A few months ago, Riot Games clearly announced that they would seek to reduce the power of the mid lane while buffing the AD Carry role. The reason is quite simple, the influence of AD Carries has diminished over the seasons compared to the early ones, while the mid lane has become overly important. To put it bluntly, the mid lane and jungle positions account for 90% of a team’s win rate in solo queue, and Riot does not want League of Legends to be unbalanced in this way.
And Riot Games has implemented the latter in patch 10.11, which is buffing AD Carries by slightly increasing this class’s health stats, and more importantly, the movement speed of the item “Stormrazor” was significantly increased. So what about the former part, the mid lane nerfs? The answer is gradually being revealed by Riot in the latest post by Riot Mark Yetter – the lead gameplay designer of League of Legends, specifically:
Riot Mark Yetter: “Changes in the system for patch 10.12:
Here are the biggest system changes we are aiming for in patch 10.12:
Upgrading and pushing some elemental maps into a more unique and special gameplay.
Upgrading weak or unsatisfying rune points.
Adjustments to the mid lane position.
The goal of patch 10.12 is to continue the updates on the bot lane and bring about system changes to League of Legends. We have had early tests on how to effectively reduce the power of the mid lane position while upgrading the overall gameplay. Currently, our plan will focus on two directions:
1. Reducing the resources this position receives (gold/experience).
2. Increasing the presence of minion waves making the ability to roam more of a tradeoff.
These updates will take some time to implement correctly, so we are not sure they will be included in patch 10.12 immediately.
Thank you all, stay safe!”.
With these revelations from Riot Games, we understand that patch 10.12 will focus heavily on system changes such as elemental maps, rune points, and summoner spells. Whether there will be champion buffs or nerfs will depend on the win rate of those champions in the current patch, and even if the newly reworked champion Volibear is too strong or too weak, adjustments will be made.
That’s the story for the near future; the change that players are most concerned about – the mid lane nerfs – actually leaves us feeling a bit disappointed. The idea of forcing players to trade off more between roaming and farming is nice, but reducing some resources for the mid lane position does not address the overall issue of this role. They are dominant because they hold too much power early on with very few items.
While other positions need at least one major item costing around 3000 gold to be strong, champions like physical Assassins or Mages only need a little over 1000 gold to accomplish this. A Mage with a Lost Chapter, or an Assassin with Death Mark is more than enough to hold the lane, farm comfortably, and take down opponents. It is this absurdly early power that Riot Games needs to adjust.
