These augments are crazy!
LoL: These Insane Augments Were Originally Planned For Arena
League of Legends' new Arena mode has been a huge success! The never-before seen formula that shies away from the classic two-team mode sees many players enjoy themselves. One big gameplay twist is the introduction of augments, and Riot have now spoken about scrapped augments for the first time!
Let us be real: you have most likely tried the new Arena mode for yourself, too. Many of your friends probably can not get enough of League's newest game mode, and they keep inviting you to their games. Nobody could blame them for enjoying it!
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The development team has now turned to Reddit to answer community questions in an Ask Me Anything. Once the players were done showering the devs with positive feedback, they started asking all kinds of questions about Arena. One of those questions inquired about more ideas for augments.
These Insane Augments Did Not See The Light Of Day
Augments first appeared in Teamfight Tactics, which – to be fair – is quite different from traditional League of Legends. That does not mean they do not work in League too, as Arena proves they very much do. The concept is similar, and you even get to purchase them in shopping rounds. Just like in TFT, they also grant you powerful buffs.
Some of these augments make you fire Sivir's Q – Boomerang Blade or Ezreal's R – Trueshot Barrage at your enemies on repeat. Others will increase your combat stats – or your teammate's stats – or replace your summoner spells.
Other augments, however, were not fortunate enough to see the heat of battle, and Reddit user 'IceCubesBurning' has now asked Game Designer 'MadnessHeroo' about those.
Augment 1: Shiitake Happens (Prismatic)
With this augment, a shroom spawns somewhere in the arena. While every player can make it explode by stepping on it, only you can see it. Teemo is basically part of any round now, and he still gets to use his own shrooms! How infuriating would that be to play against?
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Developer MadnessHeroo has called this one of the most interesting concepts, but explained that it led to weird situations in-game. While the team with the shroom augment would position around the shroom, the other team would often realize what is going on and they would get into a western-like duel without either team pulling the trigger.
Ultimately, the augment was deemed too difficult to balance properly and therefore scrapped. However, it is not off the table entirely, as it may be introduced in a later iteration of Arena.
Augment 2: Flicker (Gold)
This augment teleports you to a random place at the start of each round and grants you Camouflage for 3.5 seconds. After that, it will teleport you to a random place every 13 seconds and grants you invisibility for 1 second. Just like playing against Shaco!
Maybe not entirely like playing against Shaco, but you get the point.
This one was controversial according to MadnessHeroo. Some play testers said it was great, some others said it was extremely annoying, regardless of whether they played with or against it. Burst-heavy champions would also get another trick up their sleeves, as they would have no trouble recreating this meme:
Augment 3: Pass-a-Fist (Prismatic)
With this augment, you can not use your basic attacks. Instead, you will buff your teammate, as they will gain 50% of your Attack Damage and your Attack Speed. Their attacks will also trigger your on-hit effects. The depths of this gameplay twist showed as MadnessHeroo was mentioning Janna with Blade of the Ruined King and Nashor's Tooth as an example!
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In the end, the augment was scrapped for three specific reasons:
- Some champion combos utilized it much better than others, making it incredibly hard to balance
- Having on-hit items on a champion out of vision made it difficult to understand what is going on
- The basic attack restrictions locked out too many spells
With the high number of champion combinations, this surely would have been fun to use! However, it can also be incredibly frustrating, so we get why it has been scrapped.
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These augments are unavailable at the moment, but be patient – maybe they will see the heat of battle in a future iteration of Arena!