The preseason for the 13th season in League of Legends has been ongoing for several weeks. It didn’t take long for players to come up with new tricks to win games for their team. Thus, a strategy from 4 years ago has resurfaced.
What kind of strategy is this? The approach involves a player becoming very strong very quickly. With the introduction of the new jungle items, a bug has crept in that the staff at Riot Games did not anticipate.
This bug allows every player with the “Smite” spell to buy and sell the jungle item. Midlaners with control mages are currently taking advantage of this.
They buy the item on their first recall to base. When the purchase is canceled, they get their money back. The problem, however, is that the effect of the jungle item remains. So the player without the jungle item still collects cookies for the pet.
If this player has collected the stacks – around minute 15 – then they can repurchase the jungle item and redeem the stacks by defeating jungle monsters. For each monster slain, the champion loses a cookie and receives 50 bonus gold. This results in an unexpectedly large influx of gold.
In this video, you can see how massive League of Legends has become:
Riot Games lays their cards on the table
Where does this strategy come from? The strategy has established itself as the “Funneling Strategy” in the League of Legends universe. This means that all gold is funneled into a single character to give them an incredibly strong advantage in experience and gold. The top lane was also a focus of the preseason and there they have already increased gold and experience values.
So far, players have only used this tactic in the mid lane. Due to the adjustments, this tactic could also be exciting for top laners.
The key player, who the gold and experience are focused on, receives necessary protection from their teammates to freely gather experience and gold. This playstyle then leads to a game-changing advantage for the team that employs the tactic.
Riot Games had previously patched this tactic out of the game because there are few counters to this playstyle. They did this by ensuring players with the jungle item receive less gold when they kill minions on the lane. Conversely, players without the jungle item earn less gold from opponents in the jungle.
Here you can check out a video about the strategy again:
What is Riot Games doing about it? On reddit, Riot Ray Jonggi commented on the problem. The team around him did not focus on finding and fixing small niche bugs in the preparation for the preseason. Instead, they utilized 99.9% of their time for revisions. The team has implemented some changes for the preseason.
Furthermore, he explained how they plan to address this issue promptly. Presumably with the next patch. And as long as a player does not have the jungle item, they should not be able to gather stacks either. This way, the tactic won’t work as it has so far.
This approach has allowed them to fix the problems with 5% or less effort, rather than trying to launch everything completely ready for preseason.
What do you think about Riot Games’ new approach to making the game enjoyable for everyone and nipping such niche problems in the bud? Let us know in the comments.
If you want to read more news about LoL, we have more for you here: LoL – HandOfBlood builds the perfect gaming bus for 20,000 euros: “You E-car, I E-sport!”
