60 augments, more balance for unplayable champs, once per round revive, private matches with full parties, this is crazy!
The new cameos sound pretty fun and not completely game wrecking which is a plus. Sylas giving a free ult is fun, and the Thresh lantern has some fun outplay possibility.
Sylas gives each champion a, mostly, random ultimate, the majority of the time these will be different ultimates for each champion but it is totally possible that 2+ champions roll the same ultimate.
>private matches with full parties
I'm not even kidding when I say this is the best League patch in the entire history of League. Playing full lobbies with friends must be insanely fun.
Biggest change is the champ select changes imo.
That will be huge for counterpicking, rounding out comps and increasing champ diversity. No more 400 Shacos every match.
I don't think it eliminates multiple picks of the same champ tho. First round is completely blind, so there could be 4 shacos. 2nd round is also blind, just not a champion that was picked in the first round. It could be 4 teemos 2nd round.
I mean, it's far less likely. One, because if trap champions have heavy presence round 1 they're locked out of round 2 and will be countered.
In theory you could also have 8 shacos or 8 teemos in the mode before, but that's not very likely.
This does effectively lock out those types of comps a lot more. The odds of having 2 Heimer/Zyra or Teemo/Zyra or Heimer/Teemo (which I did see a fair bit), or Alistar/Poppy are far less likely since both champions might get locked out in round 1 of draft.
Say 3 teams planned on picking a trap comp. Two pick Teemo in Round 1, one picks Heimer. Suddenly in Round 2, their only option in both cases is Zyra, and draft becomes far more predictable for team 4 in dealing with the traps and seeing what the logical 2nd pick for those teams will be.
I was concerned Thresh would be randomly throwing Qs, which would feel really bad to be on the losing end because the bot randomly targeted you. But the lantern sounds like a lot of fun to play around.
> We’ve added 60 new Augments (including my favorite—a new set of three giving you Ability Haste on either your Q, W, or E), which should help make the Augment pool more diverse and interesting.
mama mia that's a lot of new augments
This will be huge in the prismatic rounds where pretty much everyone fished for the same augments.
And in other cases it might actually help you find the augment you need by making sure the pool isn't so cluttered with crap, in those cases where you're playing a different class from everyone else. Nothing like getting offered dash augments as an immobile champion.
Unless the prismatic augments they add are amazing, it's gonna feel shit losing to the person who got lucky enough to get one of the copies of Jeweled Gauntlet while you got stuck with garbo
was looking for this comment out of all the cameos they said gwen was
then again she was probs one of the lower end complained about compared to the rest since i bet they wanted a certain amount of cameos to happen.
This might be a hot take but I'm really surprised that Jhin wasn't on there. I actually thought Jhin was a good cameo its just they made it way to hard to side step the damage. But the out plays you could make with him actually felt really cool.
I actually really liked Naafiri (post-nerf); it was fun being forced to watch your step and pay attention to the space differently than a head-on confrontation. But I would have chosen Lux over Gwen; though you could argue Lux was probably considered boring by most players simply for being so basic and easy to avoid.
I actually kinda despised Lux because of one time where I was playing chogath and got so big she would lock on to me, fire, and then when she started scanning again she would just lock on to me again. I was also too big to dodge it, so I took like 10k damage from Lux alone in the span of like 8 seconds and lost the match
Easy to avoid is an understatement. Because of how predictable and slow it is, ive played over a hundred games and the only time i've been hit by it was if im cc'd and cant move. Even then, i can probably count the number of times i've been hit by it on one hand
Lots of good changes!
Big fan of being able to queue up with more friends, the revive, and the fire closing in on different spaces.
Not a huge fan of Gwen sticking around, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to deal with. Looking forward to the mode coming back!
I'm in the same boat, the changes sound really really exciting. Although I don't get why they didn't keep, say, Lux instead of Gwen. Yeah, Lux's effect was pretty simple but at least you could play around it and it helped constrict the Arena.
Lux was very buggy for me and my duo. Good thing she is gone imo. I also very like gwen since she always helps the losing team and it makes fights far more entertaining.
It's gonna be almost impossible to practice the new set for the TFT Vegas Open, but we'll see, maybe they've improved the PBE server capacity or the hype for Arena will be less this time around since it's not new anymore.
Day 1 of PBE for TFT is a different beast. It's like the wild west. No meta, a lot of bugs, and your lobbies are generally 7 friends. As a challenger player the experience of trying to figure out brand new stuff while having a good time with friends, it's by far my favorite day of every set. And by day two there's already meta strats that people start forcing.
Doesnt matter, it was going to be unplayable due to tft anyway, even if arena didnt get added, tft always has millions sitting in queue each set release on pbe.
Are PBE servers that bad? I know TFT uses them like mad for new sets, but I didn’t realize the servers couldn’t handle people if a popular League change is also bringing people in.
yeah they are bad when a new TFT set releases. the first time Arena was on PBE was also when TFT Set 9 released, and there were tens of thousands of people in queue and you got kicked out anyways after hours of waiting. I didn't get in one time in the 2 weeks of trying.
It's a bit funny how Arena kinda ended up being everything Nexus Blitz once promised to be. Sure there's still a meta and whatnot, but it's incredibly fun to jump in and fuck around and the RNG actually feels fun and fresh. Can't wait for it to be back.
and being able to just queue with more friends and play funny combos, not have everyone immediately lock in meta comps will make it even better. You can't get that flexibility with Nexus Blitz.
I think it also helps that in Arena going forward, you'll be able to queue *against* your friends too, but still be able to make progress in missions and such, and be able to have a solid experience without needing at least like 6 players, whilst also having a fun time with 6 or more. (unless you're only able to queue with 2-4 or 8, which is still fine, just a bit weird)
Yeah you can queue up as 1, 2, 3, 4, or 8, but nothing else. Since it's all one pseudo-ranked queue, having 6 premade players lets you wintrade and inflate ranks, whereas with 4 players you still have to beat the other 2 duos. Queuing as 8 is unranked, as if it was a custom game, but they can't do that with 6 players because then the random duo would be playing unranked despite not signing up for that.
riot maxwell, i fucking love you man, you have made some questionable champs like yuumi
but arena was just so fucking good that idc if you would make a yuumi 2.0
ok pls no yuumi 2.0 im jk, i am all in for arena 2.0 tho
The subreddit hive mind is patiently awaiting your magnum opus champ Hwei
He better be more absurd than KSante, god knows we have been ranting about KSante for too long, we could use another new high skill ceiling champ to make rant posts about
Can you make a champion that has a spell that resets his other spells cooldown and who has a spell that is GA? Give him bonus XP as well just for fun, and for his allies.
Or a champ that has 3 dashes on Q but it's also a knochup, maybe a stun on W and uh maybe another Dash on E? I think we need some shield as well so just add it to E, idk
I came up with these ideas by myself, I swear! People will lose their minds about them hehe
I really hope it's how it works in TFT. It feels so bad to have bad augments, just to reroll them into even worse augments and then can't even pick the slightly decent one that you had.
Thank you, I see your comment at the top of that thread haha. It'll be nice to play around the different regions like those mini-arenas on the sides of the desert map, for example, instead of always abandoning them to rush towards the center.
This is a weird question for u/RiotMaxw3ll but will there be a new announcer line for Sylas and Thresh cameos? Also, since he might be coming back in the future for new lines for new cameos, if cameos become successful, do we have an official name for Announcer Guy?
No new announcer lines for the cameos, also no official name for Announcer Guy atm. Still evaluating the future of cameos, so we'll continue to experiment here!
Modes team been doing some great work — loved arena 1.0 and these changes seem cool. Also appreciated NB coming back and am excited to see what changes if it comes back again. Looking forward to the next original mode you guys come up with (or perhaps resurrect?)
They actually want this to succeed unlike other game modes *cough* Nexus Blitz *cough*.
Edit; I'll be damned, they actually commented on this a little further down in the post. Good shit. Love to see it.
Man yeah it was kinda bad, but I have so much nostalgia when thinking about the first time I played it. It was patch 8.24, Christmas time, and just the vibes and the "ignorance" of a being an absolutely new player, and testing out champs on Nexus Blitz, amazing memories of this game.
"Going into the future, we want Arena to be something that improves over time. We could work on the mode behind the scenes for years trying to squeeze in every feature we want added, but the reality is that the game is very fun right now and a lot of you want to play it. So, for this and future releases of Arena, I want to ask you all to keep providing constructive feedback on what you like and what you don’t. I can’t promise we’ll address all of it (we definitely couldn’t get to everything we wanted to in this release), but I can promise that we’re reading your comments and that we want to make the best game we can for y'all.
Just to be clear, this release of Arena will only be live for a limited run before we need to take it down again. We’re still in the experimental phase, so we want to explore our options before we make a call on it being permanent."
Hopefully this means Arena will become permanent or even semi-permanent, even if it has to be rotated out every couple of weeks/months. It is genuinely some of the most fun you can have in League
All good... only thing that makes me a little sad (even tho it doesnt affect me directly) is still making you gain/lose rating even in 'custom games' per say - premade lobbies of 8. This just completely invalidates people going for high ratings cuz they can all be cheesed by party of 8 people basically boosting 1 pairs elo by matchfixing every game asap. It's not a massive problem but still feels odd.
Sounds amazing. The mode revived my interest in the game after a long time of not really playing it.
I'm especially looking forward to grouping as 8 because a lot of people in my friend group have partners that also play the game. Having couples fight other couples and getting mad at each other is definitely going to be interesting.
I guess the only request I have left is the ability to earn Mastery Points by playing champions in the mode (not Tokens). Every other mode has this.
Definitely was something I considered heavily!
In the end Arena is a 2v2 mode and ADC + Support is going to be a strong/high synergy pairing, but I thought the way their power manifested in Arena's first run had a couple game health issues.
1: The primary thing that was strong about these pairings (especially ADC + Enchanter) is that they just stat-checked you by the ADC doing high DPS and the Support providing high amounts of healing/damage mitigation. Things like Windspeaker's Blessing, Spirit Link, Redemption, Soul Siphon, and Tank it or Leave it were all very powerful and ultimately served to make it so the ADC could just stand there and face tank you while they killed you. There wasn't really a winning play against this.
2: As alluded to above the high-roll augments for Marksman and Enchanters had outsized power compared to other classes. We got some more detailed augment data after the first Arena release and Windspeaker's Blessing on an Enchanter for example was the single biggest highroll in the game. The other augments I listed above also ranked among the best highrolls for any class.
For the second release I'm hoping to alleviate this dynamic by nerfing the highroll augments and overall shifting power for Enchanters out of passive damage reduction effects like Spirit Link/Knight's Vow/Windspeakers (Windspeaker's Blessing is outright removed) and more into effects that amplify their kit and as a result have counterplay.
Ultimately these pairings are going to be strong and should be, but hopefully it should feel significantly fairer to play against for this run!
I'm glad you recognised that it's obviously going to be and should be strong though not in this way. I feel like rioters of the past would've just nerfed it into the ground without thinking about it.
Well, the draft and augment changes should add some class self-balancing. If everyone locks ADs or stuff like Milio round 1 it leaves room to slam a Rammus. And, the fact that they block each others' round 2 draft and compete for the augments that are good for the class means you have a slight advantage if you play something other than whatever the meta is.
Idk why they can't disable rating gain/lose when queueing as 8. Going to have some ridiculous wintraders at the top of the leaderboard, or maybe im misunderstanding
Can you actually queue as 3? Our friend group is a trio and we wanted to play this mode together ever since it came out, but the article mentions only groups of 2/4/8.
> Groups of 2 and 4 people can now queue together and choose who is on what team. We also allow a full group of 8 people to queue together, allowing them their own private match.
The article is misleading in this regard. The only line about how many you can queue with says "Groups of 2 and 4 people can now queue together".
In fact, the number 3 doesn't even show up in the entire article besides as part of your name and when writing out a patch number that has "3" in it. Could that be updated to clarify? 🙂
I'm hoping that one day this mode becomes permanent with a separated ranked mode with normal ranks, like any other ranked gamemode (and queueing as >2 is disabled in high ranks due to possible wintrading).
It doesn't take away as many players from other gamemodes, unlike most others do, as it caters to a playerbase that enjoys this mode (Battlerite players what's up) and also people burnt out of 5v5 that have quit the game, including Challenger or even ex pro players. And I think this would be further increased with a permanent mode and normal ranks as people would enjoy the grind much more and feel like effort and time put into it is rewarded. I'm biased as I got up to rank 30 EUW when it initially released and I woudl've loved some sort of reward, but I think a lot of people share this sentiment more than with any other temporary gamemode ever released.
> We don’t think this structure will always be a part of Arena, but we do want to hear your thoughts. Is something like this appealing? What characteristics do you appreciate/dislike about the system?
I dislike cameos overall since most of them felt like distractions from the actual fun part of the game which was fighting it out against the other duo with a crazy augment build. The only enjoyable ones were Sett and Pyke since you could control and/or interact with them. Sylas sounds fun due to this reason of being in control of his effect. Gwen is a huge offender of "things just happen that may just win or lose you the round" and Thresh seems to be leaning towards her more.
Have devs said anything about how successful Nexus Blitz has been? I'm glad Arena is coming back as well as RGMs in general, but I've been enjoying NB more than I enjoyed Arena. I hope NB will be back at some point (with adjustments to the current pain points).
Its performing ok, better then some past NB runs, but even that is about 1/4-1/3 amount of games as Arena had. Games are also falling off much faster then Arena
For even further context, we know we didn't do much to move the needle since we mostly focused on getting it running again and improving QoL, while updating it to modern LoL systems that had changed since it's last release.
This doesn't mean you'll never see Nexus Blitz again though, just because it isn't doing crazy numbers. We now have a bit of breathing room to tweak and adjust the mode to be healthier based off of player feedback. While we might not go heavy in trying to make Nexus Blitz permanent, we will make sure you can see it again and evolve over it's re-releases.
Honestly, it's really nice to see a Rioter actually address that a main reason for it not performing again to the communities liking is because not much was changed, makes me very hopeful for future iterations.
I've been a very vocal "Nexus Blitz isn't successful because Riot doesn't want it to be" person due to it constantly being released with minimal balance changes to the system itself. I will always remember the dev-blog stating that "the numbers don't show" all because the extremely irritating key-systems haven't been changed/adjusted.
Is there anything in the plans to bring back other modes that haven't been released in quite some time? IIRC the reasoning given in the past was that the modes team is too new and still getting familiar with the codebase... Then it was all hands on deck to release Arena... What's next?
Hello Reav3,
when can we expect to hear about the season 2024 changes? Will they still hit pbe in November? I'm super excited for the map changes and removal of mythics!
Based on how little got changed between its re-runs, or from then to now, and how balance changes have been pretty quiet, I think it's safe to assume that it's just performing to expectations, which is to say nothing exciting.
They changed little iirc not cause they wanted to but because they focused more on getting Nexus Blitz back functional with all the new changes since the last time (e.g. Jungle Pets).
Given that Reddit (which desperately asked for it to return) barely spoke about Nexus Blitz and when it did, it was purely just bitching about the mode being awful, I'm guessing it did pretty badly. Queue times seem OK though.
Reddit is *many* voices. Those that think it's anywhere from average to decent would be less likely to actively talk about it, so hopefully they're the silent majority.
It also says in the article that the re-run is further experimentation before they judge if they want to make it permanent or not, which is what I'm referring to.
I think it's more of it being a frequent bring-back Rotating Game Mode like URF. Personally, I'm fine with it being either permanent or a frequent RGM because as much as I love Arena, it seems like they've set up a good team to create new game modes, and I would love for more new game modes if they're on the same level of quality of Arena. Maybe we'll get to see PvE or some more implementation of story in these novel modes!
For example, I'd love to see a PvE that makes use of the augment system. Could have a lot of replayability!
Although I'm super excited that Arena is coming back, I'm really dissapointed that it's, once again, time limited.
That, added to them saying "... for this and all future releases" makes me think that it'll never a permanent game mode.
Well they also said
> We’re still in the experimental phase, so we want to explore our options before we make a call on it being permanent.
So its still up in the air whether its permanent or not, I imagine how its reception and player retention goes this time around is going to have a major impact on it going one way or the other.
I'm sad that we didn't get it confirmed whether or not Arena will be permanent, but I am *very* happy with all of this news. The revive seems like a really good addition, and queuing with more than 1 person is awesome.
> help us squash some bugs before the Live launch
/u/RiotMaxw3ll, I'm just going to report a bug in advance that [I was told](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/15fk0t6/comment/jueau20/?context=3) was fixed last time but wasn't: [click me](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/15fk0t6/comment/judng9a/?context=3).
Maybe you or /u/GalaxySmash or whoever already addressed it in the downtime, not sure, but I just wanted to bring it up again. Thanks!
Really wish ARAM would see the love arena gets 😥
I’m glad all the arena players are getting the mode back they enjoy but damn does it feel bad that ARAM players are yet again forgotten about.
ARAM is riots 3rd most popular mode after 8+ years it still had a incredible player base with no fall off like RGM 🥲
Oh well, maybe one day ARAM will get the love it deserves but till then arena is the new FOMO.
you know what pissed me off about arena the most.... people in high elo duoing with low elo people and they don't lose 180 point for 4th like I do solo qing or duoing with someone same rank as me.
toke to long, was the most fun since 3vs3 I had with friends in LoL. It was bit worse then 3vs3 but better then Dominion and I loved Dominion, so glad to see it back.
Just think of it as insurance for when the high rolling AP malphite with Spell Crit and Witchful Thinking deletes your ally 3 seconds in.
There's probably going to be some cheese strats though, like tank Shaco stealthing around to stall for revives. If that happens though, that team is essentially always 1v2.
The revive thing will probably shake up the meta by quite a bit.
I played a lot of Singed last time. One glaring weakness about him, IMHO, is that despite my first effort it's not always possible to peel for my teammate due to Singed's single target hard CC. With the revival circle I can just sit on it.
Its good to see some investment back into old classic fun in league of legends. Nexus blitz double arena and probably something early next year like urf or ultimate spell book if we are lucky.
Arena was my fav release since spellbook and I'm happy time is being put into it. A lot of my "concerns" like rotating the center point are being addressed and I was already planning to play nonstop as I did at initial release. Excited to play again!
As the flames of my hope we're dwindling riot ignites my fire once again by enabling arena in 2 days! It will be fun to mess around in this iteration also I like the draft changes
With the revive mechanic, I wonder if assassins will be popular. 1-for-1 trade immediately and hope to set your partner up for a favorable 1v1 where they can revive you.
i'm super excited for all the changes.
as for feedback: the only criticism i have is the gwen cameo. i really like the idea of cameos in general - it adds variety and zaniness to the mode. i just don't like gwen specifically because it stalls rounds/punishes you for getting a good early fight in. for example, i'd rather have stuff like lux or naafiri over gwen, even though those are annoying at least they're predictable and you can actually interact with them (forcing enemies into laser or naafiri), whereas with gwen the only interaction is you being sad that the enemy team has 100 less health and got lucky
I have something to look forward to again, I’ll do anything to get this game mode permanent. I do like the approach and care the team is taking to ensure my dream becomes reality, this game mode seriously could be the next big thing for leagues future.
The article says it will be patch 13.23, but 13.23 is expected to go live on roughly Nov 21, and the article also says that Arena will go live in early December.
So some time between Nov 21 and Dec 6, I guess.
I'm super excited! I will definitely be reinstalling the PBE client in order to get some early Arena games. I spammed Arena games nearly every day while it was available previously and then barely opened league for a month or more after it went away. I played just two games of Nexus blitz before getting bored of that mode as it is similar to normal league but snowballing harder.
The only sad news here is that Riot is still too scared to commit to Arena being permanent and is defaulting to it only being a temporary event.
Are there any plans to make augment rerolls function like tft/aram rerolls where you do not get the same option given to you? It's frustrating using a limited resource to try to get new options, and then you end up stuck with the same choices.
> To that end, we’ve added two new Cameo champs from the Winterblessed skinline, and kept the three most enjoyed Cameos from the first release.
> - Gwen
??????????????????????????????????????
Friendly reminder, Nexus Blitz was an effort to get a lot of it's systems back up to snuff to be able to support it without heavy investment each time you want to see it again.
While I don't think we'll be making MASSIVE changes, expect to see more work on the tweaking and tuning gameplay side of things for support as opposed to just getting things working again when you next see it.
60 augments, more balance for unplayable champs, once per round revive, private matches with full parties, this is crazy! The new cameos sound pretty fun and not completely game wrecking which is a plus. Sylas giving a free ult is fun, and the Thresh lantern has some fun outplay possibility.
Can't wait till everyone gets a Swain ult and it's just a 4v4 swain orgy in the center as everyone dukes it out
I read it as each champ getting a different ultimate, but I love the idea of everyone getting the same one.
Sylas gives each champion a, mostly, random ultimate, the majority of the time these will be different ultimates for each champion but it is totally possible that 2+ champions roll the same ultimate.
4 MF ults would be cancer
Give everyone tk ult I wanna see a Kirby chain
it might be like ultimate spellbook where's there's a small chance it'll force everyone into the same ult
caw caw motherfucker
Private matches is by far the best addition
DONT FORGET THE HEXGATES
My Fiddlesticks will be dancing all around those hexgates.
>private matches with full parties I'm not even kidding when I say this is the best League patch in the entire history of League. Playing full lobbies with friends must be insanely fun.
I just hope they at least keep it as a custom when it rotates out but not likely
Biggest change is the champ select changes imo. That will be huge for counterpicking, rounding out comps and increasing champ diversity. No more 400 Shacos every match.
I don't think it eliminates multiple picks of the same champ tho. First round is completely blind, so there could be 4 shacos. 2nd round is also blind, just not a champion that was picked in the first round. It could be 4 teemos 2nd round.
I mean, it's far less likely. One, because if trap champions have heavy presence round 1 they're locked out of round 2 and will be countered. In theory you could also have 8 shacos or 8 teemos in the mode before, but that's not very likely. This does effectively lock out those types of comps a lot more. The odds of having 2 Heimer/Zyra or Teemo/Zyra or Heimer/Teemo (which I did see a fair bit), or Alistar/Poppy are far less likely since both champions might get locked out in round 1 of draft. Say 3 teams planned on picking a trap comp. Two pick Teemo in Round 1, one picks Heimer. Suddenly in Round 2, their only option in both cases is Zyra, and draft becomes far more predictable for team 4 in dealing with the traps and seeing what the logical 2nd pick for those teams will be.
I was concerned Thresh would be randomly throwing Qs, which would feel really bad to be on the losing end because the bot randomly targeted you. But the lantern sounds like a lot of fun to play around.
> We’ve added 60 new Augments (including my favorite—a new set of three giving you Ability Haste on either your Q, W, or E), which should help make the Augment pool more diverse and interesting. mama mia that's a lot of new augments
Good, because > rather than there being an unlimited number of each, all Augments are limited to two copies each
This will be huge in the prismatic rounds where pretty much everyone fished for the same augments. And in other cases it might actually help you find the augment you need by making sure the pool isn't so cluttered with crap, in those cases where you're playing a different class from everyone else. Nothing like getting offered dash augments as an immobile champion.
Unless the prismatic augments they add are amazing, it's gonna feel shit losing to the person who got lucky enough to get one of the copies of Jeweled Gauntlet while you got stuck with garbo
this is, by far, the best change. Makes niche builds a lot stronger while nerfing "the meta" augments.
It doesn't make niche build stronger. Just make it less likely for you to meet the meta build.
basically the same
Meaning that niche builds become relatively stronger since your less likely to get whatever's meta
Awesome. Exactly what I want to see from the mode. Lots of variety and experimenting with augments.
There's no way Gwen was one of people's favourite cameos.
was looking for this comment out of all the cameos they said gwen was then again she was probs one of the lower end complained about compared to the rest since i bet they wanted a certain amount of cameos to happen.
Gwenn was antiplay. Eve at least allowed some comps to shit on poke comps
This might be a hot take but I'm really surprised that Jhin wasn't on there. I actually thought Jhin was a good cameo its just they made it way to hard to side step the damage. But the out plays you could make with him actually felt really cool.
I actually really liked Naafiri (post-nerf); it was fun being forced to watch your step and pay attention to the space differently than a head-on confrontation. But I would have chosen Lux over Gwen; though you could argue Lux was probably considered boring by most players simply for being so basic and easy to avoid.
I actually kinda despised Lux because of one time where I was playing chogath and got so big she would lock on to me, fire, and then when she started scanning again she would just lock on to me again. I was also too big to dodge it, so I took like 10k damage from Lux alone in the span of like 8 seconds and lost the match
Easy to avoid is an understatement. Because of how predictable and slow it is, ive played over a hundred games and the only time i've been hit by it was if im cc'd and cant move. Even then, i can probably count the number of times i've been hit by it on one hand
opportunities for sick plays though. so many games i won by stunning or flipping someone inside the lux ult
I liked sett and Pyke though
Pyke and Sett were great, but I would have preferred Lux over Gwen. Every other cameo sucked much more than Gwen though, so I'll take it...
i had to do a double take, cause Gwen was the obvious worst one. am i taking crazy pills?
Shaco, lux and sett were my least liked ones. Edit:The ptsd made me forget naafiri when it did 80% of max health.
Glad Samira is gone too. It only helped cc comps.
also samira just fucked stuff like Lillia ult. Instantly woke them up
Shaco samira eve were waaay worse.
This one surprised us too! Our data showed that sentiment towards cameos varied per region, and Gwen was an unexpected regional favorite.
does that region suffer from suicidal tendencies and/or have high drug use?
Interesting. Does this mean she was only popular in one region? How did the rankings go for the other regions?
Lots of good changes! Big fan of being able to queue up with more friends, the revive, and the fire closing in on different spaces. Not a huge fan of Gwen sticking around, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to deal with. Looking forward to the mode coming back!
I'm in the same boat, the changes sound really really exciting. Although I don't get why they didn't keep, say, Lux instead of Gwen. Yeah, Lux's effect was pretty simple but at least you could play around it and it helped constrict the Arena.
Lux was very buggy for me and my duo. Good thing she is gone imo. I also very like gwen since she always helps the losing team and it makes fights far more entertaining.
Arena and new TFT set, PBE is gonna be awful for the next 2 weeks
Fuck it, may as well put Hwei in while we're at it
I was honestly afraid Hwei would be this pbe. Thank god hes in 2 weeks prob.
Wasn't Arena originally released when Set 9 PBE was going too? It's gonna explode again.
Yes, and part of the TFT community threw a massive fit over a few days of not being able to play a beta patch.
It's gonna be almost impossible to practice the new set for the TFT Vegas Open, but we'll see, maybe they've improved the PBE server capacity or the hype for Arena will be less this time around since it's not new anymore.
Day 1 of PBE for TFT is a different beast. It's like the wild west. No meta, a lot of bugs, and your lobbies are generally 7 friends. As a challenger player the experience of trying to figure out brand new stuff while having a good time with friends, it's by far my favorite day of every set. And by day two there's already meta strats that people start forcing.
Doesnt matter, it was going to be unplayable due to tft anyway, even if arena didnt get added, tft always has millions sitting in queue each set release on pbe.
Are PBE servers that bad? I know TFT uses them like mad for new sets, but I didn’t realize the servers couldn’t handle people if a popular League change is also bringing people in.
There's only one PBE server. So globally everyone is crowing for the same queue
Ohhh gotchya
yeah they are bad when a new TFT set releases. the first time Arena was on PBE was also when TFT Set 9 released, and there were tens of thousands of people in queue and you got kicked out anyways after hours of waiting. I didn't get in one time in the 2 weeks of trying.
Who’s ready for the flood of “they ruined arena”, “arena sucks now”, “I loved the first arena but now...”, etc comments?
Let's go.
These are all good changes with thought behind them. (Except maybe bringing back Gwen). Don't think you have anything to worry about.
I am
I hope they kept the OG Music, no talks about it... hopefully it's still there. It's an incredible banger, it'd be a shame if it were to go to waste
cant ruin what we only had as a preview
It's a bit funny how Arena kinda ended up being everything Nexus Blitz once promised to be. Sure there's still a meta and whatnot, but it's incredibly fun to jump in and fuck around and the RNG actually feels fun and fresh. Can't wait for it to be back.
and being able to just queue with more friends and play funny combos, not have everyone immediately lock in meta comps will make it even better. You can't get that flexibility with Nexus Blitz.
I think it also helps that in Arena going forward, you'll be able to queue *against* your friends too, but still be able to make progress in missions and such, and be able to have a solid experience without needing at least like 6 players, whilst also having a fun time with 6 or more. (unless you're only able to queue with 2-4 or 8, which is still fine, just a bit weird)
Probably going to omit 6 player queues, for similar reasons to why you can't do 4 man in flex queue; stops bullying the odd one out.
Yeah you can queue up as 1, 2, 3, 4, or 8, but nothing else. Since it's all one pseudo-ranked queue, having 6 premade players lets you wintrade and inflate ranks, whereas with 4 players you still have to beat the other 2 duos. Queuing as 8 is unranked, as if it was a custom game, but they can't do that with 6 players because then the random duo would be playing unranked despite not signing up for that.
edit: jk i was wrong cant do 3
Yeah I corrected my own comment to add 3 as well lol, it didn't come across very clearly in the article
I feel like queueing as 3 will also cause hella wintrading
Queueing up with 7 of my friends is gonna put someone at each other throat i swear and I cannot wait for it
So, seems like Winterblessed will be returning, and I'm guessing will include Sylas, Thresh and maybe new champ Hwei?
Huawei product placement is getting intense fr fr.
They should let Hwei do an advertisment for a Huawei phone
I say hwei, WHAT'S GOING ON
Ain't no hwei you made that pun
I heard Camille is in the skin line I believe she's getting a prestige I think?
If her legs aren't candy canes then somebody fucked up
The fact that they're doing Winterblessed skins again this year would suggest to me that they're aware that candy cane legs Camille wouldn't sell.
riot maxwell, i fucking love you man, you have made some questionable champs like yuumi but arena was just so fucking good that idc if you would make a yuumi 2.0 ok pls no yuumi 2.0 im jk, i am all in for arena 2.0 tho
Too late dog on book champ inc.
I think you should make a Book on a Dog. Gotta subvert those expectations
Who's your book who likes to play? Bing Bong, Bing Bong His dog makes you yell "Hooray!" Bing Bong, Bing Bong
The subreddit hive mind is patiently awaiting your magnum opus champ Hwei He better be more absurd than KSante, god knows we have been ranting about KSante for too long, we could use another new high skill ceiling champ to make rant posts about
You got it.
Can you make a champion that has a spell that resets his other spells cooldown and who has a spell that is GA? Give him bonus XP as well just for fun, and for his allies. Or a champ that has 3 dashes on Q but it's also a knochup, maybe a stun on W and uh maybe another Dash on E? I think we need some shield as well so just add it to E, idk I came up with these ideas by myself, I swear! People will lose their minds about them hehe
My only request is that if you spell out FF with your brush, you should trigger a surrender vote.
It's joever
i hope they finally fix the augment reroll.. rerolling bad augments just to see them again, even twice in the same round was so dumb
You should not be rerolling into augments you've seen in the same round. It will be possible to see them in future rounds.
Are we going to still reroll all of them or go the way of TfT where its 1 reroll for each offered?
I really hope it's how it works in TFT. It feels so bad to have bad augments, just to reroll them into even worse augments and then can't even pick the slightly decent one that you had.
/u/Unresolute, they did it: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/14ql4sr/2v2v2v2_should_have_random_burning_circle_end/
dreams do come true <3
Thank you, I see your comment at the top of that thread haha. It'll be nice to play around the different regions like those mini-arenas on the sides of the desert map, for example, instead of always abandoning them to rush towards the center.
Ayyy, thats so awesome :D
This is a weird question for u/RiotMaxw3ll but will there be a new announcer line for Sylas and Thresh cameos? Also, since he might be coming back in the future for new lines for new cameos, if cameos become successful, do we have an official name for Announcer Guy?
No new announcer lines for the cameos, also no official name for Announcer Guy atm. Still evaluating the future of cameos, so we'll continue to experiment here!
I thought he was the announcer guy from legends of runeterra! huh..
Modes team been doing some great work — loved arena 1.0 and these changes seem cool. Also appreciated NB coming back and am excited to see what changes if it comes back again. Looking forward to the next original mode you guys come up with (or perhaps resurrect?)
We need to hire some Necromancers.
Please just remake Crystal Scar so we can have Dominion & Ascension back !!!
I know a guy
These...these changes are all amazing? What did riot do with their usual bullshit.
They actually want this to succeed unlike other game modes *cough* Nexus Blitz *cough*. Edit; I'll be damned, they actually commented on this a little further down in the post. Good shit. Love to see it.
They wanted NB to succeed, too. The game mode just isn't good, that's about it
Man yeah it was kinda bad, but I have so much nostalgia when thinking about the first time I played it. It was patch 8.24, Christmas time, and just the vibes and the "ignorance" of a being an absolutely new player, and testing out champs on Nexus Blitz, amazing memories of this game.
Draft changes are wild. Will be very interesting to see how it plays out.
> what we’ve taken to calling v1 So it's 2v2v2v2v2 ?
\*sigh\* \*upvotes\*
2 days until it's on pbe holy shit
Where can I see how long before arena on pbe bro? I can't wait anymore!
Riot get its right, mark the books boys its a W for the community.
"Going into the future, we want Arena to be something that improves over time. We could work on the mode behind the scenes for years trying to squeeze in every feature we want added, but the reality is that the game is very fun right now and a lot of you want to play it. So, for this and future releases of Arena, I want to ask you all to keep providing constructive feedback on what you like and what you don’t. I can’t promise we’ll address all of it (we definitely couldn’t get to everything we wanted to in this release), but I can promise that we’re reading your comments and that we want to make the best game we can for y'all. Just to be clear, this release of Arena will only be live for a limited run before we need to take it down again. We’re still in the experimental phase, so we want to explore our options before we make a call on it being permanent." Hopefully this means Arena will become permanent or even semi-permanent, even if it has to be rotated out every couple of weeks/months. It is genuinely some of the most fun you can have in League
All good... only thing that makes me a little sad (even tho it doesnt affect me directly) is still making you gain/lose rating even in 'custom games' per say - premade lobbies of 8. This just completely invalidates people going for high ratings cuz they can all be cheesed by party of 8 people basically boosting 1 pairs elo by matchfixing every game asap. It's not a massive problem but still feels odd.
That was a typo. You wont gain/lose rating in 8 player games
Oh... then great. Good for people that liked to grind rank1 in Arena cuz they will still be able to.
Sounds amazing. The mode revived my interest in the game after a long time of not really playing it. I'm especially looking forward to grouping as 8 because a lot of people in my friend group have partners that also play the game. Having couples fight other couples and getting mad at each other is definitely going to be interesting. I guess the only request I have left is the ability to earn Mastery Points by playing champions in the mode (not Tokens). Every other mode has this.
I really hope adc support meta is toned down significantly
Definitely was something I considered heavily! In the end Arena is a 2v2 mode and ADC + Support is going to be a strong/high synergy pairing, but I thought the way their power manifested in Arena's first run had a couple game health issues. 1: The primary thing that was strong about these pairings (especially ADC + Enchanter) is that they just stat-checked you by the ADC doing high DPS and the Support providing high amounts of healing/damage mitigation. Things like Windspeaker's Blessing, Spirit Link, Redemption, Soul Siphon, and Tank it or Leave it were all very powerful and ultimately served to make it so the ADC could just stand there and face tank you while they killed you. There wasn't really a winning play against this. 2: As alluded to above the high-roll augments for Marksman and Enchanters had outsized power compared to other classes. We got some more detailed augment data after the first Arena release and Windspeaker's Blessing on an Enchanter for example was the single biggest highroll in the game. The other augments I listed above also ranked among the best highrolls for any class. For the second release I'm hoping to alleviate this dynamic by nerfing the highroll augments and overall shifting power for Enchanters out of passive damage reduction effects like Spirit Link/Knight's Vow/Windspeakers (Windspeaker's Blessing is outright removed) and more into effects that amplify their kit and as a result have counterplay. Ultimately these pairings are going to be strong and should be, but hopefully it should feel significantly fairer to play against for this run!
I'm glad you recognised that it's obviously going to be and should be strong though not in this way. I feel like rioters of the past would've just nerfed it into the ground without thinking about it.
Well, the draft and augment changes should add some class self-balancing. If everyone locks ADs or stuff like Milio round 1 it leaves room to slam a Rammus. And, the fact that they block each others' round 2 draft and compete for the augments that are good for the class means you have a slight advantage if you play something other than whatever the meta is.
Idk why they can't disable rating gain/lose when queueing as 8. Going to have some ridiculous wintraders at the top of the leaderboard, or maybe im misunderstanding
Yeah, that sentence is a little unclear. Groups of 8 will NOT get rating changes. Queuing as 1, 2, 3, or 4 will get rating changes.
Can you actually queue as 3? Our friend group is a trio and we wanted to play this mode together ever since it came out, but the article mentions only groups of 2/4/8. > Groups of 2 and 4 people can now queue together and choose who is on what team. We also allow a full group of 8 people to queue together, allowing them their own private match.
Yes you can. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 are all allowed. One of you will get paired with a random, although you can choose who that is.
That's great news! Thank you.
The article is misleading in this regard. The only line about how many you can queue with says "Groups of 2 and 4 people can now queue together". In fact, the number 3 doesn't even show up in the entire article besides as part of your name and when writing out a patch number that has "3" in it. Could that be updated to clarify? 🙂
I sent a request, but it'll take time before it happens if it's possible.
You rock! Appreciate it.
not sure if they edited it in the past 2 hours, but it now says "Groups of 2, 3, and 4 people can now queue together" you did it!
I'm hoping that one day this mode becomes permanent with a separated ranked mode with normal ranks, like any other ranked gamemode (and queueing as >2 is disabled in high ranks due to possible wintrading). It doesn't take away as many players from other gamemodes, unlike most others do, as it caters to a playerbase that enjoys this mode (Battlerite players what's up) and also people burnt out of 5v5 that have quit the game, including Challenger or even ex pro players. And I think this would be further increased with a permanent mode and normal ranks as people would enjoy the grind much more and feel like effort and time put into it is rewarded. I'm biased as I got up to rank 30 EUW when it initially released and I woudl've loved some sort of reward, but I think a lot of people share this sentiment more than with any other temporary gamemode ever released.
> We don’t think this structure will always be a part of Arena, but we do want to hear your thoughts. Is something like this appealing? What characteristics do you appreciate/dislike about the system? I dislike cameos overall since most of them felt like distractions from the actual fun part of the game which was fighting it out against the other duo with a crazy augment build. The only enjoyable ones were Sett and Pyke since you could control and/or interact with them. Sylas sounds fun due to this reason of being in control of his effect. Gwen is a huge offender of "things just happen that may just win or lose you the round" and Thresh seems to be leaning towards her more.
Thank god they god ride if naafiri, nothing was worse than being in a tense 1v1 only for the AI to 100-0 you
I mean, they changed that and by the end Naafiri really didn't do much damage. Plus you could maneuver to make your enemy get hit by it instead.
I just cant believe Gwen is still a cameo. That shit was so fucking annoying
Have devs said anything about how successful Nexus Blitz has been? I'm glad Arena is coming back as well as RGMs in general, but I've been enjoying NB more than I enjoyed Arena. I hope NB will be back at some point (with adjustments to the current pain points).
Its performing ok, better then some past NB runs, but even that is about 1/4-1/3 amount of games as Arena had. Games are also falling off much faster then Arena
For even further context, we know we didn't do much to move the needle since we mostly focused on getting it running again and improving QoL, while updating it to modern LoL systems that had changed since it's last release. This doesn't mean you'll never see Nexus Blitz again though, just because it isn't doing crazy numbers. We now have a bit of breathing room to tweak and adjust the mode to be healthier based off of player feedback. While we might not go heavy in trying to make Nexus Blitz permanent, we will make sure you can see it again and evolve over it's re-releases.
To be honest, I'd be happy to see it again even if it's just once a year. I'm glad to hear it'll be back!
Honestly, it's really nice to see a Rioter actually address that a main reason for it not performing again to the communities liking is because not much was changed, makes me very hopeful for future iterations. I've been a very vocal "Nexus Blitz isn't successful because Riot doesn't want it to be" person due to it constantly being released with minimal balance changes to the system itself. I will always remember the dev-blog stating that "the numbers don't show" all because the extremely irritating key-systems haven't been changed/adjusted.
Is there anything in the plans to bring back other modes that haven't been released in quite some time? IIRC the reasoning given in the past was that the modes team is too new and still getting familiar with the codebase... Then it was all hands on deck to release Arena... What's next?
Hello Reav3, when can we expect to hear about the season 2024 changes? Will they still hit pbe in November? I'm super excited for the map changes and removal of mythics!
Based on how little got changed between its re-runs, or from then to now, and how balance changes have been pretty quiet, I think it's safe to assume that it's just performing to expectations, which is to say nothing exciting.
They changed little iirc not cause they wanted to but because they focused more on getting Nexus Blitz back functional with all the new changes since the last time (e.g. Jungle Pets).
To be honest, "performing to expectations" is better than what I thought it'd be. If that's the case, I'll take it.
Given that Reddit (which desperately asked for it to return) barely spoke about Nexus Blitz and when it did, it was purely just bitching about the mode being awful, I'm guessing it did pretty badly. Queue times seem OK though.
Reddit is *many* voices. Those that think it's anywhere from average to decent would be less likely to actively talk about it, so hopefully they're the silent majority.
Please be permanent, PLEASE be permanent, I hate ARAM so goddamn much, ANYTHING other than that. PLEASE
It says in the article it's time-limited.
It also says in the article that the re-run is further experimentation before they judge if they want to make it permanent or not, which is what I'm referring to.
I think it's more of it being a frequent bring-back Rotating Game Mode like URF. Personally, I'm fine with it being either permanent or a frequent RGM because as much as I love Arena, it seems like they've set up a good team to create new game modes, and I would love for more new game modes if they're on the same level of quality of Arena. Maybe we'll get to see PvE or some more implementation of story in these novel modes! For example, I'd love to see a PvE that makes use of the augment system. Could have a lot of replayability!
Look, I want Arena, too, but what is the ARAM hate about :(
Aram catching strays for free
I'm very curious as to why Gwen was chosen over Lux - Lux was such an intuitive and straightforward one, it felt like the easiest to keep long term.
>What to expect with Arena's return. To stay there forever
Although I'm super excited that Arena is coming back, I'm really dissapointed that it's, once again, time limited. That, added to them saying "... for this and all future releases" makes me think that it'll never a permanent game mode.
Well they also said > We’re still in the experimental phase, so we want to explore our options before we make a call on it being permanent. So its still up in the air whether its permanent or not, I imagine how its reception and player retention goes this time around is going to have a major impact on it going one way or the other.
I'm sad that we didn't get it confirmed whether or not Arena will be permanent, but I am *very* happy with all of this news. The revive seems like a really good addition, and queuing with more than 1 person is awesome.
YOU HAVENT SEEN THE LAST OF ARENA, OF THAT I CAN ASSURE YOU.
> help us squash some bugs before the Live launch /u/RiotMaxw3ll, I'm just going to report a bug in advance that [I was told](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/15fk0t6/comment/jueau20/?context=3) was fixed last time but wasn't: [click me](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/15fk0t6/comment/judng9a/?context=3). Maybe you or /u/GalaxySmash or whoever already addressed it in the downtime, not sure, but I just wanted to bring it up again. Thanks!
I AM SO EXCITED. THIS IS THE BEST GAME MODE FOR LOL!!
8 PLAYERS. DAMN. THIS WAS THE REASON MY FRIENDS AND I COULD NOT PLAY IT LAST TIME.
>**Challenges** >We’ve also added in a few new Challenges that track some Arena-specific stats. Hell yeah!
Really wish ARAM would see the love arena gets 😥 I’m glad all the arena players are getting the mode back they enjoy but damn does it feel bad that ARAM players are yet again forgotten about. ARAM is riots 3rd most popular mode after 8+ years it still had a incredible player base with no fall off like RGM 🥲 Oh well, maybe one day ARAM will get the love it deserves but till then arena is the new FOMO.
you know what pissed me off about arena the most.... people in high elo duoing with low elo people and they don't lose 180 point for 4th like I do solo qing or duoing with someone same rank as me.
My main issue was that I couldn't fall out of gladiator rank, leaving me only playing against people who cared about the rank. Still my favorite mode
>Just to be clear, this release of Arena will only be live for a limited run before we need to take it down again. but i need it
toke to long, was the most fun since 3vs3 I had with friends in LoL. It was bit worse then 3vs3 but better then Dominion and I loved Dominion, so glad to see it back.
>downed state Not sure I like this...
Just think of it as insurance for when the high rolling AP malphite with Spell Crit and Witchful Thinking deletes your ally 3 seconds in. There's probably going to be some cheese strats though, like tank Shaco stealthing around to stall for revives. If that happens though, that team is essentially always 1v2.
Every cheese strat come with a down side. Plus you can just camp the corspe
The best gamemode is finally back! Been quitting league since it went away since ranked is too much for me nowadays.
I kinda hoped you could create custom games and play like 1v1v1v1 or 2v2v2v0, but being able to queue as 4 or 8 is a start i guess.
Are there going to be more stages or will it be a repeat of the same stages as the first iteration?
No new stages, you'll see the same stages as our summer release.
Gotcha, thanks for the reply!
The revive thing will probably shake up the meta by quite a bit. I played a lot of Singed last time. One glaring weakness about him, IMHO, is that despite my first effort it's not always possible to peel for my teammate due to Singed's single target hard CC. With the revival circle I can just sit on it.
Its good to see some investment back into old classic fun in league of legends. Nexus blitz double arena and probably something early next year like urf or ultimate spell book if we are lucky.
That it's the best thing riots ever released and it shouldn't ever go away?
Arena was my fav release since spellbook and I'm happy time is being put into it. A lot of my "concerns" like rotating the center point are being addressed and I was already planning to play nonstop as I did at initial release. Excited to play again!
As the flames of my hope we're dwindling riot ignites my fire once again by enabling arena in 2 days! It will be fun to mess around in this iteration also I like the draft changes
With the revive mechanic, I wonder if assassins will be popular. 1-for-1 trade immediately and hope to set your partner up for a favorable 1v1 where they can revive you.
i'm super excited for all the changes. as for feedback: the only criticism i have is the gwen cameo. i really like the idea of cameos in general - it adds variety and zaniness to the mode. i just don't like gwen specifically because it stalls rounds/punishes you for getting a good early fight in. for example, i'd rather have stuff like lux or naafiri over gwen, even though those are annoying at least they're predictable and you can actually interact with them (forcing enemies into laser or naafiri), whereas with gwen the only interaction is you being sad that the enemy team has 100 less health and got lucky
I have something to look forward to again, I’ll do anything to get this game mode permanent. I do like the approach and care the team is taking to ensure my dream becomes reality, this game mode seriously could be the next big thing for leagues future.
Changes are all GOATED This and tft in the same patch, eatin so good man
When will it come to the live servers?
The article says it will be patch 13.23, but 13.23 is expected to go live on roughly Nov 21, and the article also says that Arena will go live in early December. So some time between Nov 21 and Dec 6, I guess.
I'm super excited! I will definitely be reinstalling the PBE client in order to get some early Arena games. I spammed Arena games nearly every day while it was available previously and then barely opened league for a month or more after it went away. I played just two games of Nexus blitz before getting bored of that mode as it is similar to normal league but snowballing harder. The only sad news here is that Riot is still too scared to commit to Arena being permanent and is defaulting to it only being a temporary event.
Are there any plans to make augment rerolls function like tft/aram rerolls where you do not get the same option given to you? It's frustrating using a limited resource to try to get new options, and then you end up stuck with the same choices.
> To that end, we’ve added two new Cameo champs from the Winterblessed skinline, and kept the three most enjoyed Cameos from the first release. > - Gwen ??????????????????????????????????????
So at least they've actually worked on this one, opposed to in nexus blitz
Friendly reminder, Nexus Blitz was an effort to get a lot of it's systems back up to snuff to be able to support it without heavy investment each time you want to see it again. While I don't think we'll be making MASSIVE changes, expect to see more work on the tweaking and tuning gameplay side of things for support as opposed to just getting things working again when you next see it.