If you thought Patch 7.15 and its impressive list of over 20 champions being changed was bad, you’re in for quite the shock when the preseason patch arrives.
There is a total of about 120 champions being changed at once with the preseason update this year, according to a PBE update this week. Changing 120 champs at once is far beyond any patch we’ve seen within the past few years. But don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
Runes Reforged is on the way and, as most of the League of Legends community knows by now, the old runes and masteries systems will be removed from the game. There will be a single rune system in place of both old systems. One of the goals of the new runes was to make every pregame choice meaningful, something that the current systems sorely lacks.
The reason for the lack of meaningfulness in the current rune system lies within the fact that it’s strictly a system of small stat boosts. You get 10 AD, a bit of armor, CDR, and then you move into the game.
With the new rune system, all of that is going away completely. There will be very few runes that affect stats passively at all. Unfortunately, without those small stat boosts, playing the game will feel a bit different, as every champion will be objectively weaker, especially in the early game when those little stats matter so much.
To compensate, there are 120 different champs all receiving very small buffs. An ability will get five AD at all ranks, another will provide a slightly larger shield, and many more just like that. The buffs won’t feel like much of a change on the game as a whole, even though there’s so many of them launching at once, and that’s because they’re simply supposed to fill a void left by uninspired runes.
Runes Reforged and the 120 champion updates are set to launch with the preseason patch on Nov. 8.
