League of Legends is getting big changes in the upcoming 12.10 patch. In this one, all champions will have their resistances increased so that the effective damage in the game is lower. However, the method chosen by Riot Games to make these adjustments is to improve character stats. This is a very good decision in many ways, which the developer has already justified, but there is a big compromise to be made. There is a mechanism that promises to cause a lot of problems for studio employees and for which no preventive measures have been taken.
Raw damage threatens League of Legends
Raw damage is damage that ignore enemy resistance and attack their life points directly. They can only be reduced with shields and only a few champions have them. However, since Riot Games’ improvements have mainly affected the resistance per level of champions, this source of damage directly impacting HP for opponents will be particularly important. League of Legends is a complex system, and although characters now have a bit more health, the reduction in this type of damage is barely noticeable.
While damage from all sources will be reduced by 10-20% depending on the situation, raw damage will barely be affected by adjustments. So there’s a paradox: although it’s a bit less efficient because the characters will have a bit more health, having their power reduced in such a moderate way is much more efficient in relative terms than physical or magical attrition. Also, it’s worth noting that there are raw damage sources that scale based on the opponent’s health and are even more potent.
Riot Games does not want to take preventive measures
Vayne, Fiora, or Garen are just a few examples of champions that have raw damage based on the opponent’s HP (max, current, or missing). Especially in the case of the shooter and the duelist, this situation has caused many employees of the company to bet on them as being some of the strongest champions in League of Legends after the changes. However, Riot Games officials are prepared for any eventuality and plan to release an additional patch just 48 hours after the release of Patch 12.10.
If Riot Games didn’t act sooner, it’s that the studio does not want to take unnecessary risks. It’s much easier and more efficient in the long run to let champions have a few days without changes on the League of Legends live server and accumulate a lot of data than to make adjustments in advance. On other occasions, the devs wanted to make theory-based tweaks and they just didn’t work. An experience that made it possible to define the protocol for the next patch.
The best thing to do is to keep an eye out for champions with raw damage and try to take advantage of them as soon as the patch goes live.. It is true that League of Legends will be a bit unbalanced for a while, but we can take advantage of the situation to increase our MMR and reach an even higher rank than we are entitled to.
Over the years, the members of Riot Games have become masters in the art of teasing. Only, many things are teased about League of Legends, and it is good to provide clarifications at times. That’s what Reav3 did about Bel’Veth.