Players are not sure what they should think about these lane swap changes.
League of Legends 25.05. Early patch brings several adjustments to champions but also concerns players by making some controversial changes to lane swapping.
Even though lane swapping is pretty normal in most LoL matches, it is especially an issue with pro players. Bot laners were able to skip the lane phase almost completely and funnel gold towards the ADC for either team with very little risk.
The practice lowered the importance of lane matchups in pro matches, so the changes made by the balance team are an attempt to bring the lane back.
However, the way LoL has changed it raised some eyebrows in the community.
Here are all the details behind the changes coming to lane swapping, as well as every other detail you can expect to come with League of Legends patch 25.05., that is aimed mostly at high level/pro play.
Lane Swap Punishment
In this patch, more than one non-jungler champion being in mid or top lane will drastically buff turrets. Here’s what that debuff does as well as the AoE in which it applies:
- Fortification buff removed for all turrets
- If two non-jungler enemy champs appear in top or mid lane, the outer turrets get buffed:
- 95% damage reduction
- Tower shots are fully charged
- Deal 1000% damage to minions
- Enemy champs gold and XP reduced to 50%
- Defending minion and turret kills will redirect all gold to nearest allied champ
- Top lane tower grants 50% damage reduction to defending champion under tower
- Detection starts at 1:30 and ends at 3:30 for top and 2:25 for mid
- Tower buff duration upon detection is 20 seconds for top, 8 seconds for mid
With the removal of standard damage reduction on towers, these changes not only have the possible side effect of drastically changing normal matches, there is also a chance pro-players will wait to lane swap until the duration of the tower debuffs have run out to take advantage of reduced tower durability.
LoL Patch 25.05 Champion Buffs
- Aphelios
- Mundo
- Seraphine
- Zed
LoL Patch 25.05 Champion Nerfs
- Ambessa
- Ashe
- Aurora
- Cho’Gath
- Elise
- K’Sante
- Skarner
- Yorick (jungle)
LoL Patch 25.05 Champion Adjustments
- Poppy (top/jungle)
System Buffs
- Sixth Sense
- Unflinching
System Nerfs
- Axiom Arcanist