Big changes are on their way to ARAM, including 3 new items

For years, ARAM felt like a forgotten element of League of Legends. Most people play Summoners’ Rift, and plenty of people liked to dunk on Dominion, but ARAM just sat back quietly being enjoyed with only minor balance tweaks. But, over the past year or so, Riot has made that laissez-faire ARAM attitude a thing of the past thanks to quite a few balance changes that have made their way to the Howling Abyss.

Riot’s new, more active, role in ARAM doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon as associate game designer Riot Popc0rner made a forum post on Tuesday night detailing a few more changes that are on their way to ARAM. The first few changes from Popc0rner’s post aren’t exactly groundbreaking, starting with the correct amount of experience to actually be level three, Warmog’s Armor being removed and Dark Harvest dropping slightly fewer souls are all welcome, but fairly uninteresting changes.

The big changes, however, are the three new items that are coming to the Howling Abyss in the near future.

Ghostwalkers

Riot Games

This is essentially a buyable version of of Kayn’s Shadow Step. It likely won’t be useful all the time, but in a few situations, it might be exactly what you need to make a big play and turn a game around.

Bloodletter’s Veil

Riot Games

This item is extremely exciting because it takes a couple good items from Summoners’ Rift and adds them into ARAM in a way that’s faster and more exciting fitting the Howling Abyss style perfectly. This item is a little like Banshee’s Veil, except you have to hit a spell to get the defensive shield, and a little like Void Staff, since it gives you a bit of magic penetration, and it even has some health thrown on top. This is the kind of item that shows that Riot is finally taking time to make ARAM as fun as possible.

Spectral Cutlass

Riot Games

Once again, this item is a combination of a few things, but mostly, champion abilities. The active ability on Cutlass is something like a combination of Zoe’s ultimate and Leblanc’s Distortion. This should help aggressive players get into the fray, deal they’re damage and jump back to safety, without the guaranteed death that an all-in play might normally bring with it in ARAM.

According to Popc0rner’s post, all these changes, and a few more, should come with a larger explanation when Riot releases an official Nexus post about them sometime soon. For now, each of the items is up on the Public Beta Environment, where you can try all of the ARAM changes for yourself.