League of Legends pre-Season 3 patch brings sweeping changes

Riot have released an enormous patch for League of Legends, making big changes to the game in the lead up to Season 3. The update has been designed to tweak a number of areas: new and adjusted items give more flexibility to late game builds; jungling has been rejigged, with scaling difficulty and less gold from mobs; and masteries have been overhauled to reduce the availability of early game resistance stats. The focus, it appears, is to increase the number of strategic options available to each character. Riot have released a video to outline the important bits of the patch, which I've embedded below.

So, 23 new items, tweaked gold distribution and all sorts of other changes. While I'm sure the notoriously calm and level-headed LoL community will react to such a major shift in the meta-game with grace, the developers are keen to note that this will be an iterative process. They'll be incorporating player feedback throughout the pre-season, in preparation for the eventual launch of Season 3.

You can view the full patch list here . I'd add it into the post but it's so big, we'd probably run out of internet.

Thanks, PCGamesN .

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.