The League of Legends 2021 Season is concluding with Worlds 2021 raging on.
While the champion of 2021 is still to be decided, Riot have wasted no time showing players what's coming in the LoL Preseason 2022.
This includes a newly revealed Inspiration Keystone rune, First Strike.
Release Date
The League of Legends Season 11 will start on January 8, 2021. In the meantime, players will begin experiencing Pre-Season 2022 changes in PBE beginning October 19, 2021.
These changes will go live in the Normal Server during the LOL 11.23 on November 17, 2021.
Keystone Rune: First Strike
Runes are enhancements that add new abilities or buffs to the champion. The player can preset their runes before the match begins and during champion selection.
First Strike is a new Inspiration Keystone that gives you a considerable advantage when striking an enemy champion first.
- Damaging an enemy champion with an attack or ability before they do, or within 0.25s of the start of combat, grants 5 gold and First Strike.
- First Strike - For 3 seconds, attacks or abilities will deal 12% bonus damage against all champions, and granting (100% melee / 70% Ranged) of bonus damage dealt as gold.
- Cooldown: 25-15s (Scale with level)
To get the most out of it, you’ll need to beat your opponents in a test of reactions to get that initial hit and follow up to deal as much damage as possible during the 3-second buff. This will especially be true in melee matchups, which we'll see plenty of in the Top Lane.
First Strike will bring back memories from players for its resemble with Kleptomancy. In that regard, Riot comments:
"We also incorporated our learnings from Kleptomancy, which was frustrating for enemy laners who would get poked to death with little opportunity to fight back."
More Runes= Changes
The Pre-Season 2022 will witness changes for two more Runes:
- Glacial Augment - Now it will create slowing zones when you immobilize a champion, rather than just active items. When you immobilize an enemy, the rune will create three slowing zones.
- The Lethal Tempo - It will increase the attack speed when auto-attacking a champion, stacks six times, granting increased attack range.
- Attack Speed will cap up to 3.0
- Prototype Omnistone - With the arrival of First Strike developers are removing this Rune, considering was never appealing for players.
More PreSeason 2022 Changes
New Mythic Items
- Tank Mythic Item: this new item will reward aggressive tactics.
- Mage Mythic Item: This item will focus on increasing Mage's abilities, providing damage reduction.
New Legendary Items
- Assassin Legendary Item: this item will provide ability haste and reduce Ultimate cooldowns after every elimination.
- Tank Legendary Item: this item will benefit Tanks with low mana consumption.
- Mage Legendary Item: This item will grant extra magic penetration against newly shielded enemies.
Comebacks: Bounties and Runes
- Objective Bounties: Teams will have better chances of recovering from significant disadvantages focusing on obtaining objectives.
New Dragons
- Hextech Dragon gives teams increased ability haste and attack speed when they kill it.
- Creates Hextech Gates that can teleport players to a different location on the map.
- The Chemtech Drake
- It gives teams increased damage when they kill it.
- Transforms players into a zombie state when they die, allowing them to keep fighting and cast abilities for a few seconds
While we wait for these changes, people will experience the new animated show based on League of Legends called Arcane and a new series of skins inspired by this new show.