Support item stacking will be discouraged with the upcoming changes in Lol patch 14.2 and onwards .
League of Legends season 2024 came with a plethora of changes. One of the biggest changes came to the items. Mythic items were removed, completely new items with new effects took their place and now the gameplay has changed greatly compared to the previous few seasons.
Speaking of item changes, support items were completely overhauled. Now, every support champion starts with World Atlas. It then undergoes 3 upgrades, with the last upgrade letting you choose from 5 different finished items.
World Atlas executes minions below 50% (3 charges every 18 seconds). However, excessive minion kills result in severe gold reduction afterward. For example, having more than 7 minion kills with this item before 5 minutes can lead to an 80% gold reduction.
However, despite such penalties, pro players have found a loophole that allows them to maximize gold beyond the amount achievable through regular CS-ing. Here comes the support item stacking concept.
It turns out that if both the bot-laners buy World Atlas and share minions, they can still optimize more gold than the non-stacking botlane. This is possible largely due to the amount of gold you get from hitting champions with attacks or abilities and taking turns while killing minions. However, you are bound to lose some gold from minions due to the constraint. The passive income, apparently, more than makes up for it.
So, Riot has decided to immediately address the issue with Patch 14.2 onwards.
In this article, I will try to simplify the response from Riot and how it resolves the problem.
Read More: Riot Adding More Options In Practice Tool in LoL Patch 14.2
Lol Support Item Stacking Changes from Patch 14.2 Onwards
Reduced Gold from Minions upon Support Item Stacking
The relevant change from patch 14.2 notes regarding the support item stacking is this:
Support Item Stacking: This item grants reduced gold from minions if you kill excessive numbers of them >>> This item grants reduced gold from minions if anyone on your team kills an excessive number of minions
Basically, you cannot minimize the effect of reduced gold income from minions by ‘sharing’ cs with support by taking turns. In patch 14.1, pro players like Gumayusi and Keria both used World Atlas strategically to minimize the reduced gold and ended up getting net positive gold compared to the enemy bot lane, even while being 10 CS down.
With the upcoming change, once ‘anyone’ on your team buys a support item and reaches the threshold, after which you start getting decreased minion gold, that effect will carry onto whoever else has the support item. So, for example, if you are the ADC and you have bought World Atlas alongside your support who has exhausted the normal gold limit of the item if you kill a minion, you will receive low gold from it as well, even if didn’t reach the limit yourself.
This heavily discourages support item stacking, as there is no point in stacking it if you cannot generate a positive value compared to the regular botlane CS strategy.
This is a good change. But I wonder how Riot managed to let such an exploit slip into the game to begin with. But at least it will be resolved now. However, you will still see the pro players exploit this for a couple of weeks more because patch 14.2 will drop there much later than the live servers.
Patch 14.2 Release Date
LoL Patch 14.2 will be released on 24 January 2024.
