Riot walks back putting League of Legends' controversial 'last hit indicators' into ranked play, for now

It's been a whirlwind few hours for League of Legends, with Riot Games announcing that its most controversial player assist tool was about to be implemented in ranked play, only for them to rapidly reverse the decision in response to public outcry. The 'last hit indicator' system, which clearly marks when minions are within lethal damage range for your champion, has been available in swiftplay and co-op versus AI for several months, but its implementation into the more competitive side of LoL has sparked heated debate, and with good reason.

I'll come down on one side of this argument: I'm all for the feature as a way to learn, but I don't think last hit indicators have a place in ranked League of Legends. Last hitting - the act of scoring the killing blow on enemy minions and jungle creeps to secure the maximum gold bounty from them - is the very heart of the laning phase. Being good at CS (that's 'creep score,' not Counter-Strike), while also attempting to stop your opponents from landing their own last hits on your minions, is therefore fundamental to being a good laner, especially if you play in the carry role.

A big part of learning each champion is understanding when to attack to get the kill, as acting too early can cause you to miss the final blow and lose out on the gold. The last hit indicator is an assist tool designed to help players become more familiar with the system: it shows a clearly darker segment on minion health bars to denote the 'last hit range,' and once their life falls below that the meter clearly changes color to show that they're vulnerable for you to finish off.

Last hitting in League of Legends is already a little more generous than in other MOBAs like Dota 2, and that's fine. In fact, it only further emphasizes the value of being able to rack up a high CS in the early stages of the game to push your economy ahead of the opponents'. Putting this assist into co-op versus AI matches, and even into swiftplay, is a nice way to help players who are new learn the ropes before stepping into the big leagues, where you're likely to be going up against veterans for whom it's second nature.

Improved tutorials are great; pushing those systems into ranked feels like a mistake. With League of Legends patch 26.13, Riot announced that it would be enabling last hit indicators in both normal draft and ranked SR games. In the patch notes, it wrote, "We think it's better to focus on skill expression in other parts of the game - rather than understanding exactly when you can last-hit a minion - and are pretty confident that these don't degrade skill expression in lane."

Clearly the community disagreed with this statement, with a discussion on the topic rising to the top of the game's Reddit page. Fortunately, the outcry was loud enough that Riot quickly responded. "We've seen a lot of conversation around last hit indicators coming to ranked, and we've decided to enable them in non-ranked SR queues only for continued testing," it announces.

"We want to get more data and feedback to decide if we should make them an option for ranked before making that call," Riot continues. "So we'll keep them enabled, but off by default, for swiftplay, co-op versus AI, and normal draft, to collect data and iterate. We'll keep you updated about performance and progress in dev updates before making any future calls." It has also adjusted its original statement in the 26.13 patch notes.

I've already made my stance clear, but I'm in agreement with Reddit thread poster 'XpMonsterS' that putting last hit indicators into ranked would be "a bad precedent." Does it remove all skill expression from laning? No. Does it dramatically reduce it? Yes. In its original post, Riot noted, "You still need to be mindful of positioning, harassing your opponent, considering where both jungles are, understanding power spikes, and more." That's all true, but all of those revolve around the core fundamentals of landing your CS.

Being able to be mindful of your last hit range - and the way it changes through the match as you buy items and level up abilities - is a big factor in what makes the 'dance' in lane so satisfying. That's doubly true as the chaos ramps up; players who never miss a CS even as ganks and pushes come in are a special breed. I'm all for training wheels, but I do believe that they should remain exactly that. Eventually, if you want to compete in the big leagues, you have to learn to ride without them.