League of Legends Season 10 is slowly creeping upon us. After Season 9 saw dragon not being the hotly contested objective that Riot wanted it to be, they’ve announced a lot of changes to how things are going to shift about come Season 10 of the Summoner’s Rift.
With a lot of experts making the claim that Ocean and Cloud dragons were near useless - it was no surprise to see Riot making the decision to try and remedy that through some pretty interesting mechanical additions.
In the next season, we will be treated to plenty of new things including the new champion Sett.
Here's everything you need to know about Season 10 in League of Legends.
When Does Season 10 Start?
Season 10 will be going live on January 10th 2020, with the big update set to arrive on the 8th.
Players can already get a taste of what to expect in Season 10, after patch 9.23 went live on the 19th November.
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Elemental Rifts
So far, we’ve seen the Summoners Rift maintain a fairly constant state - with the only changes to the map coming in the form of patch-to-patch adjustments. Instead of that - Riot’s looking to remake the map live as your game goes on!
Every game, once the second dragon of the game is killed, the map will permanently change to one of four terrains - depending on which dragon will spawn next. The remainder of dragon spawns for that game will be the same as the terrain - until the Elder comes to be.
While mountain and infernal rift changes aren’t particularly substantial, with small changes to the map via the addition of new rock formations, and slight changes to pathing across the map. Unlike those though, Cloud and Ocean rift look to be making the map substantially better by giving constant additions to the entire map which can be used by every champion, both for teamfights and skirmishes.
The Cloud Rift sees “wind boosting tunnels” set up around the map - at each of the buffs as well as within the dragon pit itself. These provide you with much faster movement speed to everyone within tunnels, making it significantly better for teams who are playing defensively at the time to be able to maneuver about and dodge skillshots coming in from the superior side.
On the other hand, Ocean Rift adds new Honeyfruit plants near buff camps, as well as making most of the bushes substantially thicker. The bushes create more opportunities for either team to make plays or add new warding positions, as well as adding pools of water around the map for those junglers who want to go for the water walking rune for their games.
Of course - the elemental rift is only a setup for the major gameplay change to the dragons!
Dragon Souls
Similarly to the Elemental Rift, Riot’s been looking to add more permanent additions to your average game of League of Legends. Although most buffs gained in the past from dragon, Baron or Rift Herald have been temporary at best, Dragon Souls will be one of the first big permanent buffs that is going to be introduced into modern League of Legends.
These are going to be used to add another dimension to teams that are able to exploit the fourth dragon of the game - which is going to be the last elemental drake before the Elder Dragon begins spawning. The soul which the team gets will match the Elemental Rift that was decided on the third dragon spawning. Only one team will be able to get the soul as only a single, final elemental dragon, will be the one to give it away. Each soul matches the buff that a dragon itself would give you.
The infernal soul adds your damage in a significantly scaling manner. The rest of the game will see you having your damage buffed both for ability and auto-attack. It adds a passive effect where every three seconds you’ll gain a supercharged attack/spell, which deals additional damage scaling based on your AP, AD and bonus health.
The mountain soul sticks true to the changes that Riot has made to Mountain Drake (discussed in a later article) in making it a much more tank oriented detail. Similar to infernal, it gives you a passive that triggers a 225 damage shield, scaling on the basis of AP, AD and health every five seconds. For a permanent change to see such substantial effects is going to be particularly interesting - especially if a team that’s behind is able to steal away the buff.
Ocean and cloud are much more straightforward - though equally effective. Ocean gives you additional health and mana regen over three seconds each time you deal damage to enemies in any form. Finally, Cloud soul gives you an incredible ten percent increase to your passive movement speed, as well as a 30% buff for three seconds each time you cast your ultimate.
The dragon souls aren’t going to show their true colours till competitive play starts though, where we can see how each region deals with them across the board.
Preseason couldn’t get more exciting, and we’ve got more coming up soon about what the new Season 10 changes are, and how they’ll affect the game.
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Written byMamoon Sabri@ggTeaTime