Riot intentionally left minions and monsters unchanged in League of Legends durability update 

League of Legends patch 12.10, also known as the "durability update," shipped tons of tweaks and updates to the MOBA. This included buffs for champion health, armor, and resistance, alongside balancing the effects of heals, shields, and sustain.

Moreover, despite being an intense roll-out, a few things remained unaltered in the patch. Minions and monsters were two such game elements that were surprisingly left unchanged.

When League of Legends players started sharing their confused views regarding the same on social media, Riot designer Tim “TheTruexy” Jiang clarified that their actions were deliberate and that it was not just compensation for durability.

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League of Legends durability update kept minion-monster combats unaltered

Image via Riot Games

Like many others, LoL player CookieBlitz raised the confusion regarding the current state of minions and monsters through a Reddit post. He queried,

"I’m not sure if it was overlooked by Riot or an intentional decision, but giving all champions 70 base HP at level 1 makes a huge difference when it comes to tanking minions in low level trades. Some champions like Olaf who are hard to contest in lane from level 1 are even stronger because minions matter less in low level trades. And another noticeable thing is clearing super minion waves, which now deal less relative damage over all. I feel like while 12.10 was a success there are some parts of the game that need to at least be looked at (should Dragon and herald damage be buffed like Nashor was? why weren’t they in the first place?)"

The community complained that minion and monster damage owed some love in Patch 12.10 as compensation for the durability update. To clarify everyone's doubts, TheTruexy replied to the same post to explain that making these changes wasn’t as simple as it seems and thus, were deliberately left unaltered. He wrote,

"This was intentionally not changed for 12.10. As people have pointed out, it's not as simple as "compensate for durability". A lot of 12.10 made it so weak early games are harder to punish, so there's a lot of pros/cons of making early minion trades equally punishing."

After the durability modifications, since all champions can survive longer, it has become much more difficult for League of Legends players to get ahead in the early game. Thus, buffing minions' and monsters' damage at this point wouldn't have made any sense, and the whole intention of the update would have been counterproductive.

TheTruexy further stated the same,

"For your dragon/herald question, it (oversimplified) ended being that the "compensation" buffs would be overall miniscule for the early game durability and more importantly the tension on these objectives is the amount of time you're in 1 area forcing a fight than the actual damage you take."

With that being said, the designer reassured League of Legends players that Riot is keeping an eye on these types of things and are open to following up as needed.