Let's play a fun game called "real or April Fool's Day joke." Today is April 1 which, as many of you are well aware, is the worst day in video gaming. No game is safe from the ridiculous announcements made, including Riot Games' League of Legends.
The developer today implemented a new "Ultra Rapid Fire" mode, and although it's part of Riot Games' April Fool's Day Celebration, it's also part of their experiments in creating new gameplay experiences by tweaking the rules a bit. To that end, Ultra Rapid Fire mode is real, and it may just be the best set of rule changes yet: removing mana and energy costs, adding an 80% cooldown reduction on all abilities, activated items, and summoner spells, and doubling the attack speed for ranged champions.
Here's what Rioter Pwyff had to say of the new mode:
We believe that being forewarned is forearmed so we're testing next season's changes with the Ultra Rapid Fire mode. You guys loved the impact our 2014 season changes had on supports' end game fantasies and we realized we wanted to take that philosophy one step further: end game fantasies… accelerated. Full item builds will take less time to buy, big teamfights will happen more often and no more worrying about pesky resources! From the feedback we've received internally, we think you guys will love these updates.
Some of the changes are pretty drastic and, as a result, a few champions and items just didn't fit within our expanded philosophy. Usually we'd try to tweak them but, with these sweeping changes, we had to make some tough decisions. Clearly this will cause some pain for fans of those champions but it had to be done. Keeping LoL competitive is our number one priority with this update.
Here are the patch notes for the new mode:
- NEW MANA AND ENERGY COST All ability costs reduced to 0
- NEW COOLDOWN REDUCTION 80% on abilities, activated items and summoner spells
- NEW MOVEMENT SPEED +60 for all champions
- NEW TENACITY +25% for all champions
- NEW ATTACK SPEED BONUSES Bonuses given by items/abilities increased by 100% on ranged champions
- NEW CRITICAL STRIKE DAMAGE Increased by 25% of base damage on ranged champions
- NEW GOLD GAIN +500% of the amount normally granted on Summoner's Rift
Riot also has a few champion-specific tweaks because they are just too overpowered with these rule changes. For instance Ryze and Kassadin have been completely removed from this mode, while Teemo is limited to just 20 mushrooms at a time. Irelia's health has also been nerfed from 546 to 545.6, rounding to the closest whole number.
