Nexus Blitz has been a mode showcased several times now within League of Legends. It’s entirely different from the main game, and in it’s current form, provides a lot of fun for players. However, there are plans to make it a proper game mode, with potential ranked additions. As someone who has entirely fallen out of love with League of Legends, Nexus Blitz is a refreshing game-play environment that you can’t take too seriously, which is something League is sorely missing. There are many pros and cons to League of Legends Nexus Blitz, and we’re about to explore them all in this article.
Increased Variety
The biggest pro to Nexus Blitz, in my eyes, is the variety it presents. Sure, there are definitely champions that are better than others, but overall there is a vast amount of variety. As someone who exclusively jungles, I’ve jungled nearly every champion in the game in Nexus Blitz. Do you want to play a traditional jungler? Sure! A mid laner? Why not! Hell, a support? Go for it! The variety in jungle alone is greater than the entirety of ranked play.
More than champions, the variety in items is a breath of fresh air. Nexus Blitz holds within it many items that have been removed over the years, such as Atmas Impaler and Force of Nature (two of my personal favorites). Seeing these long-forgotten items and playing with them once more gives a nice blast of nostalgia. It also reinforces my opinion that Force of Nature should never have been removed from regular play.
Speed of Games
In the immortal words of HotShotNidaleeGG: It’s fast, it’s fun.
Just like one of my favorite discarded game modes, Dominion, Nexus Blitz has the advantage that it’ll never take too long. In fact, there’s a forced ending by approximately 20 minutes due to the nexus itself getting up and walking itself down mid to be murdered.
While I personally feel that this happens a bit too early sometimes, it’s a great way for the mode to feel fast, and not take itself too seriously. It’s a lot harder to get invested in a game full of silliness that will only last 20 minutes, at most.
The same can be said about the champion select. It still has a ban phase, but everyone picks at once, which allows you to get through champion select infinitely faster than Draft or Ranked modes. For someone who has cut back on playing League quite a bit lately, I have zero tolerance for people dodging last minute in Draft modes, so Nexus Blitz’s speed was a nice change of pace.
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Ridiculousness
I’ve said it a few times now, but Nexus Blitz can’t be taken too seriously. The events that happen are often completely ridiculous, and it’s impossible to take this sort of thing with any amount of seriousness. There’s URF, Scuttle Racing, Loot Teemo, and Push the Cart. You never know what’ll happen, and it’s often hilarious when you find out.
As someone who has many times fallen under the banner of ‘designated flamer,’ I have often found myself in Nexus Blitz not checking the scoreboard until the game is over. The game is fast paced and silly, lending to its own ease. Even when you lose it’s not something you take too hard. The game is literally unbalanced 100 percent of the time.
Balance? Not in Nexus Blitz
You can’t take the game mode seriously because it’s entirely unbalanced. This may be a positive when it comes to laughing the game off, but it’s a huge downside from the perspective of potential future ranked play. The modes each lend themselves to certain characters, and there’s simply no way to know what you’ll encounter going in. If it were as simple as ‘do we play for the events or for the sudden death?’ then it would be fair enough, but it’s closer to ‘do we play for specific events?” This can be difficult, as you have absolutely no clue which ones will come up.
Building a team composition to combat all of this is impossible, leading people to just play whatever the they want. From a fun perspective this is great, but from a balance perspective it leads to a lot of games where certain compositions crush other ones. This is exacerbated by the fact that you don’t see the enemy’s champions during champion select. You barely see your own team’s champions because you’re given only 30 seconds to choose. If the mode were to change, some balance changes would be desperately needed.
Scuttle Racing
This needed its own point, because Scuttle Racing is by far the worst part of this game mode. It has undergone a full overhaul and significant improvement since the original version, but it’s still awful. Killing the scuttle simply isn’t as impactful as pulling it or pushing it, or even sometimes stunning it. This means that teams with champions like Alistar, Blitzcrank, Maokai, or Nautilus will automatically win the Scuttle Race. I’ve had many games where one team wins it by having a Blitzcrank suicide a few times to pull it, while the rest of the team doesn’t even show up.
There are a lot of balance changes that could happen to Scuttle Racing. Primarily, making damage more impactful and pulls less-so. However, the mode is poorly designed as a whole, and I think this is one of those cases where the mode would be much better if it just didn’t exist at all.
Conclusion
Nexus Blitz is fun. As someone who has been very let down by League of Legends over the past few years, Nexus Blitz was a great addition to the game. I’m quite disappointed that it has disappeared, and I’ll likely be playing much less League until it come back.
It’s a mode that lets me not care if I win, laugh at its ridiculousness, and just have fun with whatever champion I want without feeling pressured. There are balance changes needed, sure, but it’s a great game mode, and I look forward to its return!
