League of Legends Devs Tease New and Reworked Weapons

League of Legends players who’ve been active since the great item overhaul of the 2021 season [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

League of Legends players who've been active since the great item overhaul of the 2021 season should by now be well-acquainted with those items, but there are also some new and reworked ones coming in the future that you'll have to familiarize yourself with. Riot Games teased those new and renovated items this week in an Ask Riot post where it previewed some of the plans for the two new items that'll be added as well as the future of Sanguine Blade.

Jeevun "Jag" Sidhu, the lead game designer on League's Summoner's Rift Team, opened this week's Ask Riot post by talking about the future item plans. The question from a community member asked if there were plans to add more items to the shop, and while the answer to that could always be assumed to be a "yes," Sidhu offered much more information beyond that to say what, exactly, the developers will be adding. Specific names and effects weren't mentioned, but we were able to get an idea of the items that'll be added.

One of those items is a Legendary tool for tanks that has a binding mechanic like Zeke's Convergence, though this one has a neat twist to it in that it binds to enemies instead. After doing so, it offers damage and tenacity reduction against that particular target. If you're a tank against a Kraken Slayer Vayne or want to bind to the only AP enemy on an otherwise AD team after you've built mostly armor, this sounds like an item that'll be well-suited for both of those sorts of situations.

The new tank item is one Riot says will ideally release during the summer, but the release window of the second new item is less certain. That one doesn't have a name yet either but is a Legendary item for Enchanter supports. It's meant to provide protections against Enchanters who get caught out through "burst resistance in the vein of Zhonya's Hourglass, but with a much more supportive bend." Riot said this item may not release until the preseason period.

Finally, there's the reworked Sanguine Blade that Riot said it hopes to ship alongside the new tank item. It will no longer be a Lethality item and will instead be geared towards AD champions who like to split in solo lanes, so it sounds like something that'll be perfect for champs like Fiora, Jax, and Tryndamere.

"This item has an awesome solo operative fantasy, but its stat package has struggled to support it," Sidhu said about the item. "We're reworking this item and taking it out of the lethality space, broadening its appeal to any AD champion focused on side laning as their win condition. We'll be shifting the item's power so that it partially indexes in 1vX potential (which is fairly solo queue focused), but now it'll also partially index into taking a tower that is being defended by a durable opponent (which is fairly pro focused)."

Riot teased more work to be done on "item spaces" during the preseason, but details on those couldn't be shared just yet.

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