League of Legends game developer Riot Games has unveiled the planned gameplay changes for the upcoming Season 2, which will revolve around Ionia.
The major updates, which are expected to be released in the upcoming Patch 25.09, include a visually enhanced Summoner’s Rift, a rework of neutral objectives such as Atakhan and Void Grubs, tweaks to bounty mechanics and more.
With Spirit Blossom and Ionia taking centre stage in the new season, Riot Games will introduce the Spirit Blossom Rift. The map, however, will not alter gameplay terrain, maintaining consistency with the previous iterations.
Changes To Neutral Objectives In League of Legends Season 2
The major changes come from the reworks of neutral objectives. In particular, Atakhan will now only appear as Atakhan of the Thorns, granting the killing team all roses on the map and giving an extra 25% boost in stats. Additionally, the monster will give a team-wide buff called Spiritual Purification, which deals area damage upon kills and will trigger slows.
Void Grubs and Rift Herald are also on the changelist. The former will only spawn once, reducing the reliance on team-wide coordination to capture multiple objectives. Rift Herald will be easier to take down as the damage reduction from champions hitting it will be removed. Moreover, it will have more strategic value, making it more worthwhile for teams to take down.
Bounty Mechanics and Gameplay Systems Tweaked
Riot Games has also announced changes to prevent unfair snowballing from bounties. Going forward, the latter will only appear when a team is clearly ahead, instead of being based on individual kill score. The champion gold will scale with levels, slightly rewarding losing teams in case they are playing well from behind.
Jungle and support roles will now receive their respective items automatically, reducing potential mistakes and discouraging players from intentionally griefing games. To avoid roles being wrongfully assigned, Riot will allow players to swap their roles during champion select.
Lane-swapping, which dominated the early parts of the season, is getting further nerfed down, with new penalties targeting off-meta support movements. Additionally, the game developer will also bring a few quality-of-life changes, including an updated death recap screen and multi-kill sound effects.
How will Season 2 shape up the meta?
While the patch of the new season is yet to be released, the changes to bounties and neutral objectives are expected to have major repercussions on the meta.
First of all, there is already an increased dragon priority since the anti-lane swap changes were introduced. Pushing back the initial timer on the first void grubs means teams will likely be looking to contest dragons more often, since there would be no other objective between minute five and minute eight.
On the other hand, however, Void Grubs will now no longer be taken to trade an objective on the map, but will more likely be contested between the teams. This should lead to even more skirmish-heavy games where macro coordination will be key. For Atakhan, the changes shouldn’t really change how the neutral objective is perceived, although it should reward teams that are in the lead and help them open up a wider gap to close out games.
All Season 2 changes will be released on Patch 25.09, which is expected to be released on April 30th, 2025, according to Riot’s official schedule. On the same day of the new season announcement, the game developer also unveiled a new game mode, Brawl, which is expected to be live in Patch 25.10.
