/dev: How the Season 1 Changes Landed

Hey everyone, welcome to our first gameplay review of 2025. Now that most of the dust has settled on the new Season 1 changes, we wanted to talk about how we think they landed, what we’ve already addressed, and what we’re thinking about for the future. 

Quick disclaimer, large sweeping system changes like Atakhan and Feats of Strength typically take time to settle before we can get an accurate read on them. Even using data, it’s pretty normal to see that data changes over the course of the first days and weeks of hitting Live as players begin to learn what works for them, what doesn’t, and change up their approaches to account for the seasonal changes. This evolution in player strategies and the meta is one of the things that makes League such a compelling experience to keep coming back to. We want to continue being able to take risks in evolving gameplay, so we’ll keep listening and working with you to keep the good and iterate on the less-good. All that said, let’s break down Season 1! 

(Editor’s Note: This blog was written on January 30th, so the data you see below may differ from what you currently see on Live.)

Feats of Strength & Snowballing

Feats of Strength were introduced with the goal of providing more structure to the early game and reducing early game snowballing slightly by deferring the immediate power of first blood & first turret to later on, all in a way that feels like you’re in Noxus where they embody strength above all else and fighting to prove your worth. 

We saw a lot of strong opinions from many of you come through on this feature right off the bat. Some of the initial reactions we saw were that First Blood felt too random, created too much pressure on individual players, and that both sides should be able to have access to the boots. 

We agree with the feedback on First Blood, which is why we changed this Feat to the Feat of Warfare in 25.S1.2, so now the first team to claim 3 total champion kills wins this objective. 

As for both teams getting access to boots, we haven’t eliminated the possibility of making this change, but we’re currently thinking about them like a Voidgrub or Dragon Soul reward in that we think it’s good that there are some rewards in the game that are exclusive to a team based on their accomplishments. This increases their value, makes them feel more special, and rewards teams for gaining early advantages.

While we’re talking about pushing games towards their end, the initial sentiment we saw from players was that these boot rewards were overpowered to the extent that you might want to surrender if the opponents get them. This perception is understandable since Feats are a way of visually tracking some completed objectives that were always already important to winning a game of League, and now have an item that explicitly contains some of the power of early game objectives. 

We won’t pretend they were perfect on launch with some like Spellslinger’s Shoes in particular being overtuned, but we were confident before we shipped this feature that we had the levers to make sure we could increase or decrease their power as needed. Examples here are adjusting the stats on the boots themselves or the gold cost you need to invest to upgrade them (any gold you spend on these is gold you aren’t spending towards your next Legendary Item). Thanks to this, we were able to quickly re-balance the boots after looking at the early data and player feedback. We now think they’re around balanced or maybe even slightly weak. 

Overall, when we’re looking at overall win rate based on first blood, first turret, and epic objectives, as well as game length, we’re currently seeing that these metrics haven’t substantially changed from 14.24, so game pacing and overall snowballing are in roughly the same place as before Season 1.

Percent Win Rate after Claiming Each Objective

We also made some other changes to intentionally reduce snowballing like early homeguards, increasing XP range, and removing the gold from First Blood & First Turret, and introduced it in other places like a realistically killable-at-20-minutes objective in Atakhan, so keep in mind that Feats are only one of many overall changes introduced in Season 1. Generally speaking though, we’re pretty happy with the state of Feats right now and will be keeping an eye out to see how the meta around them evolves next.

Atakhan & Blood Roses

Our big demonic friend was a bit more ambitious in scope than Feats. Multiple forms, multiple locations, multiple rewards. With Atakhan we wanted to change the macro flowchart of League since, unless you were playing at the top tiers of professional play. The 18-22 minute mark was relatively stale. This led us to add a more dynamic epic monster that’s also realistic to take at 20 minutes (since a 20 minute Baron that’s actually consistently takeable would blow games wide open). 

Ruinous Atakhan, who spawns when games are action-packed, was designed to have a pretty straightforward reward in permanent power through Blood Roses. Voracious Atakhan, who spawns in games with less action, was designed to have a reward that drives more action in games that don’t have enough. While Voracious Atakhan will more frequently appear in pro games than standard (everyone’s dropping like flies in my solo queue games), we intended for him to show up a decent amount in both levels of play.

We were aiming for around 50-70% of Atakhan spawns to be Ruinous Atakhan and close to an equal distribution of spawning in the top vs. bottom locations in regular play. While we were pretty close on top vs. bot (44% vs. 56% respectively), Ruinous vs. Voracious was actually more like 85% to 15%, overshooting our original goal. In pro play, while we were expecting to see much more Voracious Atakhan than Ruinous, it’s been almost exclusively Voracious. Since his release we’ve adjusted the spawn rates in 2025.S1.2 to get Atakhan’s form distribution more in line with our original goals.

The balance of the value of rewards for taking down Ruinous or Voracious have been pretty comparable, meaning one isn’t definitively more powerful than the other, although both have been a bit too strong. We’ve nerfed Ruinous through reducing the rewards of Blood Roses overall, which a lot of his reward budget is tied into. As for Voracious, we’ve increased the gold reward the opponents get for triggering the Withdraw effect and the time before those players get back into the action so that it isn’t too much of a get-out-of-jail free card. 

We think that Voracious is doing a good job of promoting action, particularly in pro, and rewarding the team that claims him with the ability to take a riskier-than-usual play. We’ll continue keeping an eye on this effect in particular to make sure we’re hitting the right balance of empowerment for the claiming team vs. hopelessness for the other. This was one of the riskier components of the Season, and similar to Feats we think we have a lot of levers to use here to continue to tune the experience like reward for triggering (gold, petal stacks) and power (duration, time-to-revive). 

Map Art Changes

The Current Noxian Rift

The Noxus season was our first big swing at an SR map skin in quite a while. We’re excited to continue producing these for future seasons using some of the lessons and tech from this time around. We haven’t observed major issues with visual clarity so far, but have seen feedback around the map feeling too dark, gloomy, or eye-straining. We’re planning some adjustments that will probably land around Act 2 to pull back a bit, and as of now will continue to try to push the uniqueness and immersion of each seasonal theme on the Rift. Here’s a sneak peak of the changes we’re working on, just keep in mind this is currently in development and may change before you see it.

Updated Map Art Coming in Act 2

At the time of writing these changes have only been live for roughly a month, but we're excited about the prospect for new gameplay that the Season 1 changes have created as players continue to learn and adapt to them.

Having said that, when trying to add new Gameplay to League, especially one of this size, we're not always going to land it right away. We're trying to strike the balance between making quick changes based on your feedback and giving the changes enough time to breathe while we iterate them to a spot everyone is happy with.

As always, thanks for playing and see you on the Rift!