This has been one of the biggest preseasons in the history of League of Legends—and it’s not over yet.
New runes, a new leveling system, blue essence, and other changes to the game are the biggest combined changes since the Summoner’s Rift itself was visually updated a few years ago. Riot’s made learning and playing League more fun for both new and experienced players.
Related: Five new rune pages you have to try.
But that doesn’t mean everything has gone off without a hitch. There are some champions that have been made clearly overpowered by the new runes. A number of champions have win rates above 54 percent, according to League stats site Champion.gg.
As a result, Riot’s lead gameplay designer Andrei “Meddler” van Roon announced plans today for an extra preseason patch to do some fine tuning on numbers. The regularly-scheduled patch, 7.24—which is currently live on PBE—will still ship starting on Dec. 5 (depending on region). Then, a smaller patch dubbed “7.24B” will ship on Dec. 24.
The extra patch won’t contain any new mechanics or redesigns. The focus will be on tuning numbers, especially around runes, to make sure that balance is healthy heading into next season. Riot is looking at a large number of champions and items to make sure it’s not missing anything. Special emphasis will be placed on top lane champions and fighters, and all roles could be affected to some degree.
The goal is to make smaller updates and not have a big gap between Patch 7.24 and Patch 8.1, which is still expected to ship on Jan. 9. This is a good development to make sure that League isn’t totally broken over the holidays when player numbers should spike.
