League of Legends changes: Upcoming moves for Season 7

The upcoming League of Legends changes will make Season 7 feel very fresh.

Riot has been on a tear lately with updating League of Legends for Season 7. Already, they’ve announced the return of solo queue, changes to a host of assassins and a new game replay system.

Today’s update continues on a theme Riot has engaged on consistently. They want greater variety in the game. And they want that variety to force players to make meaningful gameplay decisions.

This is a smart way to update the game. Rather than increasing the roster of champions, which has diminishing returns, giving players more choices to build and interact with the existing champions keeps the game fresh. At the professional level, champions and items that can alternate between roles which creates an interesting level of strategy.

The new jungle

The latest new champion, Ivern, came with a unique interaction: the ability to spawn bushes. Riot went all-in on the plant theme with the release that they were adding more flora and fauna to the jungle. The goal is to give players more options and utility in the jungle apart from the buffs they earn from smiting jungle camps.

This is a smart adaptation. The problem with smite is, unlike most summoner spells, opponents have almost no way of knowing whether a jungler’s smite is up or not. The hope is that players will now always assume that it’s available, which improves consistency, while also giving junglers more decisions to make on their pathing.

In addition to the camps, Riot also announced changes to the camps that encourage different routes. It’s not immediately clear what they are getting at, but in non-competitive play, there are generally very few main routes junglers take, at least on the first clear. The problem with more aggressive pathing is that it requires coordination and team play on the level rarely seen outside the highest elos.

Next: Ivern Buffed in a Hotfix to Patch 6.20

Support itemization

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Riot also announced changes to support itemization with Aegis of the Legion as the prime example. They want supports to have more options besides the very standard decision between Aegis (area of effect) and Mikael’s Crucible. They want to give non-damage support builds more juice.

Part of the change will be a heavy nerf to Aegis’ magic resistance aura. And they envision adding more items that provide stronger but more targeted protection. Rioter Andre “Meddler” van Roon has been discussing removing Aegis’ aura for a while and even pros have called the item out for being overpowered.

Masteries

Finally, Riot announced a few tweaks to the mastery system. The goal is, again, to provide players more clear choices. On certain classes, mastery choices can seem stale, and this is an area that Riot has focused on again and again. The mastery changes between Seasons 5 and 6 was a strong step in the right direction; let’s hope their Season 7 changes continue on that path.

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