Content of content

Scarizard on Karma's W2
Scarizard took time to reply to summoner complaints that Karma's W2 ( that is, her mantra'd W ) doesn't feel useful or effective. He comments:

"Looking at tackling this in the next patch. Overall, i'm pretty happy with how Karma's been playing on live, with the W2 being the only sore spot. We have a QoL fix for her Soulflare coming in 3.7 (it's not going to pierce minions or anything wacky) but should definitely help the spell feel better. 

In the 3.5 Balance Update, we made a change where Inner Flame and Soulflare both would detonate at the area of missile impact instead of auto-locking to the center of the area hit. This was a pretty nice fix for Inner Flame, making it easier to both farm and harass champions near minons (previously, you would Q 3 ranged minions in a line - and instead of exploding and hitting all three, the impact zone would lock onto the left-most or right-most minions, meaning you'd hit two of 3. Feels bad, man.) However, in the case of Soulflare this has kind of been a nerf - you clip more people with that radius than you did before, but it increased the ability for champions hit spot-on to walk out of it due to the zone spawning with them mostly outside of it already. It's small, but it's something we could easily change and have.

Looking to the future, though (as this thread is about W2), i'll be working on and testing an iteration of Renewal that hopefully makes the healing more reliable and useful in the dueling scenarios. She's getting a lot more mantras than before, but with 1 of her 3 choices feeling 'wrong' even when the situational read was correct, it's certainly not helping her play experience."

Elaborating further, he continued:

"The change the W2 isn't intended to be a huge increase in power, but most likely will be a buff due to the fact that W2 isn't used/is underpowered right now. We're pretty much on analysis watch for Karma at this point (we don't usually give two rounds of significant buffs to a champion and then keep going), and W2 is the last thing on my plate currently in terms of Karma. 

This isn't to say she won't get buffs in the future if she's consistently weak. This is true of all our champions - but Karma's seen a spike in power with recent buffs and sometimes champions who aren't in the limelight sit at a lower winrate until discovered. I remember a certain Void Mantis, Shadow Ninja and many others who had a ~45% winrate until seeing play.

I'm not just going to turn off my karma-sensors after the W2 fix goes out, so don't worry about feedback going unheard. We just want to make sure we understand that if she -is- still weak after all of the changes that we don't just give her 'more buffs' (which the community has said they don't want) and instead are able to pump power into the parts of her kit that players enjoy, or that are defining to her"

More from @Morello
When questioned for an update on the Rengar fixes Classik was talking about a while back, Morello offered up:

"Still getting it fleshed out. It's more substantial than just numbers, so requires more to test."

On the topic of the toxicity of AP Master Yi, Morello mentioned there are are plans to address it after "something a little bigger to fix Yi more"

"You're right - it is toxic and we agree. It's not overpowered, but it's definitely bad gameplay interaction. We're working on something a little bigger to fix Yi more, so we're waiting for that (which shouldn't be too much longer)."

Continuing on yesterday's discussion about Alistar, he says:

"Great feedback - Statikk and I will discuss these specifics. I'm likely going to make E not a lane sustain tool, but maybe something else helpful when aggression and peeling is what's happening (Alistar needs the risk of being worse when he's behind, like other good tank supports)."

When asked what he though of making champs of different races, i.e something like more trolls like Trundle or more Tiger people like Rengar, Morello commented:

"As for races, I think likely not for League as more of those could remove distinction of the existing characters. It's possible, but I think the pitch has to be really strong!"

Statikk on Laners Building Jungle Items
One curious summoner purposed an interesting question to the balance team today, he asked "Just how ok are you with laners building jungle items". This of course refers to the non-jungling champions who regularly build the very cost efficient jungle items, that meaning the ones that have spirit stone in their build path, such as Ezreal who likes to build Spirit of the Elder Lizard or one of the several AP champions who enjoy building Spirit of the Spectral Wraith.

Here is Statikk's reply on the matter:

"It really depends on why the item is being bought. I actually don't mind things like Ezreal building Spirit of the Elder Lizard. I think it actually provides more diversity to the game. 

If the item is simply being bought because it is extremely overpowered, that's not ideal. On the other hand, if it's being bought because it provides unique strengths that aren't offered by any other items, I think that's really cool. Interestingly enough, I think all 3 of the Spirit Stone upgrades currently provide unique niches in the game. 

For example, I think a champion buying Spirit of the Ancient Golem in order to open up the potential buy Boots of Mobility instead of Merc Treads is great. I think a champion buying Spirit of the Ancient Golem because it's just more stat efficient than a Warmog's is not great. 

I do think we need to do a deeper analysis in terms of how much junglers should be benefiting more from these items as opposed to laners, but I think it's fine as long as they are only alternatives to different strategies and not just strictly always superior choices."

Elaborating further:

"Well, we just have to take into account that jungle efficiency when we assess the power level of the items.

To be honest with you, yes I do think that there is a good possibility that the Spirit items are a bit too good right now, but I don't think at a fundamental level it is bad if laners ever buy them. As with any item in our game, it's a problem when any item becomes the only dominant choice, but it's awesome when they are an alternative."

Diamond 1 Bug Fix
Here is Phreak with news on a bug fix applied during the last maintenance. .

"Hey guys, 

A few days ago, we fixed a bug in the Leagues system that prevented players from ever getting demoted out of Diamond I. It would clamp your LP losses to the point where you could never hit 0 LP and so you would stay in Diamond I forever, even when you were supposed to enter a lower Division.

After the maintenance, players are now properly losing LP in order to have players match their intended Division. For some, this means you’ll see gains as low as 1 LP while having losses subtract a much larger number. This is the result of that bug fix: Your MMR has decreased to the point where you currently belong in a lower Division.

Sorry for screwing this up! We realize this isn't a great experience for those of you who are suddenly hit with lopsided LP changes."

He then elaborated on why such a post is stuck in the general forums and not in patch notes or something more important.

":P that's basically why it's just in GD and not a big news blast or anything. 

There's typically a lot of small under-the-hood maintenance that happens with things like Leagues that we don't post because it typically doesn't matter. This was one where a small (but important!) set of players were all, "Yo dude, wtf wit my LP dawg?" and it's worth messaging that.

As for "why me?" Well, I suppose it doesn't matter too much. Someone brought this up to me (Yo dawg wtf wit my LP) and I went and said, "Yo guys, let's get word out about this" and then we got word out"