Riot to Slow the Pace of Combat by Reducing Damage

Changes come and go with the various patches, but one thing is for sure. Riot's way of balancing the game is by making everyone overpowered, so no one really is. Unfortunately, this "The Incredibles" idiom does not work in practice as well as it does in theory.

Luckily for us that remember the golden days of League of Legends, where fights would last longer than a few seconds and were not the equivalent of an anime swordfight that ends in one move, it would seem that Riot are working on a way to slow the pace of the game.

Will Riot Lower Damage in League of Legends?

Recently RiotAxes has commented on Reddit that players can expect another address from the developers, in which they will discuss the ways they intend to implement to try and slow down the pace of the game.

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As this Rioter points out: "We believe League of Legends is best when it is, on average, fast-paced and exciting. but yeah, I think it would be fair to say it has overcorrected towards damage, which is hitting away at the clarity".

He goes on to explain that the goal is for players to be able to know what they died from, all the while learning what they could have done differently, while at the same time affording assassins and burst mages the option of one-shotting enemies if they execute their combo perfectly.

Interestingly, only recently Riot have had a dev talk regarding this very subject, in which they stated that outright lowering the damage in the game does not, in fact, defeat the power-creep. The quoted reason for this being that, should the damage be reverted, all the game would have would be overpowered tanks, useless mages, powerful healers, and burst assassins.

So, how they intend to accomplish the exact thing they stated is impossible to do, is beyond us. However, we would like to point out that tanks are already overpowered, mages have never felt weaker, and healers are, well, there is nothing that needs to be said other than "Soraka".

How Will Riot Slow the Pace of the Game?

In the recent dev address, Riot have assured us that the farming meta with no kills for the first 15 minutes of the game will not appear. Instead, we can expect them to implement the following changes, to reduce the pace of the game:

• Players will feel that their champions are dealing and taking less damage
• Burst champions must commit more resources or be further ahead to get quick kills
• Bigger windows of opportunity for counterplay
• Skirmishes and teamfights will last longer

They intend to do this by giving champions more durability, by giving their base scaling a significant buff, in the form of more armor, magic resists and health per level. This will mean that burst mages and assassins will need to be further ahead, or commit more resources, to be able to kill their enemies.

When Will Riot Slow the Pace of the Game?

AS it stands now, the mentioned changes are poised to arrive with patch 12.10. However, we cannot put it past Riot to delay it due to unforeseen circumstances, or, should it arrive to live servers, have the changes reverted if the player feedback is particularly negative.