League of Legends: Preseason 2020 Confirmations

With the 10^th Anniversary Edition of Riot Pls in full swing, Riot has come out and given a few details into the upcoming preseason 2020. With 10 years of League comes 10 days of gifts in which players can log in and collect new daily rewards. Of course, in classic Riot fashion, there will be a Summoner Icon being given out during this time.

First off, the new season will be called “Rise of the Elements” bringing drastic new changes to the Summoner’s Rift everyone has come to know. The Elemental Drakes will offer a lot more than just standard buffs, altering the entire map as the game progresses. In a new “elemental domination” mechanic, the most captured dragon will drastically change the way you play the game. Rise of the Elements begins October 22nd on the Public Beta Environment (PBE). These features will hit the live servers on November 20th.

Should the infernal drake “take over” the map, walls will burn down and offer new routes to move through. Ocean drake will increase brush sizes and the volume at which honey fruit spawns. With the mountain drake taking over, new terrain will spawn around the map, creating new areas with passive effects. Lastly, the cloud drake will create “wind tunnels” that increase movement speed around certain areas, enabling bonus movement. Cloud drake will also offer an ultimate ability cooldown on top of the move speed buff.

Continuing with the “Rise of the Elements” trend, reaching the third stack of a buff will give the capturing team yet another bonus (information unreleased). These bonuses will vary on the “dominating element”. Another major change coming is in the form of the Elder Drake. The elder buff will lose its passive bonus stat increases in favor of a new “execution”.

In the trailer shown, Twitch briefly morphs into the Elder Dragon while combating an enemy Lulu and executes her. Upon an enemy reaching around 30% health, the champion with the Elder buff will shapeshift. This transformation blasts a laser similar to that of Aurelion Sol’s ultimate ability and executes an enemy upon their health bar being lowered drastically.

There will also be a multitude of new map changes including new top and bottom lanes that feature a small divot similar to that of Nexus Blitz’s bottom lane. This new divot will increase lane gank potential and spice up lane phase. The new area is shrouded in the fog of war and falls behind the lane brushes, furthering the depth of possible gank strategy.

Aside from the drastic alterations, there will be some returning elements. League of Legends will once again be graced with everyone’s favorite rotating game mode, URF. That’s right, URF (with champion select) will return to the game! It’s already available on the PBE and is set to return to live servers sometime late next week.