Yeah, I'll let that one go, because the stash is outlandish and the hair is swiveled. This
is the hair rundown. Who's champion has the best hair? Alright, stop it, we're done. Hecarim,
he's got a mane. champion diversity. Lucian. Greg, champion diversity. This is something
that I personally want a lot of clarification on, because on the last couple episodes we
have talked about champion diversity in like very weird pointed ways like... What do you
mean weird? Well, it's never felt like it got it's own thing, we're just kind of like,
oh yeah we buffed some champions, nerfed and then because of that. Yeah. Right and so when
like strategic diversity, we did like a rundown and like a dev blog and like everything on,
so give me your verbal dev blog and agreement, sign in blood with your pen, champion diversity,
what is champion diversity? So League of Legends has a lot of champions and we feel like, you
know kind of the contract we have with players is you should be able to play them. It doesn�t
make sense making champions when the pool is really, you know, 20 or so that are viable,
so I think we are successful in champion diversity when someone feels like they can actually
play their favorite champion rather than feel like, well I'll wait one day until maybe they'll
buff whoever. Right. And that every game you don't see the same enemies. Like, it's okay
if you're a Jinx main, it's okay if you're a LeBlanc main, but you shouldn't always see
Jinx/LeBlanc in every game you're playing that everyone else is doing too. You should
feel like as your building a comp going in that you think about which of the marksmen
is really going to build this comp correctly. Is this a good situation for Vayne? Is this
a good situation for Kog'Maw or whatever. Are there enough things in the world to just
make it so you can have a 120 different champions with 4 abilities and a passive that are drastically
different from each other? Enough to warrant each one of them being playable? Because there's
going to be a time where split push just isn't a good strategy, right? And you're not going
to see the split push champions. Is this actually something that is feasible or is this just
a dream goal that we talk about to try to get to. I've tried to dream of like the perfect
shout cast, but that's never going to happen. Well not with that attitude. But you strive
for it all the time. Don't give me that. So is it something we strive for and it's not
obtainable? Yeah, it's a compass heading, I mean realistically we are not going to see
every ADC played in equal proportions, in every region, at every skill level, but we
can do a lot better, that we can do today. You know, ADCs aren't in a bad place right
now, but junglers, you know, you're not seeing them all. There are very tanky junglers and
even among them we're not getting full representation out there, and you're right, we're going to
have to take a lot of champions that are kind of occupy real similar niches of like, oh
I'm the super fast marksman, or I'm the Amumu who can jump in and stun everyone in a circle,
you know we have to find new things that champions can do when they are jumping into a team fight
to where when you are building a comp in the beginning of a game you can say, oh... Instead
of just, who's the best? Right, who does the most damage? I would say, another thing right,
because this patch we have Aatrox buffs, Shen buffs, Malphite buffs, kind of like, kind
of bring up some of the lower level guys and like, we have more in recent memory been trying
to look at people that are not in the greatest spot and bring them up a little bit as well
and try to unlock that feeling of like, oh I can't play my character. Another thing that
I think is kind of hard to balance is poke champions too. We have some nerfs to Luden's
Echo here in this patch that's going to hit both assassins and also those poke type Champions.
This is an item that's been a big pain point for me as a player for a, like in my games
just running into this on every mid laner and everybody who could possibly build this
item, building it first or second. Yeah, supports and top laners and junglers as well. Yeah,
it's everywhere. Do you like AP? Do you like movement? Yeah. Of course. it's basically,
it's a catch-all right? Do you need movement speed? There you go. Do you have movement
speed? It stacks on that. It's like all these great things, you have low cool down, high
cool down spells, it's good with everything. Now, when we're reducing the stacks from 20
to 10 per cast, it's going to be more of a niche thing, it's going to be better on people
who have mobility and people who cast a lot of spells as oppose to people who are like,
ok well I cast one spell every now and then, and the AP ratio going down isn't going to
affect it too much early in the place that it has, because it's like a first item buy,
because you want that extra base damage to help you kill like a back line minion wave
or the AP Kog'Maw to rain down some terror on people in a poke fight. This is, I think,
a good nerf for Luden's that's still going to keep it relevant and in the game and I
don't think it's too much. Awesome. So I think it's going to keep it in a good spot. Talking
about another prominent character with Luden's, I wanted to get your feelings on LeBlanc,
because we played a play test today and things did not go well for you. No. You were playing
Jayce, who we can probably talk about in a bit, and you were against LeBlanc and I wanted
to get your perspective, because I saw on Twitter Shiphtur and Scarra had a lot of harsh
words to say about the LeBlanc changes. There's like a gif that someone made of like the before
and after, right so how did you feel about the nerfs playing against them actually? So,
I felt like there was a lot of counter play to it now, because LeBlanc's combo is usually
IQ you, IW you in lane and try to just knock you out of lane with a point and click and
something very quick. So this is going to add to that, it's not just going to be LeBlanc
wins lane by hitting level 2 throwing these two abilities at you or just keep having that
pattern whenever you're in range and go up for a CS, like she will win a majority of
the trades, the thing though is it might be a little too slow for the laning phase, because
she can still use it from Fog of War late game right? I feel like this might be a nerf
that hits her a little too hard, especially in a meta where she was kind of falling off
anyway, because things were getting so tanky and her play pattern was, I need to kill squishies,
so when everything is tanky she is not successful. Yeah, so that said though, if LeBlanc get's
nerfed you can play more squishies, right? Like, that is the one thing, I hear exactly
what you're saying and I agree, like when I think of LeBlanc, because I watch a lot
of competitive, but I play a lot more, I think of LeBlanc as that reason that I get sad when
I look at my champion select. I'm like if LeBlanc is in the enemy team I'm not quite
as sad, but I'm like here's all the characters I can't play and here's the one's that I can,
right? And so my hope is that something like that means that we're ready to see it or maybe
if people pick her less you can see more things like Lux, Vel'Koz maybe come in. And I like
that perspective too, because I'm a tank player so seeing this I'm just like, oh well LeBlanc,
I'm probably never going to see her again, because she was never doing anything to me
in the first place, right? Like she could snowball a game really hard, but having the
perspective of somebody who plays like these squishy characters is actually pretty enlightening
to me, but I still feel like it might be a little too much, like it's going to be better
for people that you like to play, like Vel'Koz, very slow mobility champion and now that she
has less mobility... Very smart champion though. Little more even footing there, but I don't
know, because that feels like it was LeBlanc's thing, like I'm totally down for the E changes
and the E nerf, totally down for that, I think that is very needed, but I feel like this
might be too much on her at the same time, especially in comparison to how the meta has
shifted to a tank role. And if it's too much, you know, we can give her compensation elsewhere.
Yeah, I feel like that would be the idea. We talk so much about balance, but there are
other things to the game and she's a frustrating... many assassins can be frustrating to play
against and she is kind of the queen of frustrating, like oh there was nothing I could do, she
got into me, she fired off all her abilities... And then your teammates are like, there's
nothing I can do because she just disappeared. Or I caught her and then she disappeared anyway,
like you just... Hey, come back. Yeah. So taking it back a little bit, I mentioned Jayce.
You played him. Yeah. You did not do very well. Yeah. At all. I was just like, because
I was jungling that game and I was like, should we just swap computers at that point, like
should you jungle? Do you feel better when you take Smite? Is that something about it?
No, you were excited when we talked earlier this week about the changes and now that you
got a chance to play them I want to know how you feel. I feel like Jayce, despite my poor
performance on him, was really good. I felt very comfortable with the champion, the change
is almost seamless, because you never put points into his ultimate anyway and you just
wanted more of the poke pattern. And now that you can take the other abilities up to 6,
because you... Exactly. The fact that you can get that Q even further in the 30 extra
base damage it's just pushing it more towards that poke pattern is going to make him feel
really good and you never feel like you're wasting points ever. With Jayce before, you're
like I kind of want an R point, but it kind of sucks, so now you get that automatically,
you get that extra power boost and the thing I like about this too is he's going to be
another champion that isn't ult reliant, because we have so many champions in our game that
are ultimate reliant and that's the thing in pro play too is people are like, let's
pick these skirmishing comps, let's pick a Rek'Sai that doesn't need an ultimate in a
team fight. So Jayce is another champion that's going to have that going for him too, which
would be another niche that you would pick him in. Talking about late game guys, Shen,
the possible return of Shen, things that are happening with him. Look, we're buffing his
late game, specifically his split pushing, which I know is like emotionally triggering
most people that will hear this that will be like, oh no. Well he used to be the guy
that could do that and now with teleport is a thing it's like not so special anymore,
before this change. Right, well so are we ever going to change that or do you think
we should change that, because that's like... teleport has had a pretty huge impact on the
game in the last Season and a half, that's it's been adopted like 100 percent and you're
not seeing Ignite up there, at least in terms of competitive play. I think it's pretty common.
So I guess what I am saying is, is that a bad thing? Would it be like, ah Shen's niche
is gone now, let's make everyone else not take teleport or do you think the teleport
being used widespread in the top lane is actually probably better for League? I think, I mean
personally I think the teleport is a good change overall. The top lane is always...
players like it, because it's the lane where I get to prove my own mettle, because there
is no one that can come help me out, but on the other hand you can be so far removed from
the rest of the game that I like teleport letting, you know, adding a little bit mobility
within reason there, but Shen needs a reason to exist too, so maybe we are trying to have
it both ways, but we want all top laners to have a little more access to movement and
split pushing and things like that, but Shen is supposed to be the tanky ninja that can
go up there and be taking turrets alone. I didn't want to laugh. Like, the tanky ninja
killing buildings. Which, imagining Shen with a bunch of hammers just beating the hell out
of a building, this is my identity! It's got a big shield, because he's a tank now. Yeah,
what? Oh god. We have a lot of ninjas in League of Legends, they all have to have a little
bit of differentiation. Yeah, I know they do. So are you just not a Shen fan or are
you not excited about these changes? I'm not really excited about these changes too much,
just because I feel like they are a little bit of a band-aid problem for him. Like, we
are kind of trying to cover something up for a little bit. No, that is totally fair. And
it's like, oh let's just throw him some changes, maybe he'll be better after that. This is
one of those things we do to, you know, Urgot was similar, like maybe we can get players
to really love the champion, to play them a little bit now, with the promise that we
eventually fix...Yeah, but I have a question about that, because if you're updating something
and then people are like, oh my God, I love Shen right now, I love these changes to him,
the fact that you reduced energy costs and stuff like that. Now he's great and he's playable
and then you're like, we've got to change him. They're like, wait, what are you�...you're
just taking away this thing you gave us. If people are enjoying Urgot, then you're like,
we're changing Urgot to something completely different. Right. That's always a weird thing
to tread for me, where we're like buffing something just to like stave people and be
like, you can still play this Champion, but before we change it into a different champion.
I mean that's certainly a risk and we try not to strip a champions identity away completely
when we do an update and I think we've been better about it recently than we did when
we first kicked off updates, but at the same time it feels mean to players to be like,
you know 2017 you'll get to play you're favorite champion again. Yeah, like that is the balancing
point, because I think what you say is super valid and I think there are a lot of people,
hopefully less and less, a lot of people love their champions, and when they get updated,
they're almost fearful of an update. They're like, oh they are going to take away the thing
that I love, but I am excited to see when Shen starts seeing play in League of Legends
again, at a time when like, Gnar exists, right? Yeah. I feel like since Bami's Cinder is more
accessible, you have the wave clear early on, it gives HP, which gives him more damage
on key strike. I think he'll be in an okay spot. He'll be able to do Shen things, but
there are lane bullies out there. He can't really shut anybody in the top lane down.
Shen has all these things that he's been doing for a very long time, now it's like he's late
game is better, he's mid late game. Yeah. His early game laning phase has been the only
thing that's like maybe he's not that great at it with the people coming up right now,
but we'll see what happens with him, because right now... You sound just so over it. Yeah,
I'm just like, meh. Your like, Jayce, LeBlanc, assassins, I'm like, so excited and then,
I mean I guess we'll have to see. Shen, how it's going to be. Alright, cool. That is probably
good enough for me. I guess we'll see how it is whenever the patch comes out, so back
to the champions that have funny hair. Draven. Right, Draven is one. Jax. Jax? Well, we don't
know. I know. Do you know? Part of being Ghostcrawler means I get to see Jax's hair.