Reign of Gaming

Context on Jinx PBE Changes

Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

Okay got response typed up again.

 

So as Jinx's designer I asked to head up the nerfs coming out for her this patch. Let's talk about them and Jinxy in general.

 

First full info on the nerfs:
The min damage on the R is being cut. The max damage is staying the same. Additionally, the execute damage is not being touched. SMD rocket will ALWAYS deal 25/30/35% of the target's missing health regardless of range.

 

Below are the rough damage estimates based on ranges Jinxs should be familiar with:

 

NUMBERS AND CHANGES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE (or not). ALL THIS IS STILL IN TESTING

R damage @ Point blank: 125/175/225(+.5) >>> 25/35/45 (+.1)

 

R damage @ Minigun range: 175/245/315 (+.7) >>> 110/155/200(+.45)

 

R damage @ Level 9 Rocket range: 185/260/335 (+.75) >>> 135/190/245(+.55)

 

R damage @ Shock Pistol range (max): unchanged - 250/350/450(+1.0)

 

TLDR summary of the below wall of text:
We like Jinx being strong for a variety of reasons but she may be TOO strong at the moment. Jinx's snowballing and hyper-carry potential is intended to be strong and we like it where it is so this change is targeted at amping up her main weakness (gets wrekt if jumped on). IF THIS CHANGE GOES TOO FAR WE'LL FOLLOW UP ON IT. THE GOAL HERE IS A SLIGHT TONING DOWN OF JINX'S POWER.

 

Generally we like Jinx being a strong champ in League of Legends. Even when winning she has a lot of inbuilt counterplay which makes losing to her feel a lot less demoralizing. Thanks to her general immobility combined with the delayed and conditional nature of her spells players tend to come out of games against Jinx with gameplans on how they're going to beat her next time.

 

Going off of this, it is likely that Jinx "at balance" sits at above a 50% winrate. This partially stems from the nature of her power profile. Jinx is highly snowbally, especially in AoE focused teamfights, and is one of the best characters in the game at taking objectives after killing off the enemy team. This is going to contribute to a higher number of wins in solo queue where the "group and push" strategy is so prevalent (Jinx loves grouping and pushing!). People group, teamfights happen, Jinx AoE's things, and 1 kill tends to lead to 1-4 more + towers and dragons.

 

Additionally, it's worth mentioning Jinx's dedicated player base. If you run into a Jinx player on live that person is going to have 31 games on her on average, That's up there with other "I main dis guy forever" champs like Yasuo, Lee Sin, and Riven. For comparison, Graves has a similar play rate to Jinx (they're neck and neck for most picked ADC), and yet the average Graves player only has 16 games on him. This isn't meant to be a knock on Graves but more a highlight on the fact that many of the Jinx's you run into out there have played her A LOT and as such you'd expect a higher win rate out of her due to player experience.

 

So I've gone over why we're okay with Jinx being strong so in that case why are we nerfing her? Well the thing is there's strong and then there's I AM THE GOD OF SOLO QUEUE strong. Jinx is trending towards the latter and has only been getting better each patch. She's got one of the highest winrates in the game at 55% across all elos and that combined with her insane playrate is cause for alarm. We felt some light tuning would be appropriate to level the playing field vs. other ADC's so we looked across her kit and asked ourselves "is there anything Jinx is doing right now that maybe she shouldn't be?"

 

So as her designer I've always felt that Jinx is defined by the following strength and weakness
A) Jinx is a snowball: If you let Jinx get ahead and can't figure out how to get to her SHE WILL TAKE EVERYTHING YOU LOVE AND BURN IT TO THE GROUND.
B) Jinx has a hard time with people who invade her personal space. If you manage to jump on her when she's unprepared you should be rewarded accordingly.

 

The strength is supported by things like Get Excited (the speed passive), the always-on AS/range+AoE steroids on Switcheroo (the Q), and Jinx's reach in general which progresses from 525 range - to 700 - to 1500 - to global. This power combination ensures that if Jinx has enough gold and manages to get a foothold of safety/advantage in a fight she WILL GET TO YOU, BLOW YOU UP, AND THEN TAKE YOUR TOWERS. This is good, it's character defining and it's what we'd like her to excel at.

 

The weakness is supported by the ramp up on minigun, the cast/arm times on all her spells/ and the damage w/distance mechanic on the R. If you manage to close with an unprepared Jinx she's going to have a hard time dealing with you. Her spells leave her vulnerable, her AS needs to ramp for full DPS, chompers take a while to arm, and ideally she can't just Graves ult you for a burst of power unless you're incredibly low on health.
^^^^^that last thing is where we found a possible problem. Jinx was winning a number of engagements off the sheer burst power of her ultimate, even at pointblank range. This to me is out of line with her strength/weakness profile.

 

In summary:
Jinx is a hyper carry who can kill every single member of your team from extreme ranges if left alone but if you jump on her she should be at a severe disadvantage. Nerfing the pointblank ultimate makes the weakness more true and allows us to preserve her strengths in light of extreme power in solo queue.

I completely and totally understand the nerfs on a point blank landed ult but a -.4 ad ratio scaling not just point blank, but entirely? I agree that is extremely unneeded, even at a rewarding long range ult, will do nothing unless your opponents have no health left. Some of these changes I understand, but how they affect jinx overall, that just isn't right. I think some one, or some people need to be fired at riot.

AD ratio is still the same at max range. Perhaps you're reading the +1 as a +.1? I'll go edit that to +1.0

Effectively what is being changed is the Base Damage + Ratio multiplier over distance.

On live they increase by 2X over 1 second of travel

This change increases that multiplier to 10X.

...Honestly? This feels like favoritism. Your points make sense, but I really can't get past 'we will considered her balanced if she wins more games than she loses'. She might not be so great in pro games (but she still shows up all the time) but bleh. I hate Jinx's kit and I am not happy this is what you guys are going with her.

This is less favoritism and more an acceptance of certain things that are powerful in LoL (especially in solo queue). Players tend to overwhelmingly favor grouping and pushing as a strategy in solo queue so it stands to reason that champions with strong team fight capability (Amumu for example) are more favored to win in those situations. Amumu may very well suffer in a split push meta. Could be that he loses a lot more when against a good splitting Tryndamere. That's not going to be reflected as much in his winrate however because splitpushing strategies are much rarer than teamfighting strategies (even though they may be equally or more viable against an Amumu).

I'm going to quote you on that for future discussions RE winrate and pickrate. I agree, personally, and I'm going to throw 'a rioter used this as an argument so riot is balancing with this in mind' in the face of people who think that means nothing.

Experience on a champion doesn't mean nothing, but like other metrics it should not be used as an end all be all for balance, It's just another piece of data we take into our analysis when evaluating a champion's strengths and level of power.

Why do some champs get 'light tuning' when they're the best in their category and some get, well, olafed? I can't think of any in recent memory apart from Trist's godawful rework, but I'm really curious on how the balance team works.

Honestly, nowadays our intention is never to Olaf. We try to make good directional changes that put champions in healthier spots while maintaining their viability. Sometimes we overshoot (as in the case of Kassadin) and in that case it's our responsibility to follow up and correct the over-corrections.

gypsylord, I respect your work and your design for Jinx and other champs, so I'm going to ask you this and I hope for a response. You've played (I sure hope you've played) this nerfed version of Jinx. Do you believe it impacts her playstyle? Will she lose those close trades that she might normally win because of this?

So yeah I've tested the changes and I'm pretty confident that this will not massively affect Jinx's playstyle. You're mainly going to feel it against people in melee range of you (and that's the point) but in the average lane duel at 525 + range it should still be a potent execute. In the early game you're likely going to need one more basic attack than before to secure those closer range kills.

I'm also willing to admit that we're not omniscient and this change may affect her in ways we didn't anticipate. We'll follow up on it if that's the case.

New Sales and Bundles

Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

April bundles

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Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

Mid-Season Invitational icons, bundles and more

The best League of Legends teams from around the world will clash at the 2015 Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) on May 7-10 and to celebrate we’re offering limited-time deals on some in-game goodies. Here's the full rundown of what's available:

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Ghostcrawler on ADCs and Meta

Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

Are AD Carry mains ever happy with the meta?
Assassin meta? Nope.
Poke meta? Nope.
Tank meta? Nope.[...]

This is a healthy discussion, and I can try to help it along a little by providing some context about how we think about the meta.

 

(As a meta comment, "meta" is one of those words that gets used to describe so many different things that it has started to lose some of its meaning.)

 

First, we're okay with having a 1+1+2+J configuration. Things like duo jungle or three champs in one lane may happen from time to time, but we're not going to go out of our way to support them. For the most part, the way players allocate number of champs per lane works, and we don't feel the need to monkey with it.

 

Second, we are trying to keep the concept of position (top, middle, bottom, jungle) separate from role (fighter, mage, assassin, tank, etc.). We care a lot less which roles are played in which positions as long as the game is healthy overall (more on this below). The characteristics of some roles is going to make them better at some positions (e.g. most junglers are melee) and we're okay with that. Likewise, there are some individual champs that we don't want to see frequently in particular positions, because the results tends to be less fun for everyone. The word "Support" is particularly confusing here, because it refers both to a role ("utility mages" like Janna and Sona) as well as the (traditionally bottom) position of jumping into a lane with another champ without actively farming minions. A support role like Sona can play the support position, but so can a mage or a tank.

 

Third, every role (and ultimately every champion, though we're not there yet) has to exist in the game somewhere. This is the big corollary to my second point. If there are mages in the top lane and mages in the mid lane, that's fine. If that means fighters have nowhere to exist, that's not fine. Ideally (and I mean in the sense of a compass direction, not the state of the game today) you'd sometimes see mages and sometimes see fighters top. To use the current topic, jungle tanks didn't feel viable, so we made some changes, and now they are plenty viable and I realize some of you feel they are too viable. In crazy world, maybe there is somewhere for marksmen to live besides bottom and maybe you don't even need a marskman every game. But let's not get too crazy yet. We used to design new champs as "Gnar is going to be a top lane fighter." Now we would say "Gnar is a fighter" and leave it up to experimentation and evolution to determine where he fits best, so long as (1) he has some position in which he can be played and (2) isn't oppressive when he does.

 

Fourth, we are trying as a team to be a little more hands off and provide players more room to experiment, and this applies to the state of the meta as well. Now, I'll admit it's difficult sometimes for us to make the determination of when it is time to step in. This year, we wanted to give y'all a chance to adapt to the preseason changes, but our opinion now is that we waited a little too long to react. We are pretty happy overall with the state of the game post patch 5.5 and 5.6, but maybe things would have felt even better if we had made those changes in 5.4, while 5.2 likely still would have been too soon. Make sense? Likewise, we know there is some concern that tanks are too dominant right now, but we want to wait a few patches to see if that's a persistent problem or not. The meta will shift on its own, and has, even without Riot involvement. Sometimes it needs a nudge and sometimes the shift is towards something that is likely unhealthy in the long run, and when that happens it's our responsibility to take action.

That, honestly, is something that some people are annoyed about. You need the ability to siege down towers, and marksmen are simply the best at that. You need consistent damage, and ADC are simply better at that then 'light fighters' or whatever you're calling them now, simply because of range.

I agree with you and tried to suggest that in my previous post. Marks is the one mandatory role you must have covered. It would be awesome if we can develop mage or even melee carries that could be just as viable. I say that being honest that it's a huge amount of work and involves a lot about changing player perceptions so realistically it's not something you'll see soon.

But I kinda feel though as time is progressing on, older champions are becoming harder to experiment with only because if they are one-trick ponies and have to itemize one way then there leaves little to no roof for error in making a diversion in other ways to play them.

Completely agree. We are updating champions on a regular cadence and looking at some ideas for how we can speed that up. Champs that are one-trick ponies, to use your term, don't encourage a lot of experimentation.

Actually, ADC is NOT mandatory in current meta. A few pro teams have run the 5 bruiser/tank-comps, having Urgot in the "ADC" position, while Urgot is closer to a bruiser than to an ADC.

While Urgot is a bit of a mess, I'd still call him a Marskman at the moment. I do agree however that a lot of these rules don't apply to pros who have enough skill and team coordination to make very non-traditional comps or strategies work.

Meddler on Skill Ideas, Patch 5.8 Release and More

Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

@Meddler: Will we ever have new Champions with Taunt CC's? [...]

I expect we'll make more Taunt using champions at some point. It's a type of effect with some pretty specific gameplay, so as with other specialized CCs we'll probably only ever use it occasionally, in part to ensure those champions with it remain distinctive.

How about the opposite? Forcing champions to ignore yourself?

An ability that made you untargetable just to one specific enemy could generate some very cool play if paired with the right kit. You'd probably want to have the duration be noticeably longer than other regular types of CC, given 'immunity from one guy who's otherwise free to act' is a lot weaker than 'that guy can't do stuff to anyone'.

Rendering one enemy unable to affect you's not a good skill on a champion that can 1v1 other champions though. The interesting decisions around who you make yourself immune to for a bit and who your target attacks instead just vanish in a 1v1 fight. Easy solution there though thankfully - throw such an ability on a support. Would probably go best on one with moderately low ranges who's relatively squishy, make them dance around a bit within a fight while having the option of temporary safety against the biggest threat.

What about another champ with a charm... maybe an AoE version of Ahri's E for an ult?
---------------------------

Taric rework incoming

We did talk about a charm for Taric, but ultimately concluded a stun was the better gameplay fit, with the added benefit of preserving an aspect of his existing kit.

1. Force enemies to attack someone who is squishy. This is still a debuff - at best, they get to attack someone they already wanted to attack - but it encourages the taunter to move, leading the angry mob around instead of standing still to get beaten up. Since it's not as crippling as being forced to attack the tank, you could afford to have the effect last longer than on a tank.

Interesting, hadn't thought about that approach. Could be cool on a short ish range squishy champ with some form of ground placements they want to try and kite people through - Singed Poison, Teemo Shrooms etc.

Wait a minute, doesn't Teemo already do all of this? ;)

2. Force allied and neutral creeps to attack an enemy. This does a number of things: it pulls the lane and makes it easier to last hit, since your minions are too busy attacking the enemy champion to attack the enemy creeps, it makes it easier to zone the enemy since getting close enough to kill your creeps means they will get attacked, and it can potentially ruin somebody's day if they're close enough for a jungle camp or two to join in.

That's a skill I'm fairly sure we'll do on a kit at some point, probably on a champ with some minion creation ability. Boomer Bile's a pretty fun ability that, if done in the right way in LoL should generate some good gameplay (wouldn't want it to be spammable in lane early for example, given how powerful a full minion wave can be at levels ~1-3).

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Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

When is Patch 5.8 coming?

Not this week, 5.7 -> 5.8's going to be longer than the usual 2 week cycle.

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Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

What happened to the cool champion mastery thing where you Gained points for playing your favorite champion? When does is come out? Will it come out?

It's still being worked out - it's not ready for a proper release just yet.

Reinboom's Clarification on Critical Strike

Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this thread. I would like to follow up with a bit of a clarification (having now read through more of the responses).

 

These individual good things are within a sliding scale, and all of these are outputs of what Crit causes and not a commentary about the RNG itself or if Crit is holistically a good thing.
More directly: Don't take this as a reason why we should keep (or remove) Crit. It is simply an examination of the good qualities of Crit separated from the RNG nature of it.

 

As an example, threat range allows a team to not be completely snowballed. That it's RNG that leads to that threat range - or worse that it might of been RNG that started a snowball that needed to be deterred - is not a good thing.

 

Or if a metaphor might make the stance more clear: When a person is impaled by an object, that's obviously bad. However, that object's existence could also be holding back internal bleeding so it should only be removed surgically and the good thing it's doing (stopping internal bleeding) should be respected and replaced by something else (preferably being closing the hole).
The object also caused the need to have the internal bleeding addressed, but that still doesn't mean that you can just rip the object out.

 

Critical strike is that object.

Info on Ashe Changes Next Week

Most likely Ashe changes will hit PBE!

Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

Could we get a sneak peek of the upcoming Ashe changes?

Significant info coming as early as next week. Sit tight til then :)

Champion and Skin Sale: 04.24 - 04.27

Originally Posted by Riot (View Original Source)

 

Grab these champions and skins on sale for 50% off for a limited time:

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Champion Sales

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Other Red Posts

• QoL buff for Azir, show attack radius of soldiers when placing.
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