League of Legends Devs Preview Huge Changes Planned for "Champion Durability Update"

League of Legends' next update is planned for May 11th and will bring about big changes for champions like Taliyah and others, but the one after that releasing on May 25th is shaping up to be a much bigger deal that'll affect every champion in the game. That's because it's the one Riot Games has been referring to as the "Champion Durability Update" where it pulls back on the overall power champions have while giving each character a bit more survivability. Riot previewed some of its plans for those changes this week, and in addition to those, we've possibly now seen an unofficial preview of exactly what those changes will look like.

Riot talked about this 12.10 Update in its latest Quick Gameplay Thoughts post. Base health, health gained per level, armor gained per level, and magic resist gained per level are the four stats Riot said it's particularly concerned with which makes sense if the goal is to make a champion survive longer. Associated changes like sustain nerfs, turret damage buffs, and more are also planned.

"Devs and players agree—there is currently too much damage in League," said the Summoner's Rift Team in the post. "While tons of damage can be fun and exciting, we believe that increasing champions' defensive stats will be beneficial for letting players showcase their skill by giving them more opportunities for counterplay and to live out their high moments."

More detailed explanations were offered, but the TLDR of the update provided by Riot said players will deal and take less damage, will have to commit more resources if they're playing a bursty champion, should have bigger opportunities for counterplay, and will experience longer teamfights. Riot added that the goal isn't to create games where there are no kills happening 15 minutes in and that it'll monitor the "sweeping durability changes" to see if more changes are needed. League dev Riot Axes said on Reddit the team anticipates it "will need to quickly nerf or buff a variety of champions" and that there's already a micropatch anticipated.

While no specific values were listed in the Quick Gameplay Thoughts post, some numbers have begun floating around online in videos like the one above from Vandiril. The YouTuber said every champion is getting a "stat package" that'll give them at level 18 a total of 308 extra health, 20.4 extra armor, and 13.6 extra magic resist. Another League dev commenting on a Reddit post about that exact video said they were "excited for these changes" which lends some legitimacy to the numbers, though we won't know exactly what's planned until we see the patch notes.