The latest season in League of Legends introduced a number of features, including Atakhan. Despite it being in the game only for a few weeks, fans already think it’s making pro play dull.
Major League competitions started throughout last week, including the 2025 LCK Cup and the 2025 LEC Winter Split, giving fans their first glimpses of the competitive meta. But many criticized one of Season 15’s additions on a Jan. 22 Reddit thread: Atakhan. Fans claim the pro play has become “a lot more stale” because of the neutral objective. “The revive Atakhan buff rewards stupid gameplay of just running head first into enemy knowing you’re not going to be punished” the original poster wrote. “In fact, you’re going to be rewarded for dying because it’s faster than recalling.”
Atakhan spawns at the 20-minute mark at either top side or bottom side river, depending on the state of the game. There can also be two versions of the monsters, which is determined by how much damage both sides have dealt to each other until the 14th minute. These versions are Voracious and Ruinous Atakhan, with the former giving the team who slays it a one-time death mitigation. Instead of dying, they will return to the base a few seconds after a death. Fans think it rewards players for inting and dying instead of playing responsibly, since it’s essentially a faster way of recalling.
“It’s hard to get excited over a teamfight after one team kills Atakhan because you already know the outcome, the one with the buff wins even if they lose and that’s just mediocre viewing experience,” the post reads.
Naturally, this point of view sparked a discussion among League’s players and fans. The majority of people seem to agree with that opinion, pointing out how it’s not even a controversial take. “Not sure this is a hot take, community seems to not enjoy Atakhan from low elo to pro play. I also agree with this sentiment,” one of the top comments reads.
However, there are those who disagree, claiming Atakhan is reaching its goal to provoke more fights in pro play with it’s death-mitigation buff. “The fight immediately following the Atakhan take is less interesting than a usual fight, yeah, but the fact that one is happening at all is because of Atakhan working as intended, the goal of the revive Atakhan was to force pro players to finally ever actually be aggressive and do things,” one fan wrote. At the same time, they agreed that “it’s probably too strong right now.”
It’s too early in the year to see Riot implement meaningful changes, especially in terms of pro play. However, the developer is actively monitoring the state of the game, adding Atakhan tweaks in the latest update. These touched Voracious Atakhan’s respawn rate, which was previously too low, according to data.
Nevertheless, if the neutral monster becomes too overpowered in pro play in the next few weeks, Riot will surely take it under the scope. But, like we said, it seems too early to do it so early.
Published: Jan 23, 2025 02:27 pm