League of Legends Devs Reveal How New Arena Game Mode Works

By Tanner Dedmon

The next new League of Legends game mode, the 2v2v2v2 one, was finally revealed in full this week with Riot Games explaining how its new "Arena" mode will work. This mode is one that's been talked about for a long time now and is finally almost ready to make its debut next month alongside the cross-game Soul Fighter event. A new champion, Naafiri, is also releasing soon, so between that, the new event, and the Arena game mode, players will have plenty to experiment with over the next couple of weeks.

Arena's setup is like a mix of a matches in and on Summoner's Rift, Nexus Blitz, and Teamfight Tactics. After queuing up with a buddy or a random teammate, players pick and ban champions in a Blind Pick setup before engaging in round-based 2v2v2v2 fights like you'd see in a Teamfight Tactics match. Each team has a "health bar" like in TFT, too, and when yours is gone, you're out.

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That's the very high-level look at the mode, but things in Arena get much different beyond that. The mode is played on a series of four new maps which are mini arenas themselves and contain varying terrains and effects like "Deep Water" for Qiyana to use and a new stat-boosting "Power Flower" plant.

One of the biggest changes that's planned for this mode is the appearance of cameo champions dubbed "Soul Fighters" just like the upcoming event. These champions appear at random during rounds with chaotic effects inspired to their abilities. The 10 Soul Fighter champions that can appear are Samira, Naafiri, Lux, Sett, Viego, Jhin, Gwen, Evelynn, Shaco, and Pyke.

"Lux sweeps the arena, ulting the first person she finds. Sett takes damage until he runs out of health before punching at the enemies of the team who last hit him," Riot said in a preview of what's to come. "And Shaco? Well, he just runs around and does Shaco things. Our goal is for these Cameos to introduce even more game-to-game variance, which should help make Arena fun to play whether it's your first or twentieth game."

Thankfully, the items, Summoner Spells, and Runes situation gets a bit simpler. Buy phases exist like in TFT with only big items like Trinity Force and Goredrinker buyable with round-based gold as opposed to buying components. Runes don't exist in this mode, and Summoner Spells are reduced to just Flash and a new one called "Flee" which grants a brief burst of speed but is more useful when paired with certain Augments. These Augments combine elements of TFT and Nexus Blitz and grant champions powerful abilities like teleporting, other champions' passives, and more that they wouldn't normally have access to through traditional matches.

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League players will be able to play this mode soon enough in July, but it won't stick around for forever. Riot did say, however, that it'd like to bring this mode back in the future, though that depends on how it's received. You can read up on the mode in greater detail here.

"You may notice some jank and a missing feature or two, but we wanted to get Arena into your hands as soon as possible so you could all enjoy it instead of polishing it up to the nth degree," Riot said. But rest assured that if you all like and play this mode, we'll bring it back again with another pass to get those missing pieces in."

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