The latest League of Legends patches showed the creative side of Riot Games. As the developers continue to balance the game with their usual seriousness, some of the studio’s latest tweaks came as a notable surprise to the community. The latest is the one that arrived in patch 12.20. A change that affected Akshan, and introduced an interesting new interaction. Bulk, Champion can now spin infinitely with Heroic Soar as long as it doesn’t hit a wall or enemy champion.
The best “swing” in the history of League of Legends
This new interaction with Akshan doesn’t seem like too dangerous a change. However, some players are already taking advantage of this with new strategies or moves that were impossible before the introduction of this patch. Not only did this buff make Akshan much more fun and allow you to “troll” without causing too much damage to the game, but it also had a significant effect on the champion’s performance. With over 20,000 games played, his win rate has increased by 0.6% since the last patch.
The upward trend is apparent even when analyzing the game’s rankings individually, which rules out lack of data as a cause. If that was the reason, there would be more variability between different skill levels of players. In this sense, it is natural to wonder to what extent a change that only serves to increase the performance of a champion who, despite a certain situation, was at a very good point of balance was necessary: in the middle ranks (Silver – Platinum) he had an acceptable performance, while in the higher ranks he was already a very effective character.
Additionally, this new interaction with Akshan also led to a new kamikaze strategy. The champion can now, from the first level of the game, sneak into the enemy base and start killing enemy minions. A particularly annoying variant of the familiar “farm proxy” technique (as with Singed for example) that promises not to yield great results in competitive play, but can drive the enemy team and teammates crazy and allows you to get more than ten minions in each wavee. Whether it’s a teammate or an opponent, when you meet him in a game of League of Legends, you’re not going to like him at all.
While the recent changes to League of Legends have been particularly interesting, not all of them have worked well. A good example of this is Blitzcrank, which Riot Games wanted to improve in the jungle and ended up making it the most unbalanced support in the game.. In this sense, some players are not very happy with the direction taken by the studio. However, the title is about to face a period of change with the 2023 preseason, and Riot Games might want to start by making these small changes before moving on to the overall balance of the game.
The soap opera kept us spellbound for many, many weeks… But we finally know the end of the story and it makes us sad. Karmine Corp won’t be in the LEC next year, but I promise, KC’s future in League of Legends remains bright.