All season 2 changes in League of Legends

As the bloodshed in Noxus comes to a halt, League of Legends season two is making its way to the lush Ionian lands of spiritual magic. With the change of scenery, Spirit Blossom Rift, inspired by the region’s greenery, is also coming to set the mood. There are also multiple gameplay changes with the next season, and we’ve listed all of them. 

All season 2 changes in League of Legends, listed

Here is a list of all the changes that are coming to season two of League of Legends:

Chains hold the Thornbound Atakhan, but its corruption is purified

Riot has heard the community feedback behind Voracious Atakhan, and it’s blending both forms of the monster to make Thornbound Atakhan. Depending on the action, it spawns the top and bottom sides of the map. It spawns Bloody Roses near where the kills have happened and around the pit for players, like before. 

After killing Thornbound Atakhan, it will directly give all the remaining Bloody Roses on the map to the team. All the Bloody Petals are purified into Spirit Petals with an Ionian twist, which grants a 25 percent increased effect. Players also receive the Spiritual Purification buff for the rest of the game. The buff acts after performing takedowns (kills and assists), which blesses the area around them and slows and damages enemies while also getting their team a spirit petal. 

Kills just got flashier with Kill Streak sounds

Inspired by VALORANT, League has now added Kill Steak sounds, which are subtle and spice up your fantasy of dunking on your enemy with multiple kills. These sounds play for your ears only, so your teammates won’t be able to hear them like regular announcements. It should make each multi-kill a fulfilling experience and hype up your performance. 

Void Grub and Rift Herald changes 

Void Grubs were a crucial part of the League’s Feats of Strength mechanic, and multiple esports teams focused on getting them to fulfill their epic monsters count and get the pushing power, but the developer is now changing that. The developer is removing the second Void Grub spawning, and the monsters now spawn only once during the match. As only three of them spawn at a time, the rewards for killing them have also been tuned so you’ll only get one Void mite for pushing the towers with it.

Rift Herald’s spawn time has also moved to 15 minutes in the match, and the developer has removed Shelly’s Gaze effect, which was a debuff on players who tried to take her down while increasing their overall damage to her. Riot plans to introduce a quality-of-life update for the Rift Herald in the next patch. Once the exact numbers are revealed, it’ll be easier to gauge just how impactful this epic monster will be in the mid-game.

Bounty changes to help the weaker teams come back

After years of frustration with the game’s broken bounty system, Riot is finally addressing the underlying problems. The first major change is that bounties won’t give out any bonus gold now unless you’re on the winning team. Currently, if you’re a fed champion on your team, and the enemy is even more fed and winning the match, they can’t cash in on the bounty on you as your team is losing the match. This prevents the unfair punishment of fed players trying to make a comeback. Kill gold now scales with champion level—from 250 to 400 gold instead of a flat 300. This change benefits the losing teams more.

Riot is also fixing a few bugs with the system, such as it didn’t increment the shutdown gold until after leaving champion combat, which sometimes created confusion. Another fix is coming to the bounty suppression, which only updates after a champion kills someone fed. It now re-adjusts all bounties every time, and team leads are recalculated based on the state of the match. 

Role swapping and position binding

Jungle players will be auto-assigned smite, and only one smite will be allowed per team. If you choose Spellbook, then you can choose Smite in your matches. Similarly, support players will now automatically be given the World Atlas as their starting item to prevent weird meta from emerging, such as double support items, or funnel keeping the game healthy. 

League has also added a small quality of life change in the champions draft, where players now have a small menu to swap their positions, which makes it easier to switch roles with players on the team. 

More anti-lane swap rules

Remember the World Atlas that was a compulsory item for supports? It is now getting tied to the anti-lane swap mechanic, which works with that item. The Lane swap detection will activate upon seeing a World Atlas in mid or top lane between 1:35-2:15 and 1:35-3:00 minutes, respectively, which will put the penalty on the support. The detection only works for teams with a jungler, and it only works in non-bot lanes. 

The penalty will be that the defending players will still get full gold and experience from nearby minions, and the turret will continue to deal bonus damage and take reduced damage. However, instead of a blanket 25 percent reduction to minion rewards for all players, the support alone will now be unable to cash in World Atlas stacks or gain any gold or XP from lane minions. They can hold waves in non-bot lanes, but the penalty will kick in when the laner is back in the lane. 

Death screen and UI changes

If you didn’t like how your grey screen appeared after your death made you reflect on your poor decision to take a one-vs-three teamfight in the top lane, Riot is replacing that with a slightly less grey version of the screen, which adds a bit of color. It’s also adding a screen UI, which allows you to keep track of your teammates through the screen and keep a close eye on them from the death realm. Before, players used to use their shortcut keys to switch screens with different teammates.