Being consistent in and of itself isn't a bad thing - Alistar or Malphite pulling off consistent initiation means that you can come to understand the value they bring as a teammate and start to build expectations around that consistency. Consistency is just what it sounds like - how often you can rely on a champion pulling off a specific output.
We talk a lot about consistency and reliability (it's mentioned in these patch notes alone about 6 or so times), so let's take a context-break to dive deep. This patch, it's all about taking down the consistency at which GP hits lategame. No stranger to the Bounty Board (or whatever Patch Notes are in Bilgewater), we've taken a long hard look at Gangplank to find changes that don't just feel like we're picking at threads every two weeks.
Patrick "Scarizard" Scarborough ChampionsĬharm no longer stops dashes in their tracks. We'll continue to monitor the game's mobility creep over the next few patches, but this is our first push toward solving what could become a larger problem.Īnd that's it for us! Check out all of the patch note goodness below, and we'll see you on the Rift, taking Warlord's Bloodlust on every champion and living like a true viking. Zooming around the rift is cool and all, but the abundance of bonus movement speed is skewing the early game into a sonic-speed arms-race of who can stack it more, faster.
So what snapshots do we have today? We've got heaps of changes to individual marksmen, some nerfs to top-tier pro play outliers, and a holistic reduction of movement speed. For us, game balance is an ongoing journey - meaning that at any given moment, you may be seeing a snapshot of an ongoing, iterative investigation. For example, if our goal was 'make X champion stronger and healthier' but the character became stronger and more frustrating, we'd prefer to solve the newly-created frustration than simply reverting everything. However, when we take on balance work for a champion, the changes that make it to the patch notes often have more than one goal in mind. If our goal was only to make champions stronger or weaker, reverts (or partial reverts, like Zed's changes in 6.3) are a reasonable approach. What gives? Why not just revert the changes? To which we'd respond, “Just wait til' you get a load of it on Olaf!” We'd then ask why you’re talking to your computer (or mobile phone), but there’d be no response because we’re all just figments of each each other’s imagination.Īs you ascend the mountain of context beneath this foreword, you might notice some champions like Ryze and Kog'Maw receiving buffs or nerfs despite having just gotten the opposite the patch before. “But I love healing in combat!” you might say.
Welcome to Patch 6.4, the one where Warlord's Bloodlust is useful.