Red Post Collection: SR Hub, LCS Summoner Icons, Draven bug in 4.10, Context on recent Athene and Lucian nerfs, and more!

The intended functionality is that if you either activate Q or catch an axe out of the air  DURING your attack attack animation, Draven will throw his spinning axe. Unfortunately as of 4.10 this was UNINTENTIONALLY changed so that he would not end up throwing his spinning axe in the same situation, instead doing a basic auto attack ( example here ) .  While it may seem minor, this bug has been bugging the Draven out of Draven players since the patch launched last night. A fix is currently in the works.

Here's Pwyff's initial comments on the bug:

Gonna copy paste what I've said elsewhere as I track this down: 

"Looking into this. We seem to be running into more of these changes when we clean up the scripting behind a champion for a new skin. It's less about malicious intent and more about a really dumb lack of documentation that I need to hit someone for. 

As for the changes themselves, I'll make sure I have the right information before talking about it." 

Last time I said the Pantheon change was a bug and then found out it was intended. I'm 80% sure this is a bug but I AIN'T SAYIN' NOTHIN' YET.

When faced with criticism that he is peddling a "load of ****" and that it was another ninja nerf with the upcoming release of Primetime Draven, Pwyff replied:

"My counter question would be: how so? It would certainly get discovered and we haven't even put the skin up for sale so I'm unsure where this opinion gets its merit. Either we're incompetent at scamming or we made a genuine mistake."

He continued:

"Quote:

Draven was perfectly fine, why would anything need to be "touched up" 

have you guys not heard of don't fix whats not broken? 

This comes to a flawed understanding of how code works. Basically when nothing in a game changes, then we can take the stance of "if it's not broken, don't fix it." But code (maybe unstable code built in 2009...) often comes with such dependencies and links. It's like a big ass game of jenga - make one change here and two things you didn't even know were connected can start toppling over. 

With Draven we needed to clean up some code so his new skin could actually work and hook up to the animations (because animations are dependent on in-game actions, yeah?). Once we made those changes to allow the skin to work, one of two things happened: 

a) We made a fix that accidentally nerfed Draven (this is most likely what happened and we will need to fix). 

b) A designer felt it was a good design change for Draven for clarity and health but failed to document it (in which case this is reminiscent of Pantheon and that was a bad time for us). 

Either way this was a mistake.

Quote:

To clear up, do you mean that Draven's Q may have originally been a bug, and has been altered, similar to pantheon's skyfall. Or that this new change that has come about, may be a bug and will be reverted soon tm. 

If it is the former, you should have included it in the patch notes. Otherwise it's another Pantheon scenario, and so soon after `that instance` occurring, it does look bad for your company to be releasing these skins with undocumented changes. 

See above, but I'm trying to figure out which it is. It's most likely the second option, but I communicated that last time and it turned out to be the first. Let me figure it out and we'll have broader communications."

He later confirmed that this IS a bug and is NOT an intended change:

"Updating this thread:

It's a confirmed bug and not design intent. We're looking into how to fix it as soon as possible and/or will have official messaging... eventually. Ish."

CertainlyT later added:

"Quick update: 

We have identified the cause of the bug. 

A potential fix is in place and our QA guy* who knows Draven best is looking at it. 

I'll report back when we know more. Sorry we broke Draven! 

*RiotSquad5, famous internally for riding the "underpowered" champions Draven and Janna to Diamond 1 every season."

Context on minor Lucian nerfs in 4.10

Pwyff also commented on the ratio reduction to Lucian's W in patch 4.10, saying:

"Quote:

"At this point in time we do think Lucian will need some broader changes to give him meaningful weaknesses, but a reduction on W (which was designed for utility as opposed to any form of burst damage) is something we're confident is in line with our potential changes in the future." 

This is roughly it. We don't think this'll 'fix' Lucian or really address his core problems (he's one of the safest ADCs in the game but has a much higher burst damage output than, say, Ezreal) but it's a small thing we could do that's in the direction we want without seeming fiddly. We didn't want to ship changes to ADCs and Twitch but feel like we're ignoring the king of ADCs (Lucian).

In the future I wonder if there's a communication channel we can use to talk about changes we don't make but are high on our priority list. What would be your reaction if you followed our dev communications closely and you heard "leveling the ADC playing field" but didn't see a Lucian nerf? It's an interesting question."

[ Continued ] Twisted Treeline Ichor Discussion

[ Be sure to catch up this topic by reading the original discussion! ]

Following up on his initial comments about Twisted Treeline's Ichors, Scarizard returned to the forums to brainstorm ideas.

"Crazy idea - what if Blue Ichor made your spells cost more mana, but made them do more damage? (Opt-in muramana, essentially - downside being there would be no toggle) Could be magic-'d to make it such that the bonus resource cost/bonus damage only factored into champions."

He continued:

"Quote:

It's a really interesting idea, but much like the current Muramana, it seems wildly variable in power. One of the nice things about the "generic" ichors and elixers is that they don't serve as a differentiator. It's not like some champs are rendered unviable because they get outcompeted by folks who can utilize blue ichor.

I actually find this interesting - as everything that i've seen so far (Ziggs, Cassi, Syndra, etc) being not just viable but frustrating at high elo is related to how good they are with Blue Ichor. 

Unlike SR, where 1-2 Blue buffs is the max, champions on TT can double or triple-up on Blue Buffs - and they're strong enough stat-wise that it's actually not a huge loss to keep an ichor up. Factor in that the AP, CDR, and Regen are strong enough to sustain farming, these champions often not only stall and crush fights, but break even or better due to the strength of the pot (allowing them to chain them in a stall situation). 

With that in mind, i think it's actually a -huge- differentiator. Mages that are good at Ichor are put over the top while those that aren't are kind of hovering around 'just okay'. 

The above is just my opinion on how i see the problem, and why i'd like to not just remove the Resource Regen from blue ichor, but find a TT-Unique 'affix' that makes it stand out among just 'a ball of stats'.

New silly idea: What about %Altar Capture Bonus?"

He continued:

"Quote:

Brings memories of Priscilla's Blessing which was eventually removed for being problematic. I don't think it's a good direction as you probably shouldn't be trying to capture altars alone as a mage and as a team unless the extra speed capture is unfairly quick it won't be noticeable. 

Priscilla's as i recall (and this is my opinion) was problematic due to the primary incentive being backdooring - which for dominion especially is a form of non-interaction that feels pretty bad.
If you're being backdoored on SR, there are often other methods to overcome this (force a teamfight 4v5, use a teleport to cover the tower, trade towers or baron etc) but in Dominion almost none of these are possible. Questionably forcing teamfights, but on a very open map it's hard to find choke-points to engage (or much less scarce, actual objectives to fight over). 

I do think Priscilla's Blessing -might- have worked if there was an item that did it for every class - but in the end, the play it promoted as well as the lack of decisions around it (you will never not get it if you can) made it more trouble than it was worth.  

Something like 50/100% Altar cap bonus on a consumable item however gives a couple of differences around it.  

1. Unlike PB, the threat is not ever-present. Its finite duration and risk/reward factor inherent to elixirs make it such that the opponent would have to cap an altar to make their money back - taking action. PB was just like 'lemme get this for the stats and if they ever make a play i'll react by backdooring' While it's possible to pop an ichor and keep one in your inventory...you're spending a ton of resources on the gamble of Altar Control (and not real items, mind you). 

Similarly, Altars are not both the sole win condition and sole objective on the map - Capture points are.

Those are my thoughts as to why it might be cool to contemplate. The bigger question in my mind is not 'is sneaking altars on a map with no vision but high focus on risk/reward strategic movements cool at all?' but rather 'is it a good thing for Syndra to sneak that altar when drawing you 1v1 is what she wants?'"

4.10 Athene's Unholy Grail changes

In thread about the recent patch 4.10 changes to Athene's Unholy Grail, Phreak stepped in to share his thoughts on why the item needed to be brought down a notch:

"To address your points: 

The item was definitely overpowered. It was bought in 90% of games. That's pretty crazy. Itemization is supposed to be a choice. Keep in mind, this is an item bought BY mages, and works AGAINST mages. So it's not like the MR reduction nerfed the mage class, it just made the mage vs mage matchup a bit squishier, or incentivized other item purchases. It doesn't shift class balance anywhere. It's not like Zed is now 

As far as the mana regen nerfs: It was not nerfed by 33%. It literally couldn't be. Most of the mana regen on the item actually came from the Unique Passive. So instead of contributing 15-30 mp5 plus up to double your mp5, it contributes 10-20 mp5 plus up to double your base mp5. Additionally, it provides even further mana restore on kill or assist. 

What this means is that the item does two things:

1. It is still the number one mana regeneration item. Don't be silly. The unique passive basically guarantees that. It doesn't also need to be the best AP/CDR and defensive item too.
2. It works better alongside other mana itemization, because if you buy flat mana (Archangels, RoA) it will restore more on Kill/Assist, or continues to multiply your other sources of regen (Morellonomicon, Archangel's, etc.)"

He continued:

"Quote:

There's no reason to upgrade chalice then, it already has that passive. 

Besides that, Mikael's would be a waste of gold due to total lack of offensive stats and its insane pricing. It really doesn't look good for chalice' line of items.

Chalice is a great mana regen item in itself, that's true. You don't have to upgrade it. Upgrading an item should be because you want what the item gives. Upgrading to Athene's provides you with a bunch of AP and CDR plus the other Unique Passive at a reasonable price. 

Upgrading to Mikael's gives you its incredibly Unique Active on top of some other stats alongside. 

What what it's worth, I prefer that upgrades be somewhat of a choice. I like when items add a little something different as they move upward, it lets me help tailor my build to the specifics I want."

Whereabouts of Ranked Duo Queue Changes

As you may have noticed, the patch 4.10 notes were originally published with information on upcoming ranked duo queue restrictions. While information that can be found on the PBE boards  or in the cached version of the notes, it was removed and is not currently active on live.

When asked about it, Pwyff commented that:

"I believe we will be adding it back later as it won't deploy WITH the patch."