#pondering the s/i design currently but also. i need to learn to draw him!

[leibholz-moved]

sketching 🥰 power of god and anime on my side etcetera 

[rpgmgames]

February’s Featured Game: Ressurflection

DEVELOPER(S): charlottezxz ENGINE: RPG Maker MV GENRE: Fantasy, Cartoon, RPG WARNINGS: Paranoia, fear and tension, mild swearing and blood. SUMMARY: Ressurflection is a Fantasy/cartoon RPG set in the fictional universe of the Arbvar and taking center stage primarily at the coastal city of ‘Horizon Bluff’. Its story and game play are heavily character driven, with its narrative divided into two parallels told both within and outside the mirror itself. Ressurflection’s core themes draw from our inevitability of fearing death, and that at some point or another, we all must accept it, and to treasure what’s really important in the time that we have.

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *charlottezxz: Hiya this is Charlotte, lead game developer for Ressurflection! I’m some silly, overactive drawing monkey who works a lot with Narrow on Ressurflection! I’m always sketching and conceptualizing monster bois, taking a lot of inspiration from various games, primarily monster hunter! I’ve had avid interest in the Indie scene for a while now and a lot of the great friends I've made have been due to it and a lot of my recent favorite games have come from it! I would have had Narrow say a few things here but he’s hiding in a corner somewhere!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *charlottezxz: Ressurflection started out as what can be described as two separate stories. Myself and Narrow wrote our own stories and every so often we swapped over ideas or combined them together with each other. One day I said to ourselves ‘You know what? This could work quite well as a game rather than just a story’ so eventually Ressurflection was conceived, around the idea of a mythical mirror capable ‘Ressurflection’ the title of the game. We’ve gone through quite a few iterations of the story before it came to its current form and to be honest if we even showed or compared them side by side they’d be pretty unrecognizable as the same thing except for certain characters, locations and the mirror itself to identify its primordial form having any kind of ancestral relevance to how it is today. As for what Ressurflection is about, I think our synopsis can get that across quite nicely! ‘Horizon Bluff has always annually held its ‘Legend of the Wyvern Glass’ festivities. The Wyvern glass was a long lost mythical mirror, once fabled for its power of ‘Ressurflection’ and coveted by a kingdom now all but gone. That is quick to change however with the arrival of the Roulette Runner’s circus to the coastal city of Horizon Bluff. Trouble is soon to set in motion not just the kingdom’s sudden reappearance but the entrapment of one of their own acrobats within the mirror silver. Yet things are soon to worsen...with the spread of a purple ‘corruption’ across the city and the fact that our most unfortunate trouper is far from alone within the mirror, finding himself at the mercy of its ‘Mirror Maiden’. > The apparent all powerful manipulator of its realm…’

How long have you been working on your project? *charlottezxz: Conceptually we have been working on it for 4 years which is hard to even fathom, however that’s more tinkering around the idea for the story and conceiving it as we learnt the engine. The blog itself is hitting its 4th birthday in February! Ressuflection’s development went on as i attended university, so its always been a side lined hobby of ours.Steam says 108 days worth of hours in the engine and most of the game progress other than concepts has been done in 2019. So I could say 4 years for the ideas/stories and concepts and a year of that for actual game making!

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *charlottezxz: We each have our own inspirations, Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy 9, Xenoblade Chronicles, Monster hunter and many older PSX titles such as Medievil, Tomba and Heart of darkness are great influences and inspirations to me personally. The dark, dangerous environments of Heart of darkness contrasted by some innocent characters, the monster designs in capcom’s franchise and the storytelling and themes with a cinematic approach to cut scenes found in some of FF9, Xenoblade and Lost odyssey, a lost game stuck in the recess of the xbox 360. There are many more but these spring to mind first and foremost. Narrow himself draws inspiration from games such as Earthbound, the Persona series and FF10!

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *charlottezxz: We started the project in VX ace to begin with, until MV released. It was in Ace that I experimented learning RPG maker and in the early days of MV too. Although before Ressurflection’s time i also dabbled a bit in XP. MV seemed more in line for what we wanted, as i really wanted to try animating beyond SV sheets and do more, with Java being a bit more flexible and the scope of it being able to allow dragon bones later. However it hasn’t been without its hiccups! Part of that is the sheer amount of time you underestimate games and certain elements to take in their development. That and everything that comes with it, streamlining, trimming the fat...in the past week alone i spent days optimizing pictures, sounds and music in the game to cut down the staggering file sizes they were. So far they have retained their form without being as costly on the MB! Since I do the vast majority of the game development myself, everything takes a lot longer to develop. You underestimate all the little things to consider and that you may need later. By the end of development, I hope to have the vast majority of the game consist of custom assets and be able to truly call it something that is ours. Though that path is long ahead we won’t stray too far from it.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *charlottezxz: The game itself has always been a story-driven RPG at its heart, although certain game mechanics have been scaled down or developed further from puzzles to battle flow. As mentioned previously, the story has changed considerably which changed the direction of the overall narrative and gameplay as a whole. Certain characters and scenarios have been culled completely too. At its start the story wasn’t as heartfelt nor was the scope of the story all that big - Oh and the game had a time limit, a bit like Majora’s Mask! But it is a lot more meaningful now and we hope that you will enjoy it when the time comes.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *charlottezxz: It has been just myself and Narrow for the majority of the development but we reached a point where we wanted to reach out to find a musician for our game. We eventually came across Geoff who has done the majority of our music up until recently. However we have had friends help and contribute along the way such as Harry helping sprite some NPCs for me, Bart helping formulate and do some math balancing, Vaijack has also contributed to music making him our second musical boi and more on the way, our preliminary demo testers( it would take a little to list them all) and more peeps i’ll be sure to credit!

What is the best part of developing a game? *charlottezxz: For me it has to be conceptualising all the little ideas we have and bringing them all into being. This is especially so for any monster and character bois! I spend a lot of time visualizing and planning the design of areas, locales and creatures. Would this thing live here? Why would it be this way? If this is a historical town wouldn’t it have x and x? Then when we ultimately put it together, and all the pieces of the puzzle line into place and then you can just...experience, the final thing, that for me is the best part in developing our game for me.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *charlottezxz: I learn best by doing, so more often than not I just dive into things, including the engine blind and tussle around with it. It’s a silly way of doing it, but I've often found myself learning more that way than following tutorials. Although in any game I've played, RPG maker or not, i do like to ponder and deconstruct scenes within them. The Witch's house, Pocket Mirror, Dreaming Mary, Mad fathers and Ib are all wonderful games that are great to learn from, dissect and understand what makes and made them tick. This applies across any game I've played or intend to play! I look at game making as one giant puzzle with lots of intricate little details that need to be solved, it’s more fun and engaging that way!

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *charlottezxz: There’s some characters I like a great deal, but i can’t talk about as it would be spoilers to the plot, that and it’s hard to pick any overall favorites. Charm comes across as a fun character to write for as she’s quite witty and sarcastic, the kind of dialogue that comes a bit too naturally to me. She’s a budding magical prodigy of the circus under the tutelage of Jerine. She bigs herself up a lot but isn’t quite ready to deal with the problems of the adult world just yet, as much as she strives to get into it. Then there’s the likes of Ashley as well, she’s the loudest circus member and a close friend to Zakai, its ringmaster. She’s a super hard working down to earth country girl who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty and jump into the thick of things. Honestly I love all the cast, but there’s those two for now!

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *charlottezxz: I would say ideally we should have had all our ducks in a row before we dove into development. My development style is very messy, especially since when we started development we had a lot of learning ahead of us. That combined with focusing on a lot of coursework and real life things meant I often forgot how we made things for consistency. This has improved considerably since i started getting more organised now, keeping lists and things tabbed for reference. My desk has bits of paper kept with it with information I need to retain. I forget far too many things for my own good, but now I'm taking better count measures! I would advise anyone to keep tabs of important information about your game such as consistent sprite style sizes, resolution size, x and y positions of certain things and important variables and switches.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *charlottezxz: There’s a few ideas bounced about to do side stories for some of the cast of characters in the circus, such as before they became one and the origins of how certain members joined the circus essentially the ‘First Stringers’ and ‘Second stringers’, these being those that joined afterwards. These would be great to do as small little episodes added onto the game post development, but currently they are just ideas and won’t be given too much thought until the game is either done or close to fruition.

What do you most look forward to upon finishing the game? *charlottezxz: My most hopeful thought is for people to enjoy the game and have as much fun and interest in it as myself and Narrow have had in creating it. It’s the kind of game we want to make and hope that the characters and story chime with people enough for people to see the journey through to its end! It’s a big scope of a project but i have endless enthusiasm for it, no matter how long it takes it will get out there at some point!

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *charlottezxz: That the games story and overall feel doesn’t quite hit the right notes, it's always a little back concern. From a technical perspective I would say that the game might have some oversighted bugs or critical crashes that slip under the radar or not run as smoothly on other PCs on release. We will do our best to optimise the game as much as possible for MV and squash those pesky bugs during testing, but it is on our minds often as a niggling fear.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *charlottezxz: Gut everything from the base project that you know you most definitely will not be needing and give all your files smart tags and naming conventions. It would be great if MV allowed for sub folders, but it does not so naming your files smartly is key to finding what you need. Any of these files you know you will use often in certain ways, make them common events and call for those in events and cut scenes. This saves you mass editing them later. With naming conventions this could be Actor_1_Hurt or Chapter_1_NPC. Anything you want at the top of the list name it with _ to begin with. The bigger our project gets, the more important this has become for us and we hope it serves other inspiring devs well all the same.

Question from last month's featured dev @rojisroomrpg: How do you keep yourself happy and healthy when making your game? *charlottezxz: I’m normally a happy-go-lucky person, so I'm rarely not happy when working on Ressurflection. It's the happy little hobby I devote most of my spare time to. However, recently i would say my hands, wrists and neck have been hurting from spending a little too much time drawing assets and pieces for the game. Taking more breaks and spreading that time with other activities in between has helped to ease that pain and i would like to advise any dev to do so for their own health, including always having one or two bottles of juice, water or whatever beverage always at hand to sip at as you dev away!

We mods would like to thank charlottezxz for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Ressurflection if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[breerps]

Keziah 1,2,3,4,5,35,36,37,38,39,40,41

1. How do they move and carry themselves? Pace, rhythm, gestures, energy?

Kesiah is a very bright and ebullient woman, and this shows in her stride. She walks straight and tall, her 5′ 8″ frame occasionally bumped up by 1-2″ heels, and there’s always a bit of a spring in her step which causes her curls to bounce. Even if she’s not in a good mood, the spring stays in her stride, it just becomes more purposeful and makes it clear she’s not to be trifled with at that moment. She has a naturally brisk pace when walking normally, though if she’s really contemplating something she will slow down significantly, possibly to her present companion’s annoyance. She also talks with her hands a lot. Part of this is from how expressive she is (read: extremely), and part is from her fluency in sign language. It’s extremely rare to see her with closed off body language (such as crossed arms or legs), and to see that means she is VERY upset and you should be very careful as to how you proceed with her.

2. How much physical space do they use, active and at rest?

About the average amount for a person. She doesn’t rock or shift a lot when standing or sitting, and she’s always very aware of people in close proximity to her so that she doesn’t take up too much space that they might need. Her personal bubble is much smaller than say Lukas or Neve’s, so she doesn’t mind things like people sitting next to her or bumping into her. This is pretty much the same whether she’s moving or still, though her awareness rises when she’s active.

3. How do they position themselves in a group? Do they like to be the center of attention, or do they hang back at the edges of a crowd?

Kesiah isn’t an attention hog but she does have a natural charm which draws people to her. It’s easy to tell that she’s genuinely interested in what other people have to say, so people are likely to end up focusing on conversations with her because she’s a delight to talk to. She’s not a wallflower, either, so it’s common to find her moving around a room, engaging many different people and making sure everyone feels attended to and listened to. She hates leaving people feeling like they’re out of place or unwelcome.

4. What is their size and build? How does it influence how they use their body, if it does?

At 5′ 8″ and 135 lbs., Kesiah is of average build with some lovely curves as an accent. She jogs regularly and does sit-ups and push-ups most days, and most of her physical exercise comes from running around after the kids in her class five days a week. But that’s more than enough to keep her fit. Body image is not something that’s ever bothered her, nor does she see her body as an object, weapon, or tool to be used as anything other than her means of living life to the fullest.

5. How do they dress? What styles, colors, accessories, and other possessions do they favor? Why?

Kessie always dresses with two things in mind: the weather, and bright colors. You will virtually never see her in black, and in fact she only owns a Little Black Dress because a friend convinced her that she needed one just in case. White is much more prevalent in her wardrobe, and even grays are more common, though she prefers them to be lighter in shade and will mostly relegate them to winter-wear. She’s a huge fan of leggings as pants, particularly when paired with sweaters/sweater dresses, and has fought her school’s administration on that subject many times. But her favorite color schemes involve bright, light colors and happy patterns, especially lighter blues and soft yellows (her favorite colors). In the summer, you can find her wearing shorts and tank tops, sundresses, and light jumpsuits. All her other possessions and interior decor follows this same color theory: bright colors and fun, happy patterns. For accessories, she’s more of a bracelet/bangle type than a necklace type, though she has a couple sentimental necklaces she’ll put on for special occasions. Also, if she didn’t keep her earrings in literally 24/7, she’d never remember to wear earrings at all. In contrast to the rest of her style, her choice of jewelry is often very subtle and delicate, and she favors copper or silver (as opposed to gold) with small gemstones.

35. How and why do they internalize knowledge? What effect has that had on them?

Although she’s an avid reader, Kesiah is a very hands on learner. She prefers to dive in and do things herself, learning by doing. Maybe she’ll read up before going into it, but the concepts and practice all stick better if she tries it herself. Unlike some other people, she doesn’t mind failure. She’s always been taught that it’s just part of the learning experience, so she doesn’t get discouraged if she has to do something repeatedly until she gets it right. This has caused her to become a very encouraging person: if she doesn’t give up on things easily, she wants to help others do the same.

36. How much do they rely on their minds and intellect, versus other approaches like relying on instinct, intuition, faith and spirituality, or emotions? What is their opinion on this?

Kesiah keeps a pretty even balance for the most part, but she does tend to make most of her decisions based on her instinct and intuition. If something feels wrong to her, she reasons that there’s got to be a good explanation for that and trusts her gut. However, as a TA and aspiring teacher, she does try to lead by example and remind her students that you should try to use both logic and feeling when making decisions on how to act and treat others. Even if that’s sometimes a little hard for her personally—she has been known to offer up such passionate arguments as “just… because! It’s mean!” as a reason she’s against things. In her mind, only following cold logic will leave the world cold as well, and she wants to make the world a better, warmer place where people treat each other right because it’s the kind thing to do.

37. Have they had any special education or training that colors their means of learning about or understanding the world? Conversely, do they lack some kind of education considered essential in their world? What kind of impact has this addition or lack had on them?

She went to university for a teaching degree and is currently finishing up her in-classroom TA experience so that she can finally put that Master’s to good use. If this has colored her understanding of the world, it’s likely it made her an even more patient person and a more empathetic one. Her studies included a great deal of psychology, particularly child psychology, so she knows how to relate to kids and adults alike in more effective ways. As for a lack of essential education, her one great weakness there is that she does not have a driver’s license. Where she lives, she’s never needed it because public transport is so good and driving gives her a lot of anxiety within the city. But the only real impact this has on her is that she can’t be a designated driver or a driver for school trips, and while this has been a small setback, she makes up for it by remaining a dutiful chaperone on party nights and taking her students on fun transit and walking field trips.

38. Is there anything they wish they could change about their worldview or thought processes? What, and why?

For all that she is a very positive and sunny person, Kesiah has been through some rough shit that she never talks about with anyone. She managed to come out of that a better, more compassionate person, but she definitely wishes that she’d never had to go through that stuff in the first place because it’s made her more suspicious. She fights that, and for the most part succeeds in still being an open, welcoming person. But she’s got a little hard spot in her heart now that she wishes wasn’t there to make her a more wary person.

39. What sort of questions or thoughts recur in their lives, either specifically or as a theme? Why are these never answered, or answered permanently to their satisfaction?

The main theme of Kessie’s life is whether or not she’ll be able to make a positive impact on those around her. It’s best exemplified in contrast to Lukas’s primary motivations: Lukas wishes to change the world mainly as a means of altering how people see him (as well as to make it better for people like himself), while Kesiah is very comfortable with who she is and just wants the world to be better for the sake of others. Because the world is vast and full of problems, it’s unlikely that she will ever permanently achieve happiness for everyone around her. But she’s aware of this and just tries to do what she can where she can.

40. What do they wonder about? What sparks their curiosity and imagination, and why? How is this expressed, if it is?

Different things day-to-day. Not big things like what’s the meaning of life or are we alone in the universe, but little things like whether plants understand our tone and meaning when we talk to them. Or what squirrels have conversations about. Often, if a kid in class poses an interesting question to her, she’ll ponder it until she has an answer to give them, even if it’s “I’m afraid I don’t know, but maybe someday you’ll find out!” She’s very taken with small, everyday wonders, and even something as innocuous as a ladybug landing on her knee will capture her imagination.

41. What associations do they bring to mind? Words or phrases, images, metaphors or motifs? Why?

Sunshine and sunsets, smiles, small beautiful flowers and plants, forgiveness, patience, learning, compassion, sacrifice, nightingales, rabbits, copper, aquamarine, ivy, holly, second sight, looking to the future, warm embraces, laying with your head in your lover’s lap while reading, Sunday brunch in bed, visiting dog parks to see cute dogs, day trip self-guided tours of the city, “It’s going to be alright,” “We can do this!”, a gentle hand on your face, the gleam of copper in the sunlight, rich genuine laughter, hummingbird feeders, sitting by ponds to watch fish and frogs, “I’m here”, long hugs and deep, sensitive kisses after time apart.

[burningearthquakebread-blog]

Toy Projectors

Have you been pondering what gift would properly in shape for your personal child? Can be your kid interested in producing some sorts of presentations and needs his playmates to see what they have designed? Can be your child a techie kind? If you have, then why don?t you allow him a toy projector? Toy projectors are you can find these days. They come in a number of types with different styles and designs. They also occur in many different colors, sizes and shapes, offering you the chance to pick the best item depending on your requirements and preferences. But in case you are nevertheless clueless as to in which on earth you will discover a wide range of toy projectors, I suggest which you use the internet. Many of the well-designed toy projectors are now marketed on the internet. Numerous merchants today can sell toy projectors of various versions online. Thus far, one of the most promoted toy projectors online include the adhering to: Tracer Projector: Promoted by Etchworld.com, this toy projector is designed to offer your kid a chance to existing their artwork to their playmates in a much bigger edition. Based on some promises, this device operates to trace making your artwork greater to see, specially when you find yourself sketching a glass etching stencils of your very own. To discover what this toy projector can do in your very own masterpiece, you may use sketches, images, or any artwork out of your favourite books and task it straight into the vinyl masking, which comes and with this product. From there, it is possible to trace the design of the picture and lower the location you desired to etch. Remember that this device comes with a etching cream for use for etching the images you?d love to current. To learn much more about this system, buy it from Etchworld.com. Zoombox DVD Entertainment Projector: Introduced in Walmart.com, this is but yet another notable kind of toy projectors. The system functions similar to a genuine projector which it assignments pictures on the wall or just anywhere in your liveable space. All you have to do to make it jobs are to hook the Zoombox to the digicam or gaming system. It even incorporates built in stereo speakers, and also with a bit of leisure equipment. What?s much more, this device plays CDs and DVDs. Crayola Trace ?N Attract Projector Deluxe: Now available at CSSDeals.com, this product is one of toy projectors which will definitely help make your kid genuinely satisfied and proud. As opposed to other talked about toy projectors, this item undertaking photographs entirely on its drawing area. This is said to be great for youngsters age three to thirteen while they will see this product enjoyable. They can draw and colour their particular masterpieces with this unit. Perhaps the draw back of the item is it may be easily damaged. So, proper care is strongly advised.

[earthenthoughts]

The New Year's New Look: Post Patch 6.9, and Syndra.

The Crystal Ball is Wild and Dangerous

It is with no small distaste I look back upon my predictions and see how they have come to fruition. For the first time in many years, Syndra found herself thrust into the spotlight in a way that can only be described as 'damaging'. Clocking in a 97% ban rate at Worlds 2016, and earning the World Casters' bristling ire, her solo queue performance achieved around a 50-70% ban rate depending on any day's given temperament. Now, as we stand in the twilight of 2016, the world is looking pretty different for her.

My predictions back around August didn't play out as I thought they would, but ultimately did come true. Upon the landing of the Patch 6.9, Syndra's kit broke with a couple different bugs that would remain until Patch 6.12. Namely, her ultimate no longer detected spheres correctly, so if any of her abilities modified a sphere, there was about a 1-2 second window her ultimate wouldn't see the sphere. The net result, quite often was something like a 6 sphere ultimate only firing as a 4 or 3 sphere ultimate in turn. In all my time in playing her, it was the single most frustrating thing to deal with, and that's a pretty tall statement in over 5 years of League of Legends with her.

As Patch 6.12 landed, however, and these bugs were corrected, Syndra also received some AP ratio help, bumping her damage even further with the Patch 6.9 changes. This rode upon the back of many other different champions, many of which were the S-list and A-list competition she had to deal with, getting nerfed. The net result was a near meteoric rise to the top in competitive play and the world at large gleaning what would happen in a meta where Syndra is handed the queen's seat on a silver platter. This isn't entirely new to her, as Syndra's last rise to the top saw some stiff nerfs to her complete lane domination some years ago.

In the course of Patch 6.12 to Patch 6.24, much of the lukewarm reputation Syndra possessed was pretty much destroyed. Any notion of skill involvement disappeared as the roving bands of mob mentality paid their seasonal visit with her in their sights. I didn't really expect her to survive it any better than the rest, though I do find myself irritable nonetheless over the matter. My own personal misgivings aside, it was quite the useful learning experience, as it ever is, in watching how powerful public perception is. After all, when the man on the television preaching to you and millions of others that a champion has, "Absolutely no counter play", why wouldn't you believe him? Certainly not when no defense or counter argument is given in favor of the problem, of course.

  A New Year, and More Patches.

As we step out of the shadow 2016, and the clock turns over, the future is looking interesting for Syndra. The nerfs are on the horizon, and they aim at correcting what is arguably the biggest problem in her kit currently. Her W, Force of Will, is (as of the last PBE I looked at), being changed to something like this:

AP Ratio reverted to 0.7 from 0.8. Base damage reduced by 10 at all levels.

Old: Force of Will grabs 2 additional spheres near the target.

New: Force of Will now deals 20% bonus true damage.

The developers are fairly confident it will ship 'as is', but as ever, the Crystal Ball is dangerous. They may post something different tomorrow and explode this entire blog post like a destroyer in Battleship.

Notably, her new Q passive (+2 seconds to Dark Sphere life timers) and E changes (+0.1 AP, -2s base CD) are being retained. The rest of her kit, otherwise, remains untouched or considered as far as I'm aware. I find myself quite welcoming to these changes, as they will largely return Syndra to her prior playstyle and with easier-to-tune levers. An instrinic problem of the multisphere W is that it has no way to be balanced–your only recourse is to reduce the grab targets from 3 to 2, and this opens up other issues. The natural throw pattern would be a V-shape, which would ironically make it so awful to level you'd intentionally avoid it, as this would destroy her stun pattern. As a designer, you're forced to adjust it so one sphere is center mass and … where does the second go? Then you have to argue how it throws, and so on. As her kit is designed currently, the idea just opens more problems. Just looking at it can make a new problem appear out of thin air, seemingly.

Damage, however unimaginative it might be, is easy to tune. You make it go up or down, and if damage as a mechanic is undesired, you visit the project when you have more time. In this regard, although Syndra's W having a considerable amount of true damage (that's BONUS true damage, not a conversion. Her W overall has more damage), it's simple to change. From a gameplay perspective, it definitely empowers her skill route for W second max, as level 13 is when the mid-game/team fighting phase happens. Being true damage, she'll hammer all targets equally, though squishy ones will fear her W throw the most as they have less over all HP to absorb true damage with. Magic Resistance rushers, particularly those favoring Abyssal Scepter and Maw of Malmortius, will get stung pretty heavily by it and relieve some of Syndra's crippling issues with fighting those build paths until Void Staff is complete.

Her tank killing prowess will enjoy a slight increase, though out of all her targets, I imagine she'll still feel very cramped against them. Flat true damage is not necessarily an elegant way to kill tanks, but it does help.

The only problems I can foresee with this is squishy carry champions getting slammed particularly hard by Syndra's W sniping. However, lacking the multi-sphere throw now, she can no longer infinitely maintain her ultimate or a stun wall as large as a lane. Whether or not that's a fair trade off, time will tell, but if the true damage is a problem (in being too weak(?) or strong), a quick number change is all it needs. It is certainly a much better alternative to the multisphere mechanic and her original W passive.

  In Defense of the Multisphere Mechanic

I'll take this moment to kind of step aside and try to frame the vitrolic I have around this idea. So, standing in defiance of my past remarks, let's be a little different. On its own, the principle idea of manipulating multiple spheres with Syndra is a thematically interesting idea. It also has potential for zone control, power ramp, and everything her kit is based as an idea. As Syndra exists, however, it's inclusion destroyed safety levers many parts of her kit relied on to permit the power she has. Notably, her incredible team stunning and nuking power went from 'very timing sensitive' to 'whenever I want because I can'. The core idea itself can work, as experience has shown, merely not with the iteration Syndra herself currently exists in.

I feel that in a future VGU, or whenever the idea of a radical redesign for Syndra is in mind, it can be revisited. The concept of multiple sphere management is powerful enough you could redesign her whole kit with it in mind, and emphasize a lot of her unique strengths in the process. But, I fear it would be necessary to no longer consider Syndra a Burst Mage in that iteration. Her single target nuke ultimate as it is right now would not play nicely with that idea, so it would have to go. The multiple sphere ability (Force of Will, in this case) may even evolve into becoming her ultimate in such a world. Where it would go, or do, is a matter of speculation. You run the very real risk of making Syndra the best AOE nuke mage in the game, rather than a powerful single target problem remover. That's a wild ride of speculation and theory design I've played with for a while, but, no matter what, we'd have to fundamentally redefine a lot of who and what Syndra is.

So, the idea is good, the game just doesn't allow for it as it is. I'd be very curious to see how it'd play out on a theoritical design in testing with a bigger scope of work in mind, though.

  The World At Large

Assassins got their update and promptly fell on their face (except for LeBlanc, as always), as many of the current mage mid laners are quite comfortable against them. I'm honestly not certain if Assassins will find a happy existence, as their class entails a range of fundamental assertions that are problematic for the League of Legends environment. The largest one is the 'always losing until they're winning' one. Assassins do not have fallback mechanics in exchange for their incredible target selection and maneuverability. Thus, this means a stalwart defense and neutral farming playstyle can put them into a 'losing the game' position by just simply ignoring them. The onus to succeed is on the Assassin, and they must pursue an almost dangerously reckless degree of gameplay to stay relevant, then to win.

This in turn means player agency is a bit more suspect, as the Assassins are given–by design–the tools to out play, out manuever, and defeat their opponent. If they cannot do this reliably enough, they will simply never exist in professional League of Legends unless they're a wild card pick. Regular play will see them more convincingly, as skill and play style varies wildly there, but the class as a whole won't be regarded with some modicum of seriousness. I ponder if this is an issue of how League of Legends, as a game, is designed, and whether or not this problem can be answered by tuning the Assassins directly. Time will tell as Riot's attention goes to stepping down on the mage mid laners and giving a boost up to the Assassin class, and everyone gets to fight Fizz again(again).

Tanks are prowling around quite happily right now, and a fair number of other classes who shouldn't be, with the new Courage of the Colossus mastery. Word on the street is that will be getting slammed, so hopefully that draws that array back in line. Overall pleased with tanks having a menacing presence, though the damage available to them is brow raising. I suspect new mechanics unique to them would help give them more 'tank' and less 'tank by damage threat'. Reworking Taunt, for example, has interesting potential. Imagine if Taunt made it so a targeted enemy can only auto attack or use targeted abilities to the tank taunting them, but the target was normal otherwise (so no pseudo-stun lock mechanic). This means some of the existing tanks would either have to gain a Taunt effect, or some sort of item for them alone to use. It's one idea that comes to mind, anyway.

As is tradition, the entire jungle role is once again on fire as the new year of 2017 and Preseason 7 comes. The whole place is on fire, in a very literal way.

Bot lane is currently a whipping post as the ADC(marksman) role is finally contested after 7 years of League of Legends. That is, marksmen as a class are finding themselves constantly stepped on, smacked around, and new picks coming to contest their relevancy to the game. I find this particularly interesting to watch as, while I don't want a whole class to disappear, they're unique in that they have always 'been there'. The entire history of League of Legend metas is defined by 'Marksman+X', where X is the flavor of the month. It got to the point you had marksman in all 5 roles, though that got nerfed down. They maintain a presence in jungle and midlane, and the occasional terror pick arrives in toplane (to every top main's insatiable ire). To find a playing field open up where there are viable and desirable team compositions without marksman is a breath of fresh air in the potential of the game.

What the marksman bring to the table will still always be there, but I wonder if it will no longer be the mandatory must-have it has been. A team that could field no marksman, and make a dangerous yet viable choice in doing so, is not often considered nor held in any regard except 'I'm being trolled'. Mordekaiser as a marksman was arguably the first foray, however awkward, into this idea. The execution of that plan kind of exploded like a transformer on a power pole when the bristling hate mail came down the line … but still, it had merit in testing. Yasuo, amusingly, was somewhat envisioned as a potential marksman replacer, but he does every role. Now, we have Ziggs showing up in bot lane, not even as a marksman, but as a siege war waging machine whose unique strength is one of the few virtues the marksman class is built on. Where the marksman will end up after the dust has settled, I think, is a very telling point in how League of Legends could evolve.

If they're put back into their mandatory position, then it's reasonable to assume a degree of 'this is how it is, period'. If they're not mandatory, then it's reasonable to assume a greater degree of fluidity in design.

In what ways I can remember, I'd be historically inclined to say 'Riot will pursue a rigid method of design'. The ever changing balance team seems open to new approaches, though. I'm hopeful they'll experiment in this regard, though I live with an ever traumatic fear of what happened to Zyra, The Stolen Mage. Nonetheless, positive thoughts are better than anything else.

But, I'll be here, playing Syndra like I always do.

I'm a Syndra Main, not an OTP guys.

Seriously.

I'm serial.

staph calling me a one trick

The New Year’s New Look: Post Patch 6.9, and Syndra. was originally published on Earthen Thoughts