Big changes on the way to Pre-Season update in League of Legends

After Worlds patch 8.19 arrived last week, that means we have only one big update before the end of the year and it’s called the Pre-season update.

The pre-season will kick off with Patch 8.23, which should only be about eight weeks away from now. Unlike the mid-season update(s), Riot plans on dishing out all pre-season gameplay changes with this patch, rather than dole them out in increments over the course of the pre-season. According to Riot lead designer Andrei “Meddler” van Roon explained in a forum post today.

So far, there are a decent amount of gameplay changes coming, including a complete overhaul of the ranked ladder with positional ranks and two new tiers, as well as major changes to the rune system that was first implemented in the last pre-season. Don’t worry, it isn’t getting totally redesigned again, the bonus stats you get for taking certain rune path combinations is just going to be unlinked from the actual rune paths, so gameplay itself won’t be much different.

Aside from that, we have no doubt there will be some more minor changes implemented to various roles, but nothing terribly major has been announced just yet. In other words, while it’s good that Riot is going to try to include all the big stuff in one patch, it doesn’t sound like there’s actually that much to include—at least not yet.

All Pre-Season changes set to be arrive with patch 8.23 in nearly eight weeks from now.