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League of Legends patch preview describes Dominion balance changes
Last week, Riot Games gave League of Legends players a sneak peek at upcoming ranged damage-dealing champion Graves. In a new patch preview video this week, Riot explains all of the balance changes and updates that will be released alongside the new champion. Skarner's crystal slash ability is having its mana costs reduced to ensure it remains a viable attack in late game, his autoattack speed will be increased and his ultimate will now last longer. Champion Corki's gatling gun is also being redesigned to give it more consistent damage output. A series of changes are heading our way for LoL's new Dominion game mode. Popular item Hextech Gunblade turned out to be far too powerful in Dominion games, and is due for a nerf. In addition to tweaking the item's stats, Riot is removing the ability to stack several of the item to multiply its spell vamp. The personal score system is being modified to better reward players for team-based accomplishments rather than just kills, assists and attacking points. Due to the popularity of late-game carries in Dominion, developers are adjusting the rate of XP gain to make late-game dominance of those champions less inevitable. Skip past the cut to check out the video and find out the full details of all the changes coming to League of Legends in the next patch.
League of Legends shows off new champions, spectator mode at E3
Riot Games' League of Legends is one of the biggest free-to-play titles around -- it started off as a spiritual successor to the old Defense of the Ancients mod, but has since grown, strictly by word of mouth and organic growth, up into its own industry. Riot hasn't actually announced player numbers for the title yet, but this is a huge game online, consistently landing in the top spots on Xfire and other services' most-played lists. If you've never played (and why not? It's free!), the basic structure of the game has you controlling a champion on a real-time strategy-style battleground, and Riot has been releasing one of these new champions every few weeks for quite a while now. In the game's booth at E3 last week, we got to hear about three of the upcoming new champions, as well as brand new feature to the game designed to get even more players involved: A spectator mode.
