I gotta say, some weird stuff gets dredged up every now and then. This is definitely that.

Little did y'all know, the jaws theme plays whenever Meddler enters a room

We're still looking to hire a bunch of people in Sydney

*Jaws theme*

Again guys, I just want to emphasize that this thread is a purely personal curiosity.

Not asking on behalf of Riot, despite the reddit thread title ;P

Edit: that said, please continue sharing! I always enjoy the opportunity to better understand the player base

Yeah, Team Diana and others think there's some opportunity in Targon. We've set it up for tension and even possible resolution. I like to stray away from complete resolution though, I like it when drama and conflict continue to cycle.

I'm not sure I'd make another lunar champion. The situation is ripe for someone to appear in between the two of them, but exploring that is probably a long way off. My brain leans towards an individual/power who causes Leona and Diana to either unite or reconcile, or possibly to facilitate the destruction of both.

There obviously was some sort of society which existed that encompassed both the sun and the moon, there's a lot of opportunities to see what either remains of that once possibly united tribe, or what might seek to eliminate them both.

Who knows?

hey folks,
Thanks for all the passionate responses. It'll take some time for me to comb through them.

Either way, I am not a designer. Just curious if everyone had the same sorta nostalgic love for it that I do

evidently not ;P

No idea.

My personal opinion is that you could probably do something fun in a dual Noxus/Demacia thing. Showcase that tension.

As for Ionia, yeah, I think that's ripe territory where we could explore post-occupation reconstruction and resurgence.

All sorts of fun conflicts!

Well, they've got about 15 minutes. After that I'm off to dinner with the wife, RiotTeaTime, RiotSilver, Ohmikegoodness, and his lady to go see Star Trek.

Get it while the gettin's good!

I think a Mount Targon event would be super fun. I can think of some neat ideas. We need the content, story, and reason to support it however. It has to accomodate those that find value in story, but also widely appeal to those who are more surface oriented and don't delve too deep into the IP. It has to be significant to both, I think it can be, but time will tell.

Honestly, I'd love to do this. I'd love to make a pillar of the story line and express it with a content bundle like this. Not sure when this would be realistic, but anything is possible if we feel it's a worthy enough endeavor.

Again, it all comes back to the need for such skins to be on the surface extremely compelling. The story aspect would be pivotal, but the real meat is in how appealing things are to the majority of the players who don't engage in the story side of things.

I'm pretty sure it can be done, it's a matter of when the best time to do it is and how we decide to allocate the resources necessary.

This made me lol

Yes, yes. Some stuff is in the works! I'm on it.

Morello has spoken to the Dragon Master Swain thing. We all agree it's a very strong theme that has good potential to maximize the experience that Swain has. He's a mage who transforms into an animal. That's super ripe territory.

Dragons in general are great from Western motifs like Shyvanna to Eastern ones which we should riff off of. Big firy monsters are a pretty badass trope cross-culturally.

She has plenty of opportunities for good skins that are more serious in nature. I mean, it's actually pretty difficult to do more fun or silly things with characters like her. I want to take the opportunity while this idea is fresh.

It's in, hooked up to his ultimate, and probably massively OP. We'll find out for sure in testing.

As I've said, that's the tricky thing about skins and content creation in general. Omen is a fantastic case. Tons of people wanted Omen to happen once we showed that he was once a possibility. However, since I was the artist working on him, I can tell you first hand what a disaster it was. It was not up to quality, it was extremely confusing, and it was a product which was not a worthwhile endeavor. Nonetheless, once people know about him, they asked for him regardless of the context, assumed, and theorycrafted.

I'm comfortable talking about some scrapped content because I can give the context and assurance that we can produce better.

Again, with this particular skin, even though some people might want it, it's most likely going to not be as widely appealing as we'd like, and we have to consider the cost/benefit situation.

The sun bathing/beach theme isn't strong enough to warrant such a massive artistic effort. It's a cute idea, it's not a fundamental enhancement of the character.

*click*

Like I've said, I personally have no attachment or real knowledge on the trope. If it's a legit thing, that has potential to a) have mass appeal to Ahri players, and b) hits the popular culture notes, then I'm all for it. As of now I'm not convinced, but I'm far from an expert on the matter.

I'm neither here nor there on her for the most part. I've said some stuff about her in the past, as this thread mentioned, but I'm not sure my opinion is really solidified.

No, it's not boring, it's capturing the essence of a skin's concept while making it simultaneously appealing to a multitude of players. It's perfectly logical and attainable. Good ideas shine through despite regional/cultural differences.

I'm going to see what I can do about it.

I'm very pro-DJ Sona, but I'll say that I'm not pro "Girls Generation" or K-Pop Ahri as I've seen it presented so far. Here's the reason.. If GG Ahri is indeed something globally appealing, then I'm all for it. When I first saw the posts about it I was like.. "Wait, she's an airline pilot?" I had to dig a little deeper and I'm not really cool with players having to do that just to get the base context of the skin. It's gotta stand on its own.

However, if it's something we deem as really appealing, or say that it's realy locally appealing to the South East Asian region, and it would provide a ton of value, love, and simultaneously be something worthwhile enough for the rest of the regions to appreciate on face value, then I'm again all for that.

It's the same reason I'm not for sport specific skins, North American-centric trope skins, "meme" skins, and other content that really only appeals to a niche. If our priority however achieves a) an awesome skin at face value, and then b) hits those little niche notes, again, all for it.

La Llorona Morgana, Gladiator Draven, and Special Forces Gangplank are really good examples of skins that are based on cool themes from their respective inspirational regional sources but they are, on a very surface level, just really kickass skins.

I was recently poking around the client and I noticed a little recycle button in the lower right part of my runebook.

After getting over the traumatic memories that the icon dredged up, I figured I'd wander over and see what y'all thought of it. This is an entirely unofficial inquiry...

Are any of you old enough that you remember it being The Way to get better runes?

What are you talking about? I'm telling you that barring some major issue Sunbathing Leona will be released. But again, there might be some unforeseen big issue so I can't just make a blanket statement of assurance.

I'm in no way qualified to answer pricing questions. I cannot speak to value from a conceptual, theme and art side of things.

We do honestly.

Here, this is something I think I can talk about since I feel the dust has settled around it a little.

One of the cancelled Leona skins was Leona in the ancient armor of the Solar seen in the Diana teaser. We thought of an angle that was Leona discovering the relic armor which was akin to Diana's relic armor. We found an interesting lore loophole that allowed for this because its said in her bio that only the sword and shield were passed down generationally from one avatar to another. It was an interesting way to further the story, and I've very much wanted to explore the idea of canon lore skins. Traditionally they haven't been popular but I thought there was an opportunity there.

Unfortunately, we got it in game and it very much looked like a cross between her base and the Iron Solari skin. We decided that wasn't enough of a strong theme to warrant a skin. It just wasn't really special enough.

It was discussed that maybe a way to accomplish this same idea was to eventually develop Legendary skin that felt very substantial. Leona x10 in a way. We could then anchor it to her story but still make it amazing just on the surface if a player didn't care about the story context. So, that's what we opted to do. Currently there's no skin in development for that, but its something I want to explore later as a way to help continue the story.

Yeah, I should really try to shed some light onto the process.

There's ONE BIG danger in it though. We don't want to promise something then not deliver. It's very dangerous to give so much insight or transparency into the process where we're showing everything we're doing and 1) possibly ruin surprise and interest, 2) raise expectations we can't deliver on, and 3) show or talk too much about what we create and then do throw away, because some players will indeed "want what they can't have" simply because the thing does exist in some form, even though we deem it as subpar.

It's often hard to appraise value on a skin, and we simply don't want to half ass something. And if we do make something that we feel didn't hit the mark, it sucks to have to be like, "Guys, we know you might want this thing, but trust us, it wasn't the best execution on our part, sorry!" That's the toughest part. Basically keeping something form players which we know isn't as valuable as its perceived to be externally minus the development context.

It comes down to us saying "trust us, this thing sucks", but that's hard to validate to players at times.

Oh my, that's some incentive

I de-Teemo'd the board and put something more... feathery.. on it.

Tried that. Xerath's abilities are already all "on a delay".

I think he needs something more immediate and responsive.

Cross-post, answered here!

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/...ght=ironstylus

So, here's a thing. Yes, Sunbathing/beach bash Leona will most likely be a reality barring some major issue or slotting problem. That does sometimes happen. I never want to set certainty that could be subject to change.

It's past the concept phase, having been fully fleshed out, and will move onto modeling. I reconcepted her after PAX for better readability and some other more thought-out touches. She'll probably move onto 3D very soon, then through the animation and particle pipeline. Depending on priority, this could be a few months, we'll see.

One of the reasons it's been a while since she's had a skin is because we actually brought a couple skins of hers up to the modeling phase, and plugged them into the game, but then realized they either weren't cutting the quality/theme bar, or the skin had to be bumped because of saturation of similar themes. These skins might some day come to release, but I'm not certain of that at all.

I don't want to really delve into what those skins were because at least one wasn't terribly strong in differentiation from her other skins. It might even only really equate to a model swap. I made a call to kill the skin and possibly focus on a legendary skin for her down the line that would be a much stronger theme than what I had produced. You actually have seen the beginning of that skin in one of the videos that was released about champion production. A picture had been circulated of an armored figure from the bust up that was very early on in iteration. That was a potential Leona skin, but again, in the end it wasnt very strong.

This can happen. We actually had a mecha-cho'gath finished and animated but it was really lame. We scrapped it and decided to make him a Battlecast skin which was a MUCH stronger theme. While sometimes skins can be cool, and we feel they're neat ideas, until we get it plugged into the game we don't really know if the skin will work.

Concept art can't solve all the problems up front. Concept, meaning "idea", is just that. Until our 3D brows get that thing walking round, only then can we know that it works 100%. So while it can be unfortunate that we have to kill content that we know some players will want, we want to make sure we're delivering the right thing at the right time, and these particular unreleased skins weren't hitting the bar. My hope is that we can revisit them and make them work! Who knows!

I can easily point to Gunblade limiting hybrid champion build options because whenever Gunblade has been good at had to be balanced around, we've continuously nerfed the AP ratios of the characters who could use it.

If I removed those 3 hybrid options from the game and simply increased the ratios of hybrid champions, now instead of those 3 items being their only options they now have access to every other AD or AP item in the game. It's the fact that balancing around hybrid items simultaneously forces them into those items and also takes away existing items that is so criminal here.

Unsure - we're taking it slow here. Usually highly regenerative based builds tend to favor champions who struggle rather than bullies - but that hasn't always been the case with early health items. Doran's Shield is a bit of both - so it's hard to tell what the exact results will be.

Edit: Well - I'm off. I need to actually like, eat things so that I have energy to do activities.

You're right - Wukong's probably a better example of the quintessential bruiser, were it not for his win rate, which is ridiculous - but no one seems to mind.

The amount of damage that 'W' does is annoying, I agree - but the thing that causes Renekton to be 'You must be this tall to pass' is the sustain leftover from Q. While nerfing the 'W' might be a good choice - his healing is what is cementing him as the barrier of entry.

Yes - but in somewhere in that train of thought, I screwed up and put it on Gunblade instead.

Quite frankly, it'd be pretty easy to make Atma's Impaler good (make it slot-efficient, rather than gold-efficient, given how late of an item buy it is) - but we're not altogether convinced that making Atma's Impaler good would make the game better - so we've been holding off on it.

Haven't tested it on Mordekaiser, personally. As far as internal testing goes - Mordekaiser isn't really a good test point because his weakness to lane ganks is extreme - but his power level when unganked is extreme as well.

It's Mordekaiser's fundamental dichotomy - but his strengths are crazy and he does well - but the merest hint of a gank completely destroys him.

Renekton right now serves as the 'You must be this tall to enter top-lane' champion. While he's kind of obnoxious at this role, he's not the root cause of it.

He's probably slightly too strong right now and probably needs his 'Q' nerfed a little. Otherwise, he's kind of the quintessential bruiser man - one of the few we find annoying - but not egregiously so.

This was Statikk - but in general, he felt that the Lizard item was crowding out other AD itemization and much more powerful than intended - to the point where it didn't really feel like a cool off-build from a Jungle item - and more like just a really good item that didn't have a place for Junglers anymore.

If you mean the PBE patch - they deployed something but that thing had.. and keep in mind, I'm relaying like super unspecific details because I don't know all the details, these details might even be wrong - I think it had some stability issues that they were working out due to it.

If people find Pantheon weak - we'll change him. There's a ton of ideas for Pantheon - but right now, it's not altogether clear that people dislike Pantheon or find him weak - so there's little real reason to change it. He's pretty low priority.

I'd like to take a look at him - but any changes would be more disruptive than beneficial at this point if people like who he is now.

Sure - we took away the thing that held Nautilus back, his early clear - and now his actual overpowered elements are coming into the forefront.

This is one of those cases where a 50% win rate didn't necessarily mean balanced. Something was holding him back - something unreasonable and out of the player's control (early clear) and we compensated it with extreme damage. Well, that's all fine and good, except it means roughly half your games are stomps and half your games, you are terrible. Hence the retuning - removing early weakness - but also removing this unnecessary damage.

What you're describing isn't a hybrid build - what you're describing is something closer to the split between AP / AD Tristana than a true hybrid build - and no, I don't think they have a ton of value because we have champions that do similar thing.

The challenge of a hybrid character is that they still have to use their complete kit in order to function - but that they also have a drive to increase both AP and AD statistics. Hybrid design is tricky and often what we think of as hybrid characters were just characters whose had two "designed" AP / AD builds but ended up with the same gameplay.

1. It's regarded as weak - but more likely in a decent spot.

2. Locket doesn't built out of an Emblem of Valor because it was re-designed as a sister item to Aegis of the Legion. In effect, because Locket and Aegis function so well together - we didn't initially want to introduce anything that caused the pairing to clash.

As for why Aegis builds out of Emblem of Valor now - it was some weird principle that the keystone aura item should be an aura item at all points, including lane - which is ironic given that Aegis is frequently built by the Jungler.

Nashor's tooth allows the potential for a large group of existing champions to branch out into a subtype (autoattacking) and synergizes with champions that work well with it.

However, core hybrid itemization, when balanced, does not allow either AD or AP to branch out in such a fashion. A balanced gunblade does not help any AD or AP character aspire to any aspect of their character.

As for dual penetration %, think about how much % penetration it would take to rival Last Whisper or Void Staff. You are dealing split-damage already. Thus, any advantage of % penetration is cut in half. This is mitigated somewhat by lopsided resistances of the opponent - but then it's hard to argue that Last Whisper or Void Staff wouldn't simply be better in that regard then.

That's definitely a good approach to take - the issue you run into there is that any hybrid item will then be seen as prohibitively weak by any non-hybrid character. How big an issue of that is up to you to decide - but they'll be seen as dead items by a majority of the character pool.

In a world where there was many hybrid champions - that'd definitely be the ideal approach to take. In a world dominated by more standard scaling champions - it'd be mostly taking up space in the item store.

Hopeful - but most likely it won't. For Melee to compete in the duo lane space - they have to somehow be able to farm at range and be item scaling rather than level scaling.

More hybrid items would definitely make hybrid characters stronger - which means you'd have to go back and nerf all the scaling on these characters to the point that Jax would never ever consider picking a hybrid item that wasn't from this hybrid set.

The problem we had with the old Doran's items starting with a potion is that no one ever died. Health Quints, starting potions and Doran's items created an odd environment where most people started with 650 to 800 health and a potion.

We live in a very different world now - where level 1 fights are terrifyingly brutal. Some starting items with a little bit of health to them is probably healthy in this world where max health quints and max health early in general, is very difficult to rune / mastery for.

I don't really have any context here at the moment - sorry.

The reason why this context post isn't being posted by me is because the vast majority of the changes are being handled by other people. The few changes I've made on this patch are mostly starting item oriented and the removal of Malady.

As far as I know, I think the assessment is that Hecarim doesn't need it and it's greatly increasing his dive strength and escape power. I believe that while 'E' is up, he will still ignore unit collisions however. I believe the contention here is that Hecarim is still really strong and further numerical balance without removing this strength would start to get pretty dire, in terms of nerfing his end-game survivability and damage.

Ignore Unit Collision is a terrifying fighter statistic - as I've said before when this was brought up for boots. :x

Reading your post - there's a number of following flaws:

Malady building into Lich Bane doesn't make a lot of sense - the fundamental triggers are wrong - one is contigent on spellcasts and follows a rythym based gameplay - and adding attack speed onto Lich Bane destroys the item for any champion focused on spell weaving.

Secondly, the concern about being able to build Malady early enough for the passive to matter is somewhat flawed because by the time you rush the item - you *still* don't have anything to synergize with that playstyle. A 1500 gold item that gives your attacks AP scaling doesn't work because you don't have any AP to go along with that.

While your main concern seems to be 'let Nashor's Tooth' be its own thing and that removing Malady removes one playstyle from the game - this hinges on the assumption that Nashor's Tooth is an actual existing playstyle or that Malady is an actual existing playstyle. The truth is that currently neither of them truly work individually unless they are overpowered - the goal here is to create one actual playstyle from 2 disfunctional ones. If it works, we can then see about adjusting the style so the build path or build-up is smoother if we find it interesting space.

Riot Please

If you want the bluntest expression of a hybrid character - recall Kayle's old passive which I will always miss even though it made her explode and hyperscale.

You *could* not be anything but a hybrid character with that passive. Your attack damage was ability power and vice-versa. Every item improved every facet of your character, whether you wanted it to or not.

It's blunt, crude and possibly the purest expression of what it means to be hybrid to me.

As for playstyle changes - it depends on the passives and statistics which you favored. A hybrid playstyle looks remarkably similar to every hybrid character - except for the player playing him who is familiar with exactly how he wants to build or play.

I agree with you on that - Akali as a hybrid character, is really odd because she really doesn't want to autoattack much. Nothing gives her a chance or an opportunity to - which is why I suspect the AP build is the default - and that any hybrid items created simply augment the AP build, if they're good.

I'm not sure what you could do to change that - or if making Akali more AA focused would be a good change now. It certainly doesn't fix her current problems if you made AD stronger on her.

True but items don't help bad or good hybrid design. My argument mostly rests on the fact that hybrid items hurt a well-designed hybrid rather than help it by restricting the pool of items that the character could build to have a balance of both (if that's even a goal of 'good' hybrid design.)

So we're talking about a status quo change, then

Well I know a certain Red who's getting a new icon come Monday..

To err is... human

I'm hangin' out at my desk, trying to get some work done, and I figure... "Let's go read GD"

Welp;

Convincing people that the best thing for their hybrid characters is to have no hybrid items at all is difficult at best.

The other aspect of this is that the hybrid characters we have don't actually take advantage of hybrid scaling - they need a much heavier focus on basic attacks if they were to dip into the advantages of AD.

You have a handful of characters who hybrid scale - but don't actually benefit from a hybrid playstyle of attacks and spells - hence the drive for sheer raw statistical power. They don't actually benefit from building any of the AD items - nor does their playstyle synergize with some of the more focused AP items like Zhonya's and the like. If you take a look at the line that connects Kayle, Akali and Jax, the common thread is that they almost all rely on going nuclear at some point through sheer statistical might.

It's not a fundamental difference in the problem. It's a difference in expectation.

When you pick a ranged carry - you expect to do ranged carry like things. Kill dudes with your ranged attack - harass with spells - train on people. You have a specific set of needs and you are trying to accomplish them.

Similarly, when you pick a mage - you want to kill people with abilities. You could care less for your basic attack. You hit buttons - they die in a wildfire.

However, what do you expect out of a hybrid character? The flexibility to do both - or run a range from whatever you want it to be. Focused hybrid items kill that - because they demand that you build them. You don't get to choose what range you are from 'burst caster' to 'sustained drain-tanker' - you only get to build the hybrid items because your ratios have been tuned around these inflated items to exist.

It goes against the base expectation of flexibility or 'jack of all trades' nature that the hybrid scaling seems to promise you in the first place.