5/9 PBE Update: More Tentative Balance Changes

The PBE has been updated! Today's patch includes more tentative balance changes, as we move closer to the end of this PBE cycle.
Continue reading for more information!

Table of Contents

• Miscellaneous
• Balance Changes
• Context & Notes

Miscellaneous

• As mentioned by Meddler in a past QGT post, a "Treat 'Target Champions Only' as a toggle" option was added to the client under Game options:

• The "Bee Grumpy" emote was renamed to "Bee Mad".

Sion

• HP regen increased from 1.4 to 1.8
• Vs. Live: from 2 to 1.8

Context & Notes

1) Here's Riot Wittrock with details on a Talon bugfix that should be on the PBE this cycle:

"Hey there /r/longswords !...uh..erm, ..I mean /r/Talonmains 

We've got a change we're testing on the PBE to help reduce/remove instances of failed E's, particularly the backflip/jumping backwards or going nowhere cases. No promises on a complete fix, or when we'll ship it, but wanted to give you folks a heads up. If you're playing Talon on PBE (including a custom or practice tool game), things to look out for: 

• E still failing on short jumps / jumping backwards
• New E failures (problems with longer jumps, weirdness with champ created terrain) 

If you do still encounter E issues, ideally capture them with a quick video or the .rofl file of the replay; barring that, at least knowing the specific piece of terrain that's giving you trouble with a screenshot helps. Feel free to post that stuff in the thread or DM me. 

Thanks all!"

2) Here's Meddler's quick gameplay thoughts for May 9th, including thoughts on the 8.9 mana changes, supports, and more:

"Hey all, 

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 

Impact of the 8.9 mana changes 

We've been watching the impact of the 8.9 mana changes (mages and some items) over the past week. So far the effect on most champions seems to be power neutral, which was our target (more casts early, fewer later, same overall strength). There are a group of a few mages who look like an exception to that though. They're all champs who are able to burn a lot of mana repeatedly and do seem to have lost a noticeable amount of power (Anivia, Cass, Taliyah, Malz). Might need to put some power back into them as a result, still assessing. If so it would likely not be as more access to mana later in the game though since one of our other goals was to reduce the power of mage waveclear as well. 

Some thoughts on supports 

After the midseason changes (8.11) and some followup (8.12 at least) some of the things we'll be looking at are various things about the support position. Not sure exactly what will ship or when yet, but did want to run you folks through a list of things we'll likely be looking at and why. 

Heal/Shield Stat:

• Was introduced back when supports got less gold. Also contributes a lot of power through multiplication of base stats, rather than as a separate ratio like AP, making it hard to tune it properly for a variety of different cases. Will be considering things like whether it's undercosted, whether it should be a stat that can be tuned on an ability by ability basis, which items should offer it etc.

Reliability of defensive tools:

• A lot of the time defensive tools, particularly those on Lulu and Janna, are significantly more reliable/forgiving than offensive tools used against their team. We'll be looking at whether more risk/skill expression should be added to particular effects as a result. That could mean things like shorter shield durations or other timing demands (e.g. like Redemption), adding more contextual demands to some abilities (e.g. % missing effects or bonuses just after an ally has been damaged) or other approaches.

Item Efficiency:

• This one's similar to the Heal/Shield stat stuff above, but also applies to a wider range of classes who play as support. We've got a range of items at significantly cheaper than average price points because support income's been low historically. Some of those at least might need to be repriced to account for increased support income.

Those three categories are where we'll likely start. There are a couple of other spaces we'll also consider, though aren't as likely to ship changes in in the shorter term at least. They're being treated as secondary areas because they've either got less clear directions and/or the time versus benefit ratio on work there doesn't look as promising as the above issues:

• Introducing more variability into support gold/XP income (valuable, but a large and tricky task, could involve enabling/rewarding roaming play more, though that brings some other issues with it due to impact on other lanes)
• Reducing the amount of power supports give to others (solves some issues, particularly around removal of marksmen weaknesses, but also cuts pretty hard into support differentiation from other positions and enchanter/warden identity) 

Upcoming Post: True Damage 

Been seeing quite a bit of discussion around increasing use of True Damage, given both Conqueror and IE have made it more accessible to a range of champions. Thoughts on why that approach, in particular why we think it's better than the alternatives, soon (probably early next week)."

Check out [THIS PAGE] for a comprehensive list of the new content & changes currently on the PBE as a part of this cycle or catch up with the individual update links below !

• 5/1 PBE Update: Pulsefire Riven, Shen, & Twisted Fate, Summoner Icons, Ward Skin & More
• 5/2 PBE Update: New Summoner Icon & Tentative Balance Changes
• 5/3 PBE Update: Skin Tweaks & Tentative Balance Changes
• 5/4 PBE Update: MSI Summoner Icons & More Tentative Balance Changes
• 5/7 PBE Update: Pulsefire Splash Art, Leveling Reward Emotes & More
• 5/8 PBE Update: New Emotes & More Tentative Balance Changes