League of Legends Season 2024 is bringing substantial changes to every part of Summoner’s Rift, a move that’s sure to shake up the way matches are played. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of each lane to give you an idea of what to expect.
Through League of Legends’ lengthy history, the core map design of Summoner’s Rift hasn’t changed too much. It’s always been three lanes and a jungle, with a river running across the map’s center that leads to Baron on the topside and Drake pit in bot.
Season 2024’s changes, however, are some of the biggest yet. Other than items getting overhauled and Smolder, a brand new Champion, releasing soon, there’s a lot to look forward to with a made-over Summoner’s Rift. Previous changes to bushes and alcoves have nothing on the massive overhaul players will get to experience once the new patch goes live.
To get an idea of just how big the scale of these changes is, here’s a quick side-by-side comparison between the live version of the game and what the Season 2024 map looks like.
League of Legends Season 2024 brings massive map changes
In general, the map has been made much more symmetrical than before. The prior design essentially flipped the maps, making one side of top lane much more open to ganks than the other with the same being true for bot lane.
This led to speculation that blue side had an advantage due to easier gank pathing into bot lane, though that’s an issue the community has long been conflicted on. The argument there gets even further muddled when factoring in blue side getting first pick in draft.
In Season 2024, the lanes are much more equal as far as when and where junglers can gank and the routes in which laners can rotate through.
All before and after images are oriented with before on the left side and after on the right side.
Top Lane
The biggest difference in top lane is that both sides have been made impossible to gank without taking tower shots. While it’s still a bit easier to gank on red side for most junglers, it’s encouraged for junglers to path directly through river.
Additionally, one bush has been put in the middle of a much wider mouth to the river rather than a longer bush biased toward the blue side.
Baron Pit
Access to Baron Pit has been opened up a bit on both sides, making it a bit easier to access the pit without getting held into a choke. Blue buff’s wall has also had a hole punched through it, making it so that blue buff is a bit more accessible on both sides of the map.
However, these changes aren’t the biggest thing that’s changed about Baron Pit. Baron now has variations that’ll change the map’s geometry.
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Baron’s variants (Hunting, Territorial, and Tunneling) all have a different effect on the map state. These variants are an entirely new part of Season 2024, and they’ll shake up Summoner’s Rift even more as the game progresses.
Some new creatures will also inhabit the pit pre-20 minutes. Three Voidgrubs will spawn into the game after five minutes. The new neutral monster will help players take down turrets and build power over time as the game progresses.
Killing one Voidgrub grants the player and allied teammates one stack of the Hunger of the Void Buff, which causes your non-proc attacks to deal bonus true damage to structures over 4 seconds. This damage will scale with the number of Voidgrubs slain at a rate of 4 (melee) / 3 (ranged) true damage every 0.5 seconds per stack.
Once your team hits 5 stacks of the buff, you will spawn 1 Voidmite to help when attacking towers (15-second cooldown). At 6 stacks the amount of Voidmites is increased to 2. The Voidgrumps despawn at 13:45 of in-game time.
Mid Lane
Mid lane is now much wider than before, and, while its kept its mirrored nature, the additional path toward sidelanes opens up new opportunities for ganking and rotating. However, much like top lane’s red side changes, it’s no longer possible to gank from the path toward the lane without taking tower aggro unless you’ve got minions shoved into tower.
Additionally, it’s plain to see the river is much wider in general, and the bushes on either side of the lane have been stretched out to accommodate the wider river.
Dragon Pit
Dragon pit is mostly the same, with the biggest difference being that the path in from red side is a bit more spread out in an identical way to how blue side’s access to Baron pit is formatted with the map being mirrored.
It’s worth noting, however, that the river being wider gives players a bit more space to fight in as they funnel toward skirmishes for Drakes. It also hasn’t been made completely clear how the map will change around based on which Elemental Drake enters the Rift just yet, but Riot have confirmed that adjustments have been made to Infernal, Mountain, and Ocean drakes in preparation for this new map layout.
Bot Lane
Last but certainly not least is bot lane. The odds have been evened out in botside, with red side being much easier to access for both ganks and rotations, meaning that the way the lane is played will be fundamentally changed. Blue side, meanwhile, remains mostly untouched.
That’s everything you need to know about League of Legends’ map changes in Season 2024 with a side-by-side comparison. For more Season 2024 coverage as we get ready for yet another exciting year of League, stick with Dexerto.