betweenskill

I think a big portion of complaints I’ve seen in game, from friends etc., is that Yuumi has to choose to be interactable with by the enemy team.

An enemy has no tools to force Yuumi to be interactive except solely by killing the champ she is attached to. If Yuumi wants to sit on a juggernaut or tank and spam E late game she can and there is absolutely nothing the enemy can do about it.

Yes, it may not be the most optimal play, but considering the vast majority of players are Gold and below, it becomes extremely hard to feel like you have options against her.

If there was some way to force her off of a champ, through aoe spells or hitting enough hard cc on her attached champ or something to allow champs to detach her, even if its difficult to do, would give some tangible agency back to opponents.

Her problems tend to stem a lot from perception rather than balance, which seems to be a running theme with a lot of newer champs and reworks lately that people tend to dislike to play against. Yes they may be balanced, but they don’t feel like the opponent has choices or agency when fighting against them compared to most other champs. A lot like your Akali-Irelia example.

Yeah, I generally agree with that. The tack we're trying right now is making her significantly suboptimal when she refuses to give opponents a window of interaction. It's a bit tough when Presence of Mind exists, but we're giving it a go regardless.

To use an extreme example of why I don't think this is a qualitative problem and is instead an issue that can be solved with proper incentives: Xerath could play by only using his Q from out of range, and he would be borderline uninteractable. However, when we gate a bunch of his power behind actually getting closer and therefore becoming interactable, he becomes tolerable to play against. Right now, too much of Yuumi's output is accessible without detaching. In an ideal world, which hopefully we are moving towards, you would look at a Yuumi that never detached similarly to a Xerath who only uses his Q and R: "Why are they playing so incorrectly?" rather than "Why can't I do anything about this?"

I understand that we may be a ways away f...

JohnnyTruant_

I have a question about the champion mastery curve brought on by the mention of people twisting stats to fit their agenda, if you don't mind me asking.

It made me wonder, is it even hypothetically possible for a difficult champion that for whatever reason in this scenario is only skilled players to have the same mastery curve as an easier champion that for whatever reason in this scenario is only played by not skilled players?

I know in practice skilled players will use the easier champ if it's good enough, and lesser skilled players want to try out complex champs too, I'm just wondering if it's even theoretically possible for similar graphs to come from different situations like that, or am I misunderstanding that particular graph entirely?

I've never considered this because it's definitely not realistically possible. It is theoretically possible for a high-skill champion to have a flat mastery curve if every person who played that champ is already skill-capped on it from their first game. So, your answer probably depends on how you define "skilled player." If it's "high MMR player," then no, for a number of reasons. If it's "someone who has mastered the champ already (somehow, even though they just came out)," then...maybe.

DestructiveParkour

Quick question: if two champs have the exact same pick rate, but one is picked only by mains and the other is picked only by first-time players, will they have a different depth score?

Also, really appreciate the point about being hard but having no counterplay- that's why I (and a lot of other people) hated the akali-irelia meta.

Yes, they'll have a different depth score. That's what depth is meant to measure.

To your second point, absolutely. It's easier to identify this lack of counterplay when the champion looks easy or the result is consistently achievable across all skill levels, but Akali and Irelia at high levels of play during that period often completely shut out their opponents' options.

Kadexe

They weren't as popular before they were nerfed either.

This is correct. Power is definitely impactful to both breadth and depth, but nowhere near that impactful.

ContentDetective

This is riot's equivalent of LS saying "nemesis don't have a champ pool issues, in fact he has a champion ocean" and proceeds to lose because of champ pool issues. She's braindead in the sense that after people play enough games on her they never make punishable mistakes. It's a mistake to have put her in the game.

Hi, we respond to this in the post. Yuumi should indeed be more punishable, which is a counterplay issue and makes her non-interactive. A champion can be both hard and non-interactive—that means opponents are likely to think she's "braindead" when she's actually not. That's not an excuse, but instead a more accurate statement of the problem, which should still be resolved as much as possible. If a champion has to play 34-dimensional solitaire to win but is permanently invisible and untargetable and never leaves the fountain so opponents have no input into their outcomes, that's no good.

Dage-The-Ninja

Pretty sure it's more of an overhaul on the shop, I'd be surprised if they even touched items to the point any class rework did.

:)

R21Twelve

How much does the balance team take ARAM into account? AP kogmaw was already hell post-16 before that massive buff

Not much—the modes team balances ARAM separately, and we're confident that they'll follow up appropriately if anything ends up being out of line. The reason we mostly disregard ARAM is because there is already an incredible number of constraints on any balance work when you consider all of the audiences (MMR, Role, Pro/Normal) that play the game even just on SR.

Thyloon

Guys, we found a member of the balance team in the wild.

Get your pitchforks!

I work mostly on preseason now, not patch balance. Just saw an opportunity to add some fun. :)

MCrossS

Would you consider adding an AP ratio to Ashe's W?

A bit of context: I've played support Ashe since 2013. Back when Ashe's passive was Focus, it made for a really strong laning phase with high powered instances of poke. She's always been a great Black Cleaver support champion and it's incredibly fun to play.

Why an AP ratio though? Ever since they added Stoneborn Pact to the game (Font of Life in runes reforged) additional strategies opened up for support Ashe because of Frost Shot, particularly using Ardent Censer on autoattack based comps (everything Ashe does triggers Font of Life, allies heal from it and gain the buff). The problem is the item itself feels fantastic to buy, but the path feels miserable. AP does nothing for Ashe except for adding 1/0.5 AP to her ult, so spending money on a Wisp is a low point.

Support Ashe can also build a couple of AP items viably, like Twin Shadows and Liandry's, but again, the AP only really affects your R casts and your ratios from runes. An AP ratio on W would have minimal effect on ADC Ashe's balance (it would increase her W damage on Baron take only) but it would be godsent for those of us who play Support Ashe, which is incredibly fun and deceptively powerful.

I hadn't considered this one. Thanks for the thorough explanation. Can't promise anything, but I'll put it on my list of backlogged "maybe this could be good" champ changes.

SkeletonJakk

Don't worry dude, I'm sure you can throw a sneaky lux buff in the next patch for an easy bonus.

Great, thanks, now I have to wait a couple more patches to throw you off.

Shark_Keeper

Even if it were the case, I fail to see the issue with buffing underplayed champions while giving them new skins. It’s a good thing no matter how you look at it.

And thanks for the buffs ! I used to love AP Kog, can’t wait to play it again !

Cheers, I've been happy to see other people from the olden days reminiscing about AP Kog and excited to give it another spin. Have fun!

Oreo-and-Fly

Except the skin team and balance team don't talk and skins are planned like a year in advance

Yeah, I buffed off-meta builds for Kog and Nunu because I had some spare time and felt like making them more viable was pretty low-hanging fruit (high fun-for-players:work ratio, putting some newly viable (hopefully) builds in the spotlight without a lot of time invested since no mechanical changes were needed as the champs had pretty good build separation already). I sure wish there was a Nunu skin too so I could get my fat commission, though /s

Cyberplums

Love these kinds of design stories, thank you!

If I may ask, is the live balance team usually greatly concerned with keeping a champion’s original theme intact during gameplay, or are practical solutions for balance way more of a priority for them?

As someone who used to work on that team, and still works closely with them—theme is definitely a consideration. The team always tries to keep theme intact (or even enhance it where possible), though the work is often all about trade-offs in the end because no balance change is going to be perfect and they all cost something to someone.

I will say that if any change is going to more severely undercut theme, the mandate will often be to find another way to get the job done, because theme is clearly an important part of our champions.

Polderjoch

Thanks for sharing, it's always super interesting to hear about the development and future of champs in the background.

I feel like the only champs I can think of that really lost a big part of their thematic are Aatrox with his revive, and Illaoi lost part of her thematic with the removal of being able to fight back against her spirit pull, even though gameplay wise it's not really a big deal.

Yeah, the Aatrox removal was not taken lightly. In cases like that, it's a bit easier to see looking back but a lot of their troubled post-release development comes from a dedication to preserving the cool things that make each champ unique. Sometimes, though, the right call in the end is to make the cut (I would argue that Aatrox ended up being one of these cases). If a champion is hewing really close to their thematic pillars but is inaccessible to most of the players who would enjoy that theme because of balance, we're still unfortunately failing to deliver that theme properly to players.

Thanks! I think it's inevitable that some champions will feel out of whack for some players when we have a game that's as complex as League. Glad to hear you're feeling good about it.

ZERXOK

I think they do a bad job, but so does pretty much every other game designer. Game designer and people in general suck at balancing games.

If everyone who does a thing professionally seems to be bad at it, I think that implies that either the job is very hard, the standards set forth are unachievable, or both.

That said, we'll always try to get better and meet players' expectations.

Synergy2098

What were the inspirations and goals for this one? Really liked hearing the making of arena and swarm and their goals.

We approached this one from a couple different directions at once, initially. When pitching it, I was thinking about things like "What needs are unfulfilled for new players learning the game?" "What is league's equivalent of Team Deathmatch (from FPS games)?" "Is there a way to make pick-ARAM a worthwhile mode?" These coalesced into the specific pitch that resulted in Brawl.

cutlerymaster

What are some of your guys favorite anime or recommendations? I know riot phlox favorite is death note.

Big fan of Baccano! and Samurai Champloo. I'm also contractually obligated to state that u/Riot_Cadmus is wrong and FMA '03 is better.

Rexsaur

Will we be able to gain mastery points and S grades on this mode?

Yes!

greenracer123

Have you considered less players for the mode? It might be more fun with a team of 3 rather than sticking to the traditional team of 5

We briefly tested 4v4 but it was clearly a downgrade. Reducing the number of players made the game more methodical and strategic, which was an anti-goal for this specific mode.