In League of Legends, Lane swapping has always been a point of disagreement among the community. This strategy has become more controversial after its use in pro play, too. Now, there are going to be LAN swap changes to flip this meta.
On Twitter, Matt Leung Harrison, who is LOL’s lead Gameplay Designer confirmed that there are going to be several changes in the game.
Also, there have been calls made to Riot regarding the lane swap over a few years, and few also predicted to pull the trigger quite hard they could.
The main thing to notice is that the first changes are made to effect only in the early game, where lane swap penalties are only applicable between 1.30 and 3.30 for the Top Lane and 1.30 and 2.15 for the Mid Lane.
In the second part, Leung Harrison confirmed that the Heavy-Handed are only signed to be temporary. However, it is still unclear how much time it is going to take; the development team is still working on it to make it more useful for a longer time.
This new move has made it quite difficult for Riot, and they have been planting some updates that could benefit both pro play and the solo queue simultaneously.
Lane Swapping Restriction for Pro Play
In the LCK Cup finals, we saw Gen.G take on HLE in the best of five, having several of the games throw into relief. That is why pro players of the League of Leadends need some lane-swapping restrictions.
Game 4 saw Gen. G Top Laner Kiin on CS just two minutes into the game. He could have managed to take over, but Game Five was even more chaotic from the intended format, where HLE took the first tower just before 7 minutes.
Later, Kiin found himself without a minion kill at least after five minutes; where he could be on opponent Top Lane, Zeus had only 5.
It was exciting to watch on an individual basis, but it felt like an underwhelming closer to an end series. Matches like these are more to equally test the skill and the early game strength and have an overloading lane.
Solo Queue Facing More Uncertain Future Under New Rules
The most common practice of players is to deliberately grieve, but in a recent statement, Leung Harrison said that they know bad actors attempt to use those changes to test for grief. If anyone tries this behavior to grieve the teammates, we will detect it and make sure to punish them.
It was a rash statement, but it comes as comfort for those who suffer from consistent grief in most of the areas in the game. It sounds like the detection feature is already in place; let’s see how effective these rules are.
There are many ways where a detection system could easily affect legitimate strategies, such as invisible ganks on Teemo/Twitch. Later, Leung Harrison stated that there is also collateral damage as the developers are working very hard to find meaningful long-term solutions.
All we can do is wait and watch as every new change comes up with some challenges, whether the problem ends up in a better place or it remains the same. Let’s wait for further updates.
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