Riot is targeting lane swaps in its pre-Worlds patch.
Nearly every year, before the annual Worlds championship, Riot Games announces pretty significant changes to the game. Last year, it was the introduction of the new Juggernaut class, resulting in a tournament with high priority on champions like Darius and Mordekaiser.
This year, Riot is taking on lane swaps, which have flourished in the competitive meta over the past year. The strategy, which involves teams eschewing fights in favor of trading objectives at the beginning of the game, often draws complaints of boredom from viewers.
To fight this, Riot is changing a few things about how towers and cannon minions work in League. The company announced the changes Wednesday afternoon.
Here they are!
New: "Turret First Blood" gold: +275 local, +25 global (400 total gold across the team)
New: Turret AI has been updated, and are better at defending allied champions (coming in 6.16)
Fortification (temporary damage reduction buff on turrets) changed
Duration: 7 minutes -> 5 minutes
Damage reduction: 35% -> 50%
Fortification removed from bot lane turrets (we’re investigating a more nuanced approach to this)
Outer turret HP: 3300 -> 3500
Cannon minions now spawn differently
Each team gets one cannon minion per wave, rotating lanes.
Specifically, Bot gets a cannon minion in lane at wave 3, Mid at wave 4, and Top at wave 5. This then repeats.
Post-20 minutes, Mid has a cannon in wave 40 then both Bot and Top get one in wave 41. This then repeats.
Post-35 minutes, all lanes have cannons in each wave.
tl;dr the first turret killed will give more gold (like the first champion killed), it’s harder to kill turrets in the first five minutes (except for bot lane), and cannon minions spawn less frequently at the beginning of the game
Basically, this is supposed to incentivize 2 vs. 2 laning at the beginning of the game, forcing each teams’ AD Carry and support to go head-to-head rather than avoiding each other to collect resources. Since this is already the standard strategy at the non-pro level, it’s hard to tell what will happen at lower levels of play.
So far, coaches don’t seem too happy about it: CLG’s Tony “Zikz” Gray and ROCCAT’s Fabian “GrabbZ” Lohmann weighed in.
Main point, I don’t like about lane swap changes are the draft implications… RIP bot lane matchups
— Tony Gray (@Zikzlol) July 20, 2016
So it basically goes from "Draft either a stronger botlane OR a faster swap" to "win bot or get fucked".
Ok.
Nice diversity.— Fabi GrabbZ (@LoLGrabbZ) July 20, 2016
Some players are more excited than others, like FC Schalke 04 jungler Berk “Gilius” Demir.
Even though it’s a big change for professional teams to adjust to, at least there’s plenty of time to prepare before Worlds. Last year, many teams weren’t able to play with the Juggernauts until the group stages at Worlds. While teams will have to adjust to these changes during the domestic playoffs, there will be plenty of time before Worlds.
@NaserAlNaqi We definitely wish we had made these changes sooner, but making the game actually fun to watch is a big deal.
— David Turley (@RiotPhreak) July 20, 2016
These changes should roll out in the next two patches, which should be released over the course of the next month.
Source: Polygon – Full
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