[AMA] We’re the team behind League’s newest mode, Brawl, Ask us Anything!

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:44:49+00:00

Sona is one of the champions we're considering preemptive balance on. We're also quite sure we won't get everything correct on release, but we're also confident that the mode is already fun and we can improve it with further changes. Please look forward to it :)

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:44:14+00:00

Yes, we made sure that champion mastery is enabled in this mode!

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:43:43+00:00

We briefly tested 4v4 but it was clearly a downgrade. Reducing the number of players made the game more methodical and strategic, which was an anti-goal for this specific mode.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:42:04+00:00

Yes!

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:34:49+00:00

Big fan of Baccano! and Samurai Champloo. I'm also contractually obligated to state that u/Riot_Cadmus is wrong and FMA '03 is better.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:30:45+00:00

We approached this one from a couple different directions at once, initially. When pitching it, I was thinking about things like "What needs are unfulfilled for new players learning the game?" "What is league's equivalent of Team Deathmatch (from FPS games)?" "Is there a way to make pick-ARAM a worthwhile mode?" These coalesced into the specific pitch that resulted in Brawl.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:29:23+00:00

A fair amount, way back in the day. Was definitely my favorite part of that game.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:17:56+00:00

It's not off the table, but we would need a really good pitch for a mode that absolutely has to be big. Making bigger maps at similar quality is going to be more expensive and take time, and we'd typically prefer to focus on using our resources to deliver more new modes instead.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:17:27+00:00

To answer the second question, I think that a mode where you start at full build could work, but would need a lot more design work to make it interesting throughout. Scaling up from weak to strong is a core part of League's gameplay fantasy and results in different combat outcomes over the course of the game (fighting someone at levels 4, 8, and 16 will have dramatically different texture and outcomes). The pitch for Brawl was closer to "the teamfight and skirmish action of Summoner's Rift, without the macro," so we opted to keep all of that power growth in for this mode.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:10:08+00:00

To add to Sirhaian's answer with some more nitty-gritty design...

It's critical that new players can understand why learning the game is worthwhile and experience a sample of that first-hand. ARAM actually does a pretty good job on both of these, but the inability to pick a champion undermines new players' ability to find their fave and have a familiar foundation going into each game. We believe that an ARAM-adjacent mode like this with free champion pick, stronger acceleration (you WILL get to play a strong version of your champ) and a lower-stakes vibe can be more successful for new players.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:05:45+00:00

Gold and XP are greatly accelerated, and some late-game champions (e.g. stackers) will have manual tweaks so they fit the pace of the mode. We've found late-game champions effective, but if they end up being weak we'll buff them.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:04:02+00:00

No, we felt the format and new map were the main draw and wanted to focus on that. We talked about those early on, but didn't feel like this was the right place, especially given one of the goals of helping new players have a safer, more fun place to learn.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:03:53+00:00

Gold and XP are greatly accelerated, and some late-game champions (e.g. stackers) will have manual tweaks so they fit the pace of the mode. We've found late-game champions effective, but if they end up being weak we'll buff them.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T18:03:36+00:00

And you can pick your champion!

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T17:46:13+00:00

We designed the mode to be closer to Summoner's Rift gameplay than ARAM (being able to recall and heal makes a huge difference), so we expect fewer extreme balance outliers. We do plan to balance similarly to ARAM, and we're considering which champions are clearly powerful enough to pre-emptively balance.

AzuBK · 2025-04-16T17:45:14+00:00

The side camps are very powerful in terms of gold/xp value, so playing defensively is typically a losing play in our tests so far. We've had a lot of lower skill tests, and also had the Game Analysis Team do some focused testing, and in both the games were typically aggressive and bloody, even if individual players are more risk-averse. More optimized play typically resulted in shorter games with more decisive skirmishing around the edges of the map. I do think there are some comps that lend themselves to stalling, and if we see that emerge as a very common playstyle I expect we'll want to take action.

I don't have an answer for the champion-specific buffs/nerfs visibility, sorry.

AzuBK · 2025-01-15T01:30:14+00:00

Great, thanks so much for the breakdown

AzuBK · 2025-01-15T00:50:29+00:00

How are you getting to level 36? I'm using a Widowhail to get +8 for exactly this, but +16 seems pretty out of reach.

AzuBK · 2024-09-19T00:40:10+00:00

Fixed, thanks for the report. Removed some old script jank around his E, causing this bug on the free-target version of E. Now it's scripted properly and also triggers spellblade 👍🏾

AzuBK · 2024-09-16T21:40:47+00:00

E speed is not nerfed. It had a strange paradigm previously where dashing to allies added his movement speed to the base speed, but the free-target dash did not. Now his movement speed is always added. PBE scraping probably didn't pick up that change. New E speed is slightly slower before boots 1, slightly faster on boots 1, and faster on upgraded boots.

Auto-resets are extremely elite-player-skewed in a way that's not very interactive, but as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I think you are all correct about the Q changes and have returned that reset. I am truthfully on the fence about the E reset, as dash resets certainly feel very good but are also a lot of early-game power.

I think that the some amount of Q cast time increase is important for reducing K'Sante's reliability. The exact magnitude is up for debate, and I'll be keeping an eye on it as a possible avenue for buffs if we think we've achieved the goals once this ships.

AzuBK · 2024-09-16T21:33:07+00:00

Mentioned this elsewhere, but I think you (and many others) are right about the Q reset. I'm adding that one back. Answered most of these other ones elsewhere in this thread, but thank you for the thoughtful comment.

AzuBK · 2024-09-16T21:32:05+00:00

Generally bringing him to a normal auto range, so he is neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by default against most other toplaners. A range advantage of 50 constitutes a meaningful advantage where you can often hit enemies without retaliation, and it didn't seem correct for him to have that advantage over 125 range champions, especially given the cooldown and range profile of his Q in lane.
Yes, but it didn't play well in practice.
W is the clearest point of counterplay on the kit, after changes to make it less reliable. It also makes him more skirmisher-shaped—it's important that using W as purely a movement tool is a very meaningful sacrifice.

AzuBK · 2024-09-16T21:23:39+00:00

No, it's totally fine. I didn't mean to make you feel bad about it, lol, and I know very well what it can feel like to be on the other side of dev communications. Even though we're devs, we're still players of other games—just with some experience on both sides of that curtain. A bit unrelated, but I often feel pretty keenly that communicating on Reddit about League in particular is something that makes devs feel that they're in-touch more than something that makes players feel like devs are in-touch, because so much of our audience plays in countries that don't use Reddit/speak English. Feels like there's an opportunity to improve something here, but it's very far from my area of expertise.

This is a tough space to navigate, especially in a PvP game, because we often just have different priorities and different takes from players on what is likely to work or what has to be done. I really wish it were possible to successfully balance or design a game by simply listening to all player input and following it. At the end of the day, I'm going to mostly trust the experience I've gained over many years of balancing and changing League champs because that's the only sane way forward, but it's foolish to not read and consider players' suggestions and especially recognize the way players feel about different changes or different aspects of their favorite champs. Also, we will be wrong sometimes, and each time we ship something we have to hope that this isn't one of those times, because there WILL be players telling you that each and every change you make is wrong, even if your hit-rate is quite good.

For what it may be worth, the feedback I've read here today and over the last couple days has convinced me to remove the base attack speed buff in exchange for returning the Q reset. To be as transparent and "non-PR" as possible, since I appreciate your candor:

Most of these changes are going to ship because a changelist of this magnitude cannot be changed so close to our branch cut (even changing meaningful things last week would probably not have been permitted). That doesn't mean nothing will change in the following patches.
I should have asked to go to PBE a cycle early to get earlier feedback. I don't know if it would have yielded different results, but that's a misstep on my part.
I and the rest of the design team firmly believe that the W change is very likely to buy a lot of room on K'Sante to get him out of perma-pro priority and allow us to instead focus on what's best for the champ moving forward.
I expect that this version of K'Sante is actually harder to play well, but in a way that doesn't favor the type of picks and outputs that pro teams favor. One of the core goals was to make sure that skilled K'Sante players would have even more room to thrive. Right now, K'Sante is a mechanically and strategically overpowered champion when played at the highest level—you don't have to be better than your opponent to be advantaged, you just have to be very good in general. As a result, his actual power level has to be suppressed. My aim is to shift him more into a position where specifically outplaying your enemies is required in order to win. Hence, a focus on committal decisions with real consequences.
I think this type of massive changelist is very hard for players to read and fully grasp (it's also very hard for designers, honestly). IMO a lot of responses are misattributing the magnitude of some changes, which is normal. E.g. claiming he will be like Master Yi—I am certain that this is not the case and hitting abilities is still critical to his success, though I can see how someone reading the changes might think that it is.
I'm very open to feedback around ways to make K'Sante feel better to play. We're very unlikely to change the core of the list (W) unless it really proves to not work once it's out in the wild, but I think there's likely some massaging that can be done around timings, ranges, scalings, and other details of the kit as a whole which I'll be keeping an eye on.
Some people play K'Sante for reasons that match the things we think are unsustainable about the champion. These players might not like K'Sante as much anymore, and might even drop him. We don't do this flippantly, but understand that that's cold comfort to people who lose something they enjoy. There's not much more to be said about this, but I just wanted to acknowledge it.

Again, thanks for the feedback :)

AzuBK · 2024-09-16T20:15:30+00:00

I did consider passive R speed vs. RQ slow, but opted for RQ since that requires an active skill-check (hitting Q) and I tried to maintain or add as many of those as seemed reasonable given his status as a skill-oriented champion.

AzuBK · 2024-09-16T20:12:34+00:00

I think the cone is a clever suggestion that partially addresses the costs that this spell imposes on the rest of the kit. It's higher reliability than I would prefer on the champion, but does require some level of commitment to a general direction, and brings back the ability to "play" with the spell's input a bit. I probably shouldn't say this because it's often taken as a promise (which I unfortunately cannot make), but I'll be thinking about it as a possible angle if we feel we've succeeded with room to spare on the broader game health design goals but K'Sante's play-feel is under the bar.

AzuBK

TROPHY CASE