[Patch 4.17] Soraka/Viktor General Discussion

Champions

Viktor
Viktor has received a Gameplay and Texture Update, as well as a spiffy new splash! Check out the update article for all the details.

Abilities
Passive: Glorious Evolution
Viktor begins the game with a Hex Core, a unique item that can be upgraded three times during the course of the game.
Q: Siphon Power
Viktor creates a shield around him and blasts an enemy unit with a round of magic damage. Additionally, Viktor deals bonus magic damage with his next basic attack.
Augment: Turbocharge – Siphon Power gives Viktor a moderate movement speed boost on cast.
W: Gravity Field
Viktor creates a gravitational field at a target location, slowing all non-friendly units inside it. The field triggers after a few seconds, stunning all caught enemies.
Augment: Implosion – The gravitational field sucks all caught enemies toward its center as it triggers.
E: Death Ray
Viktor fires a beam of energy across the battleground, damaging all enemies caught.
Augment: Aftershock – The beam of energy explodes a moment after being cast, dealing a further round of damage. Enemies caught by both rounds take reduced damage from the explosion.
R: Chaos Storm
Viktor creates an electrical storm at a target location that interrupts all nearby enemy channels and deals damage over time to all caught targets. Viktor can move the storm at will, though it loses movement speed as it travels farther from him.
Augment: Velocity – Chaos Storm moves slightly faster at all times.


Soraka
Soraka has received a Gameplay Update! Check out the update article for all the details.

Abilities
Passive: Salvation
Soraka gains significant movement speed when she moves towards heavily wounded allies.
Q: Starcall
Soraka calls down a meteor at a target location, damaging all enemies caught by the explosion and dealing extra damage and a slow to enemies directly under the impact.
W: Astral Infusion
Passive: Soraka heals herself whenever she hits an enemy champion with Starcall.
Active: Soraka sacrifices her own health to heal a nearby ally.
E: Equinox
Soraka briefly conjures a celestial zone at a target location. Enemies standing above the zone are silenced until they leave, while if they’re standing above Equinox when it collapses, they’re briefly rooted.
R: Wish
Soraka summons a global heal for all allied champions. Heavily wounded allies gain extra health.


Cassiopeia
Some small buffs to Cass's mana, Q's damage scales better with AP, and E's resetting its cooldowns correctly.

We know Cass isn't doing great on the live environment, but we also want to make sure we don't react too quickly as players are learning a champion and then that champion goes on to demolish everyone (*cough* Kassadin *cough*). Still, we can give Cass a little bump as we watch her being picked up. This might be a conversation we'll revisit next patch!
General
BASE MANA 300 ⇒ 330
MANA PER LEVEL +50 ⇒ +60
Q - Noxious Blast
ABILITY POWER RATIO 0.35 ⇒ 0.45
E - Twin Fang
28.6% MORE FIXED Twin Fang now correctly resets its cooldown to 0.7 seconds ⇒ 0.5 seconds, as indicated by the tooltip

Ezreal
We fixed some longstanding clunkiness with Pulsefire Ezreal's animations in 4.16. Our bad on forgetting to list this in the last set of patch notes!
Pulsefire Ezreal
CANNONS PRIMED Smoothed out Pulsefire Ezreal's autoattack and Mystic Shot animations

Garen
Garen's going to be a lean, mean, health recovering machine.

Right now, Garen's identity is centered on his ability to run at people in a threatening way and, since we have a few people who already do that, we decided to give him a more unique strength. These buffs are to really cement Garen as a tanky sword-dude who can shrug off most forms of poke damage - that is, if he can find windows of safety to recover (more reason to hide in that brush!). You might say this gives him more perseverance. You would be correct.
Passive - Perseverance
NEWYOUR PUNY WEAPONS ARE USELESS Perseverance is no longer removed by non-epic monsters at level 11 and above
HEALTH REGENERATION 0.4% maximum health per second at all levels ⇒ 0.4% / 0.8% / 2.0% maximum health per second at levels 1/11/16
COOLDOWN 9 seconds at all levels ⇒ 9/6/4 seconds at levels 1/11/16

Heimerdinger
A player raised the concern that Heimerdinger (and Karma) had to cast two spells when empowering abilities, thus ever-so-slightly delaying his ability to fight back in high-pressure situations. With this change, Heimer will be able to preemptively use Upgrade while crowd-controlled so he can immediately mash faces when he recovers. This is a repeat of the below context.
R - UPGRADE!!!
NEWEVERY SECOND COUNTS Upgrade can now be cast while Heimerdinger is disabled

Karma
A player raised the concern that Karma (and Heimerdinger) had to cast two spells when empowering abilities, thus ever-so-slightly delaying her ability to fight back in high-pressure situations. With this change, Karma will be able to preemptively use Mantra while crowd-controlled so she can immediately mash faces when she recovers. This is a repeat of the above context.
Q - Soulflare
EXPLOSIVE DEPARTURE Fixed a bug where Soulflare's ground effect would disappear if Karma died
R - Mantra
NEWEVERY SECOND COUNTS Mantra can now be cast while Karma is disabled

LeBlanc
LeBlanc's mirror clone is more deceptive, as it spawns stealthed for a full second alongside LeBlanc, so LB can create more distance from her clone before re-appearing. W has a longer grace period to return. Brushy brushy.

Since we removed LeBlanc's silence in patch 4.10, she hasn't been in the best shape. Rather than buffing her damage (wouldn't that be fun), we're looking for healthier ways to give her some strength, like reinforcing her deceptive gameplay.
Passive - Mirror Image
NEWNOW YOU SEE ME LeBlanc now creates a mirror image after her invisibility ends ⇒ immediately
NEWNOW YOU DON'T LeBlanc and her mirror image remain invisible as long as the other is invisible (breaking the invisibility of one will break the invisibility of the other)
INVISIBILITY DURATION 0.5 seconds ⇒ 1 second
W - Distortion
JUKE CITY LeBlanc now has 3 seconds ⇒ 4 seconds to snap back to her return pad

Maokai
Maokai's currently running rampant in top lane, partially due to his ability to trade damage with most of the scrappy dudes he finds up there. Given Maokai's R is already a strong defensive ability in a team fight, we realized it probably shouldn't also have so much damage tied to it.
R - Vengeful Maelstrom
MAXIMUM STORED DAMAGE 200/250/300 ⇒ 100/150/200 (base damage remains 100/150/200)

Miss Fortune
Strut is no longer broken by non-damaging crowd control effects, like Nasus' Wither, Lulu's Whimsy, or... the aura from Frozen Heart (sorry!).

Miss Fortune's Strut was always meant to be broken by damage (and the tooltip says this) but, for some time now, Strut also considered non-damaging forms of crowd control to be valid ways to break (like Nasus' Wither, Lulu's Whimsy or... Frozen Heart's aura (sorry!)). We've fixed that.
Passive - Strut
STEP TO Strut is no longer broken by non-damaging effects

Nautilus
Nautilus can drag himself to player-created terrain.

We already did this with Vayne, Poppy, and Gnar, and realized Nautilus should probably be able to do the same (some players also let us know! Thanks!)
Q - Dredge Line
NEWNAUTICAL EQUALITY Nautilus can now drag himself to player-created terrain (e.g. Trundle's Pillar, Jarvan's Cataclysm, Anivia's Crystallize)

Nidalee
Nidalee's basic attacks do less and she has less attack speed. Takedown scales less with AD and more with AP. Pounce now resets to a reduced cooldown if Nidalee pounces to a Hunted target (rather than swiping a Hunted target).

As a super strong lane bully, Nidalee's able to poke down her opponents fairly quickly before mauling their face as a giant cat. While we think it's cool that Nidalee has access to two completely different builds (AD and AP), it's clear her AD build is a lot stronger, especially since she can put out tons of damage without needing to land a spear / trap. Our goal here is to bring a little parity between the two builds while also, honestly speaking, reducing some of Nidalee's oppressive lane power when building AD.
General
BASE ATTACK DAMAGE 52.5 ⇒ 47.5
BASE ATTACK SPEED 0.67 ⇒ 0.638
Q - Takedown
MINIMUM ATTACK DAMAGE RATIO 1.0 ⇒ 0.75
MAXIMUM ATTACK DAMAGE RATIO 2.5 ⇒ 1.875
MINIMUM ABILITY POWER RATIO 0.24 ⇒ 0.36
MAXIMUM ABILITY POWER RATIO 0.60 ⇒ 0.90
W - Pounce
NEWFLYING CAT PROJECTILES Pounce's cooldown now resets to 1.5 seconds if Nidalee pounces to a Hunted target
KITTY RESETS Killing a unit now resets Pounce's cooldown to 1.0 seconds ⇒ 1.5 seconds
NEWCOOLDOWN COUGAR Abilities that reduce Pounce's cooldown now work in combination with Nidalee's cooldown reduction stat (so at 40% CDR, a hunted Pounce gets reset to 0.9 seconds rather than 1.5 seconds)
E - Swipe
REMOVEDSWIPELESS Swipe no longer affects the cooldown of Pounce when used on a Hunted target

Rammus
Just a small quality-of-life buff where if Rammus uses Powerball to cancel Defensive Ball Curl (or vice versa), he gets 1 second of buffs overlapping instead of immediately cancelling one for the other.
Q - Powerball
OKAY While in Powerball, Rammus now cancels the ability immediately ⇒ 1 second after Defensive Ball Curl is activated
W - Defensive Ball Curl
OKAY While in Defensive Ball Curl, Rammus now cancels the ability immediately ⇒ 1 second after Powerball is activated

Sona
While we were cleaning up some code with Sona, we accidentally reduced the cast range on her Hymn of Valor. We fixed it. Sorry!
Q - Hymn of Valor
SHARP NOTES Fixed a bug where Hymn of Valor's cast range was shorter than intended

Talon
Talon's E no longer silences, it just applies a high-intensity mini-slow.

Now that other high-burst low-counterplay assassins have been modified in some way (hello LeBlanc), Talon's one of the next dudes to step forward. Our focus with this change is not to entirely nerf Talon (although we realize this is a hit to his laning phase against certain champion matchups), rather, it's to reduce frustration when playing against him. Specifically, Talon's ability to obliterate a target of his choosing in the mid to late game without them having any say in the matter (literally) is a tough ability to balance around - especially as we've targeted other low-counterplay abilities like LeBlanc's Sigil of Silence. As an aside, this does mean that the ability name Cutthroat makes no sense from a thematic perspective, but naming it cut-ankles was less inspiring. We'll look into it.
Q - Noxian Diplomacy
A METAPHOR FOR POLITICS Noxian Diplomacy's animation now plays slightly faster (so it can feel more impactful). Actual gameplay remains unchanged.
E - Cutthroat
REMOVEDTHAT'S SOME BAD AIM, TALON Cutthroat no longer silences its target
NEWCUT-ANKLES Cutthroat now slows targets for 99% for 0.25 seconds (this is enough to sneak in one Mercy-buffed basic attack)
R - Shadow Assault
NEWA SHINY ESCAPE Shadow Assault now has a particle to indicate that Talon is hasted

Tristana
As a hyper-scaling markswoman on par with champs like Koggles or Vayne, Tristana needs equivalent weaknesses for her high potential. Up front: this change won't completely address that problem, but we did want to create more opportunities against Tristana in the early to mid game as we examine her power for the future.
R - Buster Shot
COOLDOWN 60 seconds at all ranks ⇒ 100/85/70 seconds

Yasuo
While this is a fairly innocuous bugfix for Yasuo, we wanted to take this opportunity to talk about everyone's favorite wind swordsman (to ban). While we think Yasuo's in a good spot in terms of his overarching gameplay and strategic fit, there's a good chance he's just a little strong for what he brings to the table. We're currently examining ways to add more meaningful counterplay against Yasuo but just wanted to let you know we're aware of his power.
Q - Steel Tempest
INNOCUOUS BUGFIX Fixed a bug where Steel Tempest's cooldown was slightly too low when using the E-Q combo at high attack speeds

Zilean
This change is for... CLARITY!
R - Chronoshift
WE NEED MORE TIME Visual effect size (the rotating hourglasses) has been increased by 50%



Mass Texture Rebalance (Part 1)
Over the next couple patches we're taking a broad pass at the game's older character textures with the goal of improving parity with newer releases and making sure everybody looks at home on the Rift as its style and color palette continue to evolve.

TEXTURES The following textures have been updated:
Ahri
Base, Dynasty, Midnight
Akali
Base, All-star, Blood Moon, Crimson, Nurse, Silverfang, Stinger
Ashe
Base, Amethyst, Freljord, Sherwood Forest, Queen, Woad
Corki
Base, Hot Rod, Ice Toboggan, Red Baron, UFO, Urfrider
Fiora
Base, Royal Guard, Nightraven
Galio
Base, Commando, Enchanted, Gatekeeper, Hextech
Graves
Base, Jailbreak (for now)
LeBlanc
Base, Prestigious, Mistletoe, Wicked
Leona
Base, Defender, Iron Solari, Valkyrie
Nautilus
Base, Abyssal, Subterranean
Orianna
Base, Bladecraft, Gothic, Sewn Chaos
Xerath
Base, Battlecast, Runeborn



Items
Elixir of Brilliance, Elixir of Fortitude, Ichor of Illumination, and Ichor of Rage
Elixirs and Ichors now intelligently scale up in stats as a character levels up with them on.

Before this patch, Elixirs and Ichors only did one "check" on your level before determining the stats they gave you. If you leveled up with an Elixir or Ichor used, however, they wouldn't intelligently scale up to your new level. We fixed that.

SMART CONSUMABLES Stat buffs from Elixirs and Ichors now level up along with the buffed Champion



Dominion
Respawn Mechanics
Dominion currently has a balancing mechanic where the losing team has a shorter respawn timer than the winning team. Unfortunately, this mechanic would come into play immediately after one team took a lead. We've increased that band by a wider margin so that close games don't get so swingy but losing teams still have the potential to make a comeback.
Respawn Timers

DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK The respawn timer handicap now applies only if there is a point difference greater than 50



Ranked Updates
Master Tier
When we implemented Master Tier, we removed clamping from Diamond 1. One side effect of this has been that players who ride win streaks into Master incur pretty harsh LP penalties if they fall back into Diamond. This new LP loss cap is meant to soften the experience while players strive to enter - and remain in - Master Tier.
NEWLP LOSS CAP Players who quickly drop back into Diamond 1 after being promoted to Master Tier now retain a minimum of 50 LP


Ranked Decay
Ranked decay is meant to ensure that only the best active players can hold on to their position through a season. While this makes sense for the most competitive tiers, it just ends up as source of stress for the rest of the ladder. To that end, we've removed decay for silver and gold (bronze was already immune - we fixed a bug where this wasn't the case for promo series).

NEWQUALITY OF LIFE Silver and Gold players are now immune to decay
BUGFIX Fixed a bug where Bronze players who went inactive during a promo series were decaying out of their series


Ranked Duo Queue
Following a brief hiatus last patch due to a bug, we're reactivating the limiter that prevents ranked players from duo queuing with partners more than one tier above or below them.


Ranked Restrictions
We recently posted about a few new measures coming to ranked play as part of our ongoing effort to encourage positive behavior. Head to the discussion for the details!
Suggested Players

PREMADE FACILITATION The Suggested Players invite list in premade lobbies now recommends friends of friends who are currently online and available for a game




Bugfixes
Nomad's Medallion now properly shows up under the "Other Movement Items" category
In line with previous fixes, Relic Shield and its upgrades no longer execute Shaco boxes
Fixed a bug where Ichor of Illumination was removing cooldown reduction when it wore off
Fixed a number of patcher crash issues
Fixed an issue with multitouch scrolling in the Mac patcher
Players no longer lose access to the patcher's Repair tool after closing the menu via the 'x' button