10 Fun Pre-Season Facts (2016)

I do these every year, so might as well do it for this pre-season as well! Remember that these are 10 fun facts, and not a top 10 list or anything like that.

1. Blue buff has been nerfed every season, except for season 6 where it has been buffed with the introduction to Ability Power being added to the buff.

2. Jungle has received some kind of change every single season, small or large. Whether it be gold, exp, and stat adjustments on the camps to Frogs, Crabs, and Giant Void Rift Heralds!

3. There has been a new jungle item, taken away or existing items being changed, every season.

4. Seasons 4 and 6 made significant changes to the vision system, season 4 introducing Trinkets and season 6 changing vision significantly (or should I say a lack there of).

5. Season 2 was the only season to introduce new summoner spells, ever since then Riot has only taken away summoner spells and never added new ones furthering decreasing spell diversity.

6. Season 3 and Season 6 are the two season that introduced a ton of new items and item changes, no other season has done this within the pre-season (without counting the game's creation of course).

7. Every season had "The League of..." metas during pre-season, without including beta/season 1. Season 2 was gold regeneration spam and jungling cows (Alistar). Season 3 was the bruiser spam with Black Cleaver not having unique passives (this was an obvious oversight that Riot some how missed) alongside Warmogs and Sunfire Cape leading to the creations of Blade of the Ruined King and Liandry's Torment to deal with these tanky dudes (Blade of the Ruined King gets nerfed and Dr.Mundo is currently overpowered, hint hint, nudge nudge). Season 4 had the relic shield, to the point that no one jungled and just duo-laned with double relic shield, it eventually got nerfs to tone the item back to not be so powerful. Season 5 was simply put, Smite abuse, by introducing the mistake of champion Smites and Riot regretting this decision to this day. Season 6 what seems to be the most balanced pre-season so far is the league of chaos and action, making this the most fun pre-season (need surrender time to be reduced to at least 15 minutes and death timer revert; longer death timers are not fun).

8. Every Season adjusted Tower strengths, the biggest was Season 5 introducing the laser turret for Inhibitor and Nexus turrets.

9. Banner of Command went through a few interations, Season 2 it was introduced a Summoner Spell; Season 3 and 4 it became its own item, and Season 5 and 6 it became an ability power aegis of the legion type of item and having the active work on any minion rather than just a Siege Minion.

10. Every pre-season the community complains about massive changes happening every pre-season, despite the off-season being the best time for big changes. Every pre-season will be very out there and imbalanced, but with months to fine tune Riot can make good balancing for when the next season actually starts!