Hey everyone. Welcome back for another episode of the Patch Rundown. If you haven't already,
go check out the patch notes which you can do by clicking the button somewhere on this
screen. Today we are talking about Deathfire Grasp removal and finding out whether or not
we really hate Assassins. Joining me now is the Nerf-Master Suck Town himself Ryan Morello
Scott. Hello. And the boy... Hey. Voyboy. So guys, thank you for coming out to talk
with me. We are talking big picture stuff here, 5.2, it's good to see you. Yeah, thanks
for having me. I was really happy to be here, and then I read the patch notes and I went
through it and I was like, yeah I don't know if I want to do this anymore, but I'll
tough through it. You are already on the plane, you're just like, uh can we turn this thing
around? When's the next return flight at? Just fly Voyboy out and say, here's how
we've kicked you specifically in the junk. Yeah, so you know, we just touched on it,
let's get right into it. Deathfire Grasp is gone. Yep. It's out of the game. People
even thought it was a bug, it came out of nowhere. People were messaging I thought
it was a bug. Yeah people were messaging me like, DFG doesn't seem to be in the store,
can you fix this? I was like, oh we did fix it. That's a fix. So tell me why are we
getting rid of DFG? So Deathfire Grasp, it's a popular item because it's a lot of fun
to push a button and melt a face. Yeah dude. But we thought we had to remove it because
the kinds of things that items can do is give you different kinds of power, let you diversify
your build, all sorts of stuff but in this case it's giving you burst. Yeah. Right.
My power is killing you. Yeah my power is killing you. Harder. Tends to be... that power
is pretty specific on Champions right? Like Champions who can or can't burst you. Some
Champions are squishy, some Champions are tanky and things like that and this was creating
a lot of negative effects on character diversity and we really want to focus on that right
now. Voy, you've been playing Mid lane for quite a while now. How are you feeling about
this, the removal of DFG? Personally I'm not that salty over it because most of the
Champions I play they'll do fine without DFG. DFG got really strong because Athene's
got nerfed. Athene's was like the best Mid lane item for a long time. Right. And it was
so cost-efficient. It had everything you needed. Yeah, it was just too good. It gave you defensive
stats against your matchup, like why would you not buy Athene's ever? So that got nerfed,
Morello is God, like God tier, DFG was really good too because people suddenly didn't
have... actually you guys nerfed Athene's once and then you made it like even worse.
You guys lowered the MR of it. Yeah. DFG was better, all these Assassins... like burst Mages
got better because they're doing the magic damage and it's suddenly easier for like
a Fizz or an Akali or a Kassadin or a Syndra or a Vi or whatever to kill the other guy.
Ryan, you mentioned a little bit about how being able to buy into burst and opt-in isn't
really healthy with certain character sets. There are a lot of players out there that
are like, what about my AP Tristana? What about my AP Malphite, right? How do we feel
about these characters and these kinds of off-builds in a world where DFG doesn�t
exist? You were talking earlier like, oh we want... like diversity in Champion choices.
Right. How does that play into this here? Off-builds have been a big topic for a long
time because it.s like, hard, like what's your stance on off-builds? Do you like them
or do you hate them, is commonly the conversation. It's like, the honest answer is way more
nuanced than that. Yeah. The answer is both. Yeah, exactly, And neither. Right, right and
it's... a lot of it's because right now we are valuing, and you'll see, you'll
get tired of hearing this. I'm already tired. Absolutely. I haven't even heard it yet,
I'm already tired of it. We really think that character variety is one of the most
important things to both preserve and make better in League of Legends. The way you express
yourself as your character, the variety you can see in a team's comps based on character,
the kind of strategies you can pull off is based on characters, so we are kind of focused
pretty hard on that. Now when you see things like this, other off-builds that are DFG,
like they are kind of limiting that character variety necessarily, we don't want to support
those at the cost of the character variety. However, things like Blue Ezrael or other
things like, it's a cool different way to play Ezrael, probably isn't strangling other
dudes out or things like that. Now you have two ways to play Ezrael, awesome. We want
to continue to support that, it's just not the number one value on all the things we
can list as a value. Right, so basically all you're saying... if you're off-build is
doing something like, new or changing the game in some way then that's cool. If it's
just adding some of these things... you were talking about tankiness and burst right? So
Malphite being an example of characters, that guy, kind of a tank, probably shouldn't
be one-shotting people right? You're overlapping these qualities that probably just shouldn�t
exist. Right, and it's like what if that ever became good? Can you even play a burst
guy who is not as tough as Malphite now? Like, you know those kinds of things... when we
used to see that back in the day, did occur, we think that's cool to be able to play
and say, oh I saw that in my game, but it gets old pretty fast when then that's all
you see. So Voy, I want to start the next little bit with you. So DFG right, was actually
bought on a considerable number of Mid laners right? A number of which you've played,
like you were pretty big into LeBlanc and Syndra, especially if we are looking at the
Playoffs time, but also pretty big on Katarina, Ahri, Akali, Annie as well. How do you feel
about these characters that kind of relied on it and where they're going to be at right
now? So, for me DFG has almost always been a luxury item, it's never been like a core
item in my mind on a lot of the Champions I play, like core items meaning items that
you need to accomplish their kit at a proficient level so like what DFG usually meant for me
was, I'd have the opportunity to brutally overkill at least one person. Just do something
really rude. Yeah so like, I'm like walking around with Annie, got my little stun up,
I just like Flash on the AD Carry, DFG ult, he's already at like 20%, I QW like, what
am I doing... why am I killing this guy. He didn't do anything to me, why am I trying
to kill him? I could have bought... He had so much to live for. Yeah so, a lot of times
I felt like DFG was not needed to accomplish the Champion's main goal. I would say there
are certain Champions like, I'd say Veigar right now, maybe Ahri, like.. well that was
your guy's fault. You kind of built her identity around the Charm and the DFG and
stuff like that. And that's actually important because we're actually kind of going back
on that because we think like, sometimes we choose that direction, it kind of flattens
her out into, oh hey here is another bursty character, it's like, well you can pick
lots of those like, oh let's turn her back into the kite Mage who is like, almost like
nobody, that's way more unique. So, sorry to interrupt, but I thought that was important.
Everybody makes mistakes. How dare you. You can go back and fix them it's alright. We�ll
forgive you. But, I think the Champions that really rely on DFG right now will be fine,
they'll live on. There's other builds, there's other really good items. Sure there's
going to be like, kind of a difference in play style that you are going to have to adapt
to on a lot of these Champions, but I think it's cool that you guys are not just like
removing it and being like, go feed yourselves and find shelter. You're actually helping
the Champions live on. Sending Annie, she is like nine years old, alright go on, find
shelter. Based on the movie. So we gave Ahri a bunch of movement speed while her orb�s
out now, so you can do some crazy mobility plays with her and Annie gets more Tibbers
love. And, you know, we are trying to look at these unique elements of the Champions
and just really power that up every time we get the opportunity to, especially when compensating
for taking something away. And not just like, oh give them their burst back, here you go,
go kill people just like you were. It's like, no, what makes these Champions unique?
Why would I bring this Champion over to this... Why would I bring Annie over Ahri or vice
versa? Why would I bring them at all? If we can't answer those questions other than,
well every Champion in our game to be good needs 100 to 0 you as a major Assassin then
there's something wrong. Yeah. I think that's cool. So speaking of taking things 100 to
0, let's talk about Assassins. We knew it was going to happen. So I read on the internet
that we hate Assassins. I read that too. Can you confirm? I can confirm that we do not
hate Assassins. Whoa. Whoa. See what I just did there? Oh my god. You guys did it. No
one ever thought that would happen. No, it's... we don't hate Assassins. Actually, I think
Assassins are one, an important part of like, the eco-system of what can be part of your
team comp, but not only that, Assassins are pretty fun to play and add some interesting
dynamics, if done right. Yeah. The problem is, historically, we made Assassins that just
kind of like, are really quick killers that don't have a lot of telegraphing or a lot
of interaction behind their assassination patterns, and while those are fun to play
as, those do cause a lot of problems. We want you to be able to have to outfight your opponent
in real-time in a lot of cases right? So, a lot of the Assassin changes we'll want
to be pushing towards when we do change Assassins... and you'll see some of this in the past
and more in the future, is making these Assassins more interactive, more ability for you to
respond to them as the victim and more opportunities for outplays and kind of interesting things
that happen in that process, right? Yeah, what's interesting is that a lot of these
Assassins that, from my perspective, kind of more recently started to become problems.
There was a long stretch of time where they were just like chilling, like you'd pick
it and people would like, in your games call you a troll and when you are streaming they
would be like, oh my God he's like doing the thing... It's the Akali legend. Yeah
exactly. And now people... like, the Champions have become mainstream and it's like, OK
you're picking Katarina? Like, what did we do to you? Come on man, like come on. So
the last thing I want to mention here, kind of a big one... I think a lot of the driving
force behind people being very sad about Assassin nerfs or DFG's removal is the fear of the
farm laners returning. Right. The Orianna, the Xerath, the Ziggs right? And it feels
like we just saw them right? It feels like, we would see them and they would get picked
and they would stall out games, they would shove out lanes forever, wave clear. Are we
trying to bring those guys back? What's happening? There's no intent to bring those
guys back. It's not like we are trying to like, kick out the current tenants and then,
OK Ziggs, pack up, like put your tent down and set up camp dude. That's not what we
are trying to do, and if they do become dominant to the same degree it's no different of
a problem than some different details on it. These guys don't have the right interaction
right? They just sit back and farm. They don't create the right kind of gameplay and they
would limit character variety if they were the guys who were just kind of in there setting
up shop. We have to treat them with the same standard we treat Assassins here. We have
to take a look at them and reform them or take them down a notch to make sure that there's
good character variety and different ways to play. Yeah, so is the Boy worried about
the farm laners? What's happening? I mean, if I had a time machine to go back to any
point in my career I probably wouldn't choose the point where people were just wave clearing
and face trolling me lane, but I think the game as a whole has been pretty balanced for
the past few months. I actually liked a lot of the Champion diversity we were seeing at
Worlds and even now like, there's a lot of options. I think these nerfs and like these
kind of wide-sweeping Assassin changes are obviously kind of disrupt the balance and
I haven't played on the new patches yet, no one has. We don't know what's going
to be strong, we don't know who is going to make a comeback, but kind of the way League
of Legends is, there is always going to be like different metas, like it's not about
mastering one Champion. It's not about mastering Akali or Ahri or something like that and becoming
the best at that and winning Worlds or something, you've got to be playing a wide variety
of Champions, you've got to be able to adapt to different play styles, different changes,
it's just a fluid game and you've got to be able to keep up. Guys, thank you for
coming on the show to talk with me about all the amazing things and all the ways which
we do not hate Assassins. For all of you at home, thank you that's it for Patch Rundown
5.2. For myself, Ryan, Voy and the entire crew... See ya nerds!