With Midseason 2017 headed our way in the next PBE cycle, Meddler has posted up a large overview of the upcoming changes - Rift Herald, Tank Updates, Sejuani, Maokai, Zac, itemization, and more!



Intro to Midseason 2017 & Teaser

Midseason 2017 Preview teaser was shared on social media, previewing the new Rift Herald and three larger champion updates.

https://youtu.be/05XZw3KBo6M

"Midseason is an inflection point when we look back on the season to date and set things up heading into the second half of the year. More than “another really big patch”, it’s our second of two annual opportunities to make deeper improvements to the game. We’ll be highlighting just a few of midseason’s biggest features today - stay vigilant for full coverage when the update ships!

Let’s jump in.

Rift Herald

It’s been a year and a half since we introduced Rift Herald to give teams a top-side objective to play around in the early game. One of the problems we’ve consistently faced: Herald’s single-user buff has to be pretty damn impactful to compete for attention with Elemental Drakes or even a group-push in botlane. But when that’s true, the empowered champion becomes impossible to lane against. This friction has kept our mutated rift scuttler from hitting a state that delivers on her goals.

With that in mind, we're ditching the buff approach. The Rift Herald now drops the Herald’s Eye as she retreats into the Void, lasting in your inventory for a few minutes and granting Empowered Recall while held. Using the eye before it expires summons the Herald back to the Rift under your team’s banner, sending her down the nearest lane as a structure-smashing siege engine. She says by ramming into buildings from a distance, dealing massive damage. From there, she’ll steadily smash it to rubble before moving onto the next objective down the lane.

For opponents, fighting the Herald in lane is similar to fighting her in the pit - she’s still tanky as heck, so poking her in the eye is still the fastest way to get her gone. There are a few differences to be aware of, though. First, she no longer has an interest in fighting champions. While this means she doesn’t hit back (careful for AoE damage, though) it also means you won’t be able to deter her from her demolition work. Second, summoning sickness has left her vulnerable to crowd control. Everything from Dark Binding to Howling Gale to Headbutt will do the job of keeping her off your stuff. Finally, Herald’s damage in lane is directly tied to her health. Take every opportunity you can to whittle her down.


Riot Sotere, Associate Game Designer

Tank Updates

While many of our class updates set out to sharpen the distinct identity of their rosters, this is especially the case with tanks. Initiating teamfights is a responsibility many tanks share, but when initiation works and feels the same across these champions, they start to become interchangeable. Sejuani, Maokai, and Zac are three champions who struggled from this. We've added unique mechanics to each, giving you reasons to master them separately or choose them specifically.

Sejuani


Sejuani has the potential to be both barbarian warleader and heavy cavalry, but falls short of either. She’s defined almost entirely by Glacial Prison, whose teamfight-turning potential has come at the expense of satisfying power in the rest of her kit. We’re breaking Sej out of her ult-bot status and giving her more impactful things to do when skirmishing alongside her tribe.

A redesigned Permafrost comprises the bulk of Sejuani’s combat contributions and makes her the warleader she was meant to be. Passively, Sejuani and her melee allies apply Frost to enemies, and unlike Braum’s passive, Sej doesn’t need to be the one to start the stacking. Once a target’s reached max stacks, Sejuani can point-and-click stun them with Permafrost. Should she attack a frozen target, she’ll shatter them for major damage. Sejuani is at her strongest in 2v2 or 3v3 situations where she has the best chance of Permafrosting every enemy encountered.

Most of Sejuani’s other skills are getting updates as well. Frost Armor now protects Sejuani (well, her boar) as she charges into battle, granting bonus resistances and slow immunity. Winter’s Wrath is a two-part swing/slam combo, letting Sejuani strike and stack Frost in any direction while Bristle continues to move around the battlefield. Glacial Prison no longer stuns the entire enemy team, but turns the battleground around its explosion into a slowing zone that gives Sejuani’s warband time to get into Frost-stacking range.

Solcrushed, Game Designer


Maokai

Even among tanks, Maokai is pretty generalist; there’s no situation where he’s a bad pick, but there’s no situation where he’s a great pick either. The Twisted Treant fights the same in every situation: activate Vengeful Maelstrom, then throw the rest of your abilities at the same target. We’re sharpening Maokai’s tools to make him the right tree for some situations - but not all of them.

In terms of basic abilities, Saplings deal more damage when tossed into brush, giving ‘em strategic value as little sentries and adding new considerations to Maokai’s jungle clears and where he chooses to fight (careful with your brushes, Ivern). Meanwhile, we’re sharpening Sap Magic’s identity as a passive that saps magic. It now operates off a cooldown, and while Maokai still speeds it up through his own spellcasts, only enemy abilities that hit him grant the same reduction (once per cast - breathe easy, DoT champs). This leaves him vulnerable against basic-attack oriented champions like Tryndamere or Fiora, but even more resilient against frequent casters such as Karthus or Corki.

The biggest change of Maokai’s update is to his ult, which has been completely redesigned. Nature’s Grasp summons a lane-wide wall of roots that slowly advances forward, each one rooting (heh) the first enemy champion hit. The wall has devastating teamfight potential, but its slow speed demands that Maokai plan around it. To find success, the Twisted Treant has to corral enemies into the wall’s path and keep them there until nature runs its course.

Beluga Whale, Associate Game Designer

Zac

In terms of unique skillset and a rewarding path to mastery, Zac was in the best spot to start with. Elastic Slingshot affords Zac the ability to engage from great distances and unexpected angles, and Cell Division’s blob pickups are a form of combat regen unlike any other in League. That said, Zac runs out of cool stuff to do once he’s used the exciting parts of his kit to make his entrance. We want to bring other parts of Zac’s kit up to Elastic Slingshot’s standard, and we’re giving him two new forms of crowd control to do so.

Stretching Strikes is undergoing a big change: we’ve added an ‘s’ to the end of it. First, Zac throws out a blob hand that sticks onto the first enemy he hits. Once he latches onto something, his next basic attack becomes equally sticky, and he’ll use his noodly appendages to slam both targets into each other.

Let’s Bounce! is also getting a facelift. On cast, Zac flattens himself into a puddle and has the option to charge up for a few seconds. If he lets go without charging, he’ll bounce in place and knock back nearby enemies, similar to what happens today. If he stays in puddle form for at least a second, however, things change drastically. On release, Zac scoops up every enemy on top of him and schlepps ‘em all over to a target location.

Shrieve, Game Designer

Breaking from our approach in previous seasons, we won’t be making small reworks to other tanks. Small reworks were meant to give something to as many players of a class as possible, even if that something was just a quality of life improvement or small nod to thematics. While this ‘go wide’ approach has led to some long-term wins, we’d rather ship just the wins rather than trying to go for completion. Amumu’s passive update in 7.7 was the one small rework that would’ve come out with our three main tanks, but holding him in the chamber felt silly without a broader set of small reworks for him to fit into. So, we shipped him ahead of schedule.