Alright, so we're going to decide how we kick this off by shooting
Darshan! Darshan? That's the... what about you? No
He's here now, how did you do that?
I summoned him. No I... So we can start with you.
Congratulations on winning by the way.
I do want to ask you, kind of, how you feel about
the last patch, right? We introduced a bunch of stuff right?
We had the four reworks. We had a bunch of defensive item changes
and we had the new items themselves, so
how do we feel like it's played out?
Like what does the landscape look like right now?
Are things on fire?
I think my biggest concern coming into Worlds is
there's all these changes, especially the juggernauts
and there's champions like Mordekaiser and Darius and my question is
are these champions going to get nerfed? Are they going to get changed
like, am I going to have to just ban
Darius and Mordekaiser on purple side every game?
Right, what we're aiming for is very much to say no to that
to say like, you don't have to ban these guys every game.
It seems like some of these guys are somewhat nerf-worthy
for this patch and we are thinking about it.
We still want to see people try them out and see what they can do
because people really haven't seen a lot of melee
carries in our game function without being just like
oh this is Tryndamere or something and he just runs at you
and kills you and stuff like that.
We want guys that are a little tankier. A little less mobile
but still functions, so we are trying to see how that works.
We're definitely going to look really hard at
making sure they're fair for Worlds and not like a mandatory ban.
There are going to be new things at Worlds
whether you like it or not at this point
because of the introduction, because of these things
we're not looking for some stale meta coming into Worlds.
There's going to be a lot of surprises, so when you tune in
expect to see those types of things.
You're going to probably bring some pocket picks
you're going to see what you can do in the top lane
with counters as well, but that's what Worlds is going to be about this year.
Adaptation, who's adjusted to this patch
and who's picked this up very quickly.
On our end though, it's have we balanced these things so that
they feel fair to play against and they're not 100 percent player stats.
Yeah, see personally I'm excited for the scrappy underdogs that just
pick Heimerdinger every game and win.
I would be hyped to see that. I'd accept the donger overlords
but I want to move on through the rest of this patch because
you know, Worlds is going to be on 5.18, we are on 5.17 right here
but we do have a bunch of changes that feel like they are aimed
at pro play if I am correct. You know, Fizz, Azir, Maokai, Kalista
are kind of the ones we've been talking about, but we have a lot more
than that, though they may some be light, there's a lot of them.
Where do you guys want to start?
I want to start with Azir, because this is a champion that has kind of
shaped competitive mid lane for a while now.
Nobody's really able to figure out a way to play against it.
There's Viktor, but even then Viktor has disadvantages against
Azir. And we nerfed him. Yes exactly, and we nerfed him this patch
or last patch. Azir has a nerf with the Q with the fact that it kind of
interacts like Glitterlance right?
-One hit. Yeah. Can't be hit by the others
This is a nerf that I think is... isn't actually going to
hit him as extraordinarily hard, because people are now building
Nashor's Tooth, so the idea is I slow you with the Q, and then
I get two autos on you and that's the bulk of my damage.
I'm no longer using Conquering Sands for just destroying people.
It's the auto attacks.
-the movement speed change.
Removing 10 puts him tied with the slowest champions in the game
which makes sense to me from a thematic sense, right?
-He should be like that.
He's chilling back behind his soldiers. He's like
"Go over there. Stab the guy. I'll be back here."
Right? Then you get on him and he does some matrix shit
and teleports around and stuff that's, you know, I think that's fine.
I think that's actually the right way to push him too
because his weakness should be, you can get to him.
But then he has Emperor's Divide, he has a way out
Just make him slower and I think that's a really great
direction to push him in. If he still gets the ideal situation
where everybody's in a choke point, awesome.
He's still able to execute on his pattern.
He's still going to bounce people around with his wall
but, you know, let's say you're immune to CC effects
you'll run him down and kill him, because he is much slower, so
Yeah, if only there were someone that played champions
who are immune to CC effects. [Laughter]
I wonder. Sadly, none of those exist.
No, Darshan what's your pick for a change this patch?
Like, what are things you're looking at?
I'm definitely looking at Maokai.
That's probably like, my favorite balance change ever
is that Maokai got nerfed, because that just changes
so much about the top lane, because you see Maokai
in the top lane and it's, oh, solid, safe pick.
can't really counter it that well, and now that he's nerfed
-Oh that guy again. Gnar too.
and he's not nerfed in the way where he is unplayable
he's good now, but he's not like, the best
and I think that's one of the better changes
that I've seen from RIOT, is when you don't
completely kill off the champion, but you still nerf them
to make them not like, played every game.
You know, we actually like the character, right?
Like, I mean, correct me if I am wrong, but...
Totally, he's...
You know, he's kind of been allowed to exist
in the pro scene for a while, because he's a
fair champion in a lot of ways.
So, Maokai's been that staple blue side top lane
blind pick. And now that he's kind of removed
I am a little worried for like, competitive or
pro top laners, because you're not going to have as safe
of a pick when you're just blue side and your team's like
No, no ,no. We're going to have you pick early.
Or even red side where it's like
Okay, we're going to have you pick you're top laner
and we're going to last pick mid or something.
Yeah, counter picks are just going to be a lot stronger
in top lane, because Maokai was one of those few safe
blind picks, so you're definitely going to be seeing
a lot more variety in the top lane with Maokai
getting nerfed, which is something
I'm looking forward to.
Yeah, I just want to draw that out for a second.
Is that cool that there are less safe picks in top lane?
Right? Because clearly we are saying
Yeah, you nerf guys like Maokai
counter picking is going to be a bigger deal, but
You know, we say a long time ago a game where
top lane was the lane to counter pick, right?
Dudes like Wickd and Voyboy we're always
-It's getting back to that point too now.
And that's kind of what I want to know is
how do you guys feel about that playing out
in the game as is?
As a solo que player who doesn't main top,
and then I have to pick top when I get
counter picked, I don't like it, because
-[Laughter]
I don't know the match ups and I don't know
always how to play safe there, so that's one
of those things that I'm like
I would always default to Maokai
You twitch too much, you're like
Ahh, I gotta fight someone, then you die.
I defaulted to Maokai. Maokai and Shen
are my go-tos, because I can just play the
lane very safely and there is also a Shen nerf too.
We nerfed you hard this patch, yeah.
[Laughter]
I still have Garen.
He got nerfed too
Slightly. Yeah. Yeah.
I still feel like he is going to be strong as well, but...
What's a stone thrown at a god? Yeah, that's...
Damn, that is intense. Okay, please.
Overall the less counter picking thing is actually
probably healthy for competitive and pro top players.
For the average solo que player who gets
pushed in that role, I feel like that one of those
things that I'm like, uh man I don't know how much
I'm going to want to play that role as much
I'm just going to main jungle and support now
Not jungle and top. I get you. Push away from--
When you can counter pick, you can just
exploit weaker players in my opinion
so if you're the better player and you can
counter pick like, Maokai isn't going to save you
you're going to get counter picked and...
That's how I feel about the whole thing.
That's the theme of this patch
Maokai's not going to save you from Darshan.
-[Laughter]
Yeah, exactly. MaoKai can't save you from me.
-You can't hide behind the tree anymore.
We already saw this during playoffs...
Exactly, we banned Maokai against Dyrus
but now that Maokai got nerfed
we don't need to ban it anymore, so...
You'll never be in the same group though.
It's kind of interesting, because when you are
in solo que and you're last pick
and you are in your off position
like, everyone kind of has a safe thing
they default to, right?
And I think it kind of becomes problematic
when the safe thing also crushes everything too
like old Caitlyn, for example.
It's like, I want to play AD carry so...
I'll just play Caitlyn, she's fun.
I'm winning all my games, what is that?
Yeah, so we can't talk about Maokai
and top lane without talking about Fizz, right?
Fizz kind of the preeminent counter in pro play.
Kind of the only thing that makes him not
a sure bet all the time, but even then
seems like it's kind of hard on some execution.
We have nerfs to that though like
AD Fizz is kind of on the way out
What's going on?
Right, so the weaknesses that you should exploit
with the Fizz when he's mid don't exist
for the top lane version.
He has a lot of reliance on using Trickster for
damage when he's AP build and in between
those cool downs he's actually
vulnerable to getting killed and that's
one of the ways in which we say
this is the counter play to Fizz like
play--beat this out.
Yeah, if he's build squishy and he messes up
you just kill him. And then he gets CDR.
Right, which by the way, is even free-er
in the bruiser build, because he gets a Frozen Heart.
Right? It's expensive now though.
It is expensive and you're sad
about the armor items, I know, I know.
My biggest qualm about this thing is though
that AD Fizz was a viable option
and now with the nerfs, it's just cutting off
AD Fizz as a viable option to go with and
the same thing happened with AP Tryndamere
AP Master Yi, AP Tristana.
There was these cool ways to play these
champions that were different in the way
you could play them and you had these unique
build paths and they're just gone.
You can't build them that way.
Yeah, we end up talking a lot about how we
don't like to enforce a meta, but it does
come off like that sometimes. Why do we
make these changes to these champions
and just stomp alternative builds?
I think we really want to defend alternative
builds that aren't like, particularly unhealthy
for the game. I mean you can still play, I think
you used this example earlier like
you can still Ezreal as the AP carry
and AD carry. You can build a blue build
you can get Iceborn Gauntlet
you can play him pokey
and in all these builds he has different
strengths and weaknesses that you are
opting into.
And then with this current version of AD Fizz
that doesn't seem to be true, right?
It's like, well he is still very good at dueling
he is still very good at catching people
he has a lot of sustain damage
he doesn't really die when he should die
so at that point we have to say
well, there's something that he has to give up, right?
And in this case, he is giving up some of the
damage if he builds his tanky build
so if he wants to sub in a new offensive item
he still might work as an AD build
but it's not going to work with him just getting
like Triforce and then full tank.
Yeah, I feel like at least, as a player and as a spectator
the jungle kind of does this pretty well
if you look at Elise, Lee Sin and Rek'Sai
these are all characters that can say
this game I want to go Cinderhulk
this game I want to go Warrior.
These kind of fit in line with what I expect
when I see them played, where in the event
of something like top lane Fizz, I'll admit
I played a ton of top lane FIzz
I just time and time again saw people that were
trying to fight me fair and I'm like
sorry, I'm just going to keep stabbing you
I'm going to dodge all your moves and, you know
when my cool downs are down I am just as strong.
You fight me at no mana, you fight me at full mana
I'm going to do pretty well.
One question I have is about the Kalista changes
because a lot of the ways Kalista is seen is
she's a support that's... I mean, she's an AD carry
that's unique, because you play with your support.
A lot of your abilities work with your support.
Your basically like, a champion with two abilities
unless you are laning with your support
and a lot of these nerfs seem to be taking her
away from that unique play style
and nerfing those areas.
Yeah, I think that's a great point and I think
that it is... that it's something that we had to
really struggle with when making these
Kalista changes, which is that here's a
really cool character that does something
very unique. It's like, from the start I've called out
this is my partner for the rest of the game
and we're going to do interesting things
when we're together and now
we're a fearsome duo when you see us like
appear at the same time.
I think a lot of our players didn't quite bind
to that as much. They looked at the passive
Martial Poise and sort of her outplayability
and said this is the character I want
that you've delivered to me and while I think
it's really important for us to look at ways
in the future to sort of make Kalista in a
spot where she is that duo AD carry.
Right now, in terms of how much we want
to do in time for Worlds, we wanted to
preserve what people really attached to.
so we wanted to make her somewhat fair
if she is dancing around your entire team
with a hurricane and a BoRK and killing all of you
and not being caught
without making the sort of more obnoxious
parts of her that seem unnecessary, like
her always saving her support. So common.
Was this kind of a character identity
or champion identity that's influenced by
the communities use of the champion?
I would say yeah. I think anytime we put
something out in our game we have to care
about how the players received it.
Like fore example, you'll hear this story a lot
Vi was a top laner when we released her.
I wasn't here at the time, but...
Yeah. And Elise was a nothing. Yeah.
[Laughter]
Yeah, well Vi was even... Shushei played her
mid lane to get into the LCS way back when.
Like, you played Vi in solo lanes and then
Lautemortis takes it into the jungle and solos
dragon at level 3 and people are like
Oh, you can do that.
And sometimes we are cool with it
sometimes we're like, alright that's what Vi is
she's a jungler now. We're not going to be like
Hey, max damage to monsters
not gonna happen, get back in top lane, right?
And with Kalista, I think she had two
kind of distinct identities, and the ones that
players seem to really want to play is
the one we are defending right now, right?
and maybe in the long term we could
chain something around that
but, you know, we have to look at how much
people are attached to it, right?
So, any other champions that kind of stick
out to you guys, any other things
you want to get at before we wrap up?
I'm just hyped about Nocturne, like I'm
not sure if he's actually going to get into
pro play now, but I feel like a huge amount of
how early game goes in pro is about whether
or not you can outmaneuver the enemy
team's vision and now we are just saying
By the way, Noc just does this basic maneuver
Like Noc, he can just get into your lane
no matter where you are. Yeah.
I'm pretty wary of like, globals at any like...
on any champion, because even though
Shen got those buffs, I didn't think they were
necessarily that big, but even those like minor
tweaks were enough to push him over the edge
to be one of the like, strongest top lane picks
in the meta and I could definitely see the
same thing happening with Nocturne.
I don't think his dueling is like, crazy
but he's still pretty strong and him having
those range buffs on his ulty could definitely
just push him back into competitive play.
Cool. I'm trying to remember about that time that
we do it actually where we played Kalista and
Bard. Oh yeah, we did.
And I played Bard and you played Kalista
and you were like I don't know about this Bard
character man, and you went 1-7.
We won, because we got carried by someone
but you were just like hopping under their tower
and your like, I don't know about Bard man.
I'm like, what do you want me to do?
I was just testing you on this Patrick
you did a great job.
Okay, good. Yes, did it.