Players can expect big changes to the Mage Bot meta in Patch 26.16 after League of Legends Lead Gameplay Designer at Riot Games Matt ‘Phroxzon’ Leung-Harrison outlined planned balancing changes on Social Media.
The Riot dev reflected on recent criticism of the Mage Bot meta from both the community and pro players, promising changes to alleviate the threat to the ADC role posed by the current state of the game.
What changes are set to come in Patch 26.16?
Phroxzon’s social media post came after comments by pro players, such as Legendary three-time Worlds winner Lee ‘Gumayusi’ Min-hyeong, who expressed dissatisfaction with the loss of ADC identity in the Bot Lane.
The post reflected, “We’ve also heard a lot of the Pro Player complaints about the meta and are taking that into consideration. We don’t want to force them to suddenly completely swap subclasses by suddenly making ADC and that learnt skill expression unviable, so it’s a fine balance.”
However, the statement stopped short of promises to remove the trend entirely, stating, “That said, for those who want to learn it, we want to encourage and allow for skill expression of Pros to play a variety of things, resulting in more flexible comps, dynamic lanes, etc., and greater champ variety long term”
Following reflection on the differing challenges to pro play and regular play, Phroxzon outlined the following examples of rebalancing set to occur in Patch 26.16:
In 26.16 we will be making some targeted adjustments to these dynamics; some examples
- Straight nerfs to support roaming using already established levers (starting at upping out of lane support gold/xp penalty from 25% until level 3 >>> 33% until level 5
- Buffs to some underpowered ADC tools (Berserker’s Greaves, Fleet)
- Buffs to ADC base MR, nerfs to MR growth
- Buffs to Heal
- We’re also testing a variety of speculative things; will share more later in the week once we’re more firm on tactics
So the patch will undoubtedly see nerfs for roaming Supports, and see several various buffs to traditional ADCs to alleviate the advantage to Mages, but there will seemingly also be other measures.
As part of the post, Phroxzon outlined the general philiosophy for the changes, stating, “We’re not looking to adjust this power dynamic significantly as a result (eg. Mages have earlier spiking, smoother scaling curves. ADC have later & stronger scaling, but sharper successes and failures), but we are looking to address some of the magnitude of differences to make some of them less extreme.”
Phroxzon continued, “eg. Flattening the differences between Mages and ADC bot so they have the same smooth builds, the same amount of mana, similar levels of spikes, etc. is a quick way to make it so there’s no class differentiation, even if it would ‘solve the problem'”
So further measures may hope to flatten that Mage curve and stop vulnerable, squishy ADCs from being stomped as they attempt to progress their builds in the early-mid game.
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Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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