The start of the preseason is a magical time for League of Legends. With new items, new dragons, and plenty of changes across the board to explore, LoL at this time of year is generally a pretty unbalanced experience, with plenty of completely busted interactions.
This year so far certainly hasn’t been an exception. Preseason 2022 has gifted us two new dragons – Chemtech and Hextech – a slew of new Mythic items, and a smattering of Legendaries to fill in the gaps where some champions had suboptimal options. Underperforming Keystones have been reworked, while First Strike has been added for those still mourning the loss of Kleptomancy during Season 10’s preseason. So far, most of these changes have more than proven their worth out on the Rift.
Take Axiom Arc for example. This brand spanking new Lethality Legendary refunds 25% of your ultimate ability’s maximum cooldown if you score a takedown on an enemy champion within three seconds of damaging them. That’s right, even grazing an enemy with one of Nocturne’s razor sharp blades counts towards the refund – even better if you rack up the kills like Reddit user ‘Drachir133’ did.
Below, you can see the player use Paranoia not once, but twice over the course of the fight. What? All they needed was a quick triple kill and a dream to set up for their eventual pentakill.
The new assassin item seems balanced on noc from leagueoflegends
And let’s not forget how potent the new Hextech dragon soul is – ‘Azuule’ certainly didn’t let the opposing team as their Shaco clone repeatedly zapped them with chain lighting to devastating effect. That’s not actually chain lightning you’re seeing there, it’s prime spaghetti.
ABSOLUTELY BROKEN Hextech Soul + AD Shaco Clone Pentakill from leagueoflegends
Oh, and if you need to see that interaction again, here’s another clip from ‘K3vin5Durant’ – this time Elder-empowered.
And finally, if you thought the Hextech soul was spicy, you should see the outplay potential afforded by the Hextech Rift. Just look at how ‘ILoveWood’ seamlessly finesses a Jinx rocket thanks to a clutch Hex-gate spawn – completely and utterly unbalanced. Sarcasm aside, we can’t wait to see more great escapes like this going forward.
While these are just a few examples of how the preseason changes for Season 12 are already making a big impact, there’ll surely be plenty more ridiculous interactions highlighted over the coming weeks – at least until Riot hits them with the nerf gun.