League of Legends: 5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know About Patch 8.6

This October League of Legends (LoL) will enter its 9^th year since its release in 2009 and also entered its 8^th season in January of this year. Despite LoL’s growing length of history it still has plenty of content to offer its worldwide following. Riot Games has been following a bi-weekly patch release schedule so even though there has been no set release date, we can assume that the latest 8.6 Patch will be ready for download sometime around March 21^st. In order to find information in the ongoing 8.6 Patch I read almost every patch update on the Public Beta Environment (PBE) Servers, so here are the 5 things that you need to know about the 8.6 Patch.

1. No Invite, No Problem

Open parties are coming to Patch 8.6. So what does this mean for you and your follow Summoners? Once you pick a queue in an “open party” your friends will be able see that as well as the number of open spots that are available. Essentially, with one click your friends will be able to join and dominate the Rift. However, that is not the only thing that the open party is going to offer. Riot is also adding voice chat. Once you queue together you will be able to hear your teammate(s) in-game and if you join their party, then you will be able to share the excitement (or misery) for as many games as you play with them. Can’t hear them? No problem hit the tab button in-game and adjust the volume, just get ready for the Penta-Kill inaudible Hulk sounds that are sure to follow. The open parties are now live in the PBE. As far as trying to block that one “rando” friend that you added months back from getting into a queue with you and your true Summoner friends, Riot has stated on their website that the open parties are, “dead simple: it’s either open or it’s closed”. So beware who is online when you choose to go with an open party.

2. Balance Changes (From PBE Updates)

One of the most important bit of news about balance changes might not even be in effect when the 8.6 Patch goes live. What I am trying to say is, balance changes to Ahri will not be part of this PBE 8.6 patch cycle. The popular mage has been reverted back to live functionality and might undergo testing in a future cycle. Rumble’s changes have also been reverted with future testing in later cycles expected and of course right before I was about to submit this article I just happened to check the PBE update one last time and good thing I did. LeBlanc who was supposed to get the most balance changes has now been reverted back with testing having to wait for now. With that I will share with you Balance changes to Quinn, who for now, is still being tested with quite a few updates.

Quinn

Base AD lowered from 62 to 59

AD per level increased from 2.4 to 3

(AD at 18 increased from 103 to 110)

Harrier (Passive) Auto-attacks that are already in-flight will now trigger and consume the Harrier mark"

Behind Enemy Lines (R)

-Fixed a bug that would sometimes prevent Skystrike from firing

Skystrike now applies her Harrier mark to all enemy champions hit

-Fixed a bug where Skystrike would deal double damage if fired by re-activating her R

-Channeling no longer breaks when taking damage

-Removed the in-combat state that would refresh R’s cooldown every time combat was entered

-Taking damage from non-minions while channeling or while Behind Enemy Lines is active no longer breaks the channel or form. Instead, the movement speed bonus is removed for 2 seconds. Taking damage from minions no longer has any effect. 

-Fixed a bug causing Behind Enemy Lines to immediately end when used while attacking a turret

-Fixed a bug that would cause movement orders to be removed or ignored while casting Behind Enemy Lines

-Returning to the fountain now automatically casts Behind Enemy Lines if it has been learned

Senior Champion designer August Browning even tweeted out a bit of news about Rengar’s changes, though most seem to be bug fixes.

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Figure 2 August Browning Twitter

These are just a couple of Champions that are getting the most balance updates in 8.6. As always here is your disclaimer: LoL is still running 8.6 updates through their PBE cycle so any figures noted here are subject to change. If you would like to look at all the changes that are being tested just click here for the PBE updates.

3. New Ultimate Skin –Gun Goddess Miss Fortune (GGMF)

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Figure 3 1 of 4 for Miss Fortunes Ultimate Skin variants

Riot Games is also releasing Miss Fortune’s Ultimate Skin, The Gun Goddess.

Now it is not so much the skin itself that is noteworthy here. I am sure I can hear most of you trying to shout at me through your screen that this skin is already your desktop background, or maybe thats just past audiences airing their grievances at me. Anyway….this ultimate skin can be yours not for the usual 3,250 Riot Points (RP), but 2,755 RP. So why the sale before the ultimate skin has yet to dominate our login screens? Well Anna Donlon, A.K.A. Supercakes, is the Lead Producer for skins and events on LoL, posted a video where she explained that there will be 4 subskin sets in the ultimate skin package, that you can switch between at your fountain. But, don’t just take my word for it.

“When we think about what makes a skin an ultimate we think about the entire experience. We consider both the depth of that experience, as well as what you feature, or functionality you can bring to League through skins.” Supercakes continues, “With GGMF the depth of the experience is what you’ve come to expect from an ultimate. But, because we were able to take advantage of tech we already build she doesn’t bring that something new that other ultimates have. So we’ve chosen to release her at a lower price.”

That was not all the cooking enthusiast shared (Supercakes…get it?). She also dropped hints for more possible skins coming in 2018 for Shen, Amumu, Vladimir, Rumble, Heimerdinger, Galio, Ahri, and Aurelion Sol.

4. One For All (OFA) Mode is Back

Ok, maybe OFA is not necessarily new, however, Riot Games is making some interesting changes. Instead of just a standard gameplay with 5 of the same champions, players in OFA will start at level 3 and earn gold and experience faster. Players will now be able to stack shields and buffs. Slows will still stack, but will only apply the single strongest value. There are also a number of champions that have not seen this game mode before, Camille, Xayah, and Zoe just to name a few. Also Champions like Warwick and Galio have been re-worked since the last OFA release. Of course there are always a couple of disabled Champions. I am sure that you could have guessed that Teemo and Karthus are the Champs to be disabled. Oh, and before you start grabbing all that gold and fly down the midlane with 5 Zigg Ultimates at the ready, it will take 4 votes to ban a champion, not 3.

5. Waveclear Changes

Gone are the days of nuking an entire wave of minions and watching all that gold rain down on you like an ancient prince. Atleast that’s what Riot wants to attempt.

The main synopsis of why Riot Games is trying to do this pretty simple. Making minions more difficult to clear will ultimately make you stay in your lane longer, therefore, making you fight your opponent longer. Riot wants to do away with the clear minions then push your opponent type of gameplay, instead they want bring out more skilled gameplay and tactics.

Below is a thread from Riot Repertoir (David Capurro) who is a game designer at Riot Games to explain alittle bit more and show you the proposed number changes.

“There are additional changes to minion gold value that concentrate it into cannons without meaningfully altering the amount of gold gained from minions (especially pre 20 minutes). This is another tactic to create regular conflict between lane opponents.

Straight up, I do NOT expect these changes to be immediately popular. Still, I could see doing them if I thought they increased the quality of the game over the long term especially. Both those things said, I'm not necessarily convinced this is the perfect list to get the best results. It's on the PBE regardless so that there can be conversation around it before things are finalized.

Here are the changes:

"Upgrades" occur every 3 waves, so using the melee minion example below, they go from gaining 18 Health (plus 0.3 per upgrade) every 3 waves to gaining 21 Health every 3 waves.

Melee Minions

Base HP :: 473 >>> 480

HP Growth :: 18 +0.3/upgrade >>> 21

Gold Value :: 20 >>> 21

Gold Value Growth :: 0.125 >>> 0

Caster Minions

Base HP :: 296 >>> 320

HP Growth :: 6 >>> 14

Gold Value :: 17 >>> 14

Gold Value Growth :: 0.125 >>> 0

Cannon Minions

Base HP :: 828 >>> 900

HP Growth :: 23 +0.3/upgrade >>> 50

Gold Value :: 45 >>> 60

Gold Value Growth :: 0.35 >>> 3

Thanks in advance for any input."

So to recap. There is a new open party system waiting to helpfully bring summoners together a lot easier, multiple balance changes (or reverts), a new ultimate skin for Miss Fortune that might be lack luster to some but easier on the wallet, hints about new skins coming in 2018, a game mode that is being reworked to provide a kinetic and fast gameplay (don’t forget your Zigg bombs), and finally harder minions to keep you and your lane opponent dancing around til your hearts content. With the release of the 8.6 Patch looming in the near future I hope this provided a little insight to what is going on over in PBE and what was on the minds of a couple developers. We will just have to wait and see what the live 8.6 Patch will bring us.