Riot Pwyff Chats About 4.17 Forecast

Spinning these Patch Forecasts back up as more changes come hurtling to the PBE. In the future we'll be experimenting with the forecast to see what's the best way to communicate pre-PBE changes, but for now we've got some neat things on the way that we wanted to talk about.

The overarching narrative for this patch is to reduce stagnation in the live environment by targeting highly banned champions and (finally) looking at those champs who make for a low-counterplay game (looking at you Talon). Speaking to the latter (low counter play dudes), it's worth mentioning they've always had low counterplay, but that we've traditionally let them be due to their low visibility and (occasionally) lack of current-meta strengths. More below!

Viktor

There's also the GLORIOUS EVOLUTION of Viktor with his gameplay update (PBE friends, check that that feedback thread: http://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-gameplay-feedback/KiVchOFE-central-feedback-thread-for-viktor-gameplay-update)

• AP on each upgrade of the Hex Core reduced to 20 from 25 (Perfect is now 168 AP from 183)
• Base damage on Q empowered attack changed to 20~210 from 15~250
• Augment E explosions start faster (0.25 seconds faster to be precise)
• BUGFIX: Q empowered attack properly procs Lich Bane
• BUGFIX: Q empowered attack no longer works on structures
• BUGFIX: Put back missing Siphon Power shield particles on Creator Viktor skin
• BUGFIX: Creator Viktor's Death Ray makes a distinct sound again
• BUGFIX: Fixed R becoming too chaotic 

Soraka

The still-glorious-but-not-named-glorious evolution of Soraka with a larger gameplay update of her own (PBE friends, once again: http://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-gameplay-feedback/HitgrQNm-soraka-rework-feedback-thread ).

There are a few oppressive champions out there who have been climbing the ladders in terms of ban rates, play rates, and win rates, and we've finally decided to get into the weeds to make them a bit healthier to play against. Between 4.17 and 4.18 you can expect some small changes to champs like Akali, Talon, Yasuo, and Fiora (oh man Fiora), with most focused on reducing some in their low-counterplay abilities (maybe not eliminating, but reducing at the very least).

Speaking of strong dudes, there's a few more on our radar that we wanted to address specifically:

Nidalee - Cat lady's doing pretty well in all levels of play, specifically when she's thrown into top lane as a low counterplay bruiser-bully. We're looking for ways to reduce some of Nidalee's high AD / auto-attack focused strengths while maybe giving some love back to her AP bruiser / AP burst builds.

Tristana - Don't really need to say much beyond this, but Trist's pretty good right now. Specifically her early / mid-game tradeoffs just aren't being made when she's got such a monster lategame potential. We're looking for ways to fix this, specifically by adding windows to actually beat her up throughout the game.

Kha'Zix: As an opportunistic assassin, Kha'Zix's gone back to his missile-bugging days of prioritizing W to poke away at people. Given W's got tons of utility already piled on top of it (slow, vision, aoe), we're a little concerned that as missile-bug picks up, Kha'Zix will go back to losing a lot of his counterplay, especially since he can poke for high damage on grouped up individuals. We'll be keeping a close eye on Kha'Zix as our changes develop, but if he needs help assassinating people, we're prepared to give him some love in those areas!

Rammus - Not really a nerf or a huge buff, but just in case anyone mining PBE files gets confused, we're making it so that Powerball and Defensive Ball Curl can now overlap by 1 second, so if you use one to cancel the other you get 1 second to consider your mistake before it actually happens.

LeBlanc - LeBlanc changes! Since we removed the silence from her sigil of... malice, LeBlanc hasn't been in the best of places. We're looking for ways to give LB a bit more power in a healthy way, so we're talking more deception and cleverness rather than more damage.

And that's it for this forecast!

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