League of Legends Dev Diary Hints at New Item for Teams Without Marksmen

A new League of Legends Dev Diary previewed some of Riot Games' goals for early 2018, one of which is to introduce a new item to accommodate teams who choose not to have marksmen.

No-marksmen teams in League aren't unheard of, but they are uncommon. Even if a champion doesn't fill the marksman role in the bot lane, they'll usually find their way into the jungle or another role such as Ezreal and Graves' move to the jungle or Lucian's move to mid in the past. But for teams that want to completely stray away from having a marksman position at all, it appears Riot has plans to help such strategies come to fruition.

"You'll probably see us making two different types of changes," said Riot's lead gameplay producer Jessica "Safelocked" Nam at the 2:45 mark regarding position diversity. "Firstly, we're looking into itemization options to open up some new possibilities and builds. For example, we're looking into a new item that might open up possibilities for team comps without marksmen. The second type of change you'll see is direct champion kit changes designed to open up additional playstyles."

No further details were given on what the item might do or exactly which team comps would appreciate it aside from those without marksmen, but it'll have to be fairly impactful to mitigate the loss of the ranged, sustained damage that marksmen offer.

The position diversity subject was the third goal that was addressed by Safelocked during the Dev Diary, the others being "Rune Updates" and "Patch Cadence Changes." While many goals stem from the new Runes Reforged system, the plans to continue working on the runes included the development of new rune options, specifically a Keystone Rune for bruisers. Safelocked acknowledged that some players feel the Resolve rune tree is less exciting than the others due to its tanky, survivability-focused nature, but the new Keystone Rune will look to resolve that.

Patch cadence is also something that's been discussed before, the alternating between larger and smaller patches. The next small patch, for example, will be 8.3 and will include a few buffs and nerfs for certain champ and runes, but nothing major included.

Check out the full Dev Diary above to hear everything that was discussed.