Morello Introduces Preseason Updates

Posted on at 12:17 PM by Moobeat
As we were promised in yesterday's preseason state of the game update, Morello has taken to the forums to discuss some of the bigger changes coming in the near future.
Continue reading for Morello's full introduction to the upcoming S3 changes, including items, the jungle, masteries, and summoner spells!
"Hey folks,

As recently outlined, we’re going to be taking the opportunity to roll out some gameplay changes during the Preseason that we think will make League of Legends even better. Overall, we’re really satisfied with the diversity of champions that are viable at all levels of competition, and the variety of winning strategies that are out there. But we think there are ways we can still improve game pacing, champion diversity within roles, and customization options. The Preseason gives us an opportunity to look at some of the underlying systems that define the game, and make improvements there.

Items: One of the biggest places we feel we can add some interesting strategic decisions to is the item system. Many of you have told us that you’d like to see more build variety, and more interesting gameplay on items. We couldn’t agree more!

You’ll see some rebalancing of the existing items, but there’s also a slew of brand new items to spark your imagination and reward your ingenuity.

Xypherous will be giving some juicy, juicy details on this, but here are a few things to expect:

  • Underserved classes (AD Casters, for example) will get more items targeted specifically at their role
  • Most of your old favorites will be sticking around – we want more options, but we don’t want the item shop to be totally alien
  • A few items that have been challenging to elegantly balance are being removed in favor of the new options
  • We’re taking a look at overall gold and stat balancing
  • Many old items have received new upgrade paths or additional upgrade paths
  • Supports are getting some items to help ease the ward burden in longer games

This is the biggest change and, frankly, it’s pretty damn exciting. We’re really interested to see what people discover, and we’re confident this will help add some diversity and interesting choice to how you’ll be building your champions in the future.

Jungle: Much like we did at the start of Season 2, we’ll be featuring jungle mechanics changes for this preseason as well.

We liked a lot of the flow and feel improvements to the jungle (opened up non-safe junglers, more ganks, etc.), but there’re some things we can still improve. We had two major goals here: to add to the number of viable junglers, and to change the gank flow to ensure that the jungler isn’t the only role that defines the flow of the game during the laning phase.

Statikk will be revealing more complete details on the changes, but we believe this will have some positive effects on the metagame and improve champion viability, even in lane. We’ve even included new jungle-specific items (now there’s more than just Madred’s!)

Masteries: Another big opportunity is masteries. While we want to add variety to your mastery choices, there are also few specific areas we want to improve:

  • Going deep in the Utility Tree is currently underwhelming
  • Early flat Magic Resistance and Armor prevent people from being killed even if they get really outplayed in lane
  • There aren’t enough “cool” masteries

To this effect, FeralPony’s been busy taking a jackhammer to our masteries to fix these problems – all the while looking for opportunities to add more interesting things to mastery builds. He’ll be on hand later in the week to talk about the changes in-depth, and to dig into a few specific examples.

Summoner Spells: Last, and definitely not least, we’re taking a look at our summoner spells. A couple sneak peeks:

  • We’ve raised the cooldowns of popular summoner spells (Flash, Ignite, etc.) in lieu of nerfing their power
  • We’ve added a certain shielding spell from Proving Grounds, and made it so Heal is actually a support skill
  • We’re generally buffing some of the weaker skills up!

It’s our hope that these changes will give you more options for customizing your spells to suit your own playstyle or the needs in a given matchup while keeping the cool gameplay of the existing favorites. While I’d love to take credit for actually buffing stuff, good guy Roku is heading this up, so I’ll save the grand reveal for him.

This is an initiative we believe will add even more strategic diversity to League of Legends, and introduce new gameplay to master.

Let’s be clear: this will be an iterative process. We know that your games are going to play out differently than you’re used to and we’ll be watching like a hawk for any issues that we need to patch. If there’s something that’s really breaking your game experience, we won’t be afraid to hotfix things under extreme circumstances. Be sure to keep your feedback coming throughout the preseason, and look for more specifics on upcoming changes from Xypherous, Statikk, FeralPony, and Roku in the next few days!"
 Morello also added in a few more things, addressing player concern that Barrier will be too powerful 
"Yes, Barrier numbers are tweaked on SR a lot. Roku will speak to this in the next couple days."
 and mentioining that  Statikk will have more on the jungle changes sometime tomorrow.

25 comments

  1. Finally. Been waiting in anticipation all morning.

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  2. Wow, barrier? Really didn't think they'd do that. It's REALLY strong in aram.

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    Replies
    1. Guess what i'm picking when i see a karthus.

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    2. My exact thoughts. It's a strong spell especially when you've got a sustain support or summoner heal. It'll be interesting to see how long it'll take for barrier to be nerfed or removed entirely.

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    3. I'm sure it won't hit live at the same strength it is right now, but even if it does it won't be awful. Heal right now sits at 525 (575 w/ mastery) + 260 for surronding allies, while Barrier is 550 for yourself. The main thing is that cooldown. You can't bait it out, especially early game, because it'll be up before you can ever take advantage of its use.

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  3. "We’ve raised the cooldowns of popular summoner spells (Flash, Ignite, etc.) in lieu of nerfing their power"

    Even higher cd on flash now? Wut.

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    Replies
    1. Thats good. Flash is stupidly op to begin with.

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    2. If they removed flash from the game it would break the logic of all people. "What, i can't flash?!?!?!?!"

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  4. So, when will this changes come ? Tonight with the Elo Reset ? another Question, will with the Elo Reset, Season 3 starting tomorrow ?

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    Replies
    1. Whenever they finish the patch.
      they have no set date / time.
      The elo reset will happen with the patch as well (again, no definitive time)

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    2. It's season 2 still, and after the elo reset it become preseason until season 3 starts

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  5. ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!ENDLESS RAGE!

    BARRIER

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    1. ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!! ADAMANTIUM RAGE!!

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  6. I'm glad the CD on ignite is going up

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  7. S when should we expect the new Items to be leaked?

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  8. so i waited all day for an update of things that have been known for a solid month now. wow riot thanks for trolling. trololololol

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    Replies
    1. Have you known i.e. the way they are changing summoners ? You must be Riot employee or sth

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    2. no i dont know the changes they are making, but it has been known that they were going to make changes to it.

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  9. Oh god. They added the shield from proving grounds? inb4 ghost+shield

    And he was worried about early ar/mr preventing kills? lol I question Morello's intelligence.

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  10. Huge PBE patches are coming. Get ready @Moobeat! :D

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  11. Lol?
    Are there seriously nothing to the top lane? No changes to it!?
    Boo-! =[

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    Replies
    1. Itemization and mastery changes could have a big impact on top lane....

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    2. "to change the gank flow to ensure that the jungler isn’t the only role that defines the flow of the game during the laning phase.
      " are you totally dumb to not understand what it means?

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    3. I KNOW he is. I'm just commenting cause I know him irl and he's the only one that cares about top lol. The jungle changes will influence all 3 lanes, same with the items and the mastery. Also the spell changes, I may be able to go flash/promote without critism.

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