Patch 6.8 for League of Legends preps the game for mid-season magic

Riot like to fiddle with the League of Legends formula quite often. Every two weeks or so, they drop a patch, which tweaks the core experience in small doses. Every few months however, they really go out of their way to shake up their MOBA. They release a huge seasonal update, and it often comes packed with some proper game changing stuff.

A patch of that nature is due soon as a matter of fact – a mid-season overhaul. Riot have gone into a bit more detail regarding it, and it looks like Mages are going to get a whole lot of loving…

As we witness the best teams in the world duke it out for international fame and fortune, the mid-season intermission that follows is about all of us taking a deep breath and reflecting on how far we’ve come and how far we have to go. This mid-season, significant updates will be rolled out to our most magical roster of champions, sorcerous new items will be introduced, and the elemental dragons are taking flight. How do my enemies want to win, and how do I stop it? Now, more than ever, League is about playing your opponent as you play the game.

Unfortunately, this mid-season update isn’t out, not just yet anyway. In the meantime, players can enjoy patch 6.8, which somewhat preps League of Legends for all these upcoming changes. Here’s an overview:

Welcome to patch 6.8, the one before mid-season (pre-mid-season?!). We’ll have more than enough time to talk about the specifics of that spicy update, but for the moment let’s ask this question – how do we balance in the face of an impending major update? As you’d expect, the answer is ‘carefully.’

If our goal is to be careful, then that means focusing on outliers – either too dominant or too weak – that we don’t think mid-season will impact significantly. We’re toning down some early-game sustain, as well as the main offenders in the ‘Everyone Gets To Be A Tank’ party (Ekko, Iceborn Gauntlet). We’re also showing love to some fan favorites (MF, Rumble) that play particularly well with and against the wizardly warriors to be spruced up next patch.

Mix it all together with a fabulous new Taric and you’ve got yourself a medium-sized patch with just enough excitement to hold you over until a cadre of updated mages waltz up and optic blast you into the next dimension (look out for Malzahar). That’s all for us this patch – we’ll see you around the Rift, playing some new champion named ‘Galio’.

The new Taric is now available? That’s simply fabulous news!

Other than that, there are some pretty stock standard tweaks included in Patch 6.8. Riot are no doubt saving all the juicy stuff for the mid-season update, which should be out soon hopefully. Are you ready for it? Are you excited for all the upcoming changes?

Last Updated: April 21, 2016