Jatt: Changes to Draven, LeBlanc and vision items in this episode of the Patch Preview.
Jatt: Hey Summoners, welcome to the Patch Preview.
I’m Jatt, here with game designer Feral Pony to talk about some of the changes in this patch.
Let’s start with Draven.
For a lot of players, Draven’s been an unfair champion to lane against with his unmatched early game damage and trade potential.
What are we doing to address that?
Feral Pony: When we were looking at Draven, we really wanted to lower his early damage,
but we didn’t want to hit any of the abilities that make him fun, like Spinning Axes.
We ultimately ended up reworking his passive because it was adding a lot of damage at early levels,
but didn’t offer much in terms of gameplay.
We saw this as an opportunity to remake Draven’s passive into something more thematic and entertaining.
So now Draven’s new passive is the League of Draven.
Each time Draven kills a minion, or catches a Spinning Axe, the crowd will be so impressed with his abilities that he’ll gain a stack of Adoration.
When Draven kills a champion, he’ll cash in half of his Adoration for bonus gold. When Draven dies, he’s suitably shamed and loses half of his stacks.
Jatt: Scrapping Draven’s old passive in favor of a new one might seem a little dramatic to some players -
why didn’t we just lower the numbers on the old passive?
Feral Pony: We tried that, but quickly realized that there wasn’t a good number we could hit that would lower Draven’s early power enough,
while still feeling impactful as a passive.
We really like Draven’s new passive, because it allows us to make the balance change we want,
but it also adds something that fits Draven’s character as a glorious high-risk high-reward executioner.
Jatt: We’re also making some changes to LeBlanc’s Mimic and Sigil of Silence.
Typically, LeBlanc is seen as a polarizing champion who either stomps her lane, or falls behind for the rest of the game.
Or, in some cases, both. Let’s start with the Mimic changes.
Feral Pony: Mimic will still copy the last spell cast.
The difference now is that Mimic will deal damage based off of its rank, not the rank of the mimic’d spell.
This change will allow Leblanc to still deal solid damage even when mimicking a rank one spell.
This opens up a lot of flexibility for LeBlanc players, especially in the early game.
Jatt: So now that more options have been opened up for Mimic,
what’s preventing people from mimicking Sigil of Silence every time due to its overwhelming burst - like we’ve seen previously?
Feral Pony: Mimicking Sigil of Silence will still be a good option for LeBlanc;
however, most of Sigil of Silences damage used to be up front,
which meant following it up with another spell wasn’t that important.
We’ve shifted some of this initial damage into the mark so LeBlanc will have to combo her spells together to get the same effect.
LeBlanc will always be a powerful burst mage, but now she will be less frustrating to play against in lane,
but in exchange, she will gain increased flexibility and smoother scaling into late game.
Jatt: Let’s talk about vision items. We’re making a few changes to wards and Oracle’s Elixir.
Ward kill gold will now be split between the player that reveals the ward and the player that kills it.
What’s the rationale behind that?
Feral Pony: The overarching objective of these vision changes is targeting what we in the design pit refer to as “vision wars,”
where some champions – supports specifically – can get into ward battles
where they’ll spend a significant portion of their gold on pink wards to deny enemy vision.
Of course, the opposing support will do the same thing,
and this ends up leading to a downward spiral of wasted ward gold that we want to address.
Some teams would even feed ward kills to their carries – even further perpetuating the gold sink for support players.
This change guarantees that supports who provide good vision control will be rewarded with gold.
Jatt: Moving on to Oracle’s Elixir. It will now persist through death, although we’ve shortened its duration and reveal radius.
At the beginning of Season 3, we changed Oracle’s Elixir to make it last 5 minutes or until death instead of indefinitely,
and now we’re changing it once again – why?
Feral Pony: We think that the death timer combined with the limited duration has made this item a bit too much of a risk for teams,
especially those that are behind.
When someone picks up an Oracle’s Elixir, they tend to play passive because they’re afraid of wasting the gold they just spent.
We want players to feel like Oracle’s Elixir is an opportunity for making plays and not a defensive liability.
There’s still a punishment for dying with Oracles because you’re wasting its duration while dead,
but players should feel empowered to use it to react to situations.
Jatt: The final change we’ll be talking about is the new item for Howling Abyss, the Orb of Winter.
For anyone who’s played a game of ARAM, they’ll know what it’s like to play against long range poke champions like Lux, Nidalee or Ziggs.
How will this item help when facing these types of champions?
Feral Pony: Similar to when we added in Guardian’s Horn to help melee champions initiate fights in ARAM,
we also wanted to address the frustration that can come from fighting long range poke champions.
The Orb of Winter creates a damage absorbing shield that will refresh itself when the owner doesn’t take damage for a short period of time.
So if you’re good at dodging abilities, this will greatly increase your survivability.
If you’re not dodging abilities at all, you’ll still be dying a lot.
Jatt: Will we see the Orb of Winter in any other game maps?
Feral Pony: Honestly, no. This item was specifically designed for ARAM.
While we’re not actively balancing League of Legends around Howling Abyss, we did want to alleviate key player frustrations here.
ARAM is, by its very nature, random, and a bit unbalanced, but this should at least help out when dealing with the super effective edge cases.
Jatt: Well that’s all the time we have today, but for a full list of the patch changes, be sure to visit the League of Legends website,
and thanks for tuning in!