Patch 14.15 Preview Matt Leung-Harrison @RiotPhroxzon

Boots

  • For a long time, defensive boots have been too good in high levels of play (especially) while being unattractive in lowers levels
  • This often results in mirror matchup defensive boot laning phases in midlane where neither player is able to die and they opt to farm it out instead
  • At the same time, boots have been very strong for their cost, leading to unintuitive optimizations to prioritize boots over Epic components that are mainly only engaged in high levels of play (further leading to this effect).
  • We want to reduce the potency of all boots, make early MR components weaker as Mercs is disproportionately strong relative to other options (and therefore buffing the relative value of HP in these cases that are more available to tanks and fighters).
  • Some MR items that need it will be getting buffed to compensate, however we expect the MPen nerf to sorcs to also not hit MR itemization for tanks, fighters too hard
  • We also want to keep the Sorcs/Lucidity choice structure intact

ADC Ecosystem

  • While we think individual champion changes and absorb life changes from last patch will help here, we’re following up with further changes to bring ADC’s early game down (Pro has been mostly playing on 14.13 without 14.14 changes)
  • This includes nerfs to Statikk, Kraken, Fleet early healing to reduce the power of the 1 item spike
  • We’re also reverting a portion of the %attack reduction on Steelcaps to make Fighters and Tanks more resilient to ADC’s later in the game
  • We believe these will be meaningful hits to some of the double ADC comps we’re seeing in (especially) very high MMR play

AP Systems

  • We would like to balance around the tuning of Fated Ashes and Liandrys/BFT for now, so we are not riot specialing champions
  • We believe it’s close and don’t want to overnerf this playstyle (especially for AP JG) because it’s “different”
  • We’re hoping that over time it will pay benefits in making the jungle role more diverse and increase the number of viable team comps
  • However, we believe some of the other AP items are not up to scratch like Cosmic Drive, Stormsurge, etc. that are not primarily used by the already strong Liandrys users, we’re simply bringing the weaker portions of the system up to par

Decline Button Abuse

  • We’re making some changes to the Decline Queue button in 14.15 to reduce incidences of queue sniping and disruptive behavior in this space in general
  • We’re reducing the number of declines you are able to do in a row without getting a lockout and some changes to how declines are counted in a party
  • We’re increasing the lockout for players who are engaging in a multi-decline pattern
  • We think it’s reasonable to miss a queue pop, even 2 to get food and or a drink, but not so many that you’re making the matchmaking experience worse for the other 9 players

Arena

  • There will be a variety of arena changes this patch coming to freshen up the experience, including some small adjustments to Koi Pond to make it less favorable to stat-checky comps and a variety of new items and augments
  • There’s too many changes to list, so check out the patch notes

Will talk about champions tomorrow!