By now, you’ve all surely seen or played League of Legends on Patch 6.9 and experienced first-hand the ups and downs of these changes. While we won’t be able to go through all the changes introduced, we will cover the ones that look likely to affect competitive play. To simplify the wave of content and its effects on the game, there are 2 main sections you should know about; Mages and Neutral objectives.
Mages
We saw multiple reworks during the mage patch to champions, and the addition of several new items and item changes. With the changes to mage item recipes, awkward back timings now allow for purchases that build to core items, rather than sitting on a large lump of gold to get that needlessly large rod that everyone desires. However, ultimately these changes diversified the item pool for specific play-styles, and will not impact the state of the game too much aside from the slightly later power spikes.
What will change the game are the mage reworks. After some time to observe the new changes, we find prominent mage figures such as Malzahar, Vel’koz, Zyra, Viktor and Fiddlesticks rising up from previously humble positions and becoming prominent within solo queue. With the individual optimisation of the mage changes, we find that the mage picks become more situational, as they specialize in specific fields, or control certain matchups. It seems as though the biggest thing about these mid-season changes are “strategic diversity”, and with the mid lane generally carrying a lot of utility, these mage reworks appear to be encouraging such an ideal.
However, in terms of competitive viability, these mages will have to stand up to powerhouses like Azir and Ryze that have dominated the meta-game prior.
These two champions spike at two items and have amazing team fight presence and control. Azir brings zone control, siege and long range, not to mention his AOE damage is extremely high. His ability to control zones with his soldiers and his ultimate, in addition to the slow from his core Rylais Crystal Sceptre, makes him a formidable team fight threat. On the flipside, Ryze is mid-ranged, excels at duelling with high single target damage and carries a lot of innate tankiness in his build path thanks to his passive shield and third item Guardian Angel. Let’s not forget his ultimate, converting that single target damage into AOE as well in team fights. If any of the mages want to see competitive play, they will have to stand toe-to-toe with these titans.
Neutral Objectives
Some of the smaller changes that impact the game are the jungle experience changes. The killer of a jungle monster now gains full exp from that monster. These are big implications for lane swap strategies as sharing of experience no longer works as efficiently as it used to, with less total exp to go to both players from one camp.
The biggest changes this patch, however, are those to the Rift Herald and the Dragon. With the introduction of the Elemental Dragons and the new buff that the Rift Herald gives, neutral objectives have become an integral factor to each game.
The Rift Herald
The new buff that the Rift Herald gives lasts 20 minutes. That's right, you read that correctly. A 20 minute buff.
The implications spiral out of control as whoever claims the buff has an immediate damage boost in the form a charge system similar to the zeal items, as well as providing 5% damage reduction when alone. Obtaining this buff for your solo top laner or even your ADC can tip the scales from an even trade to a more one sided fight. This potentially could cause a shift in lane assignments, from the standard duo bot/top lane to the duo top/solo bot laner, as this buff has extremely high priority due to its potency. Twenty minutes of free empowerment without loss of that buff is a massive power spike for a single champion, and so the top side of the map will become a heavily contested area.
Elemental and the Elder Drakes
The new dragon mechanics create potential for early-mid game team fights. The Fire Drake possesses the highest priority amongst all dragons, as the free percentage stats that it provides to AP and AD are too good to give up. The Mountain Drake and Ocean Drake provide situational advantages in sieging and rotational play through true damage to structures or epic monsters and out-of-combat healing respectively. The Air Drake is perhaps the lowest on the Drake tier list, as it provides a flat movement speed bonus only out-of-combat. With the stacking mechanic, fighting for the extra fire drake to gain more damage or contesting the Ocean Drake a second time to deny the increased healing suddenly becomes an important factor in deciding the flow of the game.
The stat-to-gold efficiency ratios of these dragons are worth more as the game goes on and with the Elder Dragon granting a significant bonus to the dragons you currently have, this makes them all the more important. Past the 30 minute mark, the decision to contest the Baron Nashor and the Elder Dragon becomes harder, with one providing siege potential and the other providing team fight potential respectively. This opens a chance for variability in both champ select and in-game, where deciding between the two objectives can be the game winner or ender.
New season predictions
'Tis the season for bloody team fights. With the new overhaul to neutral objectives, we may once again see teams take on more diverse strategic identities. No one style is clearly the best way of playing, and perhaps we'll see the rise of new team compositions to adjust to the changes. Riot appears to have taken a path to make League of Legends a better spectator sport as these new changes encourage skirmishes and promote team fighting: one of the greatest joys of watching League of Legends.
With these new mage changes, it will be a test of time to see what star mid laners across the regions will bring to the table and what strategies teams will develop over the course of the split. With new roster changes during the off-season, many teams will be scrambling to find their own team identity. A plethora of strategies such as siege, pick-oriented play, team fighting compositions built around specific power spike timings or even the current split push strategies with double teleport become possible. The shaping of a team's "colour" will be vital to determine how well they can adapt to this patch, and as of now, the possiblities are nigh inconceivable.
The new season is exciting to say the least, as the changes have allowed for a variety of new options to arise in champion select, particularly focusing on the mid lane and the possible picks that may arise. With the subtle nerf to the lane swap this patch, standard lanes may become more common. Everyone knows that at that point, the game becomes more about player vs player mechanics than player vs environment execution. I’m sure we’ll all be looking forward to that.
