We've made a couple of adjustments to the Bounty System for the Preseason - Killstreaks have been altered significantly and the rewards from Bounties have been replaced.
Goals
In general, spending additional resources to shut down a unit that has a high bounty should be a decent call to make. However, in the current way that bounties are formulated - often times - it isn't worth the time or investment to try to reverse or stall a winner.
When we make comeback bounties too high on an individual basis - you get some wild rubberbanding logic over the course of a lane, making lane accomplishes feel moot in a lot of ways.
Additionally, because these bounties are compounded by the assist pool - a losing team can easily be behind simply due to an assassin doing his job too well - as he frequently deprives his team of assist pool bonuses on high profile targets.
We want to make the Bounty system more visible - so players can use it as a better threat indicator and performance evaluator for the short term - as well as attempt to fairly compensate the additional resources required to shut down a target on a 2-0 or 3-0 killstreak without causing huge rubberbanding in lane cases.
Bounty Rules
Champions now begin to accrue a Bounty once they have gotten 2 consecutive kills without dying, like live - and will set you to Bounty Tier '2' (like live.)
The more kills you get, the higher your bounty 'Tier', up to a maximum of Bounty 'Tier' 5 - which is the same as live.
Major Changes
Bounty 'Tier' are now visualized next to your champion health bar. Higher 'Tiers' of Bounties will have progressively more impressive icons. You will be able to see both the Bounty Tier of allies and enemy champions.
Dying no longer resets your Bounty entirely. Instead, it decays your Bounty 'Tier' by 3 'Tier'. If you have a Bounty 'Tier' of 3 or less, this means it will reset completely. If you have a Bounty Tier of 4 or 5 - you will go to 1 and 2 respectively.
Bounties now give Team gold rather than adding to kill gold. Killing a champion with a Bounty will display the total amount of Team Gold awarded to the enemy.
Bounty Rewards by Tier
Tier 1: 25 Global Gold
Tier 2: 45 Global Gold
Tier 3: 75 Global Gold
Tier 4: 100 Global Gold
Tier 5: 120 Global Gold (MAX)
Note: You can only ever get to Bounty Tier 1 by having a Tier 4 Bounty and dying. Champions on a 2-kill streak will start at Bounty Tier 2.
Additional Note: We are purposefully inflating the amount of gold given out due to the gold efficiency changes on items - this is due to the fact that many items sat at around a 40% gold efficiency mark or so - and we've adjusted them down quite heavily to have better item and decision balance between items.
Examples of this in Practice
Darius has scored an early double kill in top lane. He now has a Tier 2 Bounty. The Jungler comes and with the assistance of the top laner - they murder Darius for 300 Gold plus 150 Assist Gold pus 220 Team Gold => 670 Total Gold.
This gold bonus is in contrast to live, which he would be worth 370 Kill Gold + 185 Assist Gold => 555 Total Gold.
Example: Tier 5
Riven is murdering everyone due to insanity at early snowballing. She has a Tier 5 Bounty from going 5-0. On Live, she would be worth 500 kill gold and 250 Assist Gold => 750 Total Gold.
With the new Bounty System, she would be worth 300 kill gold, 150 Assist Gold and 600 Team Gold => 1050 Total Gold. If she dies at Tier 5 Bounty, she then drops down to Tier 2 Bounty status. She then gets killed again without getting more kills, she'll award 300 Kill Gold, 150 Assist Gold and 220 Team Gold => 670 Total Gold.
Context on Rift Herald
you said the buff only drops to the killer. At the dragon and Baron we see, that mostly the jungler kills them with smite, that the enemies cant steal them. [...]
We made some small changes here, that will help with the buff handoff.
1) The backstab damage is now 15% of max HP (this will ALWAYS be more than Smite).
2) If the backstab proc brings Rift Herald below 15% max HP, you can do it again.
This means that the power to secure this objective is firmly in the hands of a champion behind Rift Herald, and not the one with Smite.