League of Legends preseason update will add a new type of item: Mythics

League of Legends’ 2020 season is nearly over, and that means developer Riot Games is already dropping details about what to expect next season. In a preview released on Monday, Riot gave fans their first real look at the game’s item rework, which should make up the bulk of the changes that Riot is making ahead of the 2021 season.

While Riot has frequently changed up items in League, it’s always been slowly; either a few at a time, or focused on just one type of item. But with the rest of the game in a fantastic place, Riot has decided it’s finally time to rework League’s items from top to bottom.

This means that all of the smaller component items and the larger items they build into, which will now be called Legendary items, and even the item shop itself, are all getting changes next season. But there’s also a brand-new category of item that got most of the attention in this post.

The new additions are called Mythic items and they’re designed to be the most important item in players’ build each game. These items will have powerful effects, augment the other items you buy, and provide tons of valuable stats. Each players can only have one of them in their inventory at a time and, according to Riot, they’ll almost always be your first item.

One of Riot’s focuses as it develops these new items is to give players choices in how they play. Riot wants players to make the decision about which Mythic item they build in a given game to be based on factors in that game, rather than there being one item that’s objectively the best, that players build game in and game out.

To make this happen, Riot has created a set of rules called the Item Balance Framework, that it will make sure every Mythic item adheres to. For instance, a Mythic item shouldn’t have a higher than 60% build rate on any champion and no more than a 2% higher win rate than the other Mythic options.

Image: Riot Games

Riot also says that if a Mythic item is being used by more than two champions outside of its intended role then it will change the item to make sure they’re are being used as intended.

All these changes are going to require ample testing, so Riot is planning to roll out these changes to the Public Beta Environment sometime in the near future. The new Legendary and Mythic items, and the new items system, will remain on the PBE until the end of the season, which is usually sometime in November. Once the season ends, Riot will release the preseason patch, which will include the new item system for players to test out until the official start of the season in January 2021.