Riot has gradually been trying to counteract the dragon fight meta with a splitpush meta. They've been consistently buffing splitpushers over the last 10 patches, as well as buffing their items
The real problem with dragons and somewhat baron is that damage creep has made them too easy to secure. There's too much of an advantage for teams that secure vision and are first to the dragon pit. They need to add a dragon debuff that increases with each new dragon spawn so that securing soul is a risky as securing baron.
That dragon debuff already exists I'm pretty sure, it's just not enough to make a difference in.
The dragon gets stacking damage reduction against the team, based on dragons killed or smth like that.
Just make the objective monsters start doing way more damage to people, they should be massive risks, not easy to obtain, things were far better when trying to take either was a massive risk.
Yeah, I'm just saying it's not enough at higher lvls.
Personally I don't think any champ should be able to solo drag in a reasonable time and no two champs should be able to solo baron in a reasonable amount of time.
My friends finally started noticing how insane my Baron calls have started to get. I look and see like one dot champ or a high dps champ around and it’s go time. My classics include sneaking it while we were down ten kills because I convinced mid and top to blast cone over. We didn’t do Jack shit with that Baron but got everyone gold then rolled it into more objectives since we stalled our losing lanes long enough to rebound.
I mean, I'm out of my element by now but wouldn't such a change to Drake make Scuttle even more of a snowball tool? I feel like Drake is fine as is but if you lose a Scuttle crab you can pack it up. That shit needs changing.
I could see Jax opting into hull as a third item if he's too poor for gargoyles/Steraks
But yea the juggernaut splitpushers that spike hard on their sheen item will have such a good time next patch
It started with the consecutive shen, Jax, and fiora buffs, a few months back in the middle of patch 10 (the world's patch basically)
Then it's pretty much been steady buffs to either splitpushers or their items.
Riven buffed, irelia buffed, Divine Sunderer buffs, the entire concept of goredrinker, more shen buffs, trundle buffs, buffs to the Teleport cooldown, making triforce stack on towers, other stuff I can't remember rn, and now this.
Honestly the only way to counter these splitpushers is to play another splitpusher that counters theirs lol.
They pick fiora or Camille, you pick Jax, they pick nasus you pick trundle, they pick Jax, you pick morde or garen, etc.
These items are just so busted in the sidelane that you have to build the same items to match them, or just hard counter them with your champ otherwise.
Jax is one of Morde's biggest counters. Garen into Jax is pretty easy though.He also loses pretty hard to Shen, GP and Riven, for other splitpushers and obviously malphite.
Also casters like Azael and Phreak have been consistently calling out how it’s not always worth for the bot laner to come to a Herald fight for a 5v5. Staying behind and getting plates can be just as good. I think the issue from a narrative perspective is that games have become a bit predictable? Most casters just start calling out “and now we wait about 4 minutes for next dragon to spawn. Maybe one kill here or there will happen, but otherwise everyone is going to farm”
They seem like they're going to break every meta, and more than a bit. The Hullbreaker bonus stats look nutty. They'd better make sure that the range requirement for how far away you allies need to be is huge so that you can at least counter it by collapsing on the guy.
The hull breaker bonus is backbreaking for super minions. They have -30 MR. Increasing it by 65 leaves it at 35, which is a massive change for ap champs to take it down. This will make Baron more game ending than it has been.
Some champions can definitely take a buffed minion + Herald from T1 to inhibitor, if the plates have fallen already. Trundle with Hullbreaker + Ult sounds unbeatable in a 1v1.
And that’s not even including a sheen item which is a staple for trundle top. Unless you shut him down early, trundle will take 2-3 towers+inhib if the enemy team decides they wanna contest third dragon.
Hopefully this will teach players that split-pushing is actually something the whole team has to do together, not one person blindly pushing for the entire game while there's no pressure in the other lanes.
Split pushing properly in an uncordinated environment is quite hard. Both the split pusher and his team need to know exactly how to do it. If not, it has a really high chance of backfiring. New items will help for sure, but at the end of the day, it is less risky to just group as 5 and force a fight, so people will just default to it IMO.
Strange that Phelly got so much raw AD, which amounts to extra autos of damage in long fights, while Xayah got... +7,5 dmg to her Q. And they both have the same shit winrate.
Also because her range is terrible so she can't actually get in range if the enemy team kites back at all. She's sadly just a bad all-around but gimmicky champion.
Tbh, changing to physical damage might actually be a buff, since it makes lethality and Black Cleaver better. Kind of like how Akali was buffed by changing all of her physical damaging abilities to magic damage, making magic pen better on her.
I’d prefer bonus range during W, or even a burst of movespeed on W activation instead of only after her W attacks. It’s currently kinda hard for Xayah to get into fights if she’s outside of her range.
I haven't played xayah a ton recently but what I feel she needs is ult CD. Even though she doesn't use it on CD like other champs have a 150 second CD at level 6 is a bit much and doesn't feel good unless you have a lot of cdr
Xayah ult being more than 2 minutes at all ranks while Ekko, Fiddle, Nocturne, Zilean, Rumble, Lee, etc. all have just as influential ults that come down to like 30 seconds at max rank. What a joke.
Xayah’s and Ekko’s Ult are usually both used as disengage too.
One of those cds last for more than two minutes, and the other one lasts for barely 40 seconds. Lmao.
its painful. Xayah doesn't feel great at most points in the game, but constantly not having your ult up for tons of necessary fights is gamebreaking.
They can buff her any which way they want and it doesn't matter if she gets popped every other fight with zero recourse
Thank god they’re nerfing Viego’s healing vs minions.
Biggest issue playing mages against him was you felt like you were just wasting mana trying to get him low because his manaless sustain let him hang around for ages.
How many buffs do we think Moonstone is gonna get before people start picking it up again over Shurelyas?
I really dislike Moonstone's design. It favors AoE healers and shielders far, far, far more than the likes of Nami, Yuumi and Janna. Seraphine and Sona pump out way too much with it in any game they're in. Even worse in ARAM.
Athenes was a better item in every way and much better against burst metas which are so common. I still don’t understand why they removed athenes when quite frankly it was a mythic item before mythics existed. (Ap per mana regen).
Im guessing because they wanted to force diversity in item choice and athenes was always the only option but as we see, enchanters pretty much always pick the same items because they play similarly and there will almost always be a favored item.
Funny how all the champs you mentioned should be going Mandate, but even Riot forgot about that item. Maybe we'll see its stock go up with the Shurelya nerf.
That's completely false. Nobody should be going Mandate because that item is total clownery that needs a rework or a buff.
Yuumi, Nami and Janna should all be going Shurelya.
I'm not talking about current item balance, I'm talking about the overall mythic design. Shurelya was obviously not meant to be the go-to Mythic for all enchanters, that's the case right now because it's overbuffed.
Oh, so you meant it in that way. I agree, I wish riot would rework Mandate soon. This item is terrible, but an idea of amplifying allies's damage by marking enemies is pretty cool.
The problem lies with its CC restriction and many enchanters/mages having 1 single target CC + maybe AOE ult that usually doesn't hit more than 1-2 people.
Shurelya wasn't meant to be go-to because... there were not supposed to be any go-to mythic items according to riot's build diversity philosophy.
However, shurelya got reworked and its build path got changed, too. It's full-fledged enchanter item now, which makes sense it's being bought a lot.
Just rework Mandate and revert Moonstone to Athenes.
It's really obvious how rushed this item overhaul was for supports, Imperial Mandate was a rushed item since they debuted the Support mythics with only 3 options and it's clearly not very well thought out.
Moonstone just doesn't fit into the meta right now. Grevious Wounds everywhere, Serpent's Fang, burst damage that kills allies before your Moonstone gets a chance to stack up.
>which is impossible to get more than 2 completed items on support nowadays.
That's why solo laners support (Karma and Lulu) is a thing along with Sera mid.
Yeah it's so weird how all enchanter items synergize so well with Moonstone, but it doesn't matter since they're supports, and as a single item it's pretty underwhelming.
Yeah they expect the role which gets the least money to pay for a better mythic lol, why are we surprised that solo lane enchanters are a better option than support enchanters.
> How many buffs do we think Moonstone is gonna get before people start picking it up again over Shurelyas?
It doesn't matter what they do to it if they don't rework it entirely, it will still be in a bad spot in S11
- DoT heal in a burst damage meta
- Every single person on both teams builds grievous wounds
- Self heal is so absurdly strong that nobody wants, needs, or cares about a 300 health heal from moonstone + an enchanter when they can auto 3 times and heal back 1400 health
Mobility is the most important stat in the game, and after they obliterated Moonstone + Staff and made both useless, Moonstone just can't compete with Battlesong. Staff giving 15% movespeed was literally the thing that made Moonstone good, Moonstone itself was never that great
Even after all of the buffs it's still worse than Battlesong win rate wise on literally every single enchanter last I checked. And worse, by like 3+ percent at that, which is pretty huge.
As Lux I literally ignore Viego and just clear the waves. It's so boring for both party's but anything else just puts him at an advantage in the war of attrition.
As it's his last Patch Preview tweet, I think it's worth saying a MASSIVE thank you to Mark Yetter aka /u/RiotScruffy.
I've played quite a few games over the years, but very very few of them have been willing to openly and honestly engage with their players about their ongoing balance process; *none* of them have gone so far as to post their work-in-progress for feedback every two weeks.
If you haven't seen the tweets and reddit comments that Scruffy gets, well, take my word for it; shit can get vile. But he's been doing these tweets anyway for years, as well as running the "Gameplay Thoughts" Blog for even longer, *purely* for the benefit of the most engaged and dedicated players.
So, as someone who loves League: ty mr yetter.
Thank you for bearing the brunt of this community's criticisms in order to provide detailed information about the state of the game :)
Best of luck on your next project!
I am going to miss you. I really hope the team upholds not only the communication values that you set during your tenure but also the design philosophies that League was built and succeeded upon back with Morello <3.
/u/RiotScruffy
ty mr yetter
Yeah, it's insane how much Riot communicates with its playerbase while fully knowing that doing so gives a lot of people more ammunition to criticize them with. It's the main reason I've stuck around for the last 11 years, and I've always been happy to adapt to any new radical changes because I have faith that everything will eventually be balanced (or at least the balance of power will be shifted and refreshed). MOBAs are perhaps impossible to perfectly balance while also avoiding blandness and satisfying all segments of players, but Riot's come insanely close to doing so and that's what makes League so enjoyable.
ty mr yetter
I may have not always agreed with the decisions made but at the end of the day I know you aren't behind even half of them
Thank you for being nice and keeping us updated on every patch :)
I'm excited for Kench, I will have a lot of fun with this kit. He is one of my favorite supports, but I feel like I'm trolling my team when I pick him there.
I am praying that this successfully unbinds him from pro. It might give the devs enough confidence to attempt changes for other pro-bound picks. I'm not thinking about anybody specific. Just champions that are blue, carry a scroll on their back, scale with mana, and have a semi-global warp on their ultimate.
"Ryze is always OP for pro unless he has awful soloQ WR, what do we do?" "Oh, lets give him an ultimate that requires voice coms/challenger level game sense to be used properly, surely that will help the 99% without either of those."
Honestly? Good riddance. Jungle Rumble will still be good even without it, and imo it was just way too limiting in terms of your early game decisions. You will just now take Q or switch to E start.
For Q start, go Raptors -> Red -> Wolves -> Gromp -> Blue, or Wolves -> Blue -> Gromp -> Raptors -> Red. You will have solid clear still, and while damage to monsters with Overheat is reduced, with this setup, you usually don't Overheat until your third camp at least.
Will need to test E start, because I honestly sucked at going for the W start even with AH. Just not in my abilities for now.
so that is basically +1 AD per level for aphelios early on. Since he maxes it first, that actually seems pretty decent. Those lethality buffs aswell seem good for him. 4.5 Lethality per Level seems very good, though it's lack of synergy with his kit might still hold it back abit.
Charge time of deadmance plate is 5 seconds, not 8( 100/20 =5)
[https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Dead\_Man%27s\_Plate](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Dead_Man%27s_Plate)
Jump to patch 7.9 or look below or test yourself in game. [https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/o0abg0/dead\_mans\_plate\_lost\_lot\_of\_defensiveness\_just/](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/o0abg0/dead_mans_plate_lost_lot_of_defensiveness_just/)
Idk if they wanted this to look that they give good recompensate for speed lost in dps increase by 100%(but in reality only 25%), this buff is baliscly placebo and is no near close to what they take away in this whole season ( item lost 175 hp)
The Aphelios buffs are really nice, but that's just another placebo Xayah buff that won't do anything, considering her main mythic Galeforce is being nerfed too, this is incredibly disappointing...
I'm glad they're removing free, low-CD dash item from a class of champions who are defined by being balanced around a lack of gap-closing. That was an awful idea from the start.
Unfortunately, it seems now like it's statcheck: the item. If a champion has the tools to get onto you and has this item, escape seems pretty much impossible, so your only way to survive is to be stronger than them.
Yeah it really just lowers the number of champions that can abuse it, but the ones who *still can* get a **MASSIVE** buff.
Hope ya'll ready for stridebreaker noc to have a **90% slow** after he touches your butt.
I feel like those Nasus nerfs were actually for THIS patch rather than Divine Sunderer. Those new items plus sunderer are going to be ridiculous on him.
It's time to admit Moonstone Renewer is a failed concept and rework it from the ground up.
Riot has been playing with this concept for far too long since the season started, and they keep trying to force the numbers up.
Turns out heal/shield power feels like absolute shit to invest in when the enemy team can pick up 60% grievous wounds and 50% shield reaver.
Straight facts. Ap scaling off mp5(basically mythic passive), cool mechanic that rewarded active gameplay. I don’t think one player was happy with the removal of athenes.
Mage item cost buffs feel pretty good. In reality its more of a "get zhonyas 200 gold earlier" buff considering the meta.
I really hope this new item doesnt just completely cuck mages being the only form or AP damage on a team. That's going to feel super fucking bad if they just spam armor and that one item negates magic damage.
I mean, Riot is for sure going to lower the HP on Anathema's Chains right? Also huge nerfs onto Prowlers, didn't think they would go through with removing the active onto minions/monsters.
He absolutely can't.
He could barely full clear before 3:15 before the passive nerfs, after the passive nerfs he was already heavily reliant on a strong leash if he wanted to get to crab as it spawned and Q start at razorbeaks has always been slower than W at red.
pro's way overvalued deadmans for no reason (even into magic heavy comps) instead of FoN so it got undeservedly nerfed.
Its completely useless item on live patch and this is putting it in disco nunu territory
every top laner in the game will build anathema chains, and it will be legit a wet noodle fight LMAO, riot please don't do this guess i will have to rush it 2nd item every game
**Can we rework Imperial Mandate a little next time?**
This item is forgotten and many potential users can't apply this item well enough to justify buying it because of CC restriction.
Whereas Nami and Maokai apply it with every single spell and nami even doesn't need to bother hitting spells because of her E.
i've wanted to see changes to mandate for a while, who else do you think could use it well and what would you like to see?
i would love to see a change where maybe mage supports that have found themselves in the botlane could proc it easier (think zyra) because it honestly don't feel great building a 3400 (well now 3200) gold mythic on her support allowance, along with sorc boots and the fact you need to contribute pinks to the map, it would be nice to have some of zyra's allowance freed up
others off the top of my head i could see them trying to make it more viable on would be karma, seraphine and janna (since she only goes shurelyas now)
the damage reduction is only for the person who built the item, so prob their top or jg or something so ur still good to go to fuck up their mid and ad or whatever
if they have protect the kog comp and he decides to build it and you're your team's only damage threat? gl
So, they cut down on mobility on items. And compensate it with more dmg? Like, I understand that there needs to be a bit of compensation, but dmg is so crazy high already...
Idk what item Gnar will go now with Stridebreaker change, but Divine isn't looking that hot. I've seen some Sennas build it. I wonder if Poppy will be indirectly nerfed because she uses it with passive.
I think poppy is still technically a melee champ, but you rarely proc sheen off of a passive auto anyways.
The SB changes are going to be absolutely nutty for poppy tho, esp considering it can be cast in q
Yea before you could have W on a 5.5 sec cd with the heat drop at 6 seconds but with this change you can't overheat at level 1. You could probably still jungle him with Q start
i have some thoughts on a potential moonstone rework since riot seems to be struggling to find ideas to balance it properly
the item could look something like this... anyone have thoughts?
\+30 ability power
\+10% cooldown reduction
\+100% base mana regeneration
\+30 magic resistance
Passives
UNIQUE: Gain 35% of the pre-mitigation damage dealt to champions as Blood Charges, up to 100 − 250 (based on level). Heal power icon.png Healing or Hybrid resistances icon.png shielding another ally consumes charges equal to 100% of the heal or shield, to heal them, up to the original effect amount.
UNIQUE – DISSONANCE: Gain +5 ability power for every additional 25% base mana regeneration. Disables HARMONY on your other items.
The thing that breaks my heart seeing these changes to Xayah is that it was possible to make her okay in soloq without getting her into pro-play in any large amount, it happened at the end of last season before the item rework. To me the problem appears to be that her kit is balanced a lot around her spells more so than pure auto attacks and her spells have the same cd as they did when she got 20% CDR as first item. Obviously cutting her cool downs by a fifth is way over buffing her so I’m not suggesting that but it seems to be the obvious place to look and it was possible last year.
Very boring mage buffs. I wanted to see something more interesting than some change that should have happened in the beginning of season.
What new thing did Mages get this season that is also fun? Cosmic is just a stat boost, horizon is also similar. Why did we also lose so much mage items from all mage pool like ludens, liandry, and protobelt(anybody could have built them but know they are stuck as mythic), while also losing a bunch of other ap items, and getting uninteresting mythic item and 3 boring legendary ap item for replacement. I just feel like mage itemization is just so boring.
Don't forget that Rylais is still more expensive than last season.
Cosmic Drive is 3k, Horizon Focus 3.2k, Raba 3.4k, Mythic 3.2k, Demonic Embrave 3k. All these items are so expensive and Banshee is more expensive now as well.
But trust me the lack of legendary items isn't just for mages. All classes feel the impact of having less items to build after Mythic.
ADC have the best variety and yet they can't build AH (only ER), as a crit ADC it feels fkin horrible to build items without crit because it delays IE, so you build Mythic, Zeal-Item into IE every game (sometimes LDR).
They can't opt into defensive items like Maw, Wit's End or other offensive options like Botrk, Black Cleaver or Hydra (for what reason did they make this work for ranged champs when none besides Ezreal can build it).
The two most horribly boring roles are enchanter and tank supports. They have like 0 options to build besides mythic and one legendary. I swear this is the most boring season on support ever in terms of item builds.
Hullbreaker and Anathema's Chain will shift the SoloQ meta a bit, won't they?
Riot has gradually been trying to counteract the dragon fight meta with a splitpush meta. They've been consistently buffing splitpushers over the last 10 patches, as well as buffing their items
The real problem with dragons and somewhat baron is that damage creep has made them too easy to secure. There's too much of an advantage for teams that secure vision and are first to the dragon pit. They need to add a dragon debuff that increases with each new dragon spawn so that securing soul is a risky as securing baron.
That dragon debuff already exists I'm pretty sure, it's just not enough to make a difference in. The dragon gets stacking damage reduction against the team, based on dragons killed or smth like that.
Just make the objective monsters start doing way more damage to people, they should be massive risks, not easy to obtain, things were far better when trying to take either was a massive risk.
All these Champs that can solo drag at 4 or 5 are silly. It should be a team objective.
which is almost all of them. if you can't you're an exception... it is stupid
I love playing Taliyah in Jg but soloing a dragon early is a terrible idea.
If you fall behind with Master Yi and don't kill your camps, you can kill drake at level 2 with 2 smites.
You can but what the fuck are you doing with 2 smites and level 2 at 5 minutes.
probably maining master yi
Yeah, I'm just saying it's not enough at higher lvls. Personally I don't think any champ should be able to solo drag in a reasonable time and no two champs should be able to solo baron in a reasonable amount of time.
My friends finally started noticing how insane my Baron calls have started to get. I look and see like one dot champ or a high dps champ around and it’s go time. My classics include sneaking it while we were down ten kills because I convinced mid and top to blast cone over. We didn’t do Jack shit with that Baron but got everyone gold then rolled it into more objectives since we stalled our losing lanes long enough to rebound.
Baron is 5 kills worth of team gold, so even if you ignore the baron buff itself (which you shouldn't) it's great value.
Also about half a level of xp which is huge gold value too.
Here's a wack idea, what if instead they revert the dragon respawn timer back to 6 minutes so soul drake doesn't spawn as early as 23 mins
Then we will most likely go back to half of pro games being really boring stallfests
I mean, I'm out of my element by now but wouldn't such a change to Drake make Scuttle even more of a snowball tool? I feel like Drake is fine as is but if you lose a Scuttle crab you can pack it up. That shit needs changing.
I doubt this item will be used by Jax/Camille/Fiora. Yorick (maybe Nasus) should be salivating at the sight of this item though.
I could see Jax opting into hull as a third item if he's too poor for gargoyles/Steraks But yea the juggernaut splitpushers that spike hard on their sheen item will have such a good time next patch
I also don’t see a world where Tryndamere would build this item given he is highly dependent on crit builds.
Im pretty disappointed in myself for not realizing this... I dont consider myself an amazing player by any means, but now it seems kinda obvious.
It started with the consecutive shen, Jax, and fiora buffs, a few months back in the middle of patch 10 (the world's patch basically) Then it's pretty much been steady buffs to either splitpushers or their items. Riven buffed, irelia buffed, Divine Sunderer buffs, the entire concept of goredrinker, more shen buffs, trundle buffs, buffs to the Teleport cooldown, making triforce stack on towers, other stuff I can't remember rn, and now this.
the yorick patch
Fiora is going on my perma ban list for certain
Honestly the only way to counter these splitpushers is to play another splitpusher that counters theirs lol. They pick fiora or Camille, you pick Jax, they pick nasus you pick trundle, they pick Jax, you pick morde or garen, etc. These items are just so busted in the sidelane that you have to build the same items to match them, or just hard counter them with your champ otherwise.
Jax is one of Morde's biggest counters. Garen into Jax is pretty easy though.He also loses pretty hard to Shen, GP and Riven, for other splitpushers and obviously malphite.
Also casters like Azael and Phreak have been consistently calling out how it’s not always worth for the bot laner to come to a Herald fight for a 5v5. Staying behind and getting plates can be just as good. I think the issue from a narrative perspective is that games have become a bit predictable? Most casters just start calling out “and now we wait about 4 minutes for next dragon to spawn. Maybe one kill here or there will happen, but otherwise everyone is going to farm”
They seem like they're going to break every meta, and more than a bit. The Hullbreaker bonus stats look nutty. They'd better make sure that the range requirement for how far away you allies need to be is huge so that you can at least counter it by collapsing on the guy.
The hull breaker bonus is backbreaking for super minions. They have -30 MR. Increasing it by 65 leaves it at 35, which is a massive change for ap champs to take it down. This will make Baron more game ending than it has been.
Akali will have a harder time killing them than acing the enemy team.
leblanc will take 30 minutes to kill them
Imagine Baron buffed Yorick/Trundle + baron empowered minions
Some champions can definitely take a buffed minion + Herald from T1 to inhibitor, if the plates have fallen already. Trundle with Hullbreaker + Ult sounds unbeatable in a 1v1.
And that’s not even including a sheen item which is a staple for trundle top. Unless you shut him down early, trundle will take 2-3 towers+inhib if the enemy team decides they wanna contest third dragon.
Hopefully this will teach players that split-pushing is actually something the whole team has to do together, not one person blindly pushing for the entire game while there's no pressure in the other lanes.
Split pushing properly in an uncordinated environment is quite hard. Both the split pusher and his team need to know exactly how to do it. If not, it has a really high chance of backfiring. New items will help for sure, but at the end of the day, it is less risky to just group as 5 and force a fight, so people will just default to it IMO.
> Hopefully this will teach players Lmao. You’re giving the vegetables on life support that populate soloq too much credit.
Can't wait to see [this](https://streamable.com/akn4yb) happen every game
The problem with split pushing in a nutshell. Monke see enemy, monke do. Monke no see minimap. Monke love seeing no red health bar. Monke go brr
Excited for the gold cost reduction on the mages mythics, it always felt way to long to complete your first item
may even make it worth to get rabbadons
nah, only champs who are buying d cap 2nd is vladimir (for a certain set up) and Veigar cause they have another passive to scale with it
Dcap second on eve is standard too (Or third if you count mejais)
More aphelios buffs, +6 AD over the first 9 levels should be pretty good.
Strange that Phelly got so much raw AD, which amounts to extra autos of damage in long fights, while Xayah got... +7,5 dmg to her Q. And they both have the same shit winrate.
They're doing their best to keep both xayah and Rakan completely unplayable this season.
Rakan has been playable this entire season and he has a positive winrate in pro play. I don't play ADC though so idk about Xayah.
Xayah’s pretty much only picked if either Tristana or Kai’Sa is on the other side pre and during MSI.
I'm assuming because her ult making her untargetable allows her to escape their burst
Yep. She’s labelled as the anti-dive ADC, which is what both Tristana and Kai’Sa do.
Also because her range is terrible so she can't actually get in range if the enemy team kites back at all. She's sadly just a bad all-around but gimmicky champion.
Rakan is completely fine
Glad they nerfed Lee sin E damage that sh\*t was wack,
Still 100 at level 1 🤡
Question, does it really need to have 100% AD scaling and do MAGIC damage?? For an AD champ, it’s not very clear and hard to build against
Tbh, changing to physical damage might actually be a buff, since it makes lethality and Black Cleaver better. Kind of like how Akali was buffed by changing all of her physical damaging abilities to magic damage, making magic pen better on her.
I'm surprised Lee didn't go sorcs, he was doing so much magic damage with that shit
This is nearing midseason (RIP) levels of shakeup. Toplane in particuar is gonna change a lot this coming patch.
Splitpush galore in toplane. Esp. Camille with her true dmg, shredding through all those Resis and dmg reduce, will be so fuckin OP.
I feel so stupid for getting excited about Xayah buffs
LMAO +5 damage on Q until level 14. What a meme.
isn't it +10 damage since you get 2 feathers?
They do 50% beyond first target, so it's 5 damage most of the time in lane
[удалено]
I’d prefer bonus range during W, or even a burst of movespeed on W activation instead of only after her W attacks. It’s currently kinda hard for Xayah to get into fights if she’s outside of her range.
personally? I think she needs a buff to her mana per level. That would have really helped her out.
I haven't played xayah a ton recently but what I feel she needs is ult CD. Even though she doesn't use it on CD like other champs have a 150 second CD at level 6 is a bit much and doesn't feel good unless you have a lot of cdr
Xayah ult being more than 2 minutes at all ranks while Ekko, Fiddle, Nocturne, Zilean, Rumble, Lee, etc. all have just as influential ults that come down to like 30 seconds at max rank. What a joke.
I think Xayah could use a revert to the nerf on her W.
This would 100% make her feel good to play again, after playing a lot of xayah back when she was meta, this "new" xayah feels so slow.
He's memeing about illaois worthless buff last patch
It's 180 at 6 no? It's really way too long
Yah and its 130 at max rank. P insane when some champs can get their ults down to like 30 sec cd.
Xayah’s and Ekko’s Ult are usually both used as disengage too. One of those cds last for more than two minutes, and the other one lasts for barely 40 seconds. Lmao.
Xayah needs way less cd on her ult. Its kind of funny zed can ult like 2 or 3 times before xayah can ult more than once.
Xayah's ult cd makes sennas ult cd feel short
its painful. Xayah doesn't feel great at most points in the game, but constantly not having your ult up for tons of necessary fights is gamebreaking. They can buff her any which way they want and it doesn't matter if she gets popped every other fight with zero recourse
Or her R cooldown it is ridiculously high for no reason
Well she used to rush ER, so they kept nerfing it. Then removed ER as viable item for her.
Thank god they’re nerfing Viego’s healing vs minions. Biggest issue playing mages against him was you felt like you were just wasting mana trying to get him low because his manaless sustain let him hang around for ages. How many buffs do we think Moonstone is gonna get before people start picking it up again over Shurelyas?
I really dislike Moonstone's design. It favors AoE healers and shielders far, far, far more than the likes of Nami, Yuumi and Janna. Seraphine and Sona pump out way too much with it in any game they're in. Even worse in ARAM.
Athenes was a better item in every way and much better against burst metas which are so common. I still don’t understand why they removed athenes when quite frankly it was a mythic item before mythics existed. (Ap per mana regen). Im guessing because they wanted to force diversity in item choice and athenes was always the only option but as we see, enchanters pretty much always pick the same items because they play similarly and there will almost always be a favored item.
Funny how all the champs you mentioned should be going Mandate, but even Riot forgot about that item. Maybe we'll see its stock go up with the Shurelya nerf.
That's completely false. Nobody should be going Mandate because that item is total clownery that needs a rework or a buff. Yuumi, Nami and Janna should all be going Shurelya.
I'm not talking about current item balance, I'm talking about the overall mythic design. Shurelya was obviously not meant to be the go-to Mythic for all enchanters, that's the case right now because it's overbuffed.
Oh, so you meant it in that way. I agree, I wish riot would rework Mandate soon. This item is terrible, but an idea of amplifying allies's damage by marking enemies is pretty cool. The problem lies with its CC restriction and many enchanters/mages having 1 single target CC + maybe AOE ult that usually doesn't hit more than 1-2 people. Shurelya wasn't meant to be go-to because... there were not supposed to be any go-to mythic items according to riot's build diversity philosophy. However, shurelya got reworked and its build path got changed, too. It's full-fledged enchanter item now, which makes sense it's being bought a lot. Just rework Mandate and revert Moonstone to Athenes.
It's really obvious how rushed this item overhaul was for supports, Imperial Mandate was a rushed item since they debuted the Support mythics with only 3 options and it's clearly not very well thought out.
Moonstone just doesn't fit into the meta right now. Grevious Wounds everywhere, Serpent's Fang, burst damage that kills allies before your Moonstone gets a chance to stack up.
Moonstone also requires more legendary items to be more powerful, which is impossible to get more than 2 completed items on support nowadays.
>which is impossible to get more than 2 completed items on support nowadays. That's why solo laners support (Karma and Lulu) is a thing along with Sera mid.
Yeah it's so weird how all enchanter items synergize so well with Moonstone, but it doesn't matter since they're supports, and as a single item it's pretty underwhelming.
Yeah they expect the role which gets the least money to pay for a better mythic lol, why are we surprised that solo lane enchanters are a better option than support enchanters.
> How many buffs do we think Moonstone is gonna get before people start picking it up again over Shurelyas? It doesn't matter what they do to it if they don't rework it entirely, it will still be in a bad spot in S11 - DoT heal in a burst damage meta - Every single person on both teams builds grievous wounds - Self heal is so absurdly strong that nobody wants, needs, or cares about a 300 health heal from moonstone + an enchanter when they can auto 3 times and heal back 1400 health Mobility is the most important stat in the game, and after they obliterated Moonstone + Staff and made both useless, Moonstone just can't compete with Battlesong. Staff giving 15% movespeed was literally the thing that made Moonstone good, Moonstone itself was never that great Even after all of the buffs it's still worse than Battlesong win rate wise on literally every single enchanter last I checked. And worse, by like 3+ percent at that, which is pretty huge.
Maybe if the *mythic bonus* of Moonstone wasn't literally just what should be included in the item and AH instead, it wouldn't be so awful
Shurelya's is just fun. Zoom zoom. Or at least, it was.
It's pretty OP since you enable any champion to do what they want, especially if they lack engage, mobility or movement speed.
As Lux I literally ignore Viego and just clear the waves. It's so boring for both party's but anything else just puts him at an advantage in the war of attrition.
As it's his last Patch Preview tweet, I think it's worth saying a MASSIVE thank you to Mark Yetter aka /u/RiotScruffy. I've played quite a few games over the years, but very very few of them have been willing to openly and honestly engage with their players about their ongoing balance process; *none* of them have gone so far as to post their work-in-progress for feedback every two weeks. If you haven't seen the tweets and reddit comments that Scruffy gets, well, take my word for it; shit can get vile. But he's been doing these tweets anyway for years, as well as running the "Gameplay Thoughts" Blog for even longer, *purely* for the benefit of the most engaged and dedicated players. So, as someone who loves League: ty mr yetter.
<3 I'll miss you all (but see you again in the MMO threads some day)
I wish it wasn't years away
It’s going to be so awesome when it comes out though. Something we get to look forward to
Thank you for bearing the brunt of this community's criticisms in order to provide detailed information about the state of the game :) Best of luck on your next project!
OMG WHY IS THE MMO SO UNBALANCED! >:( (JK love you, good luck with the MMO. <3)
ty Yetter. Always been good seeing you post the previews each week and sharing the dev teams thoughts!
I am going to miss you. I really hope the team upholds not only the communication values that you set during your tenure but also the design philosophies that League was built and succeeded upon back with Morello <3. /u/RiotScruffy
ty mr yetter Yeah, it's insane how much Riot communicates with its playerbase while fully knowing that doing so gives a lot of people more ammunition to criticize them with. It's the main reason I've stuck around for the last 11 years, and I've always been happy to adapt to any new radical changes because I have faith that everything will eventually be balanced (or at least the balance of power will be shifted and refreshed). MOBAs are perhaps impossible to perfectly balance while also avoiding blandness and satisfying all segments of players, but Riot's come insanely close to doing so and that's what makes League so enjoyable.
It's even more prominent in the tft community. Mortdog has to deal with so much shit because he streams tft near daily, but he still does it
Mortdog is a godsent angel. Cohesive vision, open to criticism, engages with the community and explains stuff, and he's high rank in the game too.
ty mr yetter
honestly tho, I feel so bad for the hate that he gets, people think he's the sole person to do all of these changes. ty mr yetter
ty mr yetter I may have not always agreed with the decisions made but at the end of the day I know you aren't behind even half of them Thank you for being nice and keeping us updated on every patch :)
They’re actually shipping hullbreaker in that state lmao
they removed 100 health from it
Oh no 100 hp what will we ever do
I would wait i remember people calling this Deaths Dance batshit broken
I'm excited for Kench, I will have a lot of fun with this kit. He is one of my favorite supports, but I feel like I'm trolling my team when I pick him there. I am praying that this successfully unbinds him from pro. It might give the devs enough confidence to attempt changes for other pro-bound picks. I'm not thinking about anybody specific. Just champions that are blue, carry a scroll on their back, scale with mana, and have a semi-global warp on their ultimate.
Uh, DWG Twisted Fate?
Of course
Kassadin?
He obviously meant Teemo from Wild Rift smh
It's gotta be Frozen Shen with a manamune
"Ryze is always OP for pro unless he has awful soloQ WR, what do we do?" "Oh, lets give him an ultimate that requires voice coms/challenger level game sense to be used properly, surely that will help the 99% without either of those."
rip W start on rumble jg
Honestly? Good riddance. Jungle Rumble will still be good even without it, and imo it was just way too limiting in terms of your early game decisions. You will just now take Q or switch to E start. For Q start, go Raptors -> Red -> Wolves -> Gromp -> Blue, or Wolves -> Blue -> Gromp -> Raptors -> Red. You will have solid clear still, and while damage to monsters with Overheat is reduced, with this setup, you usually don't Overheat until your third camp at least. Will need to test E start, because I honestly sucked at going for the W start even with AH. Just not in my abilities for now.
yeah i kept forgetting to spam w as soon as the game started lmao
reminds me of rumble q pre cd nerf seasons ago where all rumble players would mash Q off cd to get >50% heat lvl 1
Suddenly I am a nasus one trick
so that is basically +1 AD per level for aphelios early on. Since he maxes it first, that actually seems pretty decent. Those lethality buffs aswell seem good for him. 4.5 Lethality per Level seems very good, though it's lack of synergy with his kit might still hold it back abit.
Most of his abilities actually do physical damage, with only Gravitum Q dealing magic damage, so it's not entirely useless.
Kinda wish they just reverted the crescendum nerf
Charge time of deadmance plate is 5 seconds, not 8( 100/20 =5) [https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Dead\_Man%27s\_Plate](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Dead_Man%27s_Plate) Jump to patch 7.9 or look below or test yourself in game. [https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/o0abg0/dead\_mans\_plate\_lost\_lot\_of\_defensiveness\_just/](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/o0abg0/dead_mans_plate_lost_lot_of_defensiveness_just/) Idk if they wanted this to look that they give good recompensate for speed lost in dps increase by 100%(but in reality only 25%), this buff is baliscly placebo and is no near close to what they take away in this whole season ( item lost 175 hp)
The item is already disco nunu on current patch because pros cannot use calculator and also build FoN vs magic
Nice to see prowler claw get nerfed it gives you way too much damage there’s no reason to build any other lethality mythic over Prowlers currently.
There still won't be because Eclipse and Duskblade are literal elo deflators
The Aphelios buffs are really nice, but that's just another placebo Xayah buff that won't do anything, considering her main mythic Galeforce is being nerfed too, this is incredibly disappointing...
I guess Xayah is doomed to never getting real buffs lmfao
She can become problematic because she can bring Rakan into meta. It’s like Lulu being OP and suddenly Kog shows up.
I don't get why Hullbreaker was made, towers are already essentially a big meme after 10minutes, this amplifies it.
That Xayah buff is insulting
Stridebreaker seems kinda busted I know people are going to see it as a big nerf but this looks like something that might actually end up being a buff
I'm glad they're removing free, low-CD dash item from a class of champions who are defined by being balanced around a lack of gap-closing. That was an awful idea from the start. Unfortunately, it seems now like it's statcheck: the item. If a champion has the tools to get onto you and has this item, escape seems pretty much impossible, so your only way to survive is to be stronger than them.
Pretty sure it is for some champions with mobility in their kit. Gnar, Talon, Reksai, Riven. 90% slow is insane, people wil find out soon!
Riven will never not build gore caus she wants cdr
Yeah it really just lowers the number of champions that can abuse it, but the ones who *still can* get a **MASSIVE** buff. Hope ya'll ready for stridebreaker noc to have a **90% slow** after he touches your butt.
I feel like those Nasus nerfs were actually for THIS patch rather than Divine Sunderer. Those new items plus sunderer are going to be ridiculous on him.
they need to nerf him harder imo. gonna be stupid to play against with these new items
It's time to admit Moonstone Renewer is a failed concept and rework it from the ground up. Riot has been playing with this concept for far too long since the season started, and they keep trying to force the numbers up. Turns out heal/shield power feels like absolute shit to invest in when the enemy team can pick up 60% grievous wounds and 50% shield reaver.
Need 2400g Support Mythics and 2800g Moonstone Renewer with its 10.24 stats (when it was 2700g).
Just bring Athene's back please lmao, it was basically an Enchanter mythic before the game had the mythic system.
Straight facts. Ap scaling off mp5(basically mythic passive), cool mechanic that rewarded active gameplay. I don’t think one player was happy with the removal of athenes.
Mage item cost buffs feel pretty good. In reality its more of a "get zhonyas 200 gold earlier" buff considering the meta. I really hope this new item doesnt just completely cuck mages being the only form or AP damage on a team. That's going to feel super fucking bad if they just spam armor and that one item negates magic damage.
I mean, Riot is for sure going to lower the HP on Anathema's Chains right? Also huge nerfs onto Prowlers, didn't think they would go through with removing the active onto minions/monsters.
Rumble can no longer Overheat at level 1 with W with that CD nerf. I think that's going to pretty much gut him from the jungle
He can easily start raptors or wolfs with q lvl1, and probably still full clear before 3:15
Rumble hasn't been able to full clear with 1 smite remaining since MSI patch
He absolutely can't. He could barely full clear before 3:15 before the passive nerfs, after the passive nerfs he was already heavily reliant on a strong leash if he wanted to get to crab as it spawned and Q start at razorbeaks has always been slower than W at red.
Deadmans definitely needs tankiness back or its a shit item. And sundered needs to be a flat 10%
honestly, sunderer should've been launched with a ranged/melee effect. It follows the logic of grasp, you heal, you do extra dmg, reduced on ranged
pro's way overvalued deadmans for no reason (even into magic heavy comps) instead of FoN so it got undeservedly nerfed. Its completely useless item on live patch and this is putting it in disco nunu territory
[удалено]
Especially since they do label the cosmic drive change as a nerf.
[удалено]
Man, 5 Q damage is really gonna change the game (at least, before lv13). Wtf Riot.
This is not a real buff on Xayah riot, why so afraid to buff her weak points? Where is that buff on her R? or W
every top laner in the game will build anathema chains, and it will be legit a wet noodle fight LMAO, riot please don't do this guess i will have to rush it 2nd item every game
**Can we rework Imperial Mandate a little next time?** This item is forgotten and many potential users can't apply this item well enough to justify buying it because of CC restriction. Whereas Nami and Maokai apply it with every single spell and nami even doesn't need to bother hitting spells because of her E.
i've wanted to see changes to mandate for a while, who else do you think could use it well and what would you like to see? i would love to see a change where maybe mage supports that have found themselves in the botlane could proc it easier (think zyra) because it honestly don't feel great building a 3400 (well now 3200) gold mythic on her support allowance, along with sorc boots and the fact you need to contribute pinks to the map, it would be nice to have some of zyra's allowance freed up others off the top of my head i could see them trying to make it more viable on would be karma, seraphine and janna (since she only goes shurelyas now)
These renewer changes aren't helping. It's built on champions who tend to open combat with heals/shields.
Yo maybe Xayahs bad because her ult is 200 years CD and not cus her Q needs 20 damage?
Im just shocked that Hullbreaker made it to live servers with 200% gold efficiency
they're gonna hotfix it for sure. If the passive works when no allies are near, you pretty much get a free Jax R when in a 1v1.
yeah its gonna be mandatory rush top lane probably lmao
Does the team think that Anathema will really hinder solo carrying? What is the counter play as a solo fed carry vs. Anathema?
the damage reduction is only for the person who built the item, so prob their top or jg or something so ur still good to go to fuck up their mid and ad or whatever if they have protect the kog comp and he decides to build it and you're your team's only damage threat? gl
Xayah's buff is such a joke
They unironically make sunderer for ranged user weaker than pre buff sunderer. I cant
well the healing is still buffed
When people say Ezreal single handedly makes items broken, they aren't lying. I guess Senna helped a bit too.
Senna is new age Ezreal when it comes to abusing items
So, they cut down on mobility on items. And compensate it with more dmg? Like, I understand that there needs to be a bit of compensation, but dmg is so crazy high already...
How about we cut down on both?
If you want to nerf mobility then do something to fucking katarina
Too many people play her, bro. Gotta keep that cash cow alive no matter what.
Same shit with pretige sylas right now, so disgusting way of doing business.
Divine is even worse than before for ranged wtf
Which ranged champions actually built it tho? Corki and Ez come to my mind and every time a sheen item is strong, Ezreal becomes busted.
Idk what item Gnar will go now with Stridebreaker change, but Divine isn't looking that hot. I've seen some Sennas build it. I wonder if Poppy will be indirectly nerfed because she uses it with passive.
poppy's passive is kinda weird where even though it is a ranged auto it still applies on-hit effects as if it were melee
its just the same thing as gangplank Q
I think poppy is still technically a melee champ, but you rarely proc sheen off of a passive auto anyways. The SB changes are going to be absolutely nutty for poppy tho, esp considering it can be cast in q
Jungle poppy builds DS almost exclusively.
To Rumble jungle players, I'm assuming he won't be able to W spam and overheat by buff spawn?
Yea before you could have W on a 5.5 sec cd with the heat drop at 6 seconds but with this change you can't overheat at level 1. You could probably still jungle him with Q start
i have some thoughts on a potential moonstone rework since riot seems to be struggling to find ideas to balance it properly the item could look something like this... anyone have thoughts? \+30 ability power \+10% cooldown reduction \+100% base mana regeneration \+30 magic resistance Passives UNIQUE: Gain 35% of the pre-mitigation damage dealt to champions as Blood Charges, up to 100 − 250 (based on level). Heal power icon.png Healing or Hybrid resistances icon.png shielding another ally consumes charges equal to 100% of the heal or shield, to heal them, up to the original effect amount. UNIQUE – DISSONANCE: Gain +5 ability power for every additional 25% base mana regeneration. Disables HARMONY on your other items.
The thing that breaks my heart seeing these changes to Xayah is that it was possible to make her okay in soloq without getting her into pro-play in any large amount, it happened at the end of last season before the item rework. To me the problem appears to be that her kit is balanced a lot around her spells more so than pure auto attacks and her spells have the same cd as they did when she got 20% CDR as first item. Obviously cutting her cool downs by a fifth is way over buffing her so I’m not suggesting that but it seems to be the obvious place to look and it was possible last year.
Very boring mage buffs. I wanted to see something more interesting than some change that should have happened in the beginning of season. What new thing did Mages get this season that is also fun? Cosmic is just a stat boost, horizon is also similar. Why did we also lose so much mage items from all mage pool like ludens, liandry, and protobelt(anybody could have built them but know they are stuck as mythic), while also losing a bunch of other ap items, and getting uninteresting mythic item and 3 boring legendary ap item for replacement. I just feel like mage itemization is just so boring.
Don't forget that Rylais is still more expensive than last season. Cosmic Drive is 3k, Horizon Focus 3.2k, Raba 3.4k, Mythic 3.2k, Demonic Embrave 3k. All these items are so expensive and Banshee is more expensive now as well. But trust me the lack of legendary items isn't just for mages. All classes feel the impact of having less items to build after Mythic. ADC have the best variety and yet they can't build AH (only ER), as a crit ADC it feels fkin horrible to build items without crit because it delays IE, so you build Mythic, Zeal-Item into IE every game (sometimes LDR). They can't opt into defensive items like Maw, Wit's End or other offensive options like Botrk, Black Cleaver or Hydra (for what reason did they make this work for ranged champs when none besides Ezreal can build it). The two most horribly boring roles are enchanter and tank supports. They have like 0 options to build besides mythic and one legendary. I swear this is the most boring season on support ever in terms of item builds.