League of Legends Pro Games To Become A Lot Bloodier

While Riot is always quick to point out that their dev posts are always subject to change and cannot be assumed to be 100% going to happen, their latest regarding the lack of action in professional LoL games has some pretty exciting news for fans of fast and bloody games.

Firstly, they are increasing the power of neutral objectives, such as Baron and Elder Dragon. At the moment, the Baron only really gets stronger to a degree, but Riot are looking to increase the amount that it will scale, allowing teams that secure it later in the game to become more powerful. Additionally, while the initial Elder Dragon buff won’t be changing much, subsequent buffs will be more powerful, again helping teams that are able to secure the objective in the late game to become stronger.

Also on the agenda is the prevalence of vision. With teams now having the ability to cover multiple chokepoints and routes with wards to deny ganks and ambushes, Riot is looking at changing the way that vision works, removing the Trackers knife item from jungler, as well as looking at how much vision is provided by zombie wards.

Finally, the ability to use a Stopwatch to protect yourself is being delayed from 6 minutes, giving players more time in which they have their ultimate abilities, but their opponent’s do not have the ability to negate. This should increase the likelihood of an early first blood happening.

For some teams, this will not mean a lot of changes. Teams like Liquid have a fairly low average game time, as seen in their victory over the Golden Guardians, which only lasted for twenty-six and a half minutes. For others, this may prove beneficial, with some games in the EU LCS going for more than an hour. Ultimately, with shorter, more action packed games on the horizon, fans can look forward to cheering their throats raw rather than twiddling their thumbs waiting for something to happen. When we caught up with Echo Fox on their team roster day, we asked them what changes they would like to see occur over the course of the season. Support Adrian “Adrian” Ma was less than thrilled with the overabundance of tank supports, and hoped that there would be more opportunities for fights to occur around bot lane, while top laner Heo "Huni" Seung-hoon would like to see more mechanically difficult champions make their way back into the top lane, rather than the tanky farm fests we’re used to seeing these days.

If you’re looking forward to catching the upcoming games in the NA LCS, check out the schedule page here. You can also check out our Players to watch in Week 5, for an idea of which teams to keep an eye on.