Riot Games has released another Dev Update for League of Legends to kick off Season 2 Act 1: Pandemonium.
With no big mid-season update for LoL this year, Season 2 2026 will be shorter than usual, lasting for six patches rather than the usual eight, to make room for a bigger Season 3 later this year.
Yet, Riot has announced a ton of new changes coming to LoL in the upcoming months.
For example, games will now auto-detect trolling behaviour and if so, will allow teams an earlier surrender vote, much like how AFK detection works. The inting player will not get to participate in the vote and will be punished, while their teammates keep their LP and the opponents receive full LP for a win.
This comes along with WASD in ranked, Discord integration, a massive overhaul for Arena and more revealed for Season 2.
WASD Will Soon Be Enabled In Ranked for League of Legends
Starting with Patch 26.9, Riot will controversially allow players to use WASD controls in their ranked LoL matches.
The control scheme was first released in unranked queues to test for bugs and balance and Riot now believes it’s in a healthy enough state for ranked.
Riot claims that WASD controllers still have a slightly worse win rate than traditional point and click players but believes the difference between the two will decrease as players master WASD controls.
And in a huge change that benefits both types of players, Riot is allowing players to create different keybinds for each champion.
This means that players can toggle on and off Smart Cast on certain champions, which is particularly huge for Rumble and Vikor mains.
And it’ll also mean that players can use WASD controls on only champions they think it benefits, such as ADCs as WASD makes kiting much easier.
New Skins
Due to the shorter season, the battle pass will be quicker to complete this time around and the non-prestige skins will be purchasable directly in the store.
New prestige skins are coming for Shaco and LeBlanc this season and for Veigar next season. As well as the ‘Pandemonium’ skins revealed in the gameplay trailer, new skins in Rain Shepherd Ivern and PROJECT: Quinn are coming soon.
There will also be new Day Jobs skins with a cooking theme in Breadsticks Irelia and Sphaghetti alla Vel’Koz.
Gameplay Changes
Riot has updated Role Quests with more forgiving rules to allow roam-heavy champions to still complete their bonuses as long as they still visit their lane occasionally.
Additionally, top laners will now receive more Role Quest experience for teamfighting and, instead of an empowered recall, midlaners will now be rewarded with 6% bonus AP and AD for completing their Quest.
These changes are to ensure that the solo lane Quests benefit a wider variety of champions rather than just split pushers in the top lane and non-roaming mids.
Riot has also promised item adjustments and new Keystones to help create more diverse build options for a lot of champions, providing examples such as AP Ezreal and Attack Speed Xin Zhao as the sort of alternatives build paths the publisher wants to support.
This is leading to the return of the runes Deathfire Touch and Stormraider’s Stormsurge to the Sorcery tree, with the latter replacing Phase Rush.
Season 2 will also see item adjustments, particularly for Dusk and Dawn, as well as two new starting items, new Omnivamp Boots, and the removal of both Trailblazer and Opportunity.
New Champion Locke
The next new LoL champion was talked about by Riot for the first time too. While they didn’t want to name the character, we already know Locke is League’s next champion due to an April Fools’ joke.
Riot confirmed that Locke will be an AP Assassin intended for the mid lane and will release in Act 2 of Season 2.
League of Legends Arena Updates
Riot is adding big updates to Arena mode.
Arena will now feature events which mix things up, with three events planned for Season 2, starting with LoL Patch 26.10.
The first Arena event will last for three patches and will change the mode to six teams of three, increasing the size of teams while decreasing the number of teams.
The second event will opt every player into Bravery, the feature that has players play a random champion rather than one they selected in order to get additional bonuses. But instead of full Bravery, players will have a small pool to choose from.
The third and final Arena event of Season 2 will be Swift Arena, making matches faster with just four teams.
Additionally, Arena is receiving a new map called Petricite Grove. Based on the outskirts of Demacia, just like the new Pandemonium theme for the season, the map has lots of walls in tribute to Season 2 star Vayne, as well as bombs scattered around the map which players can send rolling before detonating.
Another new Arena Feature is Augment Levels, allowing players to level up their favourite Augments. After levelling up two Augments, players can use future Augment choices to upgrade these Augments rather than adding new ones.
Riot has also promised that while a player can only have four Augments at a time, Augments will be offered more frequently.
And Riot is also adding 20 reworked Guests of Honor to the mode, including Nocturne who will create dark zones in maps and Shaco who will make Augments roll random tiers.
There will also be 30 new Augments added to the mode, some from Mayhem and some totally new.
Discord Integration Added to League of Legends
Finally, Riot has announced that Discord will be integrated into the League client, starting with a beta in USA, Canada, and Brazil.
Players will be able to link Discord and Riot accounts in order to invite Discord friends to in-game parties without having to leave the client.
Players will be able to copy and paste party codes in order to mass invite friends rather than one at a time.
This is likely in preparation for the planned addition of voice chat in League of Legends.
What do you make of these changes Riot has made? Let us know in the Insider Gaming Discord.
And there’s more to come as alleged footage of Locke gameplay leaked recently.
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