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sebur

Bronze Squire
1,174
0
Wow, some of these PBE pre-season changes are nuts. Wonder what is going to get scrapped pretty quickly.
 

ronne

Nǐ hǎo, yǒu jīn zi ma?
8,269
7,818
Nah, give it a week and he'll be in the same boat as Garen and Darius, with a few very strong top lane match-ups and a lot of stinkers. His jungle might prove to be decently strong given how hard he is to ward against (ALL THE LANEGANKS), but he's really no different than an Amumu or Vi gank in terms of power.
 

Gilgamel

A Man Chooses....
2,869
52
How is Zac clunky? He is amazing at what he does. So is Sion =D He farms ludicrously well, has an 800 point shield, a billion CC, and his ganks while not absurd are pretty damn good. In team fights he is absurd.
 

Djevel Innenfor

Golden Squire
345
62
I'm still not sure how any of these changes they are looking at are going to make tank junglers more desired at any level of play over the carries. As an example. I love nautilus. His kit is solid and he is a CC monster; but it's impossible to carry as naut. He deals low damage, his clear is painful and he is completely dependent on his team following up and not drooling on the keyboard. But on say [insert carry jungler here], I can dowork. And on several of them I don't even need to build full damage. I don't have to rely on my team to go and assassinate one of their carries, or turn the tide of a fight, or become a splitpush threat no one can 1v1. If anything, these changes are gonna make the carries even stronger, in spite of all the nerfs they are getting. Though I do think a few less seen junglers could make a resurgence, I'm not seeing tanks enter the meta anytime soon. Willing to admit I could be wrong though, meta has been unpredictable before.
 
here are the pre-season changes currently on PBE:

"General

Pushing to the PBE sometime tonight or tomorrow. Going to throw up a really rough changelist of the subtle stuff. I'm going to take the time to call out more subtle things that are harder to notice and give much less detail about the really obvious stuff.

These are really rough patch notes and we are highly interested in heavily iterating on a lot of these. For example, I'd love to hear your suggestions for what cool Dragon bonuses could be - and I know we're still heavily iterating on the Jungle.

I'm going really light on context in this post because this isn't an official patch notes - I just wanted to get a good list of details out there so you guys have some inkling of what's going on when the stuff gets deployed to PBE.

As usual, if you have questions, feel free to ask but try to keep it in this thread if possible.

Fountain Regeneration

Improving feel of regeneration in fountain

Fountain Regeneration now heals for 25% of the amount healed on live but ticks 4 times as fast.

Stat Growth Per Level

Champion base stats and stat growth per level adjusted to help reduce the impact of early level advantages

Roughly, characters will start the game with an additional 68% of their per level statistic compared to live.
Each level, characters will gain from 72 to 128% of their per level statistic compared to live, totalling to 1700% of your per level statistic.

Bounty Changes

With Stats Growth Per Level changes, early advantages are somewhat diminished - thus removing the unpopular gold rubberbanding mechanic from S4 to compensate for the new system of stats growth

Kill gold is no longer reduced before 4 minutes.
Gold gained from Assists now scales from 25% to 50% over the first 210 seconds of the game.

Death Timers

Shifting Death Timers to be longer based on level for a larger portion of the game to give a team on the backfoot an uptime advantage

Death Timers now increase by 2% every 30 seconds starting at 35 minutes, rather than 2% every 60 seconds starting at 25 minutes.

Towers

Towers have received some changes to change both tower feel and to simplify the calculus involved in determining your damage to a tower

Inner Towers have been given some anti-split push / anti-siege potential. Inhibitor Towers have been given more ramp-up to make it easier to defend against single targets

Towers no longer gain Armor and Magic Resistance over time, but they still gain Attack Damage.
Tower Armor and Magic Resistance have been normalized to 100.
Tower HP has been set to the following:

Outer: 2000 Health

Inner: 2000 Health

Inhibitor: 2500 Health

Nexus: 2000 Health

Inner Towers have a new mechanic - Shielding:

Inner Towers have a shield protecting them that regenerates after 60 seconds of not taking damage.

While the shield holds, nearby champions gain a moderate shield as well.

Inhibitor Towers have a new mechanic - Beam:

Inhibitor Towers attack their target continuously, up to 4 times a second.

Inhibitor Towers slowly ramp their damage from 100% to 260% over the course of 6.5 seconds.

Inhibitor Towers slowly ignore their targets armor from 40% to 100% over the course of 6.5 seconds.

Ramp is reset when Inhibitor Towers change targets.

Base Tower regeneration reduced to 5 hp/5 from 15 hp/5

Minions

Simplifying Minion Math as well as removing the ability for resistance penetration to increase wave clear power

Minions no longer gain Armor and Magic Resistance
Minions gain increased maximum Health at a rate roughly comparable to the old resistance bonuses such that their effect HP is the same.

Homefield Advantage

Wanted to give the defending team an advantage in their base and remove other rubberbanding mechanics

While a character is in their own base, they receive a movement speed and minor resistance bonus.

Inhibitor Respawn

Removing this rubberbanding mechanic as the base buff seems to accomplish the same thing while not dragging the game out artificially

Inhibitors respawn timers increased to 300 seconds from 240.

Blue Buff

Blue Buff, acquired ealy, can lead to some unbreakable siege scenarios. With two buffs, this siege power can extend to 100% uptime. Wanted to reduce the duration on the buff a bit rather than attack the power of it to shorten some extended sieging scenarios

Blue Buff duration reduced to 120 seconds from 150.

Red Buff

Blue buff is incredibly broad in application as it is used to dominate lane and contribute to clearing minions in wave clear, while red buff has some in-combat advantages - we wanted to give red buff some kind of role to play in a siege to give greater rewards to controlling the map before a siege

Grants you 1% of your maximum Health every 5 seconds.
Duration reduced to 120 seconds from 150.
Slow reduced to 5-10% / 8-15% for ranged / melee characters from 5-15% / 8-24%
Burn damage rescaled to 5-56 damage per second from 10-44 damage
Burn damage now applies to Towers

New Powerup: Still Waters

Adding a pickup to the lanes after 20 minutes to add some incentive to visit this area in the mid and late game, as well as provide some split pushing power

In the top and bottom lanes, at the entrance to river, a powerup will spawn beginning at 20 minutes and every 3 minutes thereafter.
This buff confers:

+50 out of combat movement speed.
Standing Still for 0.5 seconds grants up to 25% increased vision range and the ability to look over walls.

Elixirs

Replacing current Elixirs with Elixirs that serve more divergent strategic powers, especially in the late game

Elixir of Fortitude and Brilliance have been removed.
You may only benefit from one elixir at a time.
Elixirs may only be bought when your champion is level 9 or above.
Elixir price increased to 400 gold.
New Elixirs added:

Elixir of Ruin: Grants Health, +% Tower Damage. Nearby minions gain +% Tower Damage and their movement speed is set to 90% of your own, up to 500.
Elixir of Iron: Grants Size, Tenacity and Slow resistance. You leave a trail that increases ally movement speed by 10%
Elixir of Sorcery: Grants AP, MP/5 and bonus true damage when damaging a champion or a tower.
Elixir of Wrath: Grants AD, 10% physical vamp and scoring a kill or assist will extend the duration of the flask by 30 seconds.

Baron Nashor

Attempting to create a greater call to action for the team that has the Baron Nashor buff, rather than passively grind the opponent out

Health and Regeneration removed (AD and AP boost remain the same)
Baron Buff additionally grants you Empowered Recall, reducing your recall time to 4 seconds. This also massively heals you and grants you an 8 second movement speed buff once it finishes.
Baron Buff buffs nearby minions around you significantly, causing them to gain up to 90% your Movement Speed as well as specific bonuses on type:

Melee Minions: Gain 80% damage reduction from almost all damage types
Ranged Minions: Gain increased damage and a minor increase in range.
Siege Minions: Gain massive increases to range - such that they outrange towers. Their attacks are 50% slower but are AoE and deal 4x damage to towers.
Super Minions: Gains 75% Movement Speed when nearby enemies as well as 25% Attack Speed.

Dragon

Dragon bonuses adjusted to be more 'back-loaded' so that a team that opts for a fast pushing strategy versus a team that goes for neutral objective control will spike in power at different times in the game

Slaying Dragon now grants you a stack of 'Dragonslayer' which grants different permanent bonuses depending on how many Dragons you've slain.

Stack 1: Increased Regeneration

Stack 2: Increased AD / AP

Stack 3: Increased Movement Speed

Stack 4: Increased Health

Stack 5: Triples all other bonuses

Dragon gives 50% reduced XP, compared to live.
Dragon no longer grants global gold.
Dragon deals 20% increased damage to units for every Dragon their team has slain.
Dragon takes 7% reduced damage from units for every Dragon their team has slain.

Itemization Updates

Enchantment: Captain's

Removing overlapping mechanics from Elixir of Ruin and Baron Buff - and most people didn't use Captain's for this purpose anyway

Minion MS amplification removed.

Armor and Magic Resistance

Resistances are inherently reactive buys - and the constraint of Negatron Cloak and Chain Vest makes the act of cleverly reacting to your opponent much much harder than it should be

All Armor and Magic Resistance items can now be built out of a cloth armor / null magic mantle.
Recipes, gold costs, stats and build paths have been adjusted to compensate for the above change.
In effect, there is now no meaningful difference between 'Chain Vest/Negatron Cloak' items vs. 'Cloth Armor/Null Magic Mantle' items as they will all build from the same root.

Health and Mana Regeneration

We're swapping from items granting flat HP/5 and MP/5 to increasing a % of your base regeneration + % level regeneration. This allows different characters to benefit from regeneration items differently - as well as allowing these items to more naturally scale as the game goes on.

Items that grant Health and Mana regeneration now grant either % Base Health Regeneration or % Base Mana Regeneration
% Base Health / Mana Regeneration take into account your champion's Health and Mana regeneration and any Health and Mana regeneration they gain per level.
This does not take into account: skills, masteries, runes and other sources other than your champion statistic.

Example: Your champion has 7 mp/5 at level 1 and 18 mp/5 at level 18. You buy an item that grants +50% Base Mana Regeneration. At level 1, this item will provide an additional +3.5 mp/5 at level 1 and 9 mp/5 at level 18.

New Items

Crystalline Bracer
Recipe: Rejuvenation Bead + Ruby Crystal

Grants Health and Regeneration.

Righteous Glory
Recipe: Catalyst + Crystalline Bracer

Grants Health, Mana and Regeneration
Active: Grants +60% MS to you and nearby allies when moving towards enemies for 2 seconds. When this speed boost ends, it emits a shockwave, slowing nearby enemy champions by 80% for one second.

Warmog's Armor

Health reduced to 800 from 1000.
Regeneration triples when out of combat.
Cost slightly reduced.

Raptor's Cloak
Recipe: Rejuvenation Bead + Cloth Armor + Rejuvenation Bead

Grants bonus movement speed when near turrets or Zzrot Gates.

**Zz'rot Portal**
*Recipe: Raptor Cloak + Negatron Cloak*

Spawns a gate at a location that summons monsters. These monsters proceed down the nearest lane and attack minions and damage towers.

Edit: Not currently in this build. Also no one spells like that.

Ohmwrecker

Recipe: Raptor Cloak + Kindlegem

Active now boosts the damage of nearby towers by 100% or prevents nearby enemy towers from attacking.
Stats adjusted to fit the recipe items (Health/Armor/Regen/CDR)

Jungle

Jungle is different now. For reasons!

Reasons that are outlined in the previous PBE post. Don't look at me like that.

General

1. Jungle Difficulty and Rewards have been increased
2. Red and Blue buff timers moved to 2:30

New Jungle Camp: Scuttle crab

This neutral objective is intended to add control to the river as a setup for Baron / Dragon or provide protection/enable river ganks in the early game

Spawns in top and bottom river and patrols the river it is in.
Is not hostile - tries to run away from enemy champions.
Grants a speed shrine in the river that provides vision and out of combat movement speed to people who cross it.

Smite

Smiting a large monster from one of the monster camps will now grant bonus XP and a monster specific bonus when you kill it - this ensures that the Jungler always potentially benefits more from the Jungle than other roles

Brambleback (Elder Lizard)

Restores a large amount of Health.

Blue Guardian (Ancient Golem)

Restore a large amount of Mana.

Krugs (Ancient Golem)

Grants Gift of Heavy Hands - adding Execute Damage to your attacks.

Gromp (Large Wraith)

Grants Gift of the Toadstool - grants Toadstool Armor, poisoning enemies that attack you.

Raptors (Wraith Camp)

Grants Gift of the Eagle Eye - grants you a buff that automatically grants you true sight for a short time the next time you are spotted by an enemy ward

Murkwolf (Wolf Camp)

Grants Wolf Sentry - A ghostly wolf patrols that quardrant of the jungle for a moderate time. If an enemy champion enters that quadrant of the jungle, it'll run at them and alert you to his position.

Jungle Itemization

Jungle itemization has been overhauled - all existing jungle items have been removed.

Hunter's Machete

Hunter's Machete now grants 30 magic damage on hit over 2 seconds and grants 8 health and 2 Mana per second while fighting monsters.
Hunter's Machete can only be bought if you have Smite as a Summoner Spell.

Upgrades

Hunter's Machete now upgrades into 4 items that amplify or change your Smite ability - depending on what overarching Jungle Strategy you want to do: Gank, Invade, Fast Clear, or Counterjungle

Stalker's Blade

After killing 3 monsters, you can smite Teemo enemy champions, dealing a small amount of true damage and reducing their movement speed by 50% for 2 seconds.

Poacher's Knife

Upgrade Smite to Quick Smite. Quick Smite has reduced cooldown - has further reduced cooldown when you kill large monsters and grants bonus gold if you use it on the monsters in the enemy jungle.

Skirmisher's Saber

Upgrades Smite to Challenging Smite. Challenging Smite can be cast on an enemy champion - doing no true damage but revealing them for a long time and causing your attacks to deal bonus true damage each time you hit him.

Ranger's Trailblazer

Upgrades Smite to Desolating Smite - which causes Smite to deal 50% splash damage to other nearby monsters as well as stun them for 1.5 seconds.

MOAR UPGRADES

The 4 above items can be enchanted with 4 enchantments that offer bonus statistics so you can customize the item based on what kind of role you want your jungler to transition to

Enchantment: Warrior

* Grants AD and Life Steal

Enchantment: Magus

* Grants AP and CDR

Enchantment: Juggernaut

* Grants Health, CDR and Movement Speed

Enchantment: Slayer

* Grants AS, CDR and a stacking AS buff"



Remember that EVERYTHING BELOW IS EXPERIMENTAL AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE!

Surrender at 20: 10/9 PBE Update: Experimental Preseason Changes, Singed Model/Texture Updates, New Splash Art, and more!
 

Ravishing

Uninspiring Title
<Bronze Donator>
8,456
3,577
The new jungle items could theoretically allow different junglers to thrive...

Buying stalkers blade will help ganks for champions that lack CC. (smite slows enemy champ 50% for 2 seconds). This item alone could solve Shyvana's ganking problems.
Buying Ranger's Trailblazer will help champs clear the jungle faster whom lack AoE abilities
Buying Skirmisher's Blade will likely be seen most on the "carry" junglers, but they sacrifice the gank potential that stalker's blade would give.
Buying Poacher's Knife would be preferable for Counter-Jungling.

It does seem like a step in the right direction.

I do not think that every champ will become viable in the jungle, and there will still be a set of "weak" and "strong" champs, but I absolutely can see some more diversity added to the jungle. These items serve to make the current crop of junglers stronger, but also weaker. The Stalker's Blade item alone means any champion can have a ganking tool now, thus devaluing the champs that have CC built into their kit. Of course, Stalker's blade on a champ with already crazy CC would mean they get super-duper CC ganks, but at the cost of having one of the other items.

For Nautilus in particular, I guess what he suffers from most is the inability to carry games. This is a problem with a lot of Tank champions. Riot has been adding more %dmg abilities to Tanky kits so that they can still be tanky but also do respectable damage. I don't think Nautilus can be fixed by purely jungle/item changes, he needs kit changes.
 

Ravishing

Uninspiring Title
<Bronze Donator>
8,456
3,577
I was trying to think how a laner might want to take smite and machete, but seems like for the most part these changes don't benefit laners much.

The only one I can think is if Blue Side Top Laner and Red Bottom Side Support or ADC take Smite to utilize the poison damage from the toad. No need to buy machete but with smite the option is there and could upgrade to Stalker or Skirmisher's blade for CC or Damage. The poison doesn't seem bad and could give you the edge in lane.

The other camps don't seem worthwhile at all for a laner.
 

Amzin

Lord Nagafen Raider
2,917
361
Machete Katarina with the smite other champions. Oh god my brain's buzzing with reset potential.
I'm willing to bet Ignite will end up doing more damage to champions, and is way less work/wasted gold to set up. When you consider the summoner slot + item investment, it's going to be exceedingly rare to have a laner gain any advantages from the new jungle changes themselves, but I do like a lot of the changes for junglers. Some things though:

  • No version of quill coat for the tanky junglers that really have clear time issues (Naut mainly, Sej/Amumu are fine once they get going and Rammus is ok). The AE smite upgrade is an option but frankly that seems like the booby prize of the lot of them, it's basically saying you're so bad at clearing that you have to buy an upgrade specifically to help you focus on clearing your own jungle. On the other hand, if it helps enough, it'll get you to ganks faster and healthier so we'll see.
  • The damage-over-time/restoration-over-time effects of the jungle items instead of on hit kind of levels the field for a bunch of junglers. Although, perhaps ironically, I don't think it slows down Kha or Elise at all, but maybe hurt Lee/Rengo a bit.
  • I really like the ideas behind the new buffs from smaller camps with smite, but the explanations are a bit wonky right now. The wraith one seems great though, as does the double golem one.
  • I think poacher's knife may be the worst of the lot. 50% extra gold is great, but it's 50% extra gold at most once every 50 seconds, with no extra bonuses for actually helping you in their jungle. If you want to counter-jungle you'd be better of with the duelist or stalker and just kill the junlger then take their shit, like you do now.
  • I am not a jungle main, it's my least played role right now, or just above support, but I've been trying to practice it lately and I do like their ideas. I don't think the results are going to be there right away but the enchantment system gives a lot of flexibility.

Moving away from jungle...
  • I like the regeneration changes on mana and health, although it's way more obtuse now. They need an easy way of seeing your base regen stats vs. your total regen, which is all you can see now.
  • Inhibitor towers seem terrifying now. Like, buy an Ohmwrecker for real terrifying. BUT the ability to buff your minions helps fight anti-siege comps quite a bit which is great.
  • The dragon changes are cool but again, a bit hard to figure out. If your dragon buff shows your reduced damage/increased damage taken when you hover over it, that'll help. The xp and global gold nerfs seem harsh but the advantage gained from killing the dragon over and over are not insignificant at all. +45 movement on all champs on that 5th kill alone is huge, much less the other nice stats.
  • New items seem alright. Righteous Glory is amusing at least. Glad rejuv bead finally makes more items. Their explanation of the change to paths for MR/Armor items was vague but it sounds like you can buy EITHER cloth or mail and build wardens with it, paying the difference effectively? So you can buy the item you can afford when you want early resistances and not be boned. If that's how it works, awesome.
  • Maybe this falls more under jungle, but that buff that spawns at 20 minutes is huge. The vision you can get is insanely useful.
 

Vitality

HUSTLE
5,808
30
No way dude I'm going to run ddSmite Ignite DFG Gunblade Frostqueens

My jungle katarina games are going to pay off this coming season!