Changes in the pace of gameplay in LoL. What were Riot’s designers hoping to achieve?
When the 13.9 update appeared on the live servers, a lot of changes hit the PBE, which are likely to be released already in the next patch 13.10. Although there is still some time left before the update is released, you can already take a look at the initial fixes that the League’s developers plan to release.
There are indeed a lot of changes – they mostly affected items, but there were also buffs to some heroes, who will now cope better with unconventional builds – AP conversions were given to Vayne, Kalista, or Akshan, among others. Some of the fixes, meanwhile, have a direct impact on gameplay regardless of which heroes or items are included.
What else are the developers changing?
Both on the PBE and in statements from the designers that appear online, you can take a look at the changes that will soon be hitting the live servers. TheTruexy shared a description of the fixes that aim to change the gameplay.
Now that it’s on PBE, here are some harder to find changes that will also be coming in 13.10. These are mostly trying to put more of an emphasis on lengthening the laning phase by hitting some roaming/ganking/tower diving power.
This means less games where roams from other lanes instantly end your laning phase by easily diving you and taking numerous 175g tower plates. I think most of these are on PBE but have to do a QA sweep to be sure.
The changes in question are outlined below.
- Minions
- Not counting the first wave of minions, those from the middle lane will hit the center at the same time (minions from the side lines will speed up)
- Minions that have taken the enemy tower as their target will ignore the “cry for help” in attacking the enemy champion
- Unleashed Teleport
- Spell transformation time changed from 14 minutes to 10 minutes
- Turrets
- Resistances against rushing (20 seconds after plate is knocked down) increased from 0-180 to 45-225 (dependent on the number of champions)
- Homeguard
- Homeguard activation time decreased from 20 minutes to 14 minutes
- Fountain
- Mana regeneration per tick increased from 2.1% of maximum mana to 3.1%
- Jungle plants
- Explosive cone near rivers will now appear from 9:00 – 9:30 instead of 5:00-5:3
According to what the designer writes, the changes are supposed to lengthen the linear phase, hitting the power of roaming, ganking, and diving. In contrast, they are not supposed to affect how gameplay in the mid-game, adding that the minion acceleration will drop after the 14th minute.
At this point, it is difficult to say exactly how the changes will affect the line phase. Players can test the changes now on test servers, and they will hit the wider community in update 13.10, which is scheduled for May 17.