League of Legends Patch Decreases Early Death Timers

The patch notes for the newest League of Legends patch that's coming this week include a change that lets players respawn quicker at the start of games.

In a section of the official patch notes that deals with snowballing potential in the early game, death timers are the first area that was looked at. These respawn times give the player who killed their lane opponent a chance to revel in victory and exert their influence on the map during a brief moment of operation, but Riot Games says that the time it takes for respawning champs to come back is perhaps a bit too long in early levels. The goal is indeed to take our your opponent and put them behind, but that can be devastating at early levels if you get unlucky once or twice and struggle to get back in the game.

"While you're dead, you miss out on a ton of experience and gold, meaning that not only has your opponent gotten ahead, but you've fallen further behind. We're reducing death timers early on so that players can get back into the action more quickly."

To make this happen, the death timers from levels 1-6 are being reduced quite a bit. Four seconds are being shaved off of the level 1 death timer with the level 6 respawn time becoming even shorter. The changes end at level 7 though as everything above that remains the same, so players won't notice any difference beyond these early levels.

• DEATH TIMERS LEVELS 1-6 10-22.5 seconds (at levels 1-6) ⇒ 6-16 seconds (at levels 1-6)
• DEATH TIMERS LEVEL 7 25 seconds ⇒ 21 seconds
• DEATH TIMERS LEVEL 8+ unchanged

Going along with the death timer changes, early-game snowballing is also being changed by Riot Games altering the bounties and outer turret gold system. Collecting bounties from champions will now start when someone has two kills with the bounties offering more gold regardless of levels, but destroying the outer turrets will no longer grand players as much gold when the patch is deployed.

Bounties

• [NEW] 2-KILL BOUNTY 150 gold
• 3-6 KILLS: 200-325 gold (at 3-6 kills) ⇒ 300-500 gold (at 3-6 kills)
• LEVEL 6+: 25 gold per additional kill ⇒ 50 gold per additional kill

Outer Turret Gold

• GOLD REWARD: 100 gold per player per turret ⇒ 50 gold per player per turret

League of Legends Patch 8.13 is scheduled to go live tomorrow. You can check out the full list of changes that include the big Aatrox rework that's featured in the trailer above by heading to the official patch notes.