Welcome to patch 6.9, the one where it’s Midseason. You may notice the sweet new layout (if you’re reading this in the patcher, we recommend heading to the web) – that’s because this ain’t your ordinary run-of-the-mill patch!

Midseason is a time for us to reflect on what parts of Preseason worked and what didn’t, and take large strides to keep League fresh. We identified two areas of improvement for Midseason: adding cohesion to the mage class, and shaking up the strategy surrounding objectives. Let’s dive in.

While thematically strong (who doesn’t like casting spells?), mages have historically lacked a cohesive identity beyond ‘damage that’s magic.’ Some are long-ranged, some are short-ranged, some are Fiddlesticks, you get the idea. A lack of clear expectations combined with the sheer size of the class means there’s a lot of redundancy across the mage roster. In the end, this puts mages in a spot where the answer to ‘who should I play?’ is always ‘whoever’s numerically strongest’.

That’s a lot of rhetoric in one paragraph, but you get the idea. Like marksmen and juggernauts before them, mages are getting a class-wide update, drawing out their individual strengths and cranking them up to 11. If your favorite spellslinger didn’t get directly changed, never fear – mage items have also been recalibrated to enable more diverse playstyles. Time will tell how impactful the changes are, but one thing’s for sure: it’s a good patch for folks that love ability power.

Circling back, let’s talk objectives. Current balance between mapwide objectives is pretty off-kilter, with turrets taking the lion’s share of strategic value. Our goal with Midseason isn’t just to spiffy up the jungle bosses and buffs, but to make contesting them a viable option when weighed against sieging or defending an turret. By diversifying the rewards on the map, we create an environment where teams constantly re-evaluate the importance of objectives as the game progresses. Between controlling, contesting, and trading, there’s a lot to take (and a lot to take in), but adaptation is key to coming out on top.

And that’s all we have for today! Be sure to to check out the whole thing (it’s a doozy) and we’ll see you on the other side, Proto-Belting forward recklessly and drinking in the chaos. It’s times like these where experimentation is best rewarded – just remember to credit us if Jungle Syndra really takes off.

Good luck, have fun.