New Year, New Meta

Patch 9.23 brought map changes that transform ‘Rift’ into different elements

“League of Legends” got a massive pre-season patch, changing
the drake system, map and various other systems of the game. With massive meta
changes, the UTD League team is adapting as necessary.

The biggest change to “League of Legends” in patch 9.23 is
the overhaul of the drake systems. Of the many monsters in the jungle,
elemental drakes come in four varieties and spawn in the dragon pit. There’s an
infernal drake, cloud drake, earth drake and ocean drake, with buffs to various
aspects of champions given to the team that kills the drake. They respawn in
different forms and after two drakes are killed, the third drake’s element
becomes the map’s element, changing the terrain of the map.

This means that in every game, the map has the potential to
become entirely different, and each team has the potential to have a variety of
different buffs as the game progresses.

Computer science junior Kyung “Lunarly” Joo, the “League of
Legends” A Team captain, said the new drake importance has created a larger
focus around the bottom lane, which is closest to the dragon pit.

“The dragon changes how the map plays. So as a top laner I
feel like there are two big things that I could do: either play for the team
and try and secure dragons with saving my teleport or just completely isolating
myself and trying to win top and then pushing that lead to again help my
teammates and take more dragons,” Joo said.

While this patch has shaken up the meta-game in a large way,
it’s par for the course for the team. Joo said that because the tournament that
they’ve been playing in this semester — Upsurge League — is not Riot-sponsored,
the tournament is played on the live game. This means that if a patch is
dropped on the day of a match, that’s the version the match is played on. This
is in contrast to official Riot tournaments that will keep a tournament on a
previous balance patch for longer so that pros don’t have to spend too much
time adjusting to new metas.

“If a patch is coming out on a Wednesday and then we play
that Wednesday, we have to play the tournament on that new patch,” Joo said.
“So, there’s some things that people might not pick up and that’s kind of the
fun of it.”

In a best-case scenario, the team will get a few days to
learn the ins and outs of the meta after a new patch drops. Joo said the team
mostly accomplishes this through playing in solo ranked games and through
scrims, taking one or two days. After playing a lot of the updated game, new
strategies and builds for characters reveal themselves, with Joo saying that
Conqueror Cassiopeia in patch 9.23 is powerful due to how Conqueror stacks
quickly and heals for damage done.

“When a patch comes out, we need to quickly find out what’s
the best in the meta,” Joo said. “The main goal for all five of us is just to
play as much as we can to gain that knowledge, and also get help from analysts
who see what is good at that moment.”

Joo said it generally takes only a few days to get used to
smaller balance patches, and a week or two for larger patches like 9.23. Some
of Joo’s favorite champions are Akali and Irelia, but as the meta shifts, the
champions that the team plays also shifts, whether or not that champion is the
favorite of that teammate.

“Each player has their best champ. Their little pool of ‘Oh,
these are my three favorite champions that I love to play in, that are really,
really good that I’m really confident in,’” Joo said. “But then again,
sometimes the meta might not match up with your favorite champs, so you’re kind
of forced to learn those new champions to be relevant in the meta … If you have
a favorite champ and they’re really good at the moment, play it and you’re
going to be successful, but if not you just kind of have to learn. And that’s
how it goes.”