Continue reading for a look at new skins for Draven, Nidalee, and Renekton, experimental LeBlanc changes, tons of balance changes, and more. Additionally, Xypherous has put up a lengthy post explaining the context of tonight’s PBE changes.
( Warning: PBE content is highly tentative and subject to change! Some of this information may have been datamined and could likely be erroneous. )
New skins:
Gladiator Draven
Headhunter Nidalee
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| No model yet. You are going to have to wait a bit to peek this one. |
Scorched Earth Renekton
Xypherous on PBE changes this cycle
Here is Xypherous discussing most of the big changes to hit the PBE tonight and a few from the next PBE push:
Xypherous on PBE changes this cycle
Here is Xypherous discussing most of the big changes to hit the PBE tonight and a few from the next PBE push:
“Hey guys – I’m going to make a context thread on the stuff in PBE and what we’re going for this patch – this will be accurate as of the *next* PBE push – but I’ll also talk about some of the things you’ve seen or was on the docket that we’re pushing back.
CDR Runes
CDR runes have generally been buffed across the board… …*but this might be delayed for the patch due to some under the hood stuff*
We intend to generally buff CDR runes across the board, both in the flat and per level case to better ensure that you get sane 5 to 10% numbers from a combination of flats and per level runes.
For example, you can now hit a flat 5% CDR from 8 CDR blues. Use the other blue rune space for something else.
3 CDR quints now simply get you to 5% CDR, rather than 4.92% CDR.
We want to align CDR runes to be more easily able to get you to 5% breakpoints, or 6/4% breakpoints to align with the mastery – close to numbers that are good stopping points.
Jarvan
- Golden Aegis
- Shield amount per nearby enemy champion increased to 20/30/40/50/60 from 20/25/30/35/40
- Mana cost reduced to 45/50/55/60/65 from 6
- Demacian Standard
- Active no longer grants bonus Armor
We’re trying to consolidate Jarvan’s power into Jarvan IV himself - rather than having a large bulk of invisible power simply aura out from Jarvan.
It would be kind of a shame to make any of Jarvan’s individual characteristics any worse – simply because as a character, he tends to be manageable in a lot of ways – However, the invisible power to his team is skewing Jarvan to be overpowered in a lot of ways.
Leblanc
* No changes for the following patch
There’s a couple goals with Mimic right now – but mostly, Leblanc’s ultimate is heavily dependent on which spell she levels first – severely diminishing her overall effectiveness outside of her primary spell.
While this serves to allow Leblanc’s skill choices to be meaningful – it constricts her ultimate to being additional power that she often didn’t need to be that strong. If Leblanc could use her Mimic to compensate for the weaknesses in her current level up path – her overall progression would be far smoother.
That said, there isn’t any changes in the current build on Leblanc (however, most of you are probably experiencing the 3/05/2013 PBE patch.)
Janna
Howling Gale
- Fixed a bug where the knockup duration was not increasing based on charge time
Janna’s empowered Q should actually be worth it to empower – right now, currently, it isn’t – which makes the quick-shot Q the superior choice almost always. Planning to use the Q pre-emptively should give greater payoff than reactively tapping the button – so we’re increasing some of the high-end power of the skill when charged.
- Knockup duration when fully charged increased to 1 second from 0.75 seconds
Taric
Nerfs!
We wanted to accomplish a few things with changing Taric: Giving more power to the Taric player to contribute meaningfully in a sort of Paladin-Support role, rather than a back-line support stun role.
The second goal we wanted to accomplish with Taric is actually reducing his overall power level because Taric was far more powerful than is normally healthy for that role. While we feel like Taric’s playstyle is significantly improved – we haven’t achieved the second goal – and we’ll keep tuning until we feel like his power level is in line.
As an aside, we’ve noted that while Taric’s playstyle has shifted to be more active – his power level hasn’t actually changed much at all – hence the additional need for changes.
Malphite
*No changes currently for 3/06/2013 PBE patch*
So, we’re generally unhappy with how Malphite plays – and how his sole fact that he completely annhilates AD carry attack speed is one of the only reasons to pick him and the reason why everything about him has to be completely lackluster given how powerful the ‘E’ attack speed slow is.
However, Malphite isn’t at a bad place currently – just his gameplay – so we’re going to take some more time to work on this a little.
We still dislike how powerful Malphite’s Attack Speed slow *and* how stale his gameplay can be – but those changes were a little sketchy.
Aegis of the Legion / Runic Bulwark
* 50% increased effect of minions.
The items are great all-purpose team centric items – but should also allow teams to concentrate their pushing power. These items already worked on minions previously but the amount of wave-clear and pushing potential was still overcoming any effect these items could have.
We couldn’t find a value that seemed to give the additional pushing power we’d like to minions while having the same value on champions – so we opted to increase the overall power the aura had on minions.
The only aura item that doesn’t currently effect minion is Zeke’s Herald- because +12 damage on 7 minions is insane. Also Lifesteal on minions tends to cause last-hitting to be nightmarish.
Locket / Bulwark cost / health adjustments
Locket cost reduced by 150. Bulwark cost reduced by 250. Locket loses 100 health. Bulwark loses 100 health. Bulwark aura MR reduced to 25 from 30.
In the current environment – the jungler or support is frequently picking up these items to provide team fight presence in a cool defensive way.
However, what we found was that the price point and power level of these items frequently meant that these characters were often the poorest characters on their team – and that the gold cost was significantly constraining their builds when they chose to do so.
We still want the Locket or the Bulwark purchase to feel great as a supportive character – we just don’t want it to completely set your build back by being such pricey pickups.
Hurricane
Secondary Target Seek Range 300 –> 375
So Hurricane is kind of a scary item – but we’ve discovered that it tends to be self-balancing a lot of the time. If Teemo is in range to hit three champions with Hurricane – it means there are three champions that have an extreme incentive to jump on Teemo and make him non-Teemo
While we could certainly make the item more efficient in terms of statistics – we found that in most cases, the Hurricane AoE range was too small to actually be a meaningful AoE – similar to the old Tiamat case. We’re thus going to adjust the AoE up so that Hurricane actually works in a team-fight scenario, rather than simply against clusters of minions (though the pushing case is pretty cool.)
Sheen
Combine cost decreased by 60 – Total cost 1200.
The cost of AD went up – but Sheen’s passive was still priced the same.
This cost reduction is basically recognizing the fact that Sheen’s passive should be cheaper simply because the value of raw physical damage is cheaper.
Lich Bane / Iceborne Gauntlet’s total cost will be unaffected – Lich Bane does magic damage, Iceborne Gauntlet has been compensated in other ways.
Trinity Force will have its cost reduced due to Sheen being cheaper.
Iceborne Gauntlet
AP 40 –> 30 Armor 60 –> 70
Iceborne Gauntlet is getting a bit more armor this patch and less ability power to better fit the needs of the characters who would pick it up. While the additional ability power definitely helps melee tank burst damage – but that’s not the primary reason anyone is picking the item up, especially if they have a Glacial Shroud.
I prefer mispelling the item. I don’t know why – I feel like that’s cooler – It’s also why I continuously call Mercury Treads, Mercury Threads instead.
Warden’s Mail / Randuin’s Omen
Passive AS Slow 20% –> 15%.
We’re happy with what these items are accomplishing in the game – being a strong pick against champions highly reliant on auto-attacks.
However, the actual power level of these items seems a little high – they work – but they’re probably working a little too well – hence the adjustment.
Frozen Heart will be unaffected in these attack speed slow changes – because we feel like it’s a nice trade-off for you to make after you have Warden’s Mail. Either continue to Frozen Heart and gain further armor/attack speed reduction – or shift to Randuin’s Omen and get some much needed movement speed reduction.
Zephyr
Recipe Change: Stinger + Pickaxe + 725 Gold = 2850 Gold.
When you can purchase Zephyr – it feels great.
However, the 1200 combine cost makes the build-path to Zephyr unnecessarily punishing – so we’ve decided to simply smooth out the path a little to more manageable components.
Instead of having one huge 1200 gold jump, you know have two smaller 800~ jumps.
Philsopher’s Stone / Shurelya’s Reverie
*No Changes*
So a lot of you probably noticed the Transcend passive on these two items, which granted permanent HP/5 the longer you held onto the item. This was originally intended to be a piece of the regeneration pie intended for characters like Leona or Jungle Tanks that would’ve preferred to pick up initiation power – but frequently would be extremely susceptible to any kind of mid or late game harassment.
We’re pulling this passive for now because while it does help the situation some – we’d like to both have some additional testing time on this and work on the other pieces of the regeneration solution as well – especially looking at how it impacts the other lanes and what that does to early laning in them.”
Changes to LeBlanc’s Ulitmate
LeBlanc’s ultimate has been changed to have it’s own damage ( currently 125/200/275 + .2 AP Ratio ). The ratio number, however, is off and Roku has some additional info for us!
Here is Roku explaining the changes:
“This is an experimental change that I was working with, having Mimic be its own separate damage rather than based on which spell she is leveling. The intention was to smooth out her level 6-9 damage and instead allow her to scale a bit better late game. An additional goal was to make her feel better about casting abilities that she isn’t leveling (W->R wave clear etc).
The AP Ratio on there isn’t correct (my bad), after you put a point into Mimic it will update to a .6 ratio.
The ultimate was changed to dealing its own damage – not adding damage to the spell.”
He continued:
“Yup! Don’t worry. These numbers specifically are still highly experimental – mostly was experimenting with the feel change here.”
He elaborated even more about the extra effects on mimic spell damage, saying:
“All effects were still the same, so yes Mimic’d spells would still silence.
With the version on PBE, if Mimic’d Q gets triggered, then it would deal the Mimic damage again.”
He also added in:
“We do experiment with things from time to time, with no intention of them being final. This was one of those times.”
As for the intention of the change, he adds:
“This change in particular was aimed at freeing up the use cases of her Mimic to more than just using Q (or whichever spell you’re leveling). For example, if you’re ranking up Q, but are able to W->RW creep waves, does that make things easier?
The numbers (which still needed further tuning past this), could have been taken in various directions after the above was achieved. The mechanic itself lends to smoother power curve throughout the game, rather than that huge spike at 9 after you finish leveling Q. (Again, the particular numbers would probably change.)”
Miscellaneous Changes:
A few small changes made their way into this patch. Emotes no longer cancel movement, turrets can now “take kills” and jungle monsters have slightly different HP bars.
Using /joke, /taunt, /laugh, and /dance no longer cancel your champions movement. This is a super minor change but is awesome for those of us who like to spam Teemo laughs.
Turrets seem to now “take kills”. If a turret lands the final blow on an enemy, it will get the kill and any assisting players will get assists. In this example, I was killed by tower, and the enemy Jax got 150 gold from his assist.Not sure if this is intended or not. This has been confirmed to be a bug.
Jungle minions have slightly different HP bars now, complete with more ticks.
Balance Changes
Lots of balance changes went through this patch. Remember that Riot is more actively using the PBE as a testing grounds so some of these might not stick around.
Elise
Singed
Taric
Aegis of the Legion
Iceborn Gauntlet
Randuin’s Omen
Champions:
Elise
- Neurotoxin ( Q ) range reduced to 625 from 650
- Neurotoxin ( Q ) damage reduced to 40/80/120/160/200 from 50/95/140/185/230
- Golden Aegis ( W ) bonus shield amount per nearby enemy champion to 20/30/40/50/60 from 20/25/30/35/40
- Demacian Standard ( E ) no longer grants bonus armor to allies.
- Mimic ( R ) – See the entire section, including red posts, above for more info.
- Tidecaller’s Blessing ( E ) duration increased to 8 seconds from 5 seconds.
Singed
- Fling ( E ) AP ratio reduced to .75 from 1.
- Fling ( E ) damage reduced to 80/125/170/210/260 from 100/150/200/250/300.
- Insanity Potion ( R ) no longer grants reduced disable effects.
Taric
- Dazzle’s ( E ) stun duration changed to 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5 from 1.5 at all ranks.
- Shatter ( W ) damage decreased to 50/90/130/170/210 from 60/105/150/195/240.
Items:
Aegis of the Legion
- Now gives an an extra 50% of the armor it grants to minions.
Iceborn Gauntlet
- Ability power reduced to 30 from 40
- Armor reduced to 60 from 70.
- Total cost reduced to 1750 from 2000.
- Health reduced to 300 from 400.
Randuin’s Omen
- Cold Steel passive attack speed slow reduced to 15% from 20%.
- Total cost reduced to 2885 from 3085
- Lifesteal increased to 12% from 10%.
- Total cost reduced to 2950 from 3200.
- Legion Aura’s magic resist reduced to 25 from 30.
- Now gives an extra 50% of the armor it grants to minions.
Seeker’s Armguard
- Ability power reduced to 20 from 25.
Sheen
- Total cost reduced to 1200 from 1260
Trinity Force
- Total cost reduced to 3843 from 3903.
Warden’s Mail
- Cold Steel’s passive attack speed slow reduced to 15% from 20%
Zephyr
- Now builds out of a Pickaxe + Stinger instead of Long Sword + Stinger
- Total attack damage increased to 25 from 20.
