Riot Chats About League System + Promo Series Expirations

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TLDR; Earlier today Riot took a minute to reflect on the switch from MMR to the ranking system (but mostly to give themselves a pat on the back) and also explained that there's a new promo series expiration (28 days after entering the series)

OFFICIAL POST BELOW

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CHATTING ABOUT MMR/LEAGUE SYSTEM
Hey Summoners,

Wanted to address some of these concerns. Now that we’re well into the season we can share some data with you about how the League System has changed the landscape of ranked since it was released. Month for month ranked participation increased as much as 2x over the same time periods last year while dodge rates dropped to about half. The number of leavers / afks in these games also remained well below most other queues. In other words the number of new ranked players and existing players who participate in ranked games is greater than ever before and the quality of the games improved. Ultimately we think this is the best measure of how successful a game type is but for the sake of looking at this vs. the old system we can look at the pros and cons of each:

LEAGUE SYSTEM 

In what ways is leagues better?

• All players have immediate achievable goals once they’re in a league and have frequent opportunities to feel competent as they progress.
• All players are divided into smaller leagues typically including some of their friends making progression feel more meaningful.
• Players are punished for queue dodging in a way that makes more sense in terms of progression. Again this reduced dodge rates dramatically.
• Promotional series create spikes in intensity which make the overall experience more fun and rewarding to participate in.
• The system shields players from ladder anxiety once they’ve reached a new tier and has some protections in place to keep them from instantly falling out of a division once promoted.
• Losing while still not a great experience is overall less punishing.

In what ways is leagues worse?

• Currently players can’t drop tiers, which causes some players to get to their target tier for the season and stop trying.
• Because league placement and MMR are not tightly coupled matchmaking appears to do funny things in some cases, leading players to believe they’re being matched unfairly when this is not the case.
• League point gains swing slightly more than MMR gains and in some very fringe cases places can earn 0 LP for games.


MMR

In what ways is MMR better?

• MMR gives a very accurate representation of your global position at any given time and it’s easy to see that you’re always being matched up against the correct opponents.
• The system is very fluid and players don’t have as much slack as in leagues to not try as hard once they’ve reached some threshold.

In what ways is MMR worse?

• There is no mechanism in place to properly punish dodging. Specifically if you try to lower a player’s MMR when they dodge, you’re marking them as a worse player, but this isn’t really true. This makes matchmaking much lower quality.
• You are seated into a very massive spectrum of players with no real meaningful sense of position (ie. rank 120,503 is less meaningful than rank 10 in Malzahar’s Captains)
• The system itself sets no obvious achievable goals for players and you never really get the sense that you’ve done something special by being involved.
• Because of the way the distribution grows over the course of the season players are heavily incentivized to participate late in the season but not before that.
• Losing is very punishing and you’re never shielded from a string of losses. 

Overall when we weigh these two systems against one another even without the empirical data leagues is clearly a better system for players and the one we’re more in favor of. That said it’s not perfect and there are some areas that we want to improve on.

What do we want to improve?

• Far and away the biggest issue we want to address is the case where players can’t drop out of a tier once they’ve obtained it. It’s very likely that next season we will allow players to drop out of a division if they’re at 0LP and far below the MMR threshold for the tier they are in. This should solve a few issues, namely the trolling that happens once players reach their target tier and the issue where players get very small LP gains after being at 0 for a long period of time.
• The issue where players receive 0 LP in some cases when being at 99LP we’d like to fix by just instituting a minimum LP gain of 1 instead of requiring the player to be above the required MMR to get into the target tier though we’re monitoring the MMR of players in this tier closely to understand the consequences of that decision should we implement it next season.

Socrates

TL DR: Overall the Leagues System has had a measurable and consistent positive impact, and while it’s not perfect we feel that it’s superior to MMR as a framework for us to work with and improve upon in the future.

Source

Promo Match Changes

Hey Summoners,

We made some changes to the way a promotion series can expire over time. Read below for an explanation:

Short summary: Last patch we released a change to the league system to fix a behavior that was extending players promotion series beyond the expected time amount. From the day you enter your series, you now have 28 days to complete that promotion series or it will be automatically ended.

Context: With the latest ranked play update, players now have a 28 day time limit from the day they qualify to complete their tier / division promotion. Previously we had allowed players to extend the series for an indefinite amount of time. Players who fail to complete their promotion series within 28 days will be removed from out of their series, where regular LP decay can be applied.

This change was to address an unintended behavior that was causing some players to have a promotion series that could run almost the full duration of the season. We've applied the update retroactively to all players currently participating within ranked play.

Unfortunately we failed to properly message this change within our official patch notes, and some players may have already been affected by it. This announcement is to provide clarity if you've been automatically failed out of your promotion series and were wondering why. We apologize for the inconvenience as we strive to make ranked play a more consistent and dynamic experience overall.

Source

Aren't you glad I put a TLDR; at the top? What do you think of the changes? Comment below!


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Scarizard Chats About Rengar

type='html'>Rengar's got some mixed opinions about him. Some people think he's viable, if not strong, if not OP, while others say he's paltry, not very interesting, and overall a weak pick.

Meanwhile, here's Riot's official stance on Rengar and where they're planning on taking him:

Our other goal is to retain his dueling nature and strength in ambushes and skirmishes, but lower his instagib potential in favor of deferring his up-front damage into longer engagement windows.

Hey y'all - 

So i wanted to talk to you guys about our good ol' Stabtabby, Rengar. Classick handed off to me his initial refactor of Rengar that he had begun posting about a while back, but internally it was shown that while it certainly buffed him and fixed some issues with his design, more work needed to be done.

What our playtests revealed is that preserving the predatory feel by making his ultimate stronger is all well and good, but proved pretty abusive when it came to his burst potential. In a way, Rengar is a champion that has always been defined by his abuse-cases, either in TripleQ assassinating someone in less than a second from stealth, or double tap W + DFG pentakilling teams from stealth with AP, or simply stacking health + spirit visage splitpushing waves, then escaping from nearly any sort of chase. We've come a long way from the latter of these, but if the Pridestalker is to see any sort of return to glory we'll need to iron out some of the abusive kinks and round him out as a whole.

We're sticking with the direction that Classick originally outlined in his post here (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...71487#37371487) - namely reducing the frustration/toxicity of Thrill of the Hunt (Ultimately allowing us to buff the spell in other ways) and driving clarity in his Ferocity choices by having the effects scale with champion level rather than rank of skill. Our other goal is to retain his dueling nature and strength in ambushes and skirmishes, but lower his instagib potential in favor of deferring his up-front damage into longer engagement windows. While he'll still be a threat, changing him to a sustained damage pattern allows us to pump more power into his other abilities/ferocity bonuses and make his ability set as a whole stronger instead of the current 'stabcat on AD carry and one or both of us will die' pattern that makes Rengar so frustrating and binary to play as and against on Live.

So with that out of the way, here are some questions i'd like to get your thoughts on -

-Do you identify Rengar's playstyle as one that would be a particularly good fit in the jungle? What improvements would you like to see be made to help him out?

-What is appealing to you about the defensive boost Rengar receives from Battle Roar? I'd like to change this from just flat Armor and Magic Resistance to something that can be situationally more powerful and makes him less 'meatwall' when he leaps on a target

-What types of improvements or changes would you like to see be made to Bonetooth Necklace? Ideally i'd like to see this moved away from a 'stat-stick' and embrace more unique enhancements like his 'Increases Leap Range by 150'

These questions are really just to begin the discussion - i'm certainly looking for thoughts/feedback on a variety of topics, but these are a few that we've been talking about on a higher level that have less of a set direction currently. Wav3break, one of our Live Design Interns is working closely with me on this project and will be monitoring this thread alongside me and will help to soak feedback and answer questions y'all may have.

Without further ado: Rengar! I choose you!

Here are the changes (Without numbers, as they are subject to change/tuning as always) that we've been testing so far:

General
- Health Regen, Health Regen/lvl, and Health/lvl all increased

Unseen Predator
-Now becomes visible at the beginning of the leap, rather than midleap

Savagery 
- Attack Speed removed (Temporary for now - planning on putting something else here)

Ferocity Bonus: Savagery
- Damage lowered, Attack Speed lowered, Attack Speed Duration increased

Battle Roar
- Damage increased
- Cooldown decreased
- No longer grants Armor/MR - instead grants damage reduction from Physical Damage/Basic Attacks

Ferocity Bonus: Battle Roar
- Heal unchanged
- Now deals damage based on Rengar's level

Bola Strike
- Damage increased
- Bonus AD Ratio increased

Ferocity Bonus: Bola Strike
- Now deals damage based on Rengar's level
- Root duration increased

Thrill of the Hunt
- Cooldown decreased
- Duration increased
- Movement speed increased
- Enemies will now receive a particle over their head when Rengar can see them; Additionally, Enemies will hear Voice Over on activation if they are in Rengar's sight range (roughly 1000) when he casts Thrill of the Hunt

Source

What do you guys think about Rengar? Comment below!


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Chatting About Brand - #4 Highest Win Rate?!

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Brand

Release Year: 2011

Current Win Rate: 53.16% (#4)

Popularity: (3.89%) - Middle of the pack

Most Recent Changes:

Pillar of Flame

• Mana cost reduced to 70/75/80/85/90 from 70/80/90/100/110

Conflagration

• Mana cost increased to 70/75/80/85/90 from 60/65/70/75/80

Pyroclasm

• Mana cost reduced to 100/100/100 from 100/150/200

When Brand was first released, he was touted as the new Annie, better, faster, stronger, and generally superior in every way imaginable.

• He didn't need to charge his stun
• His level 1~3 damage was much higher
• His range didn't depend on a difficult to smart-cast cone
• He was FUN

After dominating most of Season One with his ridiculous damage output, Brand was hit by the nerfbat, falling into low play. With the release of the Zombie Brand skin he saw some more facetime, but for the most part, other mages like Ahri and Zyra stole the show with much better mobility and/or CC with similar early game and late game AOE burst damage.

However, with the most recent mana changes to Brand's kit, he's suddenly seen a massive surge statistically from a very average champion with below average win rate to...the fourth highest win rate in the game?

His popularity is still a little low, as it's been since he was last buffed (his ultimate prioritized enemy champions if hit an ablaze target), since assassins like Akali, Talon, and Katarina were extremely popular. As everyone knows, dodging skillshots is pretty easy with an instantaneous blink.

However, now that the assassins are out of favor (except for Zed), it seems like Brand's making a pretty decent comeback. While he still doesn't do well against champions like Kassadin, he's more than a match for popular weak early game mages like Twisted Fate and Nidalee.

I personally would like to see a resurgence in Brand play since I feel that he's a very fun champion to play, and also a very fun champion to play against. While his damage is strong when he hits, it's also very easy to understand what you have to do to prevent getting gimped...dodge skillshots. While this isn't always easy to do, it does make for some "OHHHHH" moments.

What do you guys think? Is Brand's win rate a fluke? Is he insanely strong right now? Comment below!

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RiotRadioblur Chats About New Icons

type='html'>If you're observant (or even mildly observant) you've probably noticed a slew of new icon reworks floating around the shop and in your inventory. Well there's a reason behind them, most of which is because they want it to look pretty. Check out the full scoop below!

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Hey there!

I’m sure you’ve noticed some of the items have had their art updated and replaced. As the aesthetic of League becomes more cohesive and solidifies in quality, we’re working hard to update all of our old art. In particular, the Visual Design team is working hard to innovate and improve on our user interface and visual identity. We have already been raising the icon quality bar on our champions and summoner icons, and it’s about time items got some love. Because these icons are so important to our players, I thought I’d walk through some of the decision-making process involved in developing the new aesthetic. 

The primary goal of the reworks was to improve clarity, and then to build thematic connections between the item visuals and the other aspects of their design. Familiarity was a big concern as we began working on these—how far can we push the designs until they become too hard to adapt to?—but a few icons had very little in their visuals that could be held onto. When we were looking into which icons to re-design first, we wanted to seek out the ones that presented some of the biggest challenges to redesign, the ones whose themes seemed seriously out of line with their visuals, or whose current art didn’t localize well. From there, we wanted to find ways to build them into the rest of our game’s world in a way that felt consistent and logical.

Let’s look at how each one was chosen and how we developed them:

Abyssal Scepter



Abyssal’s older art was a bone on a stick. It was pretty lacking in terms of design, and nobody really felt that the whole “abyss” theme was captured by it. The first explorations toyed with keeping the skull, but it just wasn’t exciting enough. Somebody on the team suggested pushing more in the direction of something extremely warped, exaggerated, and unusual, but retaining the feeling that this was the skull of some terrifying creature. The more we pushed, the more we realized a hybridization of the two would provide the most unsettling result. A vaguely human skull at the end of a staff made out of its own spinal column, wrapped in worn strips of leather. The bone went from bleached white to dark, decayed brown, which also brought out the silhouette and distanced the design even further from appearing too human. The final touch came from one of our splash artists, Alex Flores, who really pushed the S shape in the staff to where it is now. In the end, we had this:



Catalyst the Protector

  

Catalyst’s upgrade had a few very specific goals going in. The first was to change the rune to match the kind of shape language we would see in our game today. The shape we used was designed by one of our other Visual Designers, Zach Roberson, and it definitely feels like it belongs with the world we’re building. The second consideration we had was to make it purple to match the idea of blue and red crystals combining into one new item. The result was something with a really unique color palette and silhouette, brought up to the quality we want to see out of every new icon:



Deathfire Grasp

  

More than any other icon so far, Deathfire Grasp’s redesign pushed the limits of what we could do with changes. The original icon felt like such a missed opportunity, and had too much overlap with Abyssal Scepter’s visuals. We wanted to separate the two, and make each feel more unique. And then there was this great theme, right there in the name “Death Fire Grasp.” It sort of stuck out in our earliest discussions as the obvious thematic tie, but being obvious isn’t always the best way to design. So we tried a few iterations and different ideas, but in the end we kept coming back to a staff with some sort of hand or claw shape on the end of it holding a spirit flame. Once we decided where we were taking it, we felt like the next step was to bring it into the world. Where would you find a staff holding a captured soul? The Shadow Isles. Looking at champs like Hecarim and Thresh, we tried to give the staff some of the same flair, all the way down to the color pallette, blue-green effects and lighting, with warm iron for the metals. The new design was a huge departure from the original, and we had a lot of internal discussions about whether we were pushing too far. In the end we agreed the added clarity and visual theming made the icon more distinct and easier to associate with its thematic. And here we have all of that process in its final form:



Glacial Shroud

  

Glacial shroud also really missed its thematic. We started looking at this around the time we were developing the Freljord event, and with all this lovely new art for our wintery domain, it made sense to make Glacial Shroud more “glacial.” The first step was to remove the lion. After abstracting the details of the face, we saw some shapes that reminded us of the knot shapes on Howling Abyss, so we adjusted them all to fit in. The blue ring matched the True Ice of Freljord, so we inlaid a ring of it onto the medallion. Next was taking the gold and toning it down to the kind of muted color palettes we see on Trundle, Sejuani, and the other Freljord champs. Finally we took those wispy shapes and hinted at a frost-magic fabric the pendant holds together as a brooch, giving us a very literal shroud to play with. The new icon went from being something a bit out of place, to something that could really fit in to our world:



Haunting Guise

 

For Haunting Guise we set out to actually make something a bit spooky. A clown face was a specific nightmare, but we wanted something that would feel appropriately haunting to anybody. The shape of the mask we ended up with had a lifeless, cold feel. The red and white hinted at something Ionian, and the green magic matched some of what we were seeing out of champs like Karma and Master Yi. We drew on lots of our Ionian champs for reference, but the biggest help on this icon came from the Visual Development department, where they really helped us nail down that Ionian style. The result:



Hextech Revolver

  

Hextech isn’t extremely well-defined to our players right now, but there’s plenty in the various champions to suggest at what it could be. Again, Visual Development played a big role in helping us achieve a look the felt appropriately “hextech,” and helped steer the direction to something more specifically Piltovian, which felt like a natural fit for the item’s origins. The gun replicates a lot of the aesthetics seen in Jayce, Vi, and Graves, where magic and technology play off one another to form unique implements with an unusual design principal. The gun doesn’t function without the magic, and the magic is useless without the gun to harness it. It’s a symbiotic relationship:



Thornmail

   

Right out the gate, Thornmail felt like Noxus. Bearhug your enemies with spiked mail? Totally Noxus. Again Visual Development helped us find that perfect mix of utilitarian design and aggressive, militaristic aesthetics that makes it fit so well into our world. Darius, Draven, and other Noxian champs heavily influenced the design, right down to the spiked shoulders, dark grey metals, and the red background (shying away from the pinker hue we were seeing before). The process on Thornmail really seemed to flow as soon as we knew it was Noxian, and I think the result really shows for it:



Vampiric Scepter

  

Vampiric Scepter is another Noxian artifact, this time drawing from Vlad’s aesthetics to really drive home the vampire aspect inherent to the item. It took a few tries to get here—some of the early iterations involved a bat with scythe even—but the result is something a lot more mature than the older, goofier icon. We managed to preserve and abstract the face and scythe shapes, and give the metal a really unique gold treatment to match the rendering we see in Vlad’s splash. The final touch was making the magic feel like is was reaching out and sucking in energy from the space around it, drawing on the strength of others. The final icon is a lot more menacing than before:



And that’s them! The Visual Designers here at Riot worked really hard to bring out the best in these icons, and I think it shows. Lots of thought, time, and energy were poured into these to make them the best icons we can make, and all the other teams who dog-piled them really helped us go that extra mile. A huge shout out to everybody involved!

I’ll be in this thread to address any comments or questions, so if you have anything to say just let me know and I’ll do my best to respond. It’s great to have these out, and we hope you all enjoy!

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What do you guys think of the new icons? Comment below!


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SmashGizmo Chats About Olaf Changes

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After promising Olaf buffs quite some time ago SmashGizmo's been asleep at the wheel, leaving Olaf fans wondering what's next in store for the champion. However, with some poking and prodding, he's finally ready to provide us with an update! Check out the details below!

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We're still working on him. I apologize for the lack of posts but last week was a bit slow on Olaf work due to suring up more immediate Live Design changes and keeping up with this thread eats up a ton of my time when I try to do so, so I tend to come and go as my schedule permits.

That being said, let's look at what I'm looking at testing for Olaf. I'll just try to bold out the things that have changed recently.

Olaf Changes, V1.1

Undertow

• Slow no longer decays
• Now has a minimum throw distance of 400 units
  
• Axes now stick in walls and structures if they would land inside impassable terrain

Basically as I said last time, tuned the min distance down a bit, now the necessary movement to pick up an Axe is under 100 units.

Current status of wall sticking is that it has been mostly removed, but I have put checks in place to see if an Axe would land in impassible terrain and if it would, it instead backtracks and finds the last wall it passed through and sticks there. Essentially trying to get the best of both worlds, enabling 0 distance Axes for junglers, preventing you from throwing unretrievable Axes, and still retaining the scouting power of Axes.

Vicious Strikes

• Mana cost reduced to 25 from 40/45/50/55/60
  
• Base damage increased to 20/35/50/65/80 from 7/14/21/28/35
• HP -> damage ratio removed
• Lifesteal reduced to 8/10.5/13/15.5/18% from 9/12/15/18/21%
• Spellvamp removed
• Now provides 1% enhanced healing from all sources for every 2% health Olaf is missing during the duration

Spellvamp still seems to be adding really esoteric and misleading power onto this ability so I'm trying an iteration with the spellvamp removed. While I get that players feel clever for smiting with Vicious Strikes up to get bonus healing, I think that adds unnecessary burden of knowledge on Olaf's opponents and gives us the ability to more directly buff his jungle if it feel underpowered. Not to mention the spellvamp off smite was getting kinda silly with the new amped healing mechanic (~300+ burst healing out of nowhere late game). 

I also feel like this was leading players to improperly use W before Q in chasing scenarios, though whether that was the spellvamp or just the AD remains to be seen with this iteration. I'm fine with W -> Q being situationally useful, but with a tightly windowed lifesteal/berzerker steroid, I don't like players feeling compelled to spend 40+% of the duration catching up to their long range Axe.

The HP scaling was limiting Olaf's build paths and causing his power to spike at level 13 rather than transition smoothly to 18, so I've removed it in favor of larger base damage numbers. I'm guessing these are too high right now, but I'd rather test them at too high to make sure they feel good and work than to discard the idea do to undertuned numbers.

Lifesteal scaled slightly down due to early feedback that his sustain was feeling pretty silly in conjunction with the new healing mechanic.

Ragnarok

• Mana Cost removed
• Cooldown changed to 120/100/80 from 100
• Active duration changed to 5 from 6
• New Passive Added: Olaf gains 10/25/40 Armor and Magic Resist passively
  
• Active Changed: Olaf removes all disables from himself and becomes immune to them for the next 5 seconds. During this time, he loses the passive portion of this skill and gains 15/2025% lifesteal (PLACEHOLDER MECHANIC).

Still pretty unhappy with this skill.

Double passive bonus was going by unnoticed, which points to attack speed being pretty useless on this ult. I'm not really happy with just throwing more lifesteal on here, but I'll openly admit that I'm having trouble finding a healthy mechanic to put on the active portion of this skill. Right now, in lieu of a stronger idea, I've put on lifesteal mostly to drive home that focusing Olaf as a team during his ult is strong, but trying to duel him is a bad idea, and partially to proof of concept Olaf's lifesteal tank pattern by boosting his LS number to a somewhat obnoxious level to see how it feels to play as and against. Again, I can't stress this enough, this mechanic is intended as a placeholder while I work on finding the right mechanics that preserve the intended play of Olaf and counterplay versus Olaf.

Also, I get that people are scared of changes, I really do, but I want you guys to remember that this is an iterative process and you're getting very early eyes on my work here. Changes will come and go and get tweaked until I have confidence in them. I assure you that Olaf will not be seeing a net nerf with the final changes that hit live.

But at the same time, I want to point out that individual aspects of Olaf's kit will be getting trimmed to focus the character. Right now, Olaf's power is very diffuse and I'm trying to tighten that power up into the things that actually make Olaf awesome. And when it comes to Ragnarok in particular, I'm trying to figure out exactly how to make being completely immune to CC feel good for both Olaf and his victim at the same time, as I don't think we have ever really figured that out.

Source

What do you think about the proposed changes? Comment below!


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July: Chatting About the Solo Queue Tier List

type='html'>There's been a lot of back and forth on the solo queue tier list lately, which I love! I'm not saying I'm always correct, which is why hearing feedback from you guys is definitely a strong component that moves the tier list day by day.

The tier list is evolving...

So this post is made to address some of the current "scandalous" champions that you guys think are *outrageously* high or pitifully low on the tier list and some Work In Progress (WIP) thoughts on movements.

Post in the comment section if I've missed anything~

Your Demands (Will update to keep in mind)
Move Up: Kha'Zix, Lissandra, Syndra, Ryze, Quinn, Swain, Karma, Rengar, Support Fiddlesticks, Fizz, Shen
Move Down: Wukong, Malzahar, Warwick
Add: Jungle Aatrox, Mid Soraka, Top Nunu, Gangplank Support, Swain Top

Thoughts
Building a tier list takes time. There are over 100 champions to order, and at the rate that champions and meta changes, it'll likely never be 100% accurate. Plus, arguing for your favorite champion is half the fun of tier lists!

I could always make a list purely based off of popularity, but then readers would always be behind the curve on the hidden secret OP champions.

Possible Ordering Methods
The way I see it, building a Tier List can be done through 4 ways:

• Win Rates
• Pick/Ban Rates
• Theorycrafting
• Observational Bias

Since any one of them alone is boring, my list is comprised of all 4 combined, with a heavy weighting towards solo queue win rates. Some of you have brought up that win rates are highly subjective, which I'm not sure what that means -  

Surely observational bias is more subjective than quantifying win rates over thousands of games no? For those of you wondering, yes, I do use LolKing's database whenever I refer to winrates and pick/ban rates. (They're awesome).

Comments on Unusual Champion Choices

Personally, whenever I read a tier list, it's never the FOTM champions that I find interesting, it's always the non-FOTM ones that strike me as "new-and exiciting" and encourage me to try something unique out. Of course I'm always hoping that my little secret that will someday snowball into an upset victory at a major tournament so I could say "you heard it here first!"

Examples:

Rammus - Homeguard boots + Mobility + Powerball + Teleport = Massive ganking speed unrivaled by any other champion.

Jungle Malzahar - Insane ganking power and ranged red buff compensated by a vulnerable early jungle.

Top Lane Kayle - Before Rincent posted his build, who knew that Kayle beat EVERYONE? 

Tier 2 and Tier 3 Champions

You'll sometimes see formerly popular champions drop into Tier 2 or Tier 3...everyone knows that they're strong, nobody wants to go toe-to-toe with them, and nothing they do catches people off guard. The element of surprise is definitely a strong factor in winning, especially in solo queue where players get cocky against non-FOTM champions.

They're viable, but nothing special anymore. *balanced* does not mean weak.

Balance.

FOTM Champions

Meanwhile, I know that I've dropped some popular champions like Lissandra, Syndra, Rengar, and Alistar into Tier 4. I've seen people say:

"You want a tier list? just look at the FOTM champions, those are Tier 1" 

I'm not that lazy.

Even though everyone thinks they're strong and they look strong on paper, considering how much they're played, they should really win over 50% of the time if they're actually strong champions...and they're not even *close* to that, and are instead competing with Olaf to see who can lose more.

Closing

I never shy away from a good argument, and in fact I enjoy it. I might be a little too busy to respond sometimes due to the sheer volume, but I try to do as much as I can and let you guys chat among yourselves on the rest. Just remember, keep it classy and have fun!

- SSJSuntastic, platinum scrub

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RiotRadioblur Chats About New Icons

type='html'>If you're observant (or even mildly observant) you've probably noticed a slew of new icon reworks floating around the shop and in your inventory. Well there's a reason behind them, most of which is because they want it to look pretty. Check out the full scoop below!

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Hey there!

I’m sure you’ve noticed some of the items have had their art updated and replaced. As the aesthetic of League becomes more cohesive and solidifies in quality, we’re working hard to update all of our old art. In particular, the Visual Design team is working hard to innovate and improve on our user interface and visual identity. We have already been raising the icon quality bar on our champions and summoner icons, and it’s about time items got some love. Because these icons are so important to our players, I thought I’d walk through some of the decision-making process involved in developing the new aesthetic. 

The primary goal of the reworks was to improve clarity, and then to build thematic connections between the item visuals and the other aspects of their design. Familiarity was a big concern as we began working on these—how far can we push the designs until they become too hard to adapt to?—but a few icons had very little in their visuals that could be held onto. When we were looking into which icons to re-design first, we wanted to seek out the ones that presented some of the biggest challenges to redesign, the ones whose themes seemed seriously out of line with their visuals, or whose current art didn’t localize well. From there, we wanted to find ways to build them into the rest of our game’s world in a way that felt consistent and logical.

Let’s look at how each one was chosen and how we developed them:

Abyssal Scepter



Abyssal’s older art was a bone on a stick. It was pretty lacking in terms of design, and nobody really felt that the whole “abyss” theme was captured by it. The first explorations toyed with keeping the skull, but it just wasn’t exciting enough. Somebody on the team suggested pushing more in the direction of something extremely warped, exaggerated, and unusual, but retaining the feeling that this was the skull of some terrifying creature. The more we pushed, the more we realized a hybridization of the two would provide the most unsettling result. A vaguely human skull at the end of a staff made out of its own spinal column, wrapped in worn strips of leather. The bone went from bleached white to dark, decayed brown, which also brought out the silhouette and distanced the design even further from appearing too human. The final touch came from one of our splash artists, Alex Flores, who really pushed the S shape in the staff to where it is now. In the end, we had this:



Catalyst the Protector

  

Catalyst’s upgrade had a few very specific goals going in. The first was to change the rune to match the kind of shape language we would see in our game today. The shape we used was designed by one of our other Visual Designers, Zach Roberson, and it definitely feels like it belongs with the world we’re building. The second consideration we had was to make it purple to match the idea of blue and red crystals combining into one new item. The result was something with a really unique color palette and silhouette, brought up to the quality we want to see out of every new icon:



Deathfire Grasp

  

More than any other icon so far, Deathfire Grasp’s redesign pushed the limits of what we could do with changes. The original icon felt like such a missed opportunity, and had too much overlap with Abyssal Scepter’s visuals. We wanted to separate the two, and make each feel more unique. And then there was this great theme, right there in the name “Death Fire Grasp.” It sort of stuck out in our earliest discussions as the obvious thematic tie, but being obvious isn’t always the best way to design. So we tried a few iterations and different ideas, but in the end we kept coming back to a staff with some sort of hand or claw shape on the end of it holding a spirit flame. Once we decided where we were taking it, we felt like the next step was to bring it into the world. Where would you find a staff holding a captured soul? The Shadow Isles. Looking at champs like Hecarim and Thresh, we tried to give the staff some of the same flair, all the way down to the color pallette, blue-green effects and lighting, with warm iron for the metals. The new design was a huge departure from the original, and we had a lot of internal discussions about whether we were pushing too far. In the end we agreed the added clarity and visual theming made the icon more distinct and easier to associate with its thematic. And here we have all of that process in its final form:



Glacial Shroud

  

Glacial shroud also really missed its thematic. We started looking at this around the time we were developing the Freljord event, and with all this lovely new art for our wintery domain, it made sense to make Glacial Shroud more “glacial.” The first step was to remove the lion. After abstracting the details of the face, we saw some shapes that reminded us of the knot shapes on Howling Abyss, so we adjusted them all to fit in. The blue ring matched the True Ice of Freljord, so we inlaid a ring of it onto the medallion. Next was taking the gold and toning it down to the kind of muted color palettes we see on Trundle, Sejuani, and the other Freljord champs. Finally we took those wispy shapes and hinted at a frost-magic fabric the pendant holds together as a brooch, giving us a very literal shroud to play with. The new icon went from being something a bit out of place, to something that could really fit in to our world:



Haunting Guise

 

For Haunting Guise we set out to actually make something a bit spooky. A clown face was a specific nightmare, but we wanted something that would feel appropriately haunting to anybody. The shape of the mask we ended up with had a lifeless, cold feel. The red and white hinted at something Ionian, and the green magic matched some of what we were seeing out of champs like Karma and Master Yi. We drew on lots of our Ionian champs for reference, but the biggest help on this icon came from the Visual Development department, where they really helped us nail down that Ionian style. The result:



Hextech Revolver

  

Hextech isn’t extremely well-defined to our players right now, but there’s plenty in the various champions to suggest at what it could be. Again, Visual Development played a big role in helping us achieve a look the felt appropriately “hextech,” and helped steer the direction to something more specifically Piltovian, which felt like a natural fit for the item’s origins. The gun replicates a lot of the aesthetics seen in Jayce, Vi, and Graves, where magic and technology play off one another to form unique implements with an unusual design principal. The gun doesn’t function without the magic, and the magic is useless without the gun to harness it. It’s a symbiotic relationship:



Thornmail

   

Right out the gate, Thornmail felt like Noxus. Bearhug your enemies with spiked mail? Totally Noxus. Again Visual Development helped us find that perfect mix of utilitarian design and aggressive, militaristic aesthetics that makes it fit so well into our world. Darius, Draven, and other Noxian champs heavily influenced the design, right down to the spiked shoulders, dark grey metals, and the red background (shying away from the pinker hue we were seeing before). The process on Thornmail really seemed to flow as soon as we knew it was Noxian, and I think the result really shows for it:



Vampiric Scepter

  

Vampiric Scepter is another Noxian artifact, this time drawing from Vlad’s aesthetics to really drive home the vampire aspect inherent to the item. It took a few tries to get here—some of the early iterations involved a bat with scythe even—but the result is something a lot more mature than the older, goofier icon. We managed to preserve and abstract the face and scythe shapes, and give the metal a really unique gold treatment to match the rendering we see in Vlad’s splash. The final touch was making the magic feel like is was reaching out and sucking in energy from the space around it, drawing on the strength of others. The final icon is a lot more menacing than before:



And that’s them! The Visual Designers here at Riot worked really hard to bring out the best in these icons, and I think it shows. Lots of thought, time, and energy were poured into these to make them the best icons we can make, and all the other teams who dog-piled them really helped us go that extra mile. A huge shout out to everybody involved!

I’ll be in this thread to address any comments or questions, so if you have anything to say just let me know and I’ll do my best to respond. It’s great to have these out, and we hope you all enjoy!

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What do you guys think of the new icons? Comment below!