Riot Dev Reveals Plans for Reducing Overall Damage in League of Legends

A Riot Games developer (dev), in a Reddit comment, revealed that they were working on finding ways for reducing overall damage in League of Legends. Lead Gameplay Designer Bryan “Axes” Salvatore added that they were hoping to ship the changes in Season 2022 instead of waiting till the next preseason. Recently, former pro player Tim “Nemesis” Lipovšek commented on the issue on his Twitch stream and criticized the devs by comparing the damage output in the game at present and the past seasons. This rant by the former pro went viral on social media, warranting a reply from Riot.

Overall damage in League of Legends has been a subject of constant debate within the community. Also termed power creep, the players have pointed out the insane damage dealt in the game, and have called it to be nerfed. The community has complained of the one-shot kill potential that champions have, unmindful of the player mechanics.

What is Power Creep in League of Legends?

Nemesis’ comments on the power creep situation were talked about on the League of Legends subreddit, where most of the players had a similar take on the issue.

One Reddit user commented, “League right now is about who nukes whom faster. The League of One-shots.”

“Sustain is too high and damage is made too high to compensate. They both need major tuning so the game can be more linear. The game is so weird, it's like you either have just enough damage to kill the super sustain champ, or they just barely live and heal to full and kill everyone. Then everyone else who doesn't have sustain just gets one tapped instantly,” rued another player.

Riot responds to overall damage in-game

Riot Games developer Axes responded to the thread and wrote, “We are actively working on finding the good, nuanced version of reducing overall damage in the game.” Stating that there was not a good update at present, the dev added, “We’re hoping to ship it (the changes) when it’s ready, and we’re willing to ship it during the season instead of having to wait until preseason if we’re able to land it aside from specific launch windows like playoffs/MSI or the leadup to Worlds.”

Earlier in December 2021, SK Gaming’s support Erik “Treatz” Wessén called for Riot to nerf the damage, healing, and shielding in the game.

Following this, Axes gave some insights into the conclusions that the dev team drew from their internal testing with 20% less damage (on champions by champions), healing, and shielding.

In October 2021, Riot acknowledged the power creep issue in the game but revealed that a nerf would not be coming in anytime soon. In a Reddit thread, senior game designer Matt “PhRoXzOn” Leung-Harrison clarified that making changes would impact the meta and subsequently pro play.

“It would not be as simple as just reducing damage by X% and the game is fixed. Tanks, assassins, ADC, sustain, pro play watchability, game snowballiness are just some of the places that would likely need adjustment,” he said in the comment.

With Riot confirming the changes aimed at reducing the overall damage in League of Legends, players can take a breather and in the future, hope to farm the creeps in the top and bottom lanes without worrying about getting one-shot by enemies.

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