14 DAY TRIAL // League of Legends has just received update 4.15, bringing forth a few balance tweaks to some champions, but also the new design and infrastructure for the actual game client and its patcher system.
League of Legends is one of the most popular free-to-play online games out there, and while its upcoming World Championship is drawing near, developer Riot Games has decided to roll out another pretty big patch, in the form of update 4.15.
Unlike previous ones, the new patch doesn't mess that much with champion balancing, bringing only a few small buffs for Gnar, while tweaking other popular characters like Alistar, Caitlyn, Fiddlesticks, Graves, Rumble, Shyvana, Sivir, Urgot, and a few more.
However, the major aspect of the new update is the fact that it brings the promised design overhauls for both the actual League of Legends client and for its patcher system, which is crucial in making sure that the game won't cause errors when it receives future patches.
"These two visual updates represent phase one of our ongoing development process to improve your pre-game League of Legends experience. There's a lot of nuance that goes into introducing new, stable technology," Riot said on the official blog.
What's more, the rankings system has been tweaked, somewhat, with a new Master Tier now sitting between Diamond 1 and the Challenge tiers, offering up and coming players a new way to stand out in the rankings.
"Snuggled comfortably between Diamond 1 and the Challenger Tier, the new Master Tier will offer more competitive visibility between top players in your region. The introduction of Master Tier also means that Challenger rankings will rotate on a 24-hour schedule with no immunity, so now's the time to hit the ranked gym," the studio added.
Last but not least, Riot Games is finally close to release the overhauled version of its core Summoner's Rift map. As such, it will begin adding pieces of the new level with each update, so that the official release won't include a major download.
"As we near final polish on a few parts of Summoner's Rift, we're going to start patching those finished pieces to the live environment. This is being done to minimize the size of the eventual Summoner's Rift launch patch so you all don't end up with massive downloads on the day we go live," the developer explained.
"In other words, this doesn't mean you'll be able to play on those shipped pieces - and we still don't have an official release date! - just that they'll be pre-emptively sitting on your hard drives."
You can download League of Legends patch 4.15 right now via Softpedia or through the in-game client.