This year’s League of Legends April Fools’ Day mode slows things down

April 1st — perhaps better known by the League of Legends community as Urf Day — is rapidly approaching. While new skins paying tribute to the adorable little manatee champion were revealed last week, Riot Games today unveiled "the future of League of Legends."

"After reviewing player feedback and hammering out brass tacks, we felt confident we created the most refined gameplay experience League has inspired yet, all in time to iterate in preparation of the next competitive season," Riot teased today.

The mode is called New Ultra Rapid Fire, and it's a twist on last year's Ultra Rapid Fire Mode. Rather, it's the exact opposite. Instead of 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, New Ultra Rapid Fire Mode increases mana and energy costs, increases cooldown on abilities, and drastically lowers movement speed, attack damage, and just about everything else.

it "raises the stakes by delivering a slow, sophisticated, and stoic strategic showcase that tests teams’ abilities in new and dynamic ways while not restricting the highest tier of play to those with sub-millisecond response times."

"New Ultra Rapid Fire raises the stakes by delivering a slow, sophisticated, and stoic strategic showcase that tests teams’ abilities in new and dynamic ways while not restricting the highest tier of play to those with sub-millisecond response times," Riot teased.

"Normally, a League match is a fast-paced slugfest that ranges from top to bottom lane and across Summoner’s Rift. We want to broaden the pool of high-level talent to include expert tacticians previously excluded by something so trivial as the necessity of hyper-twitch reflexes."

New Ultra Rapid Fire will, of course, troll us and go live a day early. Here's a preview of the gameplay tweaks it'll make.

• +100% mana and energy cost on all abilities
• +200% cooldown inflation on abilities, items and summoner spells
• +225 movement speed reduction
• +200% delay between basic attacks
• Critical strikes deal 50% of base AD
• Units critically strike on 150% of attacks

[League of Legends]