Following the significant overhaul of League of Legends’ ARAM game mode last December, Riot is now committed to continually updating the game mode and making changes based on player input. Today, the League devs announced that they’re tweaking several aspects of ARAM, including the addition of Frostgates and Tower Rubble.
The most significant modification Riot intends to make to the Howling Abyss relates to Tower Rubble. When towers are destroyed in ARAM, they leave debris on one side of the lane, effectively halving the side-to-side travel distance for champions. This often confines champions to a small area in team fights, making it more challenging to push down the single lane.
According to survey data conducted by Riot, the addition of Tower Rubble has been viewed negatively by the game’s player base. “We think that at the end of the day, we changed ARAM more dramatically than we needed to,” said Riot’s lead game modes designer Daniel Emmons in a recent update. “A lot of the combat focus was drawn to the choke points and vision, and away from the normal teamfighting push and pull that folks play ARAM for.”
Riot stated that the ARAM devs will most likely adjust the way Tower Rubble operates in a future patch, or remove the mechanic entirely.
On the bright side, Riot stated that the ARAM team is satisfied with how players have received “Frostgates,” the ARAM version of Hexgates that were introduced to the game mode with the late 2022 overhaul. While they’re not on the chopping block like Tower Rubble, Frostgates will receive some modifications in a future patch, likely through an indirect change that focuses on death timers. “Frostgates had a somewhat negative trend with overall ‘game flow’,” according to Riot.
Riot will also make consistent balance changes to ARAM, focusing particularly on champions who require a boost. League players should expect another round of adjustments to ARAM in the near future, beginning with the series of modifications to Frostgates in Patch 13.4. No information was given about a potential return of ARAM Clash.