Riot Games’ design director Andrei “Meddler” van Roon has posted a new blog post outlining the team’s plan for several key aspects of League of Legends, including the future of Clash, some minor buff and nerf targets for Patch 9.19, and the next steps for Teamfight Tactics‘ PVE drop system.
Recently, Riot ran a test for the popular Clash game mode in Korea, which throws teams of five into a tournament-style bracket against squads of similar skill level. Because of the test’s success, Meddler says that Riot is “still on track as hoped for the Global Beta,” which should be arriving later this year. Riot still plans to run some Clash tests in other regions, though.
This should give some hope to League fans who’ve been waiting for the return of Clash since its failed launch last year. The developers tried to test out the game mode multiple times, but several technical issues forced Riot to shelve the mode for a while.
Meddler also said that the pro meta is in a relatively good state. This means that Riot won’t be making any major changes for the upcoming 2019 World Championship, which will be played on Patch 9.19.
This should be good news for all of the teams who have qualified for the tournament so far because they can now settle into the current meta and build various compositions and strategies without having to worry about any changes that will throw a wrench into some of their plans.
Check out all the champions that the team is looking to buff or nerf below.
Possible buff targets:
- Ashe
- Blitzcrank
- Cassiopeia
- Fiora
- Graves
- Heimerdinger
- Mordekaiser
- Orianna
- Ornn
- Rek’Sai
- Riven
- Sion
- Twisted Fate
- Vayne
- Veigar
- Xin Zhao
- Zac
Possible nerf targets:
- Gragas
- Karma
- Sejuani
- Sylas
- Tahm Kench
- Yuumi
Finally, Meddler acknowledged the changes Riot made to the PVE drop system in Teamfight Tactics. Although he thinks that the adjustments are showing promise, the system still needs some polishing. Many fans were complaining about the rate of item drops when it came to neutral monster rounds and how some players were able to gain multiple items while others got little to none.
He also said that the devs were looking at other possible problem areas of the game, including spatula drop rate, four-cost unit availability, gold, and where item drops fall on the board.
