Patch 12.10, otherwise known as the “durability update,” brought a ton of changes to League of Legends. This included health, armor, and resistance increases to champions across the board, as well as adjustments to heals, shields, and sustain.
But while the extensive patch covered many aspects of the game, some things remained unchanged. One of them was minions, which led to some confusion from players. Tim “TheTruexy” Jiang, an associate game designer at Riot, explained why the dev team made the decision to turn a blind eye to minions in Patch 12.10.
Players had complained that minion damage should have been buffed in Patch 12.10 to compensate for the durability update. TheTruexy explained in a post on Reddit that making this change wasn’t as clear-cut as it seems.
Related: Here are the notes and updates for League of Legends Patch 12.10
“As people have pointed out, it’s not as simple as ‘compensate for durability,'” TheTruexy said. “A lot of 12.10 made it so weak early games are harder to punish, so there’s a lot of pros/cons of making early minion trades equally punishing.”
Following the durability update, it’s much more difficult for players to get ahead in the early game, due to champions having more survivability. This, to some extent, was what Riot intended in the first place. Buffing minion damage would be counterproductive and take the whole point out of the changes.
That being said, TheTruexy reassured players that Riot is keeping an “eye on these types of things and are open to following up as needed.”
