Riot talked mostly about League Classic this week, and the guy running it posted the entire next patch on X at one in the morning.
Old Akali is coming back, towers get buffed, and someone finally explained the matchmaking. Here's the week in one read.
Red Post Roundup
Week of August 3 to 9
Issue #1Riot talked mostly about League Classic this week, and the guy running it posted the entire next patch on X at one in the morning.
Old Akali is coming back, towers get buffed, and someone finally explained the matchmaking. Here's the week in one read.
The short version
- Classic: next patch brings back the ninjas, old Akali included, plus tower buffs and no more early Homeguard.
- Classic: long queues get fixed by starting you nearer your real rank, not by loosening the rules.
- Modern League: your MMR didn't change when the ranked season rolled over.
- Modern League: that 26.16 list going around is a PBE datamine, not the patch.
- Modern League: chat reports work, but only if you actually report.
Want these as they happen?
Our League of Legends Red Tracker collects everything Riot devs say in public and refreshes every fifteen minutes. This roundup is the weekly read. The tracker is the one you leave open.
Open the Red TrackerWhat's a "red post"?
Riot staff used to post on the old League forums with their names printed in red, so players called them reds. The forums are gone. The posts aren't. They're just scattered now, and Riot's news page carries almost none of them.
So we built a tracker that watches all of it
The Red Tracker pulls from three places and merges them into one list.
Riot's own feeds
Dev blog, game updates, esports and videos, all landing in one place.
Riot devs on X
A hand built list of real employees, each one shown with their real job title.
Rioters on Reddit
Where the specifics live. A designer answering a direct question gives you a real answer.
Three things make it quicker than scrolling any of those yourself.
Filter by subject. Every post is tagged with what it's actually about, so you can pull up just the patch talk, or just the ranked talk.
Notable means important, not just new. Every post gets scored on what it says, so a designer promising a fix next patch sits above a skin trailer from an hour ago.
Off-topic posts don't make it. Riot devs have normal accounts and post about lunch. If a post doesn't match one of these subjects, it doesn't go up.
Names are red, brand accounts aren't, and every job title comes from a list we check by hand. It can't see private Discords, deleted posts, or anything older than about a week on X. Spot a Rioter we're missing? Tell us.
The big one: Classic's next patch
League ClassicFeralPony runs League Classic. He posted the whole thing in two parts at 1am on August 8.
Hey Classic Summoners, wanted to share some recent classic changes In Right Now! - Many bug fixes - MM Seeding fixes - +6000 IP from Missions for Runes/Pages - If you own a Skin that's a Classic Chroma it's unlocked! - Bonus IP Weekend:+150 IP /win! Next Patch Below! (Ninjas!!)
FeralPonyDirector of League Classicon X
Next Patch! - NInjas (Kennen, Shen, Akali) - Visual Map Changes (More Green! Lighting Fixes!) - Tower Buffs - Early Homeguard removed - Bug fixes - Lotsa Champion Balance changes
FeralPonyDirector of League Classicon X
What it means: in Classic, tower buffs plus no early Homeguard both make diving cost more. Games there should snowball slower.
The ninjas coming back
Akali is the one to get excited about. Classic runs the old kits, so this is pre-rework Akali: a Twilight Shroud [W] that turned her genuinely invisible rather than merely hard to see, and a Shadow Dance [R] that banked charges so she could chain dash after dash onto whatever she'd marked. Feed that Akali once and the game was over.
The open question is which version of the shroud ships. The original also denied turrets their true sight, which is how old Akali dove a tower, vanished into her own smoke and strolled back out. Riot took that away years before the rework. If Classic hands it back, give it a day before the complaints start.
Shen matters most alongside the tower changes. Stand United [R] saves someone dying under a tower, and towers just got scarier. Kennen rounds out the set.
Classic's matchmaking finally got a real answer
League ClassicWe have additional fixes coming in next week and next patch for long queues and more rapidly getting folks to the right spot. Most of the fixes so far have been around seeding, essentially starting people in better positions. Didn't have enough characters to elaborate in first post
FeralPonyDirector of League Classicon X
What it means: "seeding" is where Classic starts you. Riot isn't loosening the rules to fill lobbies faster, which is the cheap fix that makes games worse. They're putting you closer to your real rank from the start, so the system wastes fewer games working it out. That fixes queue times and bad games at once.
Meanwhile on modern League: your MMR didn't move
Modern LeaguePlayers thought their rating shifted when the ranked season rolled over. It didn't.
We didn't change anything about this. [...] people's ranks or mmrs didn't change in the ranked season swap over because we didn't reset over the boundary
Matt Leung-HarrisonLead gameplay designeron Reddit
That 26.16 list you saw is fake
Modern LeagueWell, not fake. Just not the patch.
That's someone else doing the PBE scrape, not the changes that we're intending to put in the patch. I don't have any control over how people scrape the PBE environment and what they post. We'll try to clarify where we can but it's hard to be everywhere and especially during core work hours
Matt Leung-HarrisonLead gameplay designeron Reddit
What it means: the test server holds experiments that were never meant to ship. A datamine of it is not a patch preview, every single cycle.
He also explained why marksmen changes sometimes hit lanes nobody plays them in.
The Designers believe that it's important that the relationship between burst and ADC's is preserved regardless of which lanes they're played in. If we're making structural claim about a class, we should apply it broadly. [...]
Matt Leung-HarrisonLead gameplay designeron Reddit
Riot balances ADCs as a class, not as a bot lane role. If burst is meant to threaten an ADC, it threatens them everywhere.
Chat bans: how it actually works
Modern LeagueDrew Levin runs player behavior on the live game. A player showed him a chat log where the insult had been watered down so much it stopped making sense.
I appreciate that our chat detections have reached the point of effectiveness where this person has chosen to take all of the bite out of their insult
Drew LevinDirector of Product and Strategyon X
It's a joke, but it's also the point. People aren't flaming less because they got nicer. They're dodging a filter that works.
Then someone insisted nothing ever happens to flamers.
[...] when the player hits the report button, the person who sent them that message will get suspended for a couple of weeks.
Drew LevinDirector of Product and Strategyon X
What it means: the ban follows the report. Close the client without reporting and nothing looks at it.
Someone suggested Riot quietly rewrite flamers' messages so the target never sees them. He wasn't buying it.
I disagree with the premise. People who flame want other people to feel and react, otherwise they'd get just as much satisfaction out of typing and deleting.
Drew LevinDirector of Product and Strategyon X
He also hinted at what's next for lobby detection.
I think a potential future evolution of lobby hostaging detections could look at "weird shit people do after getting swap declined", since I think there's a flavor of that behavior that really only happens as retaliation for perceived pick hostaging
Drew LevinDirector of Product and Strategyon X
What it means: declining a swap is fine. What people do in the next ninety seconds is what Riot wants to catch.
Everything else Riot cleared up
Tier 3 runes return to Classic
League ClassicOld full penetration and full AP pages get their parts back. FeralPony says there's "a bunch returning next patch".
on XClassic already has ranked
League ClassicPeople keep asking for it while it's sitting there under another name. Play to level 10 and Summoners Journey unlocks.
on XChampion swapping in Classic pick phase
League ClassicOn the way, though he would not pin a patch to it: "if not next week the patch after".
on XBots in Classic custom games
League ClassicGot a flat yes, on the same loose timing as the swap fix.
on XNot every skin works in Classic yet
League ClassicA chroma unlocks only where Riot has built the matching set. More arrive as they do.
on X
Zilean's Time Bomb [Q] stays weird
Modern LeagueIts damage has never scaled evenly with rank. It is not a bug and it is not getting fixed: "It is EXTREMELY annoying to look at but know we can't change it".
on Reddit
Bankplank ran a bonus IP weekend
League ClassicAn extra 150 IP per Classic win on top of the normal bonus, closing at 10am PT on August 10.
on XARAM Mayhem hit Summoner's Rift
Modern LeagueRiot calls it "nostalgic Augments and items", so expect the Augment pool to lean on old favorites.
on XRiot's own channels were quiet. Most of it was Classic starter guides, with a Cho'Gath trailer and Triumphant Ryze returning on the modern side.
Next week
Patch 26.16 lands mid week, so we'll see how much of that datamined list was real. Classic's ninja patch is the other one to watch.
Don't wait a week
The Red Tracker carries every one of these within minutes of Riot posting it, plus everything that didn't make the cut here. Filter by subject, search the archive, check it whenever a patch drops.
Open the Red Tracker
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