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League of Legends devs tease burst damage nerfs in upcoming updates

Riot Games recently took some power out of items and put it into League of Legends characters, but that change made quick-kill damage a little too strong.

TJ Denzer

March 1, 2024 10:30 AM

Image via Riot Games

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It sounds like Riot Games has some major balance changes planned for League of Legends in the update ahead that will affect burst damage. Previously, Riot Games attempted to rework the game’s item system, getting rid of Mythic Items and trying to give power back to the Champions (League’s characters). Unfortunately, that inadvertently made burst damage too strong, and Riot intends to balance the playing field and reduce the power of burst in the updates ahead.

Riot Games signaled its intent to balance burst damage out in a recent dev blog video on the League of Legends YouTube channel. There, Game Director Pu Liu (Riot Pupulasers) and Executive Producer Jeremy Lee (Riot Brightmoon) shared some teases of changes the team intends to make. Simply put, when Riot reworked its items in League of Legends, it also worked to give boosted stats back to the Champions. Unfortunately, this ended up making burst damage (the ability to knock a character out in a short series of high-damage attacks) too strong.

Lee and Liu go on to say that while they still feel good about the item rework and the power being back on the Champions, they need to level out the burst damage potential right now and make it a little less prominent. That likely means that the next patch will feature changes focused on reducing burst damage dominance. It could even go across multiple patches as Riot aims to strike the balance between reducing burst power, but stopping short of making burst unviable.

Riot Games continues to work on many other things this year as well, including improved bots for practice. Stay tuned to our League of Legends topic as we continue to follow the latest goings on with the game.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.