Riot Will Trim Down League of Legends' Mobility Creep Problem "In a Few Patches"

Riot Games said recently that it would look at cutting away some of what it called the "systemic mobility" present currently in League of Legends. Players may recognize the problem by a different term known as "mobility creep," but the result is the same with champions have access to too many kinds of movement options they wouldn't normally get that are granted through runes and items on top of their abilities. As for the timing for when these changes will come through, Riot said to look for them "in a few patches."

Mark "Riot Scruffy" Yetter, the gameplay design director for League, penned some early thoughts on the matter shared on Twitter before following that up with a more detailed post in the Quick Gameplay Thoughts series that looked closer at the mobility creep present in League. Things like Prowler's Claw and Stridebreaker have been cited as examples from players of items that grant extra movements to champions who shouldn't have access to those abilities whether they're big champs like Darius or assassins who already have movement abilities, but no specific items were mentioned in the post.

Yetter did list items that break class weaknesses as "poor uses of mobility," however, so it certainly seems like Stridebreaker will fall into that category. Stridebreaker was mentioned in Yetter's briefer comments from before, so it sounds like that one's definitely getting nerfed.

"Some classes (like Juggernauts) are built with exceptional strengths around their lack of mobility," Yetter said. "Offering them too much mobility via runes or items can break both the expectations of players in the game and the intended weaknesses of the class. This doesn't mean they can never be offered mobility, it just has to be done with extra care. Systemic mobility in particular is an area we pushed too far with the item update and its followup, and our trimming pass will focus on this space."

For those who've been saying for a while now that League has too much mobility and wonder why it's now being addressed, Yetter said it's important to "push and test the limits" of League. It's now time to reign things back in though, and that'll happen within a few patches.

"How did we get here? It's necessary to push and test the limits of the game to find great improvements, but that does mean that sometimes we will go too far and need to pull back," Yetter said. "So we're working on a few changes to trim down on small instances of mobility creep and a few larger ones where we think we pushed too far in terms of breaking class weaknesses. Look for those in a few patches. Thanks again for playing with us."