Ultra Rapid Fire Skill Spam Returns To League Of Legends
Buffs and URFs
In honour of April Fool's Day Riot have resurrected the skill spam-tastic Ultra Rapid Fire game mode in League of Legends.
The official story is that URF found its way back onto servers after an energy drink spillage derailed an attempt to upload New Ultra Rapid Fire mode (billed as an attempt to slow the game to a crawl, "delivering a slow, sophisticated, and stoic strategic showcase that tests teams’ abilities in new and dynamic ways while not restricting the highest tier of play to those with sub-millisecond response times").
I must admit I was vaguely hoping for wizard chess when I read that. ALAS. On the other hand we do have the return of the hyper-aggressive LoLfest that is URF.
URF 2015 is pretty similar to URF 2014 - right down to the pro tournament taking place later today - but in case that's not an illuminating explanation let's have a quick look at the patch notes so you know what's in store:
The basics of the mode are that mana and energy costs have been removed entirely and there's a cooldown reduction of 80% on everything (although some abilites get a bit of special tweaking or nerfing because otherwise they'd completely ruin the game). Gold accumulates at 500% the normal rate on Summoner's Rift and, in technical speak, "everything deals tons of damage" and "everything has tons of health". Basically it's all about the plays.
Healing in the early game has been nerfed and, although perma-shielding is still an option, this time round most of the non-ultimate shields have been made weaker. Oh, and Ryze and Kassadin are actually allowed to play this year.
You can poke about in all the update news over on Riot's blog, while the pro scuffle is scheduled for 11pm BST/3pm PDT. Meanwhile, here's last year's face off between TSM and C9. It involves 77 kills in 18 minutes:
