League of Legends Patches and the Importance of Reading
League of Legends regularly releases patches every two weeks, bringing significant changes to the game’s champions, systems, and items. However, it seems that a large portion of the player base does not bother to read through the item descriptions.
In a preview of Patch 13.17, Riot Games’ David “Riot Phreak” Turley revealed an interesting statistic: most League players don’t read. He used the example of Zeri and Patch 13.12, where her interaction with Sheen and Spellblade was completely removed. Despite this change, over half of the players were still building Trinity Force as their first item for Zeri on the day the patch was released.
The Lack of Attention to Patch Changes
According to Riot Phreak, “We saw from Zeri that on day one [that] more than half of Zeri players build Trinity Force as first item. So, we know players don’t read. A lot of them do—the behavior shifted over time.”
Prior to sharing this information, Riot Phreak also discussed the upcoming Hecarim changes in the next patch, including mana reshaping and a nerf to the AD ratio triple-scaling. He mentioned that if players adjust their builds and start building Spear of Shojin, Hecarim’s win rate should increase.
Players’ Response and Lack of Adaptation
In response to these changes, players on League’s subreddit expressed their difficulties in adapting to champion changes that can drastically alter gameplay from one patch to another. One player stated, “I think Riot needs to consider that a champ like Zeri, in particular, has seen so many drastic changes, completely altering her scaling and adding a different wall of text that needs an hour of study to figure out, that most players don’t have a clue what she does these days and how she does it.”
Riot employee Riot August joined the discussion, highlighting the fact that many players don’t read tooltips when they design a champion. “If a champ has a mechanic that can only be learned by reading a tooltip, it is likely that a good chunk of players will not know it exists,” another Riot employee added.
The Importance of Reading Patch Notes
The overall sentiment is that half of the League community carefully reads through patch notes, while the other half merely skims over them or doesn’t read them at all. Some players have the habit of only focusing on changes that directly affect them and their role, which is a detrimental practice. In a game like League of Legends, where every advantage counts, reading patch notes is crucial to understanding the game and gaining an edge.