What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Quality of Life changes are small updates that really help Riot bring the best out of
champions that might be kinda struggling to compete with some of the newer, more polished
champions they release.
To keep champion designs really interesting, Riot have to create new mechanics and different
ways for abilities to work.
In the process they learn a lot about the way champions should feel and play, and these
changes are really aimed at making champions feel fresh and fluid.
Today’s Top 10 is going to list our favorite Quality of Life changes that Riot has introduced
so far.
As always, Top 10s will come down to personal opinion, but we’d still love to hear about
your thoughts on our list, so definitely leave us a comment if you disagree with something.
If you enjoy the video, make sure to hit that like button, and if you don’t hit
the dislike.
Starting off our list at Number 10 is a two for one, shared between Lux’s E, Lucent
Singularity, that received a small Quality of Life buff in patch 5.12, and Gragas’s
Q, Barrel Roll, which was patched in Patch 3.14.
Lucent Singularity is an aimed ability that sends out a projectile that slows once it
reaches its target.
It can then be detonated to deal magic damage in an AoE, but because of it’s slow, predictable
movement, it was kinda easy to expect where it would go and avoid it.
The change allowed Lux to be able to activate her E again while it was in-flight, causing
it to instantly detonate once it arrived at the target.
Although the ability was still avoidable, this really helped reduce the wait before
casting it and dealing it’s damage, and allowed players to catch more people in the
AoE where they might otherwise have missed by a fraction of a second.
It’s a really cool change that helped the ability feel way smoother and more reliable.
Barrel Roll worked in a similar way, being a targeted magic damage AoE, but instead of
a slow once it reaches the area, Barrel Roll builds up its damage until it’s detonated
- slowing as it deals it’s damage.
Gragas received the same treatment, the change giving him a small buffer just before the
barrel reached it’s destination where Gragas can re-activate Q to detonate the cask when
it arrives.
It’s not quite as fluid as Lux’s E, because he can’t immediately choose to re-detonate
it after cast, but that’s probably better for him because unlike Lux, his barrel increases
in damage the longer he leaves it at the target - having a small buffer just before it arrives
where it can be set to detonate early is ideal so that Gragas doesn’t accidentally miss
out on a ton of damage!
At Number 9 is Alistar, who had a Quality of Life change that allowed him to queue up
a Pulverize cast during his Headbutt ability.
Input buffering is an important part of using your abilities quickly in League of Legends,
but the problem is that it’s difficult to do properly with a high ping.
Alistar’s Headbutt-Pulverize combo is core to him as a champion, but without perfect
timing and a low ping it was really difficult to time Pulverize to knock up an enemy before
Headbutt pushed them away.
This meant Alistar players were way more reliable on lower ping, and it really isolated some
people from playing the champion.
This quality of life tweak allows Alistar to queue up his Pulverize cast during his
Headbutt, so the player doesn’t need to worry about ping or timing affecting whether
they will successfully combo or not.
Riot made this change in Patch 6.3, so pretty recently, but it’s caused a significant
increase in the number of Alistar players.
Being able to use his combo is less important now, so players can spend way more time learning
about the rest of Alistar’s strategy, such as when to initiate and how to zone correctly.
It’s a great example of what makes a Quality of Life change so valuable - a small tweak
can open up a champion to tons more players, and help develop them into more reliable teammates!
Number 8 is Caitlyn with her Ultimate, Ace in the Hole.
In Patch 5.11, Caitlyn received a quality of life buff that caused her to gain sight
of a target immediately after activating her Ultimate on them, rather than after she takes
aim.
Caitlyn’s Ultimate has a small cast time of 0.25 seconds before she started taking
aim, but often times an enemy champion would walk outside of vision range just as Caitlyn
started to line up her shot, causing her to lose sight and cancel the Ultimate.
With this tweak, once Caitlyn settles on a target to fire at, she gains vision of the
target instantly, so that brief cast time will no longer affect whether she gets to
fire or not.
Pretty logical change for a sniping champion, and it really helped avoid those frustrating
situations where your Ultimate would be cancelled even though you managed to target an enemy
that was in range.
At Number 7 is Syndra with a change to her Force of Will ability that made it feel way
more responsive.
The Patch was (V1.0.0.150) and it caused Syndra to pick up the nearest Dark Sphere in range
if she didn’t select another target.
It was pretty annoying to be too slow picking up a Sphere because you couldn’t target
one instantly, and this change helped new Syndra players come to terms with the champion.
That’s not all though, she also had her grab time reduced to 0.25 seconds for 0.33,
speeding up the process slightly, along with a tweak to let her queue up a throw command
during the grab.
This worked similar to the Headbutt-Pulverize change from Alistar.
Originally Syndra had to pick up a sphere and then re-cast the ability to throw it after
she had grabbed hold.
With this quality of life change, she could a choose a location to throw the grabbed sphere
or unit before she had finished grabbing it, giving her a way smoother throw and allowing
faster use of the ability.
Force of Will isn’t a particularly powerful ability by itself, but by allowing her to
reposition dark sphere’s or slow a target much more fluidly, follow up abilities like
Scatter The Weak were far easier to use.
Syndra has a really bad showing on release, and changes like this helped turn her into
the awesome lane stomper she is today.
Another shared tweak for you at Number 6, Cassiopeia and her Twin Fang along with Ryze’s
Rune Prison & Spell Flux.
The Twin Fang change happened in Patch 6.2, so before the re-work, but thankfully the
change carried over in her new form.
Twin Fang was quite a frustrating ability to use because it was so spammable while also
requiring a target.
This meant you always had to mouse over a target to use the ability, and stay moused
over whenever you wanted to cast Twin Fang.
That would be fine - but Cassiopeia would have her auto-attacks and movement commands
cancelled by casting it, so essentially you had to move your mouse to move and attack
at a ridiculous speed to be able to use her Full DPS.
The quality of life buff stopped her Twin Fang cast from cancelling movement orders,
making it way easier for Cassiopeia to chase down an enemy while still attacking.
Spammy champions need to feel fluid without being impossibly hard to play for the majority
of the playerbase, and changes like this really let them make the most of those spammable
abilities.
Both Ryze’s Rune Prison and Spell Flux abilities were a similar story.
They used to cancel his movement commands so although you would manage to snare or damage
a target, you’d have to click away again to keep moving towards them - it just wasn’t
possible to do both things at the same time.
After the change, both will cast without cancelling an issued movement command, meaning you will
still move to where you wanted to.
Great changes, and they really helped lower the skill floor of these two champions without
affecting high level play.
Breaking into our Top 5 today is Veigar, with a change to his Event Horizon.
Patch 5.6 saw a change to Event Horizon that caused champions with dashes to stop at the
wall, rather than moving through them.
Event Horizon is made to be a zoning tool that will punish an enemy from moving to a
particular position, or possibly for trapping enemies inside if they are close enough.
Before the change though, champions with dashes (like LeBlanc) could dash through the wall
to gain distance from Veigar, to jump on top of him first.
This made Veigar ridiculously difficult to play in certain matchups because he couldn’t
properly zone control with the way the ability worked before.
Being able to stop those dashes dead in their tracks is a super cool change that really
helped bring Veigar into the spotlight and allow him to properly punish the enemy for
not positioning wisely.
One of our top quality of life changes for the ADC mains amongst you, Kalista’s Martial
Poise change from Patch 5.1 is at Number 4.
Kalista’s release caused kind of a split in the community.
Half thought making a passive that caused a champion to constantly orbwalk was kinda
broken, while the other half thought it was a really cool take on how to help ADC’s
kite properly.
Whatever side of the fence you were on, Martial Poise did have a drawback - once she decides
to use her basic attack, she’s stuck with that decision, even if she dies in the process.
This change didn’t let her cancel her basic attacks, but now she can choose a different
target to attack during the wind-up, so she wasn’t locked into auto-attacking one particular
enemy for such a long time.
The wind-up felt really punishing in situations where you accidentally clicked a tank or a
minion, and this change was really noticable in making her feel smoother in trades and
teamfights.
Target selection and kiting are really important for AD Carries, and this change meant Kalista
players had control right up until spears were thrown.
At Number 3 is Nidalee with a change to her Pounce that players had been hoping to see
in game for years.
As with Riven’s Q, Nidalee’s pounce originally used to cast in the direction Nidalee was
facing, so she had to choose a new direction before pouncing.
This wasn’t a big deal for players who were adjusted to the champion and used to it, but
for new players it meant that failing walljumps and jumping away from a kill you were chasing
happened all the time, and it really discouraged players from playing her.
Patch 4.10 caused Nidalee to jump towards the mouse cursor instead.
This meant that reactive plays were way easier to pull off, requiring just one click of the
ability rather than two clicks - one to redirect Nidalee, and the second to actually jump.
We can imagine it was pretty weird for the super experienced Nidalee players to get used
to after so much time spent changing direction first, but I think we can all agree that it
was a well deserved change that really helped take away some of the stress of playing an
already ridiculously difficult champion.
The spellslinging ADC Lucian is at Number 2 with a change to his passive from Patch
3.12.
Lucian had a seriously cool kit that impressed a lot of people on release.
His passive Lightslinger rewarded him with doubled up auto-attacks after using an ability,
turning him into an AD Caster that worked auto-attacks into his spell rotation.
This was an incredibly cool and interesting take on an AD Carry, with one severe drawback
- his passive would not trigger twice if the first target died.
This meant after using an ability to activate his Passive, he’d aim for two quick auto-attacks,
usually to CS minions.
The problem was that if the first basic attack killed a minion, he’d no longer have a target
and he’d completely waste the bonus attack from his passive.
Riot dealt with this problem really quickly, causing him to automatically queue up a second
target if the first one died.
No more missed CS!
This quality of life change to his passive meant Lucian players had one less
thing to worry about.
And finally in our number one spot, Azir with a change to his Shifting Sands gapclosing
ability.
Patch 5.24 saw some bug fixes for Azir, but his Quality of life update stood out the most.
Azir is incredibly mobile for a mage, and the synergy between his Q and E meant he could
pull off some amazing moves, usually called the ‘banana’ or ‘Shurima Shuffle.’
It’s a fan favorite playmaking combo that Azir players loved to abuse whenever they
got the chance, but it did have one big weakness.
The problem was that Azir’s gapcloser, E, would pull him towards his soldiers faster
than his Q would send them out.
The combo worked by dashing to his soldiers then directing them to a new location, causing
Azir to swoop around and follow them.
As he travelled faster than his Soldiers did though, you’d catch up with them and end
your dash part way.
The only way around it was to delay your glide quite a lot, leading to some awkward situations
where you would get caught before you could escape, or totally fail to use the Shuffle
at all.
Riot recognised the sheer awesomeness of the manoeuvre though, and made it so that Azir
will follow his soldiers to the end point of the Q, whether he catches up with them
or not.
So basically, easier Shuffles for everyone!
As one of the flat out coolest gapclosing techniques in
the game, this was the most important Quality of Life update, but it was absolutely the
best choice for our number one spot.
Thanks Riot!
That wraps up the end of our Top 10 Quality of Life changes in League of Legends.
Really hope you all enjoyed it, and we’d love to hear about your favorite changes if
you think we missed one, so leave us a comment and let us know!
That’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like, subscribe if you want,
thanks for watching and I’ll see you guys next time!