League of Legends is one of the biggest and most popular games in history. The game has been growing and evolving year after year. Riot Games have been constantly adding new things, tweaking the meta, and overall making sure the game doesn’t get repetitive to play.
The League of Legends ranked season lasts for most of the year with the last two months being pre-season where most of the big balance adjustments and new features are brought out. Last year’s pre-season was polarizing; it was near-universally criticized as being a net negative. Riot has however remained consistent with its design philosophies and this pre-season builds off the last one, for better or worse. So, we go over the best and worst changes of pre-season 2022 so far.
10 Best: The New Chemtech Drake
The old Chemtech drake, soul, and map were perhaps one of the most hated features to hit summoners rift in years. Riot decided to pull the plug on this experiment after scathing reviews from players, pros, and journalists. But, it's back, and it's good.
The new Chemtech soul is solid, it doesn’t feel overly broken, nor does it feel too gimmicky or niche. The entire drake system has largely been a huge positive over the last few years, and the new Chemtech follows suit. The new map and terrain changes that come with this drake are fun and unique too. Larger blast cones and more vision make playing around jungle skirmishes more exciting for sure. It's definitely one of the best additions in a while.
9 Best: The New Communication Features
While objective voting isn’t as refined as it could be, and many players still want voice chat, the new communication features and pings are a solid step in the right direction. More ways of communicating with teammates in a game that requires cooperation is always a plus, and the new pings have mostly been useful for players.
8 Best: Jungle Pets
Replacing jungle items with these new pets was a bold move, but one that’s largely paid off. Not only does this add a breath of fresh air and color to the game, but it allows players to specialize as to what they want their role to be in a game.
While some balance changes are still needed, with particularly the red pet being underpowered, the additions have been largely positive.
7 Best: Jungle Interface
Adding the new interface and quality of life changes for junglers is helpful. This may also make the role more appealing and less daunting for newer players. The camp timers and new jungle route recommendations are also helpful and serve to level the playing field considering many players used third-party apps to get them anyway.
6 Best: Focus On Tank/Mage Mythics
The focus on tank and mage mythics has definitely been a popular and welcome shift in focus. Many players feel that mages had little item variety and were forced to use the same items every game. Moreover, many mages such as Ryze and Kassadin felt bad to play with items that just didn’t fit them.
Tank items are also a welcome addition, making the class more relevant could be a breath of fresh air to the meta. Balancing them is a different problem, however, as is evidenced below.
5 Worst: Skill Expression In The Jungle
Jungle is the most demanding and polarizing role in League of Legends. There are no laning mechanics or trades or recall timers so the majority of the skill expression in the role falls into leashing and counter-jungling. Both of these have been nerfed this pre-season leaving many jungle mains being dissatisfied.
The lower leash ranges also make kiting for ranged junglers such as Graves and Kindred more tedious as well. While it is understandable that Riot wants to make the role more accessible, they need to strike a balance between ease of play and skill expression.
4 Worst: Jungling Is Too Easy
Jungling with the new pets and changes to the jungle camps feels way too easy. This is a problem for the other eight people in the games as it feels like junglers are always full hp and ganking lanes for no tradeoff. Jungle camps heal players too much and don’t do enough damage, making the role slightly overpowered compared to its laning counterparts.
Again, while it is understandable that Riot wishes to make the role more accessible and less punishing, it’s a balancing act and they’ve tipped the scales too far at one end.
3 Worst: Ravenous Hydra & Jak’Sho, The Protean
These items are way too strong. Every single melee unit is rocking them these days regardless of roles. Jak’sho is dominating the rift and making the tank items essentially useless. Ravenous Hydra is a must-build on every single AD champ in the game, and it has lost its entire identity as a split-pushing item.
These items need serious changes. To be fair, while they have been adjusted multiple times since the pre-season dropped, they’re still not at the right place in the meta.
2 Worst: Bruisers Are Way Too Strong
This feeds off the new changes to Ravenous Hydra and Jak’Sho, but bruisers are way too strong, they’re currently dealing more damage than assassins and tanking better than the likes of Malphite and Zac. The problem lies largely in champions such as Aatrox and Fiora being able to build whatever they want with little downsides. It’s a problem that needs to be sorted out before the next season is released.
1 Worst: Yuumi
League has had some incredibly designed and fun-to-play champions. Champion design has been getting better and better with the likes of Jhin, Belveth, Sett, Pyke, and Aphelios. Yuumi has always however been the design team’s biggest stumbling block. She’s either completely busted and takes over games or a complete liability.
Many players complain about how un-interactive her design is and how little effort is needed to play her. Riot has recently mentioned a rework is in the works for her, but their blog explaining their reasoning leaves many players fearing it’ll be more of the same, something frowned upon in the genre.
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