Reign of Gaming

Gah, not done posting, give me a sec to finish the replies to those pages!

Sorry for the repost, but I accidentally hit 'submit reply' too early...

Replies to pages 611-615.

Hey Guys,

I am so sorry that it has taken me so long to update this thread. Things at work have been pretty hectic lately (in a purely amazing way). So the first time I've had to repost on this thread is on vacation (just like when I first had a chance to start this thread =-P). I hope you'll forgive me, and I'll try to do this at least once a month from now on...if not more often.

As always feel free to check out my @RiotEzreal Twitter, as I'll always post in it whenever I post in this thread (just makes it easier to track).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dazschei View Post
I always thought Lux was really similar to Morgana in terms of their kit. Drop-on-the-ground AoE, Snare, Shield.
Absolutely, her kit was actually designed around taking the dark elements from morgana and seeing what they would feel like if they instead used light elements (primarily Q/W/E). Good catch!

Quote:
Originally Posted by ashxu View Post
Will you guys ever redesign champions just because they could be more interesting or fun? (Opposed to redesigning champions because they need fixing)

I'm talking about someone like Wukong. He's not bad but c'mon, his kit is a bit bland. He only has one way to use his abilities. E -> Q -> R or W
Well, our primary focuses in doing champion updates are as follows: make the character more fun, fix the core problems, and don't remove what make the character fun in the first place. So yes we redesign characters to make them more fun.

That being said, I don't believe we would update a character like Wukong. We specifically made his kit simple with easy combos and a single ability that can be used for amazing effects. Take for example a lot of our early champions. Yes they are easier to use than our newer champions, but that is by design. We want champions that new players can join the game and fully understand on their first play through. Having a wide range of characters in both skill level and play style only improves our play experience.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anime Jesus View Post
Will Riot ever have a system where we can purchase the announcers voice to be something else? possibly popular champions?

Will we ever see Kog'maws daddy?! I love kog'maw, please tell me his Daddy will appear sometime soon!

Just also want to give my support for releasing Lissandra the Ice Dervish! I'm a huge fan of Sejuani and all of Freljord, please give me my third princess =D

More Sejuani skin please! are they on the works?
I hope we offer players alternate announcer packs, though honestly it hasn't come up that often. I recently brought this up to one of our design departments, and we are going to look into it again.

As for Kog'maw's daddy...there is only one way that I could see him in our game...and that is in epic ridiculously large boss form. So here's hoping that we eventually do a void inspired map that will allow enough space for Kog'maw's dad to fit in.

Hmmm, that's +1 for Lissandra.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nostradamusss View Post
please MR. ezreal, can you say to your riot team these bugs, because i wrote the trundle bug in the forum 1 year ago and still not fixed :/

"-Leona can reset auto attack after her Q (like old garen with bug before it got fixed)
-Trundle Q base damage cannot crit.
-shaco clone does not take into account AD runes"
The Leona note is not a bug. On next hit abilities should all reset your auto attacks. Learn it and love it, it grants a butt ton of extra damage.
I'll bring up the Trundle bug.
I'll bring up the Shaco clone bug.

Quote:
Originally Posted by RunsWithScizzors View Post
Why don't you design champions anymore?
Quote:
Originally Posted by oddish33 View Post
Are you the main designer on any champs right now? If not, then what are you doing at riot right now?
Well, I transitioned from designing individual champions to leading the champion ideation process (initial art/design/theme) some time after releasing Ahri. Recently I have also joined the Creative Design team in coming up with awesome new ways to integrate lore into our game (GIVE ME IDEAS HERE!!!).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rivayne View Post
Ezreal are you over 9000?
Not since release...and Ezreal was wayyyyyy over 9000 on that patch.

Quote:
Originally Posted by LeagueøƒLegends View Post
If someone was looking to get into the gaming field as game journalist or working inside Riot on the community part for example dealing with the community, handling Q&A and support tickets, do you have any suggestions for a major?
There are plenty of colleges which focus on journalism, and if you don't go to one then simply get a degree in Writing. As for ways to get into the community, simply put your face out there. I have met tons of people who simply became known in our community from making youtube videos, or starting up league websites. Good luck!

Well, we have already done this in the past with a few champions. Lux has a number of inspirations from Morgana, and Darius has a number of inspirations from Garen (spinning to win, and his own brand of execute). And heck, I would love to have a time assassin who takes inspiration from Zilean...though there hasn't been traction on that for years =-P.

There were two primary problems: Support Lulu would deal too much damage late game, and AP lulu would dole out too much support late game. She simply did two different roles too well, and had to be brought in line with one of them. As such, we opted to keep her in a support role.

YES, in fact, there is a glorious chicken and waffles place just down the street from the Riot office.

Yes. There are three primary reasons to remake champions: they are not fun to play as, they are not fun to play against, and they simply don't fit in the game. Now each of these can be remade based on a designers opinion of them. But playing against is one of the primary metrics we take into account when remaking champions.

Perhaps someday, but the purpose of this thread is not to go through all of the comments. Jebus, this thread started years ago so there is a ton of outdated info. So rather than constantly make new threads, I just focus on updating it every month or so.

We have removed spells and items which have done this in the past. Check out Zileas's post on Anti Fun Patterns to learn more!

1 and 2) 2013 will be a good year for you...

Whyyyyy would you do that to yourself!!! Though for doing it I will answer a few of your questions =-P:
1) Haha, I haven't been able to keep up very well recently...and I mostly post here on weekends and vacations. So it's not too sustainable for the average Rioter.
2) Skill shots will generally travel through walls unless they have an express gameplay reason to interact with walls. For example: a skill shot which bounces off walls, a skill shot that attaches a mine to a wall.
3) Zigg's bouncing bomb explodes on terrain, and turrets count as terrain.
4) We have considered it, and ultimately decided that it doesn't add great gameplay. We would rather have a shield that blocks skillshots (imagine a shield that extends to 3x the length of a champ that would block skill shots coming at him).

I hope not...

Le wewt?

Not at all, they each have their own design space, and having a unique item is within Viktor's design space. I would actually say the problem you are facing is the power of Viktor's item slot. Personally, I would love to see it get a tier 2 item upgrade, to make it more worth the slot.

Replies to pages 616-620.

Hey Guys,

At least one more for the night...though I'm getting sleepy

As always feel free to check out my @RiotEzreal Twitter, as I'll always post in it whenever I post in this thread (just makes it easier to track).

Ah, sorry for taking so long that the S3 itemization changes actually went live...

Permanent hiatus. Though I'd still love to see him some day.

I could see an ability like this used sparingly (i.e. not as a passive). Perhaps an ultimate which allows a champion free reign over terrain for a short period of time.

1) Barring unforeseen circumstances, yes.
2) Maybe, though there are no plans for one now. It does sound pretty cute though =-P.

Well, we have a number of guidelines when creating new champions, though we haven't always followed them. For example, I wish we found a way to better integrate Vayne into Demacia. She still doesn't feel very Demacian to me.

My suggestion, when creating a game which is going to focus on different regions, start off with a creative template. Know the core values of the area, their insignia, their words (see Game of Thrones for this), and their colors. It will save you a lot of effort in the long run.

=-D

Posts like this make it all worth it!

Well, what do you think of the new Tiamat. And moreover, what do you think of Ravening Hydra. I have only tried it out on Olaf on ARAM, and it was crazy go nuts!

Still planned, we just need the art resources to do it. Basically we had it mostly done and then Xyph was put on the S3 item overhaul. You can guess which project was more important.

We refocused where the lore department should focus. Rather than giving small bits of trivial information we instead focused on drilling down on our IP internally. Now we feel that we can do more interesting and better things. 2013 will be a good year for lore!

Yes.

Yes.

Haha, that reminds me of the Onos from the game 'Natural Selection'. This was actually the first design space for Cho'Gath's ultimate. However, it ran into a few problems. Players would use this on a character that they wanted to kill, and then skill shots that were aimed at them would miss. So rather than kill the enemy champion, you would sometimes save them. It led to really frustrated allies.

I don't believe so, though I could be wrong. And to be fair, she is still seeing some really high level tournament play in Korea.

...hate...

Volty still wants to go back and look at that character. Give him time, and keep pestering him!

Haha, that was a ton of fun, and a really long conversation.

As for the Mordekaiser story...well...it's actually pretty simple. My girlfriend's name on AIM (Aol Instant Messanger) has been Mordekaiser ever since she was 10. It was pretty much the easiest character to name that we've ever had. I mean, come on, how badass is that name?

He's still pretty cool. Heck, check out 'Elementalist' gangplank. I just watched one of our live designers go a full on elemental build: Iceborn Gauntlet, Statik Shiv, and one other I can't remember, perhaps Ravenous Hydra.

Inspirations come from a lot of different areas. Sometimes it comes from gameplay (Oriana was originally called Ball Girl), sometimes from art (Nami was simply an awesome Mermaid), and sometimes from theme (some future champion might have come out in lore before anything else).

Replies to pages 621-625.

Ok, last post as I've finally gotten up to date!!!

As always feel free to check out my @RiotEzreal Twitter, as I'll always post in it whenever I post in this thread (just makes it easier to track).

No one's right arm is as strong as Tryndameres...except for maybe Trogdor.

Awesome, I miss watching Shushei's Gragas! And now I get to see AP Ez too.

I've played Dark Cloud 1 & 2, so I do remember the catgirl with a slingshot. And yea, I could see a slingshot as a weapon, but it is pretty far down the list of potential powerful weapons in my mind.

We actually considered this for a dark magic user recently, though we ultimately canned this character because he wasn't quite reaching the ultimate evil magic feel that we needed him to.

Hooray for Zed! He ain't dead...

Well, we work on champions as far as 8 months ahead of time. So yes, there is at least one more support in the works. And HE...is one of the coolest characters I have seen in League of Legends.

I love this idea and I will pass it on to the live design team.

Well, yes. We have considered making a Yordle in a drill tank. Imagine an ultimate where the drill tank goes underground and pops up in a targeted area, dealing damage and creating a one way tunnel that your allies can go through... CRAZY INITIATOR!

It turns out remaking Urgot is hard, really really hard. And he is another character that clashed with season 3. We simply needed to ask ourselves what was more important, remaking Urgot or updating all of our items, masteries, jungle, and more.

Well, we are constantly looking to fill common archetypes that we have missed, and we definitely still have space for a true samurai in our game.

Check out some Ezreal cosplay, those people know what they are doing.

Yes, I fully expect that we will do this some day (directional shields for damage mitigation). Also, that's a pretty crazy awesome idea for the psionic mage. I'll have to think about that more to figure out how to make it feel great.

1) Not yet, but who knows.
2) Haha, I was just talking about the Yordle Drill Tank. But he is not currently in the works.
3) Not sure unfortunately.
4) Well, Caitlyn's original kit used to spawn brush (instead of her trap). So I could see it happening...though there were plenty of reasons to avoid this ability: weird interactions in lane, weird interactions with monsters, and more...
5) I don't think so. The delay for Dominion is more about the style of map: an objective based map where the objectives can be taken at minute 1.
6) I could see this happening in the future. But I would like to see that phantom thief be upgraded to something more awesome first...
7) We still have plenty of Valoran to discover before checking out other areas of Runeterra.

Nope =-D

Replies to pages 621-625. Ok...does anyone else find it ridiculous that we are over 625 pages on this thread?

As always feel free to check out my @RiotEzreal Twitter, as I'll always post in it whenever I post in this thread (just makes it easier to track).

On a side note, pretty embarrassed about this, but it turns out I already answered a bunch of these questions last time. Ah well, I hit a bunch more from those pages.

Nashor's Tooth has always been a painful item to buy due to it's stats composition. Few champions need AP, Atk Spd, AP, Mana Regen, and CDR. We hope to assuage this by removing the most painful, and restrictive stat: Mana Regen. After we do that we'll see how it does and adjust accordingly.

As for Malady...I am actually surprised it is not being used more. With the recent buffs to penetration in season 3 it strikes me as a very powerful item. This is one that I would rather sit back and watch rather than potentially overbuff.

We like the fact that Nidalee has a different feel to other transforming champions such as Jayce and Elise. We try to avoid core feel changes on champions whenever we look back at updating them. That and to be honest, Nidalee is still pretty dang fun. She mostly needs some bug fixes.

Awesome, I'll check it out!

I loved Dark Cloud 1 & 2. It provided a great dungeon delve matched up with city building that I never really experienced before. It's really too bad that the series / genre dissipated with only 2 showings.

That being said, I could see a champion with a sling shot some day. Though there is always the problem with making the sling shot a 'powerful' weapon. We have toyed with the idea of making the sling shot fire alchemical globes of dangerous chemicals (think Molotov cocktails). It might be something cool to experiment with in the future, but we have no plans to make one right now.

Haha, we have toyed with the idea of having Ezreal's glove come from a set, and passing on one or more of it to future champions. Again, very cool, but we don't want to overplay the 'powerful artifact' too many times. Each time we do it we risk diminishing the cool factor of older champions with the trope such as Ezreal.

We have rarely had success with ability power champions focusing on auto attacks (Kennen is one of the few). That being said, I do definitely think we could try out a full out AP auto attacker. It would certainly mess with the meta in the bottom lane...hmmm, saying that out loud reminds me that I really wanted to try that... I wonder what sort of thematic archetype would fit the role of AP auto attacker. Ideas?

1) We considered doing this in the past, but it encounters two problems. First off, the work output to gain is pretty minimal in most cases. Second, the changes to characters like annie or nunu has the potential to be more negative than positive to players who actually like them how they are. Though I have to admit, it would be pretty funny to see a full grown adult riding on the yeti.

2) True counters are pretty bad design in a competitive game. They lead to painful counter picks and a lot of extra information required. There are other ways to get this feel into the game. For example, champions with sunglasses take one less damage from Leona.

3) Well, we already have 3 poison champs (you forgot Cassiopeia who has 2 types of poisons). So while we do have space to explore the Rogue poison choosing archetype, it would probably be a while until we tried it out.

4) Ah, this question must have been asked before Nami =-P.

That would negatively impact the feel of a character in ways they would not entirely understand. So while it sounds pretty neat and would add gameplay, I think the overall negative value associated with it outweighs the positive.

I think I've talked about a Yordle riding in a drill tank a few times, a character who we thought might be cool but ultimately decided to pass on. Imagine an ultimate that would drill a hole between two areas (knocking back enemies) and providing a one way exit for your allies. Imagine the Baron/Dragon assaults!

THAT IS ADORABLE!!!

We try to hit well known archetypes in ways that differentiate them from other games. We only have 100+ champs right now, there are still plenty more basic archetypes to hit. On that note, what other archetypes have we missed out on?

I personally love that mechanic, though it comes with a bit of scariness. In a game with 0 turning radius time, with enough reaction speed you could potentially reduce all incoming damage (assuming a single source). This might require us to tone down the numbers to the point of it not feeling good. That all being said, I could definitely see us trying it out in the future.

Nope!

Nope =-P

Replies to pages 626-630.

As always feel free to check out my @RiotEzreal Twitter, as I'll always post in it whenever I post in this thread (just makes it easier to track).

1) I love the new items, it's given me a great opportunity to try out champions I haven't played in a long time.
2) Haven't seen a biggest failure yet.
3) Armor Penetration scares me a fair amount, especially Black Cleaver's Armor Reduction.
4) The e-sports scene is going phenomenally and every player I have talked to is excited.
5) The creative team is excited to make things better across the board, and they're pretty aligned with what the community wants. We just need time to do it!
6) Blonde.
7) Jackets.

The champion's designer wanted his Auto Attacks to have some impact on the kit and not be just a physical caster.

ZED IS SUPER POWERFUL!!! He is a scarey beast.

Cuz I wanna...

Well, Sion was designed to be an offensive tank, however he deviated from this when players focused on his AP build. Over time we have considered making him more focused on AD, but shied away from it since it goes counter to how the majority of the community enjoys playing him. Honestly, I am not sure if we should change him into a AD focused champion at this point.

Sounds like a great idea, and it is certainly something that we are moving towards. Check out Vi as a great example of this.

Haha, RiotRunaan would love to hear you say that.

Champion interactions is something that we truly love integrating into the game, but as it is a new feature, it is not that easy getting previous voice actors into the studio to help out for such a small number of interactions. New champions will have a much easier time getting VO interaction (so hopefully we can get a new champ who interacts with EZ).

Check out Vi, she has some awesome interactions in the game.

We are investigating this. We are looking into improving some core AP itemization, as well as nerfing AD champions who are out of line in the mid lane.

We absolutely have not given up on lore. We want to find new and better ways of integrating it into our game and giving it to our fans. Personally I think it adds a lot of flavor to our game, and I could deal with seeing more of it in the future.

That would work better, but then you have the problem of going oom (out of mana) while blocking damage, which is generally not too much fun. Having an ability that just blocks x amount of damage for a flat mana cost is generally more balancable and fun than an ability that can block ~ amount of damage for x + ~ mana.

We have added a new mastery to help out older champions like Udyr with Kiting (the anti Slow Mastery). And we are currently looking into itemization which will help champions like this.

I have always loved that personality...and I kinda hope that it's true. But who knows, only time will tell.

Vacation and weekends =-P. Just gotta make it happen!

Sand is one of those core elements that we haven't really explored with mages yet. Heck, I would also love to see a shadow mage some day. What are some other elemental mage archetypes that we have missed out on?

Crazily enough we tried out both of those ideas on Ahri when she was in her development phase.

The blink zone ability ended up feeling too limited, and the global dash was just OP on Dominion. Wow, that reminds me, I need to go play a couple of rounds of dominion!

Urgot is pretty fun to play, but he adds a fair amount of anti fun to the game. He also encounters a few of Zileas's anti patterns, including the false choice that his acid/seeker missile creates. You think you can out distance it, but really you end up just reducing your dps while still taking a ton of dps from Urgot.

Haven't seen it yet, BUT I WANT TO SO BADLY!!!

I'll pass it by the live team.

Replies to pages 631-640.

As always feel free to check out my @RiotEzreal Twitter, as I'll always post in it whenever I post in this thread (just makes it easier to track).

1) Well, I wanted a 'fake brush' sort of gameplay. Something that would feel similar to the 'fake treasure cubes' from mario cart. Where players see it and feel that something is out of place. I also wanted her to have a way to trigger her passive (don't forget that Caitlyn was made back when AD carries were mid lane, so she didn't have a lot of access to brush).

2) I'll talk about him more later, but the elemental hydra was a short lived idea that was ultimately passed on.

3) Most of the old school champion designers are helping out all across the company. For example, Geeves now leads the Live team!

4) Agreed, I would love to see more champion VO (voice over) interaction.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about this topic. But if there is a large playerbase there then I am sure that we will try to help out the players as soon as possible.

It turns out there aren't really any true junglers. Most of the traits players need to jungle are very applicable to the top lane. For example, I play Nocturne as purely a top lane champion!

We want to explore the melee dps class more. But to be honest, it is pretty dang hard. High dps classes are generally glass cannons, champions who are capable of dealing high amounts of dps while also not able to take high amounts of damage. The best way of dealing with this is range. Thus, melee range champions fail on this aspect almost instantly. So we end up having to create short scenarios where they can output their dps (Master Yi's Highlander, Fiora's Bladewaltz). That being said, we are looking at making a new melee dps. But it will take time as it is a very difficult class to figure out.

Interesting, we were just discussing this in the office recently. We discussed how the 'main character' of many fantasy series is the classic mage knight (the hero who can both wield a sword and cast magic). We dig the idea, but can't find a way to differentiate it enough from Draven. Thoughts?

...wat?

I remember that one, his art work was pretty bomb. He had amazing details on that character.

1) The battlecast skin line is one of my favorites. It would be silly to not make more of them.

2) Ah, I didn't know that skin was a battlecast, I'll have to look into it.

3) Yea, void champions are pretty awesome. I don't think you'll find anyone who disagrees with you there.

What's wrong with it?

Well, we just got a new void creature in Kha'Zix, and he is pretty awesome. I can see making a new one over time. What class do you think it would be?

Well, chaos magic is indeed cool, but it has a fundamental flaw. Chaos magic is usually associated with 'randomness'. A champion who is based on randomness is flawed, as it is impossible to balance. Now you could make an argument for making the chaos mage a multi elemental mage who could cast a number of different spells. But that archetype is cleaner when associated with elementalists. So I do believe it would be cool, I just don't believe chaos magic is a good place to explore in LoL (well, other than maybe overwhelming amounts of evil magic).

The community ultimately raises when we need to change characters. Then it's up to someone on the team to come up with a good way to improve the champion. They then need to prove to the team that the character needs the changes in order to be better. Once those are in place we try to find time for them to enact the positive changes. So if the community thinks Darius is problematic then they should beseech a designer to take on the cause of updating him.

1) I'm not sure.
2) Hexmage was the codename for Viktor.
3) That was a mistake on our part. Though I'm not sure if it was that we had the wrong hand on the icon, or if we changed the hand in the particle.

I hope so, the hunt is on is one of the coolest easter eggs we have ever added to the game.

As for your health as a resource question, it is a valid option that we can use again in the future. We just try to spread them out as they are generally less restricted than mana gated champions, and thus more difficult to balance.

Awesome, I'll check him out.

I'll pass this on to Live.

Ultimately dwarves have too much overlap with Yordles to be their own race in LoL. That being said, I think we could take elements from dwarves and create a pretty awesome yordle that would take on these elements. After all, why be restricted to copying what has been done in the past when we can make a new unique version using our own world.

2013 is going to have a pretty good balance between the two, but will also have a fair number of humanoids, creatures, and yordles!

We ultimately decided to pass on this character early on. We simply couldn't find a good way of placing a personality on this champion. Take for example dragons and phoenixes. These are classically intelligent creatures who have both monstrous and human qualities. Hydras on the other hand have almost universally had just monstrous qualities (barring Tiamat, who is more of a 5 headed dragon than a hydra). This led us to believe that hydra's are more likely to be an epic boss creature than a LoL champion.

Replies to pages 641-650.

As always feel free to check out my @RiotEzreal Twitter, as I'll always post in it whenever I post in this thread (just makes it easier to track).

I have to applaud you for such a unique idea. It has it's own flavor which feels very league of legends. I especially love your ability names (I can just imagine plot twist as an awesome ult). We actually concepted a paper mage for a while. There were a number of iterations on this character. It started off as someone who could manipulate words (using paper) to create effects. We then modified it to become sort of a 'rune mage', someone who could etch runes onto the battlefield and later detonate them.

While we loved the core concept, and felt that it was rather unique...we could never quite solve a number of issues on it. The first issue was the source of power. It ended up being such a unique SoP that most people just couldn't quite grasp it, much less guess what sort of abilities he would have. We also ran into the issue of making him look cool. And this is an area where the librarian would also get hit. Making a librarian look awesome would be quite a feat. That's not to say that it is impossible, but it simply added one more issue to the champion. These issues, along with others, made us move away from this concept.

1) We strive to make the best experience on all of our maps. So we only release changes when we believe they are the best possible variant. So while we do hold on to the files, it is not likely that we will ever re-release old Twisted Treeline.
2) See above.
3) I'm afraid I have no insight into new maps.

We have discussed the idea of using scissors as a weapon. It is a very anime trope, which does have a LoL feel. I love that scissors, despite being small in nature, have a certain dangerous quality to them. Using that innately dangerous quality and sizing it up adds uniqueness to it. It actually reminds me a lot of skarner. Turns out making small dangerous things large makes them a ton scarier. The ability works as well, nice idea!

We are striving to hit multiple of every class each year, so yes, we have a tank in production. And the next one...gah...I have to hold back from giving any spoilers. But he is really, really, really cool!

1) Honestly global taunts are pretty obnoxious. While it feels pretty good to do the taunt, it feels terrible to be taunted. It also leads your teammates to feel negatively towards the taunted player. The overall positive to negative value of the feature is likely not worth it. An alternate variant that would likely feel better is a global woot upon making a pentakill. It would be rare enough, and it would make the person and team who got it feel awesome. And the other team would at least see the awesome happen, and doesn't have a single individual to get mad at.

2) I could see this happening in the future. There are a number of whip based variants that are just begging to be used in our game.

3) It's pretty tough to make a truly amazing witch doctor. Though I would love to see a few examples if you have any!

She has a falcon...

huehuehue

The meat shield idea has too much anti fun surrounding it. The amount of harassment you can have on allied characters would make this ability unacceptable. Players could attack the target not minding if their ally is taking damage. Heck, even if they did it accidentally, it would still feel like griefing. So while it is a cool idea...which it is, it still leads to too much griefing potential.

I wouldn't say that Anivia is any more powerful than other champions, her abilities either have high amounts of counterplay or are difficult to use. To elaborate, take Flashfrost ability is exceedingly slow, and requires timing to utilize well. The ability for enemies to avoid this ability allows us to make it a ranged aoe stun. Another example is her wall, Crystalize, this ability requires a good understanding of placement and timing. Additionally, many enemy champions can get around it via movement abilities. This allows us to place a bit of extra power on skills like this.

I have always loved the idea of making a zone which slows down projectiles (especially skill shots). In fact, I wanted to work this into an old, no longer being worked on, champion named Tempus. Unfortunately this ability would feel great fighting against skill shots, but wouldn't actually do anything but delay the damage on single target abilities. This would make it too situational, and not work as well in LoL.

Mordekaiser...

But that is just because we named the character after her screen name.

That is a pretty neat way of doing Viktor's passive, I'll pass the idea along.

There were a few games floating around in the Warcraft III days which would allow you to either play randomized champions, or make your own. It felt pretty neat for a bit, but lacked any real depth. Most games just ended up being luck of the draw. Sometimes you would get a character with no damage capability, and sometimes you would get a character with 4 stunning nukes. It was simply too variable to be fun consistently.

We are willing to allow champs with infinite scaling into the game within limit. If we do it sparingly then it stays special. As for Thresh, he actually had a few ways of softening the problem. First, he lacks the base scaling for MR / AR that champions would normally have, thus making him focus on farming souls. Second, the benefit he gets from souls diminishes as he starts getting large numbers of souls. This allows the initial souls to be more impactful, while also softening the infinite scaling issue.

Any time you have two abilities say opposite things, one of them needs to take priority. Zed's ultimate states damage, while Zhonya's states don't take damage and can't be targeted. The don't take damage is simply prioritized over Zed's ultimate.

It is also a bit far to say that a single item that usually goes onto a single class makes a champion worthless. Try baiting out the Zhonya's with his other abilities. Or hold off on ulting until his Zhonya's is down. Also, his ult has a shorter cooldown that Zhonya's. So there should be periods that he can ult on her if he uses it on cooldown.

I have seen abilities like this in other games, and while it sounds cool, it leads to a best case / worst case problem. In the worst case, a 1v1, the ability deals next to no damage. And as an ultimate it is largely wasted. In the best case, a 5v5 w/20 minions, it instant pentakills. While we could bring these edge cases closer, there will always be a best case / worst case problem. Making the ultimate a waste some of the time, and overpowered the rest of the time.

1) The strong, non-sexualized, heroic female champion made by IronStylus is actually Quinn and Valor, our upcoming champion.
2) And yes, the male support I hinted at was Thresh.

I can only really answer this thread as thoroughly as I do every 2-4 weeks due to the sheer time commitment of it. Sorry guys.

Ouch, I never really thought about it that way. It is interesting that resist reduction could actually be worse than resist penetration in some cases. I'll pass this on.

Sona's E has four different aspects: It passively speeds up allies, it is a large area on demand speed boost, it charges up power chord, and it serves as a slow for power chord. Having so many different elements on one ability has diminished individual aspects of power. This is largely a flaw in Sona's design. If she didn't have the aura, then we could have likely doubled the power of the speed boost.

Now that all being said, it might currently be underpowered. As she falls out of the spotlight this seems like one of the first areas that we would boost.

While that is a cool image, the gameplay is mostly identical to Thresh's ultimate. His ult is a ring that says, don't move out of it or else you'll be damaged and get slowed. The only differences are that parts of Thresh's wall breaks, and the visual differences (which are actually problematic, since any time you make something vertical you obscure everything behind it.

PS. WOOOOOO over 2,000,000 views!!!

I think you play the forums like the high score on a Pac Man machine.