Oftentimes when Riot Games will put out a new League of Legends patch, a half dozen champions will have some minor changes made to their gameplay mechanics to balance things out a little more.
Not so with Patch 4.13, which not only deals changes to a whopping 30 champions, but also reworks Sona, while Riot are also introducing a brand new champion, Gnar.
Sona
“Essentially, we took Sona to the update board because we saw a unique opportunity to make her more rewarding and more fun,” said Sona designer Fearless. “Sona’s gameplay now revolves more around moments of power. Instead of hanging back and winning a war of attrition during laning, Sona’s now got the kit to power up her allies and save their lives when a fight turns against them.”
Instead of a champion with only a useful ultimate, Riot have made Sona a champion that is going to require a bit more positional awareness to play, with smaller auras with less range.
Unsurprisingly, some of the fans aren’t overly fond of this change — but in many situations like this, the changes are required to make the champion a more legitimate all-round choice, and pissing off a few players is a necessary and unfortunate step.
Gnar
From transforming a champion to a champion that transforms, the newest addition to the League of Legends champion roster is going to be an ancient yordle named Gnar, trapped in ice and only recently set free (by climate change, no doubt).
With no release date evident yet, Gnar’s lore and ability-set are available for all to see. Here are just a few highlights from the original reveal.
Gnar is going to be best suited to the Rift’s top lane, a “transform champion with clear strengths and weaknesses in both Mini and Mega forms”. His first three abilities are a part of his ‘Mini’ form — including the Boomerang Throw, Hyper (a passive), and Hop. His Passive ability, however, is his Rage Gene, which builds up rage during combat. Whenever the rage bar fills up, Gnar will transform into Mega Gnar — whether you want to or not, which is going to make use of the Mini-abilities key to gameplay.
“Mini Gnar’s one of the most mobile champions in the game,” said Gnar designer gypsylord. “On the other hand, Mega Gnar is a colossus. He’s tanky and surprisingly bursty, with strong area of effect and crowd control to boot.”
You can head on over to the Champion Reveal page to see the full range of abilities, lore, and comment on what you think of this new yordle champ.
Patch 4.13
“With the World Championships on the very near horizon, we’re ramping up our efforts to promote more diversity in competitive play,” said Chris “Pwyff” Tom in the Patch Notes, and with the number of champion changes they’ve made, it sure seems they’re making progress. But, as Pwyff says, there aren’t a lot of deep changes, rather just a lot of little ones across the board.
Champion’s aren’t the only ones with changes though. Summoner Spells like Heal have been changed — dropping the heal range from 95-475 down to 90-345 — while a bunch of items have been changed, as well as some item reorganisation to “make it more intuitive.”
All in all, these next few weeks of play on 4.13 are going to see the meta change, and I can’t wait to see the changes that will occur in the LCS when the patch goes live for them.
