Many are sad since LoL Arena Mode was taken down on August 28, 2023. But don't worry, Arena Mode is coming back soon!
League of Legend's newest game mode, Arena, has been insanely popular ever since it came out on July 19, 2023. Many League of Legends game modes are temporary and only come to LoL for a few weeks at a time.
Some game modes, like Odyssey: Extraction and Star Guardian: Invasion (PvE) were never brought back to LoL, since they didn't have a high replayability.
Ever since the Arena game mode came to LoL, devs have told players that it wouldn't be added as a permanent game mode, at least not immediately. So, some were worried that Arena Mode might not return after it got taken down on August 28, 2023.
Thanks to a hint from a Riot dev, we already knew that Arena wouldn't be gone forever – and now, with the newest update from Riot Maxw3ll we even have a date for the comeback.
LoL: Arena Mode Return Date
After LoL dev, Daniel "Maxw3ll" Emmons, hinted to us, that LoL Arena Mode's future might not be so unsure as we thought this entire time via a Reddit comment, our hopes were high.
That same Rioter has confirmed via a Dev Post that it is confirmed to be back in Patch 13.23. Arena will hit the PBE a bit earlier on November 8 in order to squash some bugs before the Live launch.
Arena Changes
For this new iteration of the Arena, they have made a lot of changes. You will now be able to queue in groups of 2, 3 and 4 People. Full groups of 8 can now also queue together, allowing them their own private match.
In terms of champ variety, Riot has tried to make arena more accessible to a wider variety of champions. They have added 60 (!!!) new Augments to the pool to make it more diverse and interesting. To further incentivize creativity, augments will now be locked to 2 per game. This means that if you choose a specific Augment, only one other player in the game can choose the same augment.
To also make Arena more fun, they decided to switch up the Champ Select system. First are the bans as per usual and then one player of each team gets to pick a champ. Those champs are then revealed to everyone else and the second player can pick a champ, which can not be a champ of the first rotation. To keep the Meta fresh, Riot will also have a sizeable balance update go out with the release. This includes changes to specific classes but also champion specific changes.
Stage Gameplay
Hexgates and revives will be added to the Arena. If your trusted teammate goes down, you will now be able to revive them if you stand in a specific area. They are also changing the center point of the fire ring each round so that the pesky Shaco players can't just camp in the middle till the end.
Speaking of pesky champions, Sett, Pyke and Gwen will are coming back in their Soul Fighter variant to assist or annoy you during the round. They will also be accompanied by Sylas and Thresh this time. Sylas will start the round by giving everybody a random Ultimate, similar to the Ultimate Spell book mode, that will override your non-flash summoner. After you use the ult, you then get back your summoner spell. Meanwhile, Thresh will walk around the battlefield to lantern you in and out of danger while providing a shield.
The Future Of Arena
With this new limited iteration of Arena, they are holding on to the one ranked queue. Players have wished for a normal unranked queue, but Riot think that this would hurt the player base for the mode long term.
They have added challenges to the arena mode that we will be able to complete for a brand-new title once patch 12.23 releases. Arena will again be a limited time event this year as they are still in the experimental phase and explore options before they make the call on it being a permanent mode.
Are you excited about the new release of Arena? We certainly can't wait to play our own custom games.
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