League of Legends Season 13 adds long-awaited pings, communication tools

The ping system in League of Legends is getting a huge upgrade going into Season 13, with double the options and some objective-specific communication tools to help allies better coordinate.

The ping system in League of Legends has seen a few additions and iterations over the years, but it’s remained a fairly basic method of communication over the game’s long history.

It’s at the point where players have come up with multiple ways to use pings, like pinging missing on a teammate when they make a great play (or a really bad one). For League of Legends Season 13, it’s been decided the ping system is in need of a serious facelift.

Along with a wealth of versatile options added to the pre-existing ping wheel, there have also been case-specific ping options added to make communication around big objectives clearer.

Riot doubles ping options in League of Legends Season 13

In addition to the current four pings on the wheel (Enemy Missing, Danger, Assist, On My Way), there are some new pings coming that have much more specificity than the current options.

The new options are All In, Bait, Hold, Push. While something like All In could be somewhat communicated by spamming Assist or On My Way pings, these new pings have unique roles.

For instance, laners can now communicate wave state to their junglers before ganking, and vice versa. Push and hold could both be used for wave management, something that couldn’t be clearly communicated with the old ping system.

There is also a separate ward ping wheel with options to ping ally and enemy vision, as well as request wards in certain places.

Pings will also appear at the borders of the screen in League of Legends rather than just on the mini map if they are off your screen, making them much more apparent and easier to see.

New objective planning vote helps players set up

Objectives will be able to be pinged specifically. Before, there were some case specific pings like pinging a friendly tower to defend it, or pinging an objective to attack it. Now, some objectives have a vote that comes up when trying to ping them.

Rather than pinging caution around the drake and hoping your team takes the hint, giving up the objective entirely is much easier to communicate to teammates with a simple yes or no poll.

While an updated ping system might seem like a small addition, this is a huge buff for solo queue players. For roles like jungle and support that require a ton of team coordination and communication, these new pings could be the difference between winning and losing a game.

These are small changes as part of the wider League of Legends Season 13 additions, which include the reintroduction of Chemtech Dragon, massive changes to jungle and top lane, as well as plenty of new items.