LoL: Lead Game Designer Reveals Thoughts On State Of Game
With the recent release of Season 14 everything has changed. New map, new items, new systems and even a new champion soon. While this can all be very confusing to the general player base it's good to see that the developers not only understand the situation but are already planning for the future.
Riot Phroxzon is the Lead Gameplay Designer of League of Legends. Usually between the patches he is the one to share details and his thoughts. Between 14.1 and 14.2 he decided to share his general thoughts around recently discussed topics. This is very helpful as it shows the internal talks about prominent issues with champions and systems overall.
LoL: Game Designer On Gameplay
Bard is currently one of the best supports in the game, but doesnt even really build support items. The starter item upgraded is typically enough for him, and he builds tank items like Frozen Heart and Kaernic Rookern afterward. The champion gets really hard to kill but still dishes out a lot of damage. Riot is looking to either switch him to more damage focused builds or make the trade-off more punishing. That means if he gets tankier he should do less damage. Riot mentioned that they also want to take a look at his Meep spikes.
Zeri is a problematic champion. If shes strong she is pick or ban in pro play but really weak in solo queue so she can never be quite balanced. Still, Riot is trying really hard to make it less punishing to play Zeri. They are experimenting with new changes on top of a recommended item change.
Multiple Assassin items are getting changes, as well as bruiser items. Generally, damage should be going down and health should be going up. This with additional buffs for Wukong top lane is supposed to bring the champion back.
Riot is still discussing wether they are happy with lethality ADC's or if they want to shift the focus back to crit items.
LoL: Game Designer On Ranked Systems
Riot is working on a fix where players are getting seeded into the right MMR group but where the visual rank is too high. This means that if you are in a bronze MMR, but the game shows you as a gold player, your LP gains are ruined until you drop to bronze/silver.
They are also looking into the issue where when players lose too many games at demotion breakpoints, they get negative LP gains even with 50%+ win rate.
Now the news you are all here for! D1/Master LP Gain changes. If you are in that elo, and you are part of the 2% with negative LP gains, this is due to an unfortunate side effect of their original configurations. Unfortunately Riot Games does not have a fix for that but playing around 30 games will balance it out. They did have a fix to make sure no players are affected in the future, though.
LoL: Game Designer On Aram
ARAM has had its own balancing for a while, and they are still looking at it every patch. With 14.3 you can expect some Twisted Fate, Karma and Briar nerfs while Hwei and Zed are getting buffed. They are also looking to nerf Malignance, Stormsurge, Sundered Sky and Hubris on the Howling Abyss.
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