System changes across the board are coming for League of Legends

League of Legends is due for numerous system changes, including changes to the in-game scoreboard, ability icons, runes, masteries, and even champion animations, according to Riot’s latest post on the official League forums.

Scoreboard

Until Patch 7.11, player-summoned minions counted towards their CS count, despite being worth barely any gold. This has caused CS numbers to be skewed and appear higher than they should. They have also negatively affected end-game stats that track such things. Minions that will be affected by the change are Illaoi’s tentacles, Heimerdinger’s turrets, Shaco’s boxes, Zyra’s plants, Yorick’s ghouls, and Malzahar’s voidlings.

Animations

The back-end of Renekton’s abilities was changed almost completely so that he could no longer cancel animations to make his damage output faster. Instead, if multiple abilities were mashed quickly, they would queue up behind one another. All of those changes in Patch 7.9 are being reverted; as it turns out Renekton needed that choppy-looking damage boost to stay relevant.

Icons

It’s not hard to figure out that League has some sorely outdated icons on many abilities and items. After all, the game did come out in 2009, and many items have been here since the start. Both the Guardian Angel and the Abyssal Scepter (renamed to Abyssal Mask), are getting modernized icons. Furthermore, Riot is opening up the gates for the community to let it know which other abilities and items should be prioritized for updates. If you’d like to pitch in your opinion, head over to the forums.

Runes and Masteries

Masteries and runes alike are going to be targeted later in the year with big changes, as well as changes to trim down any and all steps that are taken before getting into an actual game. Riot didn’t give much away, but did say that there will be news on the matter very soon, according to the forum post. The company will also be discussing what the pre-game stage of League requires, and what can be cut down to save time and streamline the process.

Aside from the changes to the runes and masteries, all of these updates will be arriving with the next patch, which should arrive in a couple of weeks. They won’t affect gameplay very much (unless you’re Renekton), but the behind-the-scenes of League sometimes needs balancing just like the champions do.