Nexus Blitz’s 4-week alpha test begins for all players during League Patch 8.16

Nexus Blitz, the experimental fast-paced game mode that had a rocky start on the PBE, is coming to the League of Legends live client sometime during this week’s Patch 8.16, according to Riot’s announcement today. It will remain on the live client for four weeks as an alpha test, which means the game players experience likely won’t be the final product. We tested the game mode when it first arrived on the PBE, and our first impression was a mixed one. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because even though the game and map were very, very broken, what little bits of the game we could actually experience were extremely fun. That means that assuming Riot fixes some of those issues while testing continues, the final result should be a fantastic addition to League’s game mode list. Related: League’s new Nexus Blitz game mode is ugly, broken, messy, and a ton of fun In case you haven’t seen or heard anything about Nexus Blitz yet, the map is decorated similarly to Summoner’s Rift, but it’s a lot smaller. It’s composed of a single lane that’s split in two near the middle of the map, and a single, large jungle above that lane. Each team is composed of three laners and two junglers, ensuring that junglers can run into trouble right from the get-go, along with the massive six-person throwdown in the lane. The goal of the game is just like ARAMs and Summoner’s Rift games—destroy the enemy Nexus. What makes this game mode so hectic and unpredictable is its in-game events, which spawn throughout the map. Whichever team succeeds at these events, like capture the area or push the payload, gets a really doofy, off-the-wall buff for their team. One of the buffs we often got while testing was some of our minions and towers were given Blitzcrank hooks. There aren’t many buff variations yet, but Riot will look into creating more should the mode see success. The announcement today didn’t give an exact time and date that the mode will launch, but we know it’ll come during 8.16 at some point, which means between Aug. 15 and 29.