The League of Legends S15 season is about to conclude, and Riot’s official designers recently shared the overall planned changes for S16 in their developer notes. The main focus is to accelerate match start times: the first minion wave now spawns at 30 seconds rather than 65, and all jungle camps spawn 35 seconds earlier. This means the early game setup time is reduced, leading to earlier laning phases.

Next are changes to jungle monsters. Since Elder Dragon was a crucial mid-game objective that often decided team fights and match outcomes, Riot decided to remove it to reduce the frequency of team fights. Meanwhile, Baron’s respawn time will be adjusted back to 20 minutes, and the mechanic that rewards early Baron control will also be removed alongside Elder Dragon. Finally, Riot will scale epic monster stats—both Baron and dragons—with champion levels.

The new season designers have increased the durability (health) of epic monsters and strengthened “Dragon’s Wrath.” The more elemental dragons a team secures, the more Wrath stacks they accumulate, which reduce damage dealt to dragons. Teams at a disadvantage will have a higher chance to contest dragons. Other changes include adding a shield layer to the second and inhibitor turrets, though the shield rewards come at the cost of tower pushing bonuses.

Overall, the new season’s changes are quite significant. What impact will these adjustments have on competitive play? Simply put, removing Elder Dragon lowers the win rate of teams that rely heavily on macro play, such as T1, who focus on steady resource control and late-game strength—this will slightly weaken them. Additionally, with fewer team fights, there will be more tactical diversity, and split-pushing strategies on the top lane will become viable again.

This is definitely a big boost for most LPL teams that generally struggle with macro play. However, AL might be affected negatively because Panda’s style leans towards Korean-style macro play, relying on late-game team fights to win. With increased dragon stats and changes to Dragon’s Wrath, stronger teams will secure dragons longer, while weaker teams will contest more often. For T1, who favor fast dragon control, this change is a slight nerf.

Moving tower push rewards to the shield mechanic will allow leading teams to snowball faster since it’s difficult for losing teams to take down second and inhibitor turrets. The shield rewards also make split-pushing more valuable. Teams skilled in this strategy will become stronger next year. However, the annoying lane swapping will persist since Riot only adjusted the spawn times of Rift Scuttlers and dragons, so lane rotations will still be necessary.

In summary, Riot’s changes clearly favor the LPL region because very few teams there excel at macro play. IG at this year’s World Championship is a typical example: they gained early leads against T1 almost every game but failed to respond to T1’s superior macro in the mid to late game. IG repeatedly gave up opportunities before team fights, resulting in early leads being overturned by T1.

Being able to play split-push is definitely a big boost for BLG. Bin’s Camille and Fiora should see more play next season. With split-push tower pressure and shield rewards, top lane will become very powerful, greatly influencing matches. Other teams, except AL, should also be strengthened. LCK teams will be weakened because their late-game macro style won’t be as effective in the new season.

Conclusion:

When Elder Dragon was introduced, Riot claimed it would be permanent, but just one year later, they reversed course. The designers did give themselves an out by tying its removal to the game’s lore: the new champion Yone defeats Elder Dragon upon release. It’s a somewhat abstract explanation, but that’s how it was handled.

So, what do you think? Is this patch a buff for BLG?

Feel free to leave your thoughts and join the discussion!