Rift Herald charge speed, damage from collision, and player-summoned spawn have been changed by Riot in patch 14.3.
As you may have already seen, League of Legends season 2024 has implemented major gameplay changes. Map, Baron, Items, etc. got a significant overhaul. Rift Herald’s rework, in particular, is very noticeable due to the flashiness of Shelly’s charge.
Before this season, after defeating the herald, you would collect the eye and then crush it to spawn it to crush the turrets. Players didn’t have any control over the Rift Herald after summoning. In this season, however, you could also mount it and dictate its charge trajectory by having the freedom to maneuver the direction of its motion.
However, there were some balancing issues and bugs. In patch 14.3, Riot has addressed them to make the Rift Herald mechanics more polished.
In this article, I will be noting down the key changes for you.
Read More: Riot Delays Vanguard Deployment To League of Legends Patch 14.5
All the Changes to Rift Herald in Lol Patch 14.3
These are the specific Rift Herald changes from the patch note:
- Slow Start (New): For the first three seconds after spawning, Rift Herald has very high maneuverability and will be easier to turn. Every 2 seconds after Herald slowly becomes less maneuverable as its speed increases.
- Damage from Wall Collision: Crashing into a wall while controlling Herald will deal damage equal to that of crashing into a tower to Shelly ⇒ Crashing into a wall while controlling Herald will deal 20% of the damage received compared to crashing into a tower to Shelly
- We Don’t Have All Game…: Player-summoned Rift Herald trinket spawning has been sped up by 1 second.
The ‘Slow Start’ change is a new addition, intended to make the maneuverability of Shelly easier. Instead of having high and unstable control from the beginning, you now get some time to adjust where you want to drive it. But Shelly will keep accelerating every 2 seconds to increase its speed and as a trade-off, the maneuverability will gradually decline.
Damage received from wall collision is reduced to 20% (of damage dealt to the turret), making it less punishing for bad maneuvers.
Riot also notes a known bug concerning Rift Herald. When you mount the Rift Herald, there is a direction indicator, if you don’t click on it on time, Rift Herald doesn’t register the command. This is not fixed yet but Riot has promised to resolve it very soon.
When will the Rift Herald Changes be Live?
Since patch 14.3 has already dropped on the live servers, you should already be able to see the aforementioned changes.
