Deadly mushrooms and teleports: Riot devs share LoL Arena Augments that didn’t make the cut

League of Legends’ 2v2v2v2 mode has been killing it since it released on July 20 with players flocking to Arena to showcase their champion mastery and mechanical prowess. Augments, the main power system of Arena, spice up the combat, but Riot Games’ had a few in mind that never made the cut.

During an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on League’s subreddit on July 26, three major Augments were originally planned for the new mode, but, for one reason or the other, were scrapped. 

The first Augment that was scrapped during production was the Shitake Happens Prismatic Augment which would spawn a deadly mushroom in the proving ground which only you could see. In practice, the gameplay around this one-shotting mushroom would be straightforward—you spam-pinging your ally the location of the mushroom and you hiding behind it to one-shot enemies. Riot also tried including three smaller mushrooms across the map, but it failed to meet expectations.

Another Augment Riot considered adding was Flicker, which allowed you to teleport to a random location on the map under stealth. Unfortunately, it was scrapped because it left little to no room for counterplay and you had to have some luck on your side because it would teleport you randomly. 

Finally, the devs wanted to add Pass-a-Fist Augment that would disable you from attacking enemies but would increase your ally’s attack damage or attack speed by 50 percent and make their attacks trigger your on-hit effects. Generally seen as a support Augment, this would be great for the enchanter and AD carry duos that are currently dominating tier lists. In theory, you could then build Nashor’s Tooth and Blade of the Ruined King and your precious Kai’Sa could apply it without buying these items ever. But it was cut due to three major issues—the ability to proc the same item twice, lack of clarity, and not being able to attack.

All three Augments sound incredibly fun and they would definitely spice up how Arena plays today, but it seems like the devs didn’t know should they approach balancing them, so they gave up. Hopefully, they will make their debut when Arena returns as a rotating game mode.