Welcome to preseason!
We’re always looking to level up our core game experience in new and exciting ways.
This year we’ll be making gameplay changes aimed at evolving the support role, refining the jungler position and polishing the overarching game flow of Summoner's Rift.
We’re looking for your feedback to help make the game even better before the 2014 season.
We believe all players should experience a meaningful endgame fantasy no matter what they play.
Most of our roles and positions are already successful at this, but there were a few who typically fell behind the curve late game – specifically supports and junglers.
Let’s talk about supports first.
Taking down an enemy nexus doesn’t come cheap.
Winning the vision war often meant individual players – usually supports – didn’t have that extra gold to buy the items they wanted.
Here we’re introducing new components to the vision game that’ll both increase strategy and diffuse responsibility for warding.
You’ll encounter new vision-granting items this season called “trinkets.”
Free to purchase and stored in their own item slot, each trinket offers something a little different,
like revealing and disabling nearby wards, scouting a remote area or placing a free ward.
Because there’s no cost to picking them up, trinkets are an easy and accessible way for everyone to take part in the vision game.
Another major change to vision is that each player will have a maximum number of wards they can place on the map at any time.
Our goal is to challenge players to make careful decisions about warding, as well as encourage the act of securing map vision as a true team effort.
Beyond alleviating some of the pressure behind vision, we’re also providing supports alternative means of income through masteries and itemization.
Several items designed for supports will now grant additional gold, making it easier for them to reach their end game fantasy.
We’re also adjusting the way champions gain experience throughout a game, as we’re making it easier to gain levels as you approach level 18.
This should allow duo laners more freedom to ward and roam, while still being able to keep pace with the rest of their team without the fear of falling behind.
Lastly, we want support players to feel like their contributions to a teamfight are as impactful as a high-damage mage or a damage-soaking tank.
To help drive this change, we’re introducing support ability scaling so that the utility of their skills increases with ability power.
Buffs and debuffs will increase in effectiveness as supports scale throughout a game, allowing them to feel like they’re growing in power alongside other roles.
Switching to junglers, we’ve seen successful high-utility support playstyles throughout Season 3,
but for carry-style junglers that rely on damage for their contribution in a team fight,
we’ve identified many of the same opportunities for improvement that we found with supports.
In terms of jungler income, we’ve added a new camp to each side, providing more potential jungle paths and gold outside of lanes.
We’re also adding new items that allow junglers to customize their builds to match their playstyle, whether they’re staying in the jungle or ganking enemy lanes.
To ensure that a jungler’s levels stay consistent with the rest of their team, we’re also introducing neutral monster levels that scale with the average champion level in-game,
providing higher experience and gold bounties as they level.
By increasing income and experience, junglers should have more opportunities to earn the gold necessary to build big ticket items,
so no matter what style you’re looking to play, you’ll be able to maximize your presence in teamfights and in the game overall.
So far we've gone over changes that impact particular roles and positions, but we're also making an effort to improve the overall feel and pace of the game.
In addition to adding another jungle camp, we're also doing some light yardwork around the Rift by cleaning up the size and shape of brush areas around the map.
These changes should help reduce confusion around ward placement, as well as fog of war issues around certain choke points.
To reduce the snowballing potential behind rushing down global objectives,
we’re adjusting the benefits from killing outer turrets so they’re more rewarding for the champions who destroy them and have less of an effect on other lanes.
Similarly, destroying an inhibitor will no longer make all of your minions stronger - just the ones pushing that lane.
This should give teams that lose an inhibitor the ability to capitalize on an epic comeback, instead of having to worry about defending other lanes.
Finally, the gold and experience rewards from Dragon will now scale over time and give greater rewards throughout the game.
The intent is that Dragon will be a hotly contested objective for teams, even in the later stages where it’s been considered obsolete.
Combined with the other top-level changes we’ve discussed so far, we envision a more dynamic game experience in the upcoming season.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg: to learn the full details of our preseason changes, including those not covered in this video,
check out the rest of our preseason content and keep an eye out for more updates as we continue to gather your feedback.