The Wild Rift know-how for League of Legends players

Almost 10 years after the launch of League of Legends on PC, Riot Games is finally on the verge of releasing the Regional Open Beta for Wild Rift on mobile devices.

Ever since it's first official announcement in 2019 during Riot Games' tenth anniversary, League of Legends: Wild Rift has gone through its alpha testing in June 2020 for the Philippines region. The alpha testing phase was followed by the closed beta in Southeast Asia which was closed in the early days of October. The open beta is slated to begin on October 27.

A guide to Wild Rift for League of Legends players

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Tweaks to the Champions for Mobile Optimisation

The most notable change coming in for League of Legends players in Wild Rift has to be the champion pool. With less than 50 champions in Wild Rift compared to League of Legends' more than 140 champions.

Apart from the general champion pool in general, some of the champions' abilities have also been reworked or readjusted due to the optimization factor on mobile devices. For example,

• Vayne's Silver Bolt is a passive skill in League of Legends whereas it gets an added active which increases her attack speed for a short period while also healing her at the same time in Wild Rift.
• The Enchanted Crystal Arrow or Ashe's ultimate can be controlled in Wild Rift to follow a series of player-controlled twists and turns instead of League of Legends' straight-line motion.
• Miss Fortune's Double Up ability does not require a target in Wild Rift and will connect if it lines up with the target unlike in League of Legends where Double Up is a point target ability.
• Lux's ultimate, Final Spark has been turned into a global ability instead of the limited 3,400 range in League of Legends.

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The map of Wild Rift

The map in Wild Rift, although similar to summoner’s rift is a lot smaller than League of Legends' Summoner's Rift. To add to this, even the Summoner Spells have been reworked for Wild Rift as we can see Flash, for example, having a 3-minute cooldown compared to 5 minutes on League of Legends.

The presence of jungle monsters and dragons has also been optimized according to the mobile edition. There are 4 elemental drakes present in Wild Rift, namely Cloud Drake, Infernal Drake, Mountain Drake, or Ocean Drake. In Wild Rift, killing a drake grants the slaying team a permanent buff which lasts till the end of the respective match.

All of this combined ensures much faster gameplay as well as shorter matches on the mobile device edition compared to League of Legends.

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Controls in Wild Rift

With a floating d-pad and a dedicated section for combat spells and basic attacks, Wild Rift's controls have been specially designed to ensure proper micro controls for the players with special modifications which allow players to accurately target an enemy or creep.

Master the art of laning with advice from these 3 Closed Beta streamers. #GetRiftReady pic.twitter.com/mKBRv0JREN

— League of Legends: Wild Rift (@wildrift) October 25, 2020

Items in Wild Rift are also optimized differently than in League of Legends as we find that all boots can be upgraded twice on the mobile edition. Every second upgrade on a boot is equivalent to an entire item in League of Legends.

The number of Summoner Spells in Wild Rift has also been reduced in comparison to League of Legends with Ghost, Heal, Barrier, Exhaust, Flash, Ignite, and Smite being the spells available in Wild Rift.

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Wild Rift is not League of Legends

At the end of the day, Wild Rift is a completely different player experience compared to League of Legends. Starting from a smaller map to a limited champion pool, Wild Rift is still in its early days awaiting the launch of regional open beta. That being said, some of the other notable changes coming into Wild Rift from League of Legends includes,

• Although, last hitting remains the most efficient and quickest way to amass farm yet players within the vicinity of a dying creep will be awarded some gold irrespective of the last hitter. This change according to Riot Games, has been made to accelerate the time taken for each match to run its course.
• As mentioned above, quite a few champions had to get their ability reworked before they could find themself in Wild Rift. Apart from that, some heroes also got their roles changed to better serve the mobile platform. For example, Vayne, a marksman in League of Legends has been classified as a jungler in Wild Rift after minor tweaks to his abilities.
• With Riot Games updating the champion roster continuously before the official release of the game, it remains to be seen how many of League of Legends’ champions can be reworked to include in Wild Rift before its official release.

We heard you and we got you! 👊We'll be including the following highly-requested quality-of-life fixes and balance changes in upcoming hotfixes and patches:👓 30/60 FPS toggle for all devices in a few days🔻 Xin Zhao nerf in early November🕹 Fixed joystick in December pic.twitter.com/PpW3X0U1cQ

— League of Legends: Wild Rift Philippines (@wildriftPHL) October 24, 2020

With all these necessary optimizations made for the game, the regional open beta launching from 27 October is indeed exciting as Riot Games looks to expand into the mobile esports industry with Wild Rift at the helm.