Changes to Garen, Katarina, Varus, Zyra, and the Friends List, covered in this episode of the Patch Review.
Welcome, summoners. I’m Phreak and I’m here with Morello, Lead Champion Designer.
Together we’ll be discussing some gameplay changes coming into this update for League of Legends.
While this video does not cover every single change, it will explain the thought process behind some of our decisions.
Garen is an unviable competitive pick. While his laning is strong, his impact fell off in the late-game.
In this patch we’re giving Garen a lot of ability tweaks to address his late-game viability.
First, we’re shifting the slow-removal from Judgment to Decisive Strike. Why did we make this shift?
This allows Garen to use his most fun and iconic damage ability, Judgment, just for the damage.
Adding this effect to his movement ability makes sense for what the ability does already.
We’re tweaking Judgment to scale with Total Attack Damage instead of Bonus Attack Damage.
Additionally, we’re having the actual Attack Damage ratio scale with rank. What’s this change for?
Since champions get Attack Damage every time they level up, this helps this ability scale into the late game.
The lower AD ratio early on means that he doesn’t just get massive as soon as he finishes an item like Brutalizer.
Courage is going to grant Garen a percentage increase in Armor and Magic Resist instead of a flat buff on minion kill. What’s the impact of this change? 00:01:26.900,00:01:21.300 We did this to make Garen better late game. Building Armor and Magic Resist is just better now.
Overall he’ll be tankier now, but he can’t just build health to do it.
We’re also scaling Decisive Strike’s silence to be lower early-game. What does this mean for Garen?
Lowering the silence duration on early ranks of Decisive Strike means we’re able to put power elsewhere and stop some abusive lane situations.
For example we were able to buff Decisive Strike’s movement speed so that he can run faster when using this skill.
Garen’s ultimate, Demacian Justice, is going to have a longer cooldown at Rank 1 and a shorter cooldown at Rank 3. What’s the logic behind this change?
It’s another shift to moving some of Garen’s early game power into better late game.
Now if Garen does beat you in lane and kills you with his ultimate, it won’t just be up right when you get back to lane.
But in the late game, team fights happen much more and Garen needs that ultimate on a shorter cooldown.
Katarina can have really exciting high moments where she dominates and jumps around the fight, but more often than not, she can’t reach that state and she really doesn’t contribute in a meaningful way.
In this update, we’re implementing some significant ability changes to fix this.
First, we’re replacing Killer Instincts with a new ability called Sinister Steel
This ability instantly deals damage in an area around her and grants Katarina bonus movement speed if it hits an enemy champion. Why did we replace this ability?
Katarina really needed a more reliable damage source because her ultimate is so unreliable.
We wanted to leave her ultimate both powerful and counterable so that she can have those games where she goes crazy and takes over.
Since getting into melee range now results in more damage, it allows Katarina to think about it and take smart risks.
We’ve distributed the active effects from Killer Instincts into her other active abilities, too:
Shunpo grants Katarina damage reduction for a short time after use and her ultimate, Death Lotus, applies healing reduction to the enemies she hits. 00:03:15.200,00:02:16.600 Why keep the old effects?
While Killer Insincts was a little hard to notice all the time, it did add a lot of power to Katarina.
Keeping these effects on the champion helps her feel the same for old school Katarina players.
One of Shunpo’s main uses is to jump on a low health champion and finish them off.
The damage reduction there helps ensure she can do that realistically.
Bouncing Blades is losing some of its base damage but gaining an extra effect:
Now it applies a mark that can be consumed by Katarina’s abilities or basic attacks to deal bonus damage. Why make this change?
Being a resource-less champion, Katarina’s “free poke” from Bouncing Blades was just a little too strong.
Now Bouncing Blades will do less overall damage, but will do more if you manage to close into melee range.
When and where to jump into melee range is a pretty tough decision to make overall so doing this keeps us from having to put mana on her because she has other decisions she’s making.
If you want to see some of the process behind the decisions we made on Katarina, or just have questions, you can go to Beat Punchbeef’s Dev Diary on the forums.
Click the link for your language and feel free to come ask us questions or discuss what you think about these changes.
Varus has a problem where his ultimate, Chain of Corruption, is too hard to notice for his teammates, so they often don't capitalize on the ability.
Next patch, we’re updating the particle on Varus’s ultimate, Chain of Corruption, to make it more noticeable.
What’s the goal behind this change?
The main goal of this change is to inform Varus’s teammates.
There’s a lot of power in Varus’s ultimate, but since most of his teammates weren’t capitalizing on the opportunity, a lot of that power was lost.
Now that his teammates can see when it’s out and when it’s happening, they can make appropriate decisions and use it to the fullest potential.
Zyra is incredibly overpowered so we released a hotfix to nerf her.
These are the same nerfs you’re going to see in the patch notes.
Why did we nerf her, and why the hotfix?
Zyra just did everything well. She had great burst damage, sustained damage, zone control, and crowd control.
Simply put, she just excelled at everything and was better than other mages.
We specifically chose to hotfix these changes to make sure she was more appropriately balanced for our upcoming regional tournaments.
CertainlyT spent some time on the forums to give rationale behind why we chose to nerf what we nerfed.
If you want to read some of these thoughts and insights, go to the forums and check it out.
This patch, we’re adding the ability to create “notes” on your Friends List.
As your list grows, you can keep better track of things like who your friends are, what roles they excel at, or why you enjoy playing with them.
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