So, are we concerned that letting Jarvan have two flags is a double standard?
You already made that joke today. That's actually pretty good. I work with Phreak and that one was pretty good.
Yeah, there you go. Yeah okay, so talking about turrets, we removed the slow and damage reduction from
inhibitors.
That's kind of a big deal. So what the hell man? What's going on?
So actually, we really want split pushing to be more effective in League of Legends.
We think particularly if you look at the competitive meta it's very, very deathball heavy, lots of 5v5 team fights
and teams that even try to split push tend to stall out really hard on the inhibitor turret
so went really hard on this, we didn't just trim mechanics, because we didn't want you doing math
We didn't want you thinking is my... Thanks by the way. You're right, math is hard.
But we didn't want you thinking, is Deathmark still going to kill him with 5 percent less damage?
10 percent? We're like, no. We don't want you to think about these mechanics,
we want you to have a clear understanding of what your damage is going to do
and we want you to try more split pushers in solo que, in competitive, go see what happens.
I think this is cool, but my personal opinion is... cause we've talked a couple times about how
it's not really sure how much this will move the needle when things like Sivir,
Righteous Glory on like Alistar and Maokai
like hard engage is still very much in, right? But I wonder if there aren't characters like Shen that kind of exist
at this... the halfway point of like, is a really good split pusher, is a really good team fighter
like, I feel like we may not see the Jax's at first even though he is getting like even a numerical buff this patch
but I wonder if teams don't try to employ a little bit more of that strategy with this change being the way that it is
and then seeing how it fits out and seeing where you can include like more damage heavy split pushers.
Right, I think there are a lot of things that need to happen to make split pushing optimal
like if Righteous Glory didn't exist, then if we killed Sivir and Dragon wasn't nearly as valuable,
yeah you would probably split push a lot
we're not doing that, but we are making it so it's a viable option given the right comp and the right Champions
I mean, if your 4 man unit has Janna and, you know, mid Karma or something, somehow allow disengage
and you have a very strong top lane split pusher you can make it work,
but I think there's a strong possibility we need to do more in the next couple of patches to make it happen.
You mentioned taking away a mechanic for defenders and their agency
why we do feel like defenders should have like, not a big high ground against their offenders?
Like I said, there are elements of defenders advantage,
your team can more easily rotate to defend you if you are losing against a split pusher
we have Homeguards, we have the base gates.
The laser turret is very, very good at punishing mistakes that they try to dive you and stuff like that
the damage is really high, so I think the defender overall has the advantage, but it shouldn't have such a huge advantage
that it will make up for any other advantage the attacker has built up over the course of the game
you know, if I've won my lane, top lane, I've been getting a lot of cs, I've been getting a lot of items
I'm level 15 and you're level 12 defending, that shoud be enough, right? I still think like a level 15 vs a level 15 with equal items that the defender's probably going to win.
I want to move on so that we don't spend a million years speaking about this thing.
I do want to give you a chance to speak up about something though, which is Runeglaive.
It's taken the place of Magus... We made this change to do what?
We wanted to add diversity to the jungle similarly to the way in which we brough in Juggernaut
and when we made Cinderhulk to like let more people use it.
Right now, the problem with Magus is that it doesn't actually make you able to clear the jungle
if you couldn't already, it just gives you a very, very large stat infusion as a reward for doing it.
So if you are Nidalee, if you are Fiddlesticks, if you could already clear the jungle, here is 80 AP and 20...
Yeah, just go spear dudes or Crowstorm people forever and just win.
And you'll notice that, Fiddlesticks among the highest win rate solo que junglers in our game.
Nidalee has been very strong for a while.
When this item gets purchased, it's extremely powerful, but very few people can use it. Right.
And so instead of leaving it in the game and having that balance point that we have to tune around
we decided we were going to replace it entirely with Rune Glaive so we can offer an item that a lot of people
can use so now... like, Nidalee already likes this item, Fiddlesticks still uses this item right?
Like, between drains he will auto for the mana back and just AOE the small camps down
without having to use Dark Wind.
Diana might be in with this. Fizz, Evelynn, Karma jungle might be back. We've seen Malzahar
Yes. Karma jungle. No! Somewhere Diamondprox is smiling.. That's right, yeah.
We've seen Malzahar jungle, like he has the mana to keep the voidling tanking the entire time when he gets...
Jeevun's trying to act cool about Malzahar jungle. He's like, oh we've seen Malzahar jungle.
Jeevun like, got like 16 kills in a play test just waiting in bushes for people to show up
and then just optic blasting them out of nowhere.
I punish Pwyff for playing Nidalee and existing basically.
Okay, I'll allow it. We were actually pretty encouraged after that play test.
God, I was so salty about that game. I really, really like Runeglaive, I think it's a really awesome item
you don't, like... the big problem was as a mage, you're like, I need these blue buffs
these are my blue buffs, but your mid laner wants them. Yeah.
So you are hoping it's a Yasuo or somebody who doesn't use it.
Yeah. But the thing here that I'm concerned about. My only big concern with Runeglaive,
I think it's really good all around is that junglers are saying it enables them to help them jungle, right?
Getting to the point where you actually purchase Rune Glaive, you're like, okay I backed after a very horrible
clear I got my first jungle item. Now I have to clear, gank with a pretty poor kit for ganking
to get a Sheen to then get this item.
So that gap for all these junglers is going to be very punishable. Your are invadable by most meta junglers
you're very punishable in that window and I think that's the only problem I forsee here
is that the people who are actually already good at that already
and surviving are just going to become that much better.
So we explored options of making the early clear for these mages a little better and then we thought about it,
we were like, do we really want to remove the
disadvantages of putting a mage in the jungle, because they tend to scale well off gold
If you could hide certain vulnerable ones out of lane and come to a lane
when you gank with a huge amount of burst and cc
that's something we were pretty scared of, so we think it is healthy for them to have a difficult first clear
I think a lot of them can get through it if they get help and a decent leash,
but they are very vulnerable to the Lee Sins of the world
Sure, that is, I think a cost they pay, but they actually have a decent item growth path now I think
where a lot of them literally wouldn't actually be able to jungle, right? So try to run jungle Brand, you got Magus
you still got decked by the jungle and you still ran out of mana.
Yeah, you basically had to just chain gank if you wanted to do it
But now you can actually clear, you get the AOE so you can burst down the camp very quickly
without taking damage and you don't feel bad about spending mana.
We want you to cast spells as a jungler when you are a mage jungler, right?
And you shouldn't feel like that was a penalty. Okay..
We have Elise changes, and you actually played her today. Yeah.
You did go Rune Glaive so in general how do you feel about these changes to Elise
because I think we can all agree she is not really in a great spot right now. Feelings?
I think that she's in a great spot after these buffs and the fact that it's pretty much 3 simultaneous buffs
Runeglaive gives her another option in the jungle, a lot of damage to actually burst somebody,
she's in a place where she's going to have a lot of sustain, she's going to make up late game damage
with the fact that her E now gives her more damage by maxing it
and you can take a different Smite with Rune Glaive, you don't have to take Trailblazer, you can be like,
Challenging Smite, now I'm killing squishies, now I'm a back line threat,
so I feel like Elise, just in general after this patch is going to be in a much better spot
she's not going to be sitting in that bottom of the tier. She's going to be a great pick comp Champion.
What I really like about her damage input now is... like it's still, especially with Runeglaive,
is a little more front loaded it is kind of like right as you start getting points into cocoon
it's just like a whole blast of spell damage and she still...
Her on hit is really good too with attack speed from Skittering Frenzy, like she's going to do a lot of damage.
But I guess that's the thing I like about the Repel changes because it's after you use it, right?
In a majority of cases, for her to follow up and kind of fill the time with that damage output, she's like on top of
you it's like peelable, it's something you can knock away, where I think if a pass, like if you imagine
pre-nerf Elise, like God mode Elise, it was like, you get cocooned and she will kill you in that cocoon, right?
It's like, take a huge amount of damage, take a huge amount of damage from there, right?
Where now, it's a little bit of a follow up as like, not only can I escape, maybe my team can help
and if you're just like a strong melee Champion as well,
it says well now's my time to try to make something happen, right?
A lot of the power we gave to Elise only comes when she repels on top of you,
which means she is not planning for escape with Repel.
She's taking a risky move and I think that's something that we're a lot more comfortable making her strong at
As opposed to the old Elise that was kind of like ball of stats,
walk up to you and just exit whenever she felt like it with Repel
and on top of that I think, she does have a lot of the attributes that made her really strong with the
new sustain mechanic .
The early game pressure is real with Elise now. She has a lot of versatility of where she ganks
which camp she takes and that is sort of like a niche that Rek'Sai occupies,
I think she'll be maybe more of the more mage version of it but this is what a lot of people came to expect out
of Elise and I think people should be pretty excited about the changes.
Last big thing that I want to get to... Ryze.
I never seen that guy in a game. Oh wait, he was banned every game. Yeah, he was.
Hopefully at least, So yeah, Ryze has been going out of control.
People are angry, and I think rightly so, about his existence,
so I think people are looking very much forward to the Ryze nerfs, so tell me, for a Champion that has
been up then down like he's either top of the list or bottom of the list, like are we sending
him back there again? Is that the deal is like we're just like banished to the shadow realm, what's happening?
So we don't want to knee cap him in any sense, right? I think right now, he's probably a little too strong
I saw some clip of Huni just outplaying someone really hard and killing them. He's not that far off. Outplaying.
Right. Yeah, well Huni is a very good player. The guy didn't try to move so obviously he screwed up
but, I would say that he is obviously way overtuned right now and we need to bring him back down to earth
but he is a late game hyper carry. That is what... the definition we have molded him into
and he is going to be really strong when he gets levels. This version, I think,
this change is a little complicated to read it largely addresses the perma-root case,
it's much, much lower duration even in his optimal case for putting a lot of W's on you
and it's very firmly gated by him getting levels, so the cool down reductions passive is tied to his Q rank up
so that has to be at level 9 to really do a lot. Also, his R cool down reduction at level 6 and level 16
are also other gates to it so he's still going to be a really scary dude when you get gold and levels into him
but it's going to happen later in the game and it's not going to be like, Ryze got a kill from his jungler top lane
Catalyst, Tears, came back to lane and the game's over. That shouldn't happen.
So, when he hits level 13 and I played against him, he's still very threatening.
I felt like I could barely move, that Merc Treads was a have to buy this item in order to even play against Ryze
even if there was like 2 AD threats on the enemy team, like have to buy Merc Treads against him
and I still felt like I was getting very close to perma-rooted,
the fact that he has so much movement speed on his R as well
meant escaping him was very difficult, so we were looking at Ryze and we're like
oh, this kind of accident happened that ended up being something for him and we're like,
oh, maybe he should be able to perma-root people a little bit.
Is that like the direction we are going in here, because it's not very fun to play against. It's very frustrating.
So what one of the cool things with the Ryze update is he really feels super machine gunny now
when he gets in his passive and for us to support that,
he throw a lot of roots at you, right? Because he is going to be chain casting spells
We have largely mitigated how effective each individual like, root is from Rune Prison
He is still going to root people for a decent amount of time and we're okay with that,
that is one of the strengths that we want him to showcase
particularly as the game goes on, but what's important for us is,
it probably can't be too oppressive and it can't happen too early in the game
I did want to go back to the fact that the patch, you know Huni went crazy on it, stuff like that.
How did we not catch this?
How did this slip by that maxing W and actually getting perma-root off and then we're like,
oh that should be his pattern. Like, why aren't we able to catch these things in time?
So, I think I would say first of all that was a failure on our part, just straight up. That we probably shouldn't have
put him out there in that state and that's something that we've reviewed as to how it got to that point.
One of the reasons why it happened was that the perma-root ability for him was possible when he was released
When everyone thought he was trash, right? So a lot of people didn't want to pick up the new Ryze and explore
what they could abuse with him and see
like the mechanics that made him particularly powerful, because overall I think he was tuned a little low
and at that point we made some pretty severe changes in response to bring up some of his weak areas.
When we brought up some of his weak areas to par,
the teeth like the perma-root and the incredible damage was exposed, right?
So, they were there, but we weren't sure how consistent and easy they would be to pull off
and how strong he would be
in his passive, for example, for you to not be able to play against him.
So I think we knew we were bringing up some of the strengths that we thought were powerful
but the total recipe, we didn't really calculate very well. It's interesting when you do a
very, very fundamentally like, complex change that we did to Ryze
where the mechanics on it were very, very nuanced
and some of that is really hard for us to tune properly, honestly
We have a lot of internal feedback on how this is supposed to work and how strong it is
but the amount it gives you out of any Champion in development is outnumbered
in the first few minutes they hit live, right?
I mean, just in terms of pure games played by our players and that's really when we see a lot of these
things so, we really want to minimize stuff like this where it's like this guy was way off, but we learn a lot
every time we release something new, you know?
Cause I'm sitting here and I'm like, Ryze, why is he released like this? This is terrible and now I'm like,
it doesn't seem like a strong enough... because like, my gut reaction is first like, get back down there
get back at the 40 percent win rate, like get out of my games, but the fact that you're like, okay, he'll turn on
later he is a hyper carry, by our definition of it, so let him be a hyper carry, just later in the game
so having a perma-root still exists, I can kind of accept that. It's kind of frustrating to play against still
but that's, I guess, a part of his pattern is he is supposed to frustrate you just like a Vayne who tumbles
around you and you're a Caitlyn, right?
I didn't notice this, Ryze is on the... I know... the backround there. He's like over my shoulder like,
I'm talking shit about Ryze. I'm like, he's right behind me isn't he?
He's level 13 now dog. He's about to go in on the roots.