EVERYTHING you NEED to know about Season 16...

All right guys, let's react to the Season 16 changes 2026. There's a lot of things happening. I don't really know entirely what's going on, so I'm going to watch this video through and through and I'll give you guys my live reaction to what's happening as a Challenger player, uh, who's been Challenger like last 5 years. Uh, I'll give you guys my insights, especially focused on jungle.

It's time to talk about Season 1 of 2026. For this, we wanted a contrast from 2025. Ancient danger, a dark end, and quite a bit of scheming throughout. So next year we want to kick things off with themes of unity, hope, and justice, with a drop of righteous judgment thrown in there for good measure.

Demacia. Okay, so this is the— this is the season 1 theme, um, or this is the next— next season's theme. It's Demacia. Honestly, I think it's gonna be a good change of pace. But like, uh, lowkey, lowkey, the themes have been always something that like is worth looking into. Like, it's, it's fun, it's fun. It's a different change of pace at least. So, all right, I don't really— I mean, like skins, I don't really care about the skins. What I really care about coming in January is what are the actual game changes. Okay.

And I'm Freak, and we're here to talk to you about the Summoner's Rift gameplay changes coming in.

This is what I really care about.

Over the last few years League has been largely about team fighting over neutral objectives.

This is true.

Fighting around Grubs, Dragons, or that—

Right now, like, the state of pro play, or what the Worlds pro play was all about, was just team fighting. Like, all that mattered is you need to pick some frontline, you need to pick bruiser champions, high DPS. Uh, it's all like ball comp skirmish, like skirmishing team fighting.

So—

That vision ward you just placed around Grubs or Dragons.

And while we know 5v5s make for some of the highest highs, we want to swing back towards a state where more strategies like split splitting or sieging are more viable.

So we're making some changes to major neutral objectives, towers, and minions in order to do just that.

Additionally, we're making adjustments to roles so everyone has an appropriate impact on the outcome of each game, because right now some lanes are much better at turning a winning lane into a winning game.

We also—

okay, so I think like honestly this is going to be pretty good for the game. These changes of making things less focused around objectives But I will say, um, inherently I think some roles will just naturally be better at snowballing games than other roles. I do know some of the things that they're doing with when it comes to like quests and whatnot, so I have like a little sneak peek, but I want to see specifically what they say because I haven't watched some delightful improvements.

So let's get started.

The first thing you'll notice in January is that the game starts faster. We want to reduce downtime after you load in, so minions and basic jungle camps camps first spawn 35 seconds earlier than they do today, you'll still be able to pull off early in—

okay, so minions and jungle monsters will spawn 35 seconds earlier. Okay, so right now minions spawn at 1:05 and then jungle camps spawn at 1:30. So 35 seconds earlier. So now minions will be at 1 minute— sorry, what the fuck is this math? We have 30 seconds, and then, um, jungle camps will be at— dude, that's going to feel weird— 55 seconds, right? Because we're, we're doing 35 seconds slower. Honestly, that means— okay, because keep, keep, keep this in mind— for the first, for the first 15 seconds of the game, you are stuck in base. So you're stuck in base for 15 seconds, and then you run out of base. By the time it's 25 seconds, you're in the river, and then minions spawn. This is going to feel really weird for the game, I'm going to be so honest. It takes 20 seconds for the minions to walk from the base to the lane, so you still have time, but like, there's no more level 1 bullshit pretty much. You just like don't have time to do level 1 bullshit. Um, because they also have like the anti-lane swap situation, you just don't have any time for level 1 bullshit anymore. So it's, it's really gonna like— level 1 invading will feel way faster if you're doing an invade, or it just won't happen at all, to be honest. It just won't happen at all.

We're also making some changes to vision. It's an incredibly powerful tool in League, but right now it feels monopolized by supports and sometimes by junglers.

It's true.

We want to make effectively warding the map easier to learn for everyone and give more opportunities and power towards drops by pushing champions, especially mid and top laners who are side-laning later in the game.

So we're adding— so what's up, Veilights? Locations that grant temporary vision towards— with unique bonus vision areas for each spot. Some Veilight rings will be available at the beginning of each game, while others reveal themselves when the Elemental Rift transforms, particularly those that would otherwise disrupt early early game jungle.

Okay, so on to the objectives.

Okay, so this is huge. This we need to talk about because what they just— glad— are they not gonna tell us anymore? That is crazy what you guys— what we just saw there, guys. That is crazy. So, so he dropped a ward there and it lit up the entire river. So what I think is gonna happen and what this means is like If I ward here as bot lane, it's gonna light up everything, and that's gonna get me hella vision. And then it sounds like it's not going to last forever, but it'll give like a bonus— it'll give a bonus for any laner to keep wards, which this also means that the value of Sweeper will be a lot less because, bro, I cannot sweep your ward if there's If the ward is down here, what's the point of me taking Sweeper? And as a jungler, if I get all that vision by dropping a ward here, why would I ever take Sweeper? I might as well keep Yellow Trinket for a long time in the game. So I think junglers might actually be taking Yellow Trinket even more now. I mean, I don't see any reason to not have Yellow Trinket if you get these freaking fairy lights all times. Like, like, like, like, it's actually crazy. Look at this. He's not—

later in the game, so the whole river got lit up.

The entire river got lit up, which is crazy. The entire river got lit up. Um, I mean, it's probably cutoffs and there's probably more, uh, more specifics to how much vision you get, but I will say that like ganking is going to be even harder nowadays. Ganking could be even harder.

So on to the objectives.

Otacon was one of the biggest additions to the Rift this year and was a pretty cool, unique objective to fight over. That said, he contributed to objective fatigue, which many of you cited as an issue, and we agree. We wanted to alleviate this over time. We had removed the second form of Otacon, we removed the second set of grubs, but it really wasn't enough. So, just like Zaheen did, we are cutting Otacon out of the game. That includes Blood Roses and the petals with them.

Okay, I will tell you guys my perspective on this as a jungler and as, uh, as like, you know, high-level jungler. I've competed in Tier 2 space, I went to Korea, I've done all these sort of— I've maintained Challenger. All these things considered, to be honest, I personally liked 2 Grubs. I also personally liked, um, 2 sets of grubs. I also personally liked the Otakon and the Feats. That being said, I think every single other role felt worse. So I think this is a nice balance because junglers already have a lot of like inherent like accessibility to do whatever they want on the map. They can impact every single role and you can do so much on the map. So giving junglers more objectives to clear and like more power on the map is a bit fucked up. So I will say that like, okay, removing the set of Grubs makes sense, and then now removing Otacon makes a little bit more sense. It just made jungle a little bit too broken. Like back when, back in the day when there were 2 sets of Grubs or 2 sets of Heralds even, it made jungle a little bit overtuned. You already have dragons every 5 minutes. Like, it's more fun for junglers, but overall for everyone in the game, it's like, damn, jungle is just so broken, bro. So I can understand this one.

That said, let us know what you think about limited-time gameplay changes and if there's something you'd like to see more of.

But back to Otacon, his removal also means that Baron will go back to his old 20-minute spawn time. Welcome back, king.

Additionally, we're making all epic monsters more durable, especially late-game dragons as you get closer to Dragon Soul. That should make it so that it's easier for teams on the back foot to contest dragons and other epic monsters or trade something meaningful on the other side of the map.

Finally, we're also removing—

okay, so that's actually really important to note. I don't know the specific number, but what we have to think about is now Baron's gonna spawn back at 20 minutes. So back in the day, uh, this kind of just means that, that you can end games faster because you can siege a little bit quicker. You can get inhibs faster if you get an earlier Baron. Um, but the problem, the catch, is they're making Barons and Dragons tankier. So I think that'll balance out with the quests because quests just make every single person stronger. They have more gold, which they're going to introduce quests in a little bit. Um, but my intuition is like, okay, so objectives are going to get stronger, but it's going to be balanced because all roles are just naturally getting stronger. So it's not going to change, it's not going to feel too bad, but, um, I can see it being a little bit harder to take objectives at times. So junglers might feel like worse about it because soloing objectives might be a little bit worse.

Moving feats of strength from the game, we like that they push teams to progress the game and provided goals to rally around, but we think we can create better game systems that allow for players to have more individual agency over their games. With feats getting the boot, we're adding back some gold rewards for first blood and first turret.

Okay, I like this. No more feats, that's fine, but they need to bring back first blood gold and first turret gold. So I agree, like, if you remove feats, then bring back the gold feature. So this makes sense. Yeah, I can agree with that. I personally like the boots, but if they get first blood, first gold, or first blood and then first turret, that's fine.

Another way we're looking to improve sieging is with the new mechanic called Crystalline Overgrowth, which is kind of like a universal demolish effect. Crystals will build up on towers over several minutes, and when hit, they're consumed to deal an extra burst of damage based on how much buildup has accumulated. This should help enable pushing windows in more situations, even if you're behind or don't have the highest DPS. Demolish will be sticking around, but will be simplified to a good old 3-hit passive.

We love 3-hit passives.

Yes, we do.

Turret plates will now stay on outer turrets permanently, and will be added to the inner and inhibitor towers as well. We're doing this to create long-term piecemeal rewards for pushing. No matter what state the turret's in, you're likely to mine some gold by taking aggressive actions. We're not adding more gold to the map with these changes. Instead, we're going to be basically spreading out the current gold for killing a tower and splitting it across the plates.

To further facilitate—

wow—

we're ramping up minion respawn rates in the late game to give more frequent access to sieging turrets. We're also adjusting—

wait, okay, so before we get into the minions, that's big, that's big, guys. So these turrets are gonna have their plates. So, okay, so you guys don't know, this is important knowledge for you guys to know. These turrets are worth 800 gold, okay? This is general game knowledge. This turret's worth 550 gold. So now instead of killing the turret and you getting 675, that's a 7, 675 local gold and then 25 global gold, what I'm guessing is gonna happen is they're dividing the 675 by 5, um, or something like that. They're making it, they're making it like something a little less, I guess. And then I'm assuming breaking the turret is still going to give you something. So this is the total gold, guys. You get 25 gold per person, which is why we're totaling to 800. You yourself might only get 700 from killing the turret, but I'm talking about total gold value. Now what's going to happen is the local gold value is going to be split across the turret. Which will drastically change how split pushing works, especially as a jungler. So now instead of spending your tempo for breaking the entire turret to get the gold, you can spend half the time, get a good amount of gold, leave, and then do the same thing on the other side of the map, leave, and then go back to the other side of the map. So this will make playing the map way more important. Understanding how tempo works will be so much more important we'll also see a lot less people killing themselves for turrets because you're not getting the same amount of gold. So that mechanic will change drastically. And then these little crystals growing on turrets. So it seems like every minute, like, I'm guessing it's going to be some ratio like this. Every minute that goes by, it builds up on the— crystals build up on the turret, and when you hit it, it blows the turret up. It deals some damage to it. So this is also going to drastically impact how important it is let's say there's a team fight here and you lose the team fight. You have to go trade now because you can get immediate gold from these turrets, from these plates. So you need to understand the trading concept even more, especially in an early or, or especially in an even or behind game state, because you don't need to break the full turret to get the gold, which is crazy big of a difference. Crazy big.

To further facilitate pushing, we're ramping up minion respawn rates in the late game to give more frequent access to sieging turrets. Okay, we're also adjusting Lakem Homeguards to swiftly take you to your most pushed minion wave in each lane.

What? So they're, they're making minions spawn faster. Minions will spawn faster. So if you guys don't know, minions used to spawn at 1:05. Okay, and then pop quiz, how long does it take for the next minion wave to spawn? Okay. Pause here. If you guys— now I'm gonna tell you guys, if you guys got it correctly, good for you, it means you know your facts. It takes 30 seconds for the next minion wave to spawn. So every 30 seconds, a new minion wave spawns. So 1:35 is the next minion wave, then it's 2:05, and then it's 2:35, and so on. And as the game progresses, it stays the same. But it seems like in the mid-late game, they're gonna speed this shit up. That's very, very, very, very, very interesting for the pacing of the game. That means that, like, the games might actually be significantly quicker than what they were before. And then to add to the feel, right now movement across the map is pretty difficult. But if you have a wave pushed up, let's say you have a wave pushed up all the way here, you saw the Sion was just like zooming across the fucking map. To get here. Pushing side waves as a jungler, as a support, as any role is going to be even more important because if you have the side wave here or here, you just get to fucking run around the map like a lunatic and you're so fast. Like, why is the side have homeguards for the end? Like, what? Listen to this.

Homeguards to swiftly take you to your most—

that is like, I don't know, they need to balance the ratios here, but that is crazy. That is awesome. That's actually really broken.

Minion wave in each lane.

And finally, Nexus turrets will respawn with partial health missing. We like— okay, respawn allows a team to hold their base for a while and not have to worry about getting backdoor.

This is really good. This is the best change I've heard so far.

It meant that it was honestly incorrect for a sieging team to finish killing.

Yes, yes, this is by far the best change that I'm hearing. These turrets, if you break them will spawn with like, I think it's 40% HP, it looked like? This is a beautiful change. Sometimes you'd get punished for breaking the turrets. But now, you're not gonna get punished. This is a beautiful change. I really like turrets respawning. I think that mechanic's been really, really fun. It makes backdooring like, you need to think more. So I like this a lot. Bringing turrets to 40% HP is really fun. I think this is probably by far the best change I've heard.

Now for our biggest change for next year: role quests.

When you load into the game in January, top, bot, and mid lane will now have their own quests that reward unique power similar to the jungle pet evolutions and the support item upgrades.

Okay, so this is the biggest thing happening, guys. The— every single role is getting a unique quest line that probably requires them to fulfill their specific roles. Like junglers probably clearing camps, supports probably like placing wards or some bullshit. Lane is probably like dealing damage in mid lane, dealing damage in top lane, dealing damage in bot lane. There's probably very specific things they need to do to get their quest. This is really, really, really awesome changes. I, I'm excited to see like specifically what they're going to give and how they're going to balance ratios.

You'll progress these new quests by killing minions, champions, towers, or epic objectives. All the things you'd normally be doing in the game. You'll progress even faster by doing those in your assigned lane.

Your quest is decided by which role you've been assigned in the lobby, so if you and a friend or stranger want to change roles, make sure you do an official trade in champ select.

One of our goals with these role quests is to buff top and bot carry relative to the other roles, as they're currently the two weakest, and as a result, the quest rewards are going to be comparatively stronger for them. Now, let's get into the rewards which will be granted in a new new role quest slot.

That's cool.

Historically, top laners haven't always felt like they have the agency over the games that they deserved, even if they won their lane, and that's something we would like to change this season. Upon quest completion, top laners will receive pretty much summoner teleport for free on top of the 2 summoners they already chose. Now, if you had taken teleport in pregame, instead that spell gets a lot stronger, giving a very, very large shield when you use it. In addition to getting a functionally free summoner spell, top laners will also get a bunch of bonus XP up front.

Okay, okay, I'm not gonna use the pen here, but I do want to write this down because that's really interesting stuff. They get free teleports, um, and they get to keep their existing sums. Teleport shield if— take that as usual sum.

Summoner spell, okay, will also get a bunch of bonus XP up front, more XP from future sources and an increased level cap.

So, okay, immediate bonus EXP, bonus EXP from everything, okay, and then EXP level cap increase. That's a bit fucked up. Okay, okay, immediate bonus EXP is fine, EXP level cap increase is fine, the free teleport is actually fine. All of these things is fine. What's not okay is the bonus EXP from everything. They need to make sure that this ratio is not bonkers. As long as that's not bonkers, we'll be okay. I actually don't believe that this is that broken. It's gonna make good top laners much, much better for sure. Having a free teleport is great. But what I will say is most people aren't going to even use this properly. Like, think about the games you play. They're lasting, let's say, 27, 28, even up to like 35 minutes. People still don't hit level 18 in a game like that. Like, it's probably very rare that you even hit level 18. So I'm not too worried about the EXP cap being something crazy. But if you can get to the EXP cap quicker because bonus EXP and bonus, like, immediate bonus EXP, that's where things gets concerning. That's where it's like, okay, bro, now maybe this, this role's broken. But all things considered, This is gonna make split pushing way more broken. The fact that, like, for split pushing— like, let's just write this down— like, plates/split pushing turrets now— now, like, turrets now give percentage gold after you break each plate. Break each plate, percentage of their— of their gold total. So it's split across, split across all the plates. This is gonna make split pushing much, much more broken, and then crystals grow on turrets that haven't been hit. So here's the thing right now, right? Top laners get a lot of EXP. They got so much EXP, broken, by the way, broken. But like, okay, you're not getting much gold, so you're not completing your items, but actually you are getting gold. If you hit turrets. So yeah, top lane, top lane is getting a big buff, which I think is what they wanted. Okay, let's see, let's see what other roles get. Let's see what other roles got.

Now to mid lane, a huge variety of champions can be played there, so we wanted this reward to be good whether you're mage, assassin, or both, like Malphite mid. And upon completing the quest, mid laners will receive a free tier 3 boot upgrade like the ones you could buy with— okay, beats as well as a faster recall.

Round —it out for new—

free boot upgrade like the ones you could buy with—

there's a catch here, there's a catch. I don't know if you guys noticed it, there's a catch here. Look at this frame right here, Pop Quiz. There's a catch with this empowered recall. Do you guys see what I'm seeing? It's right here, it's right here, it's, it's in this frame right here. There's a catch with the empowered recall. It's actually very important to note here. So they're balancing it. See, they're not that crazy, right? It's not that crazy. So you get, you get free boots and you get Empowered Recall. But the catch, guys, is there's a freaking cooldown right here. I don't know if you guys caught that, but there is a cooldown. Okay, so I don't know how long this cooldown will be, but it probably isn't gonna be like, okay, I get to run, run through lane and I gotta like just go here, use the homeguards from minions, push the wave out, Empowered Recall, run here with homeguards, and and then push the wave out and recall. Like, I don't think that's what's going to be happening here because there's a cooldown. So thankfully, thankfully, with this cooldown, it seems like it's going to be a little bit more balanced. But it's actually, yeah, I mean, free, free tier 3 boots, pretty powerful.

Rounding it out for new quests in bot lane, we're going to lean even harder into the carry part of the role. So while top lane is getting bonus XP, bot laners are getting a whole bunch of extra gold when completing their quest.

Okay, so we can actually see how much gold they gained there, um, and we can also see that the quest says 1199. So this is very interesting stuff. So bot lane gets, uh, bonus gold. Bonus gold looks like 300. So you get a kill's worth of gold. So I'm, I'm assuming you're going to get a kill's worth of EXP as well. So it's not that much, uh, it's not that much.

Okay, their quest, they get a lump sum of gold, increased gold from minion kills champ kills and champion assists for the rest of the game.

And you might be asking, okay, so look, the, the amount of EXP you're getting, the amount of gold you're gaining from everything, it's only like 1 or 2. So it seems like they're not gonna make it that much, like that crazy, but it's definitely like something. So bonus gold from everything, bonus gold when you get kills, minions, etc.

Minion kills, champ kills, and champion assists for the rest of the game. And you might be asking, well then, what do I do with all this gold if I hit item cap? Don't worry, the item cap is going up. Your 7th item slot will hold your boots permanently, allowing you to get 6 full legendary items.

Extra item slot. So this is the killer one. So this is what a lot of you guys are freaking out about. Having an extra item slot is scary. It sounds so scary. I promise you, it's no big deal. Again, guys, we are not— like, unless you're— the only time this matters is when you're playing a 40-minute game and they're actually generating that much gold. Here's the thing, guys. Your average player, especially below Diamond, is not getting to full build. I'm sorry, it's not happening. Okay? And the only reason why it would ever get to that point is if you struggle with closing out games. So, Learn how to close out games, okay? There's proper strategy to actually ending League of Legends games. Actually ending League games should be even easier now because turrets survive— turrets respawn with less HP, the Nexus turrets. Baron spawns at 20 minutes. Sieging has gotten even easier. So ending the game before people hit the level cap increase or the extra item slot should, in theory, be easier. So that's why I don't think you guys should be freaking out. Now let's say the game goes on for 35, 40, 45 minutes. Okay, yeah, jungle and support, we're taking a bullet to the— like straight to the head, straight to that endgame. Because I, I heard what we're getting. We're not getting shit, guys. You'll see all these guys. Oh yeah, we get, we get this, we get that. Let me eat this cake here, eat that cake. And then jungle and supports like, bro, like Can we get anything? But again, guys, it's not gonna matter too much as long as you can close games out.

For extra hard late game scaling, jungle and support already have quests and rewards, but we still wanted to take this opportunity to make some changes to them. Jungle is by far the strongest role in the game right now, especially when it comes to early map.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. Jungle's weak.

The speed of early game clears to give lane matchups a little bit more time to play play out uninterrupted.

Okay, so Chuck— so, so they start off with like, so guys, look, top lane gets all this, mid lane gets all of this, bot lane gets all this. Jungle, jungle fucking sucks, guys. We're nerfing jungle immediately. You're gonna clear slower. So what junglers get is they get a fucking hit straight to the face, bro. Junglers clear slower. Fuck you. Fuck you, junglers. That's what we get. Fuck you. If you're a jungler, fuck you.

We're also making it harder for non-junglers to steal objectives by increasing their resists and making Smite deal more damage.

Okay, so Smite will do more damage, might do more damage, and then, um, epic monsters, epic monsters will have, have more, uh, defenses, defenses, harder to steal. Okay, that's nice.

Their role quest is still getting pet upgrades and PvP Smite like before, and they're now getting increased gold and XP from large monsters when—

so how much gold did that give, bro?

It doesn't— why are they trying to scam us?

It doesn't even show us getting pet upgrades and PvP Smite like before. They're now getting increased gold and XP from large monsters when the quest is done, as well as bonus movement speed in the jungle.

So, okay, so bonus, bonus move speed. Oh shit. Okay, okay, bonus move speed, bonus, bonus EXP plus gold from camps, bonus MS in the jungle. So, okay, Overall, guys, everyone just seems to have 1,000 movespeed now. Like, why are we giving everyone movespeed? Movespeed is the most broken stat in the game. This is actually going to be game-breaking, by the way. I don't think they realize what they're doing. Guys, you— so, so, plates and split pushing. You will get Homeguards when catching up to the wave furthest from your base, and on top of that, Junglers just naturally get movespeed in the jungle. Like, can you guys imagine? It's Cloud Soul, Cloud Soul, so you have this, you take blue pets, and then your quest also gives you movespeed. What is happening? Wait, just everyone is Quinn jungle movespeed now. What the fuck is happening? I'm just like, I'm top lane? Nope, I'm actually bot lane. And then like, imagine you're playing a champion like Shadowcane or Hecarim or or any champion with movespeed. Top lane to bot lane in 2 milliseconds. What is happening? What? Okay, I don't agree with any of this. Sure. So like, they will say jungle's getting nerfed, jungle's not getting much. Bro, bonus movespeed is crazy good. And I'll also add that bonus exp plus gold from camps, that means you'll hit your level 6— well, not level 6, sorry. That means you'll hit your level 11 power spikes, level 16 power spikes, Junglers get a lot of nice value from points into their ultimates, points into their spells and items. This should still feel really good. The only catch is that, okay, if I'm my top laner and I'm my ADC now and I see that I get bonus EXP and bonus gold from taking your shit, I'mma take your shit. So the only problem is your laners might want to fuck you over. Fuck you over even harder because top lane, top bonus XP, mid, uh, faster recall. Who cares? Who cares if I get low? And then bot lane, more gold. So it's like, oh, oh, who cares if I take the camp? So I hope, I hope that they make it harder, even harder for laners to take, um, your, your camps, I hope.

Speed from large monsters when the quest is done, as well as bonus movement speed in the jungle.

Okay, similar to jungle, we think support is already plenty powerful and it is. So we didn't want to directly increase their power. With that in mind, we wanted to give them quality of life oriented upgrades, so we're giving them a new slot exclusively for control wards, discounts on control wards, and a little bit more gold over time so they can keep pace a little better with the other roles.

Okay, so support's getting fucked. Oh, I think out of all the roles, support got the worst. So support's getting, um, bonus slot for control wards, won't take up main item slots, and then they get, um, coupon on control wards. Okay, then can't forget more gold every second. Like, they're not gonna make this that broken. Like, they're gonna give you a little more gold. It's like, guys, yeah, support's broken, fuck you guys. You get a coupon code. Like, coupon code? 20% off? 20% coupon code? On control wards. Hey, hey Riot, what am I getting? I main support, man. Hmm, today I'm gonna give you a 20% off coupon code on all control wards for the rest of the game. Like, that's actually so fire. That's actually so fire. But I think ultimately I really dig these changes. So far I've heard a lot of fun things, a lot of fun stuff. Let's keep on going with the video, guys.

Overall, we want these quests to represent meaningful power spikes in a way that leans into the unique strengths of each role. This also allows us to delete the lane swap detected mechanic that we added last year to combat pro lane swapping. We'll be keeping a close eye on how quests land, so please let us know your thoughts next year. But Roquest—

pause, pause. Do you guys remember at the start of the video when I said that, okay, so minions spawn at 30 seconds? Now minions spawn, so spawn, and then camps spawn at, um, so minions and then camps. Camps spawn at 55 seconds. If there is no punishment, there's no punishment to lane detection, what we're going to see— 15 seconds in base, 25 seconds here— what we're going to see is war in the jungle. I think level 1 invading will— there will be chaos. Because here's the, here's the thing. Before, let's say, let's say hypothetically speaking, let's say that I am invading you guys and I am going to come here, and you guys spot me at around 40 seconds into the game. Well, guess what? I, as the top laner, can actually— and the jungler— I can actually walk all the way down, all the way down. Everyone can walk all the way down and respond to the invade properly. We can all respond to the invade. But now what's going to happen is, bro, my wave By 40 seconds is already here. I need to go lane. So the jungler is also like, bro, I don't have any time to defend my camps. My camps are spawning up here. Do I trade? What do I do? I think we're going to see a lot more cross mapping and we're going to see actually more weird shit happening first few levels. For all we know, right, like like, depending on how punishing it is to be in the wrong lane. It depends. Let's say if I'm the top laner and me being here like gets me nothing because I— my quest reward gets punished so hard, then maybe we won't see this. But like, if it's not that bad, I miss one wave or I— or like, I don't know, it just depends. But I could definitely see more chaos in the early game. I could see that because it— because if the— because jungle's just gonna like— jungle's just jungle, bro. You get the junglers ahead, like jungle just takes over. So it's really interesting to, to hear that. It's really interesting.

Aren't all we have planned to make your champions feel more satisfying. We're going to bring back a few items to the Rift for each class to give them some shiny new toys, including bringing back a few familiar favorites like Hextech Gunblade.

For example, we're adding the new Scepter of Bonking for AP Fighters, which will empower your Spellblade Bonk to double your on-hit effects.

That's not the final name, is it?

Uh, I would like it, but no, we're probably gonna give it something in-canon. I do love bonking.

Well, anyway, given none of these names are final, if you're an AD fighter without a good way to get Omnivamp, you can grab Blood Sphere, which will give you some Omnivamp and also ability haste scaling with your AD.

Okay, I'm not gonna take a— take a look at the items, to be honest, guys. Um, I know items are cool and all, but like We'll jump into it and like, let's finish the changes first and then we'll look at—

Of course you play an AD Kayce and how far away you are from your system and excited about. Speaking of which, we're also adding crit damage back to 100%.

Alright, we know that was a lot to cover. We're excited to hear what you think.

Crit damage back to 100%. Crit damage is back to 200%. Guys. A critical strike is a damage event that deals 175% of its normal value by default. So, that means it's going to deal double the value instead of it being 175%. Right, so it's a 25% buff. Is that— does that make sense, guys? Am I looking at the right stat, at least? It's— so, so crit damage already deals 175%. Okay, so— for those of you who are confused about the 200% crit strike damage change, you are now going from 175% to 200% on your critical strike hits. So it's a pretty big change for crit champions. You're gonna deal a lot more damage, 25% more damage on your crits. And I think that's gonna impact Sundered Sky and any champ that naturally crits as well. Jhin 4th auto, etc. Oh, actually, no, no, no, these are exceptions. These are exceptions. Okay. Uh, makes sense. Okay. So I, I, it's gonna be overall better for ADCs. All right. Makes sense. That's cool.

All right. We know that was a lot to cover. We're excited to hear what you think of all these changes as the new season kicks off.

And in case you're looking for even more details or insights on these changes, make sure to check out the dev blog that's live right now.

If it does 100, then it would— then it would do 117. I would do 120. Oh shit, I don't know how the fucking math works behind that, bro.

Okay, let's talk about ranked. This year we've been making improvements to shorten queue times and make your matches more fair through improvements to inting and griefing detection. And more recently, we ran a test in late September that reduced queue times by 40% at all ranks in Ranked in EU West and Oceania. We want to double down on that work and make 2026 the best time yet to climb.

So next year we'll be also tackling two common frustrations: mismatched teams and long queues. Something we want to address is visual rank disparity in lobbies as well. When players start their climbs late after a reset, you may see a Bronze player in an otherwise Gold lobby. Gold game, which can feel particularly unfair when in reality that player was Gold last season but they haven't gotten back to that rank yet because they've had less time to play. So we're adding a climb indicator to loading screens when a player's MMR is higher than their visible rank. This will let other players know— okay, that's cool, that's nice— and your display—

yeah, that's cool.

We're also making changes to how Flix and solo MMR. It's like whatever. A common pain point is someone who is silver in flex and say diamond in solo duo just stomping a bunch of games when in reality they're truly diamond. They're diamond players. So this season, if your solo duo MMR is much higher than your flex MMR, the system should bring your flex rank a lot closer to your solo. Okay, cool. That's great.

That's good because I've been like, I'm a Challenger, Challenger solo queue player, and then my flex rank is like platinum. It's like, what is happening here? So I'm glad they—

I'm glad. Feel a fair bit more balanced moving forwards. Next, we're making changes to autofill.

The reality of League is that certain roles are substantially more popular than others, and having an autofill jungler versus a jungle main can feel like an auto loss. This means that quite often people either dodge to avoid it or hold your lobby hostage in order to get you to dodge. When nobody likes queue times, this is an awful experience.

So we have a number of changes to make autofill fairer and reward you for sticking with the role you're assigned when you do get autofilled. First, if someone on your team is autofilled, the system will try to match autofilled players by role. So an autofilled jungler versus another autofilled jungler, for example. If it can't match by roles, it will then of course fall back and try to ensure the same number of autofilled players on each team.

Oh, so, so try to match autofill roles. Jung vs Jung, but if it can't, it'll just be— it'll— it will just be one autofill versus one autofill. I don't like this part. I don't like the 'but.' I hate this part. This is awful. What do you mean? So is it this or is it the 'but'? Okay, I don't like that. What do you guys think? I don't know. I don't like that, dude.

We do know though that even with that balance, autofill games can still feel discouraging when you play your best in a role that you didn't choose. That's why we're adding a new system called Aegis of Valor. If you're autofilled and earn a mastery score of C or greater, the Aegis will trigger. You won't lose any LP on a loss, or you'll earn double LP for a win.

Okay, that's broken. Like, like, Aegis Protector when autofilled. C+ Mastery— C, C or higher Mastery score, and you get LP prevention on loss, double LP on the win.

What?

I, I think what's going to happen, guys, is there is going to be a, a massive influx of lower ranked players climbing slightly, I think we'll see a lot of the really bad players get weeded out, and we'll see the people who are like decently good with good mentals. Pretty much they're rewarding really good behavior. If you have strong mental, you are being rewarded right now. That's great. It's a great thing. Pretty much what they're saying is, listen, play with integrity. Play with the right mindset and don't try to lose games. Don't try to grief people and we'll reward you. And I fucking love that because League of Legends has been such a shitty environment for way too long and now it's feeling more friendly. Like, okay, I'm autofilled, that's okay, bro. Like, just do your best to win. Let's still win together. Now the catch is, let's say you're autofilled and you want to be an asshole and you're like, okay, as long as I play good but we still lose, I can make my entire team lose without me losing anything. But here's the thing. They've been cracking down on people inting. They've been cracking down on people typing bullshit. They've been cracking down on genuinely people running it down. So it's really abusable. But because they are stepping in and dealing with people, Honestly, I think it's— it's— it'll be— it'll be better for the overall player base. Better for the overall player base. I like it.

So for those of you who main less popular roles and therefore seldom get autofilled, first of all, thanks! We haven't forgotten about you. You'll still occasionally receive the Aegis benefit at about the same rate as other players because we want to reward the role heroes who keep the queue healthy and moving. Finally, we know how frustrating it is to be constantly returned to the queue. That's what—

because you get enchain dodges lobby after lobby. Dodge, dodge, dodge. So annoying.

Made a few updates.

First, after a positive response to our pilot test, we're removing the ability to ban a hovered allied champion.

Yeah, this is great.

Taking away an opportunity for a teammate to—

yeah, this is— that was awful.

That was awful. Even starts— that was awful. And then second, so good, dodging a lobby will no longer allow players to escape autofill. It'll just get carried over.

Yeah, that's good. Lobby. Yeah, yeah. So you can't escape autofill ever. You can't escape it. Like, dodging, dodging does nothing. You'll get it next lobby. So this is great.

I think that the Aegis of Valor should provide a solid reward for sticking around and trying. So I mean, come on, it's double LP for a win after all. And above, dodging an autofill will count as a full loss.

We know that this is a pretty— oh wait, wait, wait, wait, did you guys hear that? Autofill will count as a full. Wow, dodging does not— dodging does nothing beneficial. You'll get, you'll get it in the next lobby and lose a full amount of, uh, a full, a full loss and lose a, and lose LP for a full game. Some shit like that. Wow.

We know that this is a pretty big change from how we've dealt with dodging in the past, and we believe that this will lead to higher quality and faster games. Speaking of speeding things up, we're also speeding up champ select by cutting down on timers and animations, which is—

that's cool. Yeah, save, save me some time. I did it. Wait, half a minute?

And animations, which should save about half a minute.

Oh, that's— yeah, I did it. And if that wasn't enough, we've got one last rank change. We're adding back duo queue to higher ranks, including—

I, I mean, this is great, like Challenger in most regions. This is great overall, but honestly, it's not my cup of tea anymore. I used to love dueling with people and climbing in Challenger. I think this is gonna be okay, but I think it's too late. If they did this change 3 years ago, it'd mean a lot more. It's too late. All the people who really care about NA solo queue, dude, they're just done. Like, we're done. We're done with you guys. I'm sorry. I'm gonna go do my coaching shit. I'm gonna go do my, my other things. Still love the game, but I just don't see myself getting back into the high elo sphere to duo with someone. Maybe it gives you more opportunity to do collabs with people, but I just— it's— I just know that it's not going to revive high elo solo queue in the way they want.

For so many people, League is better with friends, and in the past we disabled duoing at Apex tier ranks because it so often led to rank manipulation. But because of the improvements we mentioned earlier, as well as the ongoing work on boosting and ranked manipulation detection, we're confident that we can bring back high MMR mod growing without it being so abused. Let's talk about Swift Play.

Cool, okay, Swift Play, I don't care about that. WASD, bro, someone give me the WASD rundown. Chat, I'm not listening to this WASD shit. I, I haven't, I haven't cared about WASD for a single second, to be honest. So what's the, what's the WASD rundown, guys? Okay, coming to all game modes except Ranked and Draft. Okay, it's going live soon. Okay, cool. So we'll see how that goes. We'll see how that goes. So like overall, I'll give you my Challenger level takeaway. Everyone is getting more gold/exp. Healthy for the game, or pushes people to play more selfishly, selfishly, and to try and, uh, dominate themselves. As long as games don't go past 30 minutes, the top ADC role, um, bonus isn't the top touch ADC, uh, roll buff, that is the quest bonus, isn't actually that big, which is a big one, guys. Everyone has bonus move speed because of, uh, Homeguards to minions and, um, bonus MS in the jungle for that quest. Um, minions spawn faster in the mid-late game, which With the cr— and with the crystals, games should end— with the crystals and Baron spawn at 20 minutes, games should end significantly, significantly quicker. So this is the part I don't understand. So if minions spawn faster, you get home guards, there's crystals to siege— wait, okay, there's the crystals and Baron spawn at 20 minutes. Crystals respawn in 20 minutes and Nexus turrets respawning with 40% HP, game should end significantly quicker. So okay, the games aren't going past like 32+ minutes. I don't think it goes up— go past 30 to 35 minutes. The top ADC quest bonus isn't actually that big. It's very interesting. So the upfront EXP and the upfront gold that, that top laners and ADCs are getting is probably 1 kill's worth. So you're probably getting half a level of EXP, which might feel like a lot, but it's actually not a lot. That's like 2 camps. Yo Matt, thanks for the tier 1 for the 22 months, Matt. My Fucking go, guys. That's literally only like 2 camps or 3 camps worth of EXP. Like, okay, that's, that's a, that's something, but like, bro, that's not going to break the game. Calm down, guys. So objectives are a little harder to take, take, making soloing, soloing objectives a bit more annoying. This will, will make full clearing/power farming junglers who have accessibility to soloing objectives a lot stronger. People think jungle is getting worse, but ultimately the— this chat— the— this role should still feel in control of, of the game. Um, just like it's— it'll be, um, it'll be easier to properly trade trade gold on the map with the new, uh, plate system on turrets. There's, there's two sides to this story. Either, either, either ganking will be significantly stronger, which I don't fully believe in. Like, actually, actually, here, I could say this. Ganking, but like, uh, fast-paced, fast-paced gankers slash team play champions might get a bit stronger since they can't— since, since their laners can snowball harder. But like, honestly, I, I believe full clear Deluxe is going to be much, much, much better. I think ganking will be more impactful but harder to pull off. Yes, ganking will be, will be good, but how the fuck do you gank when they're— when the fucking yellow trinkets are getting buffed and there's fairy lights in— like, there's Christmas lights in my entire jungle? Like, bro, how am I ganking? There's Christmas lights in my jungle, bro. Like, oh my— like, bro, you might as well just— like, like, bro, I swear to God, at this point, at this point, Riot, the moment I show up on, on vision here, you might as well just danger ping them 5 times. Just danger ping them. Like, might as well, bro. Like, oh my gosh, bro. Like, what the fuck? They're just telling everyone, hey, jungler's here, jungler's here. It's actually ridiculous.