League of Legends is more than 10 years old now. It's come a really long way in all kinds of senses. Riot Games has overhauled League of Legends multiple times, from rebuilding the game's main map from the ground up to completely reworking the game's rune system to just recently overhauling most of its items. When a game is as old as League of Legends, it's only natural that aspects of the game age out in one way or another. Another common feature of League of Legends' current state are champion reworks. The roster of playable characters is just as commonly outdated. Champion reworks are a key way to helping League of Legends stay up to date.

The next champion up for a rework is Dr. Mundo. Mundo is a really old character -- he's an easy-to-play, healing-heavy tank who's been in League of Legends since 2009. He's gone mostly unchanged for years, and so it's not surprising that Mundo has been outpaced by many of League's other tanks. A few months ago, Riot Games held a poll that chose Dr. Mundo as the next champion rework. Riot promised that Mundo's rework would bring him up to date while still keeping him a simple, approachable tank. Now that the details of the rework have been revealed, it's clear that Riot has achieved that and simultaneously proven that there's still room for simple champions like Dr. Mundo in League of Legends.

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In a few ways, League of Legends' Dr. Mundo is almost exactly the same as his first version. His Q, Infected Cleaver, is still an extremely simple projectile that deals magic damage to a target and applies a slow. Similarly, his ultimate serves pretty much exactly the same purpose as before, giving Mundo a huge surge of health regen and movement speed. The biggest change is that he gains Attack Damage on top of the healing now. Fans of this tank might've been nervous that these iconic abilities would go away, but it seems Riot Games was careful to preserve these aspects of Mundo.

A couple abilities have changed more drastically. Mundo's W, Heart Zapper, still causes him to do magic damage around him, but instead of focusing on giving Mundo resistance to crowd control effects, it offers another way to heal him. Mundo's resistance to crowd control --something that he's notoriously good at in League of Legends -- has been shifted to his passive, which lets him occasionally avoid instances of crowd control altogether. When Mundo uses his passive, he'll drop a canister that he can grab to heal himself. Finally, his E is also largely unchanged, except that it can also knock back enemies that it kills like they're a projectile. It's clear that League of Legends has seen far more drastic champion reworks than what Dr. Mundo is going through.

In a way, it feels weird to see Dr. Mundo stay almost exactly the same as he was before. His basic gameplay pattern is unchanged: run at other champions and heal through any amount of damage that his enemies throw at him. That's fascinating because Riot Games' recent game design philosophy has seemingly been to create wildly unique and mechanically complicated champions of every kind. Dr. Mundo, however, is still a really simple champion that's friendly to newcomers. That's definitely a good thing for League of Legends. The fact that Mundo has remained simple while still becoming more mechanically interesting, encouraging a little more intelligent movement from players, proves that there's still room for simple champions in League of Legends.

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The best way to understand the significance of Dr. Mundo's rework is by comparing him to other League champions who've undergone reworks. Galio is a great example. The original Galio was an extremely easy mage and off-tank who had little more to offer than magic damage and a strong ultimate. Nowadays, he's a heavy-hitting tank who strongly encourages risky plays and relies heavily on teamwork and positioning. Shen is another champion who became vastly more complicated after his rework. He went from a very basic champion who could do little more than some single-target damage and self-shielding to a much more complicated tank who also relies heavily on intelligent positioning and resource management. Consistently, Riot Games' champion reworks have taken simple characters like Shen, Galio, Pantheon, Akali, and many more and turned them into much harder characters to play.

Riot Games could've done that to Dr. Mundo. It had all the opportunity in the world to make Mundo jump through new hoops to get his coveted healing and crowd control resistance, but he's hardly changed. Riot seemed to realize that the way bring Mundo to the modern age wasn't to make him as complicated as so many other reworking champions. Instead, Riot refreshed Dr. Mundo's kit by focusing on his special talents and giving him more tools that reward focusing on those talents. Just a few rearrangements and buffs have made one of League of Legends' oldest champions feel new again.

The final verdict on Dr. Mundo's rework can only be issued when it actually comes out, but at a glance, it looks great. Fans are responding positively to the update so far, and that's a big deal for the future of League of Legends. It means that Riot Games still knows how to make champions that are both easy and fun. As League of Legends keeps gaining champions, it seems logical that the only way to go is up in terms of mechanical complexity, but that's not true. Riot totally has the option to develop champions with a basically unique playstyle or mechanic that players can use and enjoy without practicing the champion for hundreds of hours.

Dr. Mundo's rework represents an age of League of Legends where champions don't always have to reinvent the wheel to feel new. Complicated new champions like Samira are definitely cool and very rewarding to play, but they don't have to be the be-all, end-all of League of Legends. League needs simple champions like Nasus, Annie, Ashe, and Dr. Mundo to help new fans learn to play the game. Simple champions make it possible to love League, which is the only way for the League of Legends community to grow. It's hard to say for sure what Riot's future reworks will be like, but hopefully it's taught itself an important lesson with Dr. Mundo's rework.

League of Legends is available now on PC.

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