Wild Rift Patch 2.0 Introduces 5 New Champions and First Official Ranked Season

5 new champions are arriving in the Rift as League of Legends: Wild Rift has released its first patch this new year. Alongside with these tiny heroes are new features such as Ping replies, Dragon/Baron respawn times and of course the first official ranked season of the game.

The 5 new champions are as follows: Corki, Kennen, Tristana, Lulu and Teemo.

The inclusion of these yordle champions will surely affect the meta and the arrival of everyone’s favorite Teemo will surely add thrill to the game.

Below are the other features, updates and my initial reactions to some of the notable changes in this patch.

Party Finder

• This feature makes it easier for players to get into premade games. Party owners can make the lobbies that they created available to their friends or to the public. Other players can join and search for open lobbies.

I find this feature very useful as some of my friends are not always available to play with me. This is also a perfect opportunity to meet longtime playmates.

Latency Indicator

• They have replaced the latency indicator in the homepage with a network indicator as the former turns out to be inaccurate.

This is something that I’ve been wishing for ever since they released Open Beta. I have been having problems with my connection in the game as it turns out (I was right all along) that Latency Indicator in the homepage was not accurate resulting to me having bad games because of high ping. It really affected my first few games at the beginning of the Open Beta and I’m very thankful that they sorted it out.

Social Sharing

• Players can now share end-of-game scoreboard, end-of-game personal performance, career most played champ, season rank, win streak, new champ acquired, new skin acquired, and leaderboard screens directly to facebook or save it to their phone gallery.

Finally! I can now flex 0/15/0 Yasuo game. Kidding aside, I’m getting tired of getting a screenshot of the game and manually sharing it so I think this is really a good addition.

Map Description

• You can now explore the Wild Rift map in detail so you can read up jungle and epic monsters, plants and structures at your free will.

I once created a guide about everything that you can see on the Wild Rift map and I guess with this new feature that they added, you won’t be needing my article any more. It’s quite sad but its for the betterment of the game so I won’t complain. But if you still want my guide then you can check it out here.

Champion Mastery Emotes

• Players can now unlock a champion mastery emote by reaching Mastery Level 5 with that champ.

For a player like me who likes to taunt for fun, these champion emotes would be very useful as it is very hard to type in-game when playing in mobile.

Ping Replies

• You can now let your teammates know that you acknowledged their message with ping replies.

We all know that typing words in mobile is really hard so this would be game changer too as this will improve communication with the use of these pings.

Dragon / Baron Respawns

• Spawn timers for Baron Nashor and Dragons are now displayed on the scoreboard.

It is really hard to keep track of time especially when you are too focused on enemies, lane and in the map. These would be a great help as Dragon and Baron objectives is very crucial in winning games.

Scoreboard Logic

• All enemy information in the scoreboard now updates only after players gain vision of the enemies instead of real time.

This is also important as this will add an element of surprise to the game.

Events

They have added an event called Yordle Expedition with the arrival of the 5 new little champions. You can watch the trailer below. For more information about the expedition, you can check it here.

First Official Ranked Season

• The first official ranked season (Season 1) of Wild Rift will start today, January 8. Players who played in Season 0 after the season ends. Rewards would be a participation icon for everyone and a player emblem for those who hit Gold and above.

What a way to start your year. A good opportunity to start fresh and grind our way up in the leaderboards. Hope everyone will get their first glorious skin at the end of the season!

Conclusion

This is a good start for Wild Rift and I’m glad that they are listening to the community and responding with right updates within the game as well. I’m looking forward to an exciting year of playing Wild Rift. See you there!

Other Changes

• Tutorial optimization
• New Skins
• Scoreboard Logic
• New Emotes Wheel
• System Message UI
• Detailed Stats
• Tower Prioritization
• The Leaderboard now updates every 10-15 minutes rather than every 24 hours.
• Matchmaking Tuning
• Better visual presentation for premade voice chat
• Improved Friends list filters
• UX changes for social interactions

Credits to League of Legends Wild Rift.