Patch 3.11 Teaser, Legendary Skin for Janna, Zileas on Game Design, New Bundles in the Store, Summoner shows unique Skin Splash Arts and the latest Sale!
Dominion/TT changes coming in Patch 3.11, Riot show off a legendary skin for Janna, four new bundles available until August 19th, Zileas discusses game design in Morello‘s original thread, a collection of amazing champion skin sketches, courtesy of Ze Ocelot and, as always, the latest Sale!
Champion/Skin Sale – Expires August 16th
A small list of changes coming in the next patch.
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 ManWolfAxeBoss: Disclaimer: These changes are on Dominion/TT.
These are still up for change and more may be added, but here’s what’s going onto PBE for now.
Champion Changes
   Lulu
- Cooldown increased from 110/95/80Â to 120/110/100 seconds
  Wukong
- Bonus Armor and Magic Resistance decreased from 4/6/8 to 2/4/6 per rankÂ
- Cooldown increased from 120/105/90 to 120/110/100Â
   Yorick
- Cast range decreased from 550 to 500
- Cooldown changed from 10/9/8/7/6 to flat 8 seconds
Items
Recipe Changed: Pickaxe + Vampiric Scepter + 500 gold = 2175 Total Gold
Explaining the changes
 ManWolfAxeBoss: Sanguine Blade damage will be 50 base and will be available on maps that Sanguine Blade is available on.
Lulu has a very strong kit on Dominion. Hitting her ult CD will just mean that it won’t be available for every fight (Max CDR at rank 3 was 48 seconds). She will still be strong, but now enemies will have a longer engage window when they don’t have to worry about Wild Growth.
Can we have better CDR itemization for mages?
 ManWolfAxeBoss: It’s comingÂ
And speaking of which, one of the things I’ve been considering doing with sweeper is making it build from Kindelgem + Fiendish Codex > 20% CDR and remove the MS.
NOTE:Â CONSIDERING
Will you keep the MS buff on Hextech Sweeper?
 ManWolfAxeBoss: MS would likely be moved to another item. Would like to split up the active and MS, as having them both in one item is Mike Tyson strong. The item was originally overloaded to get people to buy it. Now that they do we need to tone it down a bit.
An exciting announcement – Janna is getting a legendary skin!
In an upcoming patch, Doppler radar’s showing a likely chance of a Legendary Skin for Janna, your favorite stormy support. Here’s what you can expect when Forecast Janna makes landfall:
- A new character model, reminiscent of the alluringly professional attire you might see on your local nightly news
- Climatically inclement spell effects, such as a radar map shield on Eye of the Storm, a cloud companion on Zephyr and more tumultuous Monsoons and Howling Gales
- Broadcaster-inspired animations that look as good in the newsroom as they do on the Fields of Justice
- New voiceover featuring well-practiced non-regional diction along with meteorological lingo and diverse weather forecasts*
So stay tuned for more info on the latest Legendary Skin. And don’t forget your umbrella!
Note: Forecast Janna will arrive with an “upcoming patch” and will cost 1820 RP, as is the price point of legendary skins.
Zileas discusses game design, explanation of Riven‘s unusual discount in today’s Sale, Meddler examines the state of LeBlanc and a short update on Galio.
What is Riot trying to achieve with LoL’s gameplay?
See the full discussion on LoL’s core design here.
 Zileas: I would add three comments related to what Morello wrote earlier. We have a few goals that are relevant to this discussion:
1) We want to maximize the number of significant decisions someone can make in a game. Champion select is one of these, as are build choices, executions in situations, calling when to do what play, and so forth. If one decision has excessive consequences, or an early decision has too much consequence, the result can be a shallow feeling outcome, or a period of time after in which players have minimal ability to make a choice that impacts the game’s outcome. That’s not particularly strategic or interesting when it happens… Which leads me to my second point…
2) We don’t like situations in which the game is ‘decided’ but continues anyway, especially if it’s too early. This is shallow once it happens. How can strategy occur if there’s already a truly decisive advantage? If there is a decisive advantage, you should be able to just close out the game. We much prefer strong advantages that retain counterplay as they reduce certainty of win but preserve the feeling of awesomeness — we want you to be able to make your character into a monster, but we’d rather it looked like Kog’Maw: he’s a monster that can still be beat late game. Counterplay is a design discipline that allows us to preserve strategic choice and awesome plays even when champion have become incredibly powerful. And of course, honestly, if you win with your monster character despite counterplay existing, you earned that win that much more through your skill.
3) Continuous mastery is a key part of our design philosophy. We want to make sure that you can continuously learn, and that as many situations as possible that you might be in are ones in which you CAN learn. If you have a really rough lane matchup, but it IS possible to win it, you will learn to do so. Additionally, good play balance where we attach proper weightings to decisions will provide more opportunities and points in which one can improve ones play. So much of what we do is oriented around this idea of cultivating the availability for people to master the game and always improve.
Why is the discount on Riven so big this sale? (to sale)
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 WizardCrab: As some of you may have noticed, Riven is part of tomorrow’s sale, however the post says she’ll be on sale for 440 RP (http://beta.na.leagueoflegends.com/e…n-sale-813-816). You might note that Riven is 975 RP, and that 440 RP is more than a 50% discount. This is a mistake I made because we had hoped Lucian would be out already, and I put Riven into the sales system long before Lucian was delayed. With Lucian’s release, Riven’s price will be reduced to 880, and so 440 would have been the correct sale price had Lucian been released.
I just wanted to let you know that Riven will still be on sale for 440 RP even though her price has not been reduced yet, and will not be reduced before this sale. But the happy accident is that you don’t need to be concerned with picking up Riven right before her price drops.
Please feel free to ask me any questions if this is confusing.
What’s causing the delay with Lucian’s release?
 WizardCrab: My understanding was that introducing Lucian would introduce unacceptable bugs. So we said we couldn’t put him out in the 3.10 patch cycle.
**Here’s some conjecture, since I know nothing about the actual issues with Lucian**
I’m no computer programmer, but my guess is that no one really knows exactly how long it will take to troubleshoot every interaction that a given piece of content has with every other part of our game. Especially as we add more and more stuff and try to put in unique mechanics. But when we can be confident that he won’t break the game, we’ll let you know (most likely by putting him out).
**End conjecture**
Let’s be real people. It really sucks when a new patch comes out for your favorite game and you can’t play it because of game-breaking bugs. No one wants that.
What is your opinion on LeBlanc’s current state? (click here to view changes)
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 Meddler: I know live feels she’s a bit weak at the moment and are currently looking at whether some base stat adjustments would be an appropriate fix/part of an appropriate fix. Nothing set in stone yet, she is on their radar though.
From what I’ve seen personally I’m inclined to agree she’s a bit weak, at least at the level I’m playing at, I usually play ADC or support though so I don’t have much direct exposure to her in lane to draw on. Plus, more importantly, I’m not involved that much in balance changes.
Follow-up: Have you seen support LeBlanc?
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 Meddler: Run into a few, all that I can recall were on my team though. Quite like laning with them, provided on an ADC that can take advantage of what they offer.
What are you developing for Galio’s kit?
Check the beginning of the discussion here.
 ricklessabandon: Two-part response:
First, i’m going to give Galio mr/level in my early tests and see how it goes. I totally expect it to be fine, but ‘no promises’ and all that.
Second, Galio isn’t really supposed to be a mage counter. His kit doesn’t really have anything you’d expect on an anti-mage. Sure, he’s generally good/annoying against the du couteau house and a handful of other champions, but that’s more due to bulwark being particularly effective versus periodic and multi-hit damage than his overall kit. That said, people definitely think of him as resilient against magic so i think it will be worthwhile to make that aspect of him a bit more pronounced.
New Bundles live in the Store!
New bundles are available until August 19th!
Craving something new at champ select? Get fed on these limited time bundles. They’re flexible in cost, meaning the final bundle price will automatically adjust to reflect only what’s new to your collection.
Gank City Bundle – 25% off at 4300 3225:
Whether you’re using slingshots, knockbacks, nukes or even a dragon to open a picture perfect gank—that’s teamwork, and that’s OP.
Champions included:
- Zac
- Nasus
- Xin Zhao
- Shyvana
- Elise
Dunkmaster Bundle – 30% off at 3300 2310 (4291 if you need the champions)
C’mon and slam! Channel your inner Lebron and dunk your foes with this trio of vertically-liberated champs.
Skins included:
- Woad King Darius
- Neon Strike Vi
- Warring Kingdoms Jarvan IV
Champions included:
- Darius
- Vi
- Jarvan IV
Under the Sea Bundle – 50% off at 3740 1870 (3685 if you need the champions)
These skins leave visitors to the Urf Memorial Aquarium breathless. This bundle, which includes a legacy skin, will lend some real depth to your champ pool.
Skins included:
- Scuba Gragas (Legacy)
- Giant Enemy Crabgot
- Coral Reef Malphite
- Loch Ness Cho’Gath
- Deep Sea Kog’Maw
Champions included:
- Gragas
- Urgot
- Malphite
- Cho’Gath
- Kog’Maw
The Buddy System Buff Bundle – 50% off at 3740 1870 (3360 if you need the champs):
These performance-enhancing champions juice up their allies and rack up the assists. It’s not K/D that counts, it’s K/D/A!
Skins included:
- Headhunter Nidalee
- Spooky Gangplank
- Grungy Nunu
- Firefang Warwick
- Frosted Ezreal
Champions included:
- Nidalee
- Gangplank
- Nunu
- Warwick
- Ezreal
Summoner Ze Ocelot shares a ton of incredible art of skins on the forums, even including some model sketches!
Ze Ocelot:Â For fun, I was working on a bunch of skin ideas a little while ago. I might as well share them now! I’ll try to keep this short and simple.
“If I want to be a concept artist in the videogame industry”…was something that kept on running through my head. But I had to actually well, draw something that dealt with concept art. So, around 2 years ago or so, I started drawing out scenes and character sets. It might have been because of playing League when I saw some of the concept art sheets. And I thought it was amazing. As for skins, they were great for thinking about and visualizing alternate looks and stories for characters, whether they be cool, scary, classy, clever, or just plain silly.
Fast forward a tiny bit and I finally got to drawing out some skin concepts. Some of my ideas…ugh. But I still had fun drawing them all! I tried to do skins for more recent champs and I know, I’m missing a lot of champs. Because there are a lot of them.
Below are sectioned rendered splash arts I created for some of the skin ideas, similar to a mock-up loading screen. I do not have full versions of the splash arts; they take much longer to finish, sorry!
Attached are more skin ideas. I’ll try to do more in the future. It was super fun to draw these!
Hope you enjoy! Check out my deviantart and website to see other LoL works and more:http://vegacolors.deviantart.com/
Champion/Skin Sale – Expires August 16th
Enjoy the following champions and skins at a discount until August 16th!
Champions:
- Kassadin -Â 395 RP
- Riven – 440 RP
- Volibear – 487 RP
Black Belt Udyr – 260 RP
Reverse Annie – 487 RP
Sultan Tryndamere – 487 RP
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