League of Legends Season 12 is just beginning. And yet, even as early as the preseason, players complaints already arose, urging changes to the Chemtech Rift. Amid the controversy around the Chemtech Rift being much too strong, Riot actually shipped out a secret change to the map just as Patch 12.1 is about to go live.
The new Chemtech dragon and rift
When developers first introduced the new drakes for Season 12, players immediately got to experience how challenging it was—and still is—to play on the Chemtech Rift. For the buff, the team that slays the Chemtech dragon will gain boosted damage output, which scales with players' missing health. But while Riot has fine-tuned that part quite well, the real headache involves the landscape of the Chemtech Rift that the map changes to once a team captures the dragon soul.
Green smoke over certain parts of the map creates a camouflage zone that helps players hide—escaping opponents or ambushing their foes. (Not to mention, the soul also gives players a zombie buff, where they can stay alive for a few extra seconds after dying in order to cast abilities. It's like Karthus' passive, but way more powerful). The Chemtech Rift provides an unreal advantage to the team in skirmishes as well as strategically in terms of macro or rotating around the map, like having to play against five champions that now have Rengar's brush-hiding abilities or Akali's shroud but extended to a wide jungle area.
Players have been calling for Riot's game designers to tune down the Chemtech Rift. However, when the Patch 12.1 notes dropped a few days ago, the community found out that shockingly there were no changes noted about the rift.
But it didn't mean that League of Legends developers forgot all about it. A few weeks ago, they had promised to further change the Chemtech Rift. While the patch notes did not mention the changes explicitly, Riot had actually already implemented a small nerf on the live servers to make the map state a little less drastic to play in.
Secret Chemtech rift changes
As players soon noticed, more Scryer's Bloom plants have been scattered around the map (but only when Chemtech Rift is active). In other maps with other types of dragon souls, the Scryer's Bloom plants are still the same as before—which is within the jungle itself, toward the edges of the quadrants, such as near the drake pit and baron pit. To access these, you'd have to enter into the fog of war and hope someone won't ambush you in your own (or the enemy's) jungle.
But on the Chemtech Rift, the new change adds Scryer's Blooms under the Inner Turrets (tier 2 towers). This means that players can activate it and direct the effect towards the jungle, allowing them a glimpse into whoever's lurking around the map in that particular area. The extra vision and information, even if it's only for a couple of short seconds, could be a huge help for teams. Especially when teams are already far behind, just stepping into your own jungle can be scary if you don't have map control to place wards. Even more so when the Chemtech Rift's camouflage zone gives opponents more ways to duck out of vision.
Riot dev Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison also touched on the update in a tweet, saying that the Chemtech map isn't supposed to be skewed toward the winning team. Instead, the Chemtech Rift is “is intended to enable aggressive plays for both teams,” so the new change will ideally help “losing teams contest their jungle.”
The change may seem minor, but players already seem to be enjoying Chemtech Rift a tad more now. Riot will still be keeping their eyes peeled if any further changes are needed to help balance out the game.
Follow Us
Subscribe