Riot buffing ADC and nerfing mid-lane in LoL

Riot Games has already made major changes to both top-lane and jungle positions in League of Legends. According to lead gameplay designer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter, they now have plans to help out bottom-lane players by giving their role additional power.

Planned changes for bottom-lane

It looks like bottom-lane is next up on the list of loving. Said Scruffy, “Bottom carry power has decreased slightly this season, so we wanted to put a small amount of power back into the role. We are exploring a few options, and we may not put power directly back into XP.”

As part of this, Scruffy went on to say developers planned on looking into nerfing the mid-lane a bit. Despite the middle lane being one of the strongest roles in the game, he said there might be a little too much carrying power available. So the balancing act continues.

The only balancing Riot may need to complete is applying sufficient nerfs to pull down mid-lane numbers slightly. But they still need to make sure the role remains one of the most influential positions in League of Legends. By making these changes, the developers want to avoid accidentally affecting the top-lane. So this may be a simple matter of making changes to champion mechanics rather than tuning numbers down.

Recent role changes

Riot recently focused its efforts on making changes to the top lane after players complained about the role’s lack of impact on the match. The resulting effort meant adjusting multiple items for top-laners, increasing the gold turret plates give, and lowering damage that ranged champions do to towers.

Due to these changes, it increased the number of towers, kills, and damage top laners accrued throughout the following games. In theory, changing the ADC role could further help bottom-lane players carry matches with more ease. But we’ll have to see what the changes actually end up being.

Ryan Goodrich

Ryan has been writing since long before he could even write. He's written resumes, software user guides, consumer electronic reviews, and myriad web content spanning a variety of industries. But now he's writing about video games, which is much more interesting.

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