Riot Games is still trying to find a sweet spot for the League of Legends death timers on Summoner’s Rift. As the balance quest continues, the League developers will be ballooning how long players stay dead early.
Starting from League Patch 14.16, players who die in the first nine levels of games on the Rift will now take longer to get back into the action. First, it’s going to take four seconds more between levels one and eight. Then, any deaths at level nine will be extended out by two seconds. Level 10 onward will stay the same.
On top of the timer pivots, Riot will also be changing Death Homeguards so that the gameplay loop becomes a bit more about walking back to lanes.
These major changes, which have now been added to the League PBE, aren’t just a flat numerical tweak; the Rift has a mechanic that plays with time dead players spend in the fountain as game time ticks up. Should any unlucky players remain under level nine by the time this comeback feature kicks in at around 15 minutes, they’ll be impacted. Otherwise, things do balance out quite equally.
The objective from the League balance team here is to make sure early game deaths are actually more punishing. Right now, dying in the first half-dozen levels of a match on the Rift often means little—especially in the jungle.
The biggest change should come in the top lane though, Riot Phreak explained today, with longer timers hopefully “making Teleport less mandatory to not lose lane.”
“Getting a solo kill should [now] let you push the lane in time,” the lead League developer continued about the impending death-clock changes. “Getting chain-killed should get you back to your lane in similar times without Teleport.”
These death timer and homeguards changes will go live on proper League servers on Wednesday, Aug. 14. Testing will run for two weeks until then.
