League of Designs

One update here - I'd forgotten that 9.23 was a three week patch. That means new content will be on PBE the week after next, so around the 25th.

So far we've seen her struggle outside of bot lane. Possible there are ways to make her work we haven't seen demonstrated yet, I'd expect her vulnerability to being jumped on to make jungle and top at least pretty challenging though.

It's a somewhat experimental rune, intended to bind as much to player preferences as particular types of champion. Normally we'd aim for a stronger champion audience for a piece of content like this. In this case however we concluded we should take Klepto and felt it was a good opportunity to try something we wouldn't normally as a result. I suspect it'll need at least some tweaking post release, we'll see how it goes though.

Thinking was that as a delayed CC effect giving it some zoning impact on other enemies was also appropriate. We'll see how it plays out of course but think the counterplay present there means it's not directly comparable to immediate AoE immobolizing effects.

Zilean - currently aiming for patch 9.24, so mid December.

Smaller updates - we don't have a list available to share. Generally we'll talk about each update as soon as its solid enough for discussion.

Aatrox is definitely an example of this too. At the very least I think it's important that our work on Aatrox doesn't introduce a third playstyle, splitting the audience further and making it harder to deliver for Aatrox players.

We've got people actively working on both the unresolved bugs as their main priority right now. Completely agree they're both really disruptive and frustrating to deal with.

Yeah, Quinn's a good example. I'm not personally convinced either kit delivers particularly well on the ranger + hawk fantasy, would be pretty cautious about trying a 3rd direction though if doing major work on Quinn. Would prefer we instead tried a revised version of one of the two we've already had.

We're doing well, thank you for asking. Still short on sleep, but the good moments make that a fair trade :).

Not sure Pokemon wise. We're heading back to New Zealand for the holidays, might take the Switch along so could be a good option if so.

Issues we're particularly focused on right now are inability to interact sufficiently with her in lane and too much of her power being expressed as damage. Post changes we'd still expect her to be lower interaction than many champs in lane given her design, just not as dramatically low as she currently is. Similarly she should still have some damage, just not as much, with her current damage scaling particularly a culprit.

Neurocat's investigations into Karma changes were based on our belief that the 3.5-5.9 and 5.10+ audiences were similar enough to serve together. Conclusion was however that that wasn't the case and that what looked like clear wins would actually end up being detrimental to currently engaged Karma players. Things like putting the Shield Bomb back on instead of the Haste being a good example of that.

We're generally doing simple changes in the second week of a patch now so that we've got a bit more time to see how the previous patch stabilized before adjusting anything. That means the first week of each patch gets used for more complex work like changing spell functionality meaningfully, preseason projects etc.

MF is looking strong, given preseason's days away we'll see how that lands before considering any changes. Klepto removal alone likely takes her power down meaningfully, possible other things make her stronger or weaker as well.

Winter break - 9.24 is the last big patch of the year and is currently scheduled for December 10th. We're planning on then doing a 9.24b, probably sometime around December 17th at a rough guess. We'll then have the first patch of 2020, patch 10.1, about a week into January.

Taliyah's changes have certainly left a number of current or former mid Taliyah players unhappy. I don't think that's so much about whether she's played jungle or not though but what her mid lane experience is like. The removal of Q AoE has made her much more balanceable though. Her play rate mid is low, she's certainly not weak though.

We'll see where the preseason changes as a whole leave champion balance and then adjust as needed.