Hey, everyone. I'm on the NA projects team and we want to clarify plans around NA’s future as a server. Currently, service is not equal across the region, and that sucks. Even worse, it feels like we’ve talked about plans to improve things for a long, long time with no real visible action taken. We currently have multiple projects aimed at addressing ping issues in NA, so read on.
Yesterday, we were so excited to start talking about the new server infrastructure build, but we chose our words poorly. While technically we’re rebuilding the servers from the ground up somewhere new, the word “migration” naturally sounds like we’re moving to a central location, which we’re not ready for just yet.
We want to apologize for the confusion, and do more than say “we’re working on it,” because you’ve all heard that before. Allow us to put the infrastructure rebuild into context and map out the three-phase plan we’ve outlined for NA. We can’t promise to dish details about everything because we’re still finalizing some projects, but we can give you a better idea of what we’re doing behind the curtain.
Right now, there are three main issues with the NA server environment:
Out-of-date infrastructure (poor stability)
ISP traffic routing (network optimization)
Server location (ping distribution)
Ideally, we’d tackle all three at the same time, but these are big changes and we want to make sure we’re getting each one right before moving on to the next step. Measure twice, cut once.
The Infrastructure team is leading the charge on building a new server infrastructure from the ground up to make sure the game experience is stable and more secure. Instability causes cascading problems like fluctuating ping, downtime, and poor service, so we want to address this challenge first. Expect a more stable connection on these shiny, sturdy servers this November.
The Internet Optimization team is actively working with ISPs across the US and Canada to build what’s known as an internet backbone for League players. This backbone will decrease variances and chokepoints in connections across the region, resulting in a better optimized connection to those shiny new servers. Expect these internet superhighways to roll out in early 2015.
Finally, our team is dedicated to scoping out what will ultimately be the new location that the NA servers and optimized backbone connections will call home. We aren’t ready to share where this new home will be or when this project team will be ready for prime-time, but we want you to know that the ultimate goal is providing a comparable, stable ping no matter which coast you’re playing from. As these first two projects finalize, we’ll know more and will be ready to share additional details.
Stay tuned for more info from us in the future!
RiotPDB, NA Projects Team
+1
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
I just want the tanky/initiate junglers to have their place again. The metagame has been so hostile to them all season, and the Spirit of the Ancient Golem isn't good enough to compete with either of the other two options.
I actually really enjoy Rammus in the jungle at the moment if the other team is heavy ad.
Like the golem item works well with his clear since his clear is pritty much get hit deal damage back.
He shits on the FF junglers and shut down fed adcs easly while tanking 5 turrets being afk and makeing food.
Rammus is the exception, that is true.
Rammus is basically God tier at the moment. He was even breaking a 60% win rate last week, which is obscene.
Yeah I saw that. I have no idea how, I cant win with him, but stats don't lie.
I just want the tanky/initiate junglers to have their place again. The metagame has been so hostile to them all season, and the Spirit of the Ancient Golem isn't good enough to compete with either of the other two options.
I actually really enjoy Rammus in the jungle at the moment if the other team is heavy ad.
Like the golem item works well with his clear since his clear is pritty much get hit deal damage back.
He shits on the FF junglers and shut down fed adcs easly while tanking 5 turrets being afk and makeing food.
Rammus is the exception, that is true.
Rammus is basically God tier at the moment. He was even breaking a 60% win rate last week, which is obscene.
Yeah I saw that. I have no idea how, I cant win with him, but stats don't lie.
Stack armor ignore other team and kill turrets, reapeat until nexus is dead.
Like just backdooring with him is good when your team is pritty much useless, since rammus gives 0 fucks if there is minions to tank turrets for him!
And going full unkillable tank is pritty cheap so you get to they see me roilin they hatin point pritty fast.
Grass Grows,
Birds Fly,
'til there's Fire in the Sky...
maybe that'll take my mind off of my technically won my series blues
To start of you wanna play him against heavy AD teams, it's ok with ap on other team but you don't wont sustain magic dps that constantly chips you down DBC does a good job of takeing the brod of burst mages with another mr item to back it up.
So you are now against a heavy ad team, and what you do is kill the shit out of that jungle like all of it! When you can you back and get the coat thingy that goes to Golem, now if you have ok amounts of HP and you just want armor go for thronmail then sunfire if you want Hp first go sunfire then thornmail.
Now when you are jungleing your Q makes you able to gank lanes like a truck going downhill with no breaks, so depending on the lanes you wanna gank max taunt (E) if your lane got a lack of CC so all you need to do is lock them down so the laner can do damage (like kata etc). Or if your laners got good CC you max W for that pure awesome damage!
The reason you want a ton of armor is that his passive gives you AD based of armor so you hit 200 pritty easly with maxed W and a few items, this is pritty much why I max W for ganks since you deal a ton of damage and if they turn on you well then you deal more damage.
I suggest mobis with homeguards since you can press Q in base and gank mid befor it runs out (if you get it perfect that is).
For runes I'm just going flat hp/ad/armor/mr.
Hope this is helpfull.
Grass Grows,
Birds Fly,
'til there's Fire in the Sky...
+1
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I just want the tanky/initiate junglers to have their place again. The metagame has been so hostile to them all season, and the Spirit of the Ancient Golem isn't good enough to compete with either of the other two options.
I actually really enjoy Rammus in the jungle at the moment if the other team is heavy ad.
Like the golem item works well with his clear since his clear is pritty much get hit deal damage back.
He shits on the FF junglers and shut down fed adcs easly while tanking 5 turrets being afk and makeing food.
Rammus is the exception, that is true.
Rammus is basically God tier at the moment. He was even breaking a 60% win rate last week, which is obscene.
Yeah I saw that. I have no idea how, I cant win with him, but stats don't lie.
Rammus has one of the longest cc's in the game, amazing mobility, huge AoE on his ult, and free defensive stats on a skill you can main. I'm not sure what the mystery is.
Add to that the huge popularity of Zed, Talon, and Yasuo and overwhelming dominance of AD tops outside high levels where people can actually play Gragas and Maokai worth a dang, and it's a lot less surprising, imo. The enduring terrible mid-game AP bruiser itemization helps too.
I love that Ahri is throwing that charm like a pokeball.
+3
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited October 2014
Signs it's going to be a good day: Your first game has someone screaming if they don't get jungle they'll feed.
e: Also, I'm really enjoying Braum. He's definitely become my second favorite support after Thresh. He doesn't feel like quite the play maker Thresh is (because he's not), but he makes up for it in ability to pull teammates out of the fire. And his ult is pretty good.
Braum can totally make the plays. Though he's more of a "This was a bad idea from my idiot team and now it's not because Braum" playmaker instead of a "Hope my team isn't retards!" playmaker
Also, I should probably go through the annoyance of practicing up my Ezreal again...
supa hot crew has apparently picked ls back up as head coach, huh. he coached the team earlier in the season but was dropped a month or so before playoffs.
My favorite thing about Thresh players is the high tendency to throw out a lantern to someone and walk right up to them, almost always to flay. Unless all they need is a shield and to move five units, that kinda completely negates the main strength of the lantern.
Zz'rot Portal
We want to give tanky dudes a way to rapidly devour turrets. With minions. As a team, opting in to a split push is your choice and we didn’t want to lock that in just at champ select. This items allows for better split pushing, as it spawns little dudes who go on to assault nearby turrets.
Wall of text from Riot behind the spoiler. (For people behind firewalls)
Hi there!
Riot Reinboom and Feral Pony here to bring you an objective look at the objective changes we’re making for the 2015 season.
Philosophically, our big goal this season is to encourage more strategic diversity in League of Legends. This touches a lot of different areas but it all boils down to making your high level decisions matter (versus tactical decisions like last hitting, fight mechanics, etc). What champions can I bring? Where do I go on the map? How do I respond when the enemy team takes an objective? What can I do now that we’ve secured dragon? How does my build impact my interactions on the map? These things currently do matter, but we feel there’s room for improvement and we’re excited to explore some of these opportunities with you.
Along with this goal, we also want to ensure that we have more options in place to better balance the game. We want to be able to tone down problematic strategies and enhance weaker strategies without having to nerf or buff every champion involved in that particular playstyle (if anyone remembers Shen or Rengar pre-rework).
It’s kind of hard to talk about these changes without directly referencing some specifics, so I’ll highlight a few changes that speak to the above philosophy. Also worth repeating: all of the below are rough examples and very subject to change / may not even ship!:
One opportunity we have is examining the currently similar rewards of Dragon and Turrets - that is, gold. Often teams will trade these objectives and end up in roughly the same spot that they were at prior. Our hope is that by differentiating these rewards when a trade occurs, both teams can end up with different strengths and options as to how they progress the game from that point on.
Dragon
In more specifics: we’re going to be piloting a change where killing the Dragon grants a permanent “Dragon Blooded” buff that increases in power and function as your team kills more dragons. Since this reward increases the more times a team slays the Dragon, this puts an increasing value on the Dragon as the game progresses, both for the dragon-slaying team seeking greater buffs and for the opposing team trying to prevent them from powering up to take the victory. This change should add additional tension as the game progresses while also keeping the Dragon a more relevant objective as the game continues.
Turrets
With Turrets, we took a slightly different perspective. They already do their job well when it comes to shaking up the game; taking a turret means the enemy has less vision and defense to return to, and their playstyle changes accordingly.
So instead of changing the reward, we wanted to take a look at how teams were taking turrets. Our current idea is based on the concept that teams will need to play slightly different with each turret layer they encounter. For example, a strong split pushing team might be well-equipped at taking outer turrets but will need to switch up their tactics as the fight moves deeper into the enemy base. This allows for more variety when a team is trying to opt into a fast-pushing strategy, as they’ll have multiple layers of objectives to account for.
And more to come
The above are just two examples of the space we’re investigating when it comes to strategic diversity in League of Legends. There’s a lot more on our preseason plate as we look to things like Baron Nashor, early game objectives versus late, new forms of objective rewards (e.g. map utility), and more.
In the end, our hope is that by creating uniquely incomparable rewards for different objectives, we’ll be able to differentiate each game based on the accomplishments therein. A team who controls map objectives and wins by mounting pressure should see victory in a different way than a team who, for example, fast-pushes their way to a win.
Also remember that objectives aren’t the only way we can pursue this goal. While Fearless and Axes spoke about the new item changes for the jungle in the 2015 preseason, we also have a some additional changes to items to assist with the above goals, so without further ado...
Hi!
We're back again with news of what’s in store for items with season 2015.
A Choice Most Strategic
When we looked at all of the high-level strategic opportunities in League, some questions and opportunities arose. Through items, could we follow the same path as objectives in allowing teams to opt into different strategies? Where would the meaningful choices be found? What would they be? Could there be a method to protect yourself against opposing strategies?
We set out to investigate.
Ultimately, the philosophy we’re pursuing with preseason items feeds into the same goals as before: strategic diversity. As such, we want to create and retune items with a specific focus on macro-level value (ie: pre-fight, or out of combat) over micro-level contributions (more on this in a sec). If more teams can pick up the items they need to change course in a game (ie: switching to split pushing or sieging through item purchases rather than relying purely on champion composition), we hope to provide the right tools for strategic innovation to prosper in League of Legends.
‘Macro’ items versus ‘micro’ items
As a foreword: you can think of this preseason patch as a light ‘macro’ item revamp, in that we’re looking to create items that interact and enhance the broader game: a team’s ability to siege, initiate, split push, recover from a siege, etc, rather than items that interact on a fight-to-fight basis, like Zhonya’s Hourglass or Locket of the Iron Solari. By focusing our efforts here, we hope to see teams really branching out in terms of innovative strategies, and that we’ve created the proper ecosystem for opponents to react with unique responses of their own.
Radiant Glory
For soft initiation tanks, it can be tough to opt into the play pattern you’re expected to excel at (that is, aggressive initiation) if you’re not ahead. Historically, the ability to initiate with tanky ‘run-at-you’ champions was provided in the form of an old item of yore, “Shurelya’s Reverie.” The speed boost from Shurelya’s was often good enough for champions like Olaf to get into a fight without having to rely on Flash or Ghost. We want to give that strategic opportunity back while also focusing its design.
Zz'rot Portal
We want to give tanky dudes a way to rapidly devour turrets. With minions. As a team, opting in to a split push is your choice and we didn’t want to lock that in just at champ select. This items allows for better split pushing, as it spawns little dudes who go on to assault nearby turrets.
Warmog’s Armor
An example where we’re trying to find strategic power in items that already exist is something like Warmog’s Armor, where we’re tripling its out-of-combat regeneration (although we’ll be reducing its maximum health bonus). The big goal here was to create an item with a strong focus on skirmishing and poke recovery rather than simply being a pile of regenerating combat stats. As to what strengths a Warmog’s purchase will offer, well, we’re leaving it to you to discover!
Zz'rot Portal
We want to give tanky dudes a way to rapidly devour turrets. With minions. As a team, opting in to a split push is your choice and we didn’t want to lock that in just at champ select. This items allows for better split pushing, as it spawns little dudes who go on to assault nearby turrets.
It's time for AD tower hunter Malzahar.
Is this a joke or did riot actually write that abomination of a sentence?
Edit: they really wrote it. Wow
edit 2: This is going to be the absolute worst idea. The only reason Ohmwrecker isn't bought all the time is that tanks and AD's don't want to spend 1300 gold on AP. But now they're going to make a better Ohmwrecker that you can use to back door.
Feral Flare -> ZZ'rot Portal Yi. It doesn't matter if you've pushed up your lanes, turrets still gonna die.
Back dooring is already a thing though, you counter it with wards. While too powerful BDing might become an issue in high elo, without very skilled players it's probably gonna be handled the same ways it's always been handled.
Back dooring is already a thing though, you counter it with wards. While too powerful BDing might become an issue in high elo, without very skilled players it's probably gonna be handled the same ways it's always been handled.
The primary deterrent to backdooring is not wards. Its the fact that you need minions in order guarantee you can take the tower unless you're super hilariously fed and even if you do take the tower down you're going to be very low and its very risky. By being able to generate your own minions you negate the aspect of backdooring that makes it hard(mainly that its risky due to the tower damage and armor)
edit: And its not like there aren't other, just as abusive use cases for this. Every team will want one because pushing towers is a lot easier when you can pop a minion wave right after the enemy has used its wave clear on the normal one. And if you have two you can pop a minion wave, force them to clear it, then pop another minion wave!
This item, as a team use and split push use, will either be near useless like the promotion items because it needs a wave, useless like ohmwrecker because its got stats so shitty no one can buy it, or hilariously OP as almost everyone and their mother purchases it in order to negate the wave manipulation and tower control aspect of the game
Dragon giving a permanent buff sounds kind of interesting. Zz'rot Portal is also surely going to be a must-buy on any Pokemon Master Malzahar builds.
That's a terrible change, unless they nerf its gold value. It's already awful to be behind on dragon kills, and while dragon decreases in importance after the first / consecutive Baron kills, that's not really a bad thing, because it is often an objective that one champion can take easily, rather than a team objective like it is early game, but that's okay, because Baron now takes that role.
Dragon giving a permanent buff sounds kind of interesting. Zz'rot Portal is also surely going to be a must-buy on any Pokemon Master Malzahar builds.
That's a terrible change, unless they nerf its gold value. It's already awful to be behind on dragon kills, and while dragon decreases in importance after the first / consecutive Baron kills, that's not really a bad thing, because it is often an objective that one champion can take easily, rather than a team objective like it is early game, but that's okay, because Baron now takes that role.
Additionally it obfuscates the power increase from taking dragon. When dragon had a gold/exp bonus i can clearly see the effect it has on the enemy team because I can clearly see their level and i can check their items. But if dragon has a stacking permanent buff i have to keep track of how many dragons the enemy team has killed and the relative power level of the buff on every member of their team.
And, on top of that it creates end game power advantages which out-scale items. Such that a team which is behind early can mount a comeback which has no way of winning, because the end point when gold is equalized still leaves the other team with the stacking permanent dragon buff advantage.
I don't see a problem with that. Teams that take objectives should have advantages.
This is true, but the game is already snowbally enough that introducing more snowballing mechanics into it is probably a bad idea, and permanent buffs from neutral objective control is DEFINITELY a snowballing mechanic.
Also I agree with the portal hate. It comes pretty close to invalidating an entire axis of map control.
I don't see a problem with that. Teams that take objectives should have advantages.
This is true, but the game is already snowbally enough that introducing more snowballing mechanics into it is probably a bad idea, and permanent buffs from neutral objective control is DEFINITELY a snowballing mechanic.
Also I agree with the portal hate. It comes pretty close to invalidating an entire axis of map control.
Dragon already is a snowbally objective, though. It's just mostly invisible because the only way to track it is to compare visible items or levels at segments of the game where level advantage is comparable.
I don't see a problem with that. Teams that take objectives should have advantages.
Gold and experience are advantages. The statement that dragon should not be a permanent buff is not that teams that take objectives should not have advantages but that teams that take objectives should not have advantages forever. If the enemy team gets dragon, i can either engage before they have a chance to buy, or i can wait out their gold advantage by skirmishing instead of team fighting. Just like I can wait out a baron buff.
Now however, i can do none of those things. The team that gets the first dragon has an advantage that I cannot play around, and cannot overcome in the end game except by taking dragons
+1
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
The fact that games don't end in 20-30 minutes means that the game isn't snow-bally enough or just poorly paced.
Games will never have an average of 25 minutes without either removing the laning phase, or having the game end on the first fight. Both of these, more or less, negate key portions of the games flow. The map is just too large.
Yes i know you're salty that they shat all over dominion which you prefer. But that doesn't mean SR should top out at 30 minute games.
The fact that games don't end in 20-30 minutes means that the game isn't snow-bally enough or just poorly paced.
Are you saying that the ideal time for the game to end is 20-30 mins? I thought SR was tuned to end between 30 - 40, which is where competitive games are at right now.
Also does the dragon change mean teams are going to gain DKP? (Dragon Kill points?)
I don't see a problem with that. Teams that take objectives should have advantages.
Gold and experience are advantages. The statement that dragon should not be a permanent buff is not that teams that take objectives should not have advantages but that teams that take objectives should not have advantages forever. If the enemy team gets dragon, i can either engage before they have a chance to buy, or i can wait out their gold advantage by skirmishing instead of team fighting. Just like I can wait out a baron buff.
Now however, i can do none of those things. The team that gets the first dragon has an advantage that I cannot play around, and cannot overcome in the end game except by taking dragons
That is pretty highly dependent on tuning. It sounds like the buff stacks at a rate that increases the more dragons you take. Let's say the first dragon is a very weak buff. Maybe it's desirable, but the global gold from a retaliatory tower is worth more in raw stats. They take a dragon, you take a tower. You're still at a minor advantage, but it becomes very important for you to deny them further dragons. You probably know the dragon timer because either one of them is visible when they took it (and thus you could see when the stacking buff applies to their champion) or they took it at a time when it's obvious they were in that part of the map and you couldn't contest.
I think the proposal has a lot of potential to open up the map to more strategic play than the current global gold scaling based on global level reward.
I don't see a problem with that. Teams that take objectives should have advantages.
Gold and experience are advantages. The statement that dragon should not be a permanent buff is not that teams that take objectives should not have advantages but that teams that take objectives should not have advantages forever. If the enemy team gets dragon, i can either engage before they have a chance to buy, or i can wait out their gold advantage by skirmishing instead of team fighting. Just like I can wait out a baron buff.
Now however, i can do none of those things. The team that gets the first dragon has an advantage that I cannot play around, and cannot overcome in the end game except by taking dragons
That is pretty highly dependent on tuning. It sounds like the buff stacks at a rate that increases the more dragons you take. Let's say the first dragon is a very weak buff. Maybe it's desirable, but the global gold from a retaliatory tower is worth more in raw stats. They take a dragon, you take a tower. You're still at a minor advantage, but it becomes very important for you to deny them further dragons. You probably know the dragon timer because either one of them is visible when they took it (and thus you could see when the stacking buff applies to their champion) or they took it at a time when it's obvious they were in that part of the map and you couldn't contest.
I think the proposal has a lot of potential to open up the map to more strategic play than the current global gold scaling based on global level reward.
If you make dragon not worth fighting over then you have the same effect, people just pick it up on the back end of important objectives rather than fighting over it themselves.
I don't see a problem with that. Teams that take objectives should have advantages.
Gold and experience are advantages. The statement that dragon should not be a permanent buff is not that teams that take objectives should not have advantages but that teams that take objectives should not have advantages forever. If the enemy team gets dragon, i can either engage before they have a chance to buy, or i can wait out their gold advantage by skirmishing instead of team fighting. Just like I can wait out a baron buff.
Gold and experience is pretty permanent though. The alternatives you mention are just other ways to gain that permanent advantage close the gap. Wouldn't it be the same way you'd outplay a team with dragon/baron buff?
EDIT: actually now that I think of it, there's an eventual limit to gold and experience, determined by max item slots and max level. Wouldn't a max dragon buff fulfill the same goal?
I don't see a problem with that. Teams that take objectives should have advantages.
Gold and experience are advantages. The statement that dragon should not be a permanent buff is not that teams that take objectives should not have advantages but that teams that take objectives should not have advantages forever. If the enemy team gets dragon, i can either engage before they have a chance to buy, or i can wait out their gold advantage by skirmishing instead of team fighting. Just like I can wait out a baron buff.
Gold and experience is pretty permanent though. The alternatives you mention are just other ways to gain that permanent advantage. Wouldn't it be the same way you'd outplay a team with dragon buff?
Gold and experience are not permanent advantages. Experience caps at level 18. Gold caps at full build. These things get made up over the course of the game.
Oh, I like that Morgana skin! Gives her some clothes and in general I prefer blue to purple. The wings also look interestingly dragon-y, although I suppose they could use a more detailed texture.
Posts
http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/help-support/WH8doH76-na-servers-and-the-future
Timing is a bit unfortunate given how he's benched himself from coL but I guess it's still relevant given how he's thinking about full time streaming
http://mashable.com/2014/10/07/gaming-to-pay-the-rent/
Remember, Chicks Dig High Elo
Yeah I saw that. I have no idea how, I cant win with him, but stats don't lie.
Stack armor ignore other team and kill turrets, reapeat until nexus is dead.
Like just backdooring with him is good when your team is pritty much useless, since rammus gives 0 fucks if there is minions to tank turrets for him!
And going full unkillable tank is pritty cheap so you get to they see me roilin they hatin point pritty fast.
Birds Fly,
'til there's Fire in the Sky...
To start of you wanna play him against heavy AD teams, it's ok with ap on other team but you don't wont sustain magic dps that constantly chips you down DBC does a good job of takeing the brod of burst mages with another mr item to back it up.
So you are now against a heavy ad team, and what you do is kill the shit out of that jungle like all of it! When you can you back and get the coat thingy that goes to Golem, now if you have ok amounts of HP and you just want armor go for thronmail then sunfire if you want Hp first go sunfire then thornmail.
Now when you are jungleing your Q makes you able to gank lanes like a truck going downhill with no breaks, so depending on the lanes you wanna gank max taunt (E) if your lane got a lack of CC so all you need to do is lock them down so the laner can do damage (like kata etc). Or if your laners got good CC you max W for that pure awesome damage!
The reason you want a ton of armor is that his passive gives you AD based of armor so you hit 200 pritty easly with maxed W and a few items, this is pritty much why I max W for ganks since you deal a ton of damage and if they turn on you well then you deal more damage.
I suggest mobis with homeguards since you can press Q in base and gank mid befor it runs out (if you get it perfect that is).
For runes I'm just going flat hp/ad/armor/mr.
Hope this is helpfull.
Birds Fly,
'til there's Fire in the Sky...
Rammus has one of the longest cc's in the game, amazing mobility, huge AoE on his ult, and free defensive stats on a skill you can main. I'm not sure what the mystery is.
Add to that the huge popularity of Zed, Talon, and Yasuo and overwhelming dominance of AD tops outside high levels where people can actually play Gragas and Maokai worth a dang, and it's a lot less surprising, imo. The enduring terrible mid-game AP bruiser itemization helps too.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
e: Also, I'm really enjoying Braum. He's definitely become my second favorite support after Thresh. He doesn't feel like quite the play maker Thresh is (because he's not), but he makes up for it in ability to pull teammates out of the fire. And his ult is pretty good.
Also, I should probably go through the annoyance of practicing up my Ezreal again...
We want to give tanky dudes a way to rapidly devour turrets. With minions. As a team, opting in to a split push is your choice and we didn’t want to lock that in just at champ select. This items allows for better split pushing, as it spawns little dudes who go on to assault nearby turrets.
It's time for AD tower hunter Malzahar.
Dragon giving a permanent buff sounds kind of interesting. Zz'rot Portal is also surely going to be a must-buy on any Pokemon Master Malzahar builds.
Riot Reinboom and Feral Pony here to bring you an objective look at the objective changes we’re making for the 2015 season.
Philosophically, our big goal this season is to encourage more strategic diversity in League of Legends. This touches a lot of different areas but it all boils down to making your high level decisions matter (versus tactical decisions like last hitting, fight mechanics, etc). What champions can I bring? Where do I go on the map? How do I respond when the enemy team takes an objective? What can I do now that we’ve secured dragon? How does my build impact my interactions on the map? These things currently do matter, but we feel there’s room for improvement and we’re excited to explore some of these opportunities with you.
Along with this goal, we also want to ensure that we have more options in place to better balance the game. We want to be able to tone down problematic strategies and enhance weaker strategies without having to nerf or buff every champion involved in that particular playstyle (if anyone remembers Shen or Rengar pre-rework).
It’s kind of hard to talk about these changes without directly referencing some specifics, so I’ll highlight a few changes that speak to the above philosophy. Also worth repeating: all of the below are rough examples and very subject to change / may not even ship!:
One opportunity we have is examining the currently similar rewards of Dragon and Turrets - that is, gold. Often teams will trade these objectives and end up in roughly the same spot that they were at prior. Our hope is that by differentiating these rewards when a trade occurs, both teams can end up with different strengths and options as to how they progress the game from that point on.
Dragon
In more specifics: we’re going to be piloting a change where killing the Dragon grants a permanent “Dragon Blooded” buff that increases in power and function as your team kills more dragons. Since this reward increases the more times a team slays the Dragon, this puts an increasing value on the Dragon as the game progresses, both for the dragon-slaying team seeking greater buffs and for the opposing team trying to prevent them from powering up to take the victory. This change should add additional tension as the game progresses while also keeping the Dragon a more relevant objective as the game continues.
Turrets
With Turrets, we took a slightly different perspective. They already do their job well when it comes to shaking up the game; taking a turret means the enemy has less vision and defense to return to, and their playstyle changes accordingly.
So instead of changing the reward, we wanted to take a look at how teams were taking turrets. Our current idea is based on the concept that teams will need to play slightly different with each turret layer they encounter. For example, a strong split pushing team might be well-equipped at taking outer turrets but will need to switch up their tactics as the fight moves deeper into the enemy base. This allows for more variety when a team is trying to opt into a fast-pushing strategy, as they’ll have multiple layers of objectives to account for.
And more to come
The above are just two examples of the space we’re investigating when it comes to strategic diversity in League of Legends. There’s a lot more on our preseason plate as we look to things like Baron Nashor, early game objectives versus late, new forms of objective rewards (e.g. map utility), and more.
In the end, our hope is that by creating uniquely incomparable rewards for different objectives, we’ll be able to differentiate each game based on the accomplishments therein. A team who controls map objectives and wins by mounting pressure should see victory in a different way than a team who, for example, fast-pushes their way to a win.
Also remember that objectives aren’t the only way we can pursue this goal. While Fearless and Axes spoke about the new item changes for the jungle in the 2015 preseason, we also have a some additional changes to items to assist with the above goals, so without further ado...
Hi!
We're back again with news of what’s in store for items with season 2015.
A Choice Most Strategic
When we looked at all of the high-level strategic opportunities in League, some questions and opportunities arose. Through items, could we follow the same path as objectives in allowing teams to opt into different strategies? Where would the meaningful choices be found? What would they be? Could there be a method to protect yourself against opposing strategies?
We set out to investigate.
Ultimately, the philosophy we’re pursuing with preseason items feeds into the same goals as before: strategic diversity. As such, we want to create and retune items with a specific focus on macro-level value (ie: pre-fight, or out of combat) over micro-level contributions (more on this in a sec). If more teams can pick up the items they need to change course in a game (ie: switching to split pushing or sieging through item purchases rather than relying purely on champion composition), we hope to provide the right tools for strategic innovation to prosper in League of Legends.
‘Macro’ items versus ‘micro’ items
As a foreword: you can think of this preseason patch as a light ‘macro’ item revamp, in that we’re looking to create items that interact and enhance the broader game: a team’s ability to siege, initiate, split push, recover from a siege, etc, rather than items that interact on a fight-to-fight basis, like Zhonya’s Hourglass or Locket of the Iron Solari. By focusing our efforts here, we hope to see teams really branching out in terms of innovative strategies, and that we’ve created the proper ecosystem for opponents to react with unique responses of their own.
Radiant Glory
For soft initiation tanks, it can be tough to opt into the play pattern you’re expected to excel at (that is, aggressive initiation) if you’re not ahead. Historically, the ability to initiate with tanky ‘run-at-you’ champions was provided in the form of an old item of yore, “Shurelya’s Reverie.” The speed boost from Shurelya’s was often good enough for champions like Olaf to get into a fight without having to rely on Flash or Ghost. We want to give that strategic opportunity back while also focusing its design.
Zz'rot Portal
We want to give tanky dudes a way to rapidly devour turrets. With minions. As a team, opting in to a split push is your choice and we didn’t want to lock that in just at champ select. This items allows for better split pushing, as it spawns little dudes who go on to assault nearby turrets.
Warmog’s Armor
An example where we’re trying to find strategic power in items that already exist is something like Warmog’s Armor, where we’re tripling its out-of-combat regeneration (although we’ll be reducing its maximum health bonus). The big goal here was to create an item with a strong focus on skirmishing and poke recovery rather than simply being a pile of regenerating combat stats. As to what strengths a Warmog’s purchase will offer, well, we’re leaving it to you to discover!
Is this a joke or did riot actually write that abomination of a sentence?
Edit: they really wrote it. Wow
edit 2: This is going to be the absolute worst idea. The only reason Ohmwrecker isn't bought all the time is that tanks and AD's don't want to spend 1300 gold on AP. But now they're going to make a better Ohmwrecker that you can use to back door.
Feral Flare -> ZZ'rot Portal Yi. It doesn't matter if you've pushed up your lanes, turrets still gonna die.
The primary deterrent to backdooring is not wards. Its the fact that you need minions in order guarantee you can take the tower unless you're super hilariously fed and even if you do take the tower down you're going to be very low and its very risky. By being able to generate your own minions you negate the aspect of backdooring that makes it hard(mainly that its risky due to the tower damage and armor)
edit: And its not like there aren't other, just as abusive use cases for this. Every team will want one because pushing towers is a lot easier when you can pop a minion wave right after the enemy has used its wave clear on the normal one. And if you have two you can pop a minion wave, force them to clear it, then pop another minion wave!
This item, as a team use and split push use, will either be near useless like the promotion items because it needs a wave, useless like ohmwrecker because its got stats so shitty no one can buy it, or hilariously OP as almost everyone and their mother purchases it in order to negate the wave manipulation and tower control aspect of the game
That's a terrible change, unless they nerf its gold value. It's already awful to be behind on dragon kills, and while dragon decreases in importance after the first / consecutive Baron kills, that's not really a bad thing, because it is often an objective that one champion can take easily, rather than a team objective like it is early game, but that's okay, because Baron now takes that role.
Additionally it obfuscates the power increase from taking dragon. When dragon had a gold/exp bonus i can clearly see the effect it has on the enemy team because I can clearly see their level and i can check their items. But if dragon has a stacking permanent buff i have to keep track of how many dragons the enemy team has killed and the relative power level of the buff on every member of their team.
And, on top of that it creates end game power advantages which out-scale items. Such that a team which is behind early can mount a comeback which has no way of winning, because the end point when gold is equalized still leaves the other team with the stacking permanent dragon buff advantage.
This is true, but the game is already snowbally enough that introducing more snowballing mechanics into it is probably a bad idea, and permanent buffs from neutral objective control is DEFINITELY a snowballing mechanic.
Also I agree with the portal hate. It comes pretty close to invalidating an entire axis of map control.
Dragon already is a snowbally objective, though. It's just mostly invisible because the only way to track it is to compare visible items or levels at segments of the game where level advantage is comparable.
Gold and experience are advantages. The statement that dragon should not be a permanent buff is not that teams that take objectives should not have advantages but that teams that take objectives should not have advantages forever. If the enemy team gets dragon, i can either engage before they have a chance to buy, or i can wait out their gold advantage by skirmishing instead of team fighting. Just like I can wait out a baron buff.
Now however, i can do none of those things. The team that gets the first dragon has an advantage that I cannot play around, and cannot overcome in the end game except by taking dragons
Games will never have an average of 25 minutes without either removing the laning phase, or having the game end on the first fight. Both of these, more or less, negate key portions of the games flow. The map is just too large.
Yes i know you're salty that they shat all over dominion which you prefer. But that doesn't mean SR should top out at 30 minute games.
Are you saying that the ideal time for the game to end is 20-30 mins? I thought SR was tuned to end between 30 - 40, which is where competitive games are at right now.
Also does the dragon change mean teams are going to gain DKP? (Dragon Kill points?)
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That is pretty highly dependent on tuning. It sounds like the buff stacks at a rate that increases the more dragons you take. Let's say the first dragon is a very weak buff. Maybe it's desirable, but the global gold from a retaliatory tower is worth more in raw stats. They take a dragon, you take a tower. You're still at a minor advantage, but it becomes very important for you to deny them further dragons. You probably know the dragon timer because either one of them is visible when they took it (and thus you could see when the stacking buff applies to their champion) or they took it at a time when it's obvious they were in that part of the map and you couldn't contest.
I think the proposal has a lot of potential to open up the map to more strategic play than the current global gold scaling based on global level reward.
If you make dragon not worth fighting over then you have the same effect, people just pick it up on the back end of important objectives rather than fighting over it themselves.
Although a new Soraka skin seems nice enough!
Gold and experience is pretty permanent though. The alternatives you mention are just other ways to gain that permanent advantage close the gap. Wouldn't it be the same way you'd outplay a team with dragon/baron buff?
EDIT: actually now that I think of it, there's an eventual limit to gold and experience, determined by max item slots and max level. Wouldn't a max dragon buff fulfill the same goal?
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Gold and experience are not permanent advantages. Experience caps at level 18. Gold caps at full build. These things get made up over the course of the game.
A stacking permanent buff does not.
Oh, I like that Morgana skin! Gives her some clothes and in general I prefer blue to purple. The wings also look interestingly dragon-y, although I suppose they could use a more detailed texture.