Riot Games brings more severe Lane Swap changes for Worlds 2025

With less than two weeks to the start of the League of Legends World Championship, game designer Matt “Riot Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison has announced some major changes around lane swaps that will define the Worlds meta.

Worlds 2025 will have an increased lane swap penalty timer

In his latest X post, Phroxzon mentioned that the game will move the Lane swap penalty timer to 4:00 in the top lane, which will be 30 seconds longer than the one introduced at First Stand back in March.

He explained that the increased timer should still allow teams to execute specific early game strategies, even though it will be harder to pull off. That being said, the dev team wants to prioritize laners vs laners matchups, instead of having an ADC lane swap to the top lane and take advantage of his extra range to bully out the enemy top laner.

What is the meta expected to be like?

While this doesn’t really impact the normal level of play, the pro play meta will likely shift. Many teams are expected to shift away from the use of lane swaps, especially in the first games of the series, where prio picks will be used. During the fearless best-of-series, it’s more likely that teams will utilize lane swaps again to neutralize counter matchups.

Even though junglers are not directly impacted, the recent changes to the jungle meta, especially with the return of power farming champions, the return of AP junglers like Diana and Nidalee, and the combined nerfs to bruiser AD champions like Wukong and Xin Zhao, will increase the importance of teams playing around their junglers rather than vice versa. This will inevitably put more pressure on the players in the individual matchups, and the teammates are expected to coordinate with their jungler in the early-game action.

Stay tuned for more content around Worlds 2025 and don’t forget to make your Pickems starting on October 7.