League Last-Hit Indicator Changes Reversed After Backlash

League of Legends’ esports scene is booming, but the Rift needs fresh faces. Riot Games is streamlining its mechanics to make the title friendlier to new players, but these changes aren’t without controversy. The studio has just reversed a last-hit indicator change after significant community backlash: here’s everything to know.

League of Legends Adds Last-Hit Indicator to Ranked

On June 23, 2026, Riot Games revealed upcoming League of Legends adjustments in Patch 23.16. One of the decisions involved the last-hit indicator system. Last-hit indicators show players when they can last-hit a minion to receive gold. The planned changes would have added a last-hit indicator option to Normal games and Ranked queues, making it much easier for players to successfully farm during the laning phase.

Riot Games wrote about the update:

“We’re going to be enabling Last Hit Indicators for Normal Draft & Ranked SR games. This feature has been live in Swiftplay & Co-op vs. AI for a while, and we’ve seen it result in new players being more successful at last-hitting than before. These players are now graduating into Normals & Ranked and are interested in continuing to use them.

We think it’s better to focus on skill expression in other parts of the game—rather than understanding exactly when you can last-hit a minion—and are also pretty confident that these don’t degrade skill expression in lane. You still need to be mindful of positioning, harassing your opponent, considering where both junglers are, understanding power spikes, and more.

We’ve seen that experienced players are disabling it, as they find it more distracting than helpful, but we believe it should be available for those who want it. Let us know what you think!”

Why Did Riot Games Change League’s Last-Hit Indicators?

Spanning nearly two decades, League of Legends is becoming an older competitive title. The game has a rich esports history, with plenty of players who have become cultural icons and teams like T1 that have cemented a place in its lore. Its competitive circuit is extremely healthy, with high viewership and fan engagement. League’s upcoming Mid-Season Invitational (MSI), for example, attracts plenty of attention. However, there’s an issue: League is struggling to find new players, and the game has a steep learning curve.

In recent years, Riot Games has attempted to court fresh faces to the title by streamlining some of the pain points that make it difficult to pick up. This isn’t the first controversial change that the studio has added: previously, it introduced a WASD option that appealed to players coming from different genres.

It’s important to note again that the last-hit indicators also aren’t new. They’ve been available in training gamemodes for months now, but this update would have been the first to bring them to Normal and Ranked queues. The last-hit indicator changes were made with League’s newest generation of players in mind, but they unexpectedly caused veteran gamers to feel their hard work learning wasn’t valuable.

Community Backlash

Shortly after the changes were revealed, they caused massive community backlash. The decision, which was a relatively small part of the Patch Notes, received millions of views online and sparked controversy with players.

User @HANCOCK_LOL wrote about the move on X.com: “might as well enable auto evade, skillshot aim assist and show enemy sums timers so that way no one needs scripts because we all are scripting.” Hancock’s take received nearly 1,000 likes. A prominent Challenger player, @humzhlol, said, “Please tell me this only for gold rank and below”.

Why is Laning Important in League?

The last-hit indicators would have made laning and farming much easier. League’s laning phase, although slower than other aspects of the game, has significant implications. Farming speed can indirectly impact what duels are wise to take, how quickly you can complete builds, and how much control you have over the map. Zoning an opponent off from their farm can provide a large early advantage.

Essentially, the laning phase is the foundation of the entire game because it’s where gold and experience advantages are established that snowball into mid and late-game power spikes. Winning your lane means more CS, kills, and plates, which translates to items faster than your opponent. In a game where item timing is everything, even a small lead can let you dominate teamfights, take objectives like Dragons or Barons, and pressure the map. The laning phase sets the tempo: whoever comes out ahead has the agency to dictate how the rest of the game is played.

Riot Games Removes the League Last-Hit Indicator Changes

Just half a day later, Riot Games announced they had decided to remove the planned last-hit indicator Ranked option from League. The studio posted on League of Legends’ official X.com account, apologizing to its player base. They noted they would gather further data in the future before making related decisions. In full, the statement read:

“Hey everyone! We’ve seen a lot of conversation around Last Hit Indicators coming to Ranked, and we’ve decided to enable them in non-Ranked SR queues only for continued testing. We want to get more data and feedback to decide if we should make them an option for Ranked before making that call. So we’ll keep them enabled, but off by default, for Swiftplay, Co-op vs AI, and Normal Draft, to collect data and iterate. We’ll keep you updated about performance and progress in Dev Updates before making any future calls.”

The decision received nearly 800,000 views. Product and strategy manager @drewlevin added, “LHI coming to Norms this patch, holding off on Ranked for now. We’ll share more performance info before potentially reopening the Ranked conversation. Appreciate the feedback!”

While many community members appreciated the move, they also lamented that it happened in the first place. NA Pokemon player Verlis popped in to say, “Competitive ranked modes should NEVER have training wheels and new player mechanics.”

Some gamers also came out of the woodwork to support the planned move, questioning if the controversy’s scale was warranted. @stugots was disappointed in Riot Games: “backing down from a genuinely good change because the loudest 0.1% of the player base got butthurt is sad. Especially when most of them would never even be matched against the newer players who would actually benefit from it the most.”

Riot’s post did leave the door open for the changes to return sometime in the far future after much more research. However, for now, they are decidedly halted. Stay tuned to EsportNow for future updates.