Season One Details

[Thrawn]

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=137300

Summoners,

As you are probably aware, we have been targeting the beginning of Season One as the beginning of a long future for competitive League of Legends. As the preseason is coming to a close, we wanted to take a moment to share with you the competitive features that you have to look forward to. Hopefully you’ve been spending this time leveling up, accumulating IP, and building relationships with other League of Legends players, because Season One is sure to test your mettle out there on the Fields of Justice. The features marked by the launch of Season One will serve as the cornerstone of our competitive efforts now and into the future.

Ranked Games - Once Season One begins, summoners of Level 20 or above will be able to indulge in our ranked game system. At launch, ranked players will be able to join one of three queues: 3v3 Premade, 5v5 Premade, or 5v5 Solo. Players will receive an individual rating for each of these queues.

Ladders - Once Ranked Play begins, players who choose to participate will have their Elo ratings displayed publicly on the League of Legends Ladder. On the ladder, players will be able to see just how they stack up against the rest of their fellow summoners. The ladder will be available on the League of Legends Community Site.

Draft Mode - Champion selection during ranked play will take on the form of a live draft. In 5v5 premade and 3v3 premade, the first phase of this draft process will provide the inviter of each team with the opportunity to ban the use of two champions. Banned champions cannot be selected for use on either team, so choose wisely!

After bans have been dispensed by both sides, the teams will begin the draft process. During ranked play, draft picks will be exclusive, meaning that a drafted champion will not be available for play by the opposing team. The team who received the second ban will begin the drafting process by drafting a single champion. Following that, the game will follow a 1:2:2:2:2:1 draft format for the 5v5 brackets and a 1:2:2:1 format for the 3v3 bracket.

Through this system, we hope to encourage players to embrace a wider range of champions, allow for teams to effectively counter popular strategies, and develop a familiarity with their opponents and counter accordingly. Initially Draft Mode will be available both in Ranked Play and in practice games. Casual games still utilize blind pick during champion selection.

Improved Visual Styles - Since our launch back in October of 2009, our UI Team has been hard at work improving the visual components of the PvP.net interface. With the substantial renovations required to support Ranked Games, now seemed like the opportune time to give the game a facelift. We wanted the new look for League of Legends to be brighter, more visually appealing, and easier to use. I could elaborate further, but I think that once you get a look at the accompanying screenshots their work will stand on its own.

At last!  One issue pointed out in the thread though is how this makes the need for additional rune pages even greater.  Also it seems kind of stupid that they are putting in a draft mode...but it won't be available in casual play, I guess I can understand some of the reasoning behind that but it would be nice if it was an option still.

It's pretty amusing how much their ladder ranking images and stuff are a carbon copy of the WoW ones.

[LK]

Amusing, but smart, given their art style is modeled somewhat after Warcraft's cartoony look.

[schild]

Only looks 9,000,000 times better than before. Who gives a shit if they copy WoW stuff, it works - and Ryze isn't going to tell me to kill 400 creeps before buying my infinity edge.

More excited about Rank and Draft than ladder. Don't have time for the latter.

[tazelbain]

I really can't take their esport ambitions very seriously if they can't keep their servers up for an extended period.

[MrHat]

Kicks off on the 13th.

[Thrawn]

So any bets on what date after the 13th is will be fully functioned, playable, and stable?  I wouldn't disagree much with anyone that said "Not this year." if they stay consistant.

[tazelbain]

Crazy.  Did I miss the part where drafts were available for practice matches for a month and the servers were stable?

EDIT: Another "BUSY" night. Ya, season one is going to be clown shoes.

[Thrawn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzMnCv_lPxI

Season one cinematic trailer, I thought it was pretty good.  Granted it's like not like Blizzard level awsome and you can always pick at little stuff (Kat needs a nose job!), but I was pleasantly suprised by it.

[LK]

I think she used that money for being an assassin on a boob job instead.

[MrHat]

Season One is here!
Ranked Games
5v5 Premade
5v5 Solo
3v3 Premade
Ladders
Draft Mode
Improved Visual Style for PVP.net and the Community Site
Story Tab in PVP.net and Issue 1 of the Journal of Justice
All Random Mode in Practice Games

We will be updating League of Legends and PVP.net during Season 1 Maintenance

New Skins in the Store
Commando Xin Zhao
Imperial Xin Zhao
Unmasked Kayle
Tempest Janna

League of Legends v1.0.0.96

Xin Zhao, the Seneschal of Demacia
Three Talon Strike: Xin Zhao's next 3 standard attacks deal increased damage, with the third attack knocking an opponent into the air.
Battle Cry: Xin Zhao passively increases his attack speed and can activate this ability to further increase attack speed and lower his ability cooldowns with each attack.
Audacious Charge: Xin Zhao charges an enemy, dealing damage and slowing it and all other enemies in the area. Audacious Charge increases Xin Zhao's armor temporarily and lowers the cooldowns of all of his abilities.
Crescent Sweep (Ultimate): Xin Zhao fiercely sweeps his spear around him, dealing damage to nearby enemies based on their current health.
Tireless Warrior (Passive): Xin Zhao is healed for every 3 attacks that he lands. This amount increases every 2 levels.

Akali
Shadow Dance will now gain an Essence of Shadow charge on Champion kills and assists in addition to her standard accumulation over time method.

Amumu
Fixed an issue where Amumu's attack timing was too slow.

Alistar
Fixed an issue where Alistar's attack timing was too fast.

Cho'Gath
Vorpal Spikes will no longer trigger cast effects like Lich Bane
Vorpal Spikes will now fire even if the target is missed
Cho'Gath can now more easily Feast on any unit, including Dragon, Lizard Elder, or other very large Cho'Gaths.

Garen
Fixed a bug with Decisive Strike that would cause the icon cooldown to display improperly.

Gragas
Fixed a bug where Body Slam slowed targets that were immune to slows
Fixed a bug where Body Slam would not display a hit particle or play a sound if it hit any target that blocked the slow

Heimerdinger
H-28G Evolution Turret tooltip has been updated to show that turrets do magic damage.
CH-1 Concussion Grenade now deals 50% damage to turrets, from 100%.
CH-1 Concussion Grenade cooldown increased to 13/12/11/10/9 from 12/11/10/9/8

Kassadin
Netherblade has been redesigned:
Passive: the mana drain component removed and replaced with a flat 4/8/12/16/20 mana restore on hit. This effect returns triple the mana against champions.
Active: Kassadin gains 7/15/25/38/50 Armor Penetration for 5 seconds. 15 second cooldown. 30/40/50/60/70 mana cost. Activating this ability counts as a spell cast for the purposes of Force Pulse.
Null Sphere projectile speed increased to 1150 from 900
Void Stone (Passive)
The attack speed effect from Void Stone has been changed so that it stacks and renews instead of replaces on spell impact. This change will result in Kassadin gaining significantly more attack speed, and keeping it for a longer duration on average.
Duration lowered to 4 seconds from 5 seconds.

Kayle
Divine Blessing movement speed reduced to 10/12/14/16/18 from 12/14/16/18/20.
Righteous Fury splash damage no longer affects turrets.

Kog'Maw
Fixed a bug where Zilean’s Chronoshift would not prevent Kog’Maw from dying

Malzahar
Nether Grasp range increased to 575 from 450
Fixed a bug where the stun component of Nether Grasp would not break even if the channel was broken.

Nunu
Nunu can now more easily Consume any unit, including Dragon and Lizard Elder.

Olaf
Ragnarok now displays "Cannot be Disabled!" when it blocks a debuff

Pantheon
Spear Shot mana cost increased to 45 at all ranks from 30/35/40/45/50
Aegis of Zeonia
Cooldown modified to 12 seconds at all ranks from 20/17.5/15/12.5/10
Stun duration changed to 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 from 1.5
Aegis of Zeonia now properly interacts with spell shields
Heartseeker Spear
Base damage reduced to 4/6/8/10/12 from 6/9/12/15/18
Scaling damage reduced to 18/22/26/30/34% from 20/25/30/35/40%
Cooldown reduced to 20/19/18/17/16 from 26/24/22/20/18
Grand Skyfall will now apply smoother damage especially against large targets
Grand Skyfall will now properly interact with spell shields
General
Base health increased to 520 from 505
Base armor increased to 21 from 20.1
Health per level increased to 87 from 85

Poppy
Devastating Blow mana cost reduced to 55 from 65.
Paragon of Demacia mana cost modified to 70/75/80/85/90 from 60/70/80/90/100.
Heroic Charge mana cost modified to 60/65/70/75/80 from 50/60/70/80/90.

Singed
Fling can now be more easily cast on any unit, including Dragon, Lizard Elder, or a well-fed Cho'Gath

Sion
Fixed a bug with Death's Caress that was causing the cooldown on the tooltip to not be affected by cooldown reduction
Fixed a bug where Death Caress's buff tooltip would display the absorption amount as 0.00 instead of the correct amount

Soraka
Consecration Aura will no longer persist in the area around Soraka after she is killed.

Taric
Fixed a bug where Dazzle could stun for longer than 2 seconds

Twisted Fate
Pick a Card attacks are no longer subject to dodge or miss chances
Fixed a bug where Blue cards would restore mana even if the target died before the card hit

Veigar
Fixed a bug where Baleful Strike would grant Veigar AP even if the target died before the spell hit.
Dark Matter ability power ratio increased to 1.0 from 0.8.
Primordial Burst damage modified to 250/375/500 from 200/350/500.
Primordial Burst ability power ratios increased to 1.0 from 0.8 (both from Veigar and the target)

Zilean
Fixed a bug where replacing an enemy Time Bomb wouldn't cause the deactivation explosion
Fixed a bug where replacing your own Time Bomb caused more damage than intended from ability power
Fixed a bug where the Time Bomb explosion particle occasionally showed over fog of war
Fixed a bug where Time Bomb would occasionally remain on dead units

Items
New Item: Wriggle's Lantern
+35 Damage, +30 Armor, +14% Lifesteal
UNIQUE Passive: 20% chance on attack to deal 500 damage to a minion.
UNIQUE Active: Places an invisible ward with 1100 range sight and lasts for 3 minutes. 3 minute cooldown.
Fixed a bug where Aegis of the Legion was not affecting minions
Fixed a bug with Elixir of Agility’s tooltip to correctly show that it grants 15% Critical strike
Fixed a bug where Warden's Mail and Raduin's Omen were not slowing attack speeds

Summoner Spells
Revive now increases your movement speed by 225%, diminishing to normal over 12 seconds.
Cleanse now only removes crowd controlling effects, silences and blinds. It no longer removes effects such as damaging debuffs or armor/stat debuffs
Ignite damage per level reduced to 20 from 25.

General
Champion kill experience decreased by 5%
Turret damage scaling now begins at 90% instead of 85%
Turret damage scaling per hit increased to 20% from 15%
Removed global gold and experience rewards from Grez on Twisted Treeline
The Nexus and Nexus Turrets now become invulnerable if all of your team's inhibitors respawn
Inhibitors no longer remain destroyed for successively longer periods - they are always destroyed for 5 minutes now.
Normalized the jungle spawns on Summoner's Rift - the Wolf camp now always spawns in the same quadrant as the Ancient Golem, and the smaller golem camp will always spawn in the quadrant with Lizard Elder.
Team Kills and Enemy Team Kills are now shown underneath the Kill Count bar
Added tooltips to the Summoner Spells in the scoreboard
Fixed a bug where Champions could path through walls or appear on the other side when attempting to move
Fixed several bugs where some passive abilities were not showing up properly in Death Recap
Fixed a bug where certain particles would appear to drop to the ground before impact
Fixed several server crashes
Fixed several client crashes

Skins
Added a glow to Chosen Master Yi's sword



New Kassadin might be beast.  ATS melee w/ mega escape?

[Thrawn]

Heimerdinger
H-28G Evolution Turret tooltip has been updated to show that turrets do magic damage.
CH-1 Concussion Grenade now deals 50% damage to turrets, from 100%.
CH-1 Concussion Grenade cooldown increased to 13/12/11/10/9 from 12/11/10/9/8

If all the patch had was that I'd be happy.

Also the new items active ability is that it drops a ward and it's an obvious fit for junglers?  That seems....too good.

[Dtrain]

Of course they didn't add the ability to save more rune loadouts or mastery specs, so the benefit of banning champions to encourage different character choices is not yet fully realized.

And so far, I am not sure I enjoy the bans I'm seeing - Heimer has been banned in all 3 of the games I've played. Xin Zhao was banned twice, which I can agree with. (Still, on the 3rd game, someone on my team picked him and proceeded to jungle, not knowing anything about the character.)

Then I had someone who refused to play in a game because they got killed 3 times by the same pair of characters, and blamed it on the team leader for not banning those 2 specific characters - like people never won games before bans happened.

I can say it is unlikely that Rammus will get much ban action (at least not before Shen,) so my incentive to experiment with other characters while the game doesn't support it very well is minimual. I doubt that many people will ban tanks anyways, unless they are scared of a heavy taunt/disable strategy.

[tazelbain]

>Xin Zhao
They are allowing champs in ranked games on the first day he is available?  Very silly.

[Thrawn]

Hmm..both very good points.  Jumping straight into season one with new champs allowed from day 1, no additional rune pages and no saving masteries still just seems like major amateur hour.

[Thrawn]

Whoo hoo, first two ranked games were 5 man queue easy easy wins.  I don't know how Dispenser makes solo mid Shaco work but he does.

[LK]

Xin Zhao may be a wee bit OP.

[Hoax]

Xin Zhao may be a wee bit OP.

Waiting for the first set of balance fixes on him before I jump into ranked, champ's damage is currently dumb.

[Thrawn]

Just ban him then if you don't have first pick!

I have a feeling season one is going to make me more casual about normal games, and make me a raging tryhard nerd about ranked games and who I will queue with.  Don't have a mic and on vent? Go away.  Don't want to talk about team comp and lanes before we queue? Go away.  You want to play Olaf/Eve/Kogmaw/etc? Go away.  :P

[LK]

Xin tends to become much easier to manage if there's a Frozen Heart in play. Thornmail is nice too. However he might have a few too many HP considering he has tank elements but can gank harder than Shaco.

[Thrawn]

Keep meaning to ask this and keep forgetting.  Does anyone know what happens if you dodge during the draft stage.  Just normal queue timer?  A Leave?

[LK]

Counts as a Loss, Lower ELO according to Brackhar. That's in Ranked Games.

[MrHat]

I don't know what's going on.

One game I go 17-3.  The next, 1-10.  Repeat.

[Thrawn]

Got a chance to play the new champ last night...if you aren't either playing him or banning him its your own fault if you lose. :P

[Hoax]

He is fuck stupid at the moment, I believe they are going to tone down not just his meticulous ult but something else as well and he's still going to be very good. Once his attack speed is high its very hard to function as a physical carry if he gets on you and you'll basically get no damage the whole fight.  Not only are all his numbers really good but his skillset has great synergy with the good heal/support/invuln teams that are currently so hard to beat.

[MrHat]

He is fuck stupid at the moment, I believe they are going to tone down not just his meticulous ult but something else as well and he's still going to be very good. Once his attack speed is high its very hard to function as a physical carry if he gets on you and you'll basically get no damage the whole fight.  Not only are all his numbers really good but his skillset has great synergy with the good heal/support/invuln teams that are currently so hard to beat.

I blow with him.  Though I'd imagine that has more to do with me not being able to escape properly with a character with no escape mechanism.

Guess I could try him w/ Ghost+Flash.

Reminds me that they need to implement like 2-3 more rune books so I could try a ghetto movement speed + attack speed one.

[LK]

If you have to escape with Xin Zhao, you didn't jump in to the right fight. 

Kidding, I know that doesn't encompass every situation, but whenever I see a good Xin Zhao, he's the last one standing regardless of the opposition. Note: That's when I *see* him.

[MrHat]

If you have to escape with Xin Zhao, you didn't jump in to the right fight. 

Kidding, I know that doesn't encompass every situation, but whenever I see a good Xin Zhao, he's the last one standing regardless of the opposition. Note: That's when I *see* him.

Ya, I'm noticing a trend with my playing.  I'm not good at those chars where you have to wait in the jungle until someone else initiates and then time my entrance right.

It's why I like Morde and Kat.  You're there, they know it, but they can't do shit about it.

[LK]

I'm thinking of picking up Mordekaiser. His play style suits me. Much love to Rammus but I'm getting ass-fucked frequently as him and Rammus is good on a TEAM and not a bunch of retards that don't know their ass from their mouth because of all the shit they spew.

[Hoax]

If you have to escape with Xin Zhao, you didn't jump in to the right fight.  

Kidding, I know that doesn't encompass every situation, but whenever I see a good Xin Zhao, he's the last one standing regardless of the opposition. Note: That's when I *see* him.

Ya, I'm noticing a trend with my playing.  I'm not good at those chars where you have to wait in the jungle until someone else initiates and then time my entrance right.

It's why I like Morde and Kat.  You're there, they know it, but they can't do shit about it.

Other champs worth trying if you guys are looking to go that route: Singed, Taric, Nunu, Shen & Gragas. Those four make their living being in the way and disrupting what the enemy is trying to do. You might really enjoy Poppy who is really more of an anti-carry but w/ the ult and charge you have escapes. Possibly Cho and Udyr as well when played in certain styles w/ certain teams.

[MrHat]

Other champs worth trying if you guys are looking to go that route: Singed, Taric, Nunu, Shen & Gragas. Those four make their living being in the way and disrupting what the enemy is trying to do. You might really enjoy Poppy who is really more of an anti-carry but w/ the ult and charge you have escapes. Possibly Cho and Udyr as well when played in certain styles w/ certain teams.

Ya, I do great with Shen, Singed and Cho.  Haven't played Udyr yet, and I disliked Gragas.

I feel like Kat should be on the banlist.  Been ripping it up with her lately.

[Thrawn]

One of my current issues with draft, how does it pick who is team leader doing the bans?  It seems completely random, if I'm in a game (500+ wins and some ranked games) and a few other people with similar numbers, why does the guy with like 90 wins and no ranked games in his profile get to do our bans and first pick?

My personal 4 bans right now would probably be - Shen (if I don't think I'll get him), Xin, Soraka....hmmm, not sure on 4th actaully.  Hiem maybe?

[Thrawn]

Cripes, my last ranked game makes me want to uninstall and quit playing.  Whats the point of the game if you're going to get stuck with people like that.

Also, an obvious side effect to the Cleanse super nerf just dawned on me.  Characters like Tryn/Yi/etc. that were pretty bad in most cases before but could occasionaly get fed and carry....are now terrible, always, no exceptions.

[Prospero]

Most of my games recently have made me want to uninstall. I'm hoping someone makes a more casual MOBA; I have high hopes for Valve's entry. I enjoy LoL but pretty much hate the community. I think tracking wins and losses is a big contributing factor. It makes everyone take the whole thing much too seriously, and turns into "it's all X's" fault. I'm generally not the one to get blamed anymore, but still, it's a caustic environment to play in. Going back to TF2 has reminded me what it's like to play games with people who are just trying to have fun.

I think forcing matches to be shorter would help too. It does suck to have one guy decide to farm an hour into the game and lose a major team fight because he is jacking off in a corner. If it was only 15 minutes wasted I think there would be less angst.

[Thrawn]

From what I have seen and played of DotA and HoN, LoL IS the casual MOBA.  The community for the other games is way, way worse.

For me it's just people joining ranked games and being stupid that piss me off.  If it's "Just a game, whatever." for you, fine.  But play practice or at least normal games then, don't come into ranked games and fuck over people who WANT to play try hard.

[DLRiley]

Cripes, my last ranked game makes me want to uninstall and quit playing.  Whats the point of the game if you're going to get stuck with people like that.

Also, an obvious side effect to the Cleanse super nerf just dawned on me.  Characters like Tryn/Yi/etc. that were pretty bad in most cases before but could occasionaly get fed and carry....are now terrible, always, no exceptions.

Low health. I mean when crossing the distance between range dps/casters and eating a stun/snare along the way the diferrence between a live melee toon and a dead melee toon is health. Thats why garen, oalf and xin is being released, high health and high dps, with some version of cleanse. Its going to take a awhile before melee dps is viable again.

From what I have seen and played of DotA and HoN, LoL IS the casual MOBA.  The community for the other games is way, way worse.

For me it's just people joining ranked games and being stupid that piss me off.  If it's "Just a game, whatever." for you, fine.  But play practice or at least normal games then, don't come into ranked games and fuck over people who WANT to play try hard.

Yeah in about 2-3 weeks all the scrubs will hopefully quit playing ranked so I can solo que again. Which means that my ranked solo que is going to take 30 minutes but oh well. I wouldn't mind playing you with you thrawn and anyone else from f13.