League of Legends is Slowing Down Champion Gameplay Updates

Riot Games is planning on slowing down the Gameplay Updates for League of Legends champions for the foreseeable future.

The news that not as many League champions will be reworked may come as good or bad news depending on how you feel about recent updates. If you've enjoyed the results of the recent direction for Xin Zhao and Azir, you might be a bit disheartened to hear that those types of updates will be postponed for a while. But the compromise here is that updates like Evelynn's are still on the table, so you can expect to see more of them in the future.

"For a little while (approximately the rest of the year) we'll be putting less time into gameplay updates like Xin Zhao's or Azirs and a lot more into getting pre-season ready and then balanced once it's out," Riot Meddler said, explaining their reasoning for slowing down the updates. "We'll get back to gameplay updates at around the same speed sometime early next year, but expect to see fewer of those for a bit."

However, those who have been keeping up with the recent updates for champions will recall that there's a difference between Gameplay Updates and Visual and Gameplay Updates. The former deals with updating a champion's abilities and playstyle with a few animation tweaks to match – Xin Zhao being a prime example of that – and the latter is for large-scale updates for those who need quite a bit more work, such as Evelynn, Urgot, and Warwick. These types of updates, according to Meddler, will maintain their current schedule assuming the preseason changes don't pull in too many people from other teams.

As for the post-Evelynn update that players can look forward to, Swain's the next champion in line for a VGU. He's been added to the schedule for his update after being confirmed in recent months that he'd be reworked, so expect to see all an all-new kit, design and lore for the Noxian ruler.

Aatrox still has his spot reserved for a GU as well, the only other champion besides Swain who's left to be worked on, so those who main the Darkin Blade can still expect to see some changes soon.