League players can look forward to upcoming changes throughout the year aimed at making the game healthier.
With the League of Legends 2021 season fast approaching its end, Riot Games has detailed some short-term and long-term changes that are expected to help some of the underperforming parts of the game. it also deals with some of the overwhelming mechanics that allow some champions and mechanics to evolve for months.
On the new Quick Gameplay Thoughts dev blog, Riot Axes, the new lead game designer for the League, revealed current plans for the changes the team is looking at for the health and longevity of the game over the next few months and through 2022. All of these changes are temporary and are under internal testing at Riot. As such, they may not run at the same capacity on live servers, and the extent of most changes is unknown at this time.
Regarding short-term plans, Riot Axes revealed that the team is investigating several systems introduced in the pre-season and some champions that are not performing at the level the team intended. The new Chemtech Dragon, Chemtech Rift, and Chemtech Soul are on the team's radar due to growing issues with players' powers. To make up for this, Axes stated that they will add some more Scryer's Bloom to the Chemtech Rift in Patch 2022, the first patch of the 12.1 season, thus making the sight more common without the constant use of Control Wards.
Hunter items that almost every AD warrior, like Sterak's Gage, must bring to survive in the top lane and jungle are also being reassessed. Axes listed Maw of Malmortius and Death's Dance as items the team hopes to replace as better alternatives to Sterak's Gage. These item changes are expected to be released in the first half of 2022.
Additionally, changes previously announced in Teleport, which is being tested on the PBE, are expected to be pushed to live servers. This iteration of Teleport allows players to use the spell to travel to towers only before 14 minutes. It then transforms into the current iteration of the spell that can be used to teleport to any allied item on the map.
“Our goal is to limit this [early game] effect and eliminate some problematic end-states while maintaining the ability to stabilize losing lanes, allow the late-mid-game sideways and create opportunities for the flanks,” Axes said. Said.
As for the champions that are on the game design team's radar, Axes has revealed that both Janna and Ahri are the target of the upcoming Lucian-like changes. While he didn't go into details about Ahri's proposed changes, it was previously revealed that extensive changes to Janna were in the testing phase. However, these have been postponed to better see how it will affect Janna's playstyle. More details are set to be announced at a later date.
Regarding the long-term changes, Riot Axes explained that all League teams are assessing damage and durability, two factors that have been greatly increased by the introduction of Mythic items in the 2021 season and have been the subject of great controversy throughout the year. The game design team stated that these changes are purely conceptual and do not "promise specific results."
Explosion damage is the first concept to be mentioned on the dev blog as an area of interest within the game design team. "We're still very early in this investigation, but our current belief is that sudden death happens too quickly and too often," Axes said. The developers are considering several options for how to reduce the full extent of stun damage among champions of multiple classes, with particular focus on the mid to late game effects of this stun from assassins. While the team has been looking into these negative effects of burst damage during game time, Axes ensured that a certain champion class was not destroyed and that the "one shot" fantasy of an enemy was not completely extinguished.
Then comes arguably the League's most controversial area of improvement and maintenance throughout the 2021 season, thanks to items like Moonstone Renewer and champions like Yuumi and Soraka. Despite numerous changes implemented throughout the year, the team does not internally believe that healing and maintenance through items and runes are in balance, and Axes acknowledges that the team is "significantly far from where we want to be." these two areas. Adjusted other changes in healing and sustain to align with changes in explosion damage. As such, the team doesn't have any concrete direction on how to deal with survivability until stun damage concepts are finalized.
League's 2022 season is expected to go live on January 12.1, along with Patch 4, and patch notes are expected to be released after the holiday season.