It’s that time! Season 2022 came out on the 7th and I’m so excited! Here’s a TLDR of the live stream announcing season 2022. Whether you’re in the office and can’t watch the video or just want to read a recap, I’ve got your back. If you want to watch it yourself, you can check it out right here, or scroll on down for the TLDR rundown.
Cinematic
Okay, that cinematic was amazing! We get to see some of our favorite characters fighting together and against each other. All of the champions I noticed were: Taliyah, Kai’Sa, Ornn, Volibear, Olaf, Sejuani, Pantheon, Rek’Sai, and Leona. I really appreciate the mix of popular and not-so-popular champions featured in the short clip, and the amount of action they were able to fit into such a small amount of time.
I really could type a lot more about that because wow… but I’ll move on.
Introduction
So it has a lot of cool clips with cuts of the champions and of Worlds but moves pretty quickly into one of the game developers talking about what the schedule is: League of Legends, Wild Rift, and Esports. I’m just going to cover LoL for now. Let’s get right to the heart of it!
League of Legends
They quickly go over all the changes they made preseason, but you already know all that and it’s not what you’re here for. If you’d like to watch that part you can skip to 5:40 in the stream.
New Changes
They’re adding identity customization this year, letting players choose level borders from any they have previously obtained.
They’re also adding challenges which is a fancy way of saying in-game achievements for players that are not character bound, such as dancing with Shelly at the end of a game. The challenges level up as well, so you can advance from iron to challenger. You can choose to display 3 of your challenges during loading screens and in-game lobbies.
There are five categories of challenges: veterancy, expertise, teamwork & strategy, collection, and imagination. All of which are pretty self-explanatory in what they cover. Each category also levels up as a whole, giving you the ability to prove you’re a master strategist.
The last thing about the challenges is that they will also have legacy challenges that you can obtain by being part of monumental league moments or taking part in limited events.
So how do these challenges affect you in-game? You can show off. Your challenge crystal changes color with the more challenges you complete. You can also obtain a spot on the regional leaderboards and you can get a title to display under your name such as “Unkillable Demon King.”
Oh and the last thing besides the challenges, they’re resetting ranks back to the traditional models.
Mythic Content and Event Passes
If you’d like to skip to this section of the video it starts at 12:36.
They start this section off by saying they’re actually going to fix event passes and make them less confusing. There’s a new rewards track for players and you earn them by playing and doing missions. Once you have your tokens you just trade them in for the rewards you want, ya know, like it basically is now.
On a more important note, there’s a new essence which is mythic essence, it will replace gemstones and Prestige Points. You will earn it exactly the same way but an improvement is that it doesn’t expire, so you have more time to save it up. Make sure to spend your Prestige Points because they will expire but gemstones will be converted.
They’re adding a mythic shop just for these essences and you will be able to buy seasonal mythics, a skin line with new themes each year, and rotating past prestige skins. Also, they will be spending more time this year making the prestige skins more unique.
The last note on this topic is that they’re adding loot milestones which basically reward you for opening set amounts of loot, one repeatable track, and another one-line track.
Champions and Skins
Skins
They don’t plan on ever making a second LoL so they are prioritizing updating the characters they do have. Caitlyn just had an entire remake and this year it’s Ahri’s turn. Ahri’s default skin, animations, and VFX will all be modernized. They will do the same for all of her epic skins that are based on the same outdated models for Ahri.
The 1,000 day club are champions that haven’t gotten skins in 1,000 days or more. I know, real original. The champions of that list this year are:
- Gangplank
- Fiddlesticks
- Rek’Sai
- Trundle
- Rell
- Orianna
- Heimerdinger
Also themes they are revisiting include:
Highnoon
Star Guardian
Bees
BATTLE BUNNIES and I mean more of them, not just Riven, but Battle Bunny Riven is getting an update!
Upcoming themes you can vote for include:
Infernal, Gothic, and Arclight
Don’t worry they will all get revamped, it’s just what one you want first.
Also the third-place vote for last year, Monster Hunters, uh I mean Monster Tamers, will be released later this year.
What skins are coming first?
Porcelain, a theme in celebration of the Lunar New Year that looks like, well, porcelain. They are also revisiting the firecracker theme in celebration of the Lunar New Year.
Champions
This year instead of focusing on releasing a lot of new champions, they are going to slow down and only release champions when they are ready. That being said they aim to have a new champion for each lane released.
New Champions
A new ADC from Zaun with lightning powers named Zeri.
She will be pretty different than what we’re used to for ADC champions. For example, her Q is a skill shot and she will rely on that more than auto-attacks. Her auto attacks will count as spells meaning items will affect them. She can also move over terrain and her ult looks like a large AOE.
They also announced that they are working on a new enchanter with a dark theme to counteract the brightness of all the existing ones. It sounds like they are planning to make a powerhouse, giving us support players credit for being badasses.
Next, they’re going to release a jungler but don’t give us any extra information on that.
Udyr is getting an update and THEY TOOK AWAY HIS ANTLERS! They said this was to give him a unique shape but without them, he just looks like a swole man.
Oh! You also can go vote for who gets a VGU next year. These champions include Shyvana, Nocturne, Skarner, Tryndamere, and Kog’Maw.
They leave this section off with a visual teaser for a bot lane champion they are releasing later this year.
Well, that’s a lot of information packed down for you! I think this year will be full of really exciting updates and I’m holding my breath for that new support champ. I hope you’re just as hype for season 2022 as I am.
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