Riot Making Adjustments to Support Items in Solo Lanes in League of Legends Patch 12.4
Riot is getting ready to make significant changes to support items used in solo lanes in the upcoming League of Legends Patch 12.4. This move comes in response to innovative players who have been utilizing support items like Spellthief’s Edge to generate gold and act as a pseudo-support while in a solo lane. To combat this strategy, Riot will be implementing quicker adjustments to address the dominance of support items, as mentioned in a tweet by Riot Phlox, a developer of League of Legends.
Changes to Minion Farming and Objectives
To discourage the use of support items in solo lanes, Riot is introducing a penalty for farming minions during the early stages of the game. Players will only be allowed to farm two minions per minute in the first five minutes of the game if they possess a support item in Patch 12.4. Additionally, bounties gained from minion kills will be based on the number of items on each team that provide passive gold.
Riot is also planning to make adjustments to objective bounties and their interaction with support items. In Patch 12.4, gold leads obtained from objective bounties will be halved when a team has two or more support items. Furthermore, the warning time for the appearance and disappearance of objective bounties will be reduced from 15 seconds to five seconds in the new patch.
Competitive Impact and Release Date
In the competitive scene, enchanter supports have been receiving significant attention, even though most games are still being played on Patch 12.2 worldwide. The Janna top lane build with Smite has already been picked three times in professional games played on the current patch, according to data from Games of Legends. Additionally, Cloud9 used two enchanter supports, Ivern and Soraka, in the mid lane and emerged victorious in both of their games during the LCS’ opening weekend.
The changes to support items and their usage in solo lanes will go live when League Patch 12.4 is launched on February 16.
Riot, League of Legends, Patch 12.4, support items, solo lanes, adjustments, minion farming, objective bounties, competitive impact