The Major League Gaming Summer Championship took place over the weekend with the top League of Legends, StarCraft 2, Soul Calibur V, and Mortal Kombat players coming together under one roof to fight for a large cash pool. But it’s League of Legends that’s in the spotlight in the wake of the event as the pro scene is once again engulfed in controversy.

The controversy stems from accusations (and one alleged confession) that the two top teams, Curse and Dignitas, colluded to share the prize money from the top two spots (rather than risk walking away with only second place earnings.)

They also gained the ire of MLG when the two teams agreed to play the first match of the championship series in an all-random, middle-only style (characters randomly assigned, only fighting in the middle lane.) Which GR’s resident LoL fan Hollander Cooper likened to a Counter-Strike championship match in which the two teams agreed to only use knives. In other words, they weren’t taking competition seriously, and in the process being disrespectful to the fans who tuned in to see top-level play and MLG who, after all, was paying them tens of thousands of dollars to compete.

The two teams were stripped of their earnings in the tournament, and will receive no season credit for their placement. Team Curse has issued a formal apology to the fans and to MLG in a video statement (opens in new tab).

This isn’t the first time that the League of Legends pro-scene has seen some controversy. At the World Cyber Games (opens in new tab) late last year several allegations popped up that, interestingly, also included Team Dignitas.

Recently, Riot Games announced a big investment in the pro-LoL scene complete with player salaries, designed specifically to make playing LoL more lucrative in order to avoid controversies like these.

On the other main stage at Major League Gaming, the competition was less controversial though still entertaining. The StarCraft 2 bracket featured a string of upsets as major players like Taeja and MarineKingPrime were knocked out fairly early while the Korean Zerg, Leenock, walked away with his second MLG championship.

The post League of Legends top two teams disqualified at MLG for alleged collusion appeared first on Game News.

Rally and Fortify are getting removed outright. To replace them, Riot is bringing Promote back from the dead to allow players to upgrade a catapult minion. The spell had a good reaction when it was added to Dominion, and the developers have tweaked it to work in Summoner’s Rift, too. Riot has also created a new spell called Surge, “that will imbue your champion with a powerful aura, boosting the combat effectiveness of both you and your allies.” It’s essentially the replacement for Rally, which relied on players standing still for longer than they typically do in the game.

(opens in new tab)

A majority of the remaining summoner spells will remain unchanged, while others will be enhanced to make them more suitable for end-game play. Heal will scale better for late-game play, making is less of a joke for higher-level players, and Cleanse will remove all debuffs, including that of other summoner spells like Ignite and Exhaust.

But it’s not all peaches and gravy. Flash and Clairvoyance, two of the most powerful summoner spells in League of Legends, will be getting hit with nerfs. Flash will teleport champions less frequently and less distance, a change that’s sure to infuriate players (it’s likely the most used summoner spell), and Clairvoyance will have an an increased cooldown and reduced duration. They hope that the change will make players rely less on Flash as the go-to spell, and that Clairvoyance will be used more tactically.

We’re most excited about the possibility of Heal not sucking anymore. Before, it was the weakest of the Spells, but one that we desperately wished was more powerful. With the buffs there’s a chance it will add some new strategy to the game, something we’re more than a little happy to have.

The post Riot shuffling League of Legends Summoner Spells for Season Two appeared first on Game News.