Riot Games continue to innovate and experiment with Wild Rift, the hit mobile adaptation of League of Legends. One of these iterations is Fimbulwinter, a frosty tank item unique to Wild Rift, and fans are wondering if they’ll soon be seeing the item in League of Legends.
The item is meant to fill a gap for crowd control-focused tanks, allowing them increased rewards for a passive early game with extra shields in team fights later on. Could this item be a solution to tanks’ poor viability in the current League of Legends meta?
Fimbulwinter serves as the tank’s option for an item that builds out of Tear of the Goddess in Wild Rift. This is different compared to League of Legends, where Tear only has build options for auto-attack-focused characters and mages. These come as Muramana and Seraph’s Embrace, respectively. Upon completing the item, it is called Winter’s Approach until it has received enough charges to transform like its PC counterparts.
In a recent developer post, Riot Games hinted at this item coming to the PC version of Summoner’s Rift. They made mention of “a new Legendary tank item that gives users a large chunk of mana and a new effect that allows them to dip into that mana for additional shields every time they immobilize or slow enemies,” which sounds exactly like Fimbulwinter.
Fimbulwinter’s unique niche is something that League of Legends has long been looking for, and fans are calling for it to move over. In February, Immortals’ LCS mid laner Insanity mused on the exact recipe that Fimbulwinter is built from.
Mana is a difficult stat for tanks to find easy access to, with the only dedicated option being Frozen Heart. This can result in tanks having to be especially conservative with impactful peeling abilities due to their typically high mana costs. Responding to Insanity, a member of the League development team explained some of the difficulties with mana-focused tank items.
Could Fimbulwinter be League of Legends’ solution to the current top lane meta, where damage is abundant and being able to duel your opponent to the death is paramount? With the description from the developers, it sounds like the forecast is calling for snow and Ragnarok approaching with Fimbulwinter set to join League of Legends in Preseason 2022.
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