League of Legends has always been a game known for constant change. The ebb and flow of buffs, nerfs, and new champions is always enough to keep the game interesting. This year, however, the patch cycle has been particularly destructive.
Whether you’re dealing with the removal of the long-popular Sightstone or Tracker’s Knife, or the entire host of new AP items and core mana changes before the mid-season updates, or the unhinged mid-season patches themselves, it’s been rough so far this season. Each of these drastic changes have dramatically altered the meta, tearing it out and gutting it rather than the usual nudges and changes that kept it interesting before.
After all that, this week’s Patch 8.14 finally seemed like a return to form for the game. League’s always been about change, but this year’s patches have been less fun to adapt to and more of a chore, and the overarching feeling was that players were being dragged along, barely clinging to whatever they could. Change should always feel like a breath of fresh air, not a chore or a stressor.
Patch 8.14 buffed a few champions in healthy ways that are bound to make a few of them more viable than they were before. While some are more obvious, others will take time and experimentation to work, and there’s a chance they won’t become meta for a long time—or after a few more buffs, similar to Kindred’s road so far this year.
That’s exactly the kind of patch players need right now. It will also make learning the game easier for new players. The game should never feel like the meta is a pancake and each patch is a spatula that just flips it over every two weeks. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what it’s felt like for months now.
For the sake of those newer players, and the older players who might be a little less open to the idea of change, the slower stream of meta changes is the way to go, rather than a scorched earth policy. We hope Riot will keep the same pacing as this week’s patch for at least the rest of the year, because for the first time in a while, it felt alright.
