URF, otherwise known as Ultra Rapid Fire, is one of the most-popular game modes in League of Legends. It’s incredibly fast-paced with dramatically reduced cooldowns, no mana costs, and more damage. There are some League players who, while they do enjoy URF, believe that the main game is turning into the goofy game mode, and they’re very displeased with it.
In a post on the League Reddit community, players banded together to complain about the game’s cooldowns, saying that there are too many cooldown-lowering items and generally low-cooldown abilities. Those perceived facts alone, according to these comments, are what makes League feel URF-ified. Apparently, there are at least 6,000 people who agree with the sentiment, since that’s how many upvotes the post racked up.
The comparison to URF seems arbitrary, and, frankly, not the point. Why? Well, because these players aren’t complaining about eye-popping boosts to damage or reduced mana/energy costs, which are two very important characteristics of URF. Rather, they’re just complaining about cooldowns.
For reference, and for those who haven’t played URFs, cooldowns in that game mode are dropped almost completely. In regular games, there’s still a 40 percent cap. That much hasn’t changed. The point of contention, rather, is that there are more items, runes, and whatever else that helps players reach that cap with minimal effort. So, is that actually true? Sort of.
In the days of League’s past, champions in all roles simply had less tools to hit the CDR cap. Now, and this goes mostly for mid lane mages, there are more items to pair with CDR lowering runes. For instance, Lost Chapter items for mages can give 20 percent CDR when completed, and that’s the first item that most of them buy. Paired with runes, that hits 30 percent, needing only one more item to reach the cap. The thing is, though, most mages in old League tried to hit max CDR, anyway. They maybe just didn’t reach that level so quickly.
One item, Essence Reaver, does have the potential to lower cooldowns even more when its passive is triggered, but that only happens when ultimate abilities are used. So it’s still not widely accessible like the buffs all champions get in URF games. Overall, it’s important to remember that Reddit is the vocal minority of League players, and that one highly-upvoted post doesn’t dictate whether this is a real pain point in the community.
That being said, there’s still a grain of truth to the complaint, even if it’s a bit (or a lot) melodramatic. The fact of the matter is, more and more items are either being designed or reworked to include CDR, which means there’s more readily available. The CDR cap isn’t any higher than it used to be, though, and cooldowns for new champs tend to remain fairly high, aside from some recent reworks like Irelia and Akali. Pyke, for instance, has extremely high cooldowns on all of his abilities.
So is it true? Sort of, but only by a little bit. If you agree with the sentiment that League is becoming URF, however, you need to join the conversation to let Riot know that this is actually a popular concern. Whether on Reddit, Twitter, or the game’s forums, providing feedback is only helpful.
