New items, dragons, and more are on the way.
Hello everyone! Today we’ll be talking about the upcoming changes in the Preseason 2022 and the current state of the game (although we won’t focus much on that ;). We’ve got a lot to cover so let’s dive right in!
State of the Game
Overall, the team is pretty happy with the state of League this season, but before talking more about it, we need to cover the topic a lot of players are interested in the most: new champion balance.
Based on the data, most of the recently released champions have been pretty balanced, with the exception of Dr. Mundo (What about Viego?). However, there’s more to healthy gameplay than just winrates and a lot of players complain about the new champions being unfun to play against or having overloaded kits. The clear goal Riot aiming at is making sure the new champions arent just numerically balanced, but also feel fair to play against.
Riot Safelocked also positively reacted to the increase in champion diversity in different roles, like jungle and top lane.
But enough of the boring stuff, let’s get to the part everyone was waiting for!
Preseason 2022
New Items
While some champions and classes have lots of build options, some other classes don’t have the build options that speak to them. With that in mind, Riot is going to add two new mythic items.
The first one is a support tank item, perfect for champions that want to get aggressive. When you immobilize an enemy champion, all nearby enemies will take increased damage from your allies for a short period of time.
The second new mythic is build for mages who are looking for a little more survivability. It grants damage reduction that lingers a few seconds after you get hit, and while the protection holds, the player will get additional ability haste.
There are also 3 confirmed legendary items for mages, assassins, and tanks.
Assasins can look for a new legendary item that gives ability haste, and also refund a portion of their Ultimate’s cooldown with enemy takedowns.
Tanks that can never get enough mana will be happy with a new legendary item that grants bonus health based on total mana, and also burns some of it to create a shield whenever they immobilize an enemy.
And finally, mages can rejoice! They’ll be receiving a new legendary item that grants magic penetration against recently shielded enemies.
Runes
There are at least two major keystones that will go some form of rework. The first priority on Riot’s list is Inspiration tree with the Glacial Augmentation keystone. There’s also will be changes to lethal tempo, to double down on its attack speed fantasy and give it a more distinct use case in the Precision tree.
Objective Bounties
Champion bounties give teams who are behind a way to get back into the game without being a straight shot to victory. This year, objective bounties will be added to help make that comeback. Objective bounties will work like champion bounties, except you cash them by taking out objectives like towers or Baron.
They ramp up slowly when the enemy lead grows, and are shared by all your team regardless of who claimed it. Regardless of that, being the better team should always result in victory, so Riot will be watching the new system closely to keep things in check.
New Dragons
Finally, let’s talk about the biggest addition to Preseason 2022: Dragons. Two more Dragons, to be exact.
The first one is the Hextech Drake: When your team defeats it, you’ll all gain additional ability haste and attack speed. If you claim the soul, you’ll receive a chain-slow that works like Statikk Shiv’s passive. When Hextech Dragon takes over the Rift, it creates Hextech Gates that can transport you to set locations across the map.
The second dragon is the Chemtech Drake: When you slay it, your team will deal increased damage when your HP is low. The Chemtech Soul provides a “Zombie State” after you die, where you can still cast abilities and continue fighting. And when the Chemtech dragon takes over the map, it will create camouflage zones in fixed locations.
That’s it about the gameplay side of the Preseason changes! We’re going to cover the new “Challenges” system pretty soon so keep in touch!
Watch League of Legeds’ video on Preseason 2022 to learn more!
Don’t forget to learn about the future game modes in our article!
