After letting players to decide their own modifications to the upcoming top lane changes, Riot continued to outline their balancing plans for LoL for the rest of the year
LoL players often learn about Riot Games’ balancing changes around two weeks before the patch is released with a patch preview. The developers, however, are adopting a different technique this time and are revealing their balancing plan for the remainder of the year.
Riot revealed LoL balancing for the rest of the year
Riot’s intentions for balancing the rest of 2023 were revealed by Matt “Riot Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison, LoL’s lead designer, on July 21. He said in a tweet that there are still four significant adjustments they want to make this year. These adjustments are as follow:
- Continue buffing weak top laners up (rather than nerf the strong down)
- For other roles, nerfing the top down (rather than buff up)
- Continue nerfing JG
- Take a look at early snowballing
The adjustments for the top lane will be well received, but the major adjustments will be to the jungle and early-game snowballing.
The jungle has been a rather weak role since the preseason overhaul, thus Riot had to progressively make the role not suck. Now that we’re starting over again with jungles nerfs, even a skilled jungler might have some difficulty to genuinely influence how the game will end.
Another notable pattern in LoL is early-game snowballing, and frequently the game is lost even before you leave your lane in the middle of the match. It only depends on how Riot executes them whether or not all of these improvements will improve the game.
As of now, many players are wondering why Riot even makes these changes at the first place, especially buffing top lane and nerfing junglers. Further details when the actual changes are implemented in the game might reveal why.