The League of Legends midseason update aims to find a new direction for some of the most powerful items in the MOBA. Speaking in a developer update, Riot Games devs explain that they’re unhappy with the state of League of Legends Mythic items in their current form, and lay out a first big wave of changes. There’s also news on the incoming ranked reset, bot ban waves, and new champions.
“At a high level, we’re not very happy with the current state of Mythic items as an overall system – and, based on your feedback, neither are a lot of you,” Andrei ‘Meddler’ Van Roon says. Lead gameplay designer Bryan ‘Axes’ Salvatore explains that Mythics often feel too complicated, enforce players feeling a need to buy less exciting items rather than their “coolest choice,” and can create “serious game health problems” when an attempt to serve all champs in a role makes a single item too broadly strong.
The new goal, then, is “to test a version of the system where Mythic items are meant to be high-power, high-satisfaction capstone effects that define builds,” prioritising fun and satisfying items even if that means a given champ almost always builds the same Mythic in every game. To kick things off, the team is making changes focused on three key areas: ADC items, Enchanter items, and Lethality items.
ADC Mythics will abandon the current pair of parallel paths; instead, Infinity Edge, Navori Quickblades, Guinsoo’s Rageblade, and Galeforce will be the new Mythic items, while Kraken Slayer and Shieldbow get redesigned as Legendary items. Salvatore remarks that players can expect Rageblade “to look a lot more like its older versions,” and notes that Statikk Shiv is making a return with a new-look stat profile.
Lethality items are getting targeted changes – Prowler’s Claw is losing its dash and being reworked into a Legendary, Duskblade of Draktharr is being overhauled, and Youmuu’s Ghostblade gets a promotion to Mythic item status. Elsewhere, several Enchanter items are being reworked to make them “more satisfying and fun to use.”
“If we’re seeing a lot more promise in Mythic items after those changes we’ll commit to that, we’ll continue to reinforce that newfound direction,” Van Roon says. But if the proposed changes still don’t work out, the team will shift direction again and “explore some much more divergent approaches” such as radical shifts to how Mythic items work, or “potentially just the removal of Mythic items as a concept.”
The dev update also goes over some other news, such as reminding players of the incoming partial ranked reset in July. Jeremy ‘Brightmoon’ Lee says another major bot ban wave has rolled out that should make your play more pleasant, while on the other side of things improved bot AI for practice games is hitting the PBE later this year.
The deprecation of support for 32-bit systems has allowed an expansion of the emotes system – this will start with an expansion from five slots to nine, Van Roon says, but there’s potential for more changes such as additional emote pages. The team is also “about a third” of the way through fixing roughly 4500 broken voice lines and interactions, so you may hear some chatter that you don’t recognise during matches.
Finally, Ryan ‘Reav3’ Mireles teases that “pack of assassins” Naafiri is on the way soon, while jungler Briar is currently in holding but “her bloodlust won’t be contained for long.” The much-teased 2v2v2v2 mode is arriving with its own new map in the Summer update, and finally, while there’s sad news that the Skarner VGU has been pushed back until early 2024, there will be a visual update coming for Jax.
Check in on the League of Legends 13.8 patch notes to make sure you’re up to speed, or just browse our League of Legends tier list to see who the best champions are right now. You could also check exactly how much you’ve spent on League of Legends, but only if you’re feeling brave.