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Patch 2.2 is huge for League of Legends: Wild Rift. Here's what's in store

The full list of what's been added this week in Wild Rift, which launched in open beta in the Americas.

League of Legends: Wild Rift is Riot Games' attempt at bringing the wildly successful PC game to the mobile world. While the game is currently in its beta stage, it's still available to a fairly wide audience, and is getting steady updates to make sure fans have a ton of new things to experience. The latest update, Patch 2.2, is now out across all countries, and brings with it a lot for players to dive into as they try to make their way through this great Android game.

Described as a "monstrous patch," the latest update brings with it five new champions for players to check out, as well as a ton of updates to the existing champions in the game. Gameplay changes also occur in the update, with new items and system tweaks being delivered to give fans a more authentic League of Legends experience. If you're participating in the beta for Wild Rift, you can check out some of the various changes from Patch 2.2 in the changelog below, or head over to Riot Games' site for the full, detailed breakdown on every single thing added in the latest patch.

League of Legends: Wild Rift Patch 2.2 Notes

New Locations

  • The open beta for League of Legends: Wild Rift is now available in the Americas, Hong Kong, and Macau.

New Champion

  • Galio, The Colossus: Will be released on April 1 at 17:01 PST.*

New Features

  • (In Testing) Position Preference: The devs are working on a way to let the player have more control over the position in the game, similar to League PC's position select. Players will be able to order their preferred positions (solo lane, jungle, mid lane, duo lane, support) from most to least wanted, and the matchmaking system will take that into consideration. It'll also take a look at your history and use that if you don't set your preference. It's not a perfect substitute for making sure you always get the position you want, but it gives you a bit more control.

Note: This test will not be running in the Americas.

  • (In Testing) All Random All Mid (ARAM): A player-favorite mode from League PC will hit its first round of testing in this patch, but will only be available for a limited time. For the unitiated, in League, you typically play one of five roles across three lanes and a jungle. In ARAM, everybody's in one lane and assigned a random champion from your pool for a chaotic 12-minute round.

ARAM also features two new spells exclusive to the mode: * Mark/Dash: A two-part spell. Mark throws a snowball in a line, dealing damage and marking the first enemy hit. Reactivate to Dash to the enemy to instantly get the party started. * Clarity: Grants a burst of mana back to you and nearby allies.

  • Ranked Season 2: Start your ranked climb in the Americas as soon on March 29. Reaching Gold rank with 10 wins or more will get you Glorious Jinx.

  • Wild Pass: The Wild Pass is Wild Rift's version of a Battle Pass. Pay to upgrade to the Wild Pass to get exclusive rewards. Reaching the end will get you the Hexplorer Jax skin.

  • (In Testing) 120hz support: Riot is testing 120Hz support for a select few high-end devices. However, the developers warn that you may experience overheating.

New Items

  • Several new in-game items are on the way, including Winged Moonplate, Force of Nature, and Frozen Heart.

New Skins

The following skins will be released throughout patch 2.2:

  • Corgi Corki
  • Debonair Galio
  • Draven Draven
  • Fuzz Fizz
  • Infernal Galio
  • Surprise Party Amumu
  • Glorious Jinx
  • Hexplorer Jax
  • Academy Ahri
  • iBlitzcrank
  • Marauder Olaf

Goodies

You can earn or purchase goodies from a bunch of different sources.

  • Icons: Charming Poro; Rebel Poro; Trickster Poro; Hextech Jaximus; Jax Unleashed
  • Emotes: The Slow Clap; Much Rage; Just Peachy; OHMAIGOSH; Forgotten Birthday; Super Shisa; Choncc Chortle; Retreat!
  • Icon Borders: Hexplorer Passage
  • Recalls: Recall Port
  • Baubles: Whoopsie; Trusty Shovel; Bright Idea
  • Rift Emblems: Hexplorer History; High Tech Hexplorer; The Great Demacia; Noxian Power

Events

  • Wild Rift Journey: Wild Rift Journey starts when you complete the event for new players, Wild Rift Academy. Complete the Journey to earn new content.
  • Wild Welcome: New players to the open beta can earn champions and other content faster.

Gameplay Changes

(New) Force of Nature

Force of Nature will be replacing Adaptive Helm as the go-to Magic Resist item for when those pesky mages won't leave you alone. * Health: 350 HP * Magic Resist: 45 * Total cost: 2850g * Spectre's Cowl (1100g) + Winged Moonplate (900g) + 950g * Passive - Storm: +5% movement speed * Passive - Absorb: Taking ability damage grants you 6 bonus movement speed and 6 bonus Magic Resist for 5 seconds, stacking up to 5 times, for a maximum of 30 bonus movement speed and 30 bonus Magic Resist. Each unique ability gives 1 stack.

(New) Frozen Heart

Use Frozen Heart's aura to reduce nearby enemies' Attack Speed and defend your team. * Armor: 70 * Mana: 300 * Ability Haste: 20 * Total Cost: 2850g * Warden's Mail (1050g) + Glacial Shroud (1000g) + 800g * Passive - Winter's Caress: Reduces the Attack Speed of nearby enemies by 15%

(New) Winged Moonplate

Winged Moonplate is the new component item for Dead Man's Plate. Tank players, it's time to engage. * Health: 150 HP * Passive - Flight: +5% movement speed * Total cost: 900g * Ruby Crystal (500g) + 400g

Systems

Attack Speed: "We're changing the way champions play with higher attack speed. Previously, champs who stack a bunch of attack speed items have less attack frame reduction, which makes kiting and chasing a bit too reliable. We expect marksmen to feel the highest impact here, so we'll be monitoring this adjustment closely."

  • Attack Speed's effect ratio on attacks' windup time: 100% > 50%
  • Windup time = base windup time / (1 + attack speed) > base windup time / (1 + attack speed × 50%)

Controls and Settings Changes

Graphics

  • Added new graphics presets: Performance, Graphics, and Custom.
  • Performance: Optimizing for in-game performance, balancing FPS and stability for smoothness ingame, at the expense of graphics. This mode does not guarantee maximum FPS, because depending on your phone, you may experience FPS spikes that feel like in-game latency.
  • Graphics: Optimizing for graphic quality, balancing graphic quality and stability for higher-quality visuals, at the expense of FPS. Good for content creation!
  • Added new FPS options: 40, 90 and 120.

Deadzone Tuning

  • You can now tune your ability button dead zones. Basically, you have to drag out beyond the deadzone in order to activate the ability. The bigger the dead zone, the harder it is to accidentally drag the ability button when aiming.

Move Stick

  • It's possible to input a move direction that is opposite to your initial drag direction when you first touch the screen. Riot is reducing the likelihood of this happening by allowing the center of the move stick to be closer to the edge of the screen.

Tutorial and New Players

  • We're changing up the first-login flow to get players into Wild Rift's action faster, downloading a smaller chunk of the game while patching the rest in the background. Players will load straight into the first tutorial before login, and after completing the tutorial, there's a small interactive experience to learn about some featured champs.

  • New players will no longer immediately enter the standard free-to-play champ rotation when they finish the tutorials. They will instead have a designated champion pool, aimed at giving them a taste of different roles, playstyles, and champ fantasies. The champs are: Braum, Ezreal, Fiora, Graves, Lux, Malphite, Miss Fortune, Sona, Xin Zhao and Zed.

For the full list of changes in Patch 2.2., check out the changelog on Riot's Wild Rift website.

Play now!

League of Legends: Wild Rift

Free at Google Play Store Free at Apple App Store

The legendary game, on mobile.

League of Legends: Wild Rift is the very famous MOBA now available for mobile. It's not a straight up port, though, and is instead built from the ground-up to make sure you have the best experience possible on a mobile device.


by Anthony J Nash