Champion Roadmap & Preseason Preview

It's crazy to believe the season is already halfway over, and Preseason 2023 is on the horizon. Today, Riot announced huge updates on upcoming champions and their plans for Preseason, so let's break down the biggest talking points.

Upcoming Champions

Hailing from a new area of Shurima, K'Sante is the next champion to hit the rift. He will be a top lane tank who may use his armour to damage enemies before it regenerates.

After K'Sante is released, we can look forward to Aurelion Sol's gameplay update. While his visuals and lore won't be touched, his kit will be overhauled:

• Q will cause A'Sol to breathe fire, which can be used infinitely as long as he has enough mana
• W's flight path is now more flexible and provides a burst of vision, similar to Quinn's W
• W and Q can be comboed, so A'Sol can breathe fire while flying

Two new champions were also teased; a Darkin assassin and a support. The assassin will use a dagger, and may be the first Darkin monster to hit the Rift. Meanwhile, the new support will hail from Ixtal region, and will be League's first male enchanter.

Following on from the successful midscope updates for champions like Ahri, Janna and Sivir, Riot also confirmed Neeko and Syndra are next in line for these mini reworks.

Preseason Changes

The 2023 Preseason will focus on 4 major areas:

• In-game communication
• Vision clarity
• Jungle accessibility
• The return of the Chemtech Drake

League is one of few competitive games that does not have built-in voice comms, so in-game communication tools need to be sophisticated. The ping system is simple and effective, but Preseason will expand it to include more types of pings (including engage, freeze, and push):

The vision system will also be made more intuitive, such as by showing how many wards you've currently have down and where wards will be placed if you use them in/on a wall.

Although the Jungle is one of the most potent roles in the game, it can intimidating for players to learn when the role is so unique and has so many intricacies. Preseason will make the role more accessible for inexperienced junglers, such as with longer patience timers and smaller red/blue buffs when they're donated to laners.

Riot have emphasised they don't want to lower the role's extremely high skill ceiling, and just make it an easier role to get into.

The last Preseason update is the return of one of the most hated and infamous additions to the game: the Chemtech Drake. Thankfully, its soul and rift have been completely overhauled:

• The Soul will increase your damage and damage reduction while you're low health
• The Chemtech Rift will mutate the jungle plants, such as an increased blast radius from Blast Cones, and bonus movement speed when moving toward enemies revealed by a Scryer's Bloom

These changes are thematically consistent with Chemtech's identity, and sound much healthier for the game compared to the disastrous iteration that was removed earlier in the year.

Ahri's Visual Update & Goth Skinline

Finally, a preview for Ahri's visual update was shown:

Given the amount of skins Ahri has, the update won't be live until early next year.

After winning the skinline poll earlier in the year, the Goth universe has been completely reimagined:

Summary

League players have a lot to look forward to over the next few months: new champions from some of the least represented regions, reworks for some older or neglected champions, and updates to key systems in the Preseason. Here's hoping the new Chemtech Drake won't be as hated when it returns to the Rift.