League Of Legends To Adjust Laneswapping Tactic

Riot Games is looking to help balance League of Legends ahead of the Worlds event. One of the key areas they’re aiming to fix is the Laneswapping technique that many try to employ in their strategies.

Here is the full breakdown of their idea:

“Laneswapping, while difficult to do successfully, is starting to feel pretty formulaic with few strategic tradeoffs. As it’s become more prevalent and teams do it more efficiently, it’s led to passive turret trading and less direct early conflict. When laneswapping becomes a default opener, it creates a non-interactive early game with. We’ll be making some changes in the upcoming patch to address this.

At a high level: we’re adding factors that heighten the risk of laneswaps. Our goal is not to eliminate laneswapping but to make it a strategic choice with actual tradeoffs.

For reference, here are the changes:

First, incentivize attacking and defending turrets. The first turret taken now grants a ‘First Blood’ reward, but turrets are now better at defending their allied champions.

New: “Turret First Blood” gold: +275 local, +25 global (400 total gold across the team)
New: Turret AI has been updated, and are better at defending allied champions (coming in 6.16)
Second, target a lane that’s ideal for fast push strategies. Bot lane’s outer turret defenses are no longer identical to the other lanes, and cannon minion spawns now rotate between lanes.

Fortification (temporary damage reduction buff on turrets) changed

Duration: 7 minutes -> 5 minutes
Damage reduction: 35% -> 50%
Fortification removed from bot lane turrets (we’re investigating a more nuanced approach to this)
Outer turret HP: 3300 -> 3500
Cannon minions now spawn differently

Each team gets one cannon minion per wave, rotating lanes.
Specifically, Bot gets a cannon minion in lane at wave 3, Mid at wave 4, and Top at wave 5. This then repeats.
Post-20 minutes, Mid has a cannon in wave 40 then both Bot and Top get one in wave 41. This then repeats.
Post-35 minutes, all lanes have cannons in each wave.”