As recently outlined, were going to be taking the opportunity to roll out some gameplay changes during the Preseason that we think will make League of Legends even better. Overall, were really satisfied with the diversity of champions that are viable at all levels of competition, and the variety of winning strategies that are out there. But we think there are ways we can still improve game pacing, champion diversity within roles, and customization options. The Preseason gives us an opportunity to look at some of the underlying systems that define the game, and make improvements there.
Items: One of the biggest places we feel we can add some interesting strategic decisions to is the item system. Many of you have told us that youd like to see more build variety, and more interesting gameplay on items. We couldnt agree more!
Youll see some rebalancing of the existing items, but theres also a slew of brand new items to spark your imagination and reward your ingenuity.
Xypherous will be giving some juicy, juicy details on this, but here are a few things to expect:
Underserved classes (AD Casters, for example) will get more items targeted specifically at their role
Most of your old favorites will be sticking around we want more options, but we dont want the item shop to be totally alien
A few items that have been challenging to elegantly balance are being removed in favor of the new options
Were taking a look at overall gold and stat balancing
Many old items have received new upgrade paths or additional upgrade paths
Supports are getting some items to help ease the ward burden in longer games
This is the biggest change and, frankly, its pretty damn exciting. Were really interested to see what people discover, and were confident this will help add some diversity and interesting choice to how youll be building your champions in the future.
Jungle: Much like we did at the start of Season 2, well be featuring jungle mechanics changes for this preseason as well.
We liked a lot of the flow and feel improvements to the jungle (opened up non-safe junglers, more ganks, etc.), but therere some things we can still improve. We had two major goals here: to add to the number of viable junglers, and to change the gank flow to ensure that the jungler isnt the only role that defines the flow of the game during the laning phase.
Statikk will be revealing more complete details on the changes, but we believe this will have some positive effects on the metagame and improve champion viability, even in lane. Weve even included new jungle-specific items (now theres more than just Madreds!)
Masteries: Another big opportunity is masteries. While we want to add variety to your mastery choices, there are also few specific areas we want to improve:
Going deep in the Utility Tree is currently underwhelming
Early flat Magic Resistance and Armor prevent people from being killed even if they get really outplayed in lane
There arent enough cool masteries
To this effect, FeralPonys been busy taking a jackhammer to our masteries to fix these problems all the while looking for opportunities to add more interesting things to mastery builds. Hell be on hand later in the week to talk about the changes in-depth, and to dig into a few specific examples.
Summoner Spells: Last, and definitely not least, were taking a look at our summoner spells. A couple sneak peeks:
Weve raised the cooldowns of popular summoner spells (Flash, Ignite, etc.) in lieu of nerfing their power
Weve added a certain shielding spell from Proving Grounds, and made it so Heal is actually a support skill
Were generally buffing some of the weaker skills up!
Its our hope that these changes will give you more options for customizing your spells to suit your own playstyle or the needs in a given matchup while keeping the cool gameplay of the existing favorites. While Id love to take credit for actually buffing stuff, good guy Roku is heading this up, so Ill save the grand reveal for him.
This is an initiative we believe will add even more strategic diversity to League of Legends, and introduce new gameplay to master.
Lets be clear: this will be an iterative process. We know that your games are going to play out differently than youre used to and well be watching like a hawk for any issues that we need to patch. If theres something thats really breaking your game experience, we wont be afraid to hotfix things under extreme circumstances. Be sure to keep your feedback coming throughout the preseason, and look for more specifics on upcoming changes from Xypherous, Statikk, FeralPony, and Roku in the next few days!
Change is scary . Similar to most people, I worry balance changes will hurt the champions I have come to love the most. On the other hand, I know that these changes are for the better and they will progress the game to a better state. I also hope that by adapting to the new balances I can progress to become a better player.
Regardless of my concerns, I am really excited for what is coming season 3. Keep up the great work Riot!
It is scary - that's my primary concern to start is making sure that this doesn't change League fundamentally, but instead improves it (people like League, don't wanna change that!)
A lot of the feedback we've received has been focused on lack of item variety, and our jungle analysis has pointed to a number of problems to fix and opportunities we can take to make more champs viable and make jungling strategies differ with options. This is why we're confident that this will make long-term improvements.
Balance will need to be watched closely, but that's the cost of entry for big changes - easily worth the cost, imo.
Also, do you plan to do anything about top lane and how ridiculously snowbally it is? If you die early, you're done for the rest of the lane
There's some -really- under-the-hood stuff we're messing with here. Part of this is also address in the item premiums.
It's a problem we're chopping at, but I don't expect it to be fully fixed with this. We'll be in a better spot to improve this more, though. We definitely agree this is a problem.
I can't even begin to reel at how stupid it would be to add a 125~550 damage shield on a 125 second cooldown to SR. Karthus would weep, Assassins would scream in fury*, a Flash/Barrier and Flash/Heal** botlane would be nigh unkillable, etc.
*"But heal already does this!" Heal has counterplay in grevious wounds or ignite, Barrier does not.
**Assuming heal will now heal allies for more, as implied by it being a "support skill."
Yes, Barrier numbers are tweaked on SR a lot. Roku will speak to this in the next couple days.
Can you stop raising cooldowns on Flash and actually implement a good solution? Such as making it so you cannot use flash as an escape (if you were hit in the last 3 seconds, it won't let you flash)
Well, that's not a good solution because it prevents it being an escape, making it more favored in gap-close assassins and fighters.
Sorry, Morello, but this just doesn't seem like a "full rundown" (the words used in yesterday's state of the game post in describing what we'd be getting today). You're basically saying change is coming, but no substantial details have been provided. When someone tells me they're going to give me the "full rundown" I expect ALL the details, not what amounts to little more than a meeting agenda. I normally appreciate your posts, but I've got to give you guys a thumbs-down for setting our expectations for all the details to be released today when in fact, when you get right down to it, almost no information was released.
This is the rundown of what to expect. The other guys are doing detailed reveals on each section this week, and then you'll get every single detail in the patch notes.
Early details are a problem because we're changing things daily - all that does if you say something is happening, then change it is make people mad.
That's the problem though... you guys aren't doing enough to fix Flash. You have been increasing the cooldown on it for two years (including one or two range reductions) but it is STILL the most used summoner spell, period. Doesn't this mean that there is a larger design flaw with the spell?
Besides that, I hope these changes will change the popular meta in LoL for once... having sustain solo top, mid, carry/support bot with a jungler is getting stale after all this time.
I just don't think the meta is about lane assignment distribution. It's like saying football has low strategy because there's only one Quarterback every game - it's not actually important.
I'm more interested in the types of character diversity and team strats as a meta - protect-the-Kog, poke/heal, AoE Spooge, rush/push and delay comps are what our meta is currently comprised of, and I just can't agree that that is "stale."
Morello Introduces Preseason Updates
Hey folks,
As recently outlined, were going to be taking the opportunity to roll out some gameplay changes during the Preseason that we think will make League of Legends even better. Overall, were really satisfied with the diversity of champions that are viable at all levels of competition, and the variety of winning strategies that are out there. But we think there are ways we can still improve game pacing, champion diversity within roles, and customization options. The Preseason gives us an opportunity to look at some of the underlying systems that define the game, and make improvements there.
Items: One of the biggest places we feel we can add some interesting strategic decisions to is the item system. Many of you have told us that youd like to see more build variety, and more interesting gameplay on items. We couldnt agree more!
Youll see some rebalancing of the existing items, but theres also a slew of brand new items to spark your imagination and reward your ingenuity.
Xypherous will be giving some juicy, juicy details on this, but here are a few things to expect:
This is the biggest change and, frankly, its pretty damn exciting. Were really interested to see what people discover, and were confident this will help add some diversity and interesting choice to how youll be building your champions in the future.
Jungle: Much like we did at the start of Season 2, well be featuring jungle mechanics changes for this preseason as well.
We liked a lot of the flow and feel improvements to the jungle (opened up non-safe junglers, more ganks, etc.), but therere some things we can still improve. We had two major goals here: to add to the number of viable junglers, and to change the gank flow to ensure that the jungler isnt the only role that defines the flow of the game during the laning phase.
Statikk will be revealing more complete details on the changes, but we believe this will have some positive effects on the metagame and improve champion viability, even in lane. Weve even included new jungle-specific items (now theres more than just Madreds!)
Masteries: Another big opportunity is masteries. While we want to add variety to your mastery choices, there are also few specific areas we want to improve:
To this effect, FeralPonys been busy taking a jackhammer to our masteries to fix these problems all the while looking for opportunities to add more interesting things to mastery builds. Hell be on hand later in the week to talk about the changes in-depth, and to dig into a few specific examples.
Summoner Spells: Last, and definitely not least, were taking a look at our summoner spells. A couple sneak peeks:
Its our hope that these changes will give you more options for customizing your spells to suit your own playstyle or the needs in a given matchup while keeping the cool gameplay of the existing favorites. While Id love to take credit for actually buffing stuff, good guy Roku is heading this up, so Ill save the grand reveal for him.
This is an initiative we believe will add even more strategic diversity to League of Legends, and introduce new gameplay to master.
Lets be clear: this will be an iterative process. We know that your games are going to play out differently than youre used to and well be watching like a hawk for any issues that we need to patch. If theres something thats really breaking your game experience, we wont be afraid to hotfix things under extreme circumstances. Be sure to keep your feedback coming throughout the preseason, and look for more specifics on upcoming changes from Xypherous, Statikk, FeralPony, and Roku in the next few days!
Regardless of my concerns, I am really excited for what is coming season 3. Keep up the great work Riot!
A lot of the feedback we've received has been focused on lack of item variety, and our jungle analysis has pointed to a number of problems to fix and opportunities we can take to make more champs viable and make jungling strategies differ with options. This is why we're confident that this will make long-term improvements.
Balance will need to be watched closely, but that's the cost of entry for big changes - easily worth the cost, imo.
It's a problem we're chopping at, but I don't expect it to be fully fixed with this. We'll be in a better spot to improve this more, though. We definitely agree this is a problem.
I can't even begin to reel at how stupid it would be to add a 125~550 damage shield on a 125 second cooldown to SR. Karthus would weep, Assassins would scream in fury*, a Flash/Barrier and Flash/Heal** botlane would be nigh unkillable, etc.
*"But heal already does this!" Heal has counterplay in grevious wounds or ignite, Barrier does not.
**Assuming heal will now heal allies for more, as implied by it being a "support skill."
Flash will still be used, I can't imagine it not.
Early details are a problem because we're changing things daily - all that does if you say something is happening, then change it is make people mad.
Besides that, I hope these changes will change the popular meta in LoL for once... having sustain solo top, mid, carry/support bot with a jungler is getting stale after all this time.
I'm more interested in the types of character diversity and team strats as a meta - protect-the-Kog, poke/heal, AoE Spooge, rush/push and delay comps are what our meta is currently comprised of, and I just can't agree that that is "stale."