Riot Games’ design director Andrei “Meddler” van Roon stepped back into the dev corner today to provide some thoughts about how the dramatic preseason changes to Summoner’s Rift are impacting League of Legends.
The introduction of elemental rifts represents a broad change to the way League is played and one of the biggest alterations in years. Meddler said that the balance of the new Rift is “in a reasonably good state so far.” He admitted, however, that his team will have a lot to keep an eye on as time goes on, particularly the way that different elemental rifts alter the win rates of champions.
League fans will be curious to see what kind of impact the random elemental rifts have on the strategies of competitive play and on the new and exciting ways that the wrong element will tilt other players off the face of Summoner’s Rift.
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Item changes have so far been largely power neutral in the days since the patch. Lethality, crit, and support item users haven’t seen any broad shifts in win rate, but it’s still early days for the preseason and players have yet to adapt to the new status quo.
Meddler also said that changes need to be made in the wake of Kleptomancy being replaced by Omnistone. Kleptomancy champs have sorely missed their favorite rune and Meddler says that hotfixes are incoming—Ezreal’s buffs are already live—to compensate with buffs to their kits.
Omnistone might also be getting buffs in the coming days. Meddler said that “it’s not the optimal choice on any champs at present.”
