With the new season around the corner, we begin to wonder how all these new changes will affect the pro scene. The new tower plating system, new bounty system, runes, Neeko? This article will be different as I will attempt to gauge how each new addition will be dealt with by the pro scene. With the pro players theorycrafting and scrimmaging each other almost daily, we will be in for a wild Season 9.

Turret Plating

Quick overview: the outer turrets now have five plates protecting them which grant higher resistances as more are removed. The reward is 160 gold per plate that is split between all nearby champions, but the turret gains a secondary resistances buff for a short period as each plate falls.

With this change, we will more than likely see the return of trading bot and top towers and then a swap of top and bot laners. The idea will be to gain as much gold advantage for the carries as possible or open the map for pressure scenarios. If possible, it will be the return of funneling gold to the marksmen or any potential carries. The only drawback will be the major allocation of manpower and resources will be punishable. Teams that excel in early rotations and map movement will be at a major advantage compared to the competition.

Bounty System

Quick overview: As a champion begins to dominate and rack up multiple kills in a single life, they will acquire a bounty that scales with kills. This bounty maxes out at 1000 gold and once killed will be awarded to the player who killed them. This bounty will also scale gradually for those who farm higher quantities compared to their lane opponent.

This change will have a much higher impact in the game as it will be the way teams can reverse their situation and come back into a losing game. While I do say the system needs a minor tweak as it has a rare occurrence where you can be behind in strength yet, because you been farming well, you still have a bounty on you. Teams that excel in making plays when they matter the most or getting kills on high-value targets will greatly benefit from this. This will cause games to be an indefinite coin toss as it will be more pressure on teams not to make mistakes and cause a flip of the situation. We may see an increase in game length from the high caliber teams as they fight back and forth for controlling the pace of the game.

Runes

Quick overview: some runes have received major changes compared to last season in some cases completely changing functionality. These changes also include the stat runes that were decided by the rune build you chose. You are now able to choose the stats you want regardless of the rune page you choose.

Runes are the make or break of some champions and the stats were also restricting as some builds were not optimal. With the freedom of changing stats, you are free to build a better-optimized page and take rune setups that were not optimal before. Some runes may not see competitive play anymore with the changes they went through such as Dark Harvest and Celerity. While some may see even more in the scene like Kleptomancy and the new rune Shield Bash. These changes to runes may even bring some unused champions into the spotlight that we have not seen in quite a while or at all. The pros are hot at work testing new champions, team comps, builds, etc. I feel as though we might see some unusual picks and strategies for the first couple of weeks before we see a stable meta.

Neeko

Last but certainly not least, the lovely trickster Neeko will be live for the new season of the pro scene. This champion has only seen one change and it was to one of her basic abilities resulting in one minor damage nerf. She seems to already have a balanced win rate for her short time being available. Her playstyle will be a good match with some pros who love to be aggressive. Her kit is one of the strongest in terms of teamfighting while also producing a large amount of damage. It seems Neeko has seen the most success in the mid lane which means it will be a highly contested pick. Her assassin playstyle may see success for unconventional matchups however, it will only be short-lived. It may be picked once in the first week but otherwise, I see the rest of the games with her being banned.

Conclusion

The early weeks of the pro scene will be very erratic where we think we have a grip on the meta but then it will change. It will take some time to figure out what is strong and what isn’t, what strategy works, and which ones don’t. The pro scene will be exciting to watch from week one, to say the least. The game pace has changed entirely, and I don’t think any of us are ready to see how the games play out. If you have any predictions or ideas on some changes will affect the pro level let me know on Twitter!

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