Thursday, September 13, 2012

Patch Day: Syndra

There are absolutely zero balance changes in today's patch, unless you count sunglasses as balance. This leaves Syndra as the most important point of interest for the patch.

Syndra's design has changed slightly over the course of the PBE, in ways that have impressed me considerably. Initially her spheres lasted longer, and their lifespan was increased by grabbing them. With CDR it was feasible to have six spheres in the field, though it required considerable setup. This presented a significant balance issue, as balancing her ultimate around this ideal would have severely crippled it in more practical use cases.

In response Riot made a few clever changes. First they increased the cooldown of Syndra's Q slightly, slowing her ability to generate spheres. Next, they made it so that her W only extended the life of spheres that were already near death. Finally, they reduced the lifespan of spheres slightly. The net result is that the maximum number of spheres is three with both 0% and 40% CDR. The elegance of the solution is the creation of a limit on the number of spheres through emergent properties rather than hard limits.

That said, I'm still mad she isn't Kassadin's daughter.

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