At its core, League of Legends seems to want nothing more than to come across as a polished, dignified, and grown-up sport that can sit alongside the traditional sports. It comes across clearly through the high production values, the besuited casters discussing games, and even the way that off-season madness is handled.

As League continues to grow and evolve, it’s interesting to see the way we talk about roster changes. There are wild rumours about world champions heading to North American teams, fans clamouring to know how much SKT T1 paid for three-time world champion Faker’s contract, and Reddit wondering which young talents will end up on a LCS team. Riot Games have already started programs like the Scouting Grounds to reach out to young talent who are interested in playing pro. This is a great start, and it was a blast watching players, coaches, and candidates talking on Twitter about the endeavor. The Scouting Grounds and Challenger circuit are both ways to watch young players succeed, but there’s one sport that League could learn something from: the UFC.

Reality show rundown

The Ultimate Fighter is a reality show that shows professional MMA fighters living together and training together as they compete. The ultimate prize is a contract with the UFC. UFC fighters coach the candidates, preparing them for the ultimate fight (and they stand to benefit as well, if their fighters succeed, with benefits like title shots). Ultimate Fighter is a total blast to watch, and a great reality TV program, but it has also been a crucial part of bringing the UFC into the mainstream and introducing it as a “real” sport to people who might otherwise be uninterested or believe the stigma of the UFC as a bloodsport.

Ultimate Fighter winners and contestants have gone on to successful careers within the UFC, and viewers get an inside look at what it takes to be part of this field. It’s a win-win proposition. Now, let’s imagine that we applied this to the comparatively zany, but equally competitive world of League of Legends.

Embracing the silly side

Esports is, by its very nature, a little ridiculous. There are countless stories from the rich history of League of Legends’ professional scene: a player getting scurvy, fights in gaming houses, epic rivalries, a player screaming Rick Fox’s name upon entering a lobby in Korea, and more. As much as League tries to appear like a profoundly adult competition, it’s hard to escape a history that is partially defined by players like Dyrus, his pillow, and Imaqtpie. This isn’t a knock on them; esports’ bizarre and ridiculous history is part of what makes it so fascinating to follow. A reality show that follows up and coming young pros could do well to embrace this and build into it. Over 1,700,000 people have watched a video of Rampage Jackson destroying a door on the Ultimate Fighter. Imagine what the esports equivalent might be?

There’s also the fact that League has an abundance of various ways to watch the game. Collegiate, challenger, LCS, foreign leagues... there are a thousand ways to watch competitive League of Legends, but a reality show based around finding and training talent could afford the ability to be more light-hearted. The standard competitive league formatting is wearing thin. Why not shake things up?

The value of a showcase

One of the reasons I advocate for a reality show format is because it’s fun to watch, but there’s also very real value in showcasing young talent. There are very few competitors who stick around and play for years: a player who is in their mid-20s is considered relatively quite old in League. Many players suffer wrist or hand issues after years of playing, and others find that they are interested in pursuing a romance or raising a family. A pro has a short shelf life, and it eventually becomes time to replace them.Each region, in order to be competitively viable, needs a pool of young talent they can pull from when the old guard eventually reaches the end of their careers. EU, as a region, recently suffered from this during the most recent split. When North America imported European talent, EU struggled to fill that void. Some of these players, like Origen’s brief ADC Toaster, were thrown immediately into the deep end. While the Challenger circuit is meant to be a way to build local talent, the scene has major issues that have yet to be resolved.

Visibility matters

The Scouting Grounds was meant to be an answer to some of the above issues. Four teams, made up of unknown talent, went head-to-head in a tournament. Each team was supported by a LCS team, and pros got to try out their coaching skills. Members of the media were embedded in Mountain, Cloud, Infernal, and Ocean, and the games and results were livetweeted. This was all in good fun, and it seems to have been a valuable experience for everyone involved—but it was also frustratingly opaque for anyone who wasn’t on the grounds as the experiment unfolded.

While the VODs are all available after the fact, it’s hard to tell how many people are aware that they could watch along. The highest viewed video in the playlist sits at just above 20,000 and the rest of the games are around 2,000 views. Even the first result for “Riot Games Scouting Grounds” leads to a broken page. Oops, indeed. 

The Ultimate Fighter is a show that is, on the surface, a fun pastime. Beyond that, it’s also had a massive impact the industry. It may not seem like a natural source of inspiration for esports, but Riot should consider the reach that the show has had. It’s a runaway success that’s wildly entertaining to watch and has helped advance UFC’s mainstream success. Scouting Grounds has an amazing formula, but Riot didn’t take it far enough. It’s time for a Scouting Grounds reality show that follows in the footsteps of Ultimate Fighter and finds similar success in advancing esports. Riot, please.

Riot has continually struggled to make supports appealing to the League of Legends community. While patch 6.13 improved the overall player experience and quality of life, it failed to deliver the community appeal the role has severely lacked. Significantly fewer players want to play support, and it s an area Riot is keen to fix. Last week Riot WizardCrab announced that 10 support champions would be added to the free rotation for four weeks. This was done to give players access to a broader pool of supports and improve queue times. However, this is only a temporary fix and Riot is looking to make some big changes to the role in 2017.

Gold income

One of the key areas being investigated is how much gold income supports should receive. Supports currently earn the least gold in the game and Riot need to decide whether they want to more closely match their income with other roles. Choosing to up their wages would give support champions a lot more influence over the course of the game, while allowing them to hit their power spikes that much earlier. However, you can t just increase the passive gold gained by support items as you ll end up giving solo laners opportunities to create new strategies that could potentially upset the balance of the game.

If supports scaled off something entirely different than AP and AD this could potentially allow the role to feel more refined, while avoiding the potential pitfalls that come with increasing gold income. Supports should scale in utility not damage, and the items could reflect this by offering stronger tank stats, CDR, movement speed, gold per second and HP/mana regen.

Breaking away from AP and AD would give support champions better shields, heals and CC, but they would still not be able to 1v1 enemy champions. A support's job is to look after the team by providing defensive shields, health top ups, vision and lockdown. A change to supportive items could add further opportunities for supports to shine, while also making the role unique. Players may even be drawn toward the role if these items are only usable when playing support.

Recognition of success

The next thing Riot wants to work on is the amount of recognition supports get. Their impact on the game isn t celebrated as obviously as a killstreak, for example. However, it should be made clear when a support makes a good play. Damage dealers get recognition from their killing sprees/multi-kills, KDAs/CS numbers, tracking of damage dealt and so on. Supports don t have this luxury. Their achievements have lower visibility and offer little satisfaction to the player.

Making an awesome clutch save, countering an ultimate or stunning an entire enemy team with a Sona ult can feel great, but it offers little in terms of recognition. Some might argue that ally recognition is all that matters when playing any role, but this doesn t help supports track their overall performance in-game. Additional post-game statistics would greatly solve this problem.

It would be great to keep track of how much damage was shielded, number of wards placed/cleared and the percentage of healing done throughout the game. Even knowing how many kills you denied would make for a satisfactory addition. It may not provide the same instant recognition as the booming pentakill announcement, but it puts their plays firmly in the sights of both teams.

Itemisation

Riot started to address support itemisation in the preseason, but in the future they want to make sure the items are compelling enough that players want to pick support items for specific situations, instead of limiting their build paths. Support players also need to feel that they re getting stronger as they purchase new items. When an AD-Carry or an assassin purchases their third item there is a big spike in performance. When a support purchases their third item it s really hard to see a noticeable difference. Sure, you gain a little boost to your stats and you may even get an active to help out your team, but the overall leap between items could be improved.

Sightstone is another area that Riot wants to consider looking into. If you re playing support your first purchase is commonly going to be a Sightstone. Purchasing this item instantly puts your build behind for the entire game and greatly limits your choices as a support player. In order to fix this there would likely need to be another overhaul to the vision system. However, this could be solved by giving supports more starting items that provide different options without punishing players for not picking one item over the other. Being forced into purchasing a Sightstone can feel rather unfair and does not help to create meaningful choices.

Pre-game

Many players feel that the experience and gold per 10 runes don t provide enough benefits when compared to damage dealer runes. Supports should have their own set of runes that are only available to their role which focus on providing them with what they need. The introduction of healing and shielding runes would help supports excel in their individual areas and create more strategy within the position.

Laning patterns

Lastly, Riot is looking at how they can improve the in-game decisions made by players in the support role. Many players pick mage champions when they go support as it gives them a more engaging playstyle that allows them to harass the enemy, push lanes and even transition into an AP carry if they get ahead. It s really not hard to see why people go down this route, but it s sad to see so many dedicated support champs dropped in favour of mage champions.

Many complain that the role offers little outside of healing, blocking damage and warding. Whether you like the role or not, supports are an integral part of League of Legends. While their playstyle isn t going to suit the majority of players, they do offer rewarding experiences that are often overshadowed by their bloodthirsty allies. The more that Riot can do to make them more rewarding to play, the better.

We ve just gotten used to the assassin rework that changed up classic champions like Katarina, Talon, and Rengar, and now a new champion is swinging in to say hello. Camille, the Steel Shadow, is League of Legends new champion, and the developers have mentioned that in some ways she operates as an anti-assassin. She s very interesting, design wise, in both terms of lore (including voicework, visual design, and what she means for other champions) and in-game abilities and capabilities.

While her kit is, at first glance, incredibly simple (especially compared to some recent releases) there s a lot of room for maneuvering and outthinking an enemy. With the assassin class changes complete, Camille is here to lock them down and provide a counter. She s classified as a fighter, but she may end up thriving as a deliberate counterpick. Let s take a look at this champion and how she s taking League one bold, knife-footed step forward.

The assassin quandary

When Riot took a look at assassins across the board, they realized that there was no way to feasibly allow them to continue to blow up targets with no ability to fight back. Assassins have had that one-shot potential lowered across the board. In return, they now have access to more tools. LeBlanc can fake out enemies by spawning a global clone, Talon can leap over walls to set up ambushes or escape sticky situations, Katarina has more sustained damage with tons of mobility, and so on.

Camille is a response to that. Talen wants to vault over walls? Well, he ll have a rough time doing that if trapped in Camille s ult. Katarina s hopping around and throwing down sustained damage? Camille can shield against her. Rengar s leaping away? She can pursue with her hookshot. In the lore, she s an assassin herself, but in-game she seems almost like a more versatile, less focused Fiora. The end result is a champion that s big on relentless pursuit with a high skill ceiling. Camille herself is a perfectionist, and each ability has an optimal and suboptimal use. Players will need to be patient, and try, try, again.

Swordlegs, shields, and static fields

You can find video example of Camille s kit at the official reveal page, but I d like to take a look at those abilities and how they tie into her overall theme.

Her passive is Adaptive Defenses. When Camille attacks an enemy, she gets a shield based on her HP that defends against their primary damage type. If she kicks a mage, she s defended against magic damage. If she kicks a fighter, she gets a shield for physical damage. Here s the catch: the shield holds for a few seconds, expires, and then allows her to reset it again. This means that she s good in one on one fights, but in a team fight, she needs to figure out who s going to blow her up and shield against it. If she fails, she loses a huge chunk of her survivability for the few seconds it takes to reset, and she ll likely fall as a result.

Camille s Q is Precision Protocol. She gets to buff up her next auto attack and gets a short burst of movement speed. She can re-activate Q for a second amped up attack, but if she waits for a second period of time, the second attack does extra damage and partial true damage. Going too trigger happy on Q can end up sacrificing a chunk of damage,

Tactical Sweep is Camille s W. She takes a moment and then fires energy in a short cone. Everyone in the cone is hit, but the outer edge of the cone is the sweet spot. If Camille can land a hit in the cone s outside radius, the enemy is slowed, takes extra damage based off maximum percentage health points, and Camille heals.

Camille s E was heavily previewed in her reveal comic. Hookshot is a series of two skill shots. The first skill shot, if it connects with a wall, pulls Camille to it. The second one activates after that. Wall Dive launches Camille forward. If she hits an enemy, she stuns everyone around them. She can also use Wall Dive to escape, but the range and her launch speed is lower. The possibility for failure here is clear: first of all, there s always a risk with skillshots. Anyone who s ever placed a ward outside a bush in lane knows how even simple shots can betray us. Secondly, Camille s escape potential with E is deliberately suboptimal. She s rewarded for chasing, and if she has to use Wall Dive to get out, she s already in trouble.

Finally, there s her ultimate. Hextech Ultimatum locks one character down, putting them in an inescapable zone and knocking away their allies. While Camille is inside the Ultimatum, her attacks do bonus damage to the poor sucker caught inside. If she leaves the zone, it cancels. You can t blink out, Flash out, tumble out, or escape by any other means. Camille will have to choose the right target, and the right time to lock them down. If she blows it too early, the fight can move on without them. If she traps them too late, it s a wasted cooldown.

Camille s entire kit is based around doing the right thing, at the right time, under a great deal of pressure. It s fitting, considering her role in the lore. She serves a mysterious force. She has to make decisions as to the good of the city. On the Rift, she fills a similar role. Who do you eliminate? Who is your greatest threat? The assassins may have risen up, but Camille is there to meet them and stop their charge. While she s not the strongest one on one duelist in the game, her sustained damage throughout fights and mobility make up for it. Will you be giving Camille or a shot, or will the pressure prove too much as she steps onto the Rift?

Although the Rainbow Six Pro Season 3 Finals came to an end, there s still plenty of explosive action to watch from the intense firefights of CS:GO and Overwatch to the fantastic coordination of Dota 2 and League of Legends. All the details on this weekend s action can be found below.

CS:GO: Intel Extreme Masters Season XI Oakland

The CS:GO Intel Extreme Masters concludes in Oakland this weekend as the teams battle it out for their share of the $300,000 prize pool. Quarterfinals kick off Saturday at 10:45 PST / 19:45 CET, while the semifinals start the following day at 10:00 PST / 19:00 CET. The grand finals start at 18:00 PST, but those of us in Europe will need to be up bright and early on Monday to catch the explosive action at 03:00 CET. Tickets can be purchased here, while the event can be watched live by heading over to the official site.

League of Legends: Intel Extreme Masters Season XI Oakland

The Intel Extreme Masters will also be holding a League of Legends tournament with six international teams starting this Saturday. The IEM Oakland champions will be competing for $100,000 and will also qualify for the crowning event at IEM Katowice at Spodek Arena on March 2017. Playoffs begin at 10:00 PST / 19:00 CET, while the semifinals start Sunday at 9:30 PST / 18:30 CET. The grand finals will start at 17:00 PST / 02:00 CET and can be watched over on Lolesports.

Dota 2: Summit 6

It s been a lengthy wait for Dota 2 fans, but The Summit 6 finally gives us something to look forward to before The Boston Major in December. The Summit 6 is held outside Los Angeles, California with a $100,000 prize pool up for grabs. The summit tournaments are known for their fun, casual atmosphere and laid back couch commentary. Amongst the various pro players present at the event, there will also be some special guests to look out for. More information about the event and its schedule can be found here.

StarCraft II: HomeStory Cup XIV

This event is organised by StarCraft II caster Dennis "TaKe" Gehlen. TaKe invites star players from around the world into his home to compete for their share of the $20,000 prize pool. The first group stage can be viewed today at 04:15 PST / 13:15 CET, while the second group stage and playoffs begin Saturday. HomeStory Cup provides multiple streams and interviews that aim to create a fun atmosphere for both players and fans alike. You can watch the event live here.

Street Fighter V: Asia/Oceania Regional Finals

The Capcom Pro Tour 2016 Asia Finals take place this Saturday at the Global Game Exhibition in Busan, South Korea. So far the CPR has brought together players and spectators from all over the world to share their love of Street Fighter. The Asia finals are sure to pack a punch and can be watched over on Twitch. Full schedule and times can be found here.

Overwatch: Carbon Masters

In the wake of an action-packed qualifying event, teams -Bird Noises- and Denial Esports came out victorious. They will now join the six invited teams, to battle it out in the competitive playoffs, which kicks off on November 19th at 11:00 PST / 20:00 CET. All eight teams have a lot to prove, as the best North American Overwatch players will be battling it out to prove their worth. The event can be watched over on Carbon Entertainment s Twitch channel.

Rocket League: Cross Pacific Championship Cup

Rocket League s two day Cross Pacific Championship Cup takes place this weekend. The tournament will pit the Oceanic and South American regions against one another to determine who's the best at Rocket League. The finals will take place today 15:00 PST / 00:00 CET and will continue tomorrow at 14:00 PST / 23:00 CET. You can catch all the action on Twitch.

Hearthstone: Red Bull Team Brawl

Red Bull's second Team Brawl is this weekend, an invitational that pits teams of three against each other in simultaneous games. The teams will be able to talk among themselves during the matches to strategize, and deck building is limited to the "sealed" format where each team gets 240 cards they must use to build three decks. The tournament starts tomorrow at 12:00 PST / 21:00 CET can be watched on Twitch.

Incensed Reddit threads, frenzied rumours and reports, and a healthy dose of speculation it s that special time of year. Now that Worlds has wrapped up and spring is still weeks away, we ve entered the off-season. It s the time of year where teams begin to make changes to their roster, cut old talent, sign new players, switch around analysts, coaches, and staff, and try to change the things that held them back (or keep the benefits that allowed them to progress.)

The off-season has always been chaotic and full of weird surprises, but it s become increasingly streamlined and corporate as the years have gone by. There have been some definitive shifts to the spirit of the off-season as League becomes less of a game and more of an organized sport, some for the better and others for the worse. These are the most important historical moments from the off-season, and how they reflected the League of Legends of their time.

Chaox is kicked from TSM

Way back in 2013, TSM was still a dominant force in the NA LCS but they didn t have the same professional and polished brand that they do today. This was before the days of Bjergsen in the mid lane and Weldon as a coach, and back when Dyrus, TheOddOne, and Reginald were actively playing competitively. While the team is carefully branded and the players keep their noses to the grindstone, the TSM of 2013 was more about their Baylife attitudes. Chaox, the team s ADC at the time, fit in well with that atmosphere... up until he began to slip on practice and focus on partying over practice.

Reginald cut him from the team, replacing him with WildTurtle, and it was a tremendously difficult decision for the young team owner. In many ways, cutting an old friend from the roster marked the beginning of TSM s transition into a brand behemoth. Reginald remains one of the sharpest business minds in the game, and in many ways choosing to keep a friend or cut a liability was the crossroads he had to face before becoming who he is today.

Imaqtpie retires

In October 2014, Imaqtpie released a retirement vlog. Imaqtpie is now mostly known as the beloved streamer who reigns over the BDC, but he used to be a competitive ADC on Team Dignitas. He released a video going over his history as a pro and his reason for retirement. He explained that while being a League pro had once been a fun experience where he travelled with friends and played a game for a living a high school kid s dream. As the game became more competitive and cutthroat, he said, he felt like he didn t have the ability to cut underperforming players and mesh with the intense, professional environment.

While he was quick to say that this was the way the scene needed to be to thrive and be what it is today, he also clarified that it just wasn t fun with friends anymore. It was a business. Roster changes of the time mirrored this; instead of people moving to be with friends or falling out, teams were making roster changes based on professional reasons and to grow competitively.

Import madness

Perhaps it makes sense that imports would have been the next step in this new, professional League. While North America had been struggling with this evolution, other regions had moved on and were fielding (outwardly, at least) more cohesive, professional, and detached teams. Korea s competitive League also put a ban on sister teams, which meant that many pros were looking for a home. While the Korean Exodus mostly saw Korean pros heading to China, a few found themselves in North America and Europe as well. For a while, if a team had an open spot, it seemed natural that they would fill it with a Korean import.

Now, in 2016, this is seen as somewhat of a failed experiment. Imports struggled with language and cultural barriers, their individual mechanics didn t triumph over team troubles, and it took a good deal of work to overcome these issues. While teams today have a more realistic look at the pros and cons of importing players (especially now that it takes four years to become a native resident), for a while importing was taken very seriously.

The Doublelift bomb 

Doublelift leaving CLG to join TSM is the biggest roster change in League history. The two teams had been rivals for years, and Doublelift was the face of CLG. He had been homeless at one point, struggling to make the dream of being a pro work against all odds, and CLG had been his salvation. He had saved them from relegation, been with them for years... and then he joined the enemy. It says a lot about TSM s branding and marketing that TSM managed to come out of this roster change looking more hyped than ever, as opposed to appearing like villains. TSM s pickup of Doublelift showed just how far the sport had come since Chaox left TSM. These weren t squads of friends picking up players anymore; this was a superstar transfer that blew up and demanded headlines and press attention.

There have been other huge roster changes, of course, Svenskeren from H2K to TSM, Impact to Cloud9, Piglet to Team Liquid, Yellowstar from Fnatic to TSM back to Fnatic, the formation of Elements, and later the birth of Origen are all examples of roster changes and evolutions that are worth noting in the greater history of League. These particular examples just happen to show the way League has evolved and grown over the years. Competitive League may have started as a game that friends played together and somehow fulfilled the crazy dream of managing to do it for a living, but it grew into a legitimate competition with the importance and seriousness that entails. As League of Legends continues to grow and become mainstream, roster announcements will become more of a procession. As new announcements and changes come out, remember to reflect on the ones from history that have made the scene what it is.

The new League of Legends client is now in open beta, meaning that the next time you launch it (if you haven't done so already) you'll be prompted to update. Riot said in the open beta FAQ that it's about a 1.3GB download, which is not insignificant, but as promised last week, you won't be forced to download right away: The download link will be available throughout the open beta period, and if you want to stick with the legacy client for now, the new one will be downloaded in smaller chunks "over the next few patches."

Bear in mind that the client is a beta, and Riot said it is "still ironing out some bugs," and so if you encounter any it asked that you take a moment to report issues via the "bug icon" at the bottom of your friends list. Third-party mods won't be supported on the new client (although they weren't support on the legacy client either), and some features, including account transfers, gifting, spectate friends, and searching for/joining custom games, won't be immediately available, although Riot said it will "work quickly to add" them. An ongoing list of known issues with the beta client is available here.

Riot also emphasized that players must not uninstall the legacy client after upgrading. "The legacy and updated client are still sharing a few files, and the updated client will fail to launch if the legacy client is uninstalled," it wrote. "We'll clean out the old files for you once we're ready to move completely to the updated client." On the other side of that coin, while you can keep using the legacy client through the entirety of the open beta, you'll eventually have to move on. "By the end of open beta, the updated client will be a complete replacement for the legacy client (plus a few new features)," Riot wrote. "It takes serious time and resources to support any large piece of software, so we'll focus exclusively on the updated client."

An open beta end-date hasn't been set, but Riot hopes to wrap things up in early 2017.

The new League of Legends client is now in open beta, meaning that the next time you launch it (if you haven't done so already) you'll be prompted to update. Riot said in the open beta FAQ that it's about a 1.3GB download, which is not insignificant, but as promised last week, you won't be forced to download right away: The download link will be available throughout the open beta period, and if you want to stick with the legacy client for now, the new one will be downloaded in smaller chunks "over the next few patches."

Bear in mind that the client is a beta, and Riot said it is "still ironing out some bugs," and so if you encounter any it asked that you take a moment to report issues via the "bug icon" at the bottom of your friends list. Third-party mods won't be supported on the new client (although they weren't support on the legacy client either), and some features, including account transfers, gifting, spectate friends, and searching for/joining custom games, won't be immediately available, although Riot said it will "work quickly to add" them. An ongoing list of known issues with the beta client is available here.

Riot also emphasized that players must not uninstall the legacy client after upgrading. "The legacy and updated client are still sharing a few files, and the updated client will fail to launch if the legacy client is uninstalled," it wrote. "We'll clean out the old files for you once we're ready to move completely to the updated client."

On the other side of that coin, while you can keep using the legacy client through the entirety of the open beta, you'll eventually have to move on. "By the end of open beta, the updated client will be a complete replacement for the legacy client (plus a few new features)," Riot wrote. "It takes serious time and resources to support any large piece of software, so we'll focus exclusively on the updated client."

An open beta end-date hasn't been set, but Riot hopes to wrap things up in early 2017.