The updates of Pre-Season 2020 had a tremendous impact on the gameplay of League of Legends Season 10. The elemental map created many new movement paths in the jungle, new lethality items like the Duskblade of Draktharr, and the reworked passive of the Night Harvester made assassins significantly stronger… Among the myriad of changes, we see that the Side Lanes felt incredibly out of place as they had no impact on the game whatsoever.
The reason is extremely simple; its position is in the two side lanes, while the hottest spots on the map are the Dragon pit, Baron pit, or the buff camps, which are far too distant from this location. Moreover, there’s nothing there, it’s empty, and there’s no reason for anyone to venture into it. It even wastes time moving back to the tower because instead of going straight, you take a detour and lose a few extra seconds to traverse the lane.
In recent days, Riot Games has been making significant updates on the test server after releasing patch 10.11 on the official server. Just yesterday, updates related to the runes, the rework of Predator, and the Ghost spell showed that they would have substantial updates in version 10.12. In the latest update, the new elemental map has been updated and added more valuable objectives to the Side Lanes. Specifically:
Changes to the Wind Elemental Map
The additional movement speed when passing through the wind current zone (at the two buff camps and the dragon pit) will be 20%, and this value will double if you are out of combat. When the Wind Elemental Map is activated, the Gale Blossoms will appear more frequently at special locations.
Fire Elemental Map
When the Fire Elemental Map is activated, Explosive Seeds will appear more in the Side Lanes and the path into the Jungle.
With this update from Riot Games, the Side Lanes are likely to become a surprisingly good ambush spot on the Fire map, allowing junglers to leap out onto the lanes unexpectedly. Of course, this will depend on whether you are on the Fire map or not; however, with this change, at least the “Side Lanes” in League of Legends will be more useful instead of just being the name of a song.
