League of Legends mage champs base attacks are receiving hefty buffs in next week’s Patch 13.22, with Riot Games’ balance team prepared to sacrifice metagame balance in the short term to determine where the line should be drawn.
All up, 23 League mages will have their base attack speed, missile speed, or attack timing buffed with Patch 13.22, according to gameplay designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison, who shared the plans in an Oct. 31 preview.
Phroxzon went on to admit there is a fairly high chance some of these League champions will become overpowered thanks to these buffs, but the team is willing to take the risk to determine just how far they can take mages in League heading into the new season—and “limit-test” how the meta adjusts around the tweaks.
“We’re looking at varying approaches for different champions based on whether they already have a good attack frame, how much we want them to be attacking, etc,” Phroxzon said. The plan, he added, is to scale back any extra broken characters later.
Singed, Heimerdinger, Annie, Ahri, Xerath, and Teemo headline the list, with those six receiving significant boosts to basic attacks. In total, two-thirds of League’s mages are set to receive some sort of adjustment to their attacks.
The League balance team believes too many mages opt into selecting the Attack Speed rune shard at the moment with the plan to buff basic attacks opening up a player’s options a little more. “We’re going to be setting these Attack Speed values to what feels right first, such that the mages don’t feel required to take the shard and then address any balance fallout after,” Phroxzon said.
Those mages that have an auto-attack replacement, such as Karthus or Cassiopeia, aren’t seeing as heavy of a change as the balance team doesn’t want to dissuade players from leaning away from the abilities.
Not every mage is getting a basic attack buff either. The likes of Lux, Jayce, Varus, Aurelion Sol, and Malzahar—to name just a few—are expected to go unchanged in League Patch 13.22, though things may change as testing continues. We’ll see if the first round of buffs proves to be too much before the next group of mages gets a look-in.
League Patch 13.22 arrives in clients everywhere next Wednesday.
