Get Ready for Arena Round 3!

What is Arena?

Arena is the newest featured game mode Riot has released, having joined the ranks of such game modes as Ultra Rapid Fire (URF), Nexus Blitz, One for All, and more. The mode launched first in the Summer of 2023 as part of the Soul Fighter event, and has come back one more time during December of the same year. Now, Arena is back for a third time, with a slew of new changes.

In Arena, four teams of two players would fight one another in rotating combat rounds. Each individual player can choose their character in champion select, then power them up with unique Augments throughout the game. This would go on until one duo was crowned victorious.

While Arena has seen moderate success so far, Riot has highlighted that there are a few issues they need to iron out before they consider making Arena a permanent featured game mode, like ARAM is. Some of the issues Eduardo “Riot Cadmus” Cortejoso, Product Lead for Modes, mentioned in the most recent /dev post were feelings that builds and team comps would become too stale too quickly.

Another common complaint was that the random element of the games meant that the game could feel unfair. Certain champions and champion combos excelled, while others seemed useless. This could feel particularly frustrating if your duo was countered. With these issues in mind, Riot Cadmus intended for this new iteration for Arena to have better paced gameplay, more diversity in builds, and a greater chance for adaptability throughout the game.

When is Arena coming back?

Arena Round 3 will debut on Patch 14.9, which falls on the first of May. You will be able to play Arena on PBE starting from this Wednesday, the 17th of April.

This time around, Arena is going to stay live for much longer than previous releases. In the previous two iterations, Arena was live for just over a month each time. This time, Riot plans to having Arena stay live for the entirety of Split 2.

Round 3 Changes

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Possibly the most noticeable change hitting Round 3 of Arena is that the amount of players will be doubled. Instead of four teams of duos, there will now be eight teams of two players in each Arena match. The idea is that with more teams and more players, there will be a wider diversity of champions, team comps, and strategies, making each game feel unique.

Prismatic Items

A new item tier - Prismatic Items - has been added to the Arena. These items won't be purchasable, instead they'll appear as a pop up similarly to how Augments do. While we've only seen a sneak peek of what these Prismatic Items are, Riot claims that the items will be completely build-defining, and open up new strategies for various champions.

Anvils

As mentioned, Prismatic Items cannot be purchased outright. Instead, you have to purchase this new type of consumable item - an Anvil. Upon consuming an Anvil, the Prismatic Item shop will pop up, allowing you to take your pick.

There are three types of Anvils:

• Legendary: offers you a randomized  choice between different legendary items within your desired category (fighter, mage, etc)

• Prismatic: offers you a randomized choice between different Prismatic Items

• Stat: offers you a randomized choice of raw stat upgrades.

From left to right: Legendary, Prismatic, Stat

Map Update

A new Arena update needs a new map along with it, as well as a new shop area. The shop area is larger to make room for all eight squads, and will be decorated with the heraldry of each team.

Ranked and Matchmaking Update

The Arena Ranked season will start alongside the Summoners Rift season in Patch 14.10. This means you'll have a two-week Arena preseason to suss things out and get ready for competitive play.

Matchmaking has received a few changes. Players will be able to queue with party sizes between 1-8 players. but players cannot queue up with more than 8 friends. Players can, however, queue up as a full 16-player premade party, but they will not see changes in MMR or Gladiator rank if they choose to do so.

Quality of Life Updates

Spectating and replays are now both enabled for Arena, and you can now surrender if you think the game is not salvageable. A few adjustments have been made to the following features:

• Cameos are sticking around, and the following cameos will be making a comeback: Lux, Sett, Thresh, Pyke and Jhin.

• Several champion-specific balance changes, which are to be revealed

• Legendary Items have been adjusted to reflect changes made on Summoner's Rift, and Mythic Items have been removed, for the same reason.

More To Come

Hang in tight for a more comprehensive list of all the new things that will come with the third installation of Arena - as the game mode drops on PBE in just two days!