We’ve got a new shapeshifting yordle, and Zionspartan weighs in on what we might see at the world finals!
Welcome to Patch Rundown 4.14.
Hey guys! MsPudding here. We’ve got a new champion, Gnar, and some balance
changes in the run up to the world championships. I’ll summarize what’s changed, and
then we’ll have a conversation about Gnar and competitive strategy leading up to korea. If you
want to skip ahead, mouse over and click on your topic of interest!
This adorable prehistoric yordle switches uncontrollably between a ranged Mini form and a tanky Mega form­­while
occasionally looking scarier than Teemo in the process. I won’t go into how his abilities work
­ watch the champion spotlight for that!.. but he’s a pretty unique solo laner a with lot of awesome teamfight potential.
We’ve also got balance changes to Kassadin, Kog’Maw, Maokai, Morgana, Orianna, and Rengar, along with
some quality of life improvements for Zed and Gragas. Check out the full patch notes for details, ‘cause
today we won’t discuss the specifics­­we’ll instead talk about the state of competitive, cause this
patch may be the one the World Championships is played on.
This week I’m joined by Morello from game design, ZionSpartan from team Dignitas, and Sixtwo from the champion team!
So I do want to start with Gnar, a shape shifter, can't directly control his transformations and
he spends quite a bit of time in each form, like fifteen seconds or more. What went into the decision-making
behind making that uncontrollable?
Yeah, so we wanted to create a Champion who is a little bit different then some of our other stance-switching
Champions where it's almost like you have access to twice as many abilities as other Champions.
We wanted a Champion who stayed in these forms for a really long time, these forms had really
pronounced play styles that were really unique and managing the transition between those two stances
was also going to be something that players would have to master over time.
The thing about it is, while it's also unique, I think how you think about it is also pretty different,
right? When we talk about Elise or Jayce or Nidalee, you're making a lot of tactical combat-style decisions,
like right now I got an on the hunt, I need to be in cougar.
I need to close with them, I need to be a spider. It's these kind of split second combat decisions.
With Gnar it's a totally different kind of zoom level. You're making strategic decisions about,
OK in ten seconds or so I'm going to be big, where do I want to be? How do I want to be there, and
what do I need to do then? Or, man my big form is going to wear off soon, or I am going to be
small soon, where do I need to be there? And those are kind of more strategic layer as opposed to combat layer decisions.
I feel like for competitive play, Gnar's unpredictability on when he can ult is going to be a make or break
on whether he is a good Champion. For Nidalee and Jayce and Elise, you can kind of choose which form
you're in. how you are going to impact the team fight, the game, with your form. But on Gnar you
have to work around him, like there has to be a team around Gnar and not choosing exactly when
you are going to be able to transform can be really detrimental, especially when you're trying to kite
in a team fight, you are trying to siege, but you're turning into big Gnar, and in lane also when you're
switching between big Gnar and little Gnar, not exactly being able to control it, and I think that
unpredictability can really decide whether or not he is going to be a strong competitive Champion
and whether or not his lane is strong enough as well.
Yeah, I mean, there is a big penchant for a lot of competitive play to really go with reliable
picks, right? Reliability is a huge feature for a competitive pick.
So with this, kind of, unreliability we're hoping that will change up some of the game for how you
think about it, like what we were talking about, but I'm not sure if competitively, like is that
a realistic thing for people to build around or not? We're not entirely sure about that, but we
hope so. We hope we can change how we think about the game. That's the whole like
That's the whole thing we're trying to do with new champs, but I think what you bring up is a
really... a thing that's really hard to predict how it will be used in actual high-level play.
I mean, like, how would you build a team comp around Gnar?
Any Champion that's ranged, but can also be a tank in top lane has a lot of potential to be really
strong, so I think he is going to be fine for laning phase, but in terms of the team fight and later
on, being able to utilize when he is going to turn into that big tank and jump into them and try to
initiate and knock them into the wall and use that to your advantage is just really important, because
if you can't utilize him being a tank, then you have a team comp where he is the only tank, then
as soon as he turns back to human form it's like, "Uh oh guys, run! We don't have anyone to peel for us"
Basically, if these teams are really good at using that fifteen second window, maybe Gnar is that
good of a pick and the second his ult goes away the threat of him being a tank is gone so then
teams go in, so I can see both teams have to be good at playing against and with Gnar and I think
that is a really unique dynamic where people are scared of these individual Champions that can make
or break a team composition.
OK, so why don't we go ahead and move onto competitive since Worlds are approaching. 4.13, the previous
patch was a big balance patch and that's about to hit competitive and then we've got this patch
leading up to Worlds. I'm curious what you think are the most dominant strategies right now and
how the meta is probably going to shift as a result of those changes.
So what we've been seeing recently is kind of like, the Maokai in the top lane who is like that big
tank with just CC and can just be that huge front line, and then typically mid you've either got,
you've usually got some sort of control mid like Orianna or something like that, wave clear, and
you're seeing a little bit of Zed crop up now, but the biggest thing that we have been seeing
recently is those hyper-carries in the bottom lane. It moved away from the Lucian to more like the
Tristana and Kog'Maw, that's why there's been a lot of huge tanks like the Maokai/Alistar in the
top lane, because you have those hyper-Carry's to protect bottom and I think these changes that
are coming up with the buffs to Zed a little bit and the nerf to Kassadin to finally bring him back
in line, so he doesn't have to be banned every game are really going to help spice up... it's
not going to completely change the face of competitive play before Worlds, but it's going to kind of fine-tune
things in the right direction. I really like the use of assassins and we haven't been seeing that
much in season four, but it's definitely been starting to ramp up more towards where Worlds coming. Different
AD Carries are starting to be played besides Tristana and Kog'Maw, Kog'Maw is getting hit a little bit, so
It's been a rough year for assassins overall. We've had to go take care of some things that were really
no response, high burst-like problems, but like the buffs to Zed and the kind of light tap to even
a powerful Champion like Kassadin is about, these are the kinds of gameplay that assassins can represent
and have be healthy in League, right? Like, Zed's pretty close right now. These little buffs we think
get him really right in the range of what a good assassin in League can look like, and then how
do they make their place in the game, because when you have guys like Kog and Tristana running around,
maybe Zed is just what the doctor orders to take care of that.
See, but we are already seeing some Zed plays, especially in the past week and we are giving him
another buff and we haven't seen what the buffs to assassins are going to do in competitive with 4.13.
Right, and I think this is the difference between like,
what you test and what is philosophically true, right?
Zed, these are good changes for Zed kind of regardless of his power level. They kind of improve his gameplay,
make him a little bit more fun to play, honestly, and do just a little bit to his power. The Kassadin
nerfs on the other hand are a bit of a nerf to Kassadin, but really extend what we call the drought
mechanic: how long the mana ramping lasts on Kassadin into a longer window. So now instead of, "Well Kassadin is just weaker,"
and, "OK handle it, right?" Well, when Kassadin is moving around the map and managing this thing
this is now a thing that he has to manage much more carefully.
Yeah, so he can make mistakes or he can play it really well. Those are the kind of gameplay changes
that we think are appropriate kind of regardless of the power level, because some of the judgments
we've seen, we say, "Oh, a little up, a little down" to try to nudge them into that final spot.
Reading between the lines, you mentioned something about the good assassin.
And maybe Zed being a good example of an assassin that we don't mind seeing more often.
It kind of sounds like then, there might be some bad assassins, some assassins that we wouldn't
be so excited to see all of a sudden pop out of nowhere.
I think a lot of this year was us fixing a lot of those problems and while their balance isn't
I don't think the balance is completely finished on a lot of these Champions like removing the kind
of high burst, reliability, no response kind of play that they all had, as opposed to risk/reward,
or as opposed to really opportunistic and high tension plays. Zed does some of this; we seen this
even in season three. I think we've done a lot of that work, there is probably still a couple
of guys I would still... I would call out... I'm not going to call out any specific Champions right
here, right now. We'll see what the future holds on that, but I think a lot of the assassins are
well-primed now to start being put in the spot where, assassins have a role in League, that role
is healthy, and we can support that role much better today than I think we could a year ago.
I did want to jump in with hyper-carries though, cause you did mention that right now we are seeing
a lot of tanks and hyper-carries. Kog'Maw has been pretty much a staple pick, like pick or ban and
we are nerfing him with 4.13. We haven't seen what that's going to do in competitive and we're nerfing
him again with this patch. Is this the same sort of situation where we are just building onto the
same change with a follow-up?
A little bit. In Kog'Maws case it is a bit of a follow-up. We are pretty sure that our first nerves
were, our first nerves? Our first nerfs were pretty conservative in 4.13, but additionally what's really
important again about, like practice versus philosophy on this, Kog'Maw has always been one of the more
interesting carries to see in the game. That's the kind of thing you want to see, like, Wow, they
brought Kog. What's that mean? Their team is going to be really hyper focused on this kind of pick
and it means a lot of things about how we are going to play and what we need to do about it. Kog'Maw's
not that guy right now, and we think that's kind of a disservice to the character in the game. Kog'Maw
is just this kind of like awesome hyper-carry that you pick in a majority of situations without a
lot of context on what my team is, and a lot of that is his items have allowed him to get around
some of his previous weaknesses, some of the item changes we have done on ADC's have kind of moved
the power on that, seeing less assassins gives less threat to him, all these things together,
but what we needed to do is restore weaknesses back to Kog'Maw so we can leverage that huge artillery
range and super high late-game damage as his strengths and not just do a bunch of other stuff, because
he happens to. So regardless of what 4.13 necessarily does to Kog'Maw, doing something like making Kog
of the slowest movement speeds in the game really aligns with what the character should be good and
should be bad at.
Right, so like when we used to see protect-the-Vayne comps or something. You know that she would have
a weaker laning phase and that there were actual definite weaknesses to her where she had less range
than some of the
Yeah, exactly. When I think of a hyper-carry, I think of a Champion that has a weaker laning phase,
but to compensate for that she has one of the strongest late games in the game as a Champion and that wasn't
the case for Kog'Maw, because he would just win lane, he would win all of his lanes and then he
would also be the strongest, one of the strongest AD Carries
We were joking that Kog'Maw has a really clear identity right now, which is really strong early,
really strong mid and really strong late.
Yeah, very clear, it's still a problem, but it's like, at the same time when you can start saying
that about a Champion you definitely know there's not a lot of good trade-offs going on there.
Yeah, speaking of Maokai, we are seeing a lot of him recently since the gameplay update and he is
being picked or banned in almost every match, and every time I see him on screen his ultimate is
just on for the entire fight forever. If the Maokai train continues how do you see teams building and strategizing around him?
I definitely feel like that Maokai train is going to continue. He fits what you need in a top lane
so much; somebody who is good with teleport, has CC, is a huge tank and doesn't take any damage
and he can just sit there in team fights autoing people and healing and just CC everyone down, and
he just fits the role perfectly for top lane. The biggest thing that surprised me when I first saw
the 4.14 patch notes was, why Maokai got such a slap on the wrist. I definitely thought he was
going to get nerfed harder Morello.
You know it's true, even his teacher plays Maokai top.
I've heard that, and he has a big wrist to slap.
I've heard enough of those jokes, let's just move back to the discussion about Maokai.
In all honesty, if you look at all the changes in 4.14, we tended to be pretty conservative with
how much we would change anything on this patch. It is kind of a last patch before Worlds. 4.13
had a ton of stuff in it that we are really excited about, but we haven't had a chance to see anybody
play on that patch competitively yet, pros are still using 4.12, so we didn't want to kind of
overshoot in a lot of ways and we wanted to go on things that were more, as opposed to, like fine-tune
balance changes that may not be true as the eco-system changes from the 4.13 changes, into like more philosophical, "What's right for this character?" changes.
It does make sense that Worlds is so close, that you don't want to completely change the game.
Three weeks before the biggest tournament of the year.
OK, thanks guys, that was awesome. That's all for today, we'll be skipping the Rundown for 4.15 since
there won't be any significant changes as we get ready for World Finals, but don't worry, we'll
be back again for 4.16. If you have a question you would like to ask about a future patch, leave
it at the link below and we might address it next time. Thanks for watching Patch Rundown 4.14