9/15 PBE Update: New Summoner Icons, Skin and Chroma Tweaks, and more Tentative Balance Changes

Posted on at 12:34 PM by Aznbeat
The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 7.19 PBE cycle, today's patch includes new summoner icons themed around the Immortal Journey skins, some skin and chroma tweaks, and more tentative balance changes!
Continue reading for more information!

(Warning: PBE Content is tentative and subject to change - what you see below may not reflect what eventually gets pushed to live servers at the end of the cycle! Manage your expectations accordingly.)

Table of Contents


New Summoner Icons

Four new Immortal Journey themed icons are now on the PBE:
   

Skin Tweaks

Colors on the Sacred Sword Janna and Eternal Sword Yi skins have been tweaked.

Sacred Sword Janna's colors have been changed slightly, most visible on the sword:

She also now has a homeguard animation:

Eternal Sword Yi's colors have been brightened, most visible on the sword, shoulders, and crown:

Chroma Tweaks

Sacred Sword Janna's Sapphire, Rose Quartz, and Aquamarine chroma have been fixed, hair now moves correctly:




Each of Eternal Sword Yi's five chroma have been tweaked, adding a glove to one hand and changing the crown slightly:

Miscellaneous 

  • Sacred Sword Janna store assets:
    
[Base, Sapphire, Rose Quartz, Aquamarine, Peridot]

  • Eternal Sword Yi store assets:
     
[Base, Pearl, Turquoise, Rose Quartz, Ruby, Obsidian]

Balance Changes

NOTE*: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, & experimental changes. Be aware that what you see below may be relative to other changes earlier this cycle! These are not official notes.

Champions
Caitlyn
[Note: Missed in 9/14 PBE, adding here for posterity!]
  • Headshot (Passive) attacks for free headshot reverted from 8 to 6.

Janna
  • Auto attack delay lowered from 0.1 to 0.08

Malphite
[These changes tested in 7.17 so they may look familiar.]
  • Brutal Strikes (W)
    • [New Effect] "While Granite Shield is active, this bonus is tripled to x."
    • Armor increase lowered from 15/20/25/30/35% to 10/15/20/25/30%

Veigar
[Context]
  • Base HP regen increased from 1.0848 to 1.3
  • Attack range increased from 525 to 550
  • HP regen per level increased from .11 to .12
  • Dark Matter (W) cooldown lowered from 10/9.5/9/8.5/8 to 8 at all ranks
    • [NOTE: The cooldown was bugged on the PBE on 9/14, waiting for context to verify if this is an actual change or still a bug!]

Items
Bramble Vest
[Context]
  • Total cost increased from 900 to 1200
    • Combine cost increased from 300 to 600
  • Armor increased from 35 to 40

Thornmail
  • Combine cost lowered from 600 to 300
    • [Total cost unchanged, this accounts for Bramble Vest cost change]
  • Armor increased from 75 to 80

Context & Notes

WIP

1) Here's Meddler with his quick gameplay thoughts for September 15th, covering preseason PBE timing, runes, GalioOrianna, and more:
"Hi folks, 
Usual Disclaimers 
These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped. 
If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler 
Pre-Season PBE Timing 
We'll be putting a lot of stuff onto the PBE with more time before pre-season than we've done in the past. A lot of content, including all of the new Runes, should be there from sometime late September/early October until pre-season launch in, all going according to plan, early November. Polish, balance and occasionally functionality changes will continue of course while stuff's on PBE, should be possible though to get a look at a lot of what we're planning fairly soon. 
Runes longer term 
Now that we're close to getting to show off the new Rune system as a whole figured it would also be good to talk a bit about how it'll change over time. We expect we'll make more changes to new Runes than we have to old Runes/Masteries in the past. That's due to a combination of changes now not screwing over peoples's runes purchases compared to the old system and more concentrated power letting us do more interesting things for the power budget in question. Initially that'll probably mean modifications/replacements for Runes as we get balance and game health sorted out. Longer term potentially additional runes added to some slots (more than 3 choices) or, much longer term, potentially adding a new tree. 
Galio 
We're taking a look at some possible Galio changes at the moment. Goal with those would be to focus a bit more on some of what makes him distinct from other tanks (anti magic damage focus, AP building), making him less of a generalistic and potentially a bit stronger overall, at least when picked against appropriate enemy teams. Can't guarantee that'll go anywhere yet, and probably won't be in a patch for a while even if it does, something we're looking at though. 
Orianna 
We're also working on some Ori changes again, a follow up to the stuff we were looking at a couple of patches back. That's where W/R no longer fire slightly before the ball actually gets to the location they're firing at, but will now buffer properly instead, so if you press the key just before the ball arrives W or R will fire immediately on arrival. Might also pair those changes with other slight timing tweaks. Goal here's to offer a bit more counter but also ensure Ori's reliability doesn't nosedive like it did when we tried just removing the early W/R firing. 
Azir context 
Disclaimer: Fair bit of repetition here with post discussion on Azir, posting it though since changes are now on the PBE and some people haven't seen previous conversations. 
The Azir small gameplay update's now on PBE. We've got a larger context post coming about our thinking on that in detail early next week, some shorter notes in the meantime though: 
  • We expect we'll ship these changes in the next patch (7.19)
  • We're not looking to fundamentally change any of the core of Azir's play, so this is in some ways an extremely heavy tuning pass more than a mechanics update.
  • The biggest issue we want to solve with Azir is that, in his current state, he doesn't have meaningful weaknesses. We want to make range limitations a more significant weakness for Azir and picked range in significant part because making him weaker in other ways often doesn't matter if he's still far enough away and safe.
  • Range reduction's happening with lower Q cast range, W deactivation range.
  • We're also windowing his personal safety tools a bit more (shorter E duration, R not knocking back after the initial cast).
  • In exchange we're aiming for him to have decent sustained damage, scaling and playmaking.
  • Biggest source of added power is an attack speed steroid whenever he's got 3 or more Sand Soldiers down.
  • Initial balance may or may not be correct as with any update, direction is that biggest thing we're focused on though (what strength/weaknesses and what mechanics to change or not leave as is). I'd imagine it's more likely than not we'll have at least some polish to follow up in 7.20, balance tweaks pretty possible too once we've seen where he lands."


No comments

Post a Comment