Quick Gameplay Thought: January 24

Riot Scruffy

NA
Hey everyone. Riot Scruffy here, and I’m taking over for the Quick Gameplay Thoughts dev blog every other week. As Lead Gameplay Designer I manage the design teams that work on Champions, Game Balance, Items, the SR Map, Runes, Matchmaking, and Ranked. I plan to bring you all some updates and previews of upcoming work and go deeper into our reasoning and goals with the work that we do. Everything we add, change, and remove from LoL is done for a reason and we hope that our work makes the game better every patch. **Balance Strategy Refresh**This won’t be news to many of you, but I thought it would be good to do a quick refresh of our balance strategy. The reality of League of Legends is that the game played at different levels of skill is like an entirely different game in terms of which champions and strategies are strong or weak. With this in mind, it’s impossible to have all 148 champions balanced at every level of play. Our approach is to slice the game into 4 different skill segments where we think balance is meaningfully different: * Normal (Iron - Gold) * Skilled (Plat - Master) * Elite (Grandmaster-Challenger) * Professional And then ensure that every champ is: * Viable in at least one segment * Overpowered in no skill segments The core reasoning behind this is that we think that an overpowered champion can suppress the viability and richness of the entire game meta, so we want to protect players of all skill levels from this unbalanced game state. **Jungle Followup**With enough time to see the results on the preseason jungle changes, we’re seeing some goals were achieved and some not. * Small nerfs - the jungle XP and gold are nerfed, but it’s looking like it’s a bit too hard in particular on farming and later game junglers. * Pathing is more balanced - this goal was definitely achieved, not all paths are perfectly balanced with each other but we’re much closer here than we were in season 9 * Less early ganks more farm - this goal was not achieved, we’re seeing roughly the same amount of early ganking as season 9 The plan - we’re looking to buff up jungle XP slightly and skew towards incentives to farm over gank * Buffing jungle XP per min for minutes 4-18 and spreading it across the less targeted camps that are often skipped by gank heavy junglers * Pushing back the minion farm penalty removal to further nerf funnel strategies (which are rare but extremely strong) **Sett Release Retro**Now that Sett has been out for two weeks, I wanted to share some thoughts on how we think his gameplay turned out. Some of the long term effects of hit kit can’t really be known for sure at this point, but I still wanted to share my early thoughts. * Low complexity - Sett is a wonderful demonstration of how even in 2020, simple designs can be both satisfying and skillful. We want to do much more of this in the future where we focus on “quality over quantity” in our champ kits. * Unique but not game changing - Sett brings a few pretty exciting new ideas to the table like damage reflect and turning the enemy tank into a nuke. He isn’t redefining what a champion in LoL can be, but for his goals as an accessible top lane juggernaut, I think he’s on target. * Balance - Sett’s winrate has climbed over his first two weeks of play and he’s appearing to be a be viable as a top and jungle currently. It’s possible that he may need some slight nerfs in the future, but he doesn’t seem to be significantly OP today. * Clear weaknesses - Another success worth calling out is that Sett is powerful, but he provides enemies a clear opportunity for counterplay. **Upcoming balance changes for 10.3:****Akali** - Many of you already saw the Akali changes on PBE. Akali is dominating both pro and elite level play, but she’s not nearly as OP for skilled and normal. With that in mind we’re trying to reduce the amount of control she has over choosing when to fight, which is a core reason why she is such a strong pick at the top tier of play. The upside here is that if these mechanics changes make her a more counterable champion at the top levels of play, we can give her some more conventional buffs to allow her to be viable in regular play. After testing the initial changes, we’re making a few changes: Moving away from “CC reveals her during W stealth” as it was making the experience unreliable in a confusing way and adding inconsistency to our stealth rules Cutting R2 speed decrease - this wasn’t getting us a lot of movement for how bad it felt Keeping R1 as targeted as it’s effectively lowering both her escape tools and her super long range pick potential Exploring a few other alternatives like early ranks of Q energy cost being higher to reduce her lane trade and push power **Yuumi buffs** - The Yuumi changes in patch 9.24 have left her with significant new weaknesses that allow us to give her a decent buff. The tactic we’re exploring right now is to buff Q rankups so that Q max is a viable build (letting her have an active playstyle instead of only E max build) **Aphelios** - We’re adding a max range on caibrum marks. We intend to keep it as a very long range poke effect, but bring it in line with other similar mechanics like Caitlyn or Xerath. Frankly, cross map sniping is not interactive or interesting gameplay, so we’re removing it. **Senna** - we want to shift a bit of power out of Markswoman position Senna to Support Senna. This probably means we’ll be tuning soul drops for when you get the minion kill vs when your ally does. These are just a few of the changes in for 10.3 - expect more info next week about the full patch. Thanks again everyone for playing. I’m excited to be making more posts like this about our design process and thinking. Feel free to drop questions or future topic requests in the comments. Scruffy https://twitter.com/MarkYetter https://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/9.24.2/img/champion/Sion.png

Posts are displayed here in chronological (time, oldest first, newest last) order, like a regular web forum.

MayDuke (EUW)
Hi Scruffy! Looking forward to the gameplay thoughts/discussions for the coming year! :) What are your thoughts on Orianna at this point in time and her place in the overall game?

Valentin888 (EUW)
Are there any irelia buffs or changes planned for future since she is sitting on a 46-47% winrate at all ranks and is barely touched in pro play. What are your plans for this champion ?

Zoli Ben (EUNE)
Can {{champion:6}} get some compensete buffs for Conqueror ranged champion nerf? Today I got beat by a Nasus who simply outhealed himself no matter how much life steal and amplifier I had, I was even fed mostly but the fact he outheals me so much is just too bad IMO. {{item:3075}} was useless there. https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/2wjE4Iqs-quick-gameplay-thoughts-september-22 This was promised over 2 years ago and it was not implamented still. For {{champion:10}} Conqueror stacks thrice on passive since passive is a spell (2) and an auto(1). Can it get fixed for Urgot? He gains only two stacks instead of supposed 3 on intended shotgun autoattack.

Łukαsz (EUNE)
Any toughts on Sylas? Was the mini rework successful in your opinion?

Valentin888 (EUW)
Are there any irelia buffs or changes planned for future since she is sitting on a 46-47% winrate at all ranks and is barely touched in pro play. What are your plans for this champion ?
Riot Games user

Riot Scruffy (NA)
Ori seems to be in a pretty good spot overall - balanced, fun and unique kit, fairly clear counterplay. Not planning anything big for her right now.

Quáx (NA)
Actually not a bad post. I appreciate the acknowledgment of the state of jungle, the usual Akali pish-posh and it actually feels like you guys are getting back on your feet with a few of these changes. Well done!

Mohaa (EUW)
I dont get why you put so much work in akali all the time instead of giving her a new full rework, this kit is just unbalanceable for you. She has been a problem since a year and a half now, the entire kit is the problem {{sticker:sg-lux-2}}

RavenHusky (NA)
What's going on with Lux's Lucent Singularity? The bugfix wound up legitimately breaking the spell.

Predatorator (EUW)
What do you think of Skarner finding success toplane?

insejuaniwetrust (EUW)
any changes for seju in this parch? the last buff has not helped him enough the truth
Riot Games user

Riot Scruffy (NA)
Sure - so far the 10.1 changes seem fairly successful. He's 49% winrate across all elos and a low priority pick in pro. Playrate is up by 300% since the changes, so we hope that means that people are still enjoying his play style. We haven't seen enough data to be sure that he's actually in the right balance state yet though, may need some slight buffs, maybe not.

FF1224 (NA)
Glad to see you talked about Senna/Aphelios. I dont remember recent champ releases warping the bot lane meta so hard but these 2 on top with MF is certainly a change of pace from Xayah Kaisa. As for the Aphel nerfs I assume you mean Calibrum marks and you just confused both C weapons. If you really want to bring the champ in line though address the stat spikes relative to other marksman he gets from levels at 9 (AD) and 12 (AS).

Denlee (NA)
Good afternoon Scruffy! Super excited about Taliyah getting a new skin this year! I was wondering, while I do think she is a strong, and even flexible pick right now, is there anything in the works to buff/rework her to help her gain popularity? Much love!

faelight (NA)
thoughts on lulu buffs and her performance in the meta? will you guys look into increasing the slow on ult or giving some of her damage back to q (or reducing the damage done through targets)? :')

Rhea Seiros (NA)
Howdy Scruffy any thoughts on {{champion:39}} irelia? Shes been bottom of the winrate barrel for a while now for general scrubs like myself any chance of buffs or kit changes?

Infernape (EUW)
So isn't Ekko in need of a nerf? He's sat at the same win/pick rate in several elos since November. I'd like to be able to pick my main in normals again.

CornDoggy (EUW)
Thought I'd post this here for visibility as well: Viktor's hexcore is still broken after the bugfix in 10.2: it seems that if you upgrade your hexcore multiple times in one go, the mana increase is still wrong. Hope that it'll get fixed soon - thanks for taking the time to make these posts!

i like wafffles (EUNE)
Hey scruffy .So about the akali changes, im down for a targeted ultimate although im not so sure about increasing the q energy,If you wanna tackle her laning phase why not give q a 3 or 4 second cd and maybe remove the slow so its not oppresive against melee characters.And i think reducing her ultimate cd is necessary at this point, like we know akali is gonna be weak after these changes i dont think there is a reason to wait 1-2 patches to follow up buff her.

uzomaki timo (EUW)
What do you think about Orianna balance-wise? She feels like she takes too long to ramp up in her current state since she struggles to deal with heavy roamers.

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