League of Legends devs explain how next update will “punish” mid-laners

Riot Games are testing more changes to League of Legends and this time it could put more pressure on midlaners who are “excessively” roaming to other parts of the map.

As a pivotal role, the middle of the map is usually filled with champions like Assassins, Mages, dedicated roamers and more. While some tend to stay in their lane, season 10 has been rife with players electing to roam around and find advantages around the map in the early stages of a match.

While this aggressive playstyle is completely viable, Riot is going to test some changes before the preseason patch that should make those players think twice about leaving their region of the Rift.

“We’re testing a very simplified version of a midlane agency reduction,” Lead Gameplay Designer for League, Mark Yetter, explained. “Small resource reduction and stronger push threat to punish roaming excessively.”

The team is working with a change that would make mid’s Cannon Minions, also called Siege Minions, worth 10 less gold for the first 14 minutes of the game. Meanwhile, those same minions will get a 30% increase in attack speed when attacking towers.

Cannon minions are particularly important for champions looking to hit their early game power spikes. Having them cost 10 gold less won’t be detrimental to midlaners, but it will give them a higher incentive to farm as much as they can in the lane as a consequence.

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The trade-off will put more pressure on these players to either commit harder on a play if they should roam to make up for lost resources or just stay in lane to work on their CS (creep score) to accumulate gold.

Meanwhile, if a player leaves their lane unattended for too long, the enemy could hard shove the Cannon wave to start shredding the turret. Eventually, the upgraded firepower from the Cannons would open up the lane quicker for midlaners who stayed to farm.

Natural opposition to this change lies in people saying that this only tells players to roam more since gold in the midlane has been reduced.

To solve the problem with roaming players, the League community proposed changing XP values around the map.

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For example, an uptick in bot lane XP would make those players more prepared to defend against a roaming midlaner and punish them by committing to a lackluster gank.

Once the change comes out in the PBE, Riot will be taking a look at how the changes to Cannon Minion will affect the midlane, but it seems they are experimenting on different ways to quell roamers before next season.