League of Legends Finally Adds WASD Controls After 16 Years
▼ Summary
– Riot Games added optional WASD keyboard controls to League of Legends to make the game more approachable for players familiar with that control scheme from other PC games.
– Initial fears that WASD controls would be overpowered, giving players automatic perfect spacing, have been contradicted by player feedback stating the implementation is actually underpowered.
– The WASD control scheme suffers from a significant DPS loss, partly due to an imposed attack speed penalty and an inability to fully utilize animation cancelling techniques.
– Riot Games is still testing and adjusting the feature, with the senior producer noting it will take time to assess the full impact, and it is not yet available in Ranked play.
– The community reaction has shifted from fearing the controls would unbalance the game to debating whether they are ineffective, indicating the change is not the “doomsday” scenario some initially predicted.
After sixteen years, League of Legends has introduced an optional WASD control scheme, a seismic shift for a game long defined by point-and-click mechanics. This move, aimed at welcoming players from other PC gaming genres, has ignited a complex debate within the community, balancing accessibility against the game’s deeply entrenched competitive mechanics.
Initial reactions from prominent figures were starkly negative. Streamer and coach Marc “Caedrel” Lamont, who tested the feature early, argued it could trivialize high-skill techniques like spacing, effectively granting an “aim assist” that might unbalance roles like Attack Damage Carries. He suggested that holding directional keys while clicking an enemy could automate optimal movement and attack timing.
However, the live implementation on the Public Beta Environment tells a different story. Players quickly discovered that using WASD controls incurs a significant penalty to attack speed, particularly noticeable on champions who rely on rapid-fire assaults. This appears to be a deliberate balancing act by Riot Games. The new scheme prevents the full utilization of animation cancelling, a core technique where players interrupt attack animations with movement commands to squeeze in extra auto-attacks. For competitive players who min-max their damage output, this makes the traditional mouse-only method vastly superior for raw performance.
Community analysis, like that from Reddit user J0rdian, supports this, noting a “substantial DPS loss” at higher attack speeds with WASD. Others clarified the new rhythm required: to minimize the delay between attacks, players must release all movement keys before an attack fires, then re-engage them during the cancelable window, a cumbersome process compared to the fluidity of classic controls.
Riot’s senior tech game producer, Darcy Ludington, acknowledged the adjustment, sharing a video demonstrating how to optimize the new system. The developer’s goal remains focused on lowering barriers for newcomers, citing internal tests where traditional controls were a major hurdle. The control scheme is currently excluded from Ranked play, allowing more time for evaluation and balance tuning before it faces the ultimate competitive test.
The narrative has thus flipped from fears of an overpowered mechanic to discussions about its current underwhelming performance. Whether Riot overcorrected in response to early feedback is now the central question. The situation underscores a challenging design pivot: integrating a familiar control scheme without undermining the precise, skill-based gameplay that defines League of Legends at its highest levels. As Ludington noted, assessing its full impact, especially for new player retention, will require more time and data.
(Source: PC Gamer)
