League of Legends’ Next Patch Is One for Snowballing Champions

League of Legends players should brush up on their Katarina and Zed mechanics among other snowballing champions to prepare for the new patch that releases next week.

Patch 8.10, the next update that’s expected to be released on Wednesday of next week, includes several changes that’ll make these solo carry champions more powerful. The changes don’t come in the form of straight up buffs for the champions that can take over games with ease, but they’ll instead have more resources to work with assuming they can fulfill their role of stomping their opposing laner.

Reminding players of what’ll be coming in Patch 8.10, Riot Meddler summed up the changes in a post that explained how snowballing champs will better be able to do their job next week.

“We’re continuing to work on changes that get a bit more solo carry potential back in the game,” Riot Meddler said. “8.10’s got the bounty changes (solo gold, not team gold) and jungle changes (junglers not being able to level 3 gank as early). For 8.11 we’re looking at shifting some tower gold, on both outer and inner towers, from team gold to solo gold, focus that increased power more on whoever’s gained that advantage for their team.”

Confirming the worries of those who don’t play these champions, Riot Meddler said that yes, this will result in some champs occasionally snowballing out of control and running an entire game themselves. Touching on some of the recent discussions within the community regarding the fact that one player can’t carry a game right now but one player can certainly lose the game for their team, Riot Meddler explained that Riot has put too much emphasis on teamplay recently and is dialing back.

“One important thing to note is that increased solo carry potential is going to result in more cases of single champions snowballing and deciding the game. We think we’ve pushed too far on teamplay, hence some movement back in the other direction. Does mean there’ll be more cases of one person doing well, getting fed and dominating though. If your actions as a single player can carry the game, so can other people’s. We think that’ll be good overall, but will come at some trade off.”

This isn’t the first time that this idea has been discussed, so Riot’s most recent post is more of a reminder so that non-solo carry players aren’t caught off guard by the changes. Riot discussed the possibility of putting power in solo carries’ hands back in March with the patch that does so releasing later this week.