Red Post Collection: Yuumi Mid-Patch Update, Quick Gameplay Thoughts: 5/17, & More

Today's red post collection includes details on the 5/15 mid-patch update for Yuumi, Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for May 17, updates on client skin bios, and more!

Continue reading for more information!

• Red Post Collection: Trials Update: Week One, Return of the Rainbow Fluft Icon, & More
• 5/15 PBE Update: Little Demon Tristana Chromas and Tentative Balance Changes
• Battle Academia Skins Now Available!

Table of Contents

• 5/15 Mid-Patch Updates 
• Quick Gameplay Thoughts: May 17 
• Update in Client Skin Bios 
• Little Demon Tristana: Splash Art and Chromas
• 9.10: Lore Update 
• Miscellaneous
• Reminders

5/15 Mid-Patch Updates 

A hotfix update went out on 5/15 for Yuumi, check out the details from the 9.10 Patch notes:

5/15/2019 Balance Update 

Yuumi 

"We're looking to give Yuumi a boost to her early game that will help both experienced and inexperienced Yuumi players."

• BASE MANA REGEN 7.5 ⇒ 10
• PASSIVE MANA RESTORE 30 to 160 (based on level) ⇒ 40 to 160 (based on level)
• PASSIVE SHIELD 50/55/60/70/80/90/105/120/135/150/
  170/190/210/230/255/280/305/330 (+0.4 ability power) ⇒ 80/85/90/100/110/120/135/150/165/180/200/220/240/260/285/310/335/360 (+0.4 ability power)
• PROWLING PROJECTILE DAMAGE 40/60/80/100/120/140 (+0.3 ability power) ⇒ 40/65/90/115/140/165 (+0.45 ability power)
• PROWLING PROJECTILE EMPOWERED DAMAGE 60/100/140/180/220/260 (+0.6 ability power) ⇒ 60/105/150/195/240/285 (+0.6 ability power)
• PROWLING PROJECTILE SLOW 30/40/50/60/70/80% ⇒ 40/48/56/64/72/80%
• PROWLING PROJECTILE SLOW DURATION 1/1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5 seconds ⇒ 1.25/1.35/1.45/1.55/1.65/1.75 seconds
• ZOOMIES MINIMUM HEAL 25/35/45/55/65 (+0.1 ability power) ⇒ 30/40/50/60/70 (+0.1 ability power)
• ZOOMIES MAXIMUM HEAL 50/70/90/110/130 (+0.4 ability power) ⇒ 60/80/100/120/140 (+0.4 ability power)
• FINAL CHAPTER MULTI-HIT REDUCED DAMAGE 40% from subsequent waves ⇒ 50% from subsequent waves"

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: May 17 

Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for May 17, including notes on some champs so far in 9.10, Wukong changes on PBE, and more!

"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: 

Simple ARAM balance changes every few patches 

As you might have seen we had some simple balance adjustments for ARAM in 9.10. Our current thinking is that that's something we'll be doing every few patches. Changes will be simple stuff like % damage up or down, with one of the core goals being that a champion's playstyle, timings etc don't change significantly between maps (e.g. avoiding changes to spell CDs, CC durations, dash ranges etc). 

State of some champs in 9.10 

Now that 9.10 has been out for a bit short thoughts on a range of champs: 

• Yuumi

Was looking weak enough on release we got a micropatch buff out for her quickly. Waiting to see where that puts her in combination with the expected learning curve. Most likely we'll hold off until making any other changes this week at least then reassess after the weekend. 

• Yi

Looks a bit weaker in average skill games and a bit weaker again in high skill games. Increasing the delta between his performance in those two contexts wasn't a goal so we're monitoring how that goes. Want to give it a bit of time to see how players adapt to the changes though before making any assumptions, given a number of optimizations have changed. 

• Rageblade Users

Generally don't seem to have been excessively affected by the changes from what we've seen so far. Kog's probably the most impacted, but even then's still doing reasonable. Not immediate compensation changes planned as a result. 

Wukong Changes on PBE 

Thanks for the feedback so far on the Wukong changes that hit PBE earlier this week. Overall perception seems to be positive, seeing some good suggested areas for improvement too. Will likely be a revised version on PBE sometime next week as a result. 

As a reminder these changes are a prototype, not something that could be ready to go live shortly. They'll be on PBE for around 4 weeks, then they'll be taken off and we'll figure out whether to commit to making a more polished version of them or not."

Meddler commented on Ryze:

"There's some Ryze experimentation going on at present, cautiously optimistic it'll be worth shipping at least some of it. Wouldn't call it a revert though and don't think we've got any reason to believe past versions of Ryze were more balanceable even if his current state has issues too."

Meddler talked more on Yuumi:

"We're pretty cautious with things that give Yuumi more safety given just how evasive her attach can make her when played well. We've seen extremely powerful versions of Yuumi, even with lower AA range, in internal testing, so would be hesitant to add that to her. Not saying it's impossible, wouldn't be the first time we've thought something was much stronger than it was off limited sample size. It's something we've thought about though certainly and wouldn't want to act on too quickly."

Meddler noted they would try to get some thoughts about Teemo's experimental changes on the PBE:

"Good point, we should share some thoughts there. I'll track down the designer working on them, get something into a post for next week."

Update in Client Skin Bios 

Here's Riot Stellari with an update on skin bios going forward:

"Hi everyone -- I’m Riot Stellari, a product manager for Skins and product lead for Thematic Development. I just wanted to give you a quick update on where we are with skin bio release cadence, but first I want to talk about our philosophy behind them. 

Skin bios (or "skin descriptions”) is a product I pitched two years ago when we first created the Skin Collections Tab. The original idea for the tab was that it’d be a cool way to categorize skins, and it’d also be fun for people who like to collect things to see what they were missing. I pitched that it’d ALSO be an amazing way to show players some of the “head canon” we had for skins like Blood Moon and Program (many people didn’t know it was part of the PROJECT universe) and also a cool way to make brand new alternate universes. Also it would be fun, because I personally have always loved browsing skins in games and reading flavor text on things. I got to work categorizing skins with a team of writers and concept artists. We got through about 25% of the skins before we realized more skins had no "story" or even connective tissue. Some splashes had easter eggs to things that were "internal lore" while others just had something random and funny in the background. We had to dig through ancient Boards posts to see what the original marketing material was. 

But it was worth it because a lot of you guys have become really invested in some of these skin sets! That makes us really happy. I love seeing the community theorycraft about a "skinline" that, to be honest, was just a collection of skins. Something I've had to explain a bit on Twitter is that the vast majority of skin sets are still simply that: a set of skins for the Skins Collection Tab that also happen to have flavor text. They aren’t considered “full universes.” Only the skins listed in the Universe page are skins we consider to have full alternate universe lore. 

But every once in awhile, one of those skin collections gets to level up! We decide to reboot the line, or invest in world-building. For example, High Noon was reboot from a collection of joke cowboy skins into a demon-filled spooky Western. Carnival Knights, our narrative writer, wrote out an entire narrative world for the Skins team to dive into and be inspired by. And based on reception, players appreciated that the skins had lore and depth. 

Okay, so now that I’m done explaining our philosophy around skin descriptions, I wanted to give you guys an update that we are going to slow down the pace in which we update these. Going forward, we will only be releasing descriptions for new skins. Old skins will get descriptions if they’re part of the same skin set AND it seems valuable for us to update that. This was a side project we were really passionate about, but we also want to make sure that Carnival Knights and other writers get the chance to write really awesome stories like Trial of the Masks and The Man with the Grinning Shadow to continue to build on these skin lines so they can graduate from collection of skins, to something we want to invest in. 

Here to answer questions!"

Little Demon Tristana: Splash Art and Chromas

Here's the latest update on Little Demon Tristana, which is now testing on the PBE:

"It’s the penultimate update for Little Demon Tristana, and today we’re sharing the latest progress on her chromas and how we created her splash art. Since Tristana just jumped into PBE this week, our final update will focus on the finishing touches that go into skin development, and we’ll also have a time-lapse video of her splash art illustration to share. 

Splash Art 

Jennifer Wuestling, Illustrator: Hi, I’m the illustrator for Little Demon Tristana’s splash art! A lot has happened since our first update, back when we posted the black and white thumbnail sketches for her splash. It’s been a while, so here are those early sketches again. 

Once the team decided to go with this design, the next thing I did was make some color variations, which is something we do to see what mood or color scheme fits the character and scene. We quickly decided that a warm color scheme would be a nice contrast to the cool blues she has in her hair and fire VFX.

Before I go full into rendering—which is where I clean up the image and round-by-round paint in more details—I refine the thumbnail, solving issues while the image is still small and tweaks are relatively easy to do without spending too much time. Composition, lighting, anatomy, and values should all be solid at this stage, and when it’s viewed as small thumbnail, it should look close to what we want the final splash to look like. We call this stage the “greenlight stage.” 

Original Pass and Green-Lit Version (With Text)

After it’s green-lit by the team, I move into rendering. Before starting, I size up the image and “mask” the various elements—like her skin, clothes, horns, and hair—so that they’re all on separate layers. I try to group things that don’t touch or overlap onto one layer so that I can keep my layer count low and less confusing. Everything that has the same crazy color is typically on the same layer; for example, her hands, horns, and clothes are all marked in blue. 

Little Demon Tristana’s Masks (or Layers)

Masked Tristana With Background Layer Turned Off

Not all artists in the team work the same way or with this method, and some artists separate layers later in the process. But it’s generally useful to have the elements in layers, that way we can move things around without affecting other areas. 

from
http://www.surrenderat20.net/2019/05/red-post-collection-yuumi-mid-patch.html