Surrender at 20: 6.8 PBE Cycle

[NOTE: Patch 6.8 is headed to live morning of April 20th!]

This mega post was last Updated on 4/13 with the 4/13 PBE Update

( With the release of patch 6.7 to live on April 6th, we started the new 6.8 PBE cycle. )

Previous PBE Cycles in 2016

[6.1] [6.2] [6.3] [6.4] [6.5] [6.6] [6.7]

Below you will find a comprehensive list of new content, balance changes, and whatever else is included in the current PBE cycle! Be aware that these changes are extremely tentative, there is a possibility that things you see below will be changed or even reverted prior to the live patch.

( Note: As the cycle continues, some images may be outdated! )

(Warning: PBE Content is tentative and iterative - what you see may not reflect what eventually gets pushed to live servers! Manage your expectations accordingly. )

Taric Champion Update

Taric Visual and Gameplay Update Feedback/Bugs Thread

New Skin

Infernal Diana

[NOT IN 6.8] SKT T1 World Championship Skins

Patch History

Taric Champion Update

Champion updates are truly outrageous, they are truly, truly, truly outrageous! Taric's large scope champion update is now on the PBE, including new visuals, a new gameplay, updated skins, and more!

Taric, The Shield of Valoran

1350 IP / 585 RP

Here's a short video showing off Taric's updated abilities in game:

Stats & Abilities

Stats:

Range: 150
Movement Speed: 340
Base Health: 575
Health Growth: 90
Base Health Regen: 1.2
Health Regen Per Sec: 0.1
Base Mana: 250
Mana Growth: 75
Base Mana Regen Per Sec: 1
Mana Regen Growth Per Sec: 0.2
Base Armor: 25
Armor Growth: 3.4
Magic Resist: 32.1
Magic Resist per level: 1.25
Base Attack Damage: 55
Attack Damage Growth: 3.5
Base Attack Speed: 0.625
Attack Speed Growth: ~

[Passive, Q, W1, W2, E, R]

Bravado (Passive):

Spellcasts empower Taric's next 2 basic attacks to deal [~18+ 4 per level] (+ 15% bonus armor) bonus magic damage, reduce his base spells' cooldowns by 1* second, and attack in quick succession.

[*NOTE: This scales downward with Taric's CDR, going down to .6 seconds per hit at 40% CDR]

Starlight's Touch (Q):

60/80/100/120/140 Mana, 1-3 Charges

15 sec Recharge

[Range]

Spends all charges to heal nearby allied champions for 20/30/40/50/60 (+ .2 AP) (+ 1.5 per 100 bonus Health) per charge, up to 60/90/120/150/180 (+x) (+x) at 3 charges.

Bravado-empowered attacks reduce this recharge time by 5* additional seconds.

[*NOTE: This scales down with Taric's CDR, going down to 3 seconds per hit at 40% CDR.]

When linked to an ally with W, here's the double cast:

Bastion (W):

60 Mana

15 sec Cooldown

[Range]

Taric's spells will also cast from a nearby ally protected by Bastion.

Passive: Bastion increases Armor by X (10/12.5/15/17.5/20% of Taric's Armor).

Active: Blesses an ally with Bastion and shields them for 8/9/10/11/12% of their maximum Health for 2.5 seconds. Bastion lasts on the target until a new one is chosen.

[NOTE: Allies with Bastion on them also get increased armor.]

[NOTE: Taric can self cast W to gain a shield.]

[NOTE: No "double dipping" from W's first effect - damage/heal/effect will not stack if hit by two versions of the same spell.]

[NOTE: Cast Range is around 1000, Tether range is around 1500. If you go further out than tether range, link will go inactive but going back into range will reactivate it.**]

Dazzle (E):

60 Mana

15 sec Cooldown at all ranks

[Range]

Readies a beam of starlight that, after 1 second, deals 60/105/150/195/240 (+ .5 AP) (+
30% Bonus Armor) magic damage and stuns enemies for 1/1.125/1.25/1.375/1.5 second(s).

[NOTE: Can move, attack, cast, etc after starting cast.]

[NOTE: E targeting with W on ally always aims towards Taric's cursor.]

Using E with an ally tethered with W casts towards Taric's Cursor, similar to Lulu's Q.

Cosmic Radiance (R):

100 Mana

160/130/100 sec Cooldown

[Range]

After a 2.5 sec delay, pulses cosmic energy onto nearby allied champions, making them invulnerable for 2.5 seconds.

[NOTE: This casts on self (Taric) and on whoever W is attached to & active on.]

[NOTE: This is similar to Kayle R in that you will not take damage but can be CC'd**]

and here's the double R cast with W on an Ally:

Voiceover

Along with his new kit and visuals, Taric also has a brand new voiceover! His new VO clocks in at over 16 minutes of gems and special interactions. His new VO is voiced by Yuri Lowenthal.

Taric also has a new champion select quote:

"That glimmer of hope you see, that's me."

[Direct Link]

We also have a few non-English versions of Taric's updated voiceover:

Here's a video of Taric's special interactions:

Taric also has a new login theme on the PBE:

[Click here for Music]

Lore

Taric's new short form lore was also added this cycle:

""The best weapons are beautiful.''

Taric is the Aspect of the Protector, wielding incredible power as Runeterra's guardian of life, love, and beauty. Shamed by a dereliction of duty and exiled from his homeland Demacia, Taric ascended Mount Targon to find redemption, only to discover a higher calling among the stars. Imbued with the might of ancient Targon, the Shield of Valoran now stands ever vigilant against the insidious corruption of the Void."

[NOTE: Full lore can be found on Mount Targon page!]

Updated Skins

All three of Taric's skins have also been updated, including new splash arts!

Emerald Taric

520 RP

Armor of the Fifth Age Taric

750 RP

Bloodstone Taric

975 RP

Taric Visual and Gameplay Update Feedback/Bugs Thread

Now that you've had a look, here's Ququroon with a Bugs & Feedback Thread on Taric's champion update:

"Hey all! In case you hadn't noticed, TARIC, the TARIC of TARIC has received a Champion Update, and is now on PBE for all your feedback-y goodness.

Finally, sporting the glorious locks that he should have from the get-go, this is a complete overhaul of Taric's visuals, gameplay, and audio. We wanted to make him feel like an entirely new champion. In addition, all of Taric's skins have been remade and reconcepted to match today's quality bar. Gone is the "just a recolor" Emerald Taric, as it is now a fully fledged skin!

When you're looking at this statuesque man, please keep the following questions in mind!

How do you feel about Taric as a whole? Does he still feel like Taric to you? Better? Worse?

How do you feel about the clarity of the particles? Do they convey the effects when you want them to?

How do you feel about the skins? Do they properly capture the fantasy that you already know them for?

Read here to get more insight into Taric, and start to get an idea of what took him from the Gem Knight to the full on Shield of Valoran."

New Skins

6.8 is set to include the new Infernal Diana skin, which was created in celebration of TEAM FIRE's victory at the 2015 All-Star event!

Infernal Diana

1350 RP

Here's Galetta with a Bugs & Feedback Thread for Infernal Diana:

"No longer bathed in Moonlight, but in an unquenchable fire.

Infernal Diana includes:

New model and textures!

New particles!

New recall animation!

New SFX!

This skin will be 1350RP! (PBE pricing subject to change)

Your feedback and bug reports are extremely helpful to us, so please check out Infernal Diana and let us know what you think! Feel free to drop any bugs you find in this thread as well!

See you on the Rift!"

[NOT IN 6.8] SKT T1 World Championship Skins

[NOTE: These skins will NOT BE RELEASED in 6.8! Riot will be holding off on their release and looking to improve them as well as adding an SKT Azir skin for Easyhoon. More info here.]

A set of SKT T1 team skins for Alistar, Elise, Renekton, Ryze, and Sivir to celebrate their victory as our 2015 Season world champions was also originally added this cycle but they will not be released in 6.8!

SKT T1 Alistar - Turnaround // Skin Preview
SKT T1 Elise - Turnaround // Spider Form Turnaround // Skin Preview
SKT T1 Renekton - Turnaround // Skin Preview
SKT T1 Ryze - Turnaround // Skin Preview
SKT T1 Sivir - Turnaround // Skin Preview

New Splash Art

This cycle includes ELEVEN brand new splash arts - base art updates for Fiddlesticks, Kennen, Warwick, Darius, Evelynn, Rammus and Swain, as well as new Blade Mistress Morgana, Galactic Renekton, Tundra Hunter Warwick, and Viscero Xin Zhao splash arts!

These are new assets, not to be confused with the splash art unification changes! Check out this post by Ququroon for additional context and clarification.

[Continued] Global Splash Updates

Over the 6.7 and 6.8 patches, several older skin and champion splash arts are going to be receiving small tweaks or be replaced with versions of splash art from different regions in an effort to unify assets across all regions. See this post for more information and continued discussion.

For your convenience, here is an IMGUR mirror:

6.8 Global Splash Update - New Vs Old

Rotating Game Mode Queue Testing

Several Game Modes have been returning to the PBE to get them up to date and ready to go for their return in the Rotating Game Mode Queue, which starts in 6.7 with Ascension!

Hexakill: Twisted Treeline

Hexakill: Twisted Treeline istested on the PBE during this cycle as part of the Rotating Game Mode Queue testing!

"Heya peeps. Next up for testing in the Rotating Game Mode queue is Hexakill: Twisted Treeline.

Known bugs & Updates:

Hexakill:TT should be reasonably stable, we don't anticipate too many bugs. As always, if you guys spot anything ( in particular with new champions and skins) let us know. And yes, that means not insta-banning the new champs or champs with new skins so they can actually be tested. ^_-

The altars have also been tweaked to give a slightly different buff to last time:
1 Altar captured: +10 % movespeed
2 Altars captured: Minions spawn with +15% HP and damage

Reminder:
The Rotating Game Mode queue should be going live globally starting this weekend! For more details on the mode schedule forecast and specific timings, keep an eye out for the announcement post on Friday (PDT).

As always, thanks for the help PBE friends!

-- L4T3NCY"

URF

U.R.F mode istested on the PBE this cycle as part of the Rotating Game Mode Queue testing!

"Yo! ^_^/

Testing time for Ultra Rapid fire on the PBE before it goes into the Rotating Game Mode. We need your guys help focusing on the following things:

Champ testing: (this means not banning them so you can test them :P)

Taric

Jhin

Aurelion sol

Illaoi

Tahm Kench

Kindred

Ekko

Poppy

Thanks PBE crew. <3

-- L4T3NCY"

The zany URF mode buff has been updated with a few different bits:

"Source: No No No! Please Don't Shake the Poro!" instead of ""Source: #urf2015""
"Every third hit will deal 100% of the damage it was going to do." instead of "No Poros were harmed in the making of this game mode."

As a reminder, each game mode that eventually appears in the rotating game mode will be tested on the PBE at some point. Thus far we've seen Ascension, Poro King, Hexakill: TT and now URF!

Balance Changes

* Remember *: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, and sometimes radical changes. The changes you see below may be lacking context or other accompanying changes that didn't make it in - don't freak out! These are not official notes.

Champions

Ekko

**Parallel Convergence (W)

Passive base damage lowered to 3% missing HP from 5% missing HP
Passive AP ratio increased to 1% per 33 AP from 1% per 50 AP
[NEW] Passive does minimum 15 damage to minions.*

**Phase Drive (E)

Base damage lowered to 40/65/90/115/140 from 50/80/110/140/170
AP ratio increased to .4 from .2

[CONTEXT: These are nerfs aimed at tanky Ekko builds, taking down his base damage but increasing his AP ratios.]

Galio

Righteous Gust (E)

Mana cost lowered to 60/65/70/75/80 from 70/75/80/85/90
Movement Speed increase for allies changed to 30/35/40/45/50% from 20/28/36/44/52%

Graves

New Destiny (Passive) **

AD Ratio on First hit changed to .7 - 1.0 from .75 - 1.1

Subsqeuent hits still deal 33% damage

Crit Bullets lowered to 6 from 8
Crit Bullet Spread changed to a 15 degree angle from 18 degree angle
[New] Critical Shot Bullets deal 140% damage

"Crit damage now scales this way rather than number of bullets (i.e IE increases this to 160% damage)"**

[NOTE: Few context tweets on these passive changes: 1, 2 , 3. ]

"tl;dr on what this does: Graves w/o crit does 7-10% less damage w/ autos, Graves w/ crit does sameish damage point blank and more at 425"

Kog'Maw

Caustic Spittle (Q) armor/mr shred increased to 20/22/24/26/28 from 12/16/20/24/28

Bio-Arcane Barrage (W) base damage reduced to 4/8/12/16/20 from 10/15/20/25/30

Master Yi

Highlander (R)

**Cooldown increased to 85 at all ranks from 75 at all ranks.
Active's duration lowered to 7 seconds from 10.
Kills and assists time extension increased 7 seconds from 4 seconds.

Miss Fortune

Strut (W) **

Attack Speed duration increased to 4 seconds from 3 seconds.
Cooldown increased to 12 seconds from 8 seconds

Cooldown now begins ON CAST rather than when buff expiries!

[effect removed] No longer gains extended duration by applying Love Tap
[new effect] While Strut is on cooldown, applying Love Tap will reduce its remaining cooldown time by X seconds

X starts at 2 seconds and scales downward with CDR.

0% CDR = 2 second cooldown reduction.
10% CDR = 1.8 second cooldown reduction.
40% CDR = 1.2 Second cooldown reduction.

Olaf

Vicious Strikes (W) life steal increased to 14/16/18/20/22% from 9/12/15/18/21%

Ragnarok (R) armor and MR gain increased to 20/30/40 from 10/20/30

Rumble

Flamespitter (Q) now does full damage to minions, up from 50%

The Equalizer (R) cooldown lowered to 110/100/90 from 120/110/100

Items

Corrupting Potion

Health restore per charge reduced to 125 from 150.
Mana restore per charge increased to 75 from 50

Iceborn Gauntlet

Unique Passive - Spellblade lowered to 100% of base AD from 125%

Mercurial Scimitar

Attack damage lowered to 65 from 75
Total cost/Recipe lowered to 3600 from 3700

Masteries

Feast (Ferocity, Tier 2)

Cooldown increased to 30 from 25.**

Grasp of the Undying (Resolve, Tier 6)

Life stolen lowered to 2.5% of your max health from 3%

[Now Reads: "Every 4 seconds in combat, your next attack against an enemy champion steals life equal to 2.5% of your max Health (halved for ranged champions, deals magic damage)". Only difference vs live is steals life down to 2.5% from 3%! ]

Secret Stash (Cunning, Tier 2)

Biscuits restore changed to 15 Health and Mana instantly from 20 health and 10 mana instantly.

Continued Testing/Unreleased Content

Below are few features that have been testing on the PBE for multiple cycles! Unfortunately we do not currently have release date estimates!

[NOTE: Some of the screen shots below might be slightly out dated!]

[6.9] Mana, MP/5, AP, MR Item Pass

[REMOVED FROM PBE ON 4/11 UPDATE! Will return in 6.9 cycle.]

A large and extremely tentative set of changes for Mana, MP/5, AP, and MR items is now up on the PBE for testing, including experimental new items and changes to oodles of items, build paths, and more. Xypherous has put up a lengthy context thread and change list over on the PBE boards. Please note this item pass is planned for ~6.9 and will not be going out to live in 6.8.

[[ [Planned - 6.9] Mana x MP/5 x AP x MR Item Pass ]]

!!!! "Note: None of the numbers are final here and functionality and specific details will change as we iterate and get closer to shipping the patch note. We're still in a change of heavy numbers iteration of most of these items." !!!!

While specifics are available in the context post, here's a gallery of screenshots of changes, new effects, and new items:

Will of the Ancients has been removed from the game.

While not mentioned in the context post, Frost Queen's Claim & Frostfang's mana regen has been lowered to 75%. Targon's Brace's heal has also been lowered to 40 from 50.

Here's a short video showing off the WIP on use effects of the three Hextech items:

Shop Visual Update

[NOTE: Currently testing on live TR server in 6.7!]

A visual update for the in client shop is now up on the PBE!

Before we take a closer look, here's DontHassleDaHoff with more information from the PBE boards:

"Aloha!

We're making some visual changes to the store and wanted to give you a heads up before everything goes live. We made the whole package visually match the client, Champ Select, and Hextech Crafting, which means a few buttons and bars got moved. Most notably, you’ll see that the navigation bar has moved from its old spot on the left side of the store to the top (see below).

Other changes include:

A more streamlined navigation bar

A Gameplay menu featuring Runes and Boosts,

An Accessories menu, including Wards, Icons, Chests and Keys

A new Account Icon in the upper right, where name changes can be made

A new RP button (ohhh fancy)

We hope you dig it. Let us know what you think. Thanks!"

Here's a small gallery of the visual updated shop, including the new purchase & confirmation screen! Note that Chroma packs are now available under skins rather than only in bundles.

[NOTE: For those who might not be acquainted with the PBE shop, all content is typically priced at 1 IP for testing purposes. Additionally, some art or assets such as splashes may be missing!]