Role Quests have been a huge part of League of Legends since they were added. For Season 2 in patch 26.9, however, a number of changes are coming to the popular feature. With the aim of shaking up and improving for the new season.
Role Quests Changes in 26.9
The first key change comes in the form of the penalty for leaving the lane. This was something many players felt was a pain point of the system. “With this update, we’re lessening penalties when you just need to get out of your lane towards the end of the laning phase.”
- Quest Point Penalty applied to CS / Turrets / Plates: -50% ⇒ -75%, decreasing down to -0% based on Quest Progress
To add to this, Riot is also changing how you earn progress for the quests. The aim is also to help improve the flow at which people earn quest rewards.
- Passive Point Progression: 0.333 per second, increased to 1.6 per second while they are “in the quest lane” ⇒ 0.333/s, increased to 1.5/s while you are “in the quest lane”
- “In the quest lane”: Defined as near or past the lane’s outermost turret ⇒ Defined as anywhere in the lane, outside of your base
- Recall Penalty to Passive Point Earn: Functionally exists because passive point gain was reduced until the outermost turret, creating a minor bias towards mid lane (shorter) ⇒ Disables passive point earn entirely for 12s after recalling
To sum the changes up, Riot seems to be looking at a solution that works as follows. “For every two minutes spent in lane, you can spend one minute out of lane.” This should be good news for many laners, but it feels like mid lane and support could see the most benefit from it.
Role Quest Rewards
To improve things in the Role Quest area, the rewards for the quests are changing as well. These changes impact three lanes in particular and attempt to change the way each of the three lanes flows.
“For top, we’re doing a minor nerf to overall experience gain and adjusting the experience bonus to distinguish between champion and non-champion sources. Effectively, this will help out top laners who prefer scrappy teamfights over split pushing. We’re also ensuring that we avoid top lane experience creep situations where top laners who end up repeatedly killing each other scale their own level and experience rewards.”
- Top Lane – XP Increase: +12.5% from all sources ⇒ +80 flat XP on champion takedown; +11% from all other sources
“For mid, we’re replacing the empowered recall effect with a percent-based increase to bonus AD and AP. We’ve felt that mid has lost some of its carry and scaling fantasy compared to top and bot’s rewards, which get more levels and XP or more gold and items. We’re hoping this change provides an edge over other lanes to spike harder on item purchases.”
- Mid Lane – Role Quest Reward: Empowered Recall (300s CD, reduced by 60s on Takedown) ⇒ +6% Bonus AD and 6% Bonus AP
“We feel like bot lane is a little too strong and snowballs a little too hard, given their late-game fantasy. So we’re giving a minor nerf to their bonus takedown gold.”
- Bot Lane – Bonus Takedown Gold: 50g ⇒ 40
Minion Waves Changes
The last change to laning comes in the form of alterations to minion waves. This won’t impact the early game, with Riot looking to make minions slightly more durable in the mid to late game.
“We’re moderately increasing minion wave durability, mostly around mid and late laning phase, to help increase minion action. This should also have a minor impact on opening up roaming windows as well as slightly increase wave stacking effects, allowing teams to spend a bit more time outside of the lane while a wave builds up.”
- Melee Minion Health: 440 (+25 every 90s; then +35 after this has happened 5 times)⇒ 430 (+35 every 90s)
- Minion Slayer (Minion Damage Bonus to other Minions): +[2 Melee | 4 Ranged | 6 Siege]% Current HP On Hit ⇒ +[2 Melee | 3.5 Ranged | 5 Siege]% Current HP On Hit
Season 2 looks set to be an evolution over a revolution for League of Legends. With Riot seems overall happy with the balance of the game.