LoL Devs Target Turrets to Curb Lane Swaps

May 21, 2024
| Tags: League of Legends
| Author Paul G

LoL devs for Riot’s ultra-famous MOBA touched on plans for Patch 14.11 in a recent post, starting with a plan to restrict lane swaps.

Lane-swapping has become a popular tactic in League of Legends. The popular MOBA’s esports scene even has the best players in the world switching sidelanes mid-game. And while this valid strat does have its perks, it’s resulted in some one-sidedness across the board. So the devs are finally doing something about it.

in this article, we’re diving into lane-swapping, how it’s done and why the people behind League of Legends don’t see it as a good thing.

Why Are League of Legends Devs Against Lane-Swapping?
The lane-swapping meta is becoming a bit problematic.

Lane-swapping is done by switching the bottom duo with the solo top-laner, effectively giving your team an advantage on the side of the map where the Baron — a highly-contested objective — sits.

Switching lanes also levels the playing ground when your teammates are outmatched in their respective lanes. With all that in mind, why are the devs discouraging lane swaps?

Credit: Screenshot by Paul Gono/ESTNN
Simply put, it’s not how the game is normally played. Which means that it’s harmful to the overall ecology for a few reasons.

First, the playable characters in League were designed with their role in mind. Certain abilities are too overpowered against other champions, especially in the game’s early “laning phase”, when everyone is at their weakest.

And there’s also the fact that the top lane is usually played with one team member. Going up against a duo means you’ll be outnumbered from the start. Sure, the experience of the lane will be split between them. But top-laners usually don’t have much reach to counter AD carries, resulting in one-sided games.

This is exacerbated with last split’s “double ranged” comps where a team has two high-damage ADCs instead of one.

Credit: Riot Games
LoL Devs Target Turret Health and Gold Value
Lane-swaps have even made their way to the pro-scene where LCK favorites T1 and many others switched lanes in some of their MSI 2024 matches.

Sensing something needed to be done, the League of Legends dev team is now looking to adjust the game’s turrets to discourage lane-swapping.

Hi everyone and welcome to Patch 14.11!

Overall, the patch has landed reasonably balance wise for things that changed.

Lane Swaps
– They’ve been a hot topic of conversation over the course of MSI
– While we think some of this was teams adapting to player matchup diffs over… pic.twitter.com/8b9H9JhhxT

— Matt Leung-Harrison (@RiotPhroxzon) May 21, 2024

Matt Leung-Harrison aka “Riot Phroxzon” made a post on his X (formerly Twitter) account previewing upcoming changes. The League of Legends developer started things off saying lane-swapping had more cons than pros.

“While a few lane swaps every now and then is favorable for the viewer experience, every game is too far”, Leung-Harrison stated.

He then said that “turret fortification and first turret gold values” would be fine-tuned to stop lane-switching; a sophisticated fix that would result in more switchers hard-pushing/being vulnerable to ganks.

Time will tell if this will be an effective fix, or if players will find a creative loophole that’ll cancel out the changes (*ehem* Demolish *ehem*). Ultimately, the League of Legends devs have their sights set on taking lane swaps out of play. So it should be a matter of time.

For the latest esports news on international tournaments, follow ESTNN.

Paul started writing game guides and match predictions for ESTNN’s editorial team in 2022. Since then, he’s covered big-ticket esports events and the latest news on tech and AI.