Voidgrubs are of the biggest additions to League of Legends in season 14, giving players an early-game objective to fight over. However, many professional esports teams and players have started ignoring the objective, instead playing toward the bottom side of the map.
According to Twitter user Yuuu, a Chinese translator who reports frequently on LPL, the Chinese league’s desk requested to adjust Voidgrubs. She posted a video of David “Phreak” Turley, League’s Lead Gameplay Designer, responding to the complaints.
“In the LPL, the game has slowed down and some of those [reasons] are placed on Voidgrubs. Right now, they are undertuned. Ultimately, the best pro teams would ignore them and they’d prioritize dragon instead,” said Phreak.
Riot reflected on how Voidgrubs or “Kevins” are supposed to help top laners in League of Legends who are getting ahead by incentivizing them to win their lane. They’re also supposed to encourage teams to prioritize top-side objectives in the early game leading to the dragons in the midgame.
Phreak said they’re looking at increasing the damage buff players get from killing Voidgrubs, making them a more “valuable” objective. He also mentioned increasing the number of Voidmites that spawn alongside Voidgrubs, and said they could let players earn gold by killing them.
Moreover, Riot is also targeting Voidgrubs’ respawn timer, which currently collides with the dragon’s spawn time. This will allow teams to fight for the objective rather than trading it for the dragon in the mid-game. If Riot changes the timers in this way, the dominant team could potentially target both the Voidgrubs and the dragon, giving them a significant window to snowball the match.
Reddit user FrankTheBoxMonster posted datamined information about League’s 14.9 patch, confirming the Voidgrubs already have enhanced damage on League’s PBE server, as Phreak explained in the video.
It remains to be seen whether the changes will be substantial enough to make Voidgrubs relevant. If so, pro players could start focusing their attention and resources toward the top side of the map, instead of exclusively focusing on the dragons at the bottom side.
