a stronger ally boost?

I'm currently finding it difficult to justify working on Captain's enchantment. The power level of the item is high but the item is fairly difficult to notice or appreciate. :/

We could reduce the cost but that wouldn't really help the satisfaction issues - it just feels more like a burden. Though I agree, we should find time to rebalance enchantments out a little, at least their respective gold costs if nothing else.

I don't know about the Targon's line. I think I'll have to see it in play to get a better grasp at its power and potential niche. I think Leona with the 40 flat heal starting from level one will be too strong, but that's more of a Leona is too strong atm problem than a Targon's problem.

I think a lot of Leona's current strength comes from the DShield situation - so I'm inclined to look at it after the DShield changes. That said, a lot of Leona's strength also comes from the fact that she can buy items now and the tank path is generally a lot more accessible than the AP paths.

For the captains boots issue, how about making it something of a miniature Raise Morale? No bonus while out alone, but as soon as the player is within range of [X] allies, they all gain [X] movespeed. Could scale on the number of players nearby, or just have a threshold of 2+ players to proc. Would certainly incentivise /someone/ on the team picking them up so that teams to charge into team fights more easily.

There's talk of that - I'm unsure where the balance of it is.

Essentially, you turn it into something like:

'Wolfpack' Enchantment

• Grants X MS when nearby allies within Y range.
• Grants an additional Y MS for each additional ally with 'Wolfpack'

That's kind of a team meta-strategy enchantment, which is kind of interesting but it becomes a similar to distortion in use case - only if you're planning something eeeeee-vil across well coordinated players. Not necessarily a bad goal.

Wait a minute.
"Favor: Now also heals you for 5 health whenever a nearby minion dies."
Nearby minion, or nearby enemy minion?

Enemy minion that you did not kill. Same trigger.

As a support I would rather have more effective spells than have autoattacks that do a small amount of bonus damage.

This is true - however, the raw effective power of 10 to 20 AP to your spells is staggeringly small compared to the base power of the spells themselves. This is in stark contrast to Attack Damage, which needs to compete with a far smaller base that doesn't grow.

autoattacks that do a small amount of bonus damage.

Your autoattack and spells will deal additional damage, as long as you have charges remaining.

If you deal the damage with a spell, the spell will deal +10 magic damage. If you deal the damage with an autoattack, the attack will deal +10 physical damage.

It's true that you won't get the benefits of supportive ratios on these abilities but those vary too drastically to make Ability Power feel good by itself. Ability Power just isn't very good in the early game in general, unless you need to wave clear. ;x

But having an item with 15% CDR was so convenient for some builds. :( Not sure how you will address that missing 5% now, adding it to niche items doesn't seem like it would help if you wouldn't buy those items anyways.

True - that's the current problem with lucidity, it's the 15% niche item. Scattering 5%'s around might be a messy but more functional solution.

It's something that we'll definitely have to address in the long run but honestly, lucidity wasn't really solving the problem currently. :x

A straight up buff to Ancient Coin. I like it. up from 3 HP5 to effectively 5 HP5. The medallion's effective regeneration ends up being the same, but Talisman has a significant buff with the new passive.

Not quite a straight up buff. If you roam between lanes to place a ward, for example, or walking back to base or being pushes too far back, you will lose the health recovery. It's not a guaranteed 5 HP/5.

We'll also probably have to look at the gold generation on tier 2.

I like the change to the Tribute passive on the Spellthief's line, but I question why it doesn't get any better when you upgrade it the first time. It's the only one of the three to not do this. I feel like the first upgrade to it would be a little underwhelming since the only benefit you would get is some more mana regen and a small bit of extra gold.

Whoops! Typos were made. Tier 1 Spellthief should read +10 damage. Tier 2 Spellthief should read +15 damage.

The upgrades should look something like:

Tier 1 - Damage!
Tier 2 - Slightly moar damage and moar gold!
Tier 3 - Restriction unbound

Just to clarify, is the active now a ground-targeted skillshot? Similar to a skillshot Randuin's active, perhaps? That's what I'm reading it as, and I think that'd have an interesting mechanic in teamfights.

Yes - Frost Queen's active has been retuned to a ground-targeted skillshot.

It's actually a piercing missile that explodes, so the hit profile is like

Line + Moderate Circle

where anyone along the line and anyone caught in the explosion will be hit.

So the upgrade cost is still the same, and Ruby Sightstone's total cost is still the same, which means that the Ruby Sightstone's build price is 150 more than it used to be (same price but accounting for a 75 gold reduction on two Ruby Crystals), correct?

This is accurate.

[Planned 4.3] Trinket Cleanup (Shop / Tooltips)

Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

Just a quick note, we've done a quick cleanup pass on Trinkets.

Trinket functionality won't change at all but there are two major changes:

Trinkets no longer self-morph themselves at level 9 - instead they just gain bonuses at level 9+

This was kind of a relic for when we had Trinkets automorph several times throughout the game. Towards the end of the process, we realized a lot of them were unnecessary.

For Example:

Instead of:

• 'Warding Totem becomes Greater Totem at Level 9'

it is now simply:

• Active: Place a 60 second ward - 120 second cooldown.
• At level 9+ ward duration increases to 120

Trinkets now have a level requirement to upgrade

This means you can immediately buy the last tier of the trinket in the shop as well as making Trinkets more like real items in the shop.

This has actually required a significant amount of refactoring / reorganization 'under the hood' in order to facilitate a cleaner back-end so I'm pointing it out in case issues pop up.
----------------

Currently on live, trinkets are a bit of a mess organizationally. In order to upgrade a trinket, you have to sell your current trinket, then you have to buy the tier 1 of another trinket. Then you have to wait a second for it to 'self-upgrade'. THEN you can upgrade it.

With this, you can just sell it and buy the highest tier without going through that pain, like any other item in our game

Syndra Vs. Yasuo's Windwall

Originally Posted by Riot (View RedTracker Source)

I've played Yasuo vs. Syndra twice now and I still can't tell what goes through it and what doesn't. I know her Q is a ground shot so she can spawn it anywhere, but her Force of Will seems to hit me even with the wall up. I'm not sure the mechanics of these 2 skills interacting (like if Syndra walks passed the wall even if she initially spawned the Q>W behind it, she can still hit it. Or does it go over the wall somehow? Maybe if she uses Q and then W's her Q which is already in front of the wall it still hits?). I know her Scatter the Weak and her Ult are stopped by it easily, but if she uses her Q and then scatters the Q which is in front of the wall, does it still work?

Basically, do her W and E work on the Q that is in FRONT of the wind wall already? Or does her W go over/around the wall?

Syndra can spawn Dark Spheres behind a Windwall, her W/E/R shots won't go through it however. 

Theoretically it would be possible to damage a target behind a Windwall with something thrown by W if you were able to position the thing you were dragging around/then throwing so that it's starting point for the W recast was already through the wall (the cast's from the Sphere/minion's position, not Syndra's). Really tricky to pull off and very niche, might be relevant occasionally if being chased by a Yasuo though.

Syndra pulls the object and throws it from her location though. I doubt it would do that.

When using Force of Will Syndra attempts to drag the grabbed object to a point a couple of hundred units behind her right hand. If you throw the object before it gets there and/or are moving away from the object it will be a bit further away on top of that (~350 units from memory at a pretty standard movement speed if dragging something behind you). Since the throw takes place from the object's current location, not Syndra's, it's possible, though not particularly common, to do things like the above mentioned throw avoiding Windwall.