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UPDATE: Oct. 14, 2016, 1:31 p.m. EDT Riot Games has released more details about how plants will work. The information is below.

Change is coming to League of Legendsbefore the 2017 pro season begins, including a completely new (and pretty mysterious) feature in the jungle.

Developer Riot Games will be altering the Aegis of the Legion's stats in favor of some brand new items, changing up masteries and jungle camps to be more specific to certain playstyles, and introducing "interactive plants."

Yep, interactive plants. Here's the original plant information from a post by Riot's Gentleman Gustaf:

Enter Plants. We’re introducing interactive plants into the game and spawning them with some degree of variance. These plants should give junglers - and to some degree, other players - impactful decisions to make, without tying those choices to Smite.

It's not much to go on, but Riot expanded upon how plants will work in a forum post. The plants sort of replace Smite rewards -- the bonuses players received from smiting jungle camps. Attacking different plants will do different things, like the Blast Cone plant in this video:

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Other plants replace specific Smite rewards, like the Scryer's Bloom plant replacing the raptor vision reward.

Staying in the jungle, camps are changing to have more variance, forcing junglers to be more specific about which camps they target first instead of taking whichever camps are closest.

"We want players to have masteries that make them feel 'that’s what I want,' not 'I guess this is optimal.'"

Masteries are similarly changing to have more impact on specific playstyles. When players choose their masteries, Riot wants that choice to be satisfying and have a clear benefit to how they play.

"Overall, we want players to have masteries that make them feel 'that’s what I want,' not 'I guess this is optimal,'" Gentleman Gustaf wrote.

SEE ALSO:New 'League of Legends' developer blog takes you behind the scenes

As for the Aegis of the Legion, it's getting nerfed hard. Its aura stats make it a must-have item for teams, but it's a little toogood at protecting allies. Riot is taking away its aura stats in favor of some new support/defense items that are more specific, similar to how Mikael's Crucible protects fellow players from crowd control.

All these changes have a similar thread: allowing players to have more specific playstyles. Instead of broadening players' roles in matches, the changes will force players to be more deliberate and fall into more specific roles for their team. They may seem like small changes from a bird's-eye view, but they will likely cause pretty large meta changes for the coming season.

TopicsEsportsGamingLeague Of Legends