Red Post Collection: June Bundles, Zeke's Herald Update on PBE, Pool Party Community Creations, & More

Posted on at 4:06 AM by Moobeat
This morning's red post collection includes a look at the four limited time June bundles that are now available, Riot Jag with a tentative set of changes to Zeke's Herald, Meddler commenting on Elise and potential 5.14 buffs. Jynx with a Pool Party themed Community creations round up, and more!
Continue reading for more information!


Table of Contents


It’s time for June bundles! 

June is almost over but a selection of four new champion & skins bundles are now available through July 6th!
Here's WizardCrab with the scoop:
"Tap into your dark side, heat things up, remember the good old days, and become the law with this bunch of June bundles! 
Snag these limited time bundles now through 23:59 July 6. 
Discount Demons - 50% off at 3298 RP (4907 RP if you need the champions)
Skins included:
  • Blood Moon Thresh
  • Underworld Wukong (Legacy)
  • Reaper Soraka (Legacy)
  • Underworld Twisted Fate (Legacy)
  • Dark Crystal Ryze
  • Lollipoppy (Legacy)
Champions included:

Covering Fire Bundle - 50% off at 2208 RP (4044 RP if you need the champions)
Skins included:
  • Wildfire Zyra
  • Vandal Brand (Legacy)
  • Dragonslayer Braum
  • Panda Annie
  • Infernal Alistar
Champions included:

Protect and Sever Bundle - 50% off at 2323 RP (4215 RP if you need the champions)
Skins included:
  • Riot Blitzcrank (Legacy)
  • Riot Kayle (Legacy)
  • Officer Caitlyn
  • Captain Volibear
  • Officer Vi
Champions included:

You Belong in a Museum Bundle - 50% off at 1981 RP (3770 RP if you need the champions)
Skins included:
  • Frosted Ezreal
  • Jurassic Cho'Gath
  • Jurassic Kog'Maw
  • Dino Gnar
  • Pharaoh Amumu (Legacy)
Champions included:

[5.14] Zeke's Herald update coming to PBE

Here's Riot Jag with more on the upcoming & tentative changes to Zeke's Herald that are currently headed to the PBE and are aimed at patch 5.14 (not 5.13, which will be the next live patch).
"Hey guys, RiotJag here to tell you about the Zeke’s Herald update coming to PBE soon. 
Zeke’s Herald on Live is an item that you can buy as a support, fighter, or tank if you really wanted to enhance the offensive power of your teammates. However, the range of champions that it is useful on was small, and the effect was not nearly as satisfying as it was powerful, leading to very few players purchasing it in the shop. The Black Cleaver update has done a great job of giving tanky champions a way to add offensive utility for their team, so we wanted to look at what supports could do in this realm. And because supports frequently play around the high value squishies on their team (AD or AP carries), we felt we could do something a little more unique for them.
Recipe Change: Glacial Shroud + Amplifying Tome + Amplifying Tome 
Total Cost: 2300 G
+250 Mana
+35 Armor
+50 Ability Power
+10% Cooldown Reduction 
UNIQUE Active - Conduit: Bind to target ally. This will remove all other Conduits on your target (60 second cooldown). 
UNIQUE Passive: When within 1000 units of each other, you and your ally generate Charges. Attacking or casting spells generates extra Charges. At 100 Charges, causing damage consumes them, increasing you and your ally's Ability Power by 20% and Critical Strike Chance by 50% for 6 seconds. 
The new Zeke’s Herald is a Duo Queue’s dream. A support will buy this item and then use the active to select their teammate who will drop the biggest hurt on the enemy. As long as they stay in range and work with the ally they’ve selected, they’ll build up to a proc that infuse the pair with an extreme amount of power. During this window, if the enemy team isn’t paying attention, they’ll pay the price (yes, that really is 50% Crit and 20% AP)! 
Grab a partner and get on PBE to hit us with any and all feedback, whether it’s about the gameplay of the item or if it’s the VFX. And be warned, if you’re in one of those games where you have no idea what your ADC is doing in lane, this probably isn’t the item to buy!"
When asked if the + Critical strike chance stat was additive or multiplicative, Riot Jag noted:
"It's the former (additive Critical Strike Chance)."
As for why they've reworked Zeke's into an item so different from it's current AD + Lifesteal Aura, Jag noted:
"Quote :
The problem with old Zeke's is that if it's anywhere near cost efficient on one champion, it becomes borderline broken when there's 3 or 4 people who can utilize it to full extent. That's why the item had to be held back by the awful build path. 
We could maybe have a lifesteal aura, but it's not really something supports like to go for, and solo laners in AD heavy teams have the Black Cleaver.
That is largely the reasoning behind why we're changing Zeke's. It's very tough to put the item in a satisfying place that is useful in its niche, without also reaching insane levels of cost efficiency on multiple people. 
I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that an impactful Lifesteal Aura item should be in the shop; that said, we don't think live Zeke's is the correct incarnation of it."
He continued, elaborating on the powerful passive and stat choice:
"The "buy this every game" concern has been on our mind a lot. Our goal for Zeke's is that the choices behind buying this item are very dependent on the team you have in each game. Since the nature of utilizing the proc is a dynamic and cooperative effort, I think there are too many variables at play to be able to evaluate if it's a statistically dominant purchase for every context. It's something I'd like to see when people get on PBE and play around with the item. 
As for the statline, it looked like it was really hard for the play pattern behind optimizing the use of the proc to fit the beefier melee support guys, so we committed to making the item feel great on supports that could build AP. Hopefully this is the Glacial Shroud upgrade that the Sonas and Namis of the world have always wanted. If you try the item out and feel confident that you could make it work on the tanky supports like Alistar or Leona, I'd be interested to hear it."

Roit Axes also chimed in on why such a significant change was needed for Zeke's Herald:
"Just wanted to chip in some context on why Zeke's needed this style of update. 
Basically, live Zeke's requires all of the following to be true in a given game in order to be an efficient item: 
  • Your team must have multiple high-scaling AD auto attackers 
  • You must be a peel support located near them and able to sacrifice an item slot to help them 
  • Your opponents must be doing something (typically multiple Thornmails and minimal/no wombo combo) to increase the value of lifesteal 
Add this to a bunch of clarity and satisfaction issues (invisible auras are always undervalued relative to their power level), plus an "ADC slave" element where you don't get to feel good about your own item purchase (unless you're support Gangplank), and you have an item which, even if balanced to actually be strong, very few players will ever buy or appreciate. The only way to get players to value it would be to make it egregiously overpowered. 
One thing I want to call out, by the way:
The Live version of the item is expensive thus difficult to obtain for a support, making it a balanced and an aware, niche purchase. 
You're getting at a really important concept - that the ability to understand itemization at a level where you can adapt within a game is a valued skill. That's a skill I'd really like to see more of - but with fully supported, valuable items that do broadly different things, rather than extremely niche items. In this case, it's very unlikely that you'll be able to fit both new Zeke's and Mikael's in a single build (not impossible, but you'll be sacrificing other stuff) - understanding when one or the other is more likely to help win the game is both an important decision and a nuanced decision, assuming we hit a good state balance-wise. 
tl;dr: Old Zeke's was too specific to realistically be able to support and barely purchased; new Zeke's is a very different item but also an item that can be supported more broadly; we believe new Zeke's does offer interesting and nuanced decision-making in the support itemization space."

Meddler on Elise & Potential Buffs in 5.14

When asked about patch 5.12's effect on Elise and if we can expect any form of follow up changes or buffs for her, Meddler shared the balance team's current thoughts:

"Current thoughts on Elise:
  • 5.13 contains both a significant Runeglaive buff and adjustments to a number of items Elise tends to build. It's debateable whether Runeglaive's the correct jungle purchase on her, but it is getting bought a significant amount given it's new and she's just been changed.
  • Elise's play rate has shot up a lot given the changes to her in 5.12 and the addition of Runeglaive. That's resulted in a lot of struggling players which has depressed her average performance.
  • Given that combination of factors we're holding off on Elise changes for 5.13 and instead taking another patch cycle to assess her state.
  • We will however be buffing Elise in 5.14 unless we start seeing her perform significantly better in 5.13 than in 5.12."
He continued:
"Quote:
Thank you Meddler! When you return, perhaps we can discuss further, depending on what's brought up.
Some things I'd like to know from the balance side are: 
1.) We know that Elise is in a not-so-good place. Has the Balance team identified the why of her current state? Not necessarily "well we nerfed her a lot in the past"; rather, "these are the factors we feel are making Elise very weak right now". 
2.) Is she so far gone that she will need a Gameplay Update in the future? 
3.) Is the Balance team dedicated to keeping Elise as a jungler and shoving down her solo lane potential, or are they attempting to preserve a jungle/solo lane potential with her?
Elise's power curve's been one of the big issues. Her E rank up's always been weak, which has led to a weak late game. Combine that with a really strong level 3 (something we see consistently from form swappers as a side note) and she can be extremely dominant early while falling off very sharply late. 
Another issue is that her ability to provide pick potential from the jungle, without having put herself at risk (Cocoon), tends to be much more valuable in co-ordinated play than solo queue. That's made it hard in the past to find a balance point where she's 'viable' in solo queue without being oppressive in organized play. 
Some form of gameplay update's certainly conceivable at some point, Elise does have some issues that it's proven difficult to address purely through balance changes. Very unlikely that'd be this year though even if we did conclude that was the appropriate course. 
We feel Elise's kit's a natural fit for the jungle, so balancing around her presence there's the starting point. Wouldn't be opposed to seeing her in lane again if that both resulted in healthy play (so not just human Q spam) and didn't require she be massively overtuned as a jungler in order to be viable in a laning position."

Ocean Week Reef Status

At the beginning of 2015, the OCE server had an Ocean Week event where they pooled points to earn unlock various rewards. The final reward tier was that Riot would create a champion-themed artificial reef to drop into the ocean. The community reached this goal and voted on a reef themed around Nautilus.

Here's CptStupendous with an update on the project now that a suitable site has been located:
"Hey everyone, 
I want to provide an update on the Artificial Reef project as well as give you all an idea of what the road to completion looks like. I’m going to leave this stickied until the next update, so everyone has a clear understanding of how the reef is progressing. 
The graphic below outlines the broad steps we need to go through before the reef is ready. It’s impossible to commit to time frames, because a lot depends on iteration and working with various partners including government agencies.
The good news is, we’ve found a suitable site! We’re not ready to talk about where it is just yet, because we need to check a few permit boxes first. The site meets all the criteria though, so fingers crossed! 
We’re not sure exactly how long the permit process will take. It’s super important we make sure your efforts have a positive impact on the environment, and that will take time. Once we’re done with the permits we’ll design the reef, then work with our partners to build it, then deploy it to its permanent home. 
If you have any questions about the process then let us know in the comments below!"
Check out the OCE boards for more information & discussion!

As a small bonus CptStupendous also commented on the long awaited OCE server release skin -
"Understandable comment but unfortunately with the skin, effort isn't the only factor, we need to work with other teams and guidelines. Between everyone in the team I couldn't even begin to count the hours we've spent working on the the skin. But we haven't given up, and are planning an update shortly!"

Pool Party fan art!

Last up, we have Riot Jynx with a Pool Party themed fan art and community creations round up!
"Summer’s here, so beat the heat and make a splash with these awesome Pool Party community creations!


Share more of your favorite Pool Party creations in the comments below!"

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