League of Legends' new Arena mode has turned out to be a massive success! An exciting gameplay twist, a refreshing new meta, and the mode is almost free of bugs. The augments are one big reason for Arena to be so popular. Now the developers have given us a sneak peek into the list of augments that did not end up on the live servers.
Chances are that you are one of the many players who still can not get enough from the Arena mode. It definitely looks like the first new League of Legends mode since Nexus Blitz has turned out to be a huge success. Now, Riot Games developers have turned to Reddit to answer community questions in an 'Ask Me Anything'.
The League community could not stop showering the developers with positive feedback in this AMA. Apart from a plethora of compliments, many users asked questions about the thought process and the work behind Arena. One of those questions inquired about augments.
LoL Arena: Three Crazy Augments That Did Not Make It Into The Game
Augments first debuted as part of Teamfight Tactics, now they also made their way to traditional League of Legends through the Arena mode. The core concept is similar to TFT too. You get to purchase items between certain rounds, while you get to pick augments between others. These enhance your champions with various, powerful buffs.
Some of those augments make you fire Sivir's boomerang blade or Ezreal's Trueshot Barrage (that's his R, FYI) at your enemies every few seconds. Others improve your combat stats, replace your summoner spells or buff your teammates.
Riot's Game Modes team has definitely been working hard to make Arena happen. Even though some augments did not make it into the game, the number of available augments leaves nothing left desired! You get to decide for yourself whether that is a good thing or not, but we definitely like it!
Thank you very much to Redditor 'IceCubesBurning' for your question about scrapped augments to the developers, and to Riot's Game Designer 'MadnessHeroo' for the elaborate reply!
Augment 1: Shiitake Happens (Prismatic)
In every round, a shroom loaded with lethal poison will spawn somewhere in the Arena. Every player can make it explode by stepping on it. Only you can see it.
Imagine if you had to play against Teemo – but apart from his own shrooms, you would also have to worry about this one! What a bad time to have League of Legends installed that would be...
What do the developers think? According to MadnessHeroo, this was one of the most interesting augment concepts. However, it led to weird situations in-game. The team with the shroom augment positioned accordingly to get the shroom between them and their opponents, but those usually realized what is going on. That led to western-like standoffs, but neither team was willing to pull the trigger.
In the end, the augment turned out to be too difficult to balance and it was scrapped ahead of Arena's release. However, the developers did not yet lock out the possibility for the augment to return in a different form.
Augment 2: Flicker (Gold)
Automatically teleport to a random place within the Arena at the start of each round and gain Camouflage for 3.5 seconds. After that, teleport to a random place within the Arena every 13 seconds and gain Camouflage for 1 second.
According to developer MadnessHeroo, this is a controversial augment. Some play testers really loved the augment, while others found it to be extremely annoying, regardless of whether they had to play with or against it. While it enabled some really funny situations, it was also prone to ruining the experience.
Imagine if you had to play against a burst-heavy champion like Annie, and she teleports right behind you right at the start of the round without you even seeing it... it kind of has a resemblance to this meme:
Augment 3: Pass-a-Fist (Prismatic)
You can not attack. Your ally gains 50% of your AD and Attack Speed and their attacks trigger your on-hit effects.
This would have been the chance to utilize a completely new gameplay twist. You can not attack, but your teammate gets buffed significantly. MadnessHeroo names Janna with Blade of the Ruined King, Nashor's Tooth and this augment as an example – sounds incredibly strong, doesn't it?
In the end, the augment was scrapped for three specific reasons:
- Due to certain champion combos using it much more efficiently than others, it was impossible to balance
- It was difficult for the enemy to figure out what is going on (on-hit effects from champions that you did not even see)
- The basic attack restriction affected too many spells and rendered various champions effectively useless
Just think about how many extraordinarily strong champion combinations there would be – probably an endless amount! This augment surely would have been fun to play with, but it would have made Arena very chaotic and possibly frustrating too.
Maybe it is better that these three augments never saw the light of day. However, we should be patient – maybe we will see them when the next iteration of Arena releases!