Nalardemon

is there the possibility that we get to hear your thoughts about all the different changes you went for and why you prefered this route before they hit the live server (unless they aren't final yet)? at the moment, this interests me the most.

Some of those changes seem out of nowhere and just add confusion or don't feel like they follow what we wouldve expected considering all the informations we got over the last couple of patches. especially in the ksante mains community this caused chaos and i would really appreciate it

Video is uploading as I type this.

FBG_Ikaros

DK vs MAD literally had 4 Rumble picks in 5 games

Game 1: DK Rumble vs MAD Udyr

Game 2: MAD Voli vs DK Udyr

Game 3: DK Rumble vs MAD Udyr

Game 4: DK Rumble vs MAD Udyr

Game 5: DK Rumble vs MAD Udyr

Not only that, but DK also picked Rumble vs RNG in game 5 finals.

Granted, Morgana was banned, but Rumble was still constantly picked by Canyon in the bracket stage.

Rumble shows up when Udyr or Morgana aren't available. Yep.

GalaxySmash

Damn does this mean I didn't get the job

Rare GalaxySmash L :(

RiotYasuna

Rare? They should see playtests sometime >:)

LMAOOOOOOOOOO GOTTEMMMMMM /u/GalaxySmash

Boudynasr

last year[12.14]: teamfights arent happening, so we buffing drakes to encourage teamfighting

this year: drakes cause snowball so we nerf them

12.14 patch notes:

' As mentioned above, early game is currently becoming much slower which has led to a meta shift focusing on scaling team comps. Players have become more comfortable conceding early objectives in order to reach their late game win conditions.
In order to increase the priority of early game objectives we’re going to be increasing the reward for early drake and Rift Herald takes. Individual drake buffs are currently too low impact as players will more likely prioritize them due to the threat of soul and less for the individual buffs themselves. In order to make drake buffs more meaningful, we’ll be increasing the buff values of each by roughly 50% (and even more for Cloud Drake). In addition, we’ll be decreasing the damage output of drakes across the board in exchange for more durability so that teams have more time to contest drakes as a coordinated group. In a similar vein, we’re now increasing the value of Rift Herald by making Shelly drop local gold. We’re also increasing the amount of health on the second Herald to increase its value and priority relative to the first so that it's ignored less often. '

so we are back to pre 12.14, even worse now that drakes are much tankier, now its back to go farm your lane or camps and attempt to secure a lead rather than waste time on drakes.

I dislike teamfighting and like catching waves yay - said no one ever

That's why we're buffing souls themselves. It's important that sitting back and scaling without interaction will lead to losing the game.

justareddituser12

this is such a low effort reply, saying that w tap and q3 flash is his entire skill expression is such a strawman argument it's unreal.

it's like saying "riven's entire skill expression is E" except it's never that simple and that one ability opens so many doors for how riven wants to play trades. it's not as black and white as just saying "she E lol" and i'm not sure why you'd imply that's true of k'sante when tap W is the core of the vast majority of his combo and playmaking potential - these kinds of abilities form the core of a champions trade patterns.

having the option to tap W allows for instant on demand peel, q3 guarantee for gank setup, E+W bump for tower drag, W bump into wall combo, etc etc. forcing a cast time makes k'sante considerably more predictable and clunky to play (and pseudo removing combos because if you get hit by e behind -> W now you're just trolling)

this also doesn't consider the fact that riot themselves has marketed k'sante as a high skillcap tank due to lacking one in game and i don't think removing the majority of his playmaking abilities trends well in that direction

the fact that you even refer to the showmaker copypasta at all just adds insult to injury in this reply, kinda makes it seem like you have some personal hangups against this champ and you just want to see it gutted.

i'm really concerned you don't have any idea what you're talking about, especially when you tack 25% atkspd on his ultimate when atkspd is literally trolling on k'sante

I literally quoted the guy above me. If you want to have this discussion in good faith, than actually have it in good faith.

ZcotM

The cast time buff sounds good honestly. Is it the reason why omnivamp is no longer tied to bonus health though? Isn’t that just going to discourage building health? K’Sante seems like the champ where you want a good balance on two types of resist and health, but since Omnivamp isn’t necessarily his favorite stat, combining it with reduced cast time would encourage more health building no?

In the end Q3 Flash issue still comes down to champ knowledge and skill expression though. Hope you guys can come up with a solution in keeping him on a more rewarding side to higher skilled gameplay type champ. Thanks for the reply as well

I think it's valuable that K'Sante "requires" being a strong-side champion with much of his scaling locked behind gold (especially compared to Ornn, Malphite, etc.)

That said, it's about incentives. His ultimate always nerfs his Armor/MR. If you time it well, it doesn't nerf his HP. In general, I think it's valuable to reinforce the tradeoffs as opposed to letting him get the benefits from health for "free" without the drawbacks.

Additionally, there are some parts of the kit that just need to work even if he's behind. "Parry" mechanics like Fiora W, Irelia W, Master Yi W, and K'Sante W should fulfill their defensive purpose no matter what. Especially with the required minimum channel, it needs to be reliable at level 1. I'm amenable to changing the per-level scaling into gold scaling, but part of that is already mitigated by giving W's damage an Armor/MR ratio.

Overall I don't think it's a big problem if bonus health is a less necessary K'Sante stat. It still lowers Q cast time, wh...

GalaxySmash

Nice shirt

u2

MohamedRefai

u/PhreakRiot

i know this is early in the patch and data might be fake but the shiv nerf looks pretty big since now you can't kill casters with 2 procs the item might be dead. so:

would you look to change Kai'sa if the cheese umpral+dusk build became her best/most popular build since hybrid Rageblade is being hit again and, to be honest, Statik is the only good starting item for Rageblade hybrid. the AP poke build looks a lot weaker/(dead maybe) since when you build shiv+nashor's+ap mythic you heavily rely on the shiv wave clear since you don't have Q evo but shiv+rageblade as a second item looks okay since you have Q evo lvl 9 if you start Dblade but still affected by the nerf and the umbral+dusk being her best build i think is not ok since it's really cheese either you snowball and it feels very strong or you don't and be kinda useless

Right now the intent is to promote Hybrid Kai'Sa as the best version of her.

This requires some meaningful updates to the kit (W evolve is kinda illegal when it's not a meme). It's just a matter of prioritizing that work against other work.

In the short term, it's not a pressing matter, even though it's something we'd like to do.

Anarchontologist

Or watch 2 hour Phreak Movies every 2 weeks.

Joke's on you, I put out 3-4 of them every 2 weeks now.

Straight_Rule_535

Didnt know i needed to sign up for a python class to read those ksante changes

You mean the K'Sssssssssssssssssante changesssssssssssssssssss

ZcotM

Just saying Q3 Flash should not have been removed. Literally removed one of the slowest abilities in the game (with wind-up) + Flash (which is 300 seconds)? Also skill expression left the chat. You don't have to make every tank have low skill floors. Let us keep one that actually has some skill involved maybe?

We're not absolutely married to killing Q3+Flash but Q's cast time is reduced via bonus health. Most K'Sante players neglect buying enough +HP to finish reducing the cast time.

ViraLCyclopes19

I feel like K'Sante is gonna feel real clunky with that W Min Charge Change.

You lose the tap combo but honestly the new spell feels really good. The hit is way more impactful but yes the spell requires a time investment. It's essentially a long cast time with the option to hold it 50% longer.

skitles125

Does ksante empowered W not do dmg anymore? I'm having trouble interpreting that section where it just says "new: removed" under the ult W where the damage supposedly should go

On Live R+W deals like 400 bonus damage.

in 13.20 it will deal a little bit of bonus damage via R's +AD, but it's primarily just faster. It will be ~10% less damage than Live R+W.

Meanwhile baseline W is ~70% more damage.

SpiritualFrame8484

I saw Aatreus stream last night(NA K'Sante challenger player), and he said the changes were horrible. Basically said you were removing all the skill expression from the champion you wanted to be skill expressive. It’s like removing the animation cancels from Riven, it highly lowers the ceiling and feels like you are trying to bring him out of elite tiers.

Honestly i can understand why he was so frustrated, it feels like none of you at Riot actually plays the champion and just made a lot of random changes to his kit for no reason?

Yeah the tap combo is illegal. Queue the Showmaker copypasta. That and Q3 flash are the only mechanics we removed. So if his "all his skill expression" is W tap and Q3+Flash, y'all are telling on yourselves regarding now skillful this champion actually is.

bns18js

Eh, Kraken's unique is stronger on average.

Do you have some way of measuring this? What makes you say that?

The fact that it's more popular and wins as many games despite -10 AD

Current direction:

• Nerf Shiv (13.18 didn't nerf the wave clear enough)
• Nerf LeBlanc's AD (Lower Triforce and +AS synergy)
• Nerf LeBlanc's mana pool to require building mana again
• Small spell AP ratio increases to hopefully tread water on AP builds

TheBluestMan

Istg these were the changes people literally asked when we saw this shit lol

It's interesting; these kinds of things are the eventual results of power creep. Certainly, Shiv returning as a good first item is the straw that broke the camel's back and I did a rather poor job of getting the item into a fair state sooner. I spent much of summer just being like, "OK LB abuses Shiv, we have to keep tuning Shiv to make it not dominant on LeBlanc" despite LeBlanc being the only egregious user after like the first balance pass.

But actually LB has a bunch of small things that just slowly fell out of line. No individual change made this build appear but the end result is that she's just tuned kinda weird right now and scales with mage items worse than other mages do. So she just buys other items instead.

Boudynasr

its good that you guys are no longer bound by "locked changes" and are able to be flexible and react swiftly to stuff like Briar's WR skyrocketing and this

The intent with Briar for this patch was to essentially micropatch 13.19 itself after getting more data. There's never enough info within a week to have a reliable feel for her actual mastery curve. We can only see win rate movement by day and infer from there. Keep in mind that for any mature champion, your first game can benefit from guides and even just seeing them play in your games. That can never be true for a new release. So we elected to craft changes into a micropatch instead of making a call on this last Monday.

Micropatching is still a drain on resources. It means that some piece of work doesn't get done because people have to be pulled to actually ship it live. There's an extra step beyond, "I edited these two files and hit submit." So we really don't want to make a habit of it. But if it's pressing enough or it's just the right call for the situation, then it's a tool that we have.

pplcs

She has awful wave clear without shiv, won't lowering her AD make it even worse?

We're primarily hitting AD growth, so it will be unfeelable at level 1 and then be negligible for a while if she's mostly reliant on spells.

There isn't any single change that can literally only hit AD LeBlanc. It's just about reigning in collateral damage and trying to retain her overall power level on intended builds.