Ilyak1986

I know SoloQ winrate is low, but she is a hard champ to master, so that's to be expected

How does her winrate at a high amount of games compare to other champions with equal numbers of large games? If she doesn't do better than them, what's the point of incurring the misery premium when trying to learn her?

Furthermore, Kai'sa also has a pretty demanding kit, but her average winrate in Diamond+ seems to be a little on the low end, but not damnably so like Akali's (or worse).

Also, Irelia, who has rock bottom solo queue winrates, poor main winrates, and also sees noticeably less play in pro than Akali, after her kit got decimated (nerfs to every one of her skills--Q minion damage/range, W destroyed, E range and CD nerfs, R losing its disarm, passive losing shield shred). What are the plans to actually get Irelia back to health? Even the streamer Riot brought into HQ to consult on her rework got so burned out trying to play her again that he stopped streaming entirely, while TFBlade took up a bunch of other champions to play besides Irelia in his rank 1 global ladder climbs. Any plans on nurturing this champ back to a healthy spot?

Kai'Sa is a bad comparison because ADCs have a lot of transferable skills, since they mostly rely on Orb walking and AAs, which once mastered easily transfer to other ADCs. This is why ADCs have much less winrate variance, with the exception of Kalista because her passive actually effects the AA core loop, which makes the skill not transfer well. Champions who rely on there abilties have much less transferable skills, so when a new player picks up Akali they can't rely super heavily on previous masteries.

Currently both Akali and Irelia have very healthy and strong playrate, and while they are hard to master many players genreally find them worth putting in time to learn, so I don't think it's that big of a problem. I think both of those Champions are strong once mastered right now, and giving them strong SOloQ winrates would make them absurdly strong in players hands that take the time to master them. I don't think it's bad for the game to have difficult to master Champions because ...

ploki122

I share this with my entire leadership team though as well as our Stakeholders, get feedback, then refine it.

I'm curious, has a design ever gotten a "no-go" from leadership or stakeholders, or does it tend to be minor feedback?

Well it can't get a no-go from leadership, I show that to them to get there feedback and thoughts. When I said that I meant the Champions Team Leads, which I consult with to create the Champions Roadmap and Strategy. I don't think stakeholders have every given a no-go to a design, but we have gotten plenty of design feedback from Meddler, for example, that have caused us to change or alter a design, for the better imo.

CalmYourNeckbeard

A season 3 champion added before Vlad.

Amazing.

EDIT: Another season 3 champion

Well currently Vlad's gameplay is pretty solid, which is what is currently keeping him of the list

OnlyAnEssenceThief

Kai'Sas hook, for example, came from the idea that BravoRay came up with when he was doing concept exploration for the champion. He came into one DNA meeting with this awesome drawing of this "Void Diver" her called it and said that it was Kassadins daughter.

Now all we need is a Kass VO update to complete the father-daughter reunion!

Currently Kassadin doesn't even know his daughter is alive, so it wouldn't make sense for his VO to change right now

MaliciousMetal

Thanks for the response!

Yeah, League's greatest strength is definitely it providing a constantly changing experience, which keeps it fresh and fun throughout the years.

And while Mordekaiser definitely changed more compared to "modernized" kit approaches like Akali and Warwick, he still retains a lot of his core gameplay hooks while amping it up to eleven.

Speaking of Morde, I just wanted to say thank you again for coming in and giving us great feedback on the VGU. As seen in the imgur link below Morde was one of our most successful VGUs of all time and I believe that part of that came success from your visit with the team.

https://imgur.com/a/sSfZqfq

GrandMasterOfCool

u/Reav3 how high is Quinn on the priority list? As a an assassin lover like yourself, could you imagine a ranger/companion assassin combo working out in league?

She on the list but not super high. I think she could be really cool when her time comes, might throw her on the next "Choose a VGU" poll to gauge community interest, though I haven't finalized who will be on the next one yet

Soxviper

Would you say Zoe's hook is stealing summoner spells or catapulting one shots from wacky angles?

Zoe's hook is her super long range burst. The summoners spells are more of a unique input that make her feel very different to play then other Champions, which is also important, but isn't really a super unique output

Kabukey

What exactly is it that makes you "optimistic"? Not trying to hate, I'm just curious. After all his play-rate has again dropped to his old play-rate from before the rework (according to u.gg atleast) and in the Asol-subreddit it's mainly posts asking for a revert.

I'm optimistic right now because his depth is higher then it has been in along time as seen in the link below. This means that's while his playrate is similar, people that are playing him are playing him more often, which could mean some are finding him more satisfying to play. This may drop back to historical numbers though, which we will monitor.

https://imgur.com/a/Dgycd4W

Nedyr97

I don't fully agree with you. It depends on individual champions. Some champions fair much better than others, Udyr for example is horrendous visually and gameplay wise. However, you have champions like Riven, Lee Sin, Yasuo, Zed, Fizz, Ahri etc. that have such dynamic kits that even if you released them today, they'd fit right in with the newly designed kits we see.

For sure. I'm not saying every Champ will need a VGU, I'm just saying that Champs sometimes get added to the list over the years

brian9709

Speaking as an Akali OTP I wouldn't say she's is in a good spot. Her kit is way too strong in general and that's why she doesn't go away from competitive even after all the changes. One question, shouldn't an assassin champion have a strong early game and a not so good late game? Why after the update Akali early game is still one awful mess and she's a beast late game?

I don't think its required that every Assassin has the same points in the game where they are strong. Kat has been in a good place as a late-game scaling Assassin for awhile now.

Zoli_Ben

What are the strongest option candidates besides Mundo Shyvana Nocturne?

Rammus, Olaf, Quinn, Cho'Gath, Shaco, Skarner

Zoli_Ben

Would it be a Morde/Urgot/Swain/Nunu level one?

For sure

Moonboy65

Will it also have splash update stuff?

No, this is no longer handled by Champions Team. I think Splash team wants to start these back up again sometime, but I don't want to speak for that team

Quacking92

Non-traditonal Marksmen.

So we got more than one coming?

;)

Waterstealer

here's a vague one, will the next toplaner be more of a bruiser, tank, or skirmisher?

Ask me again tomorrow

Soxviper

Even after all her nerfs?

Yes, I love playing her to much to stop

Predatoratorr

Thank you for being available! What do you think of the skarner rework? Now that he lost presence on competitive stage, do you think a gameplay update like the shaco and garen ones, to remove the spires, would go a long way to his problems? Because that's what most skarner mains agree on. I'd love to go deeper on skarner situation of needed =)

I think Skarner needs a full VGU at some point, as I dont think a small rework is enough to get his kit to where it needs to be. He also needs a lot of work on the visual/theme side as well

MaliciousMetal

Oh I got quite an odd question regarding VGU's.

How do you guys feel about the outcries of former mains when it comes to their champions being changed this drastically?

I personally adore the new Mordekaiser, but our community has been somewhat split with the release of his VGU, which is kind of sad to experience.

Aatrox mains is a very prominent example of this actually since the old mains are still very upset about this radical change.

On a brighter note:

Really looking forward to what you guys have in store for champion VGUS down the line, especially Fiddlesticks and EVENTUALLY even Skarner!

Happy 10th anniversary, glad to have been here for the past seven years!

Overall we feel it's important to keep the game feeling modern and fresh since we believe that LoL has the ability to last a very long time. This means that we feel it's good for the long term to update things that are old and dated in our game like old Morde and breath fresh life into them. We feel this is important enough to do, even it it does cause change aversion among some of the mains of a Champion. It's also something that the community asks for and wants as player demand for VGUs is always very high when we survey players.

Aatrox though is a case where we felt we strayed too far from his previous game play identity. While he was pretty successful from a engagement perspective, we decided not to push Champions that far from there identity in future reworks.

moosknauel

How happy are you about the Asol changes?

So far we are optimistic about them but it hasn't been long enough to fully evaluate.

zyx121

How do you begin the process of designing a champion? What do you find as inspiration for their toolkit?

Inspiration can come from a variety of places, and I personally think that having it come from multiple places leads to a more diverse and exciting release schedule. Every Champion starts with a opportunity space that I create as the Product Lead for Champions Team.

For example the opportunity space for Zoe was to create a high mechanics mid lane with a cute/adorable thematic. As I felt this was something missing from League, with all our high mechanics mid laners champions being edge lords/dark themes. This opportunity space then goes to a "Core Pod" consisting of a Kit designer, concept artist, and narrative writer. They all then brainstorm ideas that fit the opportunity space. They all kind of inspire each other and that's how the Champion eventually forms