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Soul Fighter Evelynn poses after defeating an enemy in the League of Legends LoL Arena
Image via Riot Games

Riot outlines significant changes coming to LoL’s Arena mode ahead of re-release

Arena mode will look a bit different and feel a lot more convenient when it returns.

League of Legends’ Arena mode is returning to the live servers later this year, and today, Riot Games released an extensive list of changes coming to the mode before it returns to players’ hands. 

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Arena was incredibly well-received when it first launched this past summer, and players have been itching to get back in the fight. When the mode returns in December, it’ll look slightly different than it did in its first variation, with most of the changes coming in the form of quality-of-life updates. 

The biggest change coming to League’s Arena mode when it comes back to the live servers will be in regard to the restrictions placed on how many players can queue for the mode together. Previously, League players were only allowed to queue with one partner for Arena matches. But, moving forward, you’ll be able to queue for the game mode in groups of two, four, and even eight players, with the potential for completely private matches being enabled. 

Other Arena changes, including updates to the way champion select works, as well as the addition of dozens of new Augments, will look to increase the diversity levels of the meta, as well as the way players approach each game on an individual basis. 

When it comes to champion select, a massive change will come in the form of its format, with one round of players blind-picking their champions at first, then the next round of players selecting their champions after those blind-picked champions have been revealed to the entire lobby. This new shakeup should allow players to construct team comps based on what their enemies are selecting without having to play a meta-based guessing game. 

Also on the subject of champions, Riot hopes that more of them will have an impact on the Arena mode’s meta when it gets re-released next month. 

Soul Fighter Jhin skin splash art in League of Legends
Arena mode was the highlight of this summer’s Soul Fighter event. Image via Riot Games

“Compared to Summoner’s Rift there were fewer champs appearing in every lobby (good!), but there were a lot more champs who were almost never picked at all (not good),” Riot said in its update today. “Therefore, we’ve focused on making Arena more accessible to a wider variety of champions.”

The addition of more Augments in Arena—60 of them, to be precise—will likely make more champions accessible and should encourage players to experiment beyond what they’re used to seeing in the game mode. Of course, at higher ranks, we expect players to continuously hammer home the meta picks, but throughout the majority of the game’s player base, we think there’ll be fewer players who spam games with cheesy top-tiers. 

Riot also confirmed that the grind up the Arena ladder will take a bit more of an investment this time around as the devs felt the ladder-climbing, particularly from Gold to Gladiator, was a little too fast. Additionally, Arena will remain a one-queue game mode as there will be no separation for players who want to play it casually. 

“At the end of the day, allowing the two to mix in the same queue has risks, but because ultimately the rating does not have the same stakes as something like [Summoner’s Rift] does, we want to continue exploring having one queue,” Riot said. 

League’s Arena mode will return to the live servers during Patch 13.23’s cycle, as Riot has planned an early December release date for the re-release. It will be available to test on the game’s PBE on Nov. 8. 


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Author
Image of Michael Kelly
Michael Kelly
Staff Writer covering World of Warcraft and League of Legends, among others. Mike's been with Dot since 2020, and has been covering esports since 2018.