League of Legends is going to change — A LOT!
Starting with Season 10, "Rise of the Elements" will bring an overhaul update of the drakes. New buffs, new zones and bushes — get ready to adapt to a completely transformed Summoner's Rift!
Elemental Rifts
GOAL: Every game, Summoner's Rift presents a variety of distinct and memorable environments for players to master.
Rise of the Elements will bring the Summoner's Rift to life as the primal magic of the Elemental Drakes changes the landscape each game. The third drake transforms the Rift before it spawns and after that, its element will be the only one to spawn for the remainder of the game.
Infernal Rift
The Infernal Drake sunders the Rift, creating new pathways through buff camps and burning away their brush. In addition, the dragon pit itself becomes the Infernal Drake’s molten domain, crumbling the walls at the mouth of the pit. New paths make opportunities for a quick flank or sidestep that your opponent isn’t expecting.
Ocean Rift
The Ocean Drake brings new life to the Rift, causing existing brush to expand, fresh patches of brush to grow around the dragon pit, and the environment to flood with pools of water. In addition, Honeyfruit plants sprout up in each jungle quadrant. Sneak around the jungle or look for a new ambush opportunity.
Cloud Rift
The Cloud Drake’s power spawns air currents flowing through the jungle and dragon pit, speeding up champions in the vicinity. Dodge skillshots or make a swift collapse on your enemies trying to sneak a far away objective.
Mountainous Rift
The Mountain Drake triggers a seismic shift throughout the Rift. Bluffs of rock erupt from the earth, making for some scary new choke points and ambush locations, most notably across the mouth of the dragon pit itself. Extra tight spaces give opportunities for big AOE wombos and create some interesting new hiding spots with fog of war.
"We wanted to make sure the Elemental Rifts are fair to both teams regardless of whether one team is ahead on drakes. Keeping your head in the game if you fall behind early can be hard enough as-is; we didn't want to make it feel like the map itself was trying to make you lose, too. When creating new layouts for the Rifts, we wanted to make sure each of them would be as exciting and fair as the base SR map. Both teams have the opportunity to exploit and master the new terrain equally, so the outcomes are still in players' hands regardless of which Elemental Rift takes shape.
Additionally, we wanted to ensure the Rifts feel intuitive, even in your first game. We avoided creating new gameplay mechanics in favor of expanding the SR elements you're already familiar with. We also made sure the changes always occur in the jungle near buff camps and dragon pit so that no matter which element you get, you'll interact with the layout changes around the same areas."
Elemental Buffs & Dragon Souls
GOAL: The elemental buffs are more equal in both satisfaction and strength.
The Elemental Drakes themselves still grant different flavors of permanent, stacking buffs to your team when killed, but some buffs are now a little different.
- Infernal Might: Gain a percentage increase of Attack Damage and Ability Power.
- Oceanic Will: Regenerate a percentage of missing health every second.
- Cloudbringer’s Grace: Gain cooldown reduction for your Ultimate ability.
- Mountainous Vigor: Gain a percentage increase of Armor and Magic Resistance.
When a team kills their fourth Elemental Drake, instead of stacking their elemental buff, they'll gain a powerful Dragon Soul from the dominant dragon. Dragon Souls persist through death and last the remainder of the game.
- Infernal Dragon Soul: Every 3 seconds, your next attack or damaging spell creates a small AoE explosion, dealing adaptive damage that scales with bonus attack damage, ability power, and bonus health.
- Ocean Dragon Soul: Dealing any damage triggers strong health and resource regeneration for 3 seconds.
Damage to minions provides less regeneration. - Cloud Dragon Soul: Hitting enemies with abilities or attacks lowers the cooldowns of your base abilities.
- Mountain Dragon Soul: After not taking damage for 5 seconds, gain a shield that lasts until destroyed. The shield’s magnitude scales with bonus attack damage, ability power, and bonus health.
Once one team has claimed a Dragon Soul, it becomes the Elder Dragon's turn to defend the pit—this means only one team can have a Dragon Soul.
Elder Dragon
GOAL: Elder buff is more satisfying; Elder buff doesn't favor the team with more dragons.
Elder Dragon still grants a powerful, short-term combat buff, and we're retooling it to offer teams who failed to claim a Dragon Soul a teamfight-focused hope of getting back into the game. To achieve this, we're removing Elder Dragon's scaling with Elemental Drake buffs (which favors the team that's ahead) and replacing it with a new execution component. If Elder's burn damage affects a low-health enemy champion, they’ll be consumed by a searing Elder Immolation—killing them instantly!
Enemies affected by the Elder burn have a small marker on their health bar, indicating the execution threshold. The execution has a brief wind-up, so with quick reactions, Immolation victims can avoid imminent execution with the usual suite of clutch save abilities or spells (Zhonya’s Hourglass, Kindred’s Ultimate, etc). The threat of Immolation will still be there when they become vulnerable again, so if the Elder buff burn is applied a second time, it’s back to the fountain!
Side Lane Alcoves & Brush
GOAL: The side lanes offer greater outplay opportunities by allowing players to turn fights through clever environmental play.
Aside from the Elemental Rifts and other Dragon changes, we've made some renovations to other parts of Summoner’s Rift. We've created identical alcoves in top and bottom lane. Both alcoves feature three patches of brush on their outer edges and a small space in their center for champions to juke around or hide in.
As usual, all the changes will be tested on the PBE before reaching the live servers — which means that they're still incredibly subject to changes.
If everything goes well, Rise of the Elements should arrive alongside patch 9.23, around November!
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