I am hopeful that we have fixed this in time for EU deploys so that they will go fine.

It's disappointing, we agree. We told you guys it would happen and it didn't. The one thing we can promise is that we're examining the process in which we do summoner name wipes as we hope to learn as much as possible from this in order to prevent future player pain.

Hello Summoners,

The name wipe that should have happened a few hours ago during the maintenance did not work as expected. Following this thread we investigated and found that most of the summoner names that should have been made available are still taken.

This is due to a bug in our logic that we used to select and enforce the criteria, while protecting legit summoners from having their names taken away.

We are working on fixing our procedure right now, but due to the way this is executed we will most likely need to postpone this until another maintenance window. Right now are are still discussing when this might take place and will inform you about exact dates and times as soon as we are solid.

Terablo

Haters gonna hate.

I don't need Hydra, I'm just building it on pretty much everyone these days :P

Core build for me is generally Wriggles, Zerkers, Shiv, then depending upon team needs, some combination of sunfire, iedge, trinity force, Hydra, and aegis/Bulwark.

The thing of note is that Shaco can accomplish my goals at only wriggles/zerkers shive, which only costs around 5k.

If my early game went well, I generally have 3-4 kills, 2-4 assists, 1 death (can't be helped) , and 1 dragon and 30 or so cs around 10 minutes. That's generally 4.5k gold or so (rough estimate) so i'm either capable of splitpushing, or pretty close to it.

Sure I can't win duels that well yet, but why would Shaco ever pick a fair fight? At the end of laning phase, whenever that is, Shaco can live in bot lane and split, simultaneously controlling 2 buffs and dragon via wards and boxes.

Also nice is that you now begin to farm full waves that you otherwise wouldn't get, so your gold spike is hefty.

In my experience, if the game goes late, there's almost always that one moment where i hit 5 items against a solo top or solo mid who had been dealing with my split push pretty well. I then kill that person with my recently completed power spike, and take at least 1 tower, possibly 2, possibly innhib. Doesn't' always work that way but if my team is behind despite my ganks, that tends to be how I find success.

Once we know more we will post more details. I just wanted to let you guys know that we are aware of this thread.

We are looking into it...

I acknowledge and respect your honest, self-insightful answer.

We're building a survey of active Xerath players now to help better inform our decisions. There's not many worldwide, but we hope this will help us better understand the mind of the majority of Xerath players.

Familiarity is a major factor in any redesign. When I previously worked on Warlocks in WoW, the entire team put a great emphasis on preserving the fantasy and experiential elements of each specialization, while shedding as much clutter from previous generations of iteration as possible. Keeping what players love is constantly on my mind.

I intend for Xerath to remain capable of opting into a high AP sniper role, building into a high-mana pool sustained bombardment character or building into a tank-shredder/team-softener character (Liandry's + Rylai's + Pen). Now, these are just goals. One will be supreme in most cases and I may be unable to realize this item driven specialization for all players.

Let's see how it goes... shall we?

I've seen all the champions you listed except Brand, WW, and Talon played competitively in the last 6 weeks alone ;-).

There will always be popular picks, just due to the state of what teams are finding attractive at the moment strategically and what players are comfortable with within regions (Malphite and Hecarim are dominant picks in China's LCS, but not in NA). This is normal and healthy. I think it makes the game more enjoyable in some respects because you can see how the competitive scene really adapts on a sophisticated level to certain strategies. Some recent examples would be the re-emergence of Gragas comps, mid or top, to deal with Curse of the Sad Bullet Time by resetting the fight after the combo lands, and of Fizz comps to deal with "TF feeds the hypercarry ADC lane" -- Fizz abuses TF during the laning phase, then murders the ADC during team fights.

Finally, there will always be a few champions that see very little competitive play. Garen comes to mind as one. Does that mean Garen is not enjoyable to play? Not in the slightest. He still has one of the strongest laning phases in the game; it's irrelevant to the vast majority of our player base that he cannot 1v2 versus Lulu+Caitlyn, but highly relevant to our pro players.

What are the two changes you think he needs that are sufficient to explore no further?

You talk and write like someone who has had rudimentary design training, yet your rote attachment to terminology conveys it to be most scholastic, rather than experience based. Further, your analysis is consistently very green. Accurate, but basic without nuance.

So, basically, I'm saying, you're using language that speaks like a person with experience, but without the experience to back it up. Would you mind explaining the gap here? If you're a student, this would make sense, but my blind read wouldn't explain much more.

Mind clarifying who you are to sate my curiosity?

Let me be absolutely clear.

I am NOT removing Locus of Power. Weaknesses are the birthplace of true strength.

What I actually said was that Charge-Up Q eliminated the need for constant access to Locus of Power. Both in lane and in team fights.

We nerfed the aspect of him that DIDN'T take skill--mindlessly farming with Q.

Do you think you would see this added effect in the chaos of a teamfight, with other particle effects overlapping it?

Just who the hell do you think i am?!

Uh oh, we have awakened Zenon the Stoic with thoughts of rationality and seriousness.

Agreed - this may be a hard ability to deliver on properly. This is why our job isn't easy!

Clarity will be a concern with dead centre abilities where the only difference is damage levels. Leona's Solar Flare feels so good because it's very clear whether or not you used it perfectly--the enemy is either stunned or they're not. If you're going for a more damage dead centre ability you'd need to make very sure you communicated strongly with a rather loud particle, imo.

A dead-center bonus? That might feel really good if its hard to land. Plus it would make triggering Mage Chains stun feel good - since you now have a follow up. (A dead-on W pulse damage bonus)

I tried it before I posted. It was only after the insisting occured, that I realized posting my notes might explain the issue.

I love seeing the chibi versions of the champions! Cute-desu-ne!

The Spectral Ahri skin is an interesting idea. I'm very impressed with the execution of the art piece as well. cool!

Pretty awesome process! keep it up~

So I played around with this ability. Here's a link to my analysis!

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...77849#37777849

The last few suggestions have been really fascinating. There's a ton of creativity on display, from the variations on orbital laser to the ideas about making siege mode a toggle stance.

I think that these kinds of ideas are fun abilities. One in particular jumped out at me - the idea of a charged spell that narrows and increases in intensity. It's a solid idea that can totally work on a league champion.

However, as a designer, my job is to filter through all of the ideas provided - good or bad, and choose the ones that work best on this character. I really am in love with the ability, but in this case I believe it is the wrong one for Xerath (despite the tight thematic hooks!) because a different problem occured and its solution is testing very well.

First, let me walk you though the steps of how I got there.

Problem:

With siege mode swapped to the ultimate slot, Xerath's ability to poke in lane was dramatically diminished in early lane testing. Similarly, without a small cooldown, Xerath was at risk when trying to contribute to team fights without Locus of Power.

Analysis
Because most of Xerath's harassment in lane was a result of W -> Q combos, it is probably acceptable for Xerath to be able to harass from longer ranges than equivalent champions. However, Xerath's siege mode provided a clear, vital telegraph to the enemy that a long-range attack is about to happen.

Similarly, Xerath mostly poked with Q. Xerath's E was not a major contribution to lane poke, except to setup stun -> auto combos.

Hypothesis:
Xerath's siege mode provided a telegraph. If there is another telegraph which justifies that level of long-range poke, Xerath gaining long range consistently on Q will not cause lane experiences any more negative than existing Xerath inflicts.

Resolution:
Add a Vi Q style mechanic, which allows Xerath to charge-up his Arcanopulse ability, allowing him to gain the range he had from Locus of Power in lane, assuming at least 1.5 sec are used to fully charge the ability.

------

Testing:

Feedback on Xerath charge-up Q was very positive. I had to make the initial range slightly smaller in order to make the fully-charged case update correctly on the client, but the effect was that both "snap casting" and "charge casting" scenarios feel engaging.

Caveats:

Charge-ups work best when used on 1-2 vectors of growth. e.g. Varus Q increases range and damage.

Xerath Q produced extra frustration from testers when it increased damage because they felt compelled to fully-charge Q when an enemy reached melee. Removing the damage ramp-up and giving maximum damage at all charge-times lead to a better experience.

Xerath Q with a charge-up time plus the normal trigger time, lead to complaints... from Xerath's opponents, oddly enough, that his Q was now too easy to dodge. I was able to reduce these complaints by making Arcanopulse actually trigger faster than it does on live.

Conclusion:
Charge-up Xerath Q on range only has lead to increased poke in lane.
Increased telegraphing due to the charge-up animation and visual meant the warning cursor -> damage delay can be reduced.
This feels like a solid QoL increase on Xerath Q, independent of any other changes.

-----

Problem:
Arcane Barrage is lacking in *** appeal. It is now an ammo driven AoE nuke which can be cast twice. While multi-cast damage spells are appealing, this proves to consistently be in tension with levelling Q.

Analysis:
I initially balanced Q to be short-cooldown poke damage and W to be execute style, high damage, long cooldown. Playtesting has shown that instead, players put 1 point in W, then use one charge of W to wave clear in combination with a fully ranked Q.

Adjusting the damage values higher instead meant that players would rank W first, try to kil l with it, then feel bored in lane and complain about inability to farm minion waves, due to almost no damage on their Q. In addition, the "flat" damage across the huge radius of "W" result in players on both sides claiming there was no skill in using it.

If I could make W feel more skillful to reward damage, rather than simply be a huge, long-cooldown nuke, player satisfaction would be increased dramatically.

Hypothesis:
Player suggestion of making a "focusing laser" ability may work to allow players to opt-into additional skillfulness for extra damage. If it succeeds, perhaps Xerath passive can be "hold any ability down longer to increase its range." This would eliminate the need for Locus of Power.

Results:
Focusing Laser as an ability feels great in a vacuum. Being on an ammo system lets you make a mistake and immediately try again. Unfortunately, it clashes dramatically with Xerath's kit.

Two charged abilities on one character feels excessive. Three is horrible. My initial theory that Xerath's passive could be "all abilities can be charged" is flawed. If you charge his Mage Chains spell, it feels fine to you, but unfair to the opponent. Furthermore, if you charged Mage Chains to mark the target, they are frequently out of the range of Arcanopulse. This means you must charge for another 1.5 sec to get Arcanopulse to be long enough to "pop" the stun.

If the two "charged" abilities work, holding and charging Focusing Laser to deal maximum damage feels EXTREMELY disconnected. Mage Chains stun cannot exceed 1.5 sec due to game health problems. This means that either Arcane Barrage must detonate instantly (no warning) or be very large (undodgable).

Since neither of this states allows for counterplay, the conclusion of this experiment is that multiple charged abilities on a kit does not work when interplay between the abilities is an important quality of the character's kit. The satisfaction is maximized when abilities flow together. Charging abilities do not flow together elegantly. They either are used at the front of a fight (Vi Q) where the charge time doesn't matter or to finish off a combo (Varus Q) to seal the deal with a "clutch" skillshot.

Conclusion:
Focusing Laser is a sick ability which belongs on a kit dedicated to it.
Arcanopulse charge-up leads to exciting tensions between "can I snipe him as he flees" and solves lane poke scenario on Xerath.

Focusing Laser is not appropriate for Xerath. However, the desire to be "more skillful" with landing Arcane Barrages is clearly a need that must be filled.

----

Awesome suggestion, SmellslikeCF, I'm really glad I tried it. Sometimes these things don't pan out.

However, Xerath's QoL change on Arcanopulse is testing really well - being able to overcharge its range feels really good in lane and means his team fight experience gets to be more consistent. I feel very confident this change will ship.

You assume correctly! This detection fix also effectively increases the range of Scatter the Weak very slightly for purposes of Sphere collision only.

So! As you might have guessed, I love this. (I think I mentioned that a few pages back) Here are the things I love, let me count the ways:

1) I am in love with your style. It's very different, it's exaggerated, its has an extremely unique look. It's hard to put my finger on it because it's so different, but so natural feeling. It looks like you've taken some serious art classes or possibly animation study. As my time as an artist has gone on I've noticed that what I love the most is stylized work such as this. Realism is so *yaaawn* Oh, what? We were talking about realism? Whatever.. The sort of work that you’re doing here blows anything that abides too strictly to reality away. It's gestural, communicates form, and is dripping with emotion. You're getting movement and mood out of such an economic use of line, It oozes with character.

2) I am blown away by how similar the story arch here is to what we have in our heads as of now. We haven’t yet had a chance to really explore this story too far, but you’ve taken what we started with and you’ve extrapolated it brilliantly. This is the direction I feel the story should take. It might be awhile before we can provide a decent outlet to tell more from our side of things, but this is what we were hoping people would see in the Diana arc. Something that they identified with and could piece together, even if we didn’t quite have the resources at the time to tell such an in depth tale. Right now, this, what we’re dreaming up, is all sort of head-canon. Obviously things can change depending on how we fashion our world, but I hope we are able to hit similar notes as you’ve done here!

3) I and all the people who worked closely on Diana and Leona are delighted that you see something worthy enough in the story to devote your time, talent and energy to. You have no idea how much it validates what we do when players find something in a story that resonates with them, and then act that out in whatever way they choose. Comics and stories like this, cosplay, or other forms of talented work. This tells us that hey.. maybe we’re doing something right!

This was being floated all around the office today. I must’ve gotten dozens of pings about its release, from everyone from Community, to other artists. We’re extremely delighted with this and we hope that you keep this work up!

I remember seeing one of your pieces for the Season 3 Digi Art contest. I absolutely loved it. There were a LOT of pieces in that competition, and alas, there were only a few people who we could award as winners. Your work really stands out to me, I love how much expression, emotion, and motion you manage to cram into it. I can only hope to become this expressive in my own work!

PLEASE continue doing what you’re doing. I’ve seen your fanart, comics, submissions and I really adore it all!

Also! My wife totally read the comic and told me that she got teary-eyed. Mission accomplished

This is a very cool idea that should be done somewhere, if the right character for it arises. Very cool thoughts. "Focusing Laser" is an exciting concept.

Is that his real problem? Is that his real role?

Lets start there.

When I pick Shaco (ranked draft pick only, my ap shaco mid games are normals only with team permission), I have a few goals in mind:
Early game
1. Apply immense pressure to all lanes via ganks
2. Take 2 of the enemy jungler's first 4 buffs.

Mid game
1. Control dragon
2. Push all tier 1 towers

Mid-late/late game
1. split push
2. control objectives
3. pick favorable fights as a result of split pushing.

If I can accomplish this, global gold alone puts my team significantly ahead. If not, then i likely lose, but that's no different than another jungler who cannot accomplish core goals.

Maybe Shaco is higher risk, but I personally feel like the reward is worth it. That coupled with the fact that my impact on the game feels bigger means Shaco is a great champion for my playstyle.

But that doesn't mean he's for everyone!

Glad you had fun! : )

Oops should have clarified that. It will almost work like you're suggesting.

After 3 seconds of not attacking Ashe's Focus stacks will update every second.

Timeline after not attacking looks like this at level 18:
1 Sec - 0 Stacks
2 Sec - 0 Stacks
3 Sec - 18 Stacks
4 Sec - 24 Stacks
5 Sec - 30 Stacks
6 Sec - 36 Stacks
etc...

If she has 55% Crit it will look like this assuming she starts @ zero stacks.
1 Sec - 0 Stacks
2 Sec - 0 Stacks
3 Sec - 73 Stacks (55 + 18)
4 Sec - 79 Stacks
5 Sec - 85 Stacks
6 Sec - 91 Stacks
7 Sec - 97 Stacks
8 Sec - 100 Stacks, Next attack will Crit and clear Stacks.

Beautiful work. Lovely to see it finished! The way you draw faces reminds me in an oblique way of Emily Carroll. You are in good company there.

We want to make it easier for players to find related lore and stories for champions, so yes we should do something like this.

While IronStylus is my personal champion, he is not a champion in the league of legends sense. We're only showing relationships between champions.

That's a reasonable proposal let me think about it. Irelia would definitely be greatful, that doesn't mean they have to have a close personal relationship though. Soraka doesn't feel completely comfortable amongst mortals.

Who told you???????? :/

To clarify, stacks per 3 seconds are a function of Ashe's level. At level 1 she gains 3 stacks per 3 seconds. At level 18 she gains 18 stacks per 3 seconds.

The first part is correct. If you have 30% Crit chance Focus will start stacking at 30 and you will effectively only need to charge 70 stacks.

The second part is wrong. Focus stacks do not give crit chance like they used to. If you have 99 stacks of Focus you get +0% crit. If you have 100 stacks of Focus you get +100% crit.
Ashe doesn't have to be "standing around doing nothing" to stack Focus. Only autoattacks cause it to stop stacking, using Volley and other spells does not. That said you are right that it is not the best passive out there for the teamfight scenario. I would respond that it really isn't intended to be. She has 600 range, great base AS, R, and perma-slows for teamfights. Focus will however still give her the odd bonus crit in late-game Volley kiting situations.

IMO Ashe as a whole is in a pretty good spot. She sees decent play and maintains a decent win rate across all elos while also being a niche pick in the competitive environment. Her kit has clear strengths and weaknesses and offers Ashe players many opportunities for extreme high moments.

What is NOT in a good spot is Focus, Ashe's passive. As far as the majority of Ashe players are concerned it provides one singular moment of play and power to Ashe over the duration of the entire game. This is during the level one team fight/lane engagement. For the rest of the game the Ashe player tends not to notice or care about Focus and if she does notice it she feels as though she has no way to be proactive and take advantage of the power it is providing. Not cool.

So what to do? CHANGE IT OF COURSE! Here's something CertainlyT and I just put into testing:

Ashe gains 3/6/9/12/15/18 stacks of Focus for every 3 seconds spent not attacking. At 100 stacks her next attack is guaranteed to crit. Her Focus stacks will then reset to her current Crit Chance.

Note - Attacking no longer causes Ashe to lose focus.

The goal here isn't to do a massive Focus overhaul but instead make a lighter change that turns Focus into a binary mechanic that you can plan and play around in lane. If you have full stacks of Focus you get a free crit on your next attack. If you have 90 stacks of Focus then go hide in a bush for 6 seconds, get Focus, and R+W+Crit the enemy Sona.

FlGHTING WORDS

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooOOOOooOoOoOooO OOOOooooo



oooooo.....

Contrary to popular opinion, Rioters' forum avatars are chosen for them based on a wide variety of metrics, loosely measuring the effect of that Rioter's proficiency with what's represented in the chosen avatar.

We actually just needed to nerf RiotGenzer.



*All of this is a lie

Looking at the crash information from those reports it looks like you are failing to load the game audio, causing you to crash.

If the repair tool hasn't worked I would suggest re installing the game from scratch, make sure to delete the old files before you reinstall. (C:\Riot Games\League of Legends)

Some cool ideas in here (and some crazy ones too heh - MS for RoA users pls no). We're currently discussing AP itemization (and just Dominion itemization in general) right now so we'll take these into consideration. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

ps- If you haven't seen the sticky regarding tear and RoA changes then check it out.

One of the benefits of posting factional associations is that it can help clarify things like this. By posting Zaun as Blitzcrank's faction we're saying we think there is some connection there. That can prompt further discussion, and speculation.

I agree we could do that, but I think that would create a not-great experience for people browsing the web site. What you're proposing makes perfect sense for an information database, but would make for an inconsistent browsing experience.

You might want to check the site....

We decided to draw the line at the major factions because too many names might be confusing at the Champion level.
However, what if we had a Freljord symbol, and then you clicked on it to get information on the Freljord (including who is a member of each tribe). That way, the extra information is there for players who want it.
That's the direction I'd like to see the web site go.

Right we are actually going to shift her origin to have more of a Shurima tie (but you have all figured that out already haven't you).

But it's a priming experiment! What else would we call it but Optimus?

I can see that perspective, the current thought is that though Malzahar is from Shurima he is no longer concerned with Shurima. We are still discussing this however so it could change.

We are discussing adding tooltips with some additional context to explain relationships. Tooltips have problems though. They need to be really short, which means they can't be particularly satisfying. Similar to one liners in bios, they deliver not much information, with even less context. They also spoil potential stories - why write a story about twitch and zac if the tooltip has already revealed their relationship? Tooltips also limit player speculation. We see value in letting players explore relationships, and that may help us decide what stories to focus on in the future.
The jury is still out on this one though....

I may or may not be in depending on if pwyff is not or is in. In that order.

l MAY OR MAY NOT BE IN THIS WHO KNOWS

So awesome! Loved it!

I just started playing Diana, so this got me all kinds of excited.

Hmm, so you're crashing in-between champion select and the loading screen? Does the loading screen(where everyone's champions are shown) even show up?

The beta site has been updated

http://beta.na.leagueoflegends.com/

We're now listing champions with two factional affiliations form, for example Cassiopeia is listed as Shurima/Noxus

This is a temporary measure, we are going to add in a more graphical representation of factions in a future update to the site. We're also going to list enemy factions as well.

Thanks for your help in testing the beta site! Let us know if you find any other problems, I believe we've fixed the majority of them.

What are item sets?

Item sets are a way for you to create new recommended item pages that will show up in the item shop when you play.


How do I make item sets?

Select the item sets tab in your profile. Add a new page and start dragging items into it. You can create new blocks so that you can organize your items by offensive, defensive, jungle, or whatever you think of. When you save your page it will be available in-game through the item shop.


Does this save to my account?

Currently, item sets will only save to your local machine, but we want to get server-side saving to you soon. We know that this will be much better for players when they can use the feature across multiple computers, and we're working to deliver that. The server-side version will take some time since it requires additional platform work, and we want to make sure we don't impact service stability.


How does this work with community-made recommended item builders?

Recommended item pages created using 3rd party tools should still work. They can co-exist with the ones created using the item set feature, but you will not be able to use the Item Sets feature to edit your 3rd party sets.


Can I have more than one item set per champion?

Yes, you are able to select as many champions as you'd like to be associated with an item set. You can also opt to make your item set available for all champions if you prefer.


What does this look like in game?

The recommended tab now has a drop down. Custom item sets directly associated with the Champion you are playing will appear first in the drop down, followed by recommended items, followed by more general item sets and sets that are associated with multiple champions and maps.