League of Legends Is Getting an Extra Fighter-Focused Patch This Month

League of Legends players will be receiving an additional patch during December that'll contain a few simple changes focused on the top lane.

Throughout the season, Riot Games has discussed different patching processes consisting of bigger and small patches broken up into separate updates. December's updates will be implemented in a similar way with the first patch that's coming soon looking more like a general patch with changes across runes, items, and champions while the second patch that's being called 7.24B will be more focused, but less complicated.

Starting with the first part of patch 7.24, Riot Maple Nectar says that players can expect to see content and changes go live that were already on the PBE. This is the patch that'll be the format that players are more used to, and while it'd usually be the final patch of the year, the second part will come just over a week after the first half of Patch 7.24 releases on Dec. 5 or Dec. 6, depending on our region.

Calling it the "holiday patch," Maple Nectar explained the purpose behind the two-part update.

"With how disruptive introducing a whole new system like Runes can be, we weren't super comfortable with the gap between 7.24 and 8.1 (December 5th - January 10th), so have added a new patch that'll ship on a bit of a weird timeline compared to usual patches," Maple Nectar said. "We're still going to do patch notes (albeit with less context than usual), and it'll look like a normal patch to you folks."

As far as what will be in the patch, Maple Nectar went on to say that it'll be all about balance, specifically for the top lane.

"Thinking tuning numbers to base stats, abilities, and items," Maple Nectar added. "Right now we're actually looking at a fairly sized chunk of champions / items, but we'll see what we end up shipping. Primary focus is on top lane/fighters, but expect changes to impact every role to varying extents. THIS PATCH IS ONLY FOR BALANCE - NO SKINS/FEATURES/MAP MODES!"

Following these two patches, Maple Nectar closed by saying that the first patch of the new season, Patch 8.01, will likely be a smaller patch than usual and is expected to be released on either Jan. 9 or Jan. 10.