A new League of Legends update has just hit the PBE, and it features some rather severe changes aimed at putting a stop to lane swaps. The strategy has long been a point of contention in the MOBA, allowing teams to grab an early lead by moving their champions into other lanes to take advantage of the extra numbers. Now, Riot Games is taking a firm stance, rolling out a patch that lead gameplay designer Matt ‘Phroxzon’ Leung-Harrison calls “heavy handed by necessity,” admitting that it will lead to some “collateral damage” to other tactics in the interim as the developer works on longer-term solutions.
Lane swaps in League of Legends have become particularly dominant in pro play, where teams are supremely coordinated. “Many viewers and pros alike have expressed that lane swaps undermine something that makes League awesome,” Leung-Harrison says, “that the best top laners can fight the best top laners and the best bot lanes can fight the best bot lanes. As a result, we feel it is necessary to make these changes at this time.” He adds that he wants professional matches of the MOBA “to look as close as possible to the League of Legends we all play,” and that lane swaps are detracting from this.
The new update makes some very dramatic changes to help protect players in top and mid lane from facing invading squads, although Leung-Harrison notes that they are temporary. “We intend to work on longer-term solutions, but an elegant solution that solves the problem without adding excess long-term rules to the game will take time, and we’ll keep these rules in the game until that solution is ready.”
With the new changes, if two enemy champions without jungle items are determined to have moved into top or mid lane or the surrounding area, the lane swap protection will be enabled. If a team has no junglers, the rule is disabled, but if they have two or more then the junglers are included in the check. This can happen between the 1:30 and 3:30 mark for the top lane, and between the 1:30 and 2:15 mark for the mid lane.
If lane swap protection activates, the defending turret gains 95% damage reduction, will one-shot minions, and all gold and experience from defending turret and minion kills will be applied to the nearest allied champion. In addition, the top-lane turret will one-shot champions, and its defending champion gains 50% damage reduction while under the turret. The effect lingers for 25 seconds in the top lane and six seconds in mid lane after the offending champions have moved away.
“These rules are intended to address the most expectation-breaking versions of lane swaps starting from level one, but they are not intended to affect the time periods significantly after that,” Leung-Harrison adds, “as swaps at that point provide lower benefits and more closely resemble ‘normal League of Legends.’”
He also addresses concerns that the changes may impact regular play. “We put a lot of thought into ways that this might manifest in regular play and hit innocent players like level two ganking mid, a Twitch or Teemo level one ganking with stealth,” Leung-Harrison explains. “Ultimately, we didn’t feel like we could effectively eliminate lane swaps without some amount of collateral damage to these strategies.” He points to the lower linger time in mid lane as a way to mitigate accidental griefing by players pathing across the map.
“Finally, we know that bad actors may attempt to use these changes as a testbed for griefing,” Leung-Harrison concludes. “Simply put, if you engage in this behavior to grief your teammates, we will detect it and punish you.”
If these changes have you rethinking your approach, check the current League of Legends tier list to see who you should pick. Then be sure to keep an eye on which League of Legends skins are currently going cheap.
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