Riot reveals upcoming changes to tanks and systemic mobility in League of Legends

In the last few days, many updates and tweaks have been arriving in League of Legends as part of its Gameplay team efforts to control the metagame and diversify the champions selection in all ELOs, while correcting some of the biggest issues around most of the roles as well. This time, Mark “Scruffy” Yetter and Jeevun “Jag” Sidhu, two of the leading gameplay designers around League of Legends, have revealed some of the biggest changes that will be coming in the next patches, also giving an update on some previously announced by Riot.

LoL Tank ecosystem and Senna on the sight

Most of the tank champions have depended on using the Thornmail as a core item, which has resulted in a stalemate among the best options to fill any composition. To fight against this, the Summoner's Rift Team has been looking at making more competitive options for top lane tanks.

(Picture: Riot Games)

This will be made by boosting some of the most underused items for these champs, mostly looking at Warden's Mail, Frozen Heart and Warmog's Armor to take the Thornmail’s place.

The working changes will also affect Senna, as her Mythic builds will start to move away from Frostfire Gauntlet, as change her focus towards items based on Lethality and AP.

Reducing the systemic mobility to prevent creep issues in LoL

According to Scruffy, one of the latest and biggest projects among his team has been “the addressing of major mobility outliers that go too far breaking intended weaknesses (like Stridebreaker) and trimming lots of small movement speed creep across items and runes.”

(Picture: Riot Games)

What this means is that, in the near future, you will not see champions dashing and running all around the map, making a shift in the power away from those who can become a nightmare thanks to their mobility like Darius, Lillia, Gwen, and Olaf.

The upcoming changes aren’t intended to be nerfs, as these will not hit hard on the champions at first, however, Riot will be looking close to how the meta responds to this once the updates are available, to get a clearer window of opportunity to fix a systemic problem.

League of Legends - Top agency and Splitpushing

Since March 2021, the balance team has been working on ways to create a more healthy environment within the Rift, where players can make more viable strategies but as well, open more windows to defend themselves against a snowball.

(Picture: Riot Games)

“Currently we have a split push focused fighter item, a split push focused tank item and some adjustments to outer turrets to make them a bit more valuable”, commented Scruffy in his post.

To complement this, new items to help against Enchanters and Tanks are also being worked behind the scenes, giving more choices, building diversity, balance, and excitement for new and returning players.

Upcoming League of Legends reworks

Recently, Riot announced the delay on the release of Tahm Kench’s rework, due to some fixes on its visuals and animations to be updated, but meanwhile, a new mini rework is also in the works and this time, will be focused on Sona.

(Picture: Riot Games)

While this will not be a major update, the Maven of the Strings will have a better spotlight during the summer split after the offseason left her on the side of the road.

This rework will bring big changes by removing her mana refund mechanic and her Crescendo passive, implementing lower mana in all her abilities and the debut of her Resonance, a new passive that will allow her to permanently stack ability haste when damaging an enemy or helping an ally.

• Read more: Riot unveils first details around the long-waited Tahm Kench rework

As of now, both reworks have a tentative date for the summer, however, always take into account this can change among its development at any moment.

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