Welcome to patch 4.20, the first patch of the 2015 preseason and one of our biggest updates for League of Legends to date. Whew.
The big theme of the 2015 preseason (and boy will you hear this a lot) is Strategic Diversity. That sounds like a vague concept (does anyone remember "End-game Fantasy" from the 2014 preseason?), but our high-level philosophy is we want to offer you more paths to victory so that your in-game decisions matter just as much as the champions you pick. In previous years, we've lacked the proper systems and levers to balance different strategies against each other, so when teams would discover unique ways to win, we'd either have to watch Ziggs bomb the stuffing out of people in stall / poke compositions, or we'd just have to tackle the manic yordle on a personal level. This year, rather than trying to 'fix' tactical problems from the previous season, we're instead introducing a metric tonne of changes to map-wide objectives, a complete rehaul of the jungle and jungle itemization, and a number of strategic item additions / modifications. With these new paths in place, how you strive for victory will vary with each individual game and our hope is that all of this adds up to more far more strategic diversity and experimentation in League.
To be blunt, we were dubious about the idea of introducing so much change to the game, but then we realized that preseason is high-time for refining, polishing, and evolving, so we went for some ambitious goals this year. It's also worth noting that this is just the beginning. There are... a lot of changes here and, with so many variables at play, we're expecting the game to be disrupted, imperfect, and requiring even more work over time. That said, we're confident with the direction this preseason is headed, and we're more than happy to course correct as things play out. There's no comparison for our months of internal tests against millions of your own, so we're excited (and a little scared) to see what you have up your sleeves.
Anyway, there's a whole lot of information to be found on the preseason, including the 2015 Preseason Spotlight and the very pretty 2015 Preseason Microsite. Be sure to check those out if you want some high-level introductions to our changes, as we're going to be going very deep on the philosophy in these notes. Expect to hear from us throughout!
P.S. We visually updated everyone's favorite tree! Play tree every day."