00:04Changes to Draven, Leblanc and Vision Items in this episode of the Patch Preview
00:15Hey summoners, welcome to the Patch Preview
00:18I'm Jatt, here with game designer Pharaoh Pony to talk about some of the changes in this patch
00:22Let's start with Draven
00:23For a lot of players, Draven's been an unfair champion to land against
00:27with his unmatched early game damage and trade potential
00:29What are we doing to address that?
00:31When we were looking at Draven, we really wanted to lower his early damage
00:34but we didn't want to hit any of the abilities that make him fun, like spinning axes
00:38We ultimately ended up reworking his passive because it was adding a lot of damage at early levels
00:42but didn't offer much in terms of gameplay
00:44We saw this as an opportunity to remake Draven's passive into something more thematic and entertaining
00:49So now Draven's new passive is the League of Draven
00:51Each time Draven kills a minion or catches a spinning axe
00:54the crowd will be so impressed with his abilities that he'll gain a stack of Adoration
00:58When Draven kills a champion, he'll cash in half of his Adoration for bonus gold
01:02When Draven dies, he'll suitably be shamed and lose half of his stacks
01:06Scrapping Draven's old passive in favor of a new one might seem a little dramatic to some players
01:11Why didn't we just lower the numbers on the old passive?
01:13We tried that, but quickly realized that there wasn't a good number we could hit that would lower Draven's early
01:18power enough
01:19while still feeling impactful as a passive
01:20We really like Draven's new passive because it allows us to make the balance change we want
01:25but it also adds something that fits Draven's character as a glorious high-risk, high-reward executioner
01:30We're also making some changes to LeBlanc's Mimic and Sigil of Silence
01:34Typically LeBlanc is seen as a polarizing champion who either stomps her lane or falls behind for the rest of
01:39the game
01:39or, in some cases, both
01:42Let's start with the Mimic changes
01:43Mimic will still copy the last spell cast
01:45The difference now is that Mimic will deal damage based off of its rank, not the rank of the Mimic
01:50spell
01:51This change will allow LeBlanc to still deal solid damage even when mimicking a rank 1 spell
01:56This opens up a lot of flexibility for LeBlanc players, especially in the early game
02:00So now that more options have been opened up for Mimic, what's preventing people from mimicking Sigil of Silence every
02:05time due to its overwhelming burst like we've seen previously?
02:08Mimicking Sigil of Silence will still be a good option for LeBlanc
02:11However, most of Sigil of Silence's damage used to be up front, which meant following it up with another spell
02:17wasn't that important
02:18We've shifted some of this initial damage into the mark, so LeBlanc will have to combo her spells together to
02:23get the same effect
02:24LeBlanc will always be a powerful burst mage, but now she'll be less frustrating to play against in lane
02:29but in exchange, she'll gain increased flexibility and smoother scaling into late game
02:32Let's talk about vision items
02:34We're making a few changes to Ward's and Oracle's Elixir
02:37Ward kill gold will now be split between the player that reveals the ward and the player that kills it
02:41What's the rationale behind that?
02:43The overarching objective of these vision changes is targeting what we in the design pit refer to as vision wars
02:48Where some champions, support specifically, can get into ward battles
02:52Where they'll spend a significant portion of their gold on pink wards to deny enemy vision
02:56Of course, the opposing support will do the exact same thing, and this ends up leading to a downward spiral
03:01of wasted ward gold that we really want to address
03:03Some teams would even feed ward kills to their carries, even further perpetuating the gold sink for support players
03:09This change guarantees that supports who provide good vision control will be rewarded with gold
03:14Moving on to Oracle's Elixir
03:16It will now persist through death, although we've shortened its duration and reveal radius
03:20At the beginning of Season 3, we changed Oracle's Elixir to make it last 5 minutes or until death instead
03:25of indefinitely
03:26And now we're changing it once again, why?
03:29We think that the death timer combined with a limited duration has made this item a bit too much of
03:33a risk for teams, especially those that are behind
03:35When someone picks up an Oracle's Elixir, they tend to play passive because they're afraid of wasting the gold they
03:40just spent
03:40We want players to feel like Oracle's Elixir is an opportunity for making plays and not a defensive liability
03:45There's still a punishment for dying with Oracle's because you're wasting its duration while dead
03:49But players should feel empowered to use it to react to situations
03:53The final change we'll be talking about is the new item for Howling Abyss, the Orb of Winter
03:57For anyone who's played a game of ARAM, they'll know what it's like to play against long-range poke champions
04:01like Lux, Nidalee, or Ziggs
04:03How will this item help when facing these types of champions?
04:07Similar to when we added in Guardian's Horn to help melee champions initiate fights in ARAM, we also wanted to
04:12address the frustration that can come with fighting long-range poke champions
04:15The Orb of Winter creates a damage-absorbing shield that will refresh itself when the owner doesn't take damage for
04:20a short period of time
04:21So if you're good at dodging abilities, this will greatly increase your survivability
04:25If you're not dodging abilities at all, you'll still be dying a lot
04:28Will we see the Orb of Winter on any other game maps?
04:31Honestly, no. This item was specifically designed for ARAM
04:34While we're not actively balancing League of Legends around the Howling Abyss, we did want to alleviate key player frustrations
04:40here
04:40ARAM is by its very nature, random, and a bit unbalanced
04:43But this should at least help out when dealing with those super effective edge cases
04:47Well, that's all the time we have today
04:49But for a full list of the patch changes, be sure to visit the League of Legends website
04:52And thanks for tuning in
05:15We'll watch this panel clip
05:17We'll see you next time
