12
June

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The Dr. Mundo Rework In LoL Is A Major Surgical Facelift

If you've kept up with Riot's League of Legends development plans for the year 2020, you're likely already well aware of the chain of champion reworks that they've lined up.

 

From Wukong to Fiddlesticks, and more recently, Volibear - several champions that the player community deemed "dated and bland" have gone under the knife on the developers' proverbial operating table.

 

And next in line is none other than Dr Mundo himself.

 

While it was clear that his "throw cleaver and run" playstyle was a poor fit in today's League of Legends ecosystem, most players find themselves at a bit of a loss as to what the rework is going to bring about.

 

And that's why today, we're here to shed some light on what we know thus far to help you set the expectations for the new and improved Mundo 2.0.

 

Why Is Dr. Mundo Getting Reworked?

First and foremost, the majority of players that have spent any amount of time in the Rift absolutely love Mundo's appeal. From his quirky aesthetics to the whole character identity, lore and backdrop - Mundo is one heck of a cool champion.

 

However, when it comes to his kit - most players are less than excited.

 

And it's not hard to guess why. You throw a cleaver, press a button, and run around like a mindless animal.

 

All humor aside, it's not hard to see why the League of Legends development team reached a resounding consensus on the fact that Mundo's kit needs to be modernized, desperately.

 

What Is The Dr. Mundo Rework Going To Look Like?

Having covered the rationale behind the rework, let's touch base and set some expectations for what you should and should not expect to see with the new Dr. Mundo.

 

The aim of the entire rework effort is to keep Mundo's champion identity and appeal while transforming his kit into something a little more modern.

 

And according to a developer update published on June 10th, his core characteristics, chucking cleavers and having superb regeneration and tankiness, are definitely here to stay. However, the devs did drop the crafty "in some form or another" line into the update, which signifies the fact that the way those characteristics would pan out could be totally different from the incredibly flat-pan linear approach that we're so used to.

 

Overtop of maintaining the linearity of the character's identity, the developers are also hard at work to give Mundo a bit more gameplay variance and viability, beyond having to play around being able to land cleaver shots.

 

So far the dev team has tested three interesting abilities:

·   They gave Mundo additional maximum health every time he took damage.

·   They tried scaling Mundo's health with any additional resistances that players acquired over the course of a match.

·   They also gave him a "contagion bleed" ability similar to Malzahar's Malefic Visions where once Mundo killed off an enemy unit, other enemies in a small radius would take on additional bleeding damage over time.

 

However, all three of these test abilities were quickly squashed and rolled back. In part because they just didn't make sense, and because something like a contagion bleed just doesn't sit well with Dr. Mundo's champion identity.

 

As such, the dev team has commented that at this time, the rework is still in its very early stages and no concrete plans for Mundo's ability kit have been set in stone.

 

The nice bit here is that they're actively working with the community and listening to a lot of player feedback on their ideas as well as drawing inspiration from the community's suggestions for what Dr. Mundo should become.

 

When Is the Mundo Rework Going Live?

In addition to a relatively loose development plan, the League of Legends development team hasn't really provided any substantial value in terms of a concrete release timeframe.

 

However, they did mention that they are planning for the rework to go live at some point in Season 11.

 

Closing Thoughts

Dr. Mundo is undeniably one of the most iconic champions in League of Legends.

 

And while he's certainly aged quite well compared to other "founding champs," many players wholeheartedly agree that his kit doesn't fit very well in the modern League of Legends ecosystem.

 

The Riot dev team has finally lifted the veil a tad on their plans for the Madman of Zaun and gave the community some insight on what the focus of the rework is and where the rework is at.

 

While the Mundo rework is still in its early stages and very little concrete release mapping has been done yet, we do know that the development team is planning to keep the champion identity intact, including his iconic playstyle, while modernizing how Mundo's skills work and giving him a graphical facelift to give him more playability and viability in LoL's future META.

 

With that, we will keep you posted on any news and updates concerning the Mundo rework planned for release in Season 11.

 

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