Why u keep trying to remove skill expression from the game ? Why is losing lane not possible for u, u keep trying to think of something to cater to low elo and bad laning. Why? The whole point of laning is to do it well with skill expression not to cater to people who sprint perma like think about what u re doing u are thinking about all this stuff just to not let people lose lane, tp, homeguards its pathethic @Phreak
Not gonna lie, I fucking love you Phreak. This is one of my favourite videos that you've created so far. Your internal perspective and explanations of everything are what I live for these days, and I cannot wait for your REAL stat efficiency sheets. I use the wiki measures loosely, but anyone that's decent at the game knows to use them with a grain of salt. Having no accurate measures to refer to is insanely frustrating one you realise it. ALSO, with these concepts of visibility and understandability for players, PLEASE allow all items in the game to show their tooltip stats such as BC = Health Carved, Abyssal = Health Unmade etc. Having some items have unique effects, but still be very unclear on how to actually objectively view and measure the effectivity of those effects/passives can be completely unintuitive when trying to theory craft and test items. It's been a long time, and every item should at minimum have their main effect displayed in an actual number OR if you guys are feeling generous, then add every possible number that an item can display (to a reasonable extend, aka 3 stats like Thornmail does) to the bonus tooltip information below an item when observed in your inventory. Of course, this can always be turned on and off with "extended tooltip" option, so it's not an issue for players who prefer less clutter and don't care. On top of everything you've talked about, which I find an incredibly strong and amazing direction to move the game, my most wanted thing is just the ability to understand and view every piece of information about the game (IF WE WANT TO). Things like item stats and post game stat analysis showing much more visibility than they currently do would be near the top of my list.
I agree it makes theory crafting so much more fun and you knowledge of the game and its nuances can increase and i always love more available stats. I do believe that they remove some of the stats on items for example so that the game can be more easily balanceable for the devs and make the game more about what you think is fun vs about what is actually best in slot. However i think that is not an excuse to remove these stats, its their job to balance and they shouldn't hide things that ideally should be available to the players just because its harder to balance.
@@아아아-g9g1b Yeah hopefully they will revert the durability patch, there is a lot of talk about it lately so they might make people more squishy in the early game atleast.
28:00 I've always found the bounty system flawed for this reason. The point of the bounty system is to give someone a change to "get back" into the game if they manage to outplay and kill a fed opponent. However funneling a bounty into an already fed champion just throws that balance out the window. If my syndra mid is 10/0 then dies to a 10/0 Vayne now there's a fed vayne that just got an extra 1000 gold. Surely that's not the intended mechanic but it happens all too often.
@@username-ql8ox Yes, but if the goal of the system is to get losing players back in the game, the champions who are ahead getting it doesn't hit the goal there, regardless of if the current system is fair or not
@@Necro7155correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the current bounty system factor in your team's gold? So that means if both Syndra and Vayne have a 1000 gold bounty, their teams current disposition is roughly similar?
I’m totally agree on this. The Syndra should NOT have bounty if her team goes behind, because the game encourages the most powerful ally to not interact with the enemy and not being proactive. That’s simply stupid because you are restricting your best member of the team to create an advantage for the team to get money, down to do nothing and safe farm while waiting for a very safe kill without compromising.
The difference between old items/champions and new iterations of items/champions isn't in the damage numbers, it's in the cooldown. To use your own example, Morgana Q was a 15 second cooldown 10 years ago. It is now a 10 second cooldown. This is a 33% decrease in cooldown, which is massive. Damage numbers may not changed much, but so few champions have actual cooldowns any more so the window for punishing their mistakes also has considerably shrunk. This on top of the fact that you can cast your full combo 50% more often
I feel like the powercreep talk about how no large changes in combat in last 15 years largely ignores the changes made to Ability haste (CDR back then). The hard limit of 40% got changed and abilities have gotten much more spammable than they used to be. This affects the damage done in fights and in game significantly more than small damage changes on abilities or advantages gained from better farming.
When talking about the powercreep on Morgana Q specifically what about all the dashes, or high amounts of burst speed, or CC immunities that have been added to the game in the last 5 years. It's become increasingly hard to use old kits where a lot of your power is tied up into one ability that gets weaker with every new champion release.
I know you get a lot of flame for taking the role of the "face" of the balance team, but I really appreciate your transparency, and I think explaining why certain changes are being made is a really nice thing to see.
I feel like the combination of: *1. Showing both team total gold gained on the upper HUD next to the epic monster timers,* and *2. Showing gold given to the enemy when you die as like a big negative brown/reddish colored number in the same way that shutdown gold gained is shown as a big gold positive number,* immediately solves the bounty clarity issues. At the very least, i think these 2 additions would benefit clarity of the back and forth of gold income and general team disparity greatly.
Okay, so I'm a Swain main. I think the changes are pretty nice, but you didn't really say anything about the passive or the supposed "R healing scales on max HP" that we got teased about before. Could you elaborate more on that? And will Swain consider RoA as one of his many builds? How will his durability be changed after the rework?
@mariuszek1118 they are trying to balance him as a low damage utility champ as a support, which doesn't make him a good solo lane champion. It's impossible to have a strong solo lane champion and a strong support champion, look at Karma
@@ashleyturner2627 did u... watch the video? he literally was saying about removing power from W to put into E and R, and also making Q better in ranged matchups? W is his support spell and removing power from it makes him more of a support?
On bounty understandability: Add a gold meter to the scoreboard. Most League plugins add this anyway. It could be a numerical value or just an abstract "shiny bar" that shows a comparison of gold value. It could break down per champion, or just display a little shiny symbol next to their name to denote their approximate gold value compared to other players.
Can't say enough how much this videos are appreciated for us. I'm a bit of a nerd for items and champion details (xD) and having this insights is really really nice. Also the direction you talked about items/classes and other things going forward sounds super exciting. Thanks and keep it up Phreak/team :]
Old (first iteration) swain main here. While I doubt they will ever undo the major rework and go back to his old man with a bird callled Beatrice roots, here’s some ideas for how to fix him if they don’t want to go that hard. The ult heal feels really weak for what it should be for, dot and tanking though heal. Even with conqueror it feels worthless. Old swain ult in the middle of the enemy team during hour glass use to be a near full heal if done right. Now you’re lucky if it’s 25% when you build completely for it. This is a huge problem, and why I think he feels weak. Rework how his ult is used to let him be a tanking mage. While I’d love if they go back to the 3 second cd toggle ult to let him sustain in lane and mid game, I doubt this will be considered. I think a favorable buff is to increase the number of birds he can drain with from just 3, and tweak some numbers there for dmg. Buff the ult heal off minions would help a lot for laning mid game issues. Isn’t it something like a 90% heal reduction off minions? With more birds in a team fight he can heal off more champions. The point is not for tons of upfront damage but rather for him to outlive the opponents if not focused, draining enemies for himself while doing it. There’s mention of increasing the number of demon flares, instead remove the out of place aoe burst damage from the ult completely. Instead of demon flare burst damage, increase the dot damage from the bird drain. He’s not a burst mage, he’s a dot damage over time mage…. Don’t make him something he’s not. Instead perhaps keep demon flare casts a slow you can recast every couple seconds. This might sound busted, but an idea is if you recast the ult, you get a small heal boost. Perhaps where every time you hit r it heals you for either % HP based on champs hit like Darius q. Or maybe heals based off the ravenous flock stacks of your passive. Another ult idea is if you hit someone with demon flare slow you proc your passive for every nearby enemy. This would give the heal, and help build stacks. Right now it feels hard to get stacks to scale up your health like other tanks. Maybe that’s a way to fix that? Overall, ult just feels wrong. He should be a dot mage, and it feels like he’s too reliant on that minuscule burst. Remove burst, increase dot and heal to sustain your ability to maintain the dot… Completely secondary of this is the old damage increase boost his old e use to have. Again I doubt they undo the rework and bring back his old kit. But perhaps you add this feature back into first champion hit by e? Adding to champions hit by w feels like it would be too strong. But if you removed demon flare’s burst damage, maybe that could work and help scale his ult damage late game with maxing w? I don’t agree with everything in this video, but I think it has a lot of good points. ua-cam.com/video/ALtlk2MhmUQ/v-deo.htmlsi=P3il2D5nq2cHbnzj Fantasy level hopes would be that they undo the major re-work. His abilities, lore and Beatrice are missed. He use to be a damage over time anti tank mage, that tanked himself. The only champ with a 3 second ult cooldown that required proper mana management. True aoe dot player with good zoning. Aoe snare. And for players with slow hands, wasn’t so reliant on a very hard to hit skill shot for his control features. He use to be a champ you had to think about how to play and manage timing, the strategy side. Otherwise swains artwork and lore... They took an old man with a limp who was a badass with a bird, and made him into middle aged man that stole fiddlesticks arm feels empty… Example pirate swain skin use to be a crusty 80 year old sea dog, with a bad ass eye patch and a peg-leg. Now he’s the complete opposite of that. Let’s bring him and Beatrice back finally, with their own power in the top and midland. Making people fear his zoning, dot, and team fight potential.
It's great to hear that phreaks thoughts on champ durability and the amount of tankiness the durable classes should have is absolutely spot on. Being a top/jungle main, I mainly play durable champs. But man, it oftentimes feels like buying durability doesnt do anything and way too many champs need to go really heavy on damage - if you cant really survive anyway, might as well go full damage, eh? I think that, by having durability matter the way phreak explained, a lot of things just fall into place. ADCs no longer need to compete with assassin and burst mages in terms of damage output: Their role is to dps the durable targets burst champions struggle to get through. Weve seen what happens when ADCs get buffed to feel better~ they start pseudo bursting stuff, leaving actual burst champs out of a job. And if ADC gets toned down again, their dps isnt valuable enough, as everything dies so quickly anyway. Bruisers in general struggle atm as they cannot get tanky enough while keeping their damage up~ and most bruiser kits are designed with mechanics that require survivability to function. Even assassin suffer from the amount of damage in the game. Aside from the burst competition being too heavy with many ranged champs trying to take the jobs of assassins, assassins also need to hit their really quick, really save, instant in&out combos all the time, or else they just die instantly. And assassins being balanced around those sort of combos tends to make them unfair. High target access, low counterplay combos with, supposedly, lower damage are not what your "main" combos should be like.
About Swain, I think only getting the stack when recasting E - and pulling the enemy closer to you - can be very punishing against melee. Perhaps changing it so you don't have to pull them to get the stack would be a fine tweak as well.
Just a thought about the communication of bounties. If they were to put how much players were worth below 300 gold it would instantly become spam ping central. I would make it only ping able by enemies if at all
Phreak, you've been talking about item/stat efficiency calculations for years. I'm happy it's paying off and you're able to publish your numbers in an official riot way (even if they're still orientative).
I know there are no plans to change Aphelios, but I wanted to voice that I’m very happy there are not plans to change him. I love the way the champ feels now; there’s so much depth between each gun combo and how spell rotations are affected by gun ordering - very rewarding in his current state.
Morgana Q damage hasn’t changed, but because of that she moved from mid lane (a damage focused role) to support (where her cc and black shield is more useful), I think that’s a strong sign that overall damage has gone way overboard if someone’s damage that DIDNT get buffed had to move to a utility role.
I think part of that could very well be due to the community itself getting better at dodging the Q/hiding behind waves/playing while it's on CD. Also, isn't she really quite bad in support right now? Her overall winrate is being hard-carried by jungle right now, which makes a lot of use of her Q damage.
@@TheTimtam112 her support is kept purposefully bad because her black shield is extremely annoying to deal with. Even when she sucks she’s one of the most banned champions
she didnt' move to support because she lacked damage, she moved to support because she doesn't rely on gold to be useful, the difference between a mid morgana and a support Morgana isn't much. Both will do exactly the same thing in teamfights. It has nothing to do with damage creep. Also, yes, people are just much better about using minions and dodging skill shots in general these days. Jungle Morgana is powerful because it combines the roaming potential of support with the gold of mid, meaning she makes no sacrifices and gets to exploit the power her kit has early game to its fullest, transitioning into a strong midgame and still a mostly same endgame. After all, the difference between a 2 item Morg and a 3 item Morg is fairly negligible tbh. Her power spike is mostly tied to her enemy buying items that limit her usefulness. The longer they go without doing that the longer her midgame honeymoon lasts.
My opinion on TP is that while in it's pre evolve form make it go on a ~10 second cd after basing, but no cd if you spawn (i.e. no cd if you died and want to tp back to lane). Think this will enable tp to be used for defensive prevent losing lane situations early while preventing the offensive win-more use cases it currently has in lane
Phreak I really appreciate those videos! :D Its so cool that you're taking the time to make them and its always interesting just to see whats up for LoL in the future. Especially if you upload those even on weekends! x) Thank you.
These are all changes in the right direction. Good stuff. I think more could be done to bring League back in line with where it was at its peak in 2015, but these are all positive changes, so thank you.
Ref your point on Tank vs other class items/champ scaling. Has a support item system been explored to replace starting items, my first thoughts is a class based system similar to mythic item bonus stats tied into starting items can push effectiveness of itemizing towards the intended class/role for the champion. Eg upon item quest completion for whatever condition, opt into a specific *mythic* bonus towards a stat direction.
Im really interested about Swain, some ideas looks really nice :D All been said, i would say that if is possible, priorize midlane because is where the people who otp's him prefer him to be :3 P.D.: Didnt know you had a channel and you did such a nice videos, here is a new sub, and like to the video ^^
I love everything about all the discussions. I just want to target one, how "League gameplay is too fast nowadays". I think it primarily came from Champion's danger ranges were well defined. You stand X amount of distance from Annie, you aren't going to get hit unless she does Flash Tibbers. With the newer kits, there is a trend of champions having the ability to do something at a variety of ranges. Whether it comes from Mobility creep which I first saw real complaints about upon Yasuo release (over 10 years ago I know) or some other part of trading patterns. More champions have been better designed which lets them have spells they use when they are far away, and spells they use while close up. Perhaps I'm incorrect and when people say "too fast" they mean "too much damage" but I don't think that is the case. I think there is just more scenarios that allow them to take damage that they wouldn't have in earlier league. And people are also better at punishing that in higher elo than before. I think this is why ADCs have become so prevalent is that they are the best at handling each of these different ranges (especially with the required dash/escape the most popular ones have). Unfortunately the only solution in my mind so far to bring back certain classes that were designed to be good vs ADCs is to give Assassins two dashes and give everyone without a dash yet some sort of mobility (Annie Shield giving Speed, Amumu with 2 Qs were both required to make them be able to be playable "recently" as examples). I'm not a game designer, I just enjoy playing them. Edit: Another topic was about Items, imo I think it would be beneficial for tanks to have Armor/MR % items. Options like Rabadons % for AP or the Crit % being multiplicative to their pre-existing stats is nice for their late game builds. Steraks is so strong as a 3rd+ item because you've bought HP earlier and it's % is based off of the items you've previously bought. That's probably why Gargoyle stoneplate was too problematic for the game and why it was removed, but again that was a high shield, and I would want it to be based off of other stats. I understand this will cause issues like Rammus getting a % will make him strong, but I think similar to how giving AP junglers more items so you have to nerf them, the same logic would be able to handle Rammus imo.
In regards to making combat more readable. Can you please pass along that Colorblind Mode is severely lacking. As someone with Blue-Yellow colorblindness there's times I just can't react to what my opponent does. Morgana puts her W in the river? I'm unable to actually tell where it is. True Damage Ekko currently doesn't have the White Streak on his Trail? The purple Blends into the ground so it's a mini guessing game of where it is.
super duper agree on items and their identity always found it weird that the standard mage items are essentially the same stat sticks with different colored stickers on them sure, the effects still differentiate them quite well, but the fact they give the same stats always felt unusual
Thank you phreak. I started playong 1 year ago and have only ever played, and only want to play Swain. These sound fantastoc very much needed changes Thanks again!!
What im hearing is Items got a little strong but over a decade we learned how to speed run gold income to get items faster meaning we do more Damage earlier
Swain suggestion: grant more Demonflare casts from collecting Ravenous Flock stacks during Demonic Ascension. If we for example make it require 3/2/1 (Ultimate rank) Ravenous Flock stacks per Demonflare cast, a level 9 Swain landing a 3-man E gets a "good job, you get to cast big AOE damage + slow again". This plays up his fantasy of long combats and keeping his Demonic Ascension up, while rewarding good aim or landing E + W combos. Also worth exploring would be if it would give charges. So if level 6 Swain lands a 3-man E + W and gets 6 stacks: "good job, now you can cast Demonflare twice in rapid succession". Although this would require a re-cast cooldown to not make him farm stacks into SUDDENLY ONE-SHOT.
This just makes him stronger further in bigger (and more late game skewed) teamfights. Riot explicitly listed in the rework's goals that they want to make him better in 1v1s (your idea doesn't help there) and quick fights (doesn't help there either)
@@manosst4711 Multiple demonflares would still make sense tho if his R was on a duration. Lets say 5/6/7 seconds + an instant, on-cast demonflare (the idea mentioned by Phreak in the video).
For Swain, could be interesting to move more of his ult healing into the demonflare casts. So the over time healing is less but the flares have a heal based on # champs hit or something.
For teleport you could make nodes on the map maybe near baron / dragon and you can only tp to a node so it takes longer to get to Lane while keeping it's purpose of joining for objectives. Also reverting death timer increase unless the ghost effect on death gets you much closer to tower. This change was a buff to teleport. Ghost effect would be good on any back from the start of the game. I love when hexgates are up. There would be more action to watch in pro play matches too
I will say, one thing that made me really like Swain to begin with was when his ult doubled the health you got from your stacks. IMO it felt really good, kinda like a mini renekton ult and got me playing a ton of Swain both bot and support, the numbers of times I 1v2d because they committed onto me and then I got a big extra chunk of health+the higher demonflare damage did feel really good. Maybe something like that could come back?
39:50 As a Vayne player, I often bought Jak'sho because Vayne's W basically functions like an extra item anyway. If I build something like bork + rage blade + Terminus, then that's probably plenty of damage to kill 90% of champions in just a handful of auto attacks. Building more damage after that only doesn't meaningfully change the DPS by any noticable margin, so building a really versatile tank item like Jak'sho means that I'd have enough resistances to not have to worry about getting burst in a fight and can sustain through a long team fight late game. Nerfing item damage doesn't really matter that much because all that matters is if Vayne is the last one standing at the end of the fight and the W means that any enemy has a limited number of auto attacks to tank before they will die. I don't think that just nerfing damage items would fix the issue. The W itself would have to be changed so that building less damage would meaningfully reduce her damage to the point of uselessness.
Super interesting stuff. Loved the in-depth dive in the specifics of stats for items & their respective efficiencies. +1 to add more shop tabs for subclasses :) Would help for clarity! I had a question about what you said regarding movespeed: Would fighters like aatrox or darius not be pushed towards assassin lethality items more often for the movespeed and incredible dmg output those provide or do you think they would prefer building fighter items still and rely on summoner spell ghost or other sources of movement speed? Thanks for the time you put into these by the way. There's probably a ton of work going into these videos and we wholeheartedly appreciate it man!
Swain support is a weird case to me. Swain support only really exists, cause he had such a poor balance state for a long time. His output was way too bursty for a juggernaut of a mage that he is supposed to be, yet not bursty enough to win solo lanes like that. That really pushed him into support. Then Swain got overhauled and got much better in solo lanes. But people kept insisting on playing him support. I suspect that support mains solo lane a lot less than most other roles. Many secondary ADC, as thats the lane they know, or jungle - cause they dislike farming. So it kinda figures that many just keep playing him support, despite Swain being markedly worse as support - and really, he doesnt have a stellar support kit in the first place, seeing how well he scales with items. Every completed item on Swain mid feels like a HUGE deal, as he uses the unique passives and actives of some items EXTREMELY well. So I'd say that support Swain is kinda just.. lingering around from players who picked up support swain when it was his best role. And damn, he has been an outright terrible support for a long time. I also think other potential mage supps do most of what he does a lot better. What he does well is being a decently high dps CC-bot that's also tanky... which is just something the support position generally doesnt do well, hence why there are almost no bruisers in supp barring some fringe cheese lanes. Compounding this issue is that Swain, especially mid, really struggles with item builds since losing mythic liandries. Mythic liandries did everything Swain wanted from a first item: Some CDR, mana, a bit of AP and an amazing unique passive in liandries burn. Currently, Swain has the problem of having no stellar mana item to pick. RoA doesnt offer an amazing passive or haste. Ashes is too reliant on its AP scaling, unlike the rest of Swains kit. Malignance makes you feel even more useless than you already are without R. Liandries and Rylais offer neither mana nor haste, making them a bit difficult to use. You can make a workable build out of all this, but it feels really clunky to use. That said, there is a niche that isnt filled in the AP item system: A first item for AP Bruisers that require mana. RoA sucks at filling that niche, as it gives no haste and no bruiser-tailored passive.
OK Phreak, you got my attention here. I'm gonna skip the part about Swain and Aphelios since I'm not playing those champs nor the same class of champs so I don't have any opinion about it. What you said about bounties... I didn't think I will ever do that but I'm 100% agree, I'm more than thrilled you were able to admit that current system even tho it's simple doesn't feels right and system you're planning on implementing even tho will be harder to undestand will be more fair after tweaks. Don't have much more to add in this area. Item nerfs... this is where the fun begins. I know it was a little bit off topic but saying that game (champion skills and items) didn't change that much in 15 years is bold statement. I completly agree that players are generally better at the game but even if you didn't change Morgana's Q dmg in 15 years at all you changed and added many things into a game starting from items ending on champions and even if Morgana's Q doesn't root me for 4 sec at all ranks anymore only for 3 sec at max rank you did change everything around it. So comparing 1 ability from 1 champ from 15 years ago and now is just dishonest. On top of which item did get a lot of effects and stats. Take something like Liandry's for example. Very first Liandry's (after small change) was giving 60 AP 300 HP 15 MP and dealt 5% of current HP magic dmg. Now it gives 90AP 300 HP no MP but 2% magic dmg of MAX HP magic dmg. So it gives straight up more stats and arguably better dmging passive because 30AP and max hp dmg is definitely better than current hp dmg with 15 MP and 30 less AP (I will completly skip the mythic version of this item). Another example Blade of the Ruined King. First BotRK was dealing 5% of current hp physical dmg and heal for 50% of that dmg and active had 150 base physical dmg with 50% tAD scalling with stats of 40 ad and 10 life steal. Now BotRK deals 10% of current HP as physical with no active with stats of 50 ad, 25% atk speed and 10% life steal. So again, it has straight up more stats, better passive that's definitely offsets loss of active ability. And if you dig more about different items you'll find that 15 years ago, those items were worse by giving less. I intentionally brought those 2 exact items because they are widely considered as tank killer items and the last example I have is a tank item, Sunfire. So Sunfire Cape was dealing magic dmg scalling with LVL giving you 60 armor and 425 HP. Now this item gives you 50 armor, 350 hp and 10 ability haste so arguably better stats (10 armor and 75 HP for 10 AH) and passive that deals dmg scalling with MAX HP (not lvl anymore) which in long combat can be increased up to 60%. Plus it has an magic resist variant. In conclusion, over the years you were pouring a lot of power into items, bit by bit and now if you compare the same items with the items from 15 years ago you'll see that the changes are substantial. Now into a tank specific items. It's stupid that tanks can have high base dmg on their abilities and items that scales with their tankiness. Item like Thornmail is situational, it shouldn't be an item that's worth buying every time and it's completly fine as it is. Hollow Radiance is situational variant to what Sunfire is. I don't think anyone who knows how to play this game have a problem with building Thornmail on Vi or Jarvan or Xin or Wukong, I know I don't and I find plenty of success with those items in situations where those items are needed. But it's actually funny you mentioned Randuin's Omen you know, especially that you nerfed Randuin's in the exact same time you were buffing ADC items. Randuins was meh item because Frozen Heart was cheeper and it was not really worth to buy Randuin's for the critical strike dmg reduction if there wasn't as many crit users in the game. And the only time the old version of Randuin would be worth it's cost was after you buffed adc but in the same time you took away "Rock Solid" passive from it because you had to know this item would be the most perfect thing to counter ADC meta since all Tristanas, Lucians, Caitlyns are crit users and they became extremely popular. 1 thing about move speed. I disagree with putting so much move speed on all the adc and melee fighters. Some of it, sure, but making Cait able to out run me while kiting when I play Xin it's kinda unfair, it's different story for Vi who has dash more often. What I mean is adding generic move speed on items so every champ from that class regardless if they have any mobility tools or not can have access to it is not fair. Varus doesn't have any dashes so if I jump on him with Xin, he needs to use R in order to escape where Caitlyn in same situation use E and will kite me. Caitlyn E has lower CD and is less significant than Varus R. Same goes with move speed for melee fighters, Vi that has access to her dash more often than Xin shouldn't have same access to move speed because she is already more mobile. Generally for nerfing items 100% yes. Bring it in. Making new items tailored for class specific, I don't want to say no but it depends how strong or game changing those items will be because more items means harder time balancing all of it. And also I completly agree on this Annie bursting Ashe but not bursting brusier Viego statement. I hope it will actually become the reality and it's 2nd time I completly 100% agree with what you're saying. But yeah, in general you did it, you finally positively surprised me and I'm actually eager to see how it all will turns out.
Hi Phreak, I appreciate the hard work that you do for the game. I'm a big fan of the project and I can't wait for the changes it is going to provide. As a player who plays actively since season 3, and in every elo up to GM as well as semi-pro, I think minions require a rework. What is macro? - I believe a good macro was a skill long time ago, used only by those, who put enough thoughts into the game. It pointed out the difference between a serious player, and the one who played with friends for fun. Sadly, nowadays good macro is a requirement to have any fun in the game (no matter if its normal or ranked). -There is milions of guides on the internet how to do it, and everyone (and their mothers) do it now. People in GM do that, people in gold do that, and in my opinion - this is the root of what is killing the game constantly. It makes people tilt, makes people blame teammates, causes most of the toxicity in game. (I don't think toxicity is the way to release stress in game, yet I think it's the outcome of game being played around frozen waves and constantly losing gold/exp, while being exposed to the gank/roam) We should ask ourselves, what is a bad lane-state about? What a frozen wave should be? - In my opinion, temporary exposure to the gank/roam. In reality freeze is way too easy to achieve and lasts for way too long. Most of the time, freeze doesn't allow you to farm/interact with the game for few waves, which is absurd. Supports have to roam, Junglers take the blame for not helping laners with waves, ADCs are hard to balance, Meta is really boring, game becomes extremely toxic. You could be the best in the game at certain character, you could have insane micro, but if you don't get help with wave, you are not going to play the game. (Some people might think I don't understand Strong/Weak side concept. Of course I do, yet I don't think being weaksided should limit you from being able to play the game) How would I fix it? -In my opinion, minion damage %amp depending on the distance to the tower. The closer minions are to your tower - the more dmg they deal. Frozen waves don't make you lose so many minions, only expose you to the temporary gank/roam window. Is it a perfect solution? - Not at all. Does it require more thoughts from larger group of people? - Definitely. Will the change like this make some people mad? - For sure. Is there a need for a change? - Everyone can answer for themselves. I think yes. Last hitting would be awful, macro knowledge would matter less and micro more. For last few years, Top, Mid and ADC are roles who depend on jungle and support to be good, to be able to play the game. It's not fun, frustrating, and boring. Not only for the top mid and adcs but also for junglers, supports and for sure for a balance team as well. I love this game too much to just move on from it, like many other proplayers/high elo players. If you read this message, I'm very thankful for it, and wish you good luck with future of league of legends. Respectfully.
I feel like this is written from the ADC point of view, as a top main myself i must say it's even worse here. There are matchups where past lvl3 you are not allowed to come even remotely close to the wave if you are behind even in the slightest. It might not be this big of a problem in higher elo's but in my relatively low one (plat/emerald) it's extremely difficult to get your jungler to help you with breaking the freeze which renders the game more or less unplayable untill the later stages of the game more concentrated on teamfights. Furthermore "bad matchup" like that leads you to gold and exp deficit which further marks you as a "bad player" despite playing the matchup mostly correctly(let's say 0/0/0 stats in a "losing" setup).
the ability to freeze three waves under tower after a good fight is half the reason TP is so powerful in a top lane environment. I really think that player pressure on the minion wave is something you can target (even just by increasing XP range) to lower the punishment.
i feel like a really fun shape for aphelios could be leaning more into the spellcaster bit, where he’s building essence reaver and buying ability haste and going through like 2-3 new weapons in a fight, instead of stacking crit and trying to one shot with a good gun combo and then just cycling through the rest of them until you can get back to the same combo.
For bounties I think just making it so the bounty is more team spread would solve a lot of problems. That or limiting the max bounty each kill can give more but allow the max bounty you can stack to be more, maybe around 600 (double a kill) and have it just roll over. This means one mistake doesn't screw things so much but consistent bad play is a more guaranteed comeback for the other team. The spread bounty would mean the team that worked together to take down the fed person (this could be that it still gives to an individual if no one assisted or is in the area, or it gives to team regardless) is more likely to be able to do it the next time. You could also spread kill bounties onto towers in that you conquer micro play or champ advantage with good macro, this stops snowball champs from just being even better with the bounty system since those are usually harder to kill while certain champs like some mages, adcs and low mobility bruiers are easy to kill even with a lot of kills.
Since the overal dmg will be lower and snowballing will be stopped a bit more with the bounty system when your changes go trough, does that also mean the games will be longer? And I am just wondering do you guys in the soloque balance team want longer games, shorter games or are you guys satisfied with the current game lenght? I as a adc main that hovers between plat and emerald notice that alot of the time I dont get to reach that lategame I am playing for (ofcourse it's also a skill issue) Just wondering what your vision is and what to expect for the future. Great content btw amazing how you explain everything and I love the transparancy!
I think they said after the durability update game times were slightly longer, which was a goal back then. So this item update should also push games a little longer, less abruptly snowballed, which is their main goal
I know these changes aren't likely to come close to this, but for years, if I could have a single League wish, it would be having Swain's old kit back. I miss it so much.
I love being able to learn from these videos and as i study game design, especially when it comes to creating solutions and predicting effects of incoming changes. One question I do have is, if we are toning down the power of items, that also weakens the power of gold right? I think the effects would be positive for solo queue but in pro play do you think that would encourage pros to lane swap even more since lane swaps seem to focus on experience more than gold?
Why would it not be good to let players see their net gold values and their gold bounty on death when negative to solve the understandability issue that the new system would have.
@@Phreak Mildly related, wouldn't a total gold per team be useful to note the state of the game? I find myself looking at the stat in pro-play to know who is possibly "winning", as currently is only kills/deaths that gives me a sense of the game state.
I wish Phreak, when talking about resistances and HP on items, went into counter-counterplay with things like "Oh, I'm Syndra, and Sion bought Randuins and Thornmails... I can blow him up" if they're gaining more armor in exchange for HP, it makes counter balance damage sources better, and it also makes the niche mixed damage champions (Kai'sa, Kayle, Teemo, Akshan) a little better if the enemy has Randuin + Warmogs, you can just spec a little bit more into the magic side of your kit instead. Also, I would LOVE more mixed stat (AP+AD) items, I feel like hybridized damage sources that get countered by buying HP is another lever you can pull for the RPS of atk/def balancing.
The understandability hurdle can be easily solved: Show - in scoreboard - how much each champ has earned in gold and how much they gave away through deaths.
I always love how methodical and logical your videos are, Phreak. I do have a single rebuttal/counterpoint to one of your talking points, though. While champions from 2010 (Like Morgana, Anivia, Annie, as you mentioned specifically) haven't meaningfully changed, and thus they couldn't add to the damage and speed of fights in League today, Riot -have- added literally over a hundred champions since then. Those new champions in and of themselves have increased the power creep of the game just by sheer mechanics and complexity. For example, while their numbers could be similar, a lethal combo from Morgana is going to feel drastically different than a lethal combo from, say, Samira. The more complex a champion is, generally speaking, the more power they're going to have, if only because that complexity naturally gives them access to more tools and versatility. Which is to say, some of the contributing factors to League 'feeling faster and more lethal' are more abstract than just base numbers and their increase/decrease.
As someone that favors playing Swain in a csing role, the adjustment to his Q that made it so it hit all units regardless of targets being blocked had a negative impact on the satisfaction of using the ability in my opinion. While it is now a better and more consistent ability, it doesn’t feel as good to use. It felt appropriately powerful when it functioned similarly to Graves’ autos and allowed some outplay potential around it which felt like a fun skill check.
We saw it in a pro match the other day one player 1/0/0 the other 0/0/0 the same gold one player had a bounty for 200 that makes no sense. Imagine then if the fed adc gets that gold.
I feel like another thing that added to the past feeling of slowness was just players by in large not being as optimal in their gameplay (beyond just farming). Macro, jungler coordination, tower diving, wave management, proxying--all are in a far more solved state, leading to an increased feeling of oppression game by game regardless of what champion you're laning against.
29:20 I think a simple start for that would be to put gold value for both teams like you see in pro matches on the scoreboard. Players should be able to somewhat intuit this from items but they rarely do, especially at lower levels or with newer players. Edit: That negative bounty thing is a good option as well for getting players to understand.
TP/Early laning: this is a problem that was caused by a change in season 6, they made minions move faster. which means minions die faster and hit turret faster, they also made minions do more damage to turrets in later seasons, how to make this less of an issue 1) revert season 6 minion speed changes 2) remove turret plates 3) redesign top lane , bush area, river area, etc, so that its less punishing and less gankable. this is entirely a top lane issue.
I really like the Swain W. It's super fun sniping and assisting your team with the massive slow it applies across the map. I feel like it works well with the kit too since you're e combos into it as well. Swain honestly just needs his E to be a lil faster and he should be good imo. Honestly I wonder how old the E consistency problem is from cause I climbed to diamond 2 as swain in 2020 took a break for a couple years and now E just feels off.
love all this. the stat goals are on point with how i view how the game should. if you got burst, you should be able to reliably kill someone, but with longer cooldowns and less rotations it means if the squishy outplays you, then they can retaliate and kill you since there will be a greater window to punish you for failing. And likewise, you won't have a champ who can fail that burst, who will just use their rotation again in 3 or 4 seconds and then kill you. It feels so bad when that happens now. Love all the insight. Sounds like you really want the game to be fun, looking forward to the next year
I definitely agree that kits need to be stronger than items, this would prevent item poaching as it becomes problematic really quickly. Recent examples is Warmogs, meant for top lane tanky splitpushers, poached by supports, nerfed to oblivion. Prowler's claw renekton. Radiant virtue Varus, junglers, supports. Sunfire/Jaksho diana, mordekaiser, etc. I'm sure there's more recent mini metas like that but I can't think of anymore. Base stats being more distinct for classes might also help. One idea is also locking items to classes, but that gets rid of off meta builds and diversity in the game.
I really like the idea of bounty system changes. The thing is, though, it sounds like - it is more profitable to constantly fight as a team because if the enemy team has a lead, the best way to make team gold equal might be to fight 5v2/3/4. This, I guess will have huge consequences on meta: split push champions, perma farm on ADCs/farming midlaners/junglers, and shifts in support champion roster to solve the meta. At least in D+. This is not a bad thing per se, just a thing to consider.
In the end, the nerf of all items is another durability patch, and it reduces one-man carry, so high-level users lose interest in the game and leave the roll
In no way does everyone getting tankier reduce carry potential… you playing the carry are also tankier and harder to shut down, everyone less fed than you has less damage to take you down.
Random thought about making lanes less punishing: 4 Turret Plates? Make the first plate half the turrets HP, then 3 more turret plates for the last half.
Swain W usage is the main reason i play swain. I love the balance between a pick that can be a battlemage but at the same time influence the game from range in interesting ways. Walking down from mid and helping a gank bot with W makes a lot of a difference. Late game using W in a sidelane to set up a pushing lane. Cathing cannonminnons in my or other lanes. These things makes me feel like im awarded for my awearnes and for a low Emerald player thats very impactfull for me.
Awesome update! Especially looking forward to the Swain changes, my favorite bird man doesn't get enough love and I'm excited to see him get some much-deserved QOL. In terms of questions - any thoughts on an examination of Kled as a character? He seems to have been in a bit of a rough spot lately (based on his item build being mostly focused around max damage snowballing rather than the health stacking he used to be known for) and he seems to oscillate between frustrating and invisible on a dime. I know he's a higher skill champ to get effectiveness out of it, but combining the weird build path with some pretty significant bugginess on his R he's all but vanished outside of a few one tricks. Would love to hear your thoughts though, as all my knowledge is obviously anecdotal.
Dear Mr. Phreak, I'm starting to have higher hopes for you, and the rest of Riot. Pass late, my games have been getting less grief; I guess cause the changes you and Riot have plan are getting them spooked. But besides all that, I been wondering about a champion called Sivir. She was on my first champ I ever got a Penta Kill on. I hope someday to see her in a better state. Her attack range for example, are there any plans to increase it sometime soon. I mean with a kit like hers; having such a buff would be fair, yes? I hope the idea wouldn't be some whatever burger, wanna see this girl shine please... Thank you for your hard work either way..
I think in regards to itemization and damage in League, something to look into may be both the prices of items and the amount of gold in the game now. It's just a gut feeling and nothing concrete, but from my memory, item costs used to be way higher (Trinity was 3733, Deathcap was 3800, etc.), and it would not surprise me to see that gold has simply been made easier to get between making cannons give a larger portion of gold, and the various different ways they've made it easier to get gold off of turrets (turret plating, rift herald, grubs). It wouldn't shock me to see if that's a big source of perceived power dynamics being different in modern LoL compared to, say, pre Runes Reforged.
I wonder if his W would be really cool if you could recast it to detonate it early, but it’s weak as hell. Then the upside is that you can wait for it to “charge” for up to four seconds, where it’ll do a lot more damage (2x live). Basically think about it as a ranged nunu ult minus the slow.
Make league classic it will sell a ton. Nostalgia is a powerful drug. I know atleast 20 people IRL that would easily pay 50+ bucks to play season 3-4 league again.
On the topic of bounties. Adding a gold value to the killfeed might help players better understand how much gold they are giving away. DOTA currently has a system where the killfeed mentions something along the lines of X killed Y for 400 gold + 300 gold to Z champions (where the +300 gold to Z would be the total assist gold given out). It might be a bit busy but I feel that it paints a clearer picture than just mentioning streak gold getting claimed
1:07:00 topic: TP and Lane punishing: A suggestion; Instead of having the extra movement speed you get from fountain be after 14 minutes make the first 14 minutes of the game have that extra speed to get back to lane quicker(this could also be extended to the rest of the game the important idea here is the player gets a speed boost after respawning). This encourages the player to get back into the game and try to defeat their opponent just like in a base defense rather than feeling punished and mentally defeated by forcing them to walk back slowly or use TP. This could also be justified as a change of game pacing from a game design standpoint. When I started playing back in October/September last year I can very "fondly" remember the times I was absolutely rubber stomped by my opponent and forced to do the walk of shame back to lane, it felt obnoxious and downright horrible from a phycological standpoint. With my suggestion, I am hoping that it would bring a new feeling to resets encouraging players to take them more as they will be able to get back to lane faster, and the early game will feel less slow if you get what I mean? Also it would just make sense to a new player. Although I am not naïve I believe I know the design principle that led to the creation of the 14 minute speed boost. And this choice I think makes the game much less fun in the long run by not giving the speed boost before 14 minutes. I know plenty of people would probably take issue with this idea "what that's bullshit, they can't be back in lane already without tp!". think about this from an Asymmetric point of view; you too also have access to this speed boost by recalling, not just your opponent. It would be another tool at your disposal, the game should encourage you to use it. Game design is hard, and I am short-sighted so there are probably issues that I cannot see. but I can't see what the harm would be in testing it in PBE to see what testers think and feel about it, that's what a testing branch is for right?
Phreak as much as I hated some changes including the major shift to Seraphine(even if I completely understand why it was done) these have been some of the best informational videos and show that Riot is actively understanding and working on problems whereas before all we were able to do was assume they were doing so.
Please make the worlds meta like this: aphelios, crit kaisa (fuck the onhit/hybrid builds), tristana (adc), xayah, zeri, renekton, gangplank, camille, qiyana, sylas, viego, graves, nidalee, ryze, ahri, taliyah, zoe, cassiopeia and worlds will be extremely hype and fun to watch. I really miss champs like zoe, cassiopeia, crit kaisa, tristana(adc), qiyana, graves in proplay. Would be so hype to watch worlds if you actually made worlds meta like this.
TP fix idea: Upon respawning, your TP is on cooldown for 15s. This makes deaths (especially early solo deaths) in lane meaningful while still allowing most of the lategame strategic sidelaning splitpsh plays
You completely missed the issue. It's SUPPOSED to be good from behind to stop a single early death converting into "A death, a plate and 2 waves". The issue is it's too good when you're ahead for shoving an advantage; eg- I shove you to turret knowing you can't fight back, spend all my mana eating the waves and hitting your turret, then leave, TP back with full mana and a component, eat a plate and reset. I denied you CS, got an item/gold lead and the lane has reset to you even further behind and I have 80% of my mana so you can't even punish me.
You getting your position might be the best thing to ever happen to league's balance and future. I'm glad I can say someone that cares more about the game than me (not easy to do) is in charge of its balance and direction. There are some hits and some misses but its clear you are in tune with the soul of the game and are doing your best to make it as beautiful of a soul as you can. Definitely glazing a little bit here but you've earned it with this video (the work you've done that you're talking about in it) and all the work you've done since you got your position. I'm not sure you read your youtube comments, I know you're off social media for very obvious reasons, but I hope you see this one. From one man to another, good job dude, i've seen from the outside how much you are pouring your soul into the game and I respect and love you for it. I can't imagine the energy and effort and stress that come with what you are doing, but I hope you stick around in your position for the rest of the game's life because it's clear that you want to make the best version of league. ITS FUCKING PHREAK SEASON BABY
To me TP question is very simple, if minions were slower in the early game, lanes would be less punishing and you would not lose a lot by default. There should be space to punish in lane, so stacking waves and killing your opponent should be rewarding to some extent, by either enemy losing those minions or having to expend early TP. But just dying in an even lane state currently costs too much without TP. Another thing that has a side effect are early game power spikes based off items - a lot of matchups will become unplayable because one kill lead turned into early item purchase - if item components were to be weaker, this would be significantly less of an issue. Honestly main issue here is that TP is the counter-snowball summoner, so making it not that could just lead to snowballing getting out of control, there is getting advantages and then there is "lane over, died once" and game feels currently being more of the latter. It is possible that fixing the bounty system could address that however making the entire issue a bit of a moot item...
i would like to see more variants of niche stuff like Serpent's fang, i think its a cool concept and can really turn a game around but sadly there is only lethality variant
Timestamps:
0:50 - Aphelios
3:14 - Swain
16:25 - Bounties
31:32 - Item Nerfs
1:01:37 - Griefing Detection
1:03:22 - TP / Early Laning
1:07:07 - Conclusion
Why u keep trying to remove skill expression from the game ? Why is losing lane not possible for u, u keep trying to think of something to cater to low elo and bad laning. Why? The whole point of laning is to do it well with skill expression not to cater to people who sprint perma like think about what u re doing u are thinking about all this stuff just to not let people lose lane, tp, homeguards its pathethic @Phreak
Not gonna lie, I fucking love you Phreak. This is one of my favourite videos that you've created so far. Your internal perspective and explanations of everything are what I live for these days, and I cannot wait for your REAL stat efficiency sheets. I use the wiki measures loosely, but anyone that's decent at the game knows to use them with a grain of salt. Having no accurate measures to refer to is insanely frustrating one you realise it. ALSO, with these concepts of visibility and understandability for players, PLEASE allow all items in the game to show their tooltip stats such as BC = Health Carved, Abyssal = Health Unmade etc.
Having some items have unique effects, but still be very unclear on how to actually objectively view and measure the effectivity of those effects/passives can be completely unintuitive when trying to theory craft and test items. It's been a long time, and every item should at minimum have their main effect displayed in an actual number OR if you guys are feeling generous, then add every possible number that an item can display (to a reasonable extend, aka 3 stats like Thornmail does) to the bonus tooltip information below an item when observed in your inventory. Of course, this can always be turned on and off with "extended tooltip" option, so it's not an issue for players who prefer less clutter and don't care.
On top of everything you've talked about, which I find an incredibly strong and amazing direction to move the game, my most wanted thing is just the ability to understand and view every piece of information about the game (IF WE WANT TO). Things like item stats and post game stat analysis showing much more visibility than they currently do would be near the top of my list.
I agree it makes theory crafting so much more fun and you knowledge of the game and its nuances can increase and i always love more available stats.
I do believe that they remove some of the stats on items for example so that the game can be more easily balanceable for the devs and make the game more about what you think is fun vs about what is actually best in slot.
However i think that is not an excuse to remove these stats, its their job to balance and they shouldn't hide things that ideally should be available to the players just because its harder to balance.
Hello Phreak fellow gamer here
Oh phreak. Teasing me with another video within the same patch. You shouldn’t have.
This is teasing for you? I came immediately.
He's called phreak for a reason
내구도 패치나 롤백해라
what an absurdly autistic and gay thing to say.
@@아아아-g9g1b Yeah hopefully they will revert the durability patch, there is a lot of talk about it lately so they might make people more squishy in the early game atleast.
28:00 I've always found the bounty system flawed for this reason. The point of the bounty system is to give someone a change to "get back" into the game if they manage to outplay and kill a fed opponent. However funneling a bounty into an already fed champion just throws that balance out the window.
If my syndra mid is 10/0 then dies to a 10/0 Vayne now there's a fed vayne that just got an extra 1000 gold. Surely that's not the intended mechanic but it happens all too often.
Sounds like both Vayne and Syndra in this case had an equal chance of killing each other. It goes both ways
@@username-ql8ox Yes, but if the goal of the system is to get losing players back in the game, the champions who are ahead getting it doesn't hit the goal there, regardless of if the current system is fair or not
@@Necro7155correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the current bounty system factor in your team's gold?
So that means if both Syndra and Vayne have a 1000 gold bounty, their teams current disposition is roughly similar?
if your syndra mid is 10/0 and dies to a VAYNE of all champs she deserves to lose that game instantly.
I’m totally agree on this. The Syndra should NOT have bounty if her team goes behind, because the game encourages the most powerful ally to not interact with the enemy and not being proactive. That’s simply stupid because you are restricting your best member of the team to create an advantage for the team to get money, down to do nothing and safe farm while waiting for a very safe kill without compromising.
The difference between old items/champions and new iterations of items/champions isn't in the damage numbers, it's in the cooldown. To use your own example, Morgana Q was a 15 second cooldown 10 years ago. It is now a 10 second cooldown. This is a 33% decrease in cooldown, which is massive. Damage numbers may not changed much, but so few champions have actual cooldowns any more so the window for punishing their mistakes also has considerably shrunk. This on top of the fact that you can cast your full combo 50% more often
I feel like the powercreep talk about how no large changes in combat in last 15 years largely ignores the changes made to Ability haste (CDR back then). The hard limit of 40% got changed and abilities have gotten much more spammable than they used to be. This affects the damage done in fights and in game significantly more than small damage changes on abilities or advantages gained from better farming.
When talking about the powercreep on Morgana Q specifically what about all the dashes, or high amounts of burst speed, or CC immunities that have been added to the game in the last 5 years. It's become increasingly hard to use old kits where a lot of your power is tied up into one ability that gets weaker with every new champion release.
That’s just not true. you need 100 haste to get 50% cdr
I know you get a lot of flame for taking the role of the "face" of the balance team, but I really appreciate your transparency, and I think explaining why certain changes are being made is a really nice thing to see.
45:30, yes more shop tabs for which role in the team you fulfill is a good idea. Makes it more clear and understandable.
I feel like the combination of:
*1. Showing both team total gold gained on the upper HUD next to the epic monster timers,* and
*2. Showing gold given to the enemy when you die as like a big negative brown/reddish colored number in the same way that shutdown gold gained is shown as a big gold positive number,*
immediately solves the bounty clarity issues. At the very least, i think these 2 additions would benefit clarity of the back and forth of gold income and general team disparity greatly.
Okay, so I'm a Swain main. I think the changes are pretty nice, but you didn't really say anything about the passive or the supposed "R healing scales on max HP" that we got teased about before. Could you elaborate more on that? And will Swain consider RoA as one of his many builds? How will his durability be changed after the rework?
they are ruining him and turning him in to a support like every midlane champion
@@ashleyturner2627WHAT NO
@mariuszek1118 they are trying to balance him as a low damage utility champ as a support, which doesn't make him a good solo lane champion. It's impossible to have a strong solo lane champion and a strong support champion, look at Karma
@@ashleyturner2627 did u... watch the video?
he literally was saying about removing power from W to put into E and R, and also making Q better in ranged matchups?
W is his support spell and removing power from it makes him more of a support?
@kadalix he also said about making him work as a supp adding utility to his kit. You can't have a utility high damage support it's impossible
On bounty understandability: Add a gold meter to the scoreboard. Most League plugins add this anyway. It could be a numerical value or just an abstract "shiny bar" that shows a comparison of gold value. It could break down per champion, or just display a little shiny symbol next to their name to denote their approximate gold value compared to other players.
no reason to not have the # if we're going for understandability imo
I miss the old swain :( was my favourite champ, now I play him about once a year.
Can't say enough how much this videos are appreciated for us. I'm a bit of a nerd for items and champion details (xD) and having this insights is really really nice. Also the direction you talked about items/classes and other things going forward sounds super exciting. Thanks and keep it up Phreak/team :]
Old (first iteration) swain main here. While I doubt they will ever undo the major rework and go back to his old man with a bird callled Beatrice roots, here’s some ideas for how to fix him if they don’t want to go that hard.
The ult heal feels really weak for what it should be for, dot and tanking though heal. Even with conqueror it feels worthless. Old swain ult in the middle of the enemy team during hour glass use to be a near full heal if done right. Now you’re lucky if it’s 25% when you build completely for it. This is a huge problem, and why I think he feels weak. Rework how his ult is used to let him be a tanking mage. While I’d love if they go back to the 3 second cd toggle ult to let him sustain in lane and mid game, I doubt this will be considered. I think a favorable buff is to increase the number of birds he can drain with from just 3, and tweak some numbers there for dmg. Buff the ult heal off minions would help a lot for laning mid game issues. Isn’t it something like a 90% heal reduction off minions? With more birds in a team fight he can heal off more champions. The point is not for tons of upfront damage but rather for him to outlive the opponents if not focused, draining enemies for himself while doing it. There’s mention of increasing the number of demon flares, instead remove the out of place aoe burst damage from the ult completely. Instead of demon flare burst damage, increase the dot damage from the bird drain. He’s not a burst mage, he’s a dot damage over time mage…. Don’t make him something he’s not. Instead perhaps keep demon flare casts a slow you can recast every couple seconds. This might sound busted, but an idea is if you recast the ult, you get a small heal boost. Perhaps where every time you hit r it heals you for either % HP based on champs hit like Darius q. Or maybe heals based off the ravenous flock stacks of your passive. Another ult idea is if you hit someone with demon flare slow you proc your passive for every nearby enemy. This would give the heal, and help build stacks. Right now it feels hard to get stacks to scale up your health like other tanks. Maybe that’s a way to fix that? Overall, ult just feels wrong. He should be a dot mage, and it feels like he’s too reliant on that minuscule burst. Remove burst, increase dot and heal to sustain your ability to maintain the dot…
Completely secondary of this is the old damage increase boost his old e use to have. Again I doubt they undo the rework and bring back his old kit. But perhaps you add this feature back into first champion hit by e? Adding to champions hit by w feels like it would be too strong. But if you removed demon flare’s burst damage, maybe that could work and help scale his ult damage late game with maxing w?
I don’t agree with everything in this video, but I think it has a lot of good points.
ua-cam.com/video/ALtlk2MhmUQ/v-deo.htmlsi=P3il2D5nq2cHbnzj
Fantasy level hopes would be that they undo the major re-work. His abilities, lore and Beatrice are missed. He use to be a damage over time anti tank mage, that tanked himself. The only champ with a 3 second ult cooldown that required proper mana management. True aoe dot player with good zoning. Aoe snare. And for players with slow hands, wasn’t so reliant on a very hard to hit skill shot for his control features. He use to be a champ you had to think about how to play and manage timing, the strategy side.
Otherwise swains artwork and lore... They took an old man with a limp who was a badass with a bird, and made him into middle aged man that stole fiddlesticks arm feels empty… Example pirate swain skin use to be a crusty 80 year old sea dog, with a bad ass eye patch and a peg-leg. Now he’s the complete opposite of that. Let’s bring him and Beatrice back finally, with their own power in the top and midland. Making people fear his zoning, dot, and team fight potential.
It's great to hear that phreaks thoughts on champ durability and the amount of tankiness the durable classes should have is absolutely spot on.
Being a top/jungle main, I mainly play durable champs. But man, it oftentimes feels like buying durability doesnt do anything and way too many champs need to go really heavy on damage - if you cant really survive anyway, might as well go full damage, eh?
I think that, by having durability matter the way phreak explained, a lot of things just fall into place.
ADCs no longer need to compete with assassin and burst mages in terms of damage output: Their role is to dps the durable targets burst champions struggle to get through.
Weve seen what happens when ADCs get buffed to feel better~ they start pseudo bursting stuff, leaving actual burst champs out of a job. And if ADC gets toned down again, their dps isnt valuable enough, as everything dies so quickly anyway.
Bruisers in general struggle atm as they cannot get tanky enough while keeping their damage up~ and most bruiser kits are designed with mechanics that require survivability to function.
Even assassin suffer from the amount of damage in the game. Aside from the burst competition being too heavy with many ranged champs trying to take the jobs of assassins, assassins also need to hit their really quick, really save, instant in&out combos all the time, or else they just die instantly. And assassins being balanced around those sort of combos tends to make them unfair. High target access, low counterplay combos with, supposedly, lower damage are not what your "main" combos should be like.
About Swain, I think only getting the stack when recasting E - and pulling the enemy closer to you - can be very punishing against melee. Perhaps changing it so you don't have to pull them to get the stack would be a fine tweak as well.
I like Swain W, sure it's not the best ability, but the whole raven's scouting for him thing is dope. But Swain is just really cool in general.
I love how we're getting these topic videos. Glad you've made the choice to cut out the rundowns so you have time to do these!
Just a thought about the communication of bounties. If they were to put how much players were worth below 300 gold it would instantly become spam ping central. I would make it only ping able by enemies if at all
Phreak, you've been talking about item/stat efficiency calculations for years. I'm happy it's paying off and you're able to publish your numbers in an official riot way (even if they're still orientative).
I know there are no plans to change Aphelios, but I wanted to voice that I’m very happy there are not plans to change him. I love the way the champ feels now; there’s so much depth between each gun combo and how spell rotations are affected by gun ordering - very rewarding in his current state.
It's really hard to carry man, rn as a caster it's better for proplay so it's gonna be kept weaker as always
I love aphelios but I wanted the changes I want season 11 auto attack aphelios back. a sadge day for me D:
Pretty solid approach on Swain, curious to see how the rest of the basic abilities (& passive) will be shaped
Thanks for these insights. Your points make alot of sense and will lead the game in the right direction.
Morgana Q damage hasn’t changed, but because of that she moved from mid lane (a damage focused role) to support (where her cc and black shield is more useful), I think that’s a strong sign that overall damage has gone way overboard if someone’s damage that DIDNT get buffed had to move to a utility role.
I think part of that could very well be due to the community itself getting better at dodging the Q/hiding behind waves/playing while it's on CD.
Also, isn't she really quite bad in support right now? Her overall winrate is being hard-carried by jungle right now, which makes a lot of use of her Q damage.
@@TheTimtam112 her support is kept purposefully bad because her black shield is extremely annoying to deal with. Even when she sucks she’s one of the most banned champions
she didnt' move to support because she lacked damage, she moved to support because she doesn't rely on gold to be useful, the difference between a mid morgana and a support Morgana isn't much. Both will do exactly the same thing in teamfights. It has nothing to do with damage creep. Also, yes, people are just much better about using minions and dodging skill shots in general these days.
Jungle Morgana is powerful because it combines the roaming potential of support with the gold of mid, meaning she makes no sacrifices and gets to exploit the power her kit has early game to its fullest, transitioning into a strong midgame and still a mostly same endgame. After all, the difference between a 2 item Morg and a 3 item Morg is fairly negligible tbh. Her power spike is mostly tied to her enemy buying items that limit her usefulness. The longer they go without doing that the longer her midgame honeymoon lasts.
My opinion on TP is that while in it's pre evolve form make it go on a ~10 second cd after basing, but no cd if you spawn (i.e. no cd if you died and want to tp back to lane). Think this will enable tp to be used for defensive prevent losing lane situations early while preventing the offensive win-more use cases it currently has in lane
Phreak I really appreciate those videos! :D Its so cool that you're taking the time to make them and its always interesting just to see whats up for LoL in the future. Especially if you upload those even on weekends! x) Thank you.
These are all changes in the right direction. Good stuff.
I think more could be done to bring League back in line with where it was at its peak in 2015, but these are all positive changes, so thank you.
Ref your point on Tank vs other class items/champ scaling.
Has a support item system been explored to replace starting items, my first thoughts is a class based system similar to mythic item bonus stats tied into starting items can push effectiveness of itemizing towards the intended class/role for the champion.
Eg upon item quest completion for whatever condition, opt into a specific *mythic* bonus towards a stat direction.
Great work man! Really love the direction your taking things. And love the transparency with the decision making.
Im really interested about Swain, some ideas looks really nice :D
All been said, i would say that if is possible, priorize midlane because is where the people who otp's him prefer him to be :3
P.D.: Didnt know you had a channel and you did such a nice videos, here is a new sub, and like to the video ^^
8:55 "based on.... cosmic rays"
lmaoooooo that actually cracked me up
I love everything about all the discussions. I just want to target one, how "League gameplay is too fast nowadays". I think it primarily came from Champion's danger ranges were well defined. You stand X amount of distance from Annie, you aren't going to get hit unless she does Flash Tibbers. With the newer kits, there is a trend of champions having the ability to do something at a variety of ranges. Whether it comes from Mobility creep which I first saw real complaints about upon Yasuo release (over 10 years ago I know) or some other part of trading patterns. More champions have been better designed which lets them have spells they use when they are far away, and spells they use while close up.
Perhaps I'm incorrect and when people say "too fast" they mean "too much damage" but I don't think that is the case. I think there is just more scenarios that allow them to take damage that they wouldn't have in earlier league. And people are also better at punishing that in higher elo than before.
I think this is why ADCs have become so prevalent is that they are the best at handling each of these different ranges (especially with the required dash/escape the most popular ones have). Unfortunately the only solution in my mind so far to bring back certain classes that were designed to be good vs ADCs is to give Assassins two dashes and give everyone without a dash yet some sort of mobility (Annie Shield giving Speed, Amumu with 2 Qs were both required to make them be able to be playable "recently" as examples).
I'm not a game designer, I just enjoy playing them.
Edit: Another topic was about Items, imo I think it would be beneficial for tanks to have Armor/MR % items. Options like Rabadons % for AP or the Crit % being multiplicative to their pre-existing stats is nice for their late game builds. Steraks is so strong as a 3rd+ item because you've bought HP earlier and it's % is based off of the items you've previously bought. That's probably why Gargoyle stoneplate was too problematic for the game and why it was removed, but again that was a high shield, and I would want it to be based off of other stats. I understand this will cause issues like Rammus getting a % will make him strong, but I think similar to how giving AP junglers more items so you have to nerf them, the same logic would be able to handle Rammus imo.
In regards to making combat more readable. Can you please pass along that Colorblind Mode is severely lacking. As someone with Blue-Yellow colorblindness there's times I just can't react to what my opponent does. Morgana puts her W in the river? I'm unable to actually tell where it is.
True Damage Ekko currently doesn't have the White Streak on his Trail? The purple Blends into the ground so it's a mini guessing game of where it is.
super duper agree on items and their identity
always found it weird that the standard mage items are essentially the same stat sticks with different colored stickers on them
sure, the effects still differentiate them quite well, but the fact they give the same stats always felt unusual
I really missed these I just want you to know I really appreciate it and others too probably
Thank you phreak. I started playong 1 year ago and have only ever played, and only want to play Swain.
These sound fantastoc very much needed changes
Thanks again!!
What im hearing is Items got a little strong but over a decade we learned how to speed run gold income to get items faster meaning we do more Damage earlier
Swain suggestion: grant more Demonflare casts from collecting Ravenous Flock stacks during Demonic Ascension.
If we for example make it require 3/2/1 (Ultimate rank) Ravenous Flock stacks per Demonflare cast, a level 9 Swain landing a 3-man E gets a "good job, you get to cast big AOE damage + slow again". This plays up his fantasy of long combats and keeping his Demonic Ascension up, while rewarding good aim or landing E + W combos.
Also worth exploring would be if it would give charges. So if level 6 Swain lands a 3-man E + W and gets 6 stacks: "good job, now you can cast Demonflare twice in rapid succession". Although this would require a re-cast cooldown to not make him farm stacks into SUDDENLY ONE-SHOT.
This just makes him stronger further in bigger (and more late game skewed) teamfights. Riot explicitly listed in the rework's goals that they want to make him better in 1v1s (your idea doesn't help there) and quick fights (doesn't help there either)
@@manosst4711 Multiple demonflares would still make sense tho if his R was on a duration. Lets say 5/6/7 seconds + an instant, on-cast demonflare (the idea mentioned by Phreak in the video).
Bad idea, makes him insanely feast or famine and further bolsters him into winning harder vs melees
Hard pass and no on yet another hyper scalling variation.
For Swain, could be interesting to move more of his ult healing into the demonflare casts. So the over time healing is less but the flares have a heal based on # champs hit or something.
For teleport you could make nodes on the map maybe near baron / dragon and you can only tp to a node so it takes longer to get to Lane while keeping it's purpose of joining for objectives. Also reverting death timer increase unless the ghost effect on death gets you much closer to tower. This change was a buff to teleport. Ghost effect would be good on any back from the start of the game. I love when hexgates are up. There would be more action to watch in pro play matches too
I'm a simple man. I see a short (hour long plus) Phreak video, I sit my ass down and watch. Great way to start my Saturday morning! Thanks Phreak!
In another life you were the fastest auctioneer on the planet, or the fastest rapper. I'm so glad we get these inside looks with you at the helm.
I hav never bis so happy watching a youtube video as pherak talking about a posebileti of getting a health ratio on thornmail
When did he say that
@@yeah-yeah2249 55:50
@@yeah-yeah2249 55:50 i think
I will say, one thing that made me really like Swain to begin with was when his ult doubled the health you got from your stacks. IMO it felt really good, kinda like a mini renekton ult and got me playing a ton of Swain both bot and support, the numbers of times I 1v2d because they committed onto me and then I got a big extra chunk of health+the higher demonflare damage did feel really good. Maybe something like that could come back?
39:50 As a Vayne player, I often bought Jak'sho because Vayne's W basically functions like an extra item anyway. If I build something like bork + rage blade + Terminus, then that's probably plenty of damage to kill 90% of champions in just a handful of auto attacks. Building more damage after that only doesn't meaningfully change the DPS by any noticable margin, so building a really versatile tank item like Jak'sho means that I'd have enough resistances to not have to worry about getting burst in a fight and can sustain through a long team fight late game. Nerfing item damage doesn't really matter that much because all that matters is if Vayne is the last one standing at the end of the fight and the W means that any enemy has a limited number of auto attacks to tank before they will die. I don't think that just nerfing damage items would fix the issue. The W itself would have to be changed so that building less damage would meaningfully reduce her damage to the point of uselessness.
I dig this new direction you speak on. Makes a lot of sense
Super interesting stuff. Loved the in-depth dive in the specifics of stats for items & their respective efficiencies. +1 to add more shop tabs for subclasses :) Would help for clarity!
I had a question about what you said regarding movespeed: Would fighters like aatrox or darius not be pushed towards assassin lethality items more often for the movespeed and incredible dmg output those provide or do you think they would prefer building fighter items still and rely on summoner spell ghost or other sources of movement speed?
Thanks for the time you put into these by the way. There's probably a ton of work going into these videos and we wholeheartedly appreciate it man!
Revert swain q pass through minions and cd reduction. I used to main and love him before the change. He was satisfying
Swain support is a weird case to me.
Swain support only really exists, cause he had such a poor balance state for a long time. His output was way too bursty for a juggernaut of a mage that he is supposed to be, yet not bursty enough to win solo lanes like that. That really pushed him into support.
Then Swain got overhauled and got much better in solo lanes. But people kept insisting on playing him support. I suspect that support mains solo lane a lot less than most other roles. Many secondary ADC, as thats the lane they know, or jungle - cause they dislike farming.
So it kinda figures that many just keep playing him support, despite Swain being markedly worse as support - and really, he doesnt have a stellar support kit in the first place, seeing how well he scales with items. Every completed item on Swain mid feels like a HUGE deal, as he uses the unique passives and actives of some items EXTREMELY well.
So I'd say that support Swain is kinda just.. lingering around from players who picked up support swain when it was his best role. And damn, he has been an outright terrible support for a long time. I also think other potential mage supps do most of what he does a lot better. What he does well is being a decently high dps CC-bot that's also tanky... which is just something the support position generally doesnt do well, hence why there are almost no bruisers in supp barring some fringe cheese lanes.
Compounding this issue is that Swain, especially mid, really struggles with item builds since losing mythic liandries.
Mythic liandries did everything Swain wanted from a first item: Some CDR, mana, a bit of AP and an amazing unique passive in liandries burn.
Currently, Swain has the problem of having no stellar mana item to pick. RoA doesnt offer an amazing passive or haste. Ashes is too reliant on its AP scaling, unlike the rest of Swains kit. Malignance makes you feel even more useless than you already are without R. Liandries and Rylais offer neither mana nor haste, making them a bit difficult to use.
You can make a workable build out of all this, but it feels really clunky to use. That said, there is a niche that isnt filled in the AP item system: A first item for AP Bruisers that require mana.
RoA sucks at filling that niche, as it gives no haste and no bruiser-tailored passive.
OK Phreak, you got my attention here.
I'm gonna skip the part about Swain and Aphelios since I'm not playing those champs nor the same class of champs so I don't have any opinion about it.
What you said about bounties... I didn't think I will ever do that but I'm 100% agree, I'm more than thrilled you were able to admit that current system even tho it's simple doesn't feels right and system you're planning on implementing even tho will be harder to undestand will be more fair after tweaks. Don't have much more to add in this area.
Item nerfs... this is where the fun begins. I know it was a little bit off topic but saying that game (champion skills and items) didn't change that much in 15 years is bold statement. I completly agree that players are generally better at the game but even if you didn't change Morgana's Q dmg in 15 years at all you changed and added many things into a game starting from items ending on champions and even if Morgana's Q doesn't root me for 4 sec at all ranks anymore only for 3 sec at max rank you did change everything around it. So comparing 1 ability from 1 champ from 15 years ago and now is just dishonest. On top of which item did get a lot of effects and stats.
Take something like Liandry's for example. Very first Liandry's (after small change) was giving 60 AP 300 HP 15 MP and dealt 5% of current HP magic dmg. Now it gives 90AP 300 HP no MP but 2% magic dmg of MAX HP magic dmg. So it gives straight up more stats and arguably better dmging passive because 30AP and max hp dmg is definitely better than current hp dmg with 15 MP and 30 less AP (I will completly skip the mythic version of this item).
Another example Blade of the Ruined King. First BotRK was dealing 5% of current hp physical dmg and heal for 50% of that dmg and active had 150 base physical dmg with 50% tAD scalling with stats of 40 ad and 10 life steal. Now BotRK deals 10% of current HP as physical with no active with stats of 50 ad, 25% atk speed and 10% life steal. So again, it has straight up more stats, better passive that's definitely offsets loss of active ability. And if you dig more about different items you'll find that 15 years ago, those items were worse by giving less. I intentionally brought those 2 exact items because they are widely considered as tank killer items and the last example I have is a tank item, Sunfire.
So Sunfire Cape was dealing magic dmg scalling with LVL giving you 60 armor and 425 HP. Now this item gives you 50 armor, 350 hp and 10 ability haste so arguably better stats (10 armor and 75 HP for 10 AH) and passive that deals dmg scalling with MAX HP (not lvl anymore) which in long combat can be increased up to 60%. Plus it has an magic resist variant.
In conclusion, over the years you were pouring a lot of power into items, bit by bit and now if you compare the same items with the items from 15 years ago you'll see that the changes are substantial.
Now into a tank specific items. It's stupid that tanks can have high base dmg on their abilities and items that scales with their tankiness. Item like Thornmail is situational, it shouldn't be an item that's worth buying every time and it's completly fine as it is. Hollow Radiance is situational variant to what Sunfire is. I don't think anyone who knows how to play this game have a problem with building Thornmail on Vi or Jarvan or Xin or Wukong, I know I don't and I find plenty of success with those items in situations where those items are needed. But it's actually funny you mentioned Randuin's Omen you know, especially that you nerfed Randuin's in the exact same time you were buffing ADC items. Randuins was meh item because Frozen Heart was cheeper and it was not really worth to buy Randuin's for the critical strike dmg reduction if there wasn't as many crit users in the game. And the only time the old version of Randuin would be worth it's cost was after you buffed adc but in the same time you took away "Rock Solid" passive from it because you had to know this item would be the most perfect thing to counter ADC meta since all Tristanas, Lucians, Caitlyns are crit users and they became extremely popular.
1 thing about move speed. I disagree with putting so much move speed on all the adc and melee fighters. Some of it, sure, but making Cait able to out run me while kiting when I play Xin it's kinda unfair, it's different story for Vi who has dash more often. What I mean is adding generic move speed on items so every champ from that class regardless if they have any mobility tools or not can have access to it is not fair. Varus doesn't have any dashes so if I jump on him with Xin, he needs to use R in order to escape where Caitlyn in same situation use E and will kite me. Caitlyn E has lower CD and is less significant than Varus R. Same goes with move speed for melee fighters, Vi that has access to her dash more often than Xin shouldn't have same access to move speed because she is already more mobile.
Generally for nerfing items 100% yes. Bring it in. Making new items tailored for class specific, I don't want to say no but it depends how strong or game changing those items will be because more items means harder time balancing all of it. And also I completly agree on this Annie bursting Ashe but not bursting brusier Viego statement. I hope it will actually become the reality and it's 2nd time I completly 100% agree with what you're saying.
But yeah, in general you did it, you finally positively surprised me and I'm actually eager to see how it all will turns out.
Hi Phreak,
I appreciate the hard work that you do for the game. I'm a big fan of the project and I can't wait for the changes it is going to provide.
As a player who plays actively since season 3, and in every elo up to GM as well as semi-pro, I think minions require a rework.
What is macro?
- I believe a good macro was a skill long time ago, used only by those, who put enough thoughts into the game. It pointed out the difference between a serious player, and the one who played with friends for fun. Sadly, nowadays good macro is a requirement to have any fun in the game (no matter if its normal or ranked).
-There is milions of guides on the internet how to do it, and everyone (and their mothers) do it now. People in GM do that, people in gold do that, and in my opinion - this is the root of what is killing the game constantly. It makes people tilt, makes people blame teammates, causes most of the toxicity in game. (I don't think toxicity is the way to release stress in game, yet I think it's the outcome of game being played around frozen waves and constantly losing gold/exp, while being exposed to the gank/roam)
We should ask ourselves, what is a bad lane-state about? What a frozen wave should be?
- In my opinion, temporary exposure to the gank/roam.
In reality freeze is way too easy to achieve and lasts for way too long. Most of the time, freeze doesn't allow you to farm/interact with the game for few waves, which is absurd.
Supports have to roam, Junglers take the blame for not helping laners with waves, ADCs are hard to balance, Meta is really boring, game becomes extremely toxic.
You could be the best in the game at certain character, you could have insane micro, but if you don't get help with wave, you are not going to play the game. (Some people might think I don't understand Strong/Weak side concept. Of course I do, yet I don't think being weaksided should limit you from being able to play the game)
How would I fix it?
-In my opinion, minion damage %amp depending on the distance to the tower. The closer minions are to your tower - the more dmg they deal. Frozen waves don't make you lose so many minions, only expose you to the temporary gank/roam window.
Is it a perfect solution? - Not at all.
Does it require more thoughts from larger group of people? - Definitely.
Will the change like this make some people mad? - For sure.
Is there a need for a change? - Everyone can answer for themselves. I think yes.
Last hitting would be awful, macro knowledge would matter less and micro more. For last few years, Top, Mid and ADC are roles who depend on jungle and support to be good, to be able to play the game. It's not fun, frustrating, and boring. Not only for the top mid and adcs but also for junglers, supports and for sure for a balance team as well.
I love this game too much to just move on from it, like many other proplayers/high elo players.
If you read this message, I'm very thankful for it, and wish you good luck with future of league of legends.
Respectfully.
Edit: Please give likes/comment so he sees it. I would highly appreciate all the help. Thanks.
Agreed.
It's true, but balancing would be a pain in the butt
@@EMP_LOL I included that in my comment. I admit my statement can be bizarre to some, but I believe something has to be done.
I feel like this is written from the ADC point of view, as a top main myself i must say it's even worse here.
There are matchups where past lvl3 you are not allowed to come even remotely close to the wave if you are behind even in the slightest.
It might not be this big of a problem in higher elo's but in my relatively low one (plat/emerald) it's extremely difficult to get your jungler to help you with breaking the freeze which renders the game more or less unplayable untill the later stages of the game more concentrated on teamfights.
Furthermore "bad matchup" like that leads you to gold and exp deficit which further marks you as a "bad player" despite playing the matchup mostly correctly(let's say 0/0/0 stats in a "losing" setup).
the ability to freeze three waves under tower after a good fight is half the reason TP is so powerful in a top lane environment. I really think that player pressure on the minion wave is something you can target (even just by increasing XP range) to lower the punishment.
i feel like a really fun shape for aphelios could be leaning more into the spellcaster bit, where he’s building essence reaver and buying ability haste and going through like 2-3 new weapons in a fight, instead of stacking crit and trying to one shot with a good gun combo and then just cycling through the rest of them until you can get back to the same combo.
For bounties I think just making it so the bounty is more team spread would solve a lot of problems. That or limiting the max bounty each kill can give more but allow the max bounty you can stack to be more, maybe around 600 (double a kill) and have it just roll over. This means one mistake doesn't screw things so much but consistent bad play is a more guaranteed comeback for the other team.
The spread bounty would mean the team that worked together to take down the fed person (this could be that it still gives to an individual if no one assisted or is in the area, or it gives to team regardless) is more likely to be able to do it the next time.
You could also spread kill bounties onto towers in that you conquer micro play or champ advantage with good macro, this stops snowball champs from just being even better with the bounty system since those are usually harder to kill while certain champs like some mages, adcs and low mobility bruiers are easy to kill even with a lot of kills.
Since the overal dmg will be lower and snowballing will be stopped a bit more with the bounty system when your changes go trough, does that also mean the games will be longer? And I am just wondering do you guys in the soloque balance team want longer games, shorter games or are you guys satisfied with the current game lenght?
I as a adc main that hovers between plat and emerald notice that alot of the time I dont get to reach that lategame I am playing for (ofcourse it's also a skill issue)
Just wondering what your vision is and what to expect for the future.
Great content btw amazing how you explain everything and I love the transparancy!
I think they said after the durability update game times were slightly longer, which was a goal back then. So this item update should also push games a little longer, less abruptly snowballed, which is their main goal
Really love the idea of making items have a clear purpose instead of just being so generic.
I know these changes aren't likely to come close to this, but for years, if I could have a single League wish, it would be having Swain's old kit back. I miss it so much.
To be clear, I think these changes will make Swain better than he is currently. I hope I'll find him more fun.
I love being able to learn from these videos and as i study game design, especially when it comes to creating solutions and predicting effects of incoming changes. One question I do have is, if we are toning down the power of items, that also weakens the power of gold right? I think the effects would be positive for solo queue but in pro play do you think that would encourage pros to lane swap even more since lane swaps seem to focus on experience more than gold?
Why would it not be good to let players see their net gold values and their gold bounty on death when negative to solve the understandability issue that the new system would have.
Yeah that's the plan ;)
@@Phreak Mildly related, wouldn't a total gold per team be useful to note the state of the game? I find myself looking at the stat in pro-play to know who is possibly "winning", as currently is only kills/deaths that gives me a sense of the game state.
Thansk for doing these videos phreak, the changes are looking really good.
I wish Phreak, when talking about resistances and HP on items, went into counter-counterplay with things like "Oh, I'm Syndra, and Sion bought Randuins and Thornmails... I can blow him up" if they're gaining more armor in exchange for HP, it makes counter balance damage sources better, and it also makes the niche mixed damage champions (Kai'sa, Kayle, Teemo, Akshan) a little better if the enemy has Randuin + Warmogs, you can just spec a little bit more into the magic side of your kit instead.
Also, I would LOVE more mixed stat (AP+AD) items, I feel like hybridized damage sources that get countered by buying HP is another lever you can pull for the RPS of atk/def balancing.
The understandability hurdle can be easily solved: Show - in scoreboard - how much each champ has earned in gold and how much they gave away through deaths.
I always love how methodical and logical your videos are, Phreak. I do have a single rebuttal/counterpoint to one of your talking points, though. While champions from 2010 (Like Morgana, Anivia, Annie, as you mentioned specifically) haven't meaningfully changed, and thus they couldn't add to the damage and speed of fights in League today, Riot -have- added literally over a hundred champions since then. Those new champions in and of themselves have increased the power creep of the game just by sheer mechanics and complexity. For example, while their numbers could be similar, a lethal combo from Morgana is going to feel drastically different than a lethal combo from, say, Samira.
The more complex a champion is, generally speaking, the more power they're going to have, if only because that complexity naturally gives them access to more tools and versatility. Which is to say, some of the contributing factors to League 'feeling faster and more lethal' are more abstract than just base numbers and their increase/decrease.
As someone that favors playing Swain in a csing role, the adjustment to his Q that made it so it hit all units regardless of targets being blocked had a negative impact on the satisfaction of using the ability in my opinion. While it is now a better and more consistent ability, it doesn’t feel as good to use. It felt appropriately powerful when it functioned similarly to Graves’ autos and allowed some outplay potential around it which felt like a fun skill check.
Bounties aren't a player understanding problem; they are a Riot refuses to show how much gold each player and each team has on the scoreboard problem
We saw it in a pro match the other day one player 1/0/0 the other 0/0/0 the same gold one player had a bounty for 200 that makes no sense. Imagine then if the fed adc gets that gold.
not all sources of gold go into bounty calculation currently, thus the disparity between perceived fairness of bounty, imo
I feel like another thing that added to the past feeling of slowness was just players by in large not being as optimal in their gameplay (beyond just farming). Macro, jungler coordination, tower diving, wave management, proxying--all are in a far more solved state, leading to an increased feeling of oppression game by game regardless of what champion you're laning against.
29:20 I think a simple start for that would be to put gold value for both teams like you see in pro matches on the scoreboard. Players should be able to somewhat intuit this from items but they rarely do, especially at lower levels or with newer players.
Edit: That negative bounty thing is a good option as well for getting players to understand.
TP/Early laning: this is a problem that was caused by a change in season 6, they made minions move faster. which means minions die faster and hit turret faster, they also made minions do more damage to turrets in later seasons, how to make this less of an issue
1) revert season 6 minion speed changes
2) remove turret plates
3) redesign top lane , bush area, river area, etc, so that its less punishing and less gankable.
this is entirely a top lane issue.
I really like the Swain W. It's super fun sniping and assisting your team with the massive slow it applies across the map. I feel like it works well with the kit too since you're e combos into it as well. Swain honestly just needs his E to be a lil faster and he should be good imo. Honestly I wonder how old the E consistency problem is from cause I climbed to diamond 2 as swain in 2020 took a break for a couple years and now E just feels off.
love all this. the stat goals are on point with how i view how the game should. if you got burst, you should be able to reliably kill someone, but with longer cooldowns and less rotations it means if the squishy outplays you, then they can retaliate and kill you since there will be a greater window to punish you for failing.
And likewise, you won't have a champ who can fail that burst, who will just use their rotation again in 3 or 4 seconds and then kill you. It feels so bad when that happens now.
Love all the insight. Sounds like you really want the game to be fun, looking forward to the next year
I definitely agree that kits need to be stronger than items, this would prevent item poaching as it becomes problematic really quickly. Recent examples is Warmogs, meant for top lane tanky splitpushers, poached by supports, nerfed to oblivion. Prowler's claw renekton. Radiant virtue Varus, junglers, supports. Sunfire/Jaksho diana, mordekaiser, etc. I'm sure there's more recent mini metas like that but I can't think of anymore. Base stats being more distinct for classes might also help. One idea is also locking items to classes, but that gets rid of off meta builds and diversity in the game.
If you want to make swain ult one of the most badass in the game, make it so that his theme music triggers on map when he casts his ult
Maybe in Ashen Knight Swain
@@EnriqueelMike 👀
I really like the idea of bounty system changes. The thing is, though, it sounds like - it is more profitable to constantly fight as a team because if the enemy team has a lead, the best way to make team gold equal might be to fight 5v2/3/4. This, I guess will have huge consequences on meta: split push champions, perma farm on ADCs/farming midlaners/junglers, and shifts in support champion roster to solve the meta. At least in D+. This is not a bad thing per se, just a thing to consider.
Simple TP fix: remove all conditions & can teleport to any friendly unit. The range scales with level or game time
I hope Riot doesn't nerf ability haste for bruisers. They are already struggling to get enough ability haste these days.
I really appreciate your efforts Phreak, thanks for all the insight
Appreciate you communicating with the community Phreak, I know we're hard work somethings 😊
In the end, the nerf of all items is another durability patch, and it reduces one-man carry, so high-level users lose interest in the game and leave the roll
In no way does everyone getting tankier reduce carry potential… you playing the carry are also tankier and harder to shut down, everyone less fed than you has less damage to take you down.
Random thought about making lanes less punishing: 4 Turret Plates? Make the first plate half the turrets HP, then 3 more turret plates for the last half.
Swain W usage is the main reason i play swain. I love the balance between a pick that can be a battlemage but at the same time influence the game from range in interesting ways. Walking down from mid and helping a gank bot with W makes a lot of a difference. Late game using W in a sidelane to set up a pushing lane. Cathing cannonminnons in my or other lanes. These things makes me feel like im awarded for my awearnes and for a low Emerald player thats very impactfull for me.
Great video. Couldn’t agree more with these ideas. Keep cooking Phreak
Awesome update! Especially looking forward to the Swain changes, my favorite bird man doesn't get enough love and I'm excited to see him get some much-deserved QOL. In terms of questions - any thoughts on an examination of Kled as a character? He seems to have been in a bit of a rough spot lately (based on his item build being mostly focused around max damage snowballing rather than the health stacking he used to be known for) and he seems to oscillate between frustrating and invisible on a dime. I know he's a higher skill champ to get effectiveness out of it, but combining the weird build path with some pretty significant bugginess on his R he's all but vanished outside of a few one tricks. Would love to hear your thoughts though, as all my knowledge is obviously anecdotal.
I hope the scrapped iteration for Daisy goes through! It would be nice (and make sense) for Ivern to have a knock-up for an ult.
Dear Mr. Phreak,
I'm starting to have higher hopes for you, and the rest of Riot. Pass late, my games have been getting less grief; I guess cause the changes you and Riot have plan are getting them spooked. But besides all that, I been wondering about a champion called Sivir. She was on my first champ I ever got a Penta Kill on. I hope someday to see her in a better state. Her attack range for example, are there any plans to increase it sometime soon. I mean with a kit like hers; having such a buff would be fair, yes? I hope the idea wouldn't be some whatever burger, wanna see this girl shine please... Thank you for your hard work either way..
loving those changes!
I think in regards to itemization and damage in League, something to look into may be both the prices of items and the amount of gold in the game now. It's just a gut feeling and nothing concrete, but from my memory, item costs used to be way higher (Trinity was 3733, Deathcap was 3800, etc.), and it would not surprise me to see that gold has simply been made easier to get between making cannons give a larger portion of gold, and the various different ways they've made it easier to get gold off of turrets (turret plating, rift herald, grubs). It wouldn't shock me to see if that's a big source of perceived power dynamics being different in modern LoL compared to, say, pre Runes Reforged.
For Swain, Love demon flare on cast of R. Please don't take the second one away and figure out how it can work :)
I wonder if his W would be really cool if you could recast it to detonate it early, but it’s weak as hell. Then the upside is that you can wait for it to “charge” for up to four seconds, where it’ll do a lot more damage (2x live).
Basically think about it as a ranged nunu ult minus the slow.
Make league classic it will sell a ton. Nostalgia is a powerful drug. I know atleast 20 people IRL that would easily pay 50+ bucks to play season 3-4 league again.
On the topic of bounties. Adding a gold value to the killfeed might help players better understand how much gold they are giving away. DOTA currently has a system where the killfeed mentions something along the lines of X killed Y for 400 gold + 300 gold to Z champions (where the +300 gold to Z would be the total assist gold given out). It might be a bit busy but I feel that it paints a clearer picture than just mentioning streak gold getting claimed
1:07:00
topic:
TP and Lane punishing:
A suggestion; Instead of having the extra movement speed you get from fountain be after 14 minutes make the first 14 minutes of the game have that extra speed to get back to lane quicker(this could also be extended to the rest of the game the important idea here is the player gets a speed boost after respawning). This encourages the player to get back into the game and try to defeat their opponent just like in a base defense rather than feeling punished and mentally defeated by forcing them to walk back slowly or use TP. This could also be justified as a change of game pacing from a game design standpoint.
When I started playing back in October/September last year I can very "fondly" remember the times I was absolutely rubber stomped by my opponent and forced to do the walk of shame back to lane, it felt obnoxious and downright horrible from a phycological standpoint. With my suggestion, I am hoping that it would bring a new feeling to resets encouraging players to take them more as they will be able to get back to lane faster, and the early game will feel less slow if you get what I mean? Also it would just make sense to a new player. Although I am not naïve I believe I know the design principle that led to the creation of the 14 minute speed boost. And this choice I think makes the game much less fun in the long run by not giving the speed boost before 14 minutes.
I know plenty of people would probably take issue with this idea "what that's bullshit, they can't be back in lane already without tp!". think about this from an Asymmetric point of view; you too also have access to this speed boost by recalling, not just your opponent. It would be another tool at your disposal, the game should encourage you to use it. Game design is hard, and I am short-sighted so there are probably issues that I cannot see. but I can't see what the harm would be in testing it in PBE to see what testers think and feel about it, that's what a testing branch is for right?
Phreak as much as I hated some changes including the major shift to Seraphine(even if I completely understand why it was done) these have been some of the best informational videos and show that Riot is actively understanding and working on problems whereas before all we were able to do was assume they were doing so.
Please make the worlds meta like this: aphelios, crit kaisa (fuck the onhit/hybrid builds), tristana (adc), xayah, zeri, renekton, gangplank, camille, qiyana, sylas, viego, graves, nidalee, ryze, ahri, taliyah, zoe, cassiopeia and worlds will be extremely hype and fun to watch. I really miss champs like zoe, cassiopeia, crit kaisa, tristana(adc), qiyana, graves in proplay. Would be so hype to watch worlds if you actually made worlds meta like this.
TP fix idea: Upon respawning, your TP is on cooldown for 15s. This makes deaths (especially early solo deaths) in lane meaningful while still allowing most of the lategame strategic sidelaning splitpsh plays
You completely missed the issue. It's SUPPOSED to be good from behind to stop a single early death converting into "A death, a plate and 2 waves".
The issue is it's too good when you're ahead for shoving an advantage; eg- I shove you to turret knowing you can't fight back, spend all my mana eating the waves and hitting your turret, then leave, TP back with full mana and a component, eat a plate and reset. I denied you CS, got an item/gold lead and the lane has reset to you even further behind and I have 80% of my mana so you can't even punish me.
Remove the 5%MS from kraken and change the AD from 50 to 55/60 with some crit chance or just change the AD to 65.
It ends up going the worst way. Now I'm not going to call LOL anymore, I'm going to call it Heros of the strom
You getting your position might be the best thing to ever happen to league's balance and future. I'm glad I can say someone that cares more about the game than me (not easy to do) is in charge of its balance and direction. There are some hits and some misses but its clear you are in tune with the soul of the game and are doing your best to make it as beautiful of a soul as you can. Definitely glazing a little bit here but you've earned it with this video (the work you've done that you're talking about in it) and all the work you've done since you got your position. I'm not sure you read your youtube comments, I know you're off social media for very obvious reasons, but I hope you see this one. From one man to another, good job dude, i've seen from the outside how much you are pouring your soul into the game and I respect and love you for it. I can't imagine the energy and effort and stress that come with what you are doing, but I hope you stick around in your position for the rest of the game's life because it's clear that you want to make the best version of league. ITS FUCKING PHREAK SEASON BABY
To me TP question is very simple, if minions were slower in the early game, lanes would be less punishing and you would not lose a lot by default. There should be space to punish in lane, so stacking waves and killing your opponent should be rewarding to some extent, by either enemy losing those minions or having to expend early TP. But just dying in an even lane state currently costs too much without TP. Another thing that has a side effect are early game power spikes based off items - a lot of matchups will become unplayable because one kill lead turned into early item purchase - if item components were to be weaker, this would be significantly less of an issue.
Honestly main issue here is that TP is the counter-snowball summoner, so making it not that could just lead to snowballing getting out of control, there is getting advantages and then there is "lane over, died once" and game feels currently being more of the latter. It is possible that fixing the bounty system could address that however making the entire issue a bit of a moot item...
i would like to see more variants of niche stuff like Serpent's fang, i think its a cool concept and can really turn a game around but sadly there is only lethality variant