New AD Assassin Item in internal testing
Axes has hit the boards to discuss an upcoming AD Assassin focused item that is currently going through internal testing and something they hope will hit the early PBE next year:[hide]
"Hi folks,
One of the unintended side effects of the Marksman item update was the splash damage to other classes who used Last Whisper. Specifically, Assassins and many light fighters had been using LW as a powerful multiplier on their damage, regardless of who they were fighting, and LW’s updated form just doesn’t help kill their primary targets (squishies).
Just wanted to share where that work is going. We’re producing a new to-be-named item for AD Assassins with the intent of providing them with a noticeable damage boost to replace the old Last Whisper in their builds.
Caveat: This item probably won’t be on the PBE until next year, but I wanted to get some early feelers out there with this post. We’re currently in internal playtests on it.
The item:
New Assassin Dagger
- Recipe: Serrated Dirk + B.F. Sword + ??? gold (over 3000 gold total, still fine tuning)
- +75 Attack Damage
- +5% Movement Speed
- UNIQUE Passive: +10 Armor Penetration
- UNIQUE Passive: Basic attacks on an enemy champion apply Nightfall (60 second cooldown).
- Nightfall: After 2 seconds, deal 25% of the target’s missing health as physical damage. If the target dies before Nightfall ends, the cooldown is refunded.
The main goal here is provide an assassin item that those champions will actually care about, ensuring they have the right hooks in the item system to feel good and scale appropriately with as few non-assassin abuse cases as possible. Secondary goals are providing a multiplier that is more powerful if you aren’t snowballed (a super fed Talon will 100-0 his primary target before Nightfall triggers, so he’ll be using the trigger on a lower priority opponent often without the support of his full combo). Additionally, this provides provides a fallback pattern where a failing assassin can still be useful to their team, e.g. by cooperatively killing targets they otherwise might ignore, or using this item as a multiplier on teammate damage.
– Riot Axes"
As for if this item ends up being too powerful on ranked marksman, Axes added:
"Quote:
First thing that comes to mind is, what's "What's stopping adc's from getting this item?" Most adc's can do enough burst to make use of the nightfall passive and the rest of the stats work great on them. The more castery adc's (Lucian, graves) will like the massive amount of ad it gives as well.
If it's a problem on ADCs, it'll be Melee Only.
he continued:
"Quote:
Can it please start as melee only?
Sorry about being unclear. If we think that it will be a problem on ADCs - and we are vetting this pretty extensively - it will be melee only when it ships."
As for the interaction with tanks and why to not just give them pen, Axes noted:
"Quote:
What….? No, oh god no!
First off, this hits tanks REALLY hard. And they souldn't be hurt the most by assassin right?
Second, why give bonus damage on an assassin weapon. Wouldn't resistance pen just be better on them.
I can not believe this was even remotely okayed….
Understand the concern. Internally we haven't found that this hurts tanks - "percent missing damage as physical" means that your armor double counts against it (once for the damage that meant you were missing health in the first place, and again against the proc), and flat pen is probably the most misleading stat in the game - it makes you better at killing low armor targets more than it makes you good at killing high armor targets. You buy a chain vest to counter a serrated dirk, you don't buy a serrated dirk to counter a chain vest.
There are some coop kill cases with teammates that are pretty effective, but you need someone who can do the bulk of their health bar before this gets really threatening."
He continued:
"To be clear, I think the goal of an assassin is to kill low defense, high priority targets, and I think this item preferentially helps them against those targets much more than it helps them against other targets."
When asked if the effect can be cleansed with QSS, he noted:
"Quote:
Is it ''QSS-able''? I like the way the item sounds, though I think Zed will be left out since his ult usually is the execute and nothing to be added is needed. Sad.
It will be, yes.
Current impression internally is that Zed actually likes doubling down on this effect, but could be wrong on that."
He continued:
"Quote:
Holy cow. If they are missing half their hp they will be dealt 12.5% physical damage (before defense bonuses obviously).
Does this imply a buff to deaths dance allowing bruisers/ADC's to uh… bleed better?
Is nightfall an active?
If nightfall is a passive to the item when does the 2 second timer start?
to fully execute someone with this you need to do at least 80% of their hp. Is that the goal? (no defense was calcuated)
I believe Death's Dance has buffs on the PBE.
Nightfall is a passive. It starts on basic attack. You have no control over this - if the item is not on cooldown, your next basic attack WILL apply it.
To fully execute someone with this you'll need to do considerably more than 80% of their HP unless they've built no defenses because armor counts against the Nightfall proc - but yes, the item requiring you to nearly burst someone out to get full value is a goal."
When asked why the new NIGHTFALL effect is a passive and not an active, Axes commented:
"If it's an active, you have perfect control over it, so anyone who likes the stats can use it effectively (Yasuo just makes sure he applies it when he has you down to ~20% health), and it's very difficult or impossible for your opponent to make you waste it.
E.g. in playtest we've had quite a few cases where you run into someone unexpectedly in the jungle and end up applying the mark by accident - which, from the opponent's standpoint, has tended to feel like "I got him to waste a cooldown".
Or more commonly, we've seen situations where an assassin will go in and their target flashes/dashes/knockbacks them after the mark is applied, causing most of the damage from the mark to be wasted. If they didn't need the damage from the mark to kill you, that doesn't help all that much, but if they did, it can be the difference between living and dying.
tl;dr: if it was an active, it'd be hideously unfair to the opponents and good on virtually any damage dealer; as a passive, it's something both the user and their target can optimize around, and which requires your champion to have specific properties in order to use well."
In response to someone discussing assassins and afraid they are currently broken and that such an item would exacerbate the problem, Medler commented:
"If you believe assassins are broken that's all the more reason to give them items that fit their needs well and then balance around them having appropriate itemization. At present assassins rely heavily on items that are more targeted to other classes. That means bigger changes meant to affect other parts of the game will sometimes significantly affect assassin power levels, up or down. Creating items that support their patterns, while limiting strengths they shouldn't have (e.g. the ability to kill tanks) gives a lever to better balance assassins as a result."
He continued, explaining:
"Some offensive stats are much more appealing to certain builds/classes than others. Crit and attack speed for example require a champion auto attack at least a reasonable amount to be worth focusing on, while flat pen's significantly more valuable on classes with good target access who can focus down squishies. Tying effectiveness to defensive stats also tends to bar purely offensive classes from using some items (e.g. Titanic Hydra). Then there are softer ties, like base AD, that makes Triforce and other spellblade items noticeably more valuable on high base AD champions like juggernauts than others.
Forcing items to only work with certain classes is a way to hard limit problems in an item system. It does remove a lot of exploratory and experimental play though. Dictating how people play to that extent's something we'd really rather avoid where possible."
He continued:
"Every champion in the game's balanced around the item pool that's available (and vice versa). If providing a reasonable set of items for a class means we need to adjust AD ratios, CDs, mana costs etc then that's a reasonable piece of followup work.
Mirror ish match ups will be pretty sensitive to power spikes, certainly. The same holds true with generalized power though, Talon or Zed coming back to lane's with a Ghostblade or BotRK's going to dominate an opponent who's just sitting on a couple of components unless they play smart until they can get back and shop themselves. That's the nature of an item system that rewards getting more gold and reaching breakpoints first."
When asked if this new item is spearheading and sort of large assassin update, Meddler noted:
"A large scale assassin update, if we do one, would be in the second half of 2016 at the earliest. If this item, or any other factor, puts Zed or another assassin out of line we'll balance them as needed though.
One other thing that'll go out before this item is the nerf to Precision in 6.1. Assassins tend to scale harder with flat pen than any other class, so that should remove power from them more than most overall, especially given they're strong users of the tree in general (Thunderlords especially), so aren't likely to just swap to using Ferocity instead unlike some champions."
When asked about Kha'Zix specifically, Axes noted:
"I know Live Gameplay is exploring some Kha'Zix buffs. Not sure on the exact status of those, but we agree that he's in a bad spot."
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**Total Recall, or: That Time We Disabled Ranked**
Story time! [The latest Riot article](http://oce.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/riot-games/editorial/total-recall-or-time-we-disabled-ranked) includes a run down and timeline of the time Riot had to disable rank for an extended period of time during the 2015 season due to a recall bug!
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**[INTRO] Brian "FeralPony" Feeney - Live Gameplay Design Lead**
Following oodles of other designer introductions over the last week, **FeralPony** also [galloped on to the Dev Corner boards](http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/cysV88n6-intro-brian-feralpony-feeney-live-gameplay-design-lead) to introduce himself and what he is responsible for on the team:
**[INTRO] James "Statikk" Bach - Champion Update Design Lead**
**Statikk** has also [hoped on the Dev Corner boards](http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/VyuLdWhd-intro-james-statikk-bach-champion-update-design-lead) to introduce himself, his previous work, and projects he is currently in charge of heading into 2016:
**[INTRO] August "gypsylord" Browning, Champion Designer**
**Gypsylord** also [entered the fray to introduce himself!](http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/GMbEvaqv-intro-august-gypsylord-browning-champion-designer)
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**Ping-Pwn: waging war on lag for EU players**
Next up we have **Riot TMX** [with an article](http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/riot-games/editorial/ping-pwn-waging-war-lag-eu-players) on Riot Direct and how the network has been performing in EU:
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[[URL="http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/2951/2935/original.jpg"]FAN ART] "League of Legends Fan art - Tahm Kench Retreat!!" by **[Benlo](http://benlo.deviantart.com/art/League-of-Legends-Fan-art-Tahm-Kench-Retreat-578632023)**
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**New Skins** New skins for Wukong, Caitlyn, and Morgana have been added in today's build! These three skins are for the upcoming 2016 Lunar Revel !
[hide]**Radiant Wukong** (1350 RP)
Here's **Galetta** with a [bugs & feedback thread](http://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/general-pbe-feedback/Yc4spyYI-pbe-bugs-feedback-thread-radiant-wukong) for **Radiant Wukong**:
**Lunar Wraith Caitlyn** (1350 RP / Legacy)
Here's **RiotKateyKhaos** with a [bugs & feedback thread](http://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/general-pbe-feedback/mgMe9s5k-pbe-bugs-feedback-thread-lunar-wraith-caitlyn) on **Lunar Wraith Caitlyn**:
**Lunar Wraith Morgana** (1350 RP / Legacy)
Here's **RiotKateyKhaos** with a [bugs & feedback thread](http://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/general-pbe-feedback/ENoxvNdi-pbe-bugs-feedback-thread-lunar-wraith-morgana) on **Lunar Wraith Morgana**:[/hide]
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**New Ward Skin**
In addition to the new skins for Lunar Revel, we also have a new ward skin!
[Rising Dawn Ward]() (640 RP)
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**Balance Changes**
_* **Remember** *: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, and sometimes radical changes. The changes you see below may be lacking context or other accompanying changes that didn't make it in - don't freak out! These are not official notes._
[hide]***Champions***
Fiddlesticks
* Dark Wind (E) mana cost **lowered** to 50/60/70/80/90 from 60/70/80/90/100
* [[COLOR=#ff0000]**NOTE**: Still a buff vs current live value of 50/70/90/110/130]
Gangplank
* Trial By Fire (Passive)
* Damage to towers **reverted** to 50% from 25%
* Bonus AD Ratio **increased** to 1.0 from .9.
* [[COLOR=#ff0000]**NOTE**: Still nerf vs Live value of 1.2 bonus AD]
* [[COLOR=#ff0000]**NOTE**: **GP's** passive still has a few other changes on PBE, damage to towers reverted to live functionality though.]
Kalista
* [Rend](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mtq_XDwZnWk/VnXfIAgUKZI/AAAAAAAAJuo/15lAAQi5OgY/s1600/kalistae.jpg) (E) mana cost **lowered** to 30 from 40.
* [[COLOR=#ff0000]**NOTE**: Still other changes from earlier this cycle - now only refunds CD for one kill. and refunds mana cost on two+ kills. ]
Kha'Zix
* Leap (E) range **increased** to 700 from 600.
Mordekaiser
* [Children of the Grave](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mLflFxpRUcc/VnXfIaoCpVI/AAAAAAAAJuw/FT-i5ZWiRiA/s1600/morder.jpg) (R) [Tooltip updated to list actual value of health given to ghost rather than just saying 15% of Mordekaiser's maximum health]
Teemo
* Base damage **increased** to 49.54 from 47.54
* [Camouflage](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Jweqil4s5Xk/VnXpC7si4eI/AAAAAAAA2PY/bwEQYcGkYs4/s1600/camm.jpg) (Passive)
* Can now stealth while moving in brush as long as he is not taking damage.
* No longer stealths twice as fast in brush.
* Noxious Trap (R) [range [COLOR=#008000]**increased** to 400/650/900 from 300/600/900]
***Items***
***Masteries***
[Stormraider's Surge](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I3Kr-mmFmo0/VnXqanIXHKI/AAAAAAAA2Pk/MZ5tRmsi6qg/s1600/adfadfsa.jpg) (**Cunning**)
* Slow resistance **lowered** to 75% from 100%
* [[COLOR=#ff0000]**NOTE**: Stormraider's Surge has other changes added from earlier this cycle.]
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