/dev: 2024 Split 3 Gameplay Changes

The third Ranked split of 2024 is nearly upon us. But before you hop into your first Ranked game of the split, here’s a rundown of some of the changes coming alongside Split 3!

Champion Emphasis, Combat Pacing, and Snowballing

Let’s start with the biggest change you’ll notice going into this split: the global item nerfs. Simply put, we’re removing 5-15% stat efficiency from almost every Legendary item in the game. Those changes get us several important benefits: slowing down combat pacing, reducing snowballing, and making champions themselves take up a larger portion of the power budget.

Most players queue up for a game of League because they want to play a champion. We don’t see anyone load into game and get excited to play Infinity Edge—they want to play Jinx or Yasuo. With this in mind you can think of this change as a Durability Update 2.0 in the sense that we want more time for players to play out their champion’s gameplay fantasy and to put more emphasis on champions than items. Now let’s dive a bit deeper into how we got here.

Players have significantly improved at League over the past 15 years and, generally speaking, really like it when they’re able to use those skills to beat their opponents. We’re pretty big fans of skill mattering, too! That said, we should explain why nerfing almost every item in the game is related to that.

League had found itself in a state where the amount of power champions earned from items rapidly outpaced other sources like experience or team-wide objectives like Dragon. While we hadn’t directly increased the amount of gold in the game that much over the years (in fact, we’ve taken it away from things like Dragons), you all got a lot better at things like last hitting minions and also staying alive in order to last hit those minions. 

If you want to feel really skilled, look at old Worlds matches and compare your farm to the world’s best from 13 years ago. In the final game of the 2012 World Finals, the ADCs had 133 and 165 minion kills at 20 minutes. They were both on one completed Legendary and weren’t remotely close to their second. Nowadays that’s below average for Platinum players, let alone the world’s best.

But why is this a problem? Well, accelerating gold incomes makes combat faster because, for most champions, items provide a lot more damage than they provide durability. One of the most interesting results from the Durability Update was that players reported significant improvements in matchmaking quality. Which was extremely impressive because we didn’t even touch matchmaking! We just slowed down combat enough that actions were more readable and your full set of skills mattered more than your reflexes. So in the interest of making combat more readable, lowering the amount of snowballing in the game, and overall making the game more fun to play (we hope), we’ve taken 5-15% of stat efficiency off of almost every Legendary item in the game.

The recurring goal for these changes was to slow down the pace of fights. Champions should move more slowly to reward proper positioning, have more downtime between actions so each one matters more, and only have access to significant burst damage if their champion is built around bursting their opponents.

Let’s broadly break down the changes by class:

For AP champions, we made burst mage itemization have less ability haste while keeping high AP and magic penetration. Meanwhile, other mages will still have ability haste options whether they’re mana or non-mana users across squishy or beefier archetypes. We also generally lowered the amount of magic resist on non-tank items to make squishy champions have a harder time surviving AP burst thresholds.

For fighters, we pushed for larger differences among skirmisher, diver, and juggernaut items. We targeted around 20% power budget into defense for skirmisher items and closer to 50% for juggernauts, with most items falling in between those marks. To hit those goals, we raised the health on several diver and juggernaut items to make sure they stood out as clearly beefier than other classes in the game.

Skirmishers and casters also got Serylda’s Grudge back while Black Cleaver was shifted to be more appealing to divers. We also changed tank items to have more resistances, which should make them more appealing for fighters who find themselves needing to front-line. Lastly, we nerfed sources of movement speed on most other classes, meaning fighters are more likely to have the mobility edge in combat.

There’s not as much to say about ADCs, since they mostly have damage and more damage, but we’ve generally lowered the amount of level scaling in their items since they already multiply each other with gold better than other item systems. They are one of the only ranged classes with consistent access to movement speed, but that’s been lowered as well.

Tank items are the least-changed class of items and have been pushed more toward their resistances. The first effect this will have is to let tanks feel like they can hold up to their lane opponents for longer as their items will perform their roles much better. The second effect is that this will make them more appealing to many melee classes who get health in several of their core items.

AD assassins are receiving item changes pretty similar to those of AP burst mages: AD and lethality values haven’t changed much, but ability haste and item active scaling was nerfed to make assassins rely more on their individual spell casts and finding that first correct target.

Enchanters generally got their items simplified, stripping out mechanics that added power but weren’t the primary draw of the item. They’ve lost the ability to give allies bonus move speed outside of Shurelya’s and generally lost AP, making them a bit worse offensively while having relatively less impact on their supportive aspects.

Overall, these changes are intended to reduce the amount of movement speed and ability haste in the game, reduce burst access for non-burst classes, lower overall damage, and increase the amount of durability items give relative to their other stats. 

With less efficient items a champion’s individual strengths should really shine in a way that they haven’t in a while. The game should also be less snowbally, as gold tends to snowball much more than experience does. Our hope is that going forward, combat is more skill expressive and that fights are more readable with slightly slower champions, fewer spell casts, and more willingness to be a tank, or at least become tankier.

The Return of Lethal Tempo 

Next up we have a much requested change: the return of Lethal Tempo! Originally, Lethal Tempo proved to be quite problematic because of how it let players skip itemizing attack speed. And while this change was net positive for the item system, we heard a lot of player feedback that champions who favored Lethal Tempo felt like they didn’t have a great alternative rune to take.

Now that we've had time to adjust itemization without the shadow of Lethal Tempo looming over all attack speed items, we’re re-adding a modified version that maintains the spirit of the rune. It should still support heavy Attack Speed users, but without also pushing out Attack Speed itemization. 

It still gives stacking Attack Speed when attacking enemy champions, but now that Attack Speed no longer scales up with your level. Instead, once you reach max stacks, your attacks will deal bonus damage on-hit, which scales with both your level and your bonus Attack Speed. We expect many of the previous users to also appreciate this version of Lethal Tempo, but be less bound to it in a way that warped their play and itemization.

Biscuit Delivery

We've thought a lot about mana availability in the rune system. You can get a ton of mana from runes now, which in turn makes mana items matter less. And while we’re okay with items being weaker, we don’t want them to be wholly unnecessary. 

In order to cut down on how much “free” mana champions can get we’re removing both the max mana as well as the mana restoration from Biscuits and shifting to a version with max HP and even more missing health restored. 

Other mana runes in the system require champions to interact with the opponent to have value and restore mana, but biscuits was the exception to this. This non-interactive lane pattern enabled by biscuits isn’t something we’re too happy with, so these changes should help address these problems.

Quality of Life Improvements

It’s no secret that there’s a LOT to learn in League. And while some of us have years of experience that taught us to pop potions as the opponents ignite is slowly ticking down in a desperate attempt to survive by 5 health, not everyone that plays League is a veteran. With that in mind, we looked at a lot of player feedback and set out to solve a few pain points for players learning the game. If you’re a veteran these might not be something you need, but you may actually find some helpful (I’ve been playing since season 2 and still leave base without buying sometimes)!

Item Queuing

Learning item builds can be difficult for newer players. Sure, now that some of us are item connoisseurs we can browse the shop and even use secret phrases to find items, but when you’re learning the game the item shop is daunting. Starter items, basic items, epic items, legendary items, not knowing what components build into what - it’s a LOT. Not to mention newer players buying components for different full items simply because they didn’t know better. 

Sure there’s a lot of skill that goes into itemizing correctly, but we don’t want players to fall behind simply because they’re splitting their gold down different item paths. Enter item queuing!

With this we have a new addition to your HUD which is your Item Build Queue - when you’re in the item shop now you will have the ability to queue an item build, this saves the item for you and displays it in your HUD. This new HUD element will display the item currently in your Build Queue, your gold progression toward your queued item, and also the hotkey to open the shop. Gone are the days you have to remind your friend to press P to open their shop.

As you play and gain gold you'll see a progress bar to indicate your gold vs the total cost of the item. When you return to the fountain to purchase, you'll see that the button for queuing the item now becomes a “Purchase Components”. This is a “One Click” purchase that will automatically purchase all the components you can currently afford with the gold amount you have (prioritizing the most expensive component you can currently afford). Once that's made you will see an update in the HUD to reflect the purchase made by the color change on your progress. When you have enough gold to complete the build you will see a new state that lets you know “Hey you have enough now to finish this build!”

At any point you can swap your choice of build by selecting “Replace Item” in the shop. This will then update your current progress to reflect the new item you’re looking to build.

In addition to this we have added a few other quality of life updates which include updated sound effects to let you know when your purchasing components vs the entire item. We have also given our shop keepers some love - did you know clicking on them opens the shop? Well now you do!

Don’t Forget Your Items!

Have you ever ran out of fountain at the start of a game, only to get spam pinged cause you forgot to purchase items? Only to realize that you’re stuck in a bad spot cause going back will ruin your timing. We have, and realize that we should do something about that. Now if you exit the fountain at the start of the game without purchasing you will get an alert notification and your gold counter will blink yellow to let you know you forgot to purchase. You can then quickly turn around and get your items before rushing back out to lane. Saving you precious time and embarrassment.

Objective Announcements

We have made improvements to our epic objective announcements, now when an epic objective such as Dragon or Baron spawn you will see a banner announcement letting you know the objective is live. The goal here is to increase visibility on when epic objectives are live and reduce burden on timers, and pings, in chat.

Potion Commotion and Biscuit Blasts

Have you ever just finished recalling on half health only to look at your item bar and realize you have 150 gold worth of potions you forgot to use? Well, now when you are low on health and out of combat you will get a reminder to “Drink me!”. This reminder will let you know that it is a good time to consume one of these items.

Not In My Jungle

We all know early game players have a lot of things they are focusing on and setting up, like that cannon minion crashing into your tower. This means that sometimes our attention is divided and we can miss crucial moments such as that early jungle invasion. To help our Jungler friends we have a new system generated ping that triggers when combat in your jungle occurs. This has an audio and mini map VFX to let you know that your Jungler is currently being invaded. So you can quickly pivot your plans and see if you can turn that invade into an early advantage. 

My Bad!

Have you ever made a mistake in League? No? Well for those of us that have (like me) we’re adding a new interactive emote so you can let your teammates know the deep feeling of regret you’re experiencing as the enemy laner walks away with 10 health because you didn’t think you needed to ignite them. Don’t let it beat you up, ignite was going to be key to getting the second kill on them after they teleported back to lane. But your teammate didn’t know that. So simply press the “i” key and the “my bad” interactive emote will pop up to express your sincere apologies. Then your teammate can respond by using the same interactive emote and just like that all of your transgressions have been forgiven and the two of you can go on to win the game and become the best of friends. 

That just about covers all the bigger changes coming in split 3 this year. This wasn’t everything, so if you’re interested in all of the nitty gritty details and changes make sure to check out the patch notes when patch 14.19 drops! As always, thanks for ready and see you on the Rift!