Hail, Champions! As you may have noticed, there hasn't been much immediate news in the world of Runeterra lately - however there is a lot of stuff on the docket for the upcoming weeks including the next expansion, a new event, and a return to the massive balance patches of old. Here's a quick rundown of everything that's been announced; we'll run through them in more detail below.
Patch 2.10.0 on Wednesday, June 16th
- New Pool Party-themed champion skins
- End of the Dark Horizon event
Patch 2.11.0 on Wednesday, June 30th
- Release of the next expansion, Rise of the Underworlds
- Numerous card balance changes
- End of the Guardians of the Ancient season and start of the next season
Patch 2.12.0 on Wednesday, July 14th
- New Ruination-themed event
Patch 2.13.0 on Wednesday, July 28th
- New Lab
- Another champion expansion?
Pool Party Skins
Riot has already teased the next set of champion skins, and they will be set in the popular "pool party" theme for LoL. This iconic skin set is known for incorporating summer such as surfing, grilling, lifeguarding, and of course swimsuits. Riot has said that the process for creating a LoR skin differs greatly from creating a LoL, so we shouldn't assume the champions for these upcoming skins will necessarily match their LoL counterparts.
Rise of the Underworlds Expansion
While we now have an official start date for our next expansion, Riot still hasn't announced many details beyond that. This should be another "mini-expansion", the final for Set 4, that includes new champions for Shurima, Bilgewater, and P&Z. The reveal season for this expansion should come soon, though, so stay tuned for more news!
Patch 2.11.0 Will Include Numerous Balance Changes
If you were feeling underwhelmed by the balance changes in last week's Patch 2.9.0, you aren't alone -- practically everyone from popular content creators to anonymous redditors seemed disappointed at both the low quantity of card changes and their almost negligible impact on the meta. Riot responded to these outrages on reddit and committed to including "numerous balance changes" in the upcoming 2.11.0 patch along side the next expansion release.
Quote From Dovagedys Hi everyone! Dovagedys here with some news on card updates in Legends of Runeterra.
Tl;dr - More Updates Are Coming in Patch 2.11.0
We know there has been a lot of conversation recently on the topic of live design updates, and folks are… less than satisfied with the changes patch 2.9.0. First off, in patch 2.11.0, alongside the release of our next expansion - Rise of the Underworlds, we will be releasing a large batch of card updates, including updates to both older champions and non-champion cards.
Second, we’re going to be spending time re-evaluating our current live design philosophy and plans for the future. We don’t have any specific details at this time on exact balance cadence, but we know this issue is important and we will communicate our new plan once it’s finalized.
Before we get into it, I think it’s very important to call out that we thrive on the feedback we get from all of you. Our plans and actions change constantly due to the feedback we see from the community. Sometimes it takes time for those changes to be realized in balance patches. We have one of the most amazing communities I’ve ever seen in gaming and I think we should all work hard to protect the special community we have built together.
We want you all to know that the reduced number of live design changes over the last few months has been primarily due to our team being focused on making awesome things for the future. For example, the next champion expansion, scheduled for July on our roadmap, will launch very soon after the Rise of the Underworlds expansion, and many of the same designers who work on game health have been working on that champion expansion. There are also new things coming that I won’t go into detail on just yet, and you can expect another roadmap with more detail coming in late July. We slipped into a pattern of being focused on the future and deprioritizing the present. We made a mistake and we hear you.
We know that players want to see more balance changes as we move forward, so we’re taking that feedback to heart. Our team is re-evaluating live design cadence and the scope of the changes that we’re willing to make, in order to make that possible.
On Blade Dance - Power, Fun, and Frustration
Regarding Blade Dance specifically, we’ve seen strong feedback on how frustrating it is to play around the mechanic, and felt dissonance with the team when patch 2.9.0 released without significant nerfs to the archetype. To clarify our stance, we know that there’s a healthy tension between a decks’ ability to win, deck popularity, how fun a deck is to play, and how frustrating it is to play against. We want Blade Dance to sit in the middle of all those factors, where it has the ability to win (as any well-refined deck should), but where it's not winning by an unhealthy amount. It's fun to play, but also not too frustrating to play against. It can have a sharp feeling when playing against it, especially when it has a particularly strong curve. Right now, Blade Dance is extremely popular, and decks being popular is a good thing, but when a small number of decks are overly-popular, it can accelerate the feeling of a “stale” meta for a number of players. It’s also too powerful. We want to maintain its popularity while hitting some of the most problematic aspects of the deck, so we’re keeping a close eye on it for our 2.11.0 changes.
Understanding what elements make a deck popular is extremely important, because it helps us create future content that’s fun to play, while learning to avoid negative play patterns. The really great thing about LoR’s format though, is that we’re not just restricted to new sets & expansions; we can always go back and apply these same learnings to existing archetypes, and that’s what we’re doing now.
Organic Metagame Development vs. Keeping Things Fresh
Keep in mind, we still value allowing metagames to evolve and change over time without direct live design updates. We think that’s something special about our genre and rewards exploration and innovation, and there will be times when the metagame is diverse, even when we might have a few patches without card updates. The answer may not always be live design - it could be a new expansion, or just time to discover new, impactful decks, but live card updates can be a powerful tool to help when necessary to keep the game feeling fresh and exciting.
Thank you to everyone that has given us feedback in a positive and healthy way. We hear you loud and clear, and we’re making changes. Thanks for helping to keep our amazing community special and healthy.
<3
- Dovagedys
Ruination-Themed Event
We finally have an official date for the ruination-themed event that Riot has been teasing for 6 months! Like many of the other topics on the roadmap, specific details are sparse, so be sure to read up on our original article on this topic that covers everything we know so far.
Another Champion Expansion?
Finally, we have the one topic which isn't included in the in-client calendar but was in that original Season 2021 Roadmap back in January. July was designated as "Champion Expansion". It is not yet know if the reason for excluding it from the former is because the date has moved or if Riot is just playing coy. If it does come out in July, we're guessing this means it comes out in Patch 2.13 since it would be a little weird to release new additional cards immediately after the Rise of the Underworlds release. That said: if this champion release overlaps with the aforementioned Ruination event, there is a good chance the champion is thematically tied to the event -- e.g., we could be getting Viego, Gwen, or a champion-version of Senna. If that is the case, we might see the champion expansion come out at the same time in Patch 2.12.
What upcoming Runeterra event are you most excited for? Share with us below!
Comments
Hey, Aphelios, I almost completely forgot about that guy!
He got nerfed too hard. Even in labs, he's a shadow of his former self.
And still no Caitlyn :'(
Caitlyn is one the most popular champions in league, So I wouldn't worry too much about her.
Combining Piltover and Zaun made no good to her chances of getting added.
They have said consistently that all champions will eventually make it into LoR. So, she will be added someday.
Certainly, what I was trying to say was that due to the amount of champions in P&Z it's less likely that we'll get her soon compared to e.g. Pantheon in Targon. But you'll never know, she might be next (after Ekko who is pretty much certain to be the P&Z champion added in the upcoming expansion).