In one of the biggest changes League of Legends has seen this decade, Riot Games is reducing item power levels by as much as “five to fifteen percent” across the board in a huge preseason patch in a bid to make champion choices actually matter again.
The overhaul, which has been dubbed the “Champion Emphasis” update, is expected to hit as many as 119 Legendary League items and herald changes for every single class in the game, ranging from skirmishers and tanks to AD carries and assassins. The aim, the Riot balance team explained in a September blog, is to “put more emphasis on champions” again after various changes and improving player skills shifted things the wrong way.
“Most players queue up for a game of League because they want to play a champion,” the Riot devs said on why they’re making the move. “We don’t see anyone load into game and get excited to play Infinity Edge. They want to play Jinx or Yasuo.”
The biggest objective the developers have is mitigating just how good the League playerbase has become over the last decade. Whereas players in the early 2010s would farm okay and collect around 150 minions at 20 minutes—giving them access to one, maybe two legendaries—current 2024 gamers can crack 200 easily.
These boosted gold piles and better objective control has meant the game’s speed has increased exponentially and become more of a race to item power spikes.
While that’s not necessarily a bad thing overall, it’s sidelined a lot of what makes League special compared to other games: It’s unique characters. Much of the near-170 champion strong roster has been pidgeon-holed into similar builds that all end up feeling quite similar in the endgame and Riot can see more and more champs losing their identity.
Instead, the League devs wants to boil in “more time for players to play out their champion’s gameplay fantasy and to put more emphasis on champions than items” by knocking down just how overpowered all the items on sale can be.
Riot has several class-specific goals too, including taking ability haste away from burst mages, helping tanks survive longer through added resistances, and twisting enchanters further back into their supportive design over magic powerhouses. Fighters and juggernauts will have their power budget reduced while assassins will “need to rely more on their individual spell casts and finding that first correct target.” On the lesser side, AD carries won’t see major changes; damage will still the focal point of any ADC’s core build.
Said the devs: “Overall, these changes are intended to reduce the move speed and ability haste in the game, reduce burst access for non-burst classes, lower damage, and increase the amount of durability items give relative to their other stats.”
Should the Champion Emphasis update work as intended, League should become “less snowbally” and have longer teamfights—a bit closer to the mid-2010s, perhaps.
Expect all these changes to hit live League servers on Wednesday, Sept. 25.
