Greater stat customisation & more to come in preseason

Riot MapleNectar, a “Gameplay producer” for League of Legends, has recently released a forum post detailing the upcoming changes which will hit the preseason. One of these big changes will allow players to better customise their stats, irrespective of their choice of runes. The new change will unlink stats bonuses from runes completely, and instead, it will open up three new slots which will allow players to choose both offensive and defensive stats. Players will be required to choose at least one offensive and one defensive stat, with the third being a free choice of either.

Offensive stats

Attack Damage

Ability Power

Attack Speed

Scaling Cooldown Reduction

Defensive stats

Armor

Magic Resistance

Scaling Health

While MapleNectar’s post did mention a few of these offensive and defensive stat options, these have yet to be finalised. It seems that stats like Health Regeneration, Flat Cooldown Reduction and Scaling Resistances will not be a part of the new slot options, due to a variety of reasons. These include Riot not wanting to reduce kill pressure in the laning phase, being unable to balance flat cdr and the lack of impact of scaling resistances.

Tankier towers early

Tower will have a defensive “barricade” in the early game. This barricade can be broken into multiple pieces, giving a gold reward, however, this will overall make towers harder to kill and extend the laning phase. Riot mentions the change prevents players from losing their tower very early in the game due to little mistakes and positioning, which in the past, had allowed junglers to pull off ganks to rapidly snowball their lasers with first blood tower gold.

Bounties taking into account creep score

In an effort to make player shutdowns more rewarding by allocating bounties that better reflect an opponents gold difference, a player’s cs will now contribute to their bounty shutdown. MapleNectar mentions that Riot is exploring a bounty system which favours 70% kills and 30% cs. This change will lessen the blow on those who aim to carry their team, opting for kills and roaming over cs, as they strive to push their other teammates ahead. While the ratio regarding the bounty on kills and cs will likely change, this is a positive sign that Riot is working to make the games more enjoyable for all.