With the 2025 season entering its final term, Riot Games has unveiled the latest updates that will be coming to the League of Legends Season 3, including Xin Zhao VGU, the return of Doom Bots, and the implementation of the long-awaited WASD controls.
League of Legends Season 3 Kicks Off with Patch 25.17
The last season for 2025 has been confirmed to be released when Patch 25.17 goes live on August 27, according to the official patch schedule. The story will see both Spirit Blossom and Noxus come together, with LeBlanc, the new champion Yunara, Atakhan, and Xin Zhao being protagonists.
Xin Zhao VGU in 2025
Speaking of Xin Zhao, the latter will be receiving a full visual update, with all of his skins getting refreshed looks. While gameplay is unchanged, all the vaulted skins will be available during Patch 25.17 and 25.18.
A new Epic skin will be released during Act 1 of the new season. Riot also confirmed there will be improvements made to the Commando and Imperial Xin Zhao skins, which will also have a bump in price (from 520 to 750 RP). Both legacy skins will be available at their original price until Patch 25.17.
Doom Bots are Back!
The game dev team has been looking to rotate the special game modes, and Doom Bots will be returning with Patch 25.17, featuring a new difficulty, new curses, new bots, and a new boss. In the latest dev update, Riot Meddler stated that Blitzcrank’s hook will be able to push minions away as one of the new features for the game mode. They also announced the “Trials of Doom”, in-game challenges that will be introduced in each patch with unique objectives for Doom Bots players.
In regard to other game modes potentially returning, the Rioters kept their options open: “We don’t have any immediate plans to bring any other modes back from the past, but we’re open to exploring it,” Meddler added.
WASD Controls – A new era for League of Legends?
After being teased a few months ago, Riot Games will be releasing the WASD movement controls on PBE in a few patches, becoming an alternative control system for players. According to a release, the team will be monitoring the two control schemes closely to avoid competitive advantage on either side, and will be rolling out the new control system first to non-Ranked queues and eventually to Ranked.
In the dev update, designer Dean “Iksar” Ayala said that feedback was gathered from the Riot internal playtest team, from brand new players, and even pro players at MSI. The Rioter even revealed that one of the major bugs the team encountered was Nunu’s ability to do a 180 with his snowball. “One thing we will be keeping a close eye on is how WASD affects balance between moving and attacking, especially at high attack speeds,” according to producer Darcy “Dashijador” Ludington.
To make up for the new control scheme, Riot is looking to make the key bindings more customizable, as well as the camera, with a new version called Dynamic Locked Camera. It extends the view to the mouse to see more action while still retaining the locked camera. Both of them will be locked to WASD at first.
WASD will be coming as an new official input method
Flash has 3 settings, "Cursor", "WASD with Cursor Enhanced", "WASD with Cursor Fallback". Unsure what they do
Can still click to move under WASD
Has a toggle to smart cast to shoot in the direction your character is facing pic.twitter.com/lHceFXmI1A
— SkinSpotlights (@SkinSpotlights) May 14, 2025
Worlds 2025 Anthem to be released on October 10, Worlds 2024 Skins coming out next month
With the League of Legends World Championship taking place later this year, Riot Games has confirmed the anthem will be published on October 10, before the action kicks off in Beijing on October 14. The song will be ‘honoring and celebrating prolific players across League of Legends’ competitive history’, as it celebrates the 15th anniversary of the world championship. Last year’s Worlds T1 skins have also been confirmed to be released sometime in September.
Player Behavior and QoL Features
Riot Games has also detailed more restrictions on players engaging in smurfing and boosting (playing on other players’ accounts to climb the ranks), and even hitchhiking (when a higher-skilled player uses a fraudulent account to play with a lower-skilled player to artificially increase the lower-skilled player’s rank). Alternate accounts used in good faith, however, won’t be affected, meaning that players can still use more than one account if it’s for personal use.
Starting with Patch 25.18, actions will be taken against all offending parties, and botted, sold, purchased, and shared accounts will also be punished. According to Riot, Vanguard will be responsible for the detection, and the system will be supported by player-submitted “Rank Manipulation” reports.
Riot has also confirmed tests for True Skill 2, a new matchmaking system that aims to improve MMR accuracy and placement speed. “We started testing it in North America in March in normal SR and ARAM, we then fixed some issues and expanded testing to all unranked queues in Korea last month,” explained game designer Matt “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison in the dev update. We’re seeing players placed correctly in about five games, which is three to five times faster than our current system.” Additionally, individual timers will be added for jungle camps and summoner spell usage will be tracked through the death recap screen.
New Skins coming to the Mythic Shop
Sylas and Mel are the two champions that will be made available through the Mythic shop, while Jarvan IV and Zoe will be available through the Act 1 and Act 2 Battle Passes, respectively. In their dev update, the team also stated that the Exalted Viego skin will be released next year.
Machine Herald Viktor will instead be released in Patch 25.19 and will be gifted for free to all players with Viktor Mastery Level 5 or above, based on the mastery level registered on August 4, 2025. Battle Passes will also now have a lower limit, going from 50 to 48, and rewards will be condensed as a consequence. The Mythic Shop will also came with emotes and icons that were only earnable through the completion of past TFT Passes.
