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Riot Games says the biggest change that LoL patch 25.05 brings ‘is to make the common pro play practice of lane swapping non-viable in the early game’.
The latest patch, the first patch of Act 2, will release on March 5th 2025.
It will also hold First Stand, the first big League of Legends international tournament of the year. As a result, Riot says, this patch’s live balance updates are largely pro play-focused, though there are a few changes aimed at the more casual player too.
Lane swap changes in LoL patch 25.05
“On this pro-focused patch, we’re taking a heavy swing against lane swaps,” Riot said. “Due to the short duration and diffuse nature, our hope is that these [new] rules [will] have limited effect on non-pro League gameplay.
“For those unfamiliar, lane swaps are the fairly common practice for pro teams to play out uneven 2v1 lanes instead of playing out conventional 1v1 top lane and 2v2 bot lane matchups. Not only does this unevenness make certain champions nearly unplayable if they can’t withstand the lane swap itself, it deprives viewers of watching the more exciting heads-up matchups that conventional lanes provide, and not even pro players are particularly excited to play these uneven lanes out.”
Once laning phase starts, Riot says it will detect if two non-junglers are spending time together in the early laning phase (from 1:30 to 3:30). If so, ‘they’ll be met with strong income penalties that should outweigh just playing out their normal laning phase’ (see below).
Additionally, the defending champion will gain perfect gold and experience from anything that nearby minions or towers kill. Top laners on the receiving end will also be ‘nearly impossible’ to tower dive, Riot says.
Lane swap penalties include:
- Defending turret has 95% damage reduction. Fortification no longer reduces damage iflane swaps are not detected.
- Defending turret deals 1,000% damage to minions.
- Defending turret and minions give gold and XP from their kills to the nearest allied champion in the lane.
- Offending champions gain 50% less gold and XP from minions. This will linger for 20 seconds in the top lane, and 6 seconds for mid lane.
- In top-lane only, the defending turret will also deal 1,000% damage to champions and the defending champion has a 50% damage reduction under their turret.
Champions who are about to trigger Lane Swap Detection will get a warning ping as well as a text warning that they’re about to trigger lane swapping penalties. And champions who trigger Lane Swap Detection will have a debuff, an icon over their champion, and repeated text warning them that they’re taking lane swap penalties.
“Our prior design for reducing lane swaps (making top and mid outer tower take reduced damage in the early game) is insufficient as the amount of gold we’re comfortable pushing into turret plates is not high enough to outweigh the potential benefits of skipping the early laning phase,” Riot added.
“As a result, we’re implementing some very strong and targeted early game penalties for playing out non-traditional lane assignments. To be clear, these rules will not affect teams who don’t play with any junglers at all, so for any 2/1/2 fans out there (under 1% of League games), feel free to keep duo laning top.”
Ruddy Regan responded to the changes here:
Riot details specifics around the return of Hextech Chests, Your Shop and The Blue Essence Emporium
Last week, Riot announced a u-turn, confirming that Hextech Chests and Clash would be returning to League of Legends following player backlash.
Now it has gone into some more detail around how this will look.
In patch 25.05:
- There will be 10 Hextech Chests and Keys: 8 on the free Pass, and 2 additional with Honor (up to 60 per year). Chests from both the Pass and from Honor will be the exact same Chests asthe ones you got through Champ Mastery. And the 2 Hextech Chests from Honor will be coming in Patch 25.06.
- The Blue Essence cost of all champions will be reduced by 50%
- Adding 25 Mythic Essence to the paid Battle Pass to replace one paid pass skin.
- Clash is going back to a monthly cadence.
- Sometime during 25.05, Riot will consolidate all Key Fragments into Keys, rounding up leftover fragments. Any Key fragment amount (greater than 0) will round up to 3 Fragments and you just need to forge them into a Key in your inventory
In patch 25.06:
- Your Shop is coming back as originally planned.
In patch 25.07:
- The Blue Essence Emporium will return as originally planned
And elsewhere, Riot is delaying the Sahn Uzal Mordekaiser Exalted skin while they make improvements. Riot also said they are increasing the quality of Battle Pass skins going forward, and that with the Rell and Alistar skins no longer available in the pass, Riot is making changes to them.
“Frankly the Alistar skin in particular just wasn’t very good,” Riot said. “We’re leaning towards just putting more time into another skin that Alistar has coming later this year instead of trying to improve this one, given the starting point isn’t that strong. As for Rell, we’re going to simply add her skin to the shop at 975RP.”
Arena returns in LoL patch 25.05
Arena will be available in EUW, EUN, RU, MEA, and TR at 8am PT (4pm UTC) on March 5th 2025, then in all Riot regions at 11am PT (7pm UTC) also on March 5th.
For this release of Arena, Riot is introducing the brand new Arena ‘Fame’ system as the main way to progress.
“You’ll generally gain Fame depending on how you place in any individual game, but in addition to just playing and winning there will also be a set of three missions you can accomplish per champion that will drastically accelerate your Fame levelling experience,” Riot said.
“We’re experimenting with other ways of progression for engaged Arena players, as we were seeing that a large portion of the Arena audience wasn’t excited by Ranked, and in some cases were actively put off from the mode by the seriousness a rank provides. We’re exploring the best version of Arena metasystems to support Arena feeling worth your time and fun to play.”
Each game of Arena will now also feature a group of famous Noxians or Reckoners (aka champions), that will show up during different event rounds as “Guests of Honor.”
Every player in the lobby will then be able to vote on the Guests that have shown up and then the system will randomly roll a player and the guest they stand behind. The winning Guest will introduce a new rule that will be in place for the rest of the game.
See more specifics and updates in Riot’s LoL patch 25.05 notes on the League of Legends website
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.
