Xypherous Talks Christmas Morning

Millions wake on Christmas morning and rush to begin whatever festivities are traditional in their house and home.  For some that means opening gifts, for others it means getting to work cooking a Christmas feast, while for still others it means getting on their computers and wishing all their digital friends and loved ones merry tidings.

Xypherous, one of the more well-known names in Riot Games’s design team, decided that he’d take some time out of his Christmas morning to jump onto the League of Legends forums to answer a surprising number of questions dealing primarily with the items in Season Three.

Force of Nature

He started by addressing questions about an item that is now missing from the item shop, Force of Nature.  A lot of people were surprised and confused when the item vanished from the shop, so it’s been nice to get some design perspective.

The item was removed for several specific reasons.  First, the three stats it gave were all good, but generally unrelated.  It was a rare character in League of Legends that could actually make use of all three at once, and rarely without a second or third item to gain an increased benefit (Warmog’s for the health regen, boots for the movespeed, etc) meaning that it was effectively nothing more than an upgrade for a Negatron Cloak in most instances it was seen.

Second was the overall combination effect that the different stats on the item tended to have on character builds.  When an item offers two defensive stats, both of which get stronger with other defensive items, it makes certain abusively strong defensive builds possible, builds that Riot Games does not wish to promote in League of Legends.

Magic Resistance

He also addressed the relative lack of magic resistance in Season Three.  That it’s harder to get hard-to-pierce numbers in magic resistance is without question, but he also addressed some of the reasons why this is so.

Xypherous pointed out that magic penetration has actually lowered slightly from Season Two, and that the maximum late-game ability power on most champions has likewise gone down by a noteworthy amount.

The point he seemed most keen on making, however, was that making it harder to buy magic resistance in huge amounts makes the champion abilities which magic resistance significantly more valuable, making those abilities and the champions who use them stand out more for it in the League of Legends.

Flask and Pots

Someone also pointed out how much early-game health regeneration is gained from taking an initial flask and health potions.  Xypherous agreed that the specific starting build was stronger than they wanted or expected, but that they like how the separate pieces of it work individually, so they’re going to wait and see if the build is strong enough to need to be corrected or if it is more of a niche choice.

Attack Speed Slows

While discussing itemization, someone points out that Frozen Heart has remained largely unchanged, making it the only truly reliable attack speed slowing effect now that Randuin’s Omen’s active ability does not reduce attack speed any longer.

The response was that having so many possibilities for reducing the stat meant that in order for the attack damage builds to be viable they had to be strong enough as to be unstoppable if the other team did not build specifically to stop them, and that it tended to make the overall game more balanced to have attack speed debuffs limited.

Liandry’s Torment

Liandry’s is pointed out as an item that seems meant for long-range poke but has a clause that makes that poke damage far diminished in the item on its own.  Xypherous reveals that Liandry’s was intended to be a sister item to Rylai’s, which seems like an obvious conclusion given their synergy.

It also gives certain champions, Dr. Mundo being the primary example, the ability to shift their build.  He normally builds tanky, but adding a Liandry’s to his build gives Mundo a very dangerous potential poke on his cleavers.

Another example given was Brand, who could use the combination of Liandry’s with the damage from his passive to gain a poking capability where he would normally be building purely for burst damage.

The Bottom Line

Build variety is the name of the game, and the recurring theme of Xypherous’s words.  Most of the items brought up were items that could promote particularly broken builds that would unbalance League of Legends in one direction or another, or would create specific builds that would steer the game either towards a static meta or towards making certain champions or champion archetypes significantly less viable.

It’s rare to see someone like Xypherous spend so much time answering questions so candidly.  It’s good to see Riot’s developers continuing to recognize how important it is to communicate with their community.

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