Winners and losers of League’s 2023 preseason

After a month-long wait, the 2023 League of Legends preseason finally landed on the live servers on Nov. 16. The preseason has brought substantial changes to the jungle, gold and experience, and tank/bruiser items, as well as reintroducing the Chemtech Drake and Soul back to the game, so there’s a lot to digest before we dive into season 13. 

Since the meta is still shaping up and it’s extremely difficult at this moment to see the clear winners and losers of the preseason patch, this time around, we’ll focus on talking about the roles that will definitely have their hand in the upcoming meta. Seeing the series of new items coming for tanks and bruisers, we are led to believe that the upcoming meta will be heavily dictated by them. Other than tanks and bruisers, we might see battle and DPS mages rise in relevance thanks to Rod of Ages making it back into the game. The only true losers of this patch might be bot laners, who will now get even less experience when compared to solo laners and junglers. 

Related: League of Legends Patch 12.22: Full notes and updates

Without further ado, let’s dive into the preseason changes and see what the meta might look like as soon as the dust settles.

Winners of the 2023 preseason

Although we are curious to see exactly how the preseason meta will unfold and we can’t make predictions that are guaranteed to come true, we believe that top laners will have a bigger role in games going forward thanks to minions now granting 2.15 percent more experience to solo laners. Minions spawned in the mid lane will now grant one less gold, up to minute 14. Turret platings will now grant 175 gold, instead of 160 gold. On top of all of these changes, tanks and bruisers, who predominately spend the large majority of games in the top lane, are getting tons of new items like Heartsteel, Radiant Virtue, and Jak’Sho, the Protean.

Junglers have also found themselves loving the new patch since it brought a series of changes to the jungle. Replacing the starting jungling item, junglers are now getting jungle companions that will heal junglers and do damage to whoever their designated caretaker is trying to kill. Over the course of the game, the pets will grow stronger and buff their partner in crime even more. Right now, there are three types of pets you can pick up at the beginning of every game as a hatchling: Mosstomper, Scorchclaw, and Gustwalker. From this patch forward, picking up the incredibly complex role of jungler on Summoner’s Rift will be much easier since you will have leash range indicators while jungling for each monster, the monsters won’t reset as much, and you will have recommended pathing on your mini-map that will be updated every patch.

The final winners of the preseason patch are battle mages that have no other option but to be in the midst of a teamfight. Champions like Anivia, Ryze, Kassadin, Swain, and Aurelion Sol might start showing their faces around Summoner’s Rift more often. The new Rod of Ages is essentially the same as the old version, except it will heal you more often, but less, and it will give you movement speed for two seconds. 

Losers of the 2023 preseason

Looking back at the patch notes, the biggest losers of this patch are bot laners. This, unfortunately, includes both AD carries and supports. The first and main reason why bot laners lost this round of patch notes lies in the fact that they virtually received no changes. Comparing bot laners with solo laners and junglers at this moment seems almost impossible since all these previously mentioned roles got experience and gold changes that will definitely increase their level of agency, especially during the early and mid-game. 

This will translate to more often bot ganks and four-man dives that will most probably shift the tide of the game in one direction. Although supports were anyways due for a nerf because of their tremendous impact and damage they have during the early and mid-game, ADCs were finally in a decent spot after the durability patch. This preseason patch will most likely put them in a rough spot since the only real change ADC mains got is the revamped Navori Quickblades that still won’t be picked up by most ADCs, except maybe Lucian and Xayah.