Six months have passed since Riot Games’ last video update on the state of League of Legends. Now, Jessica “Safelocked” Nam, executive producer of League of Legends, and Andrei “Meddler” van Roon, the game’s director, have released another update video for the company’s flagship title.
In the video, Riot Games covers the current state of the recent item changes, different status updates and their plans for the future of League of Legends. The next champion that has yet to be announced is also teased.
State of items
The video goes over the successes and failures of the recent item overhaul. Meddler states that the goals of item diversity have generally been met, but some items have shown brighter than others.
“Items like Sunfire or Goredrinker have been universally good choices for the damage or healing they bring,” Meddler said. “And so one of our first priorities has been chipping items like that down so they’re no just dominating in terms of raw stats.”
Meddler also teases some new items that may be added to League of Legends. He specifically mentions that a new mage and tank item are in the works to combat specific playstyles like dive and split-pushing.
The numbers that Riot look at for build diversity with mythic items was also revealed. Meddler explains that the team does not want an item to be purchased for a specific champion in more than 75 percent of its games. Of the current classes for mythic items, Riot is specifically looking to improve mage items for the future.
State of burst damage and healing
According to Meddler, the item changes at the beginning of the season were supposed to decrease the amount of burst damage in the game. But, the initial rollout actually increased burst damage for a time. That initial flub has been fixed, with more removal of burst damage to come in the future.
“We’re still monitoring and talking about burst pretty actively,” Said Meddler. “We think it’s probably acceptable, though very much on the high side, but might end up taking more out of the game in the moderate future.”
Much like burst damage, healing was also initially too powerful in the initial rollout of item changes. The mechanic has been nerfed across many items. Meddler states that the durability of healing may be shifted to other statistics in the future.
Game quality of life
The game client for League of Legends has been an issue for a long time. However, Safelocked addressed many of the issues and said that players should expect improvement in the near future.
“What you should see at the end of the day is a significantly faster client compared to the start of 2020,” says Safelocked.
She also revealed that the social panel and game crashes will be worked on continuously as well. And, clarity of champions was also addressed in the video. League of Legends has had many new champions and skins introduced over the years. The ability for players to distinguish different champions is a top priority for Riot Games in the coming future.
The new event, skin line and champion were announced as well. The event and skin line, space groove, is a retro-futuristic theme that will launch with the new top lane skirmisher champion.
