Really proud of the team's work on Arena and excited for y'all to play it!!

We wanted to capture the unpredictable nature of the Arena. The idea that anything can happen and that teams are put to the test.

When the Gladiator steps into the Arena, are they going to conquer the…

Props to the Anti-Cheat team; hoping this heralds in a new positive era for League with less cheaters, account buyers going into ranked, less disruptive behavior, etc.

On the ranked side, it should also help us with seeding new accounts, placing them correctly, etc. (not right…

Final 14.8 Changelists!

Taking a bit of a different approach and talking more holistically role by role for this update.

Top:
- The top meta is looking pretty varied, with a mix of fighters, tanks, AP (any Morde enjoyers) and some ranged. We're not looking to mix this up too…

Arena is back in May with a huge update for a ~4 month run, and based on how it sustains player interest we'll gauge opportunities for permanence.

We're also releasing a new game mode in July for the summer event - a cooperative PvE mode!

Check out the dev update for more info

14.8 is the MSI patch!

Voidgrubs:
- We're buffing Voidgrubs this patch by buffing the damage and the number of grubs required to get the first grub summon spawn
- We're also separating the spawn time from Dragon a bit to make trading less of a reality and to have teams engage…

We're micropatching some buffs to Skarner JGL and nerfs to Skarner Top!

Right now, Top is outperforming Jungle when at low mastery (yet to be seen whether that's the case when mastered though). High mastery Skarners are performing pretty well on him.

We think despite his low…

Skarner is out on Live Environments!!

Super proud of the team for pushing through many hurdles during development and we're pretty happy with the result.

Initial power level does look at a tad weak, but he does have a moderate learning curve, so we're monitoring closely.…

April fools is here again! Take a look at the awesome art that the China team created for the moment!

Jump into quickplay and let us know your thoughts! The team worked so hard this year to create something fun. I’ll be back all week with fun dev stories if y’all are interested.

Finally a useful tip in loading screen!

Anyone know what's going on in SR Quickplay?

Someone sent me this clip, seems a bit weird...

Though I heard from someone that it'll take 4 days to be fixed?

14.7 Full Preview!

Buffs

Galio
- Mainly buffing AP ratios here to skew to mid and power in the passive to back up the longer fight time from last patch

Karma
- Divorcing the power of R shield from E to encourage more supportive casts
- Also increasing more of her utility…

14.7!

Systems
- Following up on the previous patch changes, further nerfs to support items
- Shiv nerfs are a follow up to the Crit item buffs from last patch; champs like Jinx/Zeri are too strong, but other champions are ~the right power level

Last Patch Followup
- Some…

A post I've been wanting to write for a long time is about developing software at scale at Riot (at least on League Gameplay). There's a lot of implications due to our size that adds a lot of unique challenges.

There are often suggestions like: 'Why don't you do 'X idea that…

14.6 full preview!

Went over systems yesterday. Talking about champions today!

Smolder:
- We don't think Smolder has any underlying issues that make him long term problematic (in terms of kit design), he's just a bit strong and that's not allowing his weaknesses (weaker early…

14.6!

ADC
- We've been hearing a lot of discussion around the state of ADC
- The strong state of supports prevents us from buffing them heavily and returning to a 'bot meta'
- Crit items are getting some buffs to make them more competitive vs on-hit and lethality.
- We're still…

🚨 Smolder micropatch nerf coming in hot!

-E bolts: 5 (+1 per 50 stacks) >>> 5 (+1 per 150 stacks)
-Fixed a bug that caused Smolder's stacks to round up when calculating number of E bolts
-R Cooldown: 120/110/100 >>> 140/130/120 seconds

General
- Saw a bunch of interesting discussion around balance philosophy yesterday. Will try to make a post later this week around some of the thoughts there (staleness, mastery, etc.)

AP Items
- Lich Bane, while being pretty anemic last season and having a lot of its lunch…

14.5!

We're pulling runaans and Galio from the patch due to some unforseen issues

Items
- Passes this patch to bring some items up to viability (sunfire, heartsteel, dream maker, celestial)
- we're still undecided on navori
- we're also throwing in some minor changes to Lich…

This patch, we're:
- Reducing LP gains below Emerald from gaining and losing 28 LP on average >>> 25 LP on average in these tiers.
- Making it slightly easier to demote from tiers

Why higher gains?
- At the start of the season, we wanted to increase LP gains below Emerald so…

14.4 Full Preview!

Systems
- For Terminus and Cleaver, we're reducing the stack counts required to hit max value, now that they're uniqued against other pen items
- Fountain regen has been tuned pretty conservatively over the years and we see an opportunity to reduce downtime in…