- Riot Games is trying out a new way to implement changes to champions
- Devs will now tweak individual skills, instead of nerfing or buffing champions as a whole
- Players suggested some other champions that might use the same treatment
With the arrival of League of Legends’ Patch 13.7, Riot used the opportunity to give ARAM much-needed attention and implement a new way to balance champions.
Riot Implements New Methodology
ARAM has been one of those League of Legends modes that hasn’t received much attention from Riot Games. It was always viewed by both the studio and players as a more “casual” game mode, that doesn’t rely too much on coordinating team strategy or optimizing things like jungle pathing and tempo. Due to this, the game mode has often not been taken into consideration when implementing nerfs or buffs for champions, as Riot focused more on Summoner’s Rift instead.
However, as Patch 13.7, which already saw ten meta champions being drastically changed, rolled around today, League’s devs used the opportunity to finally make some changes. Their approach has been to tweak individual champions’ abilities, instead of the usual approach, which was to either add or reduce damage taken and damage dealt. For example, Veigar’s Event Horizon will no longer have a cooldown, while the duration of Karthus’ passive got decreased from seven seconds to five seconds.
Players Seem to Like the New Changes
Although the game’s newest patch has been out for less than a day, players are already seeing the benefits of this type of balancing. Many fans discussed the changes in a post in the League subreddit and agreed that this method of changing champions is the way forward.
Many said that when nerfing champions using the old methods, things could swing too much in the other direction, making the nerfed character way weaker than their foes. “The 5% nerfs or buffs were fun but yeah it's gotten too much,” one commenter explained. “When you're a nerfed champ vs a buffed champ it's worse than a permanent exhaust. It makes no sense.”
The discussion continued, with players suggesting more ways in which other champions could be changed using the new methodology. Ashe was another champion that fans discussed that should receive some changes. “Give Ashe W a long cd and remove her percent debuffs so she can actually play as an ADC,” one League player said. “I still don’t understand why she takes more damage too,” another fan agreed. “She’s already a squishy backline, neither build makes her tankier. It just makes adc Ashe harder to play since she gets deleted even harder, and support Ashe just sits a mile away and uses w.”
Considering the most important thing for the ARAM meta is the team’s composition, rather than the overall strategy, it’s clear that tweaking individual skills would have more of an impact. Whether or not the game mode will need more changes is going to become clear in the future.
