Red Post Collection: Upcoming MSI icons & sales, Sion R bugfix, April BUNDLES now available, and more!

Posted on at 8:01 AM by Moobeat
[ ~3:30 PST Update: Added information on the three APRIL Champion & Skin bundles now available!]

This morning's red post collection includes a look at three new limited time champion & skin bundles available through the end of April, upcoming Mid-Season Invitational summoner icons and sales (including 2 for 1 rune pages, 50% of boosts, and more), a patch update to fix the Sion R bug, Meddler discussing specialized CC effects, Ghostcrawler on the meta, and more!
Continue reading for more information!



Table of Contents:



April Bundles now available!

A set of three new limited time flexible price bundles are now available through April 30th!
"Go commando, get up close and personal or just be a freakin’ awesome tank with this month’s bundles!
Going Commando Bundle - 50% off at 1300 RP (2997 RP if you need the champs)
Feel the breeze as you charge into battle. 
Skins included: 
  • Commando Jarvan IV
  • Commando Galio
  • Commando Garen
  • Commando Lux
  • Commando Xin Zhao 
Champions included: 

Short-ranged Marksman Bundle - 50% off at 2396 RP (4335 RP if you need the champs)

Don't fire until you hear the click of their mouse. 
Skins included: 
  • Hired Gun Graves
  • Hired Gun Lucian
  • Snowstorm Sivir
  • Battlecast Urgot
  • Mafia Jinx 
Champions included: 
Freakin' Awesome Tanks Bundle - 40% off at 2292 RP (4341 RP if you need the champs)

Yes, they do make carry pants in that size. 
Skins included: 
  • Special Weapons Zac
  • Nightmare Cho'Gath (Legacy)
  • Poro Rider Sejuani (Legacy)
  • AstroNautilus 
Champions included: 
Unlock these bundles before the sale ends on April 30th at 11:59 PM PDT!"

Mid-Season Invitational icons, bundles and more coming soon

The Mid-Season Invitational kicks off in two weeks and as we draw closer to the event Riot will be releasing a batch of summoner icons and hosting several promotions!

Starting on May 5th, you'll be able to purchase summoner icons for the participating regional leagues NA LCS, EU LCS, LCK, IWCI, LPL, and LMS plus snag a MSI summoner icons for 1 IP! In addition, Riot will have up a limited time skin and champion bundle, 2 for 1 rune pages, 50% off IP/XP boosts, and a summoner name change sale.
"The best League of Legends teams from around the world will clash at the 2015 Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) on May 7-10 and to celebrate we’re offering limited-time deals on some in-game goodies. Here's the full rundown of what's available: 

Icons 

Snag some esports-inspired Summoner Icons available from 11:00 PDT May 5 through 23:59 PDT May 19 .
Regional Leagues Icons - 250 RP
What regional meta will triumph? Show your support for your favorite regional league with an icon from the six regions participating in the 2015 Invitational.
2015 Mid-Season Invitational Icon - 1 IP
If you love all the regions equally (or just can’t pick your favorite), grab the official icon of the event. 

Bundles 

From 11:00 PDT May 5 through 23:59 PDT May 11, you can also unlock some of these limited-time bundles:
2015 MSI Picks and Bans - 50% off at 2511 RP (4495 RP if you need the champions)
Our panel of shoutcasters weighed in to predict what champions will be most impactful during the Pick/Ban Phase of the 2015 Mid-Season Invitational games.

Skins included:
  • Reaper Hecarim
  • Demolisher Nunu
  • Soulstealer Vladimir
  • Mafia Graves
  • Warden Nautilus
Champions included:
  • Hecarim
  • Nunu
  • Vladimir
  • Graves
  • Nautilus
2 for 1 Rune pages 
Grab two rune pages for the price of one on both RP and IP!
50% off boost sale 
Level up your IP and XP gains! All boosts are 50% off!

 

Summoner name change sale 
Show your allegiance to your region or favorite team with a name change for 650 RP, 50% off the normal price. 

Mystery Gifts 

Get rewards for watching the 2015 Mid-Season Invitational. If a player at Mid-Season Invitational gets a Pentakill or Baron steal, it’ll trigger a Mystery Gifts bonus and it’ll double your chance to unlock esports team (Fnatic, TPA, and SKT), championship, and legendary skins through 23:59 PDT May 15."

Interested in more about the upcoming international event? Read up on the Mid-Season Invitational over on LoL eSports.

Current qualified teams are:

  • Team SoloMid (NA LCS)
  • Fnatic (EU LCS)
  • ahq e-Sports Club (LMS)

The other three spots from Korean's LCK, China's LPL, and the International Wild Card Invitational are still to be decided!

April 21st Patch Update

The official 5.7 patch notes have been updated to reflect a small hotfix to address a bug that allowed Sion to change directions while using his R.
"4/21/2015
Sion
  • BUGFIX : Fixed a bug where Sion was able to quickly change directions during R - Unstoppable Onslaught"

Ghostcrawler on "the meta" 

In a  thread discussing the meta and various pains of  "the tank meta" or "the assassin meta", Ghostcrawler jumped in to elaborate on how Riot goals and how they think about the meta:
"This is a healthy discussion, and I can try to help it along a little by providing some context about how we think about the meta. 
(As a meta comment, "meta" is one of those words that gets used to describe so many different things that it has started to lose some of its meaning.) 
First, we're okay with having a 1+1+2+J configuration. Things like duo jungle or three champs in one lane may happen from time to time, but we're not going to go out of our way to support them. For the most part, the way players allocate number of champs per lane works, and we don't feel the need to monkey with it. 
Second, we are trying to keep the concept of position (top, middle, bottom, jungle) separate from role (fighter, mage, assassin, tank, etc.). We care a lot less which roles are played in which positions as long as the game is healthy overall (more on this below). The characteristics of some roles is going to make them better at some positions (e.g. most junglers are melee) and we're okay with that. Likewise, there are some individual champs that we don't want to see frequently in particular positions, because the results tends to be less fun for everyone. The word "Support" is particularly confusing here, because it refers both to a role ("utility mages" like Janna and Sona) as well as the (traditionally bottom) position of jumping into a lane with another champ without actively farming minions. A support role like Sona can play the support position, but so can a mage or a tank. 
Third, every role (and ultimately every champion, though we're not there yet) has to exist in the game somewhere. This is the big corollary to my second point. If there are mages in the top lane and mages in the mid lane, that's fine. If that means fighters have nowhere to exist, that's not fine. Ideally (and I mean in the sense of a compass direction, not the state of the game today) you'd sometimes see mages and sometimes see fighters top. To use the current topic, jungle tanks didn't feel viable, so we made some changes, and now they are plenty viable and I realize some of you feel they are too viable. In crazy world, maybe there is somewhere for marksmen to live besides bottom and maybe you don't even need a marskman every game. But let's not get too crazy yet. We used to design new champs as "Gnar is going to be a top lane fighter." Now we would say "Gnar is a fighter" and leave it up to experimentation and evolution to determine where he fits best, so long as (1) he has some position in which he can be played and (2) isn't oppressive when he does. 
Fourth, we are trying as a team to be a little more hands off and provide players more room to experiment, and this applies to the state of the meta as well. Now, I'll admit it's difficult sometimes for us to make the determination of when it is time to step in. This year, we wanted to give y'all a chance to adapt to the preseason changes, but our opinion now is that we waited a little too long to react. We are pretty happy overall with the state of the game post patch 5.5 and 5.6, but maybe things would have felt even better if we had made those changes in 5.4, while 5.2 likely still would have been too soon. Make sense? Likewise, we know there is some concern that tanks are too dominant right now, but we want to wait a few patches to see if that's a persistent problem or not. The meta will shift on its own, and has, even without Riot involvement. Sometimes it needs a nudge and sometimes the shift is towards something that is likely unhealthy in the long run, and when that happens it's our responsibility to take action."

As for older champions falling off the meta and never getting back in, he continued:
"Completely agree. We are updating champions on a regular cadence and looking at some ideas for how we can speed that up. Champs that are one-trick ponies, to use your term, don't encourage a lot of experimentation."

Meddler on Specialized CC Effects

Following his comments yesterday on if we will ever see another champion with an ability that taunts, Meddler returned to the thread to further discuss specialized types of crowd control effects and comment on player ideas for new types of CC.

When asked about an ability that makes you untargetable to a specific enemy champion, Meddler noted:
"Quote:
How about the opposite? Forcing champions to ignore yourself?
An ability that made you untargetable just to one specific enemy could generate some very cool play if paired with the right kit. You'd probably want to have the duration be noticeably longer than other regular types of CC, given 'immunity from one guy who's otherwise free to act' is a lot weaker than 'that guy can't do stuff to anyone'. 
Rendering one enemy unable to affect you's not a good skill on a champion that can 1v1 other champions though. The interesting decisions around who you make yourself immune to for a bit and who your target attacks instead just vanish in a 1v1 fight. Easy solution there though thankfully - throw such an ability on a support. Would probably go best on one with moderately low ranges who's relatively squishy, make them dance around a bit within a fight while having the option of temporary safety against the biggest threat.
 He continued, replying to a few other ideas for specialized CC:
"Quote:
Force enemies to attack someone who is squishy. This is still a debuff - at best, they get to attack someone they already wanted to attack - but it encourages the taunter to move, leading the angry mob around instead of standing still to get beaten up. Since it's not as crippling as being forced to attack the tank, you could afford to have the effect last longer than on a tank.
Interesting, hadn't thought about that approach. Could be cool on a short ish range squishy champ with some form of ground placements they want to try and kite people through - Singed Poison, Teemo Shrooms etc. 
Wait a minute, doesn't Teemo already do all of this? ;)
Force allied and neutral creeps to attack an enemy. This does a number of things: it pulls the lane and makes it easier to last hit, since your minions are too busy attacking the enemy champion to attack the enemy creeps, it makes it easier to zone the enemy since getting close enough to kill your creeps means they will get attacked, and it can potentially ruin somebody's day if they're close enough for a jungle camp or two to join in.
That's a skill I'm fairly sure we'll do on a kit at some point, probably on a champ with some minion creation ability. Boomer Bile's a pretty fun ability that, if done in the right way in LoL should generate some good gameplay (wouldn't want it to be spammable in lane early for example, given how powerful a full minion wave can be at levels ~1-3)."
As for if we'll see any more champions with a charm ability similar to Ahri's E, Meddler replied:
"We did talk about a charm for Taric, but ultimately concluded a stun was the better gameplay fit, with the added benefit of preserving an aspect of his existing kit."

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