LoL: Season 2 Dev Update - Spirit Blossom and More

On April 15, 2025, League of Legends released a number of content pieces, giving fans a look ahead at what the team at Riot Games has for Season 2. In the video, a variety of staff went over areas like the new map, changes to Summoner’s Rift, troll prevention systems, UI updates, upcoming game modes, and the new roadmap for skins.

While Riot usually saves the biggest game-affecting changes for the new year, they will be making some changes with the start of the upcoming season. Riot Phroxzon joined to discuss the plans going forward. One of the more eye-catching changes is a beautiful Spirit Blossom-themed map for the upcoming season, replacing the current Noxus-inspired visuals.

Voracious Atakhan had become so dominant in pro play and high-tier matches that his Ruinous form rarely saw the light of day. To address the power gap between the two forms, Riot is removing both and introducing a new one: Thornbound Atakhan. This new form keeps the visuals of Ruinous Atakhan, but comes with a totally reworked reward system.

Thornbound Atakhan’s bounty includes multiple new, thematically-fitting effects. The team that secures him will earn all of the Bloody Petals they would have previously gotten from Ruinous Atakhan (no auto-attacking needed), plus any unclaimed Bloody Roses on the map. All collected Petals will be converted into Spirit Petals. Their buffs will be 25% more potent than regular Bloody Petals. On top of that, the team gains a spiritual purification buff, which creates a slowing, mildly damaging AoE upon takedown.

Void Grubs will now spawn once instead of twice, with the spawn happening slightly later, to give players more time to lane—or gank. This will affect the number of Void Mites that players can spawn. Rift Herald’s spawn time will move from 16:00 to 15:00 for better camp pacing. The camp will deal more damage, but also take more damage. The Dev Blog also mentioned that there will be some work done on how the using Rift Herald will work.

Bounty system updates are also coming to reduce situations where a team that’s behind gets punished for having one or two players doing well. Changes to bounty scaling and timing should help mitigate snowballing while encouraging strategic play.

A few small but impactful changes are coming to how players will interact with the game. Role swapping will now be available directly in champ select—you can send a request to swap roles, similar to how pick order swaps already work, instead of relying on your team seeing your lobby chat.

League is also losing its classic post-death gray screen. Instead, players will gain a new spectator-style view during death timers. The screen will still be a little hazy, but now you’ll be able to watch your teammates in real time while you wait to respawn. Kill streaks will also feature a new Valorant-style audio cue to help keep your momentum going. These updates are meant to make the game feel feel a bit more fun—and a lot less frustrating.

In the Dev Update, Riot mentioned that they have been hearing the community’s concerns about a variety of trolling behaviors. For years, players have been abusing the way that AFK detection worked, and there was little to no viable punishment to players soft inting. With this update, that’s set to change.

Some simple quality-of-life changes will take place, preventing user errors like forgetting Smite or accidentally buying the wrong starting item as a Support. Players assigned to the Jungle role will automatically have one of their summoner spells set to Smite. They will be the only players allowed to take this spell, unless someone is playing with Unsealed Spellbook. Support players will also automatically purchase the World Atlas upon loading into the game. These role-bound rules will follow players correctly after a role swap in the pre-game lobby.

Brawl is Riot’s new casual 5v5 game mode, set on a mini Bandle City map with no towers and no major objectives. The only goal is pushing your minions to the enemy’s base. Riot hopes Brawl will offer a lower-pressure space for new players to explore champion kits and learn basic mechanics without the full complexity of Summoner’s Rift.

The community had a lot of input on its most recent in-client experience, The Demon’s Hand. Riot plans on continuing this kind of metagame in the upcoming season. While no other details were shared, the devs said they found lots of opportunities for growth, and plan on bringing a bigger and better experience the next time around.

Riot’s skin team is expanding the Spirit Blossom lineup—and with it, Ionian Folklore. Upcoming additions to the fan-favorite skinline include Spirit Blossom Ashe, Irelia, Bard, Varus, and Zyra.

Spirit Blossom Ivern and Prestige Spirit Blossom Lux will bring new characters into the skin line’s universe as earnable rewards through the paid battle pass system.

Staying true to their champion-first approach, Riot is shifting toward making skins that suit champions individually rather than forcing them into pre-built thematics. First up is Pool Party Twitch!

Riot plans on releasing more one-off skins tailored to fit champions rather than the other way around. Variety skins will maintain some level of grouping, similar to what we see each year with the April Fool’s skinlines. Don’t worry though, not all of these will be silly! Some older skinlines missing a key champion or two may finally get their moment. If you always felt like your main should’ve had that skin, your time might be coming.

Riot’s latest Dev Update dropped a lot of great info, showcasing their efforts for a fun but fair season to come. From long-awaited quality-of-life changes to the return of fan-favorite skinlines, there’s a clear focus on making the game feel smoother, fairer, and more fun. From the looks of it, season 2 has something to offer for almost everyone. With fresh content, gameplay tweaks, and a roadmap full of surprises, we can’t wait to see where this next season takes us.

You can watch the Dev Update vlog here:

Or read more about the updates Riot has planned here: