[ April Fools' Day 2014] Ultra Rapid Fire - The future of League of Legends

[ Hope you guys enjoyed it! The queue is available until April 7th at 11:59 PDT ]

We're starting April off with a bang - ULTRA RAPID FIRE IS HERE!

 U.R.F is :
"The future of League of Legends is Ultra Rapid Fire and the future is right now. Set to go live next preseason, this massive update will help every player make impactful plays at every stage of the game."
Continue reading for more on the future of League of Legends!

First up, here's Jatt with a run down on the U.R.F changes


"The future of League of Legends is Ultra Rapid Fire and the future is right now. Set to go live next preseason, this massive update will help every player make impactful plays at every stage of the game."
Here's Pabro with more info:
"The future of League of Legends is Ultra Rapid Fire and the future is right now. Set to go live next preseason, this massive update will help every player make impactful plays at every stage of the game. To give you a taste of this bold vision of the future, we’ve enabled a special preview queue that’ll be live for the next week. Check out a few of the hardest hitting changes:
  • Every champion begins the game with 80% cooldown reduction on abilities, activated items and summoner spells
  • Casting spells is fun, but running out of mana isn’t, so mana and energy costs have been removed
  • Marksmen could dole out tons more damage, so attack speed bonuses for ranged champions have been doubled
Later today, Cloud 9 and TSM will square off to claim the first ever pro U.R.F. victory - catch the action at lolesports.com. Or give Ultra Rapid Fire a shot yourself! We’ve opened up the mode to normal and Co-op vs AI queues – play a game and you’ll earn an exclusive summoner icon that’ll land in your account within three days."

.... and here's Pwyff with a set of  URF mode patch notes:

Ultra Rapid Fire Update Notes


Pwyff here with a preview of the 2015 season! 
We believe that being forewarned is forearmed so we're testing next season's changes with the Ultra Rapid Fire mode. You guys loved the impact our 2014 season changes had on supports' end game fantasies and we realized we wanted to take that philosophy one step further: end game fantasies… accelerated. Full item builds will take less time to buy, big teamfights will happen more often and no more worrying about pesky resources! From the feedback we've received internally, we think you guys will love these updates.

Some of the changes are pretty drastic and, as a result, a few champions and items just didn't fit within our expanded philosophy. Usually we'd try to tweak them but, with these sweeping changes, we had to make some tough decisions. Clearly this will cause some pain for fans of those champions but it had to be done. Keeping LoL competitive is our number one priority with this update.

So enjoy this glimpse into the future of League of Legends!
 Pwyff

Global Changes


There are a lot of changes here, but the core philosophy is to tune down anti-fun mechanics like mana costs, cooldowns and buying boots. Some of our other updates (like the additional tenacity) were to counterbalance our initial wave of changes, because when you eliminate cooldowns you also increase crowd control… a lot. We also discovered that when spells can be cast all the time, they effectively become flashier auto attacks, so we needed to buff up marksmen so they can remain the consistent damage dealers of the game.
NEWMANA AND ENERGY COSTAll ability costs reduced to 0
NEWCOOLDOWN REDUCTION80% on abilities, activated items and summoner spells
NEWMOVEMENT SPEED+60 for all champions
NEWTENACITY+25% for all champions
NEWATTACK SPEED BONUSESBonuses given by items/abilities increased by 100% on ranged champions
NEWCRITICAL STRIKE DAMAGEIncreased by 25% of base damage on ranged champions
NEWGOLD GAIN+500% of the amount normally granted on Summoner's Rift

Champions



Irelia

When played at the highest levels, Irelia skews the diversity of top lane in such a way that few meaningful choices remain. As such, a lot of champion picks revolve around how to play against or with Irelia, rather than seeing her as a single champion who is part of a greater team composition. The philosophy behind this “BNI” change is to encourage more counterplay against Irelia while offering more strategic weaknesses in her kit. Hopefully she'll be less of a priority pick / ban in competitive play while still retaining her strengths.

General

BASE HEALTH546  545.6 (this will be rounded off to the closest whole number)

Kassadin

With the recent Kassadin rework, we witnessed a few cases where he wasn't automatically banned or, even when he wasn't banned, wasn't auto-picked regardless of team synergy in ranked solo queue. We've since rectified this by disabling him.

General

REMOVEDEXISTENCEIs a thing

Master Yi

We briefly considered disabling Master Yi because Alpha Strike chaining made him borderline invulnerable, but realized we could solve the problem without removing him from the game. He's still really good.

Q - Alpha Strike

COOLDOWNNow starts at the end of the ability instead of the beginning

Ryze

We removed Ryze.

General

REMOVEDEXISTENCEIs a thing

Shaco

Turns out Ultra Rapid Fire Shaco could clear every single jungle camp at the same time as soon as they spawned while also laning so… yeah.

W - Jack In The Box

UTILITYLimited to 6 active Jack-in-the-Boxes at a time

Teemo

The most effective counterplay to Teemo is ban him at champion select but, if you fail to do so, we hope these changes teach you a lesson without making you quit the game.

R - Noxious Trap

UTILITYLimited to 20 mushrooms at a time

Zilean

Given that the best form of crowd control is death, we saw that Zilean was in line to becoming the greatest support ever in Ultra Rapid Fire mode. These changes mean he'll only be reviving two or three people per team fight, rather than one squillion.

W - Rewind

COOLDOWN REDUCTIONU.R.F. global cooldown reduction reduced by 60% (instead of 80%)
UTILITY10 seconds  5 seconds

Items


Snowball items are a lot of fun for players, but when we abolished anti-fun we realized that fun-focused items were suboptimal in their design.

Mejai's Soulstealer

General

REMOVEDEXISTENCEIs a thing

Sword of the Occult

General

REMOVEDEXISTENCEIs a thing

Other



Smite

At the start of the 2014 season, we reduced the cooldown on Smite because we wanted it to be more readily available to junglers in the mid to late game, rather than a priority cooldown to be saved for objective control. This is no longer an issue.

General

COOLDOWN REDUCTIONU.R.F. global cooldown reduction reduced by 60% (instead of 80%)

Don't forget to gaze upon the might URF login theme!


There is also a fierce new 2014 Urf Icon!
"Or give Ultra Rapid Fire a shot yourself! We’ve opened up the mode to normal and Co-op vs AI queues – play a game and you’ll earn an exclusive summoner icon that’ll land in your account within three days.""

Log on and try the Ultra Rapid Fire game mode today!
URF MODE TOOLTIP

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