JUNGLE CHANGES ARE ON THE WAY

The discussion about this all started with Morello's reply to a summoner's comments about the Jungle being too "safe" and the lack of being able to out farm an enemy jungler to gain some sort of advantage.
"Yes, we agree wholeheartedly with this problem. Jungle changes will happen."

"Jungle changes will have a big impact on single-target junglers especially."

Statikk continued to expand on the jungle changes and revealed more details of what Riot is aiming for, saying:

"We've actually been working on changes for the jungle in anticipation for Season 3 and though I can't really give all the details here because we are still iterating, I'd like to give you guys some insights into what's going on.

There are a multitude of issues we're tackling and they are very much intertwined. The current dominant jungle strategy (GP10 Support / Tanks) is fairly stagnant and the overall current jungle playstyle in many cases severely limits potential strategy and choices in other lanes/roles as well.

One large problem is that efficient farming of the jungle has very little pay off compared to constantly applying lane pressure by camping / ganking. Overall junglers severely lack in gold unless they successfully gank and snowball the game from the get-go and/or opt for a GP10 strategy.

The approach we're currently taking is to significantly increase the rewards of jungle camps over time (junglers already have a huge impact on the early game). To go along with this though, we are buffing jungle camps back up to actually be more threatening while simultaneously offering new / improved item paths that allow players to specialize in the jungle. Overall we want junglers to be rewarded for building combat stats rather than always being forced to build gold generation items.

This is not the only thing we're changing in the jungle for next season, but these types of things are definitely on our radar."

Statikk's response to a Summoner commenting that this is just Riot reverting the last set of jungle changes:

"In some ways, yes, though not completely.

We aren't going all the way back to the extreme of the old jungle where you would just get crushed unless you were Warwick, but we do feel there is a happy medium between Season 1 and Season 2 that we can strike.
The biggest difference here though is that we will be offering itemization that will help champions who need that extra boost in the jungle. Champions who are already super strong in the jungle may opt to not build these items, but it's pretty interesting to see what new junglers may become viable with these new items."

"Well a lot of the directional changes we're making for Season 3 are to make sure there are niches for the various jungle types.

For example, the nerfing of the jungle camps' damage really left no room for "safe" junglers such as Warwick since sustain was no longer a thing. Everyone can just clear with Boots + Health Pots and apply pressure to lanes.

When we do these changes for Season 3, there may be some junglers who are simply too strong in too many categories and we'll have to address that in the context of the new jungle. Overall though, we're looking to make sure there's a reason to bring X jungler over Y jungler depending on the situation."

                                           **SEASON 3 ITEM OVERHAUL:**

Morello, about what support players can expect from the upcoming item overhaul:

"We are adding a lot of support-oriented items with this in mind, though, and alternate ways to get gold (cool new mastery for supports inc...). I actually don't mind zero CS - I mind that support don't get gold that they can use to buy cool items. That is what we'll fix here.

Zero CS is needed to keep support viable (it's actually always been the optimal way to play, players just didn't have that down pre S2), but they get to do a lot of other interesting things in lane like harass, peel or set up kills. Making the lane fight for CS is inferior to that."

Morello, about diversifying the starting builds and moving away from the boring standard of Boots + 3 HP bots:

"Definitely looking at this - we'll be getting away from same starts."

Morello remarking they are aiming to make Attack Speed / On-hit builds ( think Malady + Madred's Blood Razors ) viable:

"Actually yes - we're trying to make that a viable build."

                                            **SEASON 3 CHAMPION REMAKES:**

Morello shared that Karma and Heimerdinger are the current focus regarding ability rework

"Some priorities have changed, as is normal, but right now our rework focus is Karma and Heimerdinger. Might revisit Kayle at another point.

And none of these will make progress till after Season 3 changes go out."

Morello about a little status update on the Heimer remake:

"Xyph is working on an overhaul, but nothing to say beyond that yet. Will still be a bit."

Morello about why it takes so long to complete reworks and why Riot doesn't just divert other designers to help clean up the champions who need it the most.

"This is because resource allocation is very complex. I'll give you a fast answer about it here though

Essentially, the design resources aren't as tough to get, but if it requires art (Katarina, for example) those resources are tighter. Additionally, one designer is all a project needs (and more in many cases is damaging) - IronStylus put it pretty eloquently when he said "no matter how many mothers you throw at it, it takes nine months to make a baby."

Testing is actually the tougher thing, which we have separate environments for. Balancing the game actually isn't more work per champion released, just requires more sophisticated analysis. So things like Season 3 do impact reworks, but new champions really don't effect it - we just hired enough people to do both (since champions are cool and important too). We actually just added more to a "reworks team" also to increase this output.

Could we do anything faster if we literally dropped everything and only did that? Sure, but the cost/benefit of only doing that would be pretty silly. Game development is all about this kind of thing."

                                              **SEASON 3 FEATURES:**

rjcombo made mention that Riot will be aiming to improve the ladder system, although unclear whether he means something new all together or just an implementation of the ladder into the game client, as it's currently only available by going to the LoL website

"I did reveal several features we're actively working on in an earlier post in this thread, but one thing I forgot to mention is ranked play. We aren't satisfied with the current state of the ladders, and will be making improvements to that aspect of the game."

rjcombo on a built in voice chat feature for League.

"We've done some research on this and are not convinced native VOIP is highly valuable for improving the community experience, especially when the players communicating are strangers. For players who are familiar with each other, there is already a host of great 3rd party solutions for voice.

That's not to say we'll never add VOIP to the game. It's just not a high priority."

rjcombo also spoke very briefly about the a possibility of seeing an achievement system in S3

    "It's unlikely we'll have achievements for the start of Season 3, but maybe during the season. I can't make any promises. What I can say is, if we add an achievements system, we'll be very focused on making sure players aren't encouraged to do silly things to earn rewards"

I'm sorry for the formatting, I might edit it during the day. Trying to make it more aired but saving it just clumps it up :( .

edit1:

                     **Mastery Changes for Season 3**

Morello mentioned:

"In Season 3, we'll be doing a series of mastery changes (much like what we saw for Season 2). FeralPony and I will be giving more details once it's a bit more locked down.

                                 **Champion Scale**

Why some champions are so much taller or scaled up than others, like how absurdly tall new Soraka is and the difference in overall size between Pentakill Sona and other Sonas as specific examples.

RiotNarya said:

"Yup, we are aware and are planning to equalize the champs so the lineup makes sense from a scale perspective. Many of the champs are, in fact, off scale. Compare MF to some of the Sona models for example. Those are both female champs of approximately the same height, etc. and they are very different. Don't have an exact timeline but it's on the radar!"