League of Legends players should expect more quality updates to champions from now on, as the developers made a promise to increase their focus on them.
Riot Games developers revealed the direction of League’s patches on which they will be focusing in the future in quick gameplay thoughts released on March 6. They explained that their main goal is to focus more on “patch work,” which is about taking a certain champion or two under the scope, and trying to bring changes that will make them “feel noticeably better to play.”
It was explained that League developers always had two ways of approaching champion changes. One of them was simply to boost or weaken their numbers a bit in order to buff or nerf them, respectively. The second was about sacrificing a week or two to a champion, so that the change feels more careful and can solve some complex issues with them.
“We’ve always had both types of work in our toolkit, but we’re placing more emphasis on patch work specifically for buffs right now,” the article reads. Yet, at the same time, the devs underline that these updates “won’t be a huge swing players will immediately notice.”
As a result, League players should expect buffs that don’t exactly improve champions’ by a large margin, but that improve “the feel of a champion.”
And Riot already shared two champions that will be updated in that pattern—Pantheon and Azir, who will receive their changes in Patch 13.5, that releases this week, March 8.
Related: Here are the early LoL Patch 13.5 patch notes
We already are somewhat familiar with these changes, as they were already added to the PBE servers. Azir is going to have some significant tweaks to almost every ability, in order to lower his competitive prowess and increase his solo queue win rate. Pantheon will also receive an update, more specifically his basic stats, Q, and E.
