close
close
Riot takes power away from LoL items to ‘put emphasis back on champions’

Riot takes power away from LoL items to ‘put emphasis back on champions’

In one of the biggest changes League of Legends As the game has seen so much this decade, Riot Games is reducing item power levels by a whopping “five to 15 percent” across the board in a massive pre-season patch in an attempt to make champion choices actually matter again.

The overhaul, dubbed the “Champion Emphasis” update, is expected to add a whopping 119 legendary Competition item and herald changes for every class in the game, ranging from skirmishers and tanks to AD carries and assassins. The goal, the Riot Balance team explained in a September blog post , is to “put more emphasis on champions” after various changes and player skill buffs sent things in the wrong direction.

An elderly woman at the border in League of Legends tells a story to other Runeterra villagers present.
How Competition Players shopping in-game should fundamentally change after the overhaul. Image via Riot Games

“Most players are queuing up for League because they want to play a champion,” the Riot developers said of the reason for their move. “We don’t see anyone going into the game excited to play Infinity Edge. They want to play Jinx or Yasuo.”

The biggest goal the developers have is to limit the quality of the Competition playerbase has grown over the past decade. While players in the early 2010s could farm just fine and collect around 150 minions in 20 minutes, giving them access to one, maybe two legendaries, current gamers can easily reach 200 in 2024.

These larger gold stacks and better control over objectives have caused the speed of the game to increase exponentially, making it more of a race to increase the power of items.

While that’s not necessarily a bad thing overall, it has pushed much of what makes life attractive into the background. Competition special compared to other games: They are unique characters. Many of the nearly 170 champion strong roster have been put into similar builds that all look quite similar in the endgame and Riot can see more and more champions losing their identity.

Instead, the Competition Devs want to “give players more time to play out their champion’s gameplay fantasy and put more emphasis on champions over items” by limiting the overwhelmingness of all the items available for purchase.

Riot also has several class-specific goals, including removing burst mages’ ability haste, helping tanks survive longer through additional resistances, and further dialing back enchanters in their support design over magical powerhouses. Fighters and juggernauts will see their power budgets decreased, while assassins will have to “rely more on their individual spell casts and finding that first right target.” On the downside, AD carries won’t see any major changes; damage will still be the centerpiece of every ADC’s core build.

The developers said: “Overall, these changes are intended to reduce movement speed and skill haste in the game, reduce burst access for non-burst classes, reduce damage, and increase the amount of durability items grant relative to their other stats.”

If the Champion Emphasis update works as intended, Competition should become less ‘snowball-like’ and have longer teamfights – perhaps something closer to the mid-2010s.

Expect all of these changes to go live Competition servers on Wednesday, September 25.


Dot Esports is supported by our audience. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Learn more about our affiliate policy