Riot Games unveiled many surprises for its 10-year anniversary event, including new titles, map changes, and an update to the future of League of Legends. Support and Lethality items will receive a major overhaul, too.
Riot revealed its in-depth preseason 2020 update yesterday, which looks to revamp bland support equipment and give assassins more options. The Spear of Shojin’s top lane domination will also come to an end since the item will be vaulted for good.
Here are all of the item changes coming to League’s 2020 preseason.
Support items
Riot will introduce an expanded quest system for support gear to refresh a stale item experience. The items will also automatically upgrade when the quest is completed, rather than forcing players to visit the shop for an upgrade.
A tier-one support item starts with basic stats and a gold generation passive. When players hit the milestone, it levels to tier two, which improves stats and gives three wards. A third quest completion brings you to the final tier, which provides a major stats upgrade and a four ward capacity, while sacrificing the gold generation passive.
“This unlocks supports to begin progressing toward their item builds without having to spend their first 1,500g on completing their economy item,” Riot said. “These starting support items won’t carry as many stats as before, but we think this is a fair tradeoff for the jump-start supports are getting on their other items.”
The Ancient Coin will be removed, leaving Spellthief’s and Targon’s as the only options. Ranged supports will now be able to use Targon’s execute passive and AD champs will also get a use from Spellthief’s aggressive playstyle. This provides a more binary experience depending on what playstyle your support falls into—Targon’s for farming, Spellthief’s for aggression.
Supports will also be penalized for excessively farming or poaching minions.
Lethality items
Riot felt that AD assassins and fighters were prioritizing two Lethality items, Duskblade and Ghostblade, while Edge of Night collected dust. To add more diversity to the Lethality item pool, Edge of Night will be revamped by making its spellshield work like Bashee’s Veil and avoiding the active item component.
The sinister Sanguine Blade also debuts on the Rift, which will be favored by splitpushing champions like Tryndamere. Its passive will grant a huge attack speed buff when there are no allies around, helping you take out the enemy top laner in a one-vs-one.
That’s not all. A few other Lethality options may be tested out on League’s Public Beta Environment (PBE). Due to the increase in Lethality items, Riot wants to discourage players from stacking up on the blades and avoiding other item options.
“Individual items grant fewer stats but now feature a one- and two-piece bonus which preserves the power spikes of assassins’ first big purchases,” Riot said. “Since this set bonus stops at two, assassins should generally branch into raw-AD items like Guardian Angel or Black Cleaver after their two-item spike. Full Lethality should still feel like a strong option against exceptionally squishy comps, though.”
More item changes
The Spear of Shojin now joins Deathfire Grasp and Ionic Spark in League’s item graveyard. Due to its unique passive that synergizes too well with specific champions with crowd control (CC), like Renekton, the item will be removed for the 2020 season.
Fans can expect more updates on item changes as the 2020 preseason approaches with Patch 9.23 scheduled to go live in November.
