Revelation VR: Red Post Collection: Quick Gameplay Thoughts: January 30, 9.2 Balance Hotfixes & More

Today's red post collection includes Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for January 30th, a rundown of recent balance hotfixes, and more!

Continue reading for more information!

9.2 Balance Hotfixes

A few balance hotfixes for Sylas and a few champions in ARURF went out this week:

[1] "Sylas isn't climbing as well as we'd hoped, so we're throwing him some safe hotfix buffs.

Base Stats
Attack Damage :: 55.04 >>> 58
Magic Resist Growth :: 0.5/level >>> 1.25/level

Abscond / Abduct (E)
Damage :: 50/65/80/95/110 >>> 70/85/100/115/130"

[1] "Wrekz_ is working on a round of balance changes for ARURF to hit some more of the outliers. Current plans:

Nerf:

Malzahar -8% Damage

Sivir -5% Damage

Ahri -5% Damage

Kai'Sa -5% Damage

Xayah -5% Damage

Master Yi -5% DR"

[2] "Buff:

Braum 20% DR, 10% Damage

Bard 15% Damage, 10% DR

Rammus 10% DR

Rek'Sai 10% DR 5% Damage

Gnar 10% DR, 5% Damage

Tahm Kench 10% DR (edited)

Wukong, Damage from -10% to -5% (overnerfed, hes at 48.7)

Ryze, Damage from -10% to 0%

Ornn, Reduce incoming damage from 10% -> 20%"

[3] "One more change. Master Yi deals 5% less damage."

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: January 30

Check out Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for January 30th, including thoughts on refinements to bounties, healing on Akali's Q, and updated movement animations:

"Hi folks,

Usual Disclaimers

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get delayed or even stopped. If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler

Refinements to Bounties

We've got some adjustments to how bounties from CSing are calculated coming in 9.3. Our goal with introducing CS based bounties was to recognize when players and their teams were substantially ahead via CS gold and give catch up opportunities in those cases, rather than only when a player was ahead on kills. In some cases that's been working well, in others however players have been ending up with CS bounties not because they're ahead, but because they've caught up since their last death. We'll be making some changes behind the scenes to the CS bounty calculation as a result so that the threshold to hit a bounty better reflects actual game state, meaning that you should only have a bounty from CSing when you're meaningfully ahead.

Healing on Akali Q

At this point it's likely we'll be taking the healing off Akali Q. We're doing so because we believe the current set of tools Akali has means she's lacking in sufficient weaknesses, in lane in particular. Sustain is generally a tool we give to characters who have weaker all ins, or difficulty making an all in happen when they want. Akali's pretty good in both those regards however. Trying to trade and gradually grind down a champ with all in strength's normally a good response, sufficient healing nullifies that as a weakness however. Couple that with decent waveclear from Akali (in part because she uses energy, not mana), plus decent roaming to take advantage of that pushing, and it's hard to find strong enough weaknesses against her. That lack of clear enough weakness is then amplified again by Akali's ability to flex between multiple positions, allowing her to sometimes take a more advantageous match up. Being a flex pick isn't an inherently problematic thing, but it does add additional power to an already hard to punish kit.

It's certainly possible that removing Akali's healing leaves her in a pretty rough spot overall though. In cases like this where a champion's been problematic for an extended period we've had decent success in the past by taking a heavy pass to them to remove issues, then going back and adding power shortly after if needed once we've seen where they've landed. Zoe early last year was a good example of that, proving very difficult to get into an ok spot power and frustration wise with a series of smaller adjustments. Only after we took a really heavy pass and then put some power back in were we able to get her to a better, more stable state. We're looking at potentially bringing Akali's based HP5 up to average, from quite low, in 9.3 alongside the nerf, larger compensation, if needed, would be later though.

More Updated Movement Animations

We’ve got another round of updated walk/run (mainly) animations hitting the PBE shortly. Feedback on these once they’re there much appreciated. As before we’re targeting movement animations generally because they’re seen so often, so they’re a great way to improve a champion’s overall visual quality for the time involved per animation.

Dr Mundo - Mundo does things his way. In this case that means getting an updated Q throw animation instead of a walk or run anim.

Gragas - Updated base run

Katarina - Updated base run

Lux - New no boots walk anim and updated base run

Shen - New no boots walk

Twisted Fate - New no noots walk anim

Zyra - New no boots walk"

Miscellaneous

The 2019 Lunar Revel merch collection is now available, including a new Unlocked Lee Sin statue, God Fist Lee Sin tee, Wukong plush, and more!

""Your will, my hands." The Blind Monk has entered the Unlocked Statue line as #08.

Lunar Revel is near and to celebrate we have Lee Sin jumping into the Unlocked Statue line while Wukong sneaks his way to become our next Collectible Plush.