Riot announces League of Legends champion durability update with plans to “reduce the overall amount of damage in the game,” Challenges set to go live soon

Riot Games has announced plans to “reduce the overall amount of damage” in League of Legends, as it prepares to launch the new Challenges system in-game.

LoL champion durability update

In patch 12.10, Riot will be introducing some changes to increase the durability of every champion, in a bid to lower the overall amount of damage in the game.

It will make changes to base health, health per level, as well as armour and magic resist per level.

Riot said in a quick gameplay thoughts update on the Riot website: “Devs and players agree – there is currently too much damage in League. While tons of damage can be fun and exciting, we believe that increasing champions’ defensive stats will be beneficial for letting players showcase their skill by giving them more opportunities for counterplay and to live out their high moments. 

“When you’re dying so fast that it’s difficult to tell what killed you, game clarity takes a hit which leads to frustrating experiences. 

“Shorter teamfights are hard to follow, limit the opportunities players have to make smart decisions/showcase their skills, and ultimately aren’t living up to the epic clash of legends fantasy team fights should be delivering on.”

Riot added that with the champion durability update, burst champions will have to ‘commit more resources or be further ahead to get quick kills’, players will feel like they dish out and receive less damage than usual, and team fights will last longer.

This could lead to skirmishers and champs that do well in sustained team fights becoming the meta. However, Riot, in recognising this, said it will be reducing sustain across the board.

The dev is also looking at baron and turrets dishing out less damage than usual, and said that champs should still be able to be burst killed, if the enemy is ahead.

Late last year, Riot said that Chinese League of Legends players “love high aggression and high damage” and that’s why games had been quicker with more damage in general over the past year or so.

Challenges launch in League of Legends

Riot has spoken about the new Challenges system for a while now, and it’s finally launching in-game next week.

There will be more than 300 challenges at launch, and these can be completed by players to unlock achievements.

There will be a new Challenges tab within each player’s profile, where a crystal will change based on the player’s overall progress (from Iron to Challenger).

Challenges will be grouped into Imagination, Expertise, Teamwork & Strategy, Veterancy and Collection.

Players will also be able to show off completed challenges in their profile and in the lobby.

The end game screen will also get an overhaul – it will now be broken into the game’s scoreboard and personal progression sections.

Riot said in a Challenges walkthrough post: “Challenges are designed to provide meaningful progression to all League players – so not just ranked ravagers, but ARAM aficionados, Clash contenders, and cosmetic collectors too.

“You can level up individual challenges from Iron all the way to Master. And if that’s not enough, once you’ve hit Master, many challenges also have their own Grandmaster and Challenger tiers. Just like ranked, only a certain number of players per region can be in these tiers at any given time. If you’ve ever wanted to be known as the person with the most pentakills on the server this is your chance.”

Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.