League players can anticipate higher-quality champion balancing going forward as the devs committed to putting more effort on them.
In Riot Games’ recent Quick Gameplay thoughts published on March 6, Riot Games devs disclosed the path of League’s updates on which they will be concentrating in the future. They clarified that their primary objective is to concentrate more on their patches, which entails taking one or more champions into consideration and attempting to make adjustments that will feel noticeably better to play.
The devs also mentioned that they always approached champion adjustments in two different methods. One of them was just to slightly increase or decrease their amounts to buff or nerf them, accordingly.
“Over the last couple years, we’ve tended to do most buffs and nerfs as what we call “bucket changes””
“We also have a category of work we call “patch work” where we take a longer period of time to do a more careful change intended to solve some larger problem or to make a champion feel noticeably better to play”
The second involved giving up a week or two to one in order to make the shift feel more cautious and to work with them to resolve some challenging problems.
“We’ve always had both types of work in our toolkit, but we’re placing more emphasis on patch work specifically for buffs right now,”
As a result, League players should anticipate enhancements that boost “the feel of a champion” rather than necessarily making champions significantly better.
The two champions Pantheon and Azir, who will receive their updates in Patch 13.5, which launches this week on March 8, have already been revealed by Riot Games with these kinds of adjustments.
These modifications are already somewhat known to us because they have been incorporated into the PBE systems.
Nearly all of Azir’s abilities will undergo substantial changes in order to reduce his competitive proficiency and boost his win rate in solo queues. Updates will also be made to Pantheon in the same direction to make him feel more like a Spartan champion.