As with the even of every passing year in League of Legends, the new season is already peering over the horizon.
And while most pre-season patches roll out some massive updates – the pre-season 11 patch is set to totally uproot the META we’ve seen in effect over the last while.
How’s that?
Well, as part of the larger item rework that the developers over at Riot Games have been slaving over – the community is getting ready to say “bye-bye” to an age-old stat.
That’s right! Cooldown reduction, otherwise known as CDR in-game, is taking off for southern shores. And succeeding it is a whole new stat called Ability Haste.
So strap in and get comfy as we walk you through this new stat, how it works, where it differs from CDR, and how it’s going to impact the state of League of Legends as we know it.
Why Is CDR Being Replaced With Ability Haste
So, first and foremost – why are we offing CDR in favor of a new stat?
For as long as League of Legends has been around, CDR was always one of the most challenging stats to keep balanced and work around when rolling out new content into the game.
As such, it’s always been a frequent flier when it came to tweaks, reworks, and updates. And understandably, at some point, the development team realized that with the game growing leaps and bounds, keeping CDR in-check would be far more for them to chew than they can bite off.
But, that’s not all!
In addition to the constant headaches and caffeine crashes that CDR has been responsible for over the years – it’s also an incredibly dated and limiting stat.
Over the last while, the development team has focused their efforts on a more dynamic release schedule that features a greater breadth of content aimed at incorporating far more flexibility into the game. From new game modes to META-breaking champions such as the ones in our LoL mid lane tier list, the message is clear – the META is too narrow, and far too rigid.
So, where does CDR fall short in this department?
Well, for one – it’s hard-capped at 40%. This means once you’ve hit that number, you’re done, and any additional points you acquire into the stat won’t do you any good at all.
As you can imagine, this puts a pretty big limit on many champions who would otherwise thrive with cooldown focused builds, such as the monsters of URF (Ultra-Rapid-Fire mode).
So How Do Ability Haste & CDR Differ?
At first glance, reading over the pre-season dev notes, you may think that CDR and Ability Haste are practically one and the same.
However, they’re substantially different in two key places:
- The way both stats scale.
- The fact that Ability Haste won’t have any sort of a cap.
Let’s cover the differences in a bit more detail.
First and foremost, it’s no secret that the current CDR stat scales exponentially. This means that the more of it you have, the more you’ll start to feel the effects of stacking it up. This means that if you really want some noticeable amount of cooldown reduction on your champion’s abilities, you’ll need to stack a decent amount of CDR. This effectively forces you to commit to building CDR-granting items and working them into your build. In turn, you’re sacrificing other stats you could be picking up, which limits your viable build options and playstyles for any given champion.
On the other hand, Ability Haste will scale linearly, in a 1:1 ratio with the amount of stat versus the number of times you can cast the ability across a given span of time.
This means you can potentially work in a little bit of Ability Haste into your build, while picking up other stats, and still feel the effects it has on your ability cooldowns.
In addition to this, unlike CDR, Ability Haste won’t have a hard-cap limiting you from building more. And while it’s mathematically impossible to reach a zero-second cooldown – you can enjoy near-zero cooldowns with no problem. This opens up a lot of interesting options for cooldown dependant champions and it’s easy to see how this new stat can totally uproot the META and playstyles that we’ve all gotten so accustomed to over the years.
But here’s the kicker!
Since Ability Haste is naturally a lot less “oppressive” as a stat – it’s likely that we’ll see it being added to far more items than we’ve seen offer the good old CDR.
This also correlates with the fact that being a linear-scaling stat, it’s far easier to balance and keep in check for the developers as League of Legends unveils new content, game modes, and broadens the horizons of our beloved MOBA.
How Is The Transition From CDR Towards Ability Haste Going To Happen?
Traditionally, in most major reworks like this, Riot has created a policy of rolling out the changes side-by-side with the previous model in order to do a bit of A/B testing to balance things out. And as time goes on, the old model gradually gets snuffed out of the game in favor of the updated mechanic, given that it performs well.
However, the development team has been pretty transparent on the fact that the introduction of Ability Haste is set to go down very differently.
So, what’s happening with the old items that used to give CDR? Are they being removed?
Hold your horses gamer! Thankfully, Riot has things pretty well-planned for the addition of this new mechanic. The items that previously gave you CDR will now offer the equivalent conceptual cooldown reduction in the form of Ability Haste, with more items joining the roster of items that reduce your cooldown along the way.
In short, the revamped and updated items will reduce your ability cooldown by the same amount – via Ability Haste rather than CDR. Simple as that!
So When Is Ability Haste Being Released Into The Game?
Ability Haste, along with updates to Grievous Wounds and Tenacity, as part of the overarching item rework is planned to be integrated into the game with the Pre-Season 11 patch. Usually, the Pre-Season patches go live around mid to late November of each year.
In turn, this gives you plenty of time to get back to the whiteboard and start planning out some crazy builds that you’d like to try out once the rework finally goes live.
Closing Thoughts
So there you have it – everything we know right now about the new Ability Haste stat and how it compares with its predecessor CDR.
Now that we’ve shared our piece, it’s our turn to hear from you!
Are you excited about the new stats and reworked items going live? If so – what champion builds would you like to try once the update is out?
Let us know in the comments below!
