Changes to Summoner’s Rift improved blue and red side balance

Jan 20, 2020

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In the recent developer blog, Riot Games shared the latest on the long ongoing issue with the blue side in League of Legends having an advantage over the opposite side. Riot claims that this imbalance has now been fixed, specifically in ranked games.

A few features made the blue side stronger in the past, mostly caused by the positioning of jungle camps, intended pathing, and big objectives. Before Summoner’s Rift was updated in the preseason, the bot lane side of the jungle was often favored due to n easier leash from the laners, more experience, slightly easier farming, and better pathing to the lane for an early gank.

Ahead of the Season 10 start, Riot addressed those issues by tweaking gold and experience of the jungle camps on both sides. More specifically, the Krug that was giving the blue side an advantage got its value decreased, while Gromps’ value was increased. This allows junglers to pick either of the outer camps, opening up more diversity in jungle pathing.

2020 preseason changes made Summoner’s Rift a better balanced map

It’s not only jungle gameplay changes that resulted in a better performance of the red side. As the red side has easier access to the Dragon, an objective whose importance significantly increased this season, players are utilizing that advantage to reach higher win rates.

On some League servers, the changes were enough not just to make the red side as good as the blue one, but actually gave it a slightly greater advantage. The statistics Riot provided showed the red side has an advantage of less than 0.5% in North American and Europe West solo queues, making for a well-balanced map.

Sharing this information is a step forward in Riot’s decision to better its clarity and share with players all the information they need to understand where the changes are coming from.

The developer also announced this will be another season without a large midseason patch, and that there will be improvements to the events system. The full dev notes are available here.