Aggiornamenti live sulla patch 9.13

Sylas will still be getting some longer term attention from @Squad5lol but we took some of his changelist to buff him this patch. Attack Damage :: 58 >>> 61; HP per Level :: 85 >>> 95; Kingslayer (W) Base Damage :: 60-180 >>> 65-205. #lifeofapatch

Today is our last day to check in changes for 9.13 so we will be locking down all of the numbers. #lifeofapatch

New day, new Akali to test:

Starting off today doing some prep work for preseason. Probably going to be heads down in this until morning playtest. #lifeofapatch

SONA NERFSSSSSSS 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Swain CL that is super subject to change and likely will. My initial thoughts on it in following tweets.

tfw @RiotBlaustoise solo kills me and gets up from his desk to run over and dab on me IRL

MID PLAYTEST UPDATE: Neeko bugged out so I had to swap to Morg and now I'm inting my brains out.

SR team Ritual #5: State of the Game
D+0: Patch goes Live.
D+5: Data has been gathered (win rates, ban rates, runes choices, etc).
D+8: Next Patch content is Locked (it will go through QA and Deploy)
D+14: Patch goes Live

On D+6 we do a "State of the Game" meeting

Coming out of the "state of the game" meeting we added a few tasks to 9.13:
Buffs: Randuins Omen, Sylas, Syndra, Ornn, Tristana, Leona
Nerfs: Essense Reaver, Sejuani, Karma, Sivir, Sona
#lifeofoapatch

About to play against @RiotBlaustoise in the midlane. He's playing Akali and I'm playing some Neeko. Let's see how he does. #lifeofapatch

Updated Akali list in for playtest this evening. @RiotBlaustoise playing it this time. Since last time, less change to the passive MS mechanics and some more emphasis on energy refund across the kit. Need to take a more deliberate look at passive damage next. #lifeofapatch

Evaluating nerfing or buffing Ryze post-9.12 changes #lifeofapatch

oh no they’re nerfing MY mains 😐 #lifeofapatch

stay tuned for behind-the-scene vids and pics of today's state of the game! aka the meeting where we decide the bulk of who'll get buffed or nerfed in 9.13 😋🤣😇😉😶🤭

I had a chance to playtest the Akali changes and give @RiotRepertoir feedback. Some clear things to iterate on but I overall liked the "safety down -> damage up" direction. #lifeofapatch

Since we're doing the #lifeofapatch thing, here's the Akali thing I began work on this week, including images of the internal e-mail I sent detailing the work (typos and all).

1: Current Balance Metrics
2: Design Considerations
3: Changes

Nothing is final. This isn't tuned.

And to round out our bigger mechanics' changes for the patch, @RiotJatt's Udyr list (numbers subject to change): #lifeofapatch

Think this is what @RiotRepertoir is going with for Pyke (numbers subject to change): #lifeofapatch

Today's loc lock (we lock our patterns down so tooltips can be updated across the world). That normally means no new big mechanics shifts. Numbers are always subject to change, though. This is how my Illaoi list is looking: #lifeofapatch

Today is "loc lock" for patch 9.13 so we have to finalize all changes that would require us to update tooltips. I'll do a final check on Illaoi, Pyke, and Udyr. #lifeofapatch

Thanks for all of the feedback and conversation around Swain everyone! It's all super valuable to me - the suggestions, the concerns, all of it.

Just finalized our Mordekaiser Micropatch list (image below). He was a real strong metal man. Now it's in the hands of @RiotKingCobra and our engineers to get it out to players.

I'm finalizing a new changelist for Swain today that I hope to share with you all soon. To set expectations - it is a lot more power up than the previous one so it also contains some nerfs as well in order to compensate for the additional power and reliability. Stay tuned!

So Morde is looking strong, we're working on a micropatch nerf for later today. @LoLSotere is figuring out a pitch and we'll review it before putting it out. #lifeofapatch

At the end of the day, I'm probably just going to take 100-200g off RoA's combine cost for 9.13 and call it good for now.

I usually like starting at more dramatic opportunities on these types of projects when there's something known to fall back to.

Another thing I've been considering but probably won't have a ton of time to do in the near future is an improvement to how Lifeline works. All those items feel pretty hacked together, and they're limiting in a pretty uninteresting and unsatisfying way.

Still slow burning at some item work and tossed Rylai's into the mix since it seems like it fits as a tanky ap item.

For now, I'm happy to keep chipping away at this and prepare some good stuff for preseason, but maybe we can squeeze something in sooner.

Got "autofilled" to jungle in this evening's playtest. Playing Amumu. I don't think I've played this champion since season 2 so this can only end well. :^) #lifeofapatch

We're not going to do any micro-patching today. We'll look at 9.12 data tomorrow morning and see if anything warrants a reaction. Morde VGU seems OP but it's not clear exactly how much so we won't react too quickly. #lifeofapatch

First day of the patch like today, we get our very small slice of data to see how the changes landed. If anything is way off of what we expected, we consider micropatching. Will update if we see any outliers today. #lifeofapatch

Patch 9.12 is live! I'm currently going through the bug megathread on reddit and reviewing the bugs that were reported there. The first one I planned to look at was the Yuumi mana cost bug, but it turns out the folks on Champions already have a fix prepared for it!

Watching @LoLSotere play Swain in tonight's playtest. At the point in the game he's at he has 55 stacks and is dealing about 150 more damage than he would on live with R2. 👀👀

Our playtesters are so good. I very minorly modified the angles at which Illaoi tentacles spawned (so I could fit an extra one in for the dream 6 tentacle case) but forgot to note it. Got caught in the next game. Time to find a better solution. #lifeofapatch

Spent the last hour learning how to implement this little guy to track how many souls Swain has collected. Surprisingly tricky. It was difficult for playtesters to give feedback on the direction when they didn't have a way to see how many souls they collected. #lifeofapatch

During Lightning Talks, the team has to frequently stop themselves from talking about one specific thing forever. So they time themselves and vote to see if they should give the topic two more minutes (or not) in this session #lifeofapatch

Even though patch 9.12 will go live tomorrow, we are well underway on patch 9.13 work. I have an Udyr change in testing for 9.13 to help close the gap between Phoenix and Tiger stance, as well as give Udyr good skill points to spend at lvls 16, 17, and 18. #lifeofapatch

SR team Rituals #5: Daily Playtests
Twice a day, we play a game of "simulated solo Q" (no coms)
We focus on the latest iterations (not yet live)
Post-game, we gather feedback: play as, play against, systems, items, runes.
This is a central piece to build the best patch possible.

Updated my Mordekaiser release plan with some additional day 1 options. His clear in tonight's playtest seemed a lot more reasonable (but still good). #lifeofapatch

Pyke is getting some attention to make his output in a solo lane more than an unassailable sustain monster. That work's going alright, and it seems like there are several options on it, but none of them stand out as clearly best.

We've got some preseason support item work underway that's looking pretty good. It's a bit of a slow and steady burn, but we could probably show some early stuff on it during the patch cycle.

We're looking to resolve some of the solo queue tension involved with sharing buffs between junglers and laners, so we're kicking around a few ideas on how to dig into that space. Probably won't be delivering anything until preseason, however.

In a similar vein, we're giving a look at standardizing ward timings and durations, especially the stealth varieties (wards, trinkets, klepto wards), but we decided on Thursday that it's not something we want to push into the current season. So preseason it is (if it makes it).

I showed some stuff late last week on Rod of Ages that I think is going pretty well, but for whatever reason, the tooltip formatting on the item has actually been a pain, so it's been a bit cumbersome to get cleaned up. Might get something on PBE this week.

Little update on where the 9.13 patch is at (in a not so organized fashion, sorry)
#lifeofapatch

Illaoi's got some improvements coming through to hopefully QoL her up a bit.
@RiotKingCobra has gotten a few tests in on a little update to Swain's R.

Illaoi list we're actually looking at and got into playtest this evening. Liking a good chunk of these but as always we'll modify and cut some. #lifeofapatch

Oh boy - a rare opportunity - I'm playing Cassiopeia in tonight's playtest and building @RiotRepertoir's changed RoA. @riot_captain is gonna give Swain a try in top lane. #lifeofapatch

Oh, one thing that I definitely want to do is allow Swain to drain invisible units. Sorry, Akali. 👀

For context on the R2 mid game tuning: On live a 5 stack rank 2 R2 from Swain with 124 AP (how much I had in a playtest) would do 430 damage. Current testing R2 tuning results in 630 damage.

Having a lot of productive conversation with @MarkYetter about Swain. Expect to see different ideas and iterations shared on here. Doubt we'll ship anything in 9.13 - want to make sure we land on a direction that feels right. #lifeofpatch