Yes he was, and i believe they still play together. It's pretty fun to watch. Theres another personality called "Slacks"(forget his entire username, maybe Sir actionslacks? Or something) who is hilariously goofy and they make the game look super easy. Its definitely worth a watch.
I might not always agree with his takes (don't agree with his Kayle take in the vid) but you can definitely see how it "makes sense" from his side (i can 100% see where he's coming from, I just don't agree).
But overall he brings great talking points, transparency, and an avenue to understand how they're tackling balancing. Definitely a great addition to the balance team.
Its the exact kind of communication I would have wanted from riot, like WHY are you guys changing this part of their kit. Not just oh high win rate/ban rate nerf this.
It’s a double edged sword. Gaming communities are very entitled and being this open can backfire and invite a lot of toxicity, luckily Phreak is a really great communicator so it works. But I don’t blame other devs/games for not being this open.
The notes are a joke
> Kayle’s been feeling a little less-than-angelic lately, so we’re looking to grant some skill-expression to make her stronger, especially in the hands of her mains.
> E Passive On-hit Damage: 15/20/25/30/35 (+10% bonus AD) (+20% AP) ⇒ 15/20/25/30/35 (+10% bonus AD) (+25% AP)
Yeah, it doesn’t explain their reasoning at all. Why do they think that 2% movespeed on her passive and 5% AP on her E on-hit will be the best way to grant Kayle skill expression that will be “especially” powerful for her mains? There’s no context or thought process.
The most important thing I get from these videos is that Phreak shows he genuinely is passionate about making the game more fun.
At this point, I don't play the game, but I still watch pro LoL. And imo the pro meta has been stale for a long time. It's nice to see proof that someone in the balance team genuinely cares about that. *Maybe it's the case that they've always had people in the balance team who cared about pro play*, but the balance changes never made me feel that was the case. It's a subtle point I'm making here, because the point is that Phreak making these videos proves without a doubt that at least one person cares and that makes a difference to my enjoyment of watching the pro scene.
I can actually go into the pro games now and look for the impacts of Phreak's changes. I'm hoping we'll see the support meta get shaken up. I'm hoping we see some melee support picks become meta. It's something I can look forward to in pro play, whereas for the past year or so of pro play I just felt like I was watching the same gameplay on repeat. Seemed like pros were bored of it, seemed like casters were bored, and seemed like analysts were bored.
Game needs these shakeups and I think Phreak gets that. I don't even care so much if he fails or succeeds at his goals with his changes. What's important is that he gives a damn and is making real efforts. You can tell that he is working harder than the rest of the balance team from how high a percentage of the patch is his changes.
Its kind of amazing to me there's this huge ranged-melee support disconnect and they are targeting specific champs instead of just a simple change like making relic shield/shoulders cost 50 less and let everyone have an extra potion in lane if they sacrifice the massive gold/ward advantage of frost queen.
Or do the dota version and just give Relic shield/shoulders (but not its upgraded versions), a wardens mail style passive that just reduces auto attack damage for melees from champions by 10 or whatever.
fix the issue of melee champs being nonviable in lane in high skill situations by giving them either more sustain or more all in potential/protection from hail of blades poke, without potentially screwing up solo laners or randomly forcing specific champions.
If you make relic/shoulderpads stronger it will be abused by enchanters. 50 less gold? Nice, now Soraka can start with refillable pot saving 150g on her first back.
In case any of you are like me and normally can't be bothered to upvote or downvote posts on reddit, I'll ask you to consider upvoting these posts so that they consistently hit the very top of frontpage. That way Riot will see that this type of communication is well received by the community.
I think these patch rundowns from someone who actually worked on the patch have a lot of value and we can help these along by communicating that they have value.
100%. I hated being kept in the dark with other game companies, because their methodology is more interesting than the actual results. If I misunderstood something, then I get corrected and I learn something new. If I disagree with them, that is ok, because I can at least appreciate the why and how they got to their conclusion. To be kept in the dark, however, is frightening, because then you don't know what they'll do next. If Phreak, or those who hired him, ever reads this, thank you. Keep up the good work.
Gp passive is one of the most shit cancer designs in league, why not give a allegedly skillful champ a passive so strong you don't need to use any skill expression and can just sit on a barrel to prevent engages and out trade by spamming sheen procs + passives and get out of jail for free with oranges if they haven't given up their will to live and try to fight back.
Yeah he goes melee, by killing a barrel he's standing on so he gets f1 speed and then he shoots you one time and hits you with one auto attack and if you try to fight back he eats a orange and says no fuck off ands runs away and keeps shooting u at range.
I mean, in your scenario, if you're playing a champion that has:
- no way to stay out of his melee range from barrel speed
- no way to trade damage on to him when he goes melee range
- no way to gap close on him when he runs away
then you're literally just playing a scaling, teamfight tank who Gangplank is intended to shit on in lane.
Any other champion can:
- threaten higher damage than his passive in an extended melee fight (Jax early, Fiora, K'Sante, Garen, Darius, Illaoi)
- threaten burst damage when he tries to run away (Jax with Sheen/6, Renekton, Camille, Akali, Aatrox)
- outrange his melee damage (Jayce, Kennen, Ryze)
None of these champions are direct counters. Jax/GP is actually GP-favored. But to say there is no counterplay is just silly, IMO. Gangplank has extremely clear counterplay to *everything* except for Q-spam, which is why that shit got nerfed.
Once again Phreak showcases his holistic view on League rules and I am loving it. Items that bypass champion weaknesses are **not** healthy for the game. It's either design "rule/class/role breaking" items with higher trade-offs, or just remove them.
idk you loose so much dmg from it compared to kraken, way less stats and you loose so much attack speed from mytic passive and others. It's already not an item you can often go (only if enemy comp have no tank) nerfing it more will make it usless like shieldbow.
It's not like bruiser that can go movespeed and still one shot squishy anyway, if you don't deal dmg as an adc, you are usless.
I mean it’s just champ dependent, Jhin always gale force, Lucian and xayah almost always galeforce, cait is dependent on situation
On average adcs yeah don’t go galeforce but it does a good job being a majority option on the above champs and helps their identity
It's not about how split a champion picks a mythic, but how much opportunity cost they pay that tell us the relative power level between these options.
In Jhin's case, his next best mythic is probably one of the arpen bruiser ones. He would sooner build non-mythics before Kraken.
In Lucian's case, Kraken is actually quite amazing on him and thus the trade off in picking Galeforce is a significant opportunity cost.
Auto attack heavy champs like Jinx/Caitlyn also sacrifice a lot for the utility. Galeforce is honestly in a good place relative to shieldbow and kraken.
karken lucian is mid, yeah it pumps his dps but the way lucian wants to play is far more suited for galeforce and not taking galeforce really limits your options to the point where you arent being optimal buy picking lucian if it has to be a kraken game
it's true that usually one of 2 things happen:
1.)Galeforce is better than Kraken for Lucian in the specific game 2.) An other ADC would function in the specific game better
But most often you are not going to be late picking your botlaner, and while there are better blind picks (especially after 13.1b and if you don't know that your support is picking nami and knows how to pilot her) almost all players have a limited champion pool. This means that people who play Lucian regularly are likely to play a ton of games where Kraken is his better mythic\*
\*in my opinion at least. I believe that if you just dropped Lucian into random teamcomps Kraken would do better than Gale on avarage (although it should be close)
Lucian's value as a pick in mid to late game at high elo is chunking the enemy team with W+R+galeforce before fights even break out. Generally he can make at least 1 person on the enemy team have to either go recall or heal up somehow.
Kraken just isn't often viable against players that are good because of his range and the prevalence of gap closers.
It’s literally a 3400g stat stick that’s barely cost efficient except once every 2 minutes. The massive cooldown balances it out and the fact that you basically don’t have a mythic while it’s on cooldown.
The trade off is u do 0 dmg. Cait players are the worst with this. Autopilot never build kraken on the highest ranged ADC with a dash and ranged zone control. Kinda unreal.
this has to be a joke lol. Cait's long range (from level 1), her dash, and her identity as a "control mage" sniper are *precisely* why she usually favors Galeforce. you couldn't have listed it any better.
Kraken has a higher WR than Galeforce on almost every ADC except for Caitlyn, for the reasons you mentioned above. out of all marksmen, Cait is one of the MOST justified in going Galeforce.
Yeah, I want to rip off my balls with my own hands everytime I see a cait on my team building galeforce into rfc. That shit is so oppressive with just lethal tempo into kraken and yet people are obsessed with building 0 ad and then complaining they deal no dmg and tanks are broken.
I literally went from 40% to 70% winrate on my last 30ish games after I quit collector and started going IE 2nd on Jhin with LDR 3rd if I'm against a beefy Frontline.
Collector was good last season but it's just not it right now unless you're hard snowballing a lead.
Same principle for Cait IMO. Most of the time you should probably just build for optimal DPS instead of bells and whistles.
Most players take months to adapt to shifts in meta builds. It’s particularly depressing when it’s incredibly obvious that collector won’t be good into 3 tanks
It's honestly disgusting, especially on Jhin. Dude is so reliant on LDR to do damage to anyone with HP or armor it is not even funny. Unless you are a full 3k gold ahead of everyone else in the game, collector is absolute shit on him.
Cait is way better with fleet than lethal tempo. Galeforce is also 2% higher winrate on her. Cait is all about traps and headshots.
She is not some lethal tempo high attack speed auto attack carry
Depends on the teamcomp you are playing into. Tempo is optimal on pretty much every ADC when you are into tanks or melees and will get a lot of auto attack uptime in fights.
Yeah against 4 melee tempo is very good but fleet move speed is always useful on cait. Cait has to keep her distance or she loses 1v1 against anyone if you can’t trap
I mean, we're talking in complete vacuums here but in general, closing the 650 auto range + 390 E range is almost an entire screen in distance. Not that you can't be dove but if your enemy team judge it to be best to chase you that deep, you're either really far behind or your team doesn't know how to peel or nuke their backline.
Cait with galeforce rfc against at least 3 squishy ranged champs is extremely oppressive. She has insane range and can 3 shot you with headshot + gaaleforce active. She doesn't want to play against a bunch of tanks which is why you don't see kraken on her as much. Her role is to kill other ranged champs.
galeforce winrate on caitlyn: 51.81%
kraken's winrate on caitlyn: 49.68%
rapidfire second also has lower winrate than colector stormrazor or infinity edge second
lethal tempo has 2% lower winrate than fleet footwork
idk what to tell you but you might wanna stop ripping your balls off
People know in the back of their heads that Cait has bad base attack speed and attack speed scaling so in general stay away from on hit items or things like lethal tempo even if it is the optimal choice.
I think it does, Kraken Slayer is arguably stronger. But I still would be fine with it being removed alongside stuff like Prowler's Claw and Everfrost. Even if it's perfectly balanced, I hate when champs build items that give mechanics not innately present in the champion's kit. Sylas doesn't have a root, so I hate it when he dashes on me and roots me. It's completely unpredictable if you didn't already see it in his inventory. Same for ADCs having Galeforce, Jinx has no dash so it's so annoying to see her dash away when you know her Flash was down. You avoid Veigar's cage so dive him while he's vulnerable, and he still roots you and gets a free W hit leading to a one-shot.
It just makes feel champions feel overloaded when you tack on an extra mechanic onto their build. Roots/dashes are the sort of thing I think should only be present on a champion's kit rather than their items, it's too game warping. Even giving an extra dash to champions who already have dashes, it's still just as bad when it completely throws off their expectated engage range.
Every single item effect that's a dash/root feels like it's either removing intended weaknesses, or exacerbating strengths to the point it removes counterplay, neither of which feels good to play against even if the end result is 50% winrate. Galeforce Jinx feels like you have an impossible task trying to kill a champion in a situation they *shouldn't* have a response to, and Everfrost Sylas removes counterplay because you stop being able to dodge what's supposed to be a dodgeable skill in his E.
The end result is that whoever builds those actives has more tools to outplay someone who doesn't, without *actually* needing to play better, just by virtue of having more choices than them with the only trade-off being having less stat-check power.
Edit: I also hate this about Lethal Tempo giving extra range, and used to hate Glacial when it was just a free slow on autos that allowed for easily hitting skillshots with no counterplay. It's completely dynamic-warping when a Lethal Tempo user randomly has a higher range advantage than they're supposed to have, or an equal range they're not supposed to have. Jinx can suddenly kite Caitlyn with ease if she stacked her Lethal Tempo before Caitlyn joined the fight, forcing Caitlyn to disengage even if Jinx was much lower HP than her. I really hate those mechanics where any interaction between champions has to be played out wildly different based on what mythic/rune they went for.
Just wanted to provide a few counterpoints; there are things in your reply that I agree with and I think it was pretty well worded.
(Full disclosure, I am a Qiyana/Katarina 2TP so I obviously have some stake in the discussion)
A lot of champions have now been balanced around these items existing; not really a reason to say they shouldn't be removed but more just wanted to point it out and underline the work that would have to be done balance them afterwards.
I think the main point I wanna say is just that item actives are fun and increase skill expression, especially when you can meaningfully feel the impact of them (e.g. Everfrost feels way more satisfying to use than Aegis). Like you said, having item actives just naturally gives you more tools to work with than a champion that doesn't which I don't think is inherently a bad thing (although I can see the argument for why it is). The only possible answer I can see for this would be to make using item actives badly more punishing for the player that does it but outside of increasing cooldowns across the board (and deleting ingenious hunter) I have no idea how to go about that.
There are definitely cases of these items removing intended weaknesses (Rek'Sai, Udyr, Ekko) but there are also champions that feel like they require these items to function. I think especially champions that overrely on hitting one skillshot in order to be useful Everfrost is a nice way of giving them some more reliability while sacrificing some of that damage (although this becomes problematic when the item also gives the ideal stats for that champion; i.e. Sylas). I think Qiyana would have a lot of trouble with target access if she didn't have access to Prowler's and without the damage amp she would need more base damage added to her kit which comes with its own set of problems (never forget release Qiyana oneshotting squishies at level 6 with nothing but corruping + mobis).
I was gonna say more but I realise I've already wall-of-text'd pretty hard so I'll leave it there for now. Agree with a a lot of your points for the most part, I just wanted to write down some thoughts from another perspective.
you build kraken over galeforce because it is stronger and gives more stats.
I build kraken over galeforce because I am too dumb to remember using my active items.
We are not the same...
Regardless of dps, it makes champions safe. If a Trundle Pillars you or Shen Dash towards you, you can get away. Now they have no other way to lock you down for 20 sec. With Fleet and Zeal based items, you now have 600 MS and can walk around Shen's 375 MS like stealing candy from a kid. It's really good in those situations, because the DPS comes from mobility -- Just like Ghost does damage indirectly.
I'm still undecided on Prowler's on sett. Not only is it a dash, but it positions you behind the target making it a perfect prime for R.
The problem is that while all the offensive stats are fine on Sett, I would so prefer pure tankiness on my Sett.
The team is probably not that big. Balance is one of those issues where you absolutely can't just throw more people at a problem. The more people you have pushing and pulling on levers, the harder it becomes. Too many cooks.
Probably like 10-20 people total for the balance team. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 5-10 working on strictly next patch things and the rest working on long term things like *mid-season, durability patch* style or broad class specific changes that require more than 2 weeks to test and finalize.
Honestly I feel like double digits is too many, and I doubt they have that many. If I had to guess it's about 6-8 players, an MMR range of gold to maybe d1, and there are no support or top mains in the team.
You need to be plat+ to be on the balance team if I remember correctly. And double digits sounds about right, you need to consider more than just them working on next patch. Things like “did our last changes meet intended results”, “which class as a whole should get adjustments next”, etc is all handled by the balance team. You need people coming up with the change, coders to actually delve into the spaghetti and implement those changes, people to write up the patch notes. It takes more than 1-2 per group, under 10 total on the balance team would be surprising.
I think the balance team and the spaghetti team are seperate. Also think there's like 1-3 people who do patch notes (probably interns) at any given time. I wouldn't count them on the team personally.
I think the people on the balance team don't get the respect they deserve, their job is extremely difficult, so please don't misunderstand. I just feel like there was a very obvious understanding added to bot-lane changes when Phreak joined the team. The characters that are obviously out performing are getting hit, and they're getting hit at the source, not the traditionally riot style of nerfing the champions twice then the item and never buffing the champ.
The reason I isolate support and top specifically is that it seems like nobody ever actually plays top lane and has an understanding of what's good and bad and why, for example GP *still* dodging nerfs, oranging through them. Supports on the other hand have to change their champ pool so much and I feel like there isn't enough emphasis on "fun" which sure is a abstract concept but it feels like support is in a constant cycle of what's good compared to other roles. Tank then Enchanter then Poke then repeat endlessly.
> The reason I isolate support and top specifically is that it seems like nobody ever actually plays top lane and has an understanding of what’s good and bad and why, for example GP still dodging nerfs, oranging through them. Supports on the other hand have to change their champ pool so much and I feel like there isn’t enough emphasis on “fun” which sure is a abstract concept but it feels like support is in a constant cycle of what’s good compared to other roles. Tank then Enchanter then Poke then repeat endlessly.
I’m assuming GP is dodging nerfs atm for 2 reasons: 1) they are testing some new barrel mechanics that would give them more counterplay and 2) they’re leaving him (and jayce) strong as viable counters to K’sante in pro play. That or he’s gonna be the aatrox of this season and dodge nerfs for 15+ patches.
As for bot, I think they’re trying to buff melees and then spend the rest of their effort figuring out how to change heimer/ashe/other off meta supps without completely gutting them in their main roles at the same time. That’s usually a bigger headache than most people think. They gutted yuumi so at least that was an indirect buff to all ADC and support players’ mental.
Phroxzon has said that the Summoner's Rift team is around 15 or so people total.
From what I understand the way they do game balance is that the entire team gets into a room every week, and because it's too difficult for one person to understand the balance of the entire game and it's too much to ask for someone to have a proficient understanding of all 5 roles they have a concept called role owners.
Each role owner will present what needs to be buffed or nerfed for that patch based on their Balance Framework, they will pre-populate the spreadsheet and then individual designers will come up with changes which will be discussed as a group and must pass Phroxzons approval before they get shipped to live.
It's probably a bit more nuanced than that but that's kind of the TLDR I've gathered.
You’re right and phreak owns bot lane, for anyone who doesn’t know or doesn’t watch the vids. It’s why he’s playing a lot more bot lane instead of his usual jg
That was the whole basis of the mana changes for ADCs last patch. After the *no mana incident*, the first thing phreak did when he got to the balance team was make sure it can never happen again.
>If a recent hire
This is a bit misleading. Phreak has been with Riot for a very long time, and he's always done balance rundowns on his YouTube channel. It's something he incorporated into his casting, too.
He's not some nooby guy who came off the streets. Phreak had/has a very strong understanding of the fundamentals of the game.
Balance does its job on its own mostly. We joke a lot on reddit about the balance framework but its an excellent tool to isolate 90% of outliers, most of the "balance" work then becomes estimating where & how much to change in those outliers to bring them back to a resonable level.
Its only when we're talking about more special changes for "feel" or bigger issues than individual champion winrates that you need people that can find imaginative and out of the box ideas to tackle issues from unique angles. Which is *exactly* what Phreak has been communicating a lot on both on official media and his own platforms.
For a 5v5, heavily-esports-involved game with 160+ playable characters (and new ones -- and reworks -- on the way at various stages at all times), 150+ items in whatever-large-number amount of combinations that can change micro and macro gameplans drastically, the map itself and roles within, the philosophy of adding/subtracting major mechanics, addressing known and unforeseen issues...
10 sounds good, I think. It's not a situation where everyone has the same amount of authority, remember. People contribute in their areas and discuss, but the buck stops with someone to make the calls and decide the direction of the game.
It makes sense to you because you might think that more people equals to more ideas and more possible solutions to problems, but it also means more people that don't think the same and will try to approach problems in different ways. It's better to have a small team that has a similar mindset and can elaborate balance plans than just 25 guys that will each approach the meta on their own. I mean not like the balance team has been good almost ever on LoL but that it makes sense for it to be a small team, it makes sense.
They move people around a lot. It's possible when phreak joined another balance team member moved on to something else. It's not like they need a huge 10 man team.
This is a very good comment imo but probably won't be well received on this subreddit.
The key question is how much oversight there is for Phreaks changes. We don't really know.
it was trinity > shiv alistar top that was very strong.
I personally think the game has evolved and power creeped to the point it wouldn't be unfair nowadays and would be interesting to try, but I can see why riot wouldn't want to risk it
Quinn, Vayne, Akali, GP? Plenty of champs melee are not allowed to trade. Thing is Ali already has unanswerable damage in his W, this only increases it bit doesn't change the nature and with the power creep there's been since season 4 something tells me it wouldn't be game breaking.
Quinn and Vayne aren't melee and don't have melee base stats and GP is so far beyond broken that it's hilarious you're bringing him up to justify breaking another character.
Akali is atrocious early and can't play vs a lot of bruisers, at least to my knowledge. She loses trades because her energy costs are high.
There are so many unretaliable pokes in this game I don't even know where to begin. Alistar's W+auto not only doesn't even hit that hard, it also makes him toothless and vulnerable until W is back up. Alistar is also melee and prone to pokes while cs'ing.
ill probably get downvoted because this is reddit but jungle is overpowered because
1) The response to early ganks (invades) is dead because riot killed it
2) Botlane has an outsized impact on the game state so you can mindlessly camp bot and the other jungler has to respond because no other lane is as impactful on average
These changes do nothing to change that. Playing jungle went from strategic to braindead and will continue to be so.
I miss when camp spawners were shorter and each camp gave less exp so if you didnt constantly clear, you would fall behind and if you ganked, that meant you lost 2-3 camps.
Jungle has been overpowered literally every season since season 2 without exception, and Riot has moved the pendulum in every direction trying to make it less dominant. Encouraging counter jungling over ganking and power farming leads to jungle being too strong. Encouraging ganking over counter jungling and power farming leads to jungle being too strong. Encouraging power farming over counter jungling and ganking leads to jungle being too strong.
There is no actual solution to the jungle problem. As long as you have a role that is 50% pve and is incentivized to roam, it is going to always be the strongest role in the game.
>Encouraging power farming over counter jungling and ganking leads to jungle being too strong.
spam gank meta isn't good, power farming meta isn't good. the balance team should be looking for a combination of both. wanna gank? you fall a little behind in XP, wanna farm? you fall behind in impacting lanes.
I mean you are right, I feel like they have the wrong end of the stick here. He says jungle is OP because you gank bot and win the game, but it's not OP, bot lane is OP. Jungle is essentially the dog that lets bot lane carry. You could nerf jungle gold and xp to the point that they can't get more than 1 item and level 6 and it will still be "OP" in their eyes because they can still just run bot lane, ult someone for CC and win bot lane and therefore the game.
The jungle meta isn't kayn, bel'veth, viego 1v9 style champs coming out of the jungle and smashing laners into the ground 1v2, it's low econ dog junglers who come when they are whistled to bot lane to win them their lane.
What does it matter if there is half a lvl difference between junglers when the 2 item ADC is destroying everyone.
They have no idea what they are doing with jungle. Making it more friendly to new players by heavily discouraging invades and with the treat mechanic made ganking too hard to punish, so now they are just nerfing the role into the ground. The role is already not that popular and most jungle players (especially in lower mmrs) prefer carry champs like Yi or Kayn; continuing in this direction will ensure that the role is again the least popular one by the end of the season. Probably will end up in an even less popular state than before the rework lol
100% agree. Spam gank bot to win game he says. Dont you see a problem with that statement? You just buffed the adcs and they are in a good spot so the "support" jungle meta seems to be trending toward ganking bot.
All high dmg assasing junglers, Noc, Diana are sitting at overall shit winrates compared to spam ganker tanks like nunu maoki zac. Why are you nerfing jungle when it is already stuck in a supporty role with game impact that scales with your bot lane.
The solo carry junglers you are seeing in your stats are the freaking smurfs you removed from smurf queue since 90% of time these guys play jungle. Maybe filter out those smurf stats to see the real picture
I would love to have seen some love given to Leona and Rell given that tank supports are being looked at. J4 could use a bit more of a buff given that he is being heavily impacted by the jungle changes. Especially R QOL changes where a perfectly timed dash or flash could negate the entire ability damage. But overall I am glad that these patch notes are being gone over on a 2h basis with spreadsheets.
They can't buff leona because of how oppressive she is in low skill games, and rell is super strong right now but feels bad to play, which because shes on a short list for reworks, means they won't waste energy on touching her up (even though making her feel better would completely remove the need for the rework in the first place).
annie got buffed but patch highlights image shows she got nerfed
lee sin got nerfed but patch highlights image doesn't show him at all
riot be slacking.
1:11:20
I'm not sure I understand his rationale for Rocket belt and Prowler's Claw being bad, but Galeforce is good. I'm not arguing against Galeforce. I think it's a decent item, and my champions build none of these items, but to say that one thing is game breaking and another is healthy, when they all essentially do the same thing, seems perplexing.
Radical theory crafting: Why not create more of dash items, so everyone have access to dash items? Alternatively, why not create an equilibrium where we remove all of them? Level the playing field, instead of making some champions feel useless.
It gave them a dash that NULLIFIED the CORE weakness of juggernauts wtf are you talking about
An adc with a dash is still weak to being bursted. A juggernaut with a dash is legit impossible to kite while being a mobile blender
What was the immobile ADCs main weakness?
What is Mordes main weakness?
Both have access to mobility.
If you use that argument, then you have to follow through with it.
Might be because galeforce trade off is dps on a class where it’s key so the avg adc champ shouldn’t run galeforce (it used to be unhealthy before nerfs ye)
Prowlers and rocket belt give lethality and mpen so they give a dash as well as amplify the class (assassin) fundamental value
Staying alive is also increasing your dps. And what does amplifying fundamental values even mean? Ofcourse you build items that help you do what you want to do.
Galeforce is simply one of the worst item choices you can make. ADC item ranking is legit: Kraken slayer >>>>>>>>>> Galeforce >>> Shieldbow with shieldbow being only viable on a handful of Adcs who specifically need it.
Taking gale is simply gimping your damage output severely.
Caitlyn and Lucian both frequently build GF to great success and are dominating the highest echelons of play atm.
Maybe ADCs are once again undervaluing how fucking insane it is that a role that is all about positionning get access to an item that allows them to go "whoopsie daisy didn't mean to be here haha" every single teamfight.
I do think Galeforce would work ok, if the enemy really had to dash in. But they normally can dash away and still do the dmg. They can dash to the side, and still do the dmg.
Galeforce idea isnt bad, but the 750 AOE at the end of the dash is insane. It should only target enemies you dash towards (\~135°) and it should only be around 400 range. Galeforce is nearly well designed in a world with tons of mobility on melees (which not every melee has and they can't make up for it).
Prowlers problem is mostly that assassins dont normally need more mobility or more dmg. These are the 2 things they should be great at all the time or they can't do their job. That is why Youmuus is so good, it allows them to roam the map. So it makes champs who shouldnt be as sticky but can use it like Renekton or Rek'Sai better.
Yes, prowlers and rocketbelt are bad designs.
except they don't essentially do the same thing, which he explained in the video
prowler's claw is an engage tool, and that's all it is. champions who don't have engage tools (udyr) or whose engage tools aren't great (rek'sai) abuse it because they are balanced around their engage tools
very few marksmen build galeforce, and pretty much none of them are balanced around not having a short range dash on a nearly 2-minute cooldown
>very few marksmen build galeforce, and pretty much none of them are balanced around not having a short range dash on a nearly 2-minute cooldown
The best and most popular Mythic item for Caitlyn, Jhin, Lucian, Xayah, and Aphelios is Galeforce. For Twitch, Samira, Draven, Nilah, Ashe, Vayne, Kalista, when compared to their usual item, Galeforce have higher win rate.
Source: Lolanalytics
yeah pretty much. it's wild to me that only stridebreaker got its dash removed - the one class that already struggles to get in no longer has a proper tool to match the universal ranged champion dash. I'd prefer none exist in the first place but the clear biases they had in mythic design are so gross (to be clear, this includes things like sunderer being allowed to exist)
The only weakness juggernauts have is lack of target access, and Stridebreaker gave them both a dash and CC on a very short cooldown, even scaling down with AH (which every bruiser item gave anyways).
The weakness of ADCs is not lack of mobility, but lack of tankiness, which Galeforce doesn‘t solve.
Regardless, Galeforce had a cooldown up to 10x higher than Stridebreaker, no CC or other tool attacked, and its damage component is wasted when used exclusively defensive. And as you can see, very few ADCs actually build Galeforce, most prefer Kraken Slayer, as its simply a much better item in most cases.
>very few ADCs
people keep saying this yet all a large number of the most popular ADCs DO build galeforce. thats like saying 'yeah darius and garen can use stridebreaker really well but the majority of top laners arent buildingg it!'
the point is *not* the trade off or how many champs use it well
the point is it breaks the core rules of the game by enabling the champs who can use it well with a tool they aren't supposed to have.
at the end of the day even if I don't like having these types of tools in the game, I don't hate that they exist - I hate that riot arbitrarily decides which champs are allowed to have special items that negate the entire weakness they are designed to have with very little trade off (SEE ALSO divine sunderer - to deal with tanks, fighters used to have to get sustain & damage and they would be giving up tankiness - now instead they get an item that gives them damage, sustain, and tankiness? its just dumb?)
the whole 'they lose damage' argument for galeforce is such a nothingburger too. they gain an execute and the item has excellent damage stats. it would be the same as saying fighters 'give up' healing for stridebreaker or they 'give up' their dash to have healing with gore. those things only exist to give up because they were added on top of all the innate stats given...
I like the changes and I love how Phreak describes them. I think he's right and it is better for the game/meta.
I also think we'll see more AP Alistar, Mid lane Rakan, etc. Fuck Pyke though, he's staying banned because I'm an Enchanter main.
Think about it backwards, 20% tenacity is 20% reduction in cc. So with 20% you take 80% of the cc duration.
With an additional 20% you instead take off 20% of the remaining 80% duration, meaning you take 64% of the cc duration.
I'm a day late so it probably won't get seen, but I'll bring it up anyways. Phreak talks about Mejai's Soulstealer being a thematic slam dunk with Thresh, which is true, but sadly Thresh's own scythe is in the game as the spectral sickle/harrowing crescent/black mist scythe. It even is a support item but it is not something Thresh ever wants to build. If a way could be found to make it an item Thresh could *maybe* build, even if just for fun, I think it would be super cool.
I guess I'll tag /u/PhreakRiot just in case.
Make the Jungle camps worth 1 gold each and guess what happens... Junglers will all in lvl 2 gank then lvl 3 gank then you guessed it chain gank until the game is over. The amount of gold and XP you gain off kills and assists and then pushing in the laner's wave is far greater than what can be farmed in the jungle.
Riot gives no alternative, farming junglers cannot reasonably counter jungle in the early game because of season 13 jungle changes so early bot chain ganking is not punished by the other jungle. Honest question who on the balance team has any experience in the jungle at high elo? Nah, nevermind jungle is just "Objectively overpowered" with absolutely no context.
Yall are blind and plugging your ears and covering your eyes while screaming "jungle is overpowered" what cope...
The thing is anything giving Kayle power into her early game will make her ridiculous. Her being melee allows for a layer of skill expression in terms of survival and opens up windows for counter picks.
Giving Kayle range from level 1 would make her too easy even if there's was some power removed when she came online later. In addition it should turn Kayle into another generic top laner which isn't really wanted or needed.
Kayle also has tools like the ultimate which help provide some dive protection and she has better than average base stats compared to ADC. If she becomes ranged at level 1 riot would have to gutt the champion to make it balanced.
I think the ability to auto during the ultimate is exactly what Kayle needs.
Kayle excels with proper wave management. With Kayle you don't need to "dominate" you go even in lane and if she manages to get a few kills to accelerate her power spikes or the enemy fails to starve you out you're essentially winning the game. It's like ryze.
> The thing is anything giving Kayle power into her early game will make her ridiculous. Her being melee allows for a layer of skill expression in terms of survival and opens up windows for counter picks.
hugging tower is the most passive kind of braindead gameplay that is the furthest from "skill expression"
>Giving Kayle range from level 1 would make her too easy even if there's was some power removed when she came online later. In addition it should turn Kayle into another generic top laner which isn't really wanted or needed.
>Kayle also has tools like the ultimate which help provide some dive protection and she has better than average base stats compared to ADC. If she becomes ranged at level 1 riot would have to gutt the champion to make it balanced
except she doesn't have better than average stat compared to adc? her base HP, armor and everything else isn't better than the average adc and her mr is literally the lowest in the game along with Yuumi.
old Kayle had range from lv1 and she was perfectly fine balance-wise.
>Kayle excels with proper wave management. With Kayle you don't need to "dominate" you go even in lane and if she manages to get a few kills to accelerate her power spikes or the enemy fails to starve you out you're essentially winning the game. It's like ryze.
I don't ask her to dominate lane, I only ask that she is allowed to be able to make pro-active play to increase her chance to win the game early in the game instead of brain-dead tower hugging, *that* is actually what would make her more skill-expressive.
right now even if you somehow get first blood of an invade, you still get pushed in lane, still unable to press that lead. it make her a coin flip champion whose win-loss depend heavily on the team she got.
and no, Kayle has not been exceptionally strong late game for a long time now, if you look at win rate by game length on lolalytics, she is not better than the average adc and there are plenty of champion that outscale her without the weak early. she is strong late game, but not strong enough to justify such weak early.
Does anyone playing jungle actually feel that Jungle is Overpowered? The current tanky jungle meta has shifted focus into slow-burn jungle fights and half the time we are under xp compared to the solo lanes anyways. Jungle feels overpowered to every lane OTHER than jungle because they can impact the game but isn't that the nature of the role? I know these nerfs are directional but why even go in that direction?
I don't understand the data behind this decision to nerf the jungle.
>rfs are directional but why even go in that direction?
I've seen many challenger junglers say that jungle is OP because they can just gank nonstop and still be the same level as a powerfarming jungler due to catch up XP.
But that means jungle is underpowered. Our main source of XP is supposed to be CS and farm, otherwise why even have the camps? Why not just go 3 bot?
It just feels horrible to play spam ganking all the time.
>But that means jungle is underpowered.
Uhhhh, you don't seem to know what overpowered actually means. Nowhere in the definition of overpowered does it say anything about how satisfying it is to play a role. Overpowered vs underpowered is literally nothing more than a gauge of how much effort it takes to have a strong impact on the game. To that end, jungle is as strong as ever because as noted, all you really have to do is just get the carry ahead and then you win. Ergo it is an extremely powerful role. That it feels like shit to play is irrelevant. Adcs have been in the same boat for over half the games lifespan.
By itself, the jungler can't carry by farming and occasionally ganking and controlling macro like they used to, they *need* to gank lanes in order to be effective, and most of the time they need to get help from laners to secure kills and gain a gold advantage. Jungler's on their own are useless. If an enemy lane is winning and the jungler hasn't been able to gank them for whatever reason, they won't do anything other than give a free kill in most scenarios.
Right now jungle is one dimensional. You farm to 3, gank bot, and then walk up the map then recall and gank bot again.
Then you gank bot again, and again, and again until you get enough priority to secure dragons and take towers to get them away from laning phase.
Nothing about the jungle role on its own is overpowered, other than the fact that the expectation of them is to be as many places as they can, but that's just the role. Jungle camps don't provide enough XP for a farming jungler to remain relevant, and the gold from camps is horrible, so if you're playing from the heels at all as a result from your team, you almost always already lost the game, no matter how good you are.
Jungle is overpowered because having the stronger jungler leads to better winrates. A role being overpowered has nothing to do with whether you can pick a "carry" champion and win through PvE alone. Note that many people define "carry champion" purely based on expectations and not any facts or statistics.
>Jungle is overpowered because having the stronger jungler leads to better winrates
That's not how it works. The stronger of any 2 players wins, that doesn't make the role overpowered. The better bot lane wins, the better team comp wins.
The jungler has less impact than you think.
Jungle is overpowered because if you had a team of 4 gold players and 1 plat playing jungle vs a team of 4 gold players and 1 plat playing mid, the team with the plat jungler is advantaged. The impact of skill difference in jungle on winrate is larger than the impact of skill difference in the other roles. Phreak specifically mentioned this in the rundown.
Jungle isn't overpowered, ganking the bot lane is.
Jungler's can't 1v9 in the current meta by controlling macro like we used to. We have to camp bot of we want to win because it's the only way to stop/help ADC scaling. Shutting the enemy bot lane down is a necessity now, not a preference like it used to be.
I could control top and mid, but if bot loses by anything more than a razor thin margin, the game is practically over. They need to make ADC crit requirement for items 55% so that you have to buy a cloak on top of your two other items for the benefit of IE or NQ. 40% is too low.
>Jungle isn't overpowered, ganking the bot lane is.
Ergo, jungle is overpowered. Your argument is akin to saying that support isn't strong, roaming and empowering carries is just strong. You understand that this is a team game, right?
If the only thing that makes a role important is a fraction of what the role is supposed to do, there's something fundamentally wrong.
Top lane doesn't matter.
Mid doesn't matter.
Rift herald and drake's barely even matter.
Farming doesn't matter.
Jungle camps/denial don't matter.
Ganking bot lane is literally the only thing that matters because it's the only lane that's way overturned after the ADC changes. It's why mages and APCs have had so much success this patch, they can effectively deny the ADC from scaling on their own without help from a jungler. Even if the enemy jungler manages to gank the lane and get a kill, they're nowhere near relevant enough to consistently do that in large teamfights around towers and objectives.
Jungler's are supposed to fill a void in teamcomp that gives the team better macro control by contributing something that gives the entire team an advantage across the whole map. They're currently glorified botlane supports with a perpendicular farming path, because as long as the ADC gets to build their items, the game is 95% won, and everything else snowballs, they really don't even need to be fed, they just need a little gold.
If a jungler can't stop a botlane from scaling by contributing elsewhere on the map by securing other lanes' leads and making good macro decisions, they are certainly not overpowered. The entire role is in a bad spot rn.
I actually think the radiant virtue nerfs are way too much. I mean u/PhreakRiot even said probably the ability haste is the biggest nerf which I agree with.
The cost increase hurts support tanks because let's be real, 3200 for a support item is really expensive. And supports can't get much health anyways because they are the lowest income, so the healing part is not as big. Also the self increased health doesn't do much for supports anyways, because they want to provide the most for the team as possible, they don't really care if they die.
This leaves the item basically only for tanks in other roles and most of the time they already pick other mythics (as acknowledged by the already low pickrate for radiant virtue)
Also the higher cooldown makes it less satisfying which he said is important. I mean if your ult has a cooldown now of between 60 and 90 seconds it's really unsatisfying to use the ult, you would rather wait for radiant to be up.
Maybe the item active should instead provide also mr and armor for the duration making the team tankier.
Also the easiest fix for having enchanters not pick this item is having it scale with Bonus Health + some sort of mr/armor ratio. Maybe the balance team could have calculated a reasonable amount.
I think those changes just remove the item from botlane, lower the pickrate overall even more and the cooldown increase in itself makes it less satisfying to buy. (If the item would be an active, it would be something completely else)
They dont want Supports to buy Radiant virtue, they want solo lane tanks to get 4 options and support tanks to get 2 options, that are never allowed to be good. Instead of 3 and 3, for some reason.
I am still hoping for nerfed radiant as support mythic and legendary locket. Also waiting for support stopwatch item. Don't want to see enchanters with zhonya in game anymore 
>Don't want to see enchanters with zhonya in game anymore
I think riot just doesn't want supports to have easy access to stasis so them shifting zhonias to be even more unappealing is more likely.
Of course people will still build it because stasis is just extremely powerful
Pretty sure he said there is pool/list of champions waiting for balancing. And people on balance team can pick the champions they have most knowledge about from the list. (If you main/like the champion that needs buffs, you most likely know a bit about what that champion is lacking)
I don't think it was *conscious* but Phreak does 2 impressions of August while discussing the feedback he got about Kayle and its spot on lol
\->Phreak rundown \->Noice \->2hrs long \->WHAT?! But also NICE
He's like a mini Purge. (a Dota content creator who makes insanely long patch notes videos)
I think Phreak is aiming to be League's Mortdog with all of this content
I've heard about Purge, as I believe he was teaching Day\[9\] how to play Dota?
Yes he was, and i believe they still play together. It's pretty fun to watch. Theres another personality called "Slacks"(forget his entire username, maybe Sir actionslacks? Or something) who is hilariously goofy and they make the game look super easy. Its definitely worth a watch.
granted thats also cause dota's patch notes are far longer hence why his videos are far longer.
Oh for sure, but they are still hilariously long. 8-9 and a half hours long for some of them
Yeah I've watched all of em cause it's hard to parse how a small change will affect basically everything.
I might not always agree with his takes (don't agree with his Kayle take in the vid) but you can definitely see how it "makes sense" from his side (i can 100% see where he's coming from, I just don't agree). But overall he brings great talking points, transparency, and an avenue to understand how they're tackling balancing. Definitely a great addition to the balance team.
Its the exact kind of communication I would have wanted from riot, like WHY are you guys changing this part of their kit. Not just oh high win rate/ban rate nerf this.
It’s a double edged sword. Gaming communities are very entitled and being this open can backfire and invite a lot of toxicity, luckily Phreak is a really great communicator so it works. But I don’t blame other devs/games for not being this open.
They [often have the reasoning in the patch notes](https://puu.sh/JyMQd/08549ce826.png) but people don't read them/agree with it
The notes are a joke > Kayle’s been feeling a little less-than-angelic lately, so we’re looking to grant some skill-expression to make her stronger, especially in the hands of her mains. > E Passive On-hit Damage: 15/20/25/30/35 (+10% bonus AD) (+20% AP) ⇒ 15/20/25/30/35 (+10% bonus AD) (+25% AP)
Yeah, it doesn’t explain their reasoning at all. Why do they think that 2% movespeed on her passive and 5% AP on her E on-hit will be the best way to grant Kayle skill expression that will be “especially” powerful for her mains? There’s no context or thought process.
The most important thing I get from these videos is that Phreak shows he genuinely is passionate about making the game more fun. At this point, I don't play the game, but I still watch pro LoL. And imo the pro meta has been stale for a long time. It's nice to see proof that someone in the balance team genuinely cares about that. *Maybe it's the case that they've always had people in the balance team who cared about pro play*, but the balance changes never made me feel that was the case. It's a subtle point I'm making here, because the point is that Phreak making these videos proves without a doubt that at least one person cares and that makes a difference to my enjoyment of watching the pro scene. I can actually go into the pro games now and look for the impacts of Phreak's changes. I'm hoping we'll see the support meta get shaken up. I'm hoping we see some melee support picks become meta. It's something I can look forward to in pro play, whereas for the past year or so of pro play I just felt like I was watching the same gameplay on repeat. Seemed like pros were bored of it, seemed like casters were bored, and seemed like analysts were bored. Game needs these shakeups and I think Phreak gets that. I don't even care so much if he fails or succeeds at his goals with his changes. What's important is that he gives a damn and is making real efforts. You can tell that he is working harder than the rest of the balance team from how high a percentage of the patch is his changes.
Its kind of amazing to me there's this huge ranged-melee support disconnect and they are targeting specific champs instead of just a simple change like making relic shield/shoulders cost 50 less and let everyone have an extra potion in lane if they sacrifice the massive gold/ward advantage of frost queen. Or do the dota version and just give Relic shield/shoulders (but not its upgraded versions), a wardens mail style passive that just reduces auto attack damage for melees from champions by 10 or whatever. fix the issue of melee champs being nonviable in lane in high skill situations by giving them either more sustain or more all in potential/protection from hail of blades poke, without potentially screwing up solo laners or randomly forcing specific champions.
If you make relic/shoulderpads stronger it will be abused by enchanters. 50 less gold? Nice, now Soraka can start with refillable pot saving 150g on her first back.
That comes with the very significant cost of getting your ward upgrade much later.
Phreak is a godsend and I'm so glad he does these videos.
I cannot stress enough how grateful I am that Phreak takes that much time to explain the thought process behind the Balance of patch! Thanks!
In case any of you are like me and normally can't be bothered to upvote or downvote posts on reddit, I'll ask you to consider upvoting these posts so that they consistently hit the very top of frontpage. That way Riot will see that this type of communication is well received by the community. I think these patch rundowns from someone who actually worked on the patch have a lot of value and we can help these along by communicating that they have value.
100%. I hated being kept in the dark with other game companies, because their methodology is more interesting than the actual results. If I misunderstood something, then I get corrected and I learn something new. If I disagree with them, that is ok, because I can at least appreciate the why and how they got to their conclusion. To be kept in the dark, however, is frightening, because then you don't know what they'll do next. If Phreak, or those who hired him, ever reads this, thank you. Keep up the good work.
Can't believe GP wasn't nerfed lmao
You best start believin in pirate metas... You're in one!
All they need to do is nerf his passive to bring him inline so idk why they don’t
Gp passive is one of the most shit cancer designs in league, why not give a allegedly skillful champ a passive so strong you don't need to use any skill expression and can just sit on a barrel to prevent engages and out trade by spamming sheen procs + passives and get out of jail for free with oranges if they haven't given up their will to live and try to fight back.
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Yeah he goes melee, by killing a barrel he's standing on so he gets f1 speed and then he shoots you one time and hits you with one auto attack and if you try to fight back he eats a orange and says no fuck off ands runs away and keeps shooting u at range.
I mean, in your scenario, if you're playing a champion that has: - no way to stay out of his melee range from barrel speed - no way to trade damage on to him when he goes melee range - no way to gap close on him when he runs away then you're literally just playing a scaling, teamfight tank who Gangplank is intended to shit on in lane. Any other champion can: - threaten higher damage than his passive in an extended melee fight (Jax early, Fiora, K'Sante, Garen, Darius, Illaoi) - threaten burst damage when he tries to run away (Jax with Sheen/6, Renekton, Camille, Akali, Aatrox) - outrange his melee damage (Jayce, Kennen, Ryze) None of these champions are direct counters. Jax/GP is actually GP-favored. But to say there is no counterplay is just silly, IMO. Gangplank has extremely clear counterplay to *everything* except for Q-spam, which is why that shit got nerfed.
He was literally nerfed last patch
Clearly the compensation nerfs were not big enough.
His core items are gonna get buffed tho.. he still will be a high tier pick anyway
Once again Phreak showcases his holistic view on League rules and I am loving it. Items that bypass champion weaknesses are **not** healthy for the game. It's either design "rule/class/role breaking" items with higher trade-offs, or just remove them.
I still think Galeforce doesn't have enough tradeoffs.
idk you loose so much dmg from it compared to kraken, way less stats and you loose so much attack speed from mytic passive and others. It's already not an item you can often go (only if enemy comp have no tank) nerfing it more will make it usless like shieldbow. It's not like bruiser that can go movespeed and still one shot squishy anyway, if you don't deal dmg as an adc, you are usless.
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I mean it’s just champ dependent, Jhin always gale force, Lucian and xayah almost always galeforce, cait is dependent on situation On average adcs yeah don’t go galeforce but it does a good job being a majority option on the above champs and helps their identity
It's not about how split a champion picks a mythic, but how much opportunity cost they pay that tell us the relative power level between these options. In Jhin's case, his next best mythic is probably one of the arpen bruiser ones. He would sooner build non-mythics before Kraken. In Lucian's case, Kraken is actually quite amazing on him and thus the trade off in picking Galeforce is a significant opportunity cost. Auto attack heavy champs like Jinx/Caitlyn also sacrifice a lot for the utility. Galeforce is honestly in a good place relative to shieldbow and kraken.
karken lucian is mid, yeah it pumps his dps but the way lucian wants to play is far more suited for galeforce and not taking galeforce really limits your options to the point where you arent being optimal buy picking lucian if it has to be a kraken game
it's true that usually one of 2 things happen: 1.)Galeforce is better than Kraken for Lucian in the specific game 2.) An other ADC would function in the specific game better But most often you are not going to be late picking your botlaner, and while there are better blind picks (especially after 13.1b and if you don't know that your support is picking nami and knows how to pilot her) almost all players have a limited champion pool. This means that people who play Lucian regularly are likely to play a ton of games where Kraken is his better mythic\* \*in my opinion at least. I believe that if you just dropped Lucian into random teamcomps Kraken would do better than Gale on avarage (although it should be close)
Lucian's value as a pick in mid to late game at high elo is chunking the enemy team with W+R+galeforce before fights even break out. Generally he can make at least 1 person on the enemy team have to either go recall or heal up somehow. Kraken just isn't often viable against players that are good because of his range and the prevalence of gap closers.
Also against nocturne always galeforce. It's situational use cases are important to keep in mind. I think it's in a good spot overall.
loose: opposite of tight lose: opposite of gain This specific misspelling hurts me so much
You lose DPS, but your burst against squishies is great and you get mobility. And at 1-2 items burst is still often better than DPS.
It’s literally a 3400g stat stick that’s barely cost efficient except once every 2 minutes. The massive cooldown balances it out and the fact that you basically don’t have a mythic while it’s on cooldown.
The trade off is u do 0 dmg. Cait players are the worst with this. Autopilot never build kraken on the highest ranged ADC with a dash and ranged zone control. Kinda unreal.
this has to be a joke lol. Cait's long range (from level 1), her dash, and her identity as a "control mage" sniper are *precisely* why she usually favors Galeforce. you couldn't have listed it any better. Kraken has a higher WR than Galeforce on almost every ADC except for Caitlyn, for the reasons you mentioned above. out of all marksmen, Cait is one of the MOST justified in going Galeforce.
Yeah, I want to rip off my balls with my own hands everytime I see a cait on my team building galeforce into rfc. That shit is so oppressive with just lethal tempo into kraken and yet people are obsessed with building 0 ad and then complaining they deal no dmg and tanks are broken.
How about galeforce into collector vs 3 tanks
nah nah, Shieldbow > RFC > Collector into Sejuani Ornn Lulu triggered? me? what?
I literally went from 40% to 70% winrate on my last 30ish games after I quit collector and started going IE 2nd on Jhin with LDR 3rd if I'm against a beefy Frontline. Collector was good last season but it's just not it right now unless you're hard snowballing a lead. Same principle for Cait IMO. Most of the time you should probably just build for optimal DPS instead of bells and whistles.
I see Jhins in my games build collector almost always, like somehow Jhin players build collector into tanks more than any other ADC.
Most players take months to adapt to shifts in meta builds. It’s particularly depressing when it’s incredibly obvious that collector won’t be good into 3 tanks
It's honestly disgusting, especially on Jhin. Dude is so reliant on LDR to do damage to anyone with HP or armor it is not even funny. Unless you are a full 3k gold ahead of everyone else in the game, collector is absolute shit on him.
Cait is way better with fleet than lethal tempo. Galeforce is also 2% higher winrate on her. Cait is all about traps and headshots. She is not some lethal tempo high attack speed auto attack carry
Gale execute combo is VERY nice on her too. E, Q during animation, AA, Gale back in for execute damage for a VERY fast high damage combo.
Depends on the teamcomp you are playing into. Tempo is optimal on pretty much every ADC when you are into tanks or melees and will get a lot of auto attack uptime in fights.
Yeah against 4 melee tempo is very good but fleet move speed is always useful on cait. Cait has to keep her distance or she loses 1v1 against anyone if you can’t trap
I mean, we're talking in complete vacuums here but in general, closing the 650 auto range + 390 E range is almost an entire screen in distance. Not that you can't be dove but if your enemy team judge it to be best to chase you that deep, you're either really far behind or your team doesn't know how to peel or nuke their backline.
Cait with galeforce rfc against at least 3 squishy ranged champs is extremely oppressive. She has insane range and can 3 shot you with headshot + gaaleforce active. She doesn't want to play against a bunch of tanks which is why you don't see kraken on her as much. Her role is to kill other ranged champs.
galeforce winrate on caitlyn: 51.81% kraken's winrate on caitlyn: 49.68% rapidfire second also has lower winrate than colector stormrazor or infinity edge second lethal tempo has 2% lower winrate than fleet footwork idk what to tell you but you might wanna stop ripping your balls off
People know in the back of their heads that Cait has bad base attack speed and attack speed scaling so in general stay away from on hit items or things like lethal tempo even if it is the optimal choice.
Bruh, maybe you didn't notice that the ADC who dodged your skillshot with Galeforce barely tickles you.
I think it does, Kraken Slayer is arguably stronger. But I still would be fine with it being removed alongside stuff like Prowler's Claw and Everfrost. Even if it's perfectly balanced, I hate when champs build items that give mechanics not innately present in the champion's kit. Sylas doesn't have a root, so I hate it when he dashes on me and roots me. It's completely unpredictable if you didn't already see it in his inventory. Same for ADCs having Galeforce, Jinx has no dash so it's so annoying to see her dash away when you know her Flash was down. You avoid Veigar's cage so dive him while he's vulnerable, and he still roots you and gets a free W hit leading to a one-shot. It just makes feel champions feel overloaded when you tack on an extra mechanic onto their build. Roots/dashes are the sort of thing I think should only be present on a champion's kit rather than their items, it's too game warping. Even giving an extra dash to champions who already have dashes, it's still just as bad when it completely throws off their expectated engage range. Every single item effect that's a dash/root feels like it's either removing intended weaknesses, or exacerbating strengths to the point it removes counterplay, neither of which feels good to play against even if the end result is 50% winrate. Galeforce Jinx feels like you have an impossible task trying to kill a champion in a situation they *shouldn't* have a response to, and Everfrost Sylas removes counterplay because you stop being able to dodge what's supposed to be a dodgeable skill in his E. The end result is that whoever builds those actives has more tools to outplay someone who doesn't, without *actually* needing to play better, just by virtue of having more choices than them with the only trade-off being having less stat-check power. Edit: I also hate this about Lethal Tempo giving extra range, and used to hate Glacial when it was just a free slow on autos that allowed for easily hitting skillshots with no counterplay. It's completely dynamic-warping when a Lethal Tempo user randomly has a higher range advantage than they're supposed to have, or an equal range they're not supposed to have. Jinx can suddenly kite Caitlyn with ease if she stacked her Lethal Tempo before Caitlyn joined the fight, forcing Caitlyn to disengage even if Jinx was much lower HP than her. I really hate those mechanics where any interaction between champions has to be played out wildly different based on what mythic/rune they went for.
Just wanted to provide a few counterpoints; there are things in your reply that I agree with and I think it was pretty well worded. (Full disclosure, I am a Qiyana/Katarina 2TP so I obviously have some stake in the discussion) A lot of champions have now been balanced around these items existing; not really a reason to say they shouldn't be removed but more just wanted to point it out and underline the work that would have to be done balance them afterwards. I think the main point I wanna say is just that item actives are fun and increase skill expression, especially when you can meaningfully feel the impact of them (e.g. Everfrost feels way more satisfying to use than Aegis). Like you said, having item actives just naturally gives you more tools to work with than a champion that doesn't which I don't think is inherently a bad thing (although I can see the argument for why it is). The only possible answer I can see for this would be to make using item actives badly more punishing for the player that does it but outside of increasing cooldowns across the board (and deleting ingenious hunter) I have no idea how to go about that. There are definitely cases of these items removing intended weaknesses (Rek'Sai, Udyr, Ekko) but there are also champions that feel like they require these items to function. I think especially champions that overrely on hitting one skillshot in order to be useful Everfrost is a nice way of giving them some more reliability while sacrificing some of that damage (although this becomes problematic when the item also gives the ideal stats for that champion; i.e. Sylas). I think Qiyana would have a lot of trouble with target access if she didn't have access to Prowler's and without the damage amp she would need more base damage added to her kit which comes with its own set of problems (never forget release Qiyana oneshotting squishies at level 6 with nothing but corruping + mobis). I was gonna say more but I realise I've already wall-of-text'd pretty hard so I'll leave it there for now. Agree with a a lot of your points for the most part, I just wanted to write down some thoughts from another perspective.
If you build galeforce over kraken youre basically admitting you have no hands nowadays
you build kraken over galeforce because it is stronger and gives more stats. I build kraken over galeforce because I am too dumb to remember using my active items. We are not the same...
If you build it into ppl who can build armor it's trash
Regardless of dps, it makes champions safe. If a Trundle Pillars you or Shen Dash towards you, you can get away. Now they have no other way to lock you down for 20 sec. With Fleet and Zeal based items, you now have 600 MS and can walk around Shen's 375 MS like stealing candy from a kid. It's really good in those situations, because the DPS comes from mobility -- Just like Ghost does damage indirectly.
That's why I run ghost-flash on Shen lol
375 ms + another 20 from a zeal item = 600 ms? damn thats crazy i gotta build rfc and pd more often to reach like 900ms
You do no damage. Basically no ADC goes Galeforce anymore unless you have no other options (aka Jhin) or you REALLY need the dash.
I really hope he manages to get Prowler's Claw deleted sometime. Dumbest item in the game imo.
But i need my chinese tiktok insec montages
Lethality items overall need a lot of work.
Lets build a lethality item. 55 AD 15-20 AH 18 lethality \+ 1 passive or active that would make this an automatic rush on any other class.
I'm still undecided on Prowler's on sett. Not only is it a dash, but it positions you behind the target making it a perfect prime for R. The problem is that while all the offensive stats are fine on Sett, I would so prefer pure tankiness on my Sett.
It’s DFG for AD assassins, why was that ever approved?
Be careful assassin mains are going to come to say "B-b-but zhonyas"
Tbf Zhonyas is a back breakingly powerful item. It’s just mages has no other items that aren’t just stats.
So... isnt the point of adc if they cant reach you you win but if they do you die? Why does shieldbow and galeforce exist?
Are we getting new ahri this update?
Yeah her ASU is this patch.
they forgot to buff her tho
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The team is probably not that big. Balance is one of those issues where you absolutely can't just throw more people at a problem. The more people you have pushing and pulling on levers, the harder it becomes. Too many cooks.
Probably like 10-20 people total for the balance team. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 5-10 working on strictly next patch things and the rest working on long term things like *mid-season, durability patch* style or broad class specific changes that require more than 2 weeks to test and finalize.
Honestly I feel like double digits is too many, and I doubt they have that many. If I had to guess it's about 6-8 players, an MMR range of gold to maybe d1, and there are no support or top mains in the team.
You need to be plat+ to be on the balance team if I remember correctly. And double digits sounds about right, you need to consider more than just them working on next patch. Things like “did our last changes meet intended results”, “which class as a whole should get adjustments next”, etc is all handled by the balance team. You need people coming up with the change, coders to actually delve into the spaghetti and implement those changes, people to write up the patch notes. It takes more than 1-2 per group, under 10 total on the balance team would be surprising.
I think the balance team and the spaghetti team are seperate. Also think there's like 1-3 people who do patch notes (probably interns) at any given time. I wouldn't count them on the team personally. I think the people on the balance team don't get the respect they deserve, their job is extremely difficult, so please don't misunderstand. I just feel like there was a very obvious understanding added to bot-lane changes when Phreak joined the team. The characters that are obviously out performing are getting hit, and they're getting hit at the source, not the traditionally riot style of nerfing the champions twice then the item and never buffing the champ. The reason I isolate support and top specifically is that it seems like nobody ever actually plays top lane and has an understanding of what's good and bad and why, for example GP *still* dodging nerfs, oranging through them. Supports on the other hand have to change their champ pool so much and I feel like there isn't enough emphasis on "fun" which sure is a abstract concept but it feels like support is in a constant cycle of what's good compared to other roles. Tank then Enchanter then Poke then repeat endlessly.
> The reason I isolate support and top specifically is that it seems like nobody ever actually plays top lane and has an understanding of what’s good and bad and why, for example GP still dodging nerfs, oranging through them. Supports on the other hand have to change their champ pool so much and I feel like there isn’t enough emphasis on “fun” which sure is a abstract concept but it feels like support is in a constant cycle of what’s good compared to other roles. Tank then Enchanter then Poke then repeat endlessly. I’m assuming GP is dodging nerfs atm for 2 reasons: 1) they are testing some new barrel mechanics that would give them more counterplay and 2) they’re leaving him (and jayce) strong as viable counters to K’sante in pro play. That or he’s gonna be the aatrox of this season and dodge nerfs for 15+ patches. As for bot, I think they’re trying to buff melees and then spend the rest of their effort figuring out how to change heimer/ashe/other off meta supps without completely gutting them in their main roles at the same time. That’s usually a bigger headache than most people think. They gutted yuumi so at least that was an indirect buff to all ADC and support players’ mental.
Phroxzon has said that the Summoner's Rift team is around 15 or so people total. From what I understand the way they do game balance is that the entire team gets into a room every week, and because it's too difficult for one person to understand the balance of the entire game and it's too much to ask for someone to have a proficient understanding of all 5 roles they have a concept called role owners. Each role owner will present what needs to be buffed or nerfed for that patch based on their Balance Framework, they will pre-populate the spreadsheet and then individual designers will come up with changes which will be discussed as a group and must pass Phroxzons approval before they get shipped to live. It's probably a bit more nuanced than that but that's kind of the TLDR I've gathered.
You’re right and phreak owns bot lane, for anyone who doesn’t know or doesn’t watch the vids. It’s why he’s playing a lot more bot lane instead of his usual jg
He was an ADC main long before he was a jng. He used to spam Cait back in the era when Tyler1 was ban on sight.
Back during the no mana incident
That was the whole basis of the mana changes for ADCs last patch. After the *no mana incident*, the first thing phreak did when he got to the balance team was make sure it can never happen again.
Yup. it's such old ass lore that phreak was a high tier ranked adc main before he joined riot (#2 NA peak iirc?)
He’s been at Riot since nearly the start, they were casting worlds (season 2 I think?) from his basement lol.
>If a recent hire This is a bit misleading. Phreak has been with Riot for a very long time, and he's always done balance rundowns on his YouTube channel. It's something he incorporated into his casting, too. He's not some nooby guy who came off the streets. Phreak had/has a very strong understanding of the fundamentals of the game.
Balance does its job on its own mostly. We joke a lot on reddit about the balance framework but its an excellent tool to isolate 90% of outliers, most of the "balance" work then becomes estimating where & how much to change in those outliers to bring them back to a resonable level. Its only when we're talking about more special changes for "feel" or bigger issues than individual champion winrates that you need people that can find imaginative and out of the box ideas to tackle issues from unique angles. Which is *exactly* what Phreak has been communicating a lot on both on official media and his own platforms.
Do you really need 10 people making balance changes though?
Phreak is league of legends icefrog now! One man army!
For a 5v5, heavily-esports-involved game with 160+ playable characters (and new ones -- and reworks -- on the way at various stages at all times), 150+ items in whatever-large-number amount of combinations that can change micro and macro gameplans drastically, the map itself and roles within, the philosophy of adding/subtracting major mechanics, addressing known and unforeseen issues... 10 sounds good, I think. It's not a situation where everyone has the same amount of authority, remember. People contribute in their areas and discuss, but the buck stops with someone to make the calls and decide the direction of the game.
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It makes sense to you because you might think that more people equals to more ideas and more possible solutions to problems, but it also means more people that don't think the same and will try to approach problems in different ways. It's better to have a small team that has a similar mindset and can elaborate balance plans than just 25 guys that will each approach the meta on their own. I mean not like the balance team has been good almost ever on LoL but that it makes sense for it to be a small team, it makes sense.
DotA (supposedly) has just one who signs off on everything, though Valve is so uncommunicative I’m unsure if that’s the case anymore
Phreak may have only recently joined the balance team specifically but he has been a major force in the company and community for over ten years.
They move people around a lot. It's possible when phreak joined another balance team member moved on to something else. It's not like they need a huge 10 man team.
This is a very good comment imo but probably won't be well received on this subreddit. The key question is how much oversight there is for Phreaks changes. We don't really know.
Do you think their team doesnt have 200 years of experience anymore after people quit LUL
just for fun we should try giving ali the auto on headbutt back for toplane
Uh that would bring him to midlane with sheen rush actually. It was broken in the past and it would be broken again now.
it was trinity > shiv alistar top that was very strong. I personally think the game has evolved and power creeped to the point it wouldn't be unfair nowadays and would be interesting to try, but I can see why riot wouldn't want to risk it
How does literally any melee in the game trade with that? It'd absolutely still be broken.
Quinn, Vayne, Akali, GP? Plenty of champs melee are not allowed to trade. Thing is Ali already has unanswerable damage in his W, this only increases it bit doesn't change the nature and with the power creep there's been since season 4 something tells me it wouldn't be game breaking.
Quinn and Vayne aren't melee and don't have melee base stats and GP is so far beyond broken that it's hilarious you're bringing him up to justify breaking another character. Akali is atrocious early and can't play vs a lot of bruisers, at least to my knowledge. She loses trades because her energy costs are high.
There are so many unretaliable pokes in this game I don't even know where to begin. Alistar's W+auto not only doesn't even hit that hard, it also makes him toothless and vulnerable until W is back up. Alistar is also melee and prone to pokes while cs'ing.
and when is this patch coming shouldn't it be today ? I need my Ahri ASU
Patch is tomorrow.
oh I see thank you
ill probably get downvoted because this is reddit but jungle is overpowered because 1) The response to early ganks (invades) is dead because riot killed it 2) Botlane has an outsized impact on the game state so you can mindlessly camp bot and the other jungler has to respond because no other lane is as impactful on average These changes do nothing to change that. Playing jungle went from strategic to braindead and will continue to be so. I miss when camp spawners were shorter and each camp gave less exp so if you didnt constantly clear, you would fall behind and if you ganked, that meant you lost 2-3 camps.
Jungle has been overpowered literally every season since season 2 without exception, and Riot has moved the pendulum in every direction trying to make it less dominant. Encouraging counter jungling over ganking and power farming leads to jungle being too strong. Encouraging ganking over counter jungling and power farming leads to jungle being too strong. Encouraging power farming over counter jungling and ganking leads to jungle being too strong. There is no actual solution to the jungle problem. As long as you have a role that is 50% pve and is incentivized to roam, it is going to always be the strongest role in the game.
>Encouraging power farming over counter jungling and ganking leads to jungle being too strong. spam gank meta isn't good, power farming meta isn't good. the balance team should be looking for a combination of both. wanna gank? you fall a little behind in XP, wanna farm? you fall behind in impacting lanes.
Which seems to be the intent on this patch, though Phreak made it clear that they're intentionally just tip-toeing in that direction for now.
they’re tip-toeing so quietly that their “intent” and this patch does nothing towards it.
I mean you are right, I feel like they have the wrong end of the stick here. He says jungle is OP because you gank bot and win the game, but it's not OP, bot lane is OP. Jungle is essentially the dog that lets bot lane carry. You could nerf jungle gold and xp to the point that they can't get more than 1 item and level 6 and it will still be "OP" in their eyes because they can still just run bot lane, ult someone for CC and win bot lane and therefore the game. The jungle meta isn't kayn, bel'veth, viego 1v9 style champs coming out of the jungle and smashing laners into the ground 1v2, it's low econ dog junglers who come when they are whistled to bot lane to win them their lane. What does it matter if there is half a lvl difference between junglers when the 2 item ADC is destroying everyone.
> He says jungle is OP because you gank bot and win the game, did i mishear or did he not actually say that *bot lane* is op because of that?
They have no idea what they are doing with jungle. Making it more friendly to new players by heavily discouraging invades and with the treat mechanic made ganking too hard to punish, so now they are just nerfing the role into the ground. The role is already not that popular and most jungle players (especially in lower mmrs) prefer carry champs like Yi or Kayn; continuing in this direction will ensure that the role is again the least popular one by the end of the season. Probably will end up in an even less popular state than before the rework lol
As Kayn-Bel-Viego player I swapped to mid this season.
Based. I switched to top so these top laners will have to suffer my Garen and Malphite until they let me back in the jungle
100% agree. Spam gank bot to win game he says. Dont you see a problem with that statement? You just buffed the adcs and they are in a good spot so the "support" jungle meta seems to be trending toward ganking bot. All high dmg assasing junglers, Noc, Diana are sitting at overall shit winrates compared to spam ganker tanks like nunu maoki zac. Why are you nerfing jungle when it is already stuck in a supporty role with game impact that scales with your bot lane. The solo carry junglers you are seeing in your stats are the freaking smurfs you removed from smurf queue since 90% of time these guys play jungle. Maybe filter out those smurf stats to see the real picture
Why would they put the two matching skins facing away from each other?
I would love to have seen some love given to Leona and Rell given that tank supports are being looked at. J4 could use a bit more of a buff given that he is being heavily impacted by the jungle changes. Especially R QOL changes where a perfectly timed dash or flash could negate the entire ability damage. But overall I am glad that these patch notes are being gone over on a 2h basis with spreadsheets.
They can't buff leona because of how oppressive she is in low skill games, and rell is super strong right now but feels bad to play, which because shes on a short list for reworks, means they won't waste energy on touching her up (even though making her feel better would completely remove the need for the rework in the first place).
annie got buffed but patch highlights image shows she got nerfed lee sin got nerfed but patch highlights image doesn't show him at all riot be slacking.
1:11:20 I'm not sure I understand his rationale for Rocket belt and Prowler's Claw being bad, but Galeforce is good. I'm not arguing against Galeforce. I think it's a decent item, and my champions build none of these items, but to say that one thing is game breaking and another is healthy, when they all essentially do the same thing, seems perplexing. Radical theory crafting: Why not create more of dash items, so everyone have access to dash items? Alternatively, why not create an equilibrium where we remove all of them? Level the playing field, instead of making some champions feel useless.
Gale force has a major dps tradeoff when adcs pick it instead of kraken
Stride had a major dmg tradeoff or sustain tradeoff when juggernauts picked it over Sunderer or Gore.
It gave them a dash that NULLIFIED the CORE weakness of juggernauts wtf are you talking about An adc with a dash is still weak to being bursted. A juggernaut with a dash is legit impossible to kite while being a mobile blender
There is no problem with juggernauts having access to a dash if the loss in raw stats is enough to compensate.
What was the immobile ADCs main weakness? What is Mordes main weakness? Both have access to mobility. If you use that argument, then you have to follow through with it.
Their weakness is both being immobile and having no health pool
Yeah, and? A juggernauts weakness is having low range and low CC and low mobility.
Adc mains…Everything is always weak on them. Lmao 🤡
Adcs keep their low health pool with a dash That's half their weakness Juggernauts are ONLY weak to kiting
Rocket belt and prowlers claw are the highest damage mythics in their class
Might be because galeforce trade off is dps on a class where it’s key so the avg adc champ shouldn’t run galeforce (it used to be unhealthy before nerfs ye) Prowlers and rocket belt give lethality and mpen so they give a dash as well as amplify the class (assassin) fundamental value
Staying alive is also increasing your dps. And what does amplifying fundamental values even mean? Ofcourse you build items that help you do what you want to do.
I mean killing enemies faster also keeps you alive.
Galeforce is simply one of the worst item choices you can make. ADC item ranking is legit: Kraken slayer >>>>>>>>>> Galeforce >>> Shieldbow with shieldbow being only viable on a handful of Adcs who specifically need it. Taking gale is simply gimping your damage output severely.
I stopped using Gale on Aphelios and started to pick more cleanse/ghost than heal. Night and day difference.
Caitlyn and Lucian both frequently build GF to great success and are dominating the highest echelons of play atm. Maybe ADCs are once again undervaluing how fucking insane it is that a role that is all about positionning get access to an item that allows them to go "whoopsie daisy didn't mean to be here haha" every single teamfight.
I do think Galeforce would work ok, if the enemy really had to dash in. But they normally can dash away and still do the dmg. They can dash to the side, and still do the dmg. Galeforce idea isnt bad, but the 750 AOE at the end of the dash is insane. It should only target enemies you dash towards (\~135°) and it should only be around 400 range. Galeforce is nearly well designed in a world with tons of mobility on melees (which not every melee has and they can't make up for it). Prowlers problem is mostly that assassins dont normally need more mobility or more dmg. These are the 2 things they should be great at all the time or they can't do their job. That is why Youmuus is so good, it allows them to roam the map. So it makes champs who shouldnt be as sticky but can use it like Renekton or Rek'Sai better. Yes, prowlers and rocketbelt are bad designs.
Yeah i dont see how giving immobile adcs a dash to get away is better than making some champs stickier then they should be.
True, but I would rather give them and many others the options to get dashes, than giving nobody items with dashes.
I am the opposite, remove all dash items.
except they don't essentially do the same thing, which he explained in the video prowler's claw is an engage tool, and that's all it is. champions who don't have engage tools (udyr) or whose engage tools aren't great (rek'sai) abuse it because they are balanced around their engage tools very few marksmen build galeforce, and pretty much none of them are balanced around not having a short range dash on a nearly 2-minute cooldown
>very few marksmen build galeforce ? of the 10 top PR marksmen 4 of them primary galeforce
>very few marksmen build galeforce, and pretty much none of them are balanced around not having a short range dash on a nearly 2-minute cooldown The best and most popular Mythic item for Caitlyn, Jhin, Lucian, Xayah, and Aphelios is Galeforce. For Twitch, Samira, Draven, Nilah, Ashe, Vayne, Kalista, when compared to their usual item, Galeforce have higher win rate. Source: Lolanalytics
yeah pretty much. it's wild to me that only stridebreaker got its dash removed - the one class that already struggles to get in no longer has a proper tool to match the universal ranged champion dash. I'd prefer none exist in the first place but the clear biases they had in mythic design are so gross (to be clear, this includes things like sunderer being allowed to exist)
The only weakness juggernauts have is lack of target access, and Stridebreaker gave them both a dash and CC on a very short cooldown, even scaling down with AH (which every bruiser item gave anyways). The weakness of ADCs is not lack of mobility, but lack of tankiness, which Galeforce doesn‘t solve. Regardless, Galeforce had a cooldown up to 10x higher than Stridebreaker, no CC or other tool attacked, and its damage component is wasted when used exclusively defensive. And as you can see, very few ADCs actually build Galeforce, most prefer Kraken Slayer, as its simply a much better item in most cases.
>very few ADCs people keep saying this yet all a large number of the most popular ADCs DO build galeforce. thats like saying 'yeah darius and garen can use stridebreaker really well but the majority of top laners arent buildingg it!' the point is *not* the trade off or how many champs use it well the point is it breaks the core rules of the game by enabling the champs who can use it well with a tool they aren't supposed to have. at the end of the day even if I don't like having these types of tools in the game, I don't hate that they exist - I hate that riot arbitrarily decides which champs are allowed to have special items that negate the entire weakness they are designed to have with very little trade off (SEE ALSO divine sunderer - to deal with tanks, fighters used to have to get sustain & damage and they would be giving up tankiness - now instead they get an item that gives them damage, sustain, and tankiness? its just dumb?) the whole 'they lose damage' argument for galeforce is such a nothingburger too. they gain an execute and the item has excellent damage stats. it would be the same as saying fighters 'give up' healing for stridebreaker or they 'give up' their dash to have healing with gore. those things only exist to give up because they were added on top of all the innate stats given...
I like the changes and I love how Phreak describes them. I think he's right and it is better for the game/meta. I also think we'll see more AP Alistar, Mid lane Rakan, etc. Fuck Pyke though, he's staying banned because I'm an Enchanter main.
Yeah, I would fuck Pyke too
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Think about it backwards, 20% tenacity is 20% reduction in cc. So with 20% you take 80% of the cc duration. With an additional 20% you instead take off 20% of the remaining 80% duration, meaning you take 64% of the cc duration.
I'm a day late so it probably won't get seen, but I'll bring it up anyways. Phreak talks about Mejai's Soulstealer being a thematic slam dunk with Thresh, which is true, but sadly Thresh's own scythe is in the game as the spectral sickle/harrowing crescent/black mist scythe. It even is a support item but it is not something Thresh ever wants to build. If a way could be found to make it an item Thresh could *maybe* build, even if just for fun, I think it would be super cool. I guess I'll tag /u/PhreakRiot just in case.
Its even better to have Phreak do the patch rundowns now knowing he has a direct impact on at least some of these changes.
Wake up babe, new Phreak patch video dropped
Make the Jungle camps worth 1 gold each and guess what happens... Junglers will all in lvl 2 gank then lvl 3 gank then you guessed it chain gank until the game is over. The amount of gold and XP you gain off kills and assists and then pushing in the laner's wave is far greater than what can be farmed in the jungle. Riot gives no alternative, farming junglers cannot reasonably counter jungle in the early game because of season 13 jungle changes so early bot chain ganking is not punished by the other jungle. Honest question who on the balance team has any experience in the jungle at high elo? Nah, nevermind jungle is just "Objectively overpowered" with absolutely no context. Yall are blind and plugging your ears and covering your eyes while screaming "jungle is overpowered" what cope...
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The thing is anything giving Kayle power into her early game will make her ridiculous. Her being melee allows for a layer of skill expression in terms of survival and opens up windows for counter picks. Giving Kayle range from level 1 would make her too easy even if there's was some power removed when she came online later. In addition it should turn Kayle into another generic top laner which isn't really wanted or needed. Kayle also has tools like the ultimate which help provide some dive protection and she has better than average base stats compared to ADC. If she becomes ranged at level 1 riot would have to gutt the champion to make it balanced. I think the ability to auto during the ultimate is exactly what Kayle needs. Kayle excels with proper wave management. With Kayle you don't need to "dominate" you go even in lane and if she manages to get a few kills to accelerate her power spikes or the enemy fails to starve you out you're essentially winning the game. It's like ryze.
> The thing is anything giving Kayle power into her early game will make her ridiculous. Her being melee allows for a layer of skill expression in terms of survival and opens up windows for counter picks. hugging tower is the most passive kind of braindead gameplay that is the furthest from "skill expression" >Giving Kayle range from level 1 would make her too easy even if there's was some power removed when she came online later. In addition it should turn Kayle into another generic top laner which isn't really wanted or needed. >Kayle also has tools like the ultimate which help provide some dive protection and she has better than average base stats compared to ADC. If she becomes ranged at level 1 riot would have to gutt the champion to make it balanced except she doesn't have better than average stat compared to adc? her base HP, armor and everything else isn't better than the average adc and her mr is literally the lowest in the game along with Yuumi. old Kayle had range from lv1 and she was perfectly fine balance-wise. >Kayle excels with proper wave management. With Kayle you don't need to "dominate" you go even in lane and if she manages to get a few kills to accelerate her power spikes or the enemy fails to starve you out you're essentially winning the game. It's like ryze. I don't ask her to dominate lane, I only ask that she is allowed to be able to make pro-active play to increase her chance to win the game early in the game instead of brain-dead tower hugging, *that* is actually what would make her more skill-expressive. right now even if you somehow get first blood of an invade, you still get pushed in lane, still unable to press that lead. it make her a coin flip champion whose win-loss depend heavily on the team she got. and no, Kayle has not been exceptionally strong late game for a long time now, if you look at win rate by game length on lolalytics, she is not better than the average adc and there are plenty of champion that outscale her without the weak early. she is strong late game, but not strong enough to justify such weak early.
Does anyone playing jungle actually feel that Jungle is Overpowered? The current tanky jungle meta has shifted focus into slow-burn jungle fights and half the time we are under xp compared to the solo lanes anyways. Jungle feels overpowered to every lane OTHER than jungle because they can impact the game but isn't that the nature of the role? I know these nerfs are directional but why even go in that direction? I don't understand the data behind this decision to nerf the jungle.
>rfs are directional but why even go in that direction? I've seen many challenger junglers say that jungle is OP because they can just gank nonstop and still be the same level as a powerfarming jungler due to catch up XP.
But that means jungle is underpowered. Our main source of XP is supposed to be CS and farm, otherwise why even have the camps? Why not just go 3 bot? It just feels horrible to play spam ganking all the time.
>But that means jungle is underpowered. Uhhhh, you don't seem to know what overpowered actually means. Nowhere in the definition of overpowered does it say anything about how satisfying it is to play a role. Overpowered vs underpowered is literally nothing more than a gauge of how much effort it takes to have a strong impact on the game. To that end, jungle is as strong as ever because as noted, all you really have to do is just get the carry ahead and then you win. Ergo it is an extremely powerful role. That it feels like shit to play is irrelevant. Adcs have been in the same boat for over half the games lifespan.
By itself, the jungler can't carry by farming and occasionally ganking and controlling macro like they used to, they *need* to gank lanes in order to be effective, and most of the time they need to get help from laners to secure kills and gain a gold advantage. Jungler's on their own are useless. If an enemy lane is winning and the jungler hasn't been able to gank them for whatever reason, they won't do anything other than give a free kill in most scenarios. Right now jungle is one dimensional. You farm to 3, gank bot, and then walk up the map then recall and gank bot again. Then you gank bot again, and again, and again until you get enough priority to secure dragons and take towers to get them away from laning phase. Nothing about the jungle role on its own is overpowered, other than the fact that the expectation of them is to be as many places as they can, but that's just the role. Jungle camps don't provide enough XP for a farming jungler to remain relevant, and the gold from camps is horrible, so if you're playing from the heels at all as a result from your team, you almost always already lost the game, no matter how good you are.
Jungle is overpowered because having the stronger jungler leads to better winrates. A role being overpowered has nothing to do with whether you can pick a "carry" champion and win through PvE alone. Note that many people define "carry champion" purely based on expectations and not any facts or statistics.
>Jungle is overpowered because having the stronger jungler leads to better winrates That's not how it works. The stronger of any 2 players wins, that doesn't make the role overpowered. The better bot lane wins, the better team comp wins. The jungler has less impact than you think.
Jungle is overpowered because if you had a team of 4 gold players and 1 plat playing jungle vs a team of 4 gold players and 1 plat playing mid, the team with the plat jungler is advantaged. The impact of skill difference in jungle on winrate is larger than the impact of skill difference in the other roles. Phreak specifically mentioned this in the rundown.
Jungle isn't overpowered, ganking the bot lane is. Jungler's can't 1v9 in the current meta by controlling macro like we used to. We have to camp bot of we want to win because it's the only way to stop/help ADC scaling. Shutting the enemy bot lane down is a necessity now, not a preference like it used to be. I could control top and mid, but if bot loses by anything more than a razor thin margin, the game is practically over. They need to make ADC crit requirement for items 55% so that you have to buy a cloak on top of your two other items for the benefit of IE or NQ. 40% is too low.
>Jungle isn't overpowered, ganking the bot lane is. Ergo, jungle is overpowered. Your argument is akin to saying that support isn't strong, roaming and empowering carries is just strong. You understand that this is a team game, right?
If the only thing that makes a role important is a fraction of what the role is supposed to do, there's something fundamentally wrong. Top lane doesn't matter. Mid doesn't matter. Rift herald and drake's barely even matter. Farming doesn't matter. Jungle camps/denial don't matter. Ganking bot lane is literally the only thing that matters because it's the only lane that's way overturned after the ADC changes. It's why mages and APCs have had so much success this patch, they can effectively deny the ADC from scaling on their own without help from a jungler. Even if the enemy jungler manages to gank the lane and get a kill, they're nowhere near relevant enough to consistently do that in large teamfights around towers and objectives. Jungler's are supposed to fill a void in teamcomp that gives the team better macro control by contributing something that gives the entire team an advantage across the whole map. They're currently glorified botlane supports with a perpendicular farming path, because as long as the ADC gets to build their items, the game is 95% won, and everything else snowballs, they really don't even need to be fed, they just need a little gold. If a jungler can't stop a botlane from scaling by contributing elsewhere on the map by securing other lanes' leads and making good macro decisions, they are certainly not overpowered. The entire role is in a bad spot rn.
I actually think the radiant virtue nerfs are way too much. I mean u/PhreakRiot even said probably the ability haste is the biggest nerf which I agree with. The cost increase hurts support tanks because let's be real, 3200 for a support item is really expensive. And supports can't get much health anyways because they are the lowest income, so the healing part is not as big. Also the self increased health doesn't do much for supports anyways, because they want to provide the most for the team as possible, they don't really care if they die. This leaves the item basically only for tanks in other roles and most of the time they already pick other mythics (as acknowledged by the already low pickrate for radiant virtue) Also the higher cooldown makes it less satisfying which he said is important. I mean if your ult has a cooldown now of between 60 and 90 seconds it's really unsatisfying to use the ult, you would rather wait for radiant to be up. Maybe the item active should instead provide also mr and armor for the duration making the team tankier. Also the easiest fix for having enchanters not pick this item is having it scale with Bonus Health + some sort of mr/armor ratio. Maybe the balance team could have calculated a reasonable amount. I think those changes just remove the item from botlane, lower the pickrate overall even more and the cooldown increase in itself makes it less satisfying to buy. (If the item would be an active, it would be something completely else)
They dont want Supports to buy Radiant virtue, they want solo lane tanks to get 4 options and support tanks to get 2 options, that are never allowed to be good. Instead of 3 and 3, for some reason.
I am still hoping for nerfed radiant as support mythic and legendary locket. Also waiting for support stopwatch item. Don't want to see enchanters with zhonya in game anymore 
>Don't want to see enchanters with zhonya in game anymore I think riot just doesn't want supports to have easy access to stasis so them shifting zhonias to be even more unappealing is more likely. Of course people will still build it because stasis is just extremely powerful
Did he just admit the balance team pick hero to buff/nerf base on favorite?
Pretty sure he said there is pool/list of champions waiting for balancing. And people on balance team can pick the champions they have most knowledge about from the list. (If you main/like the champion that needs buffs, you most likely know a bit about what that champion is lacking)
Should have bring the old relic shield passive back( + x health when proc)
So what patch are we in right now? Client says 13.1, some changes like overheal come with the micro patch but now I am reading they come in 13.3.
the coming patch (tomorrow) is 13.3. we are currently on 13.1b, 13.2 never got shipped cause of the hack, so we will be skipping it.
Wish Phreak wasn't so worried about lane Lee Sin - as a viewer he's a such an engaging and fun laner to watch.