League of Legends fans can expect more mini-improvements to champs, items, and runes this year.
Gameplay design director Mark “Scruffy” Yetter explained that Riot will deploy more “smaller scale design work,” such as the upcoming Rammus update and the changes to Jinx in Patch 11.3. This will contrast bigger projects, like new champs, VGUs, and patch balancing.
“We feel like our bigger projects (New champs and VGUs) and patch-by-patch balance changes are on a good track, but there’s a middle zone that can give us a little more flexibility to improve the game,” Scruffy said.
Scruffy outlined a few potential areas that the devs might target in 2021. One goal is to balance champs that are overly skewed for professional play but underwhelming in solo queue, like Tahm Kench. Nerfing those champs can be problematic since non-pro players will be adversely affected. But those champs spill into the pick-or-ban territory in competitive play since they’re in the hands of elite players.
Other projects include targeting champs with insufficient counterplay (Aphelios’ range in season 10), older champs that aren’t keeping up with the game (Rammus, Jinx), unsatisfying or unhealthy items (Hextech Gunblade), and rune imbalance (Conqueror).
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