What is Ability Haste in League of Legends? Stats, items, more

May 2023 · 4 minute read

Riot has shared the first details of League of Legends pre-season 11 item rework. While there’s a number of changes going through, none are bigger than the CDR rework. The new stat will be called Ability Haste and work differently to how cooldown reduction does nowadays.

Want to recreate URF in your regular Summoner’s Rift games? It could be possible, thanks to the CDR rework coming soon to League of Legends.

Cooldown reduction is out, and Ability Haste is in, offering players a new way to increase the amount of spells they can cast. It’s uncapped, unlike CDR, meaning you can get as much of it as you want and not be negatively affected. However, it works differently to its predecessor.

CDR is being replaced in League of Legends Season 11.

How does Ability Haste work?

Ability Haste is coming into League of Legends to replace cooldown reduction (CDR). It’s not going to co-exist alongside it, but rather completely overhaul how it affects champions’ abilities.

It will work on a linear scale, like armor and magic resist do nowadays. The stat will be a flat value that directly affects how often you can cast spells. For every 1 Ability Haste, you’ll be able to cast spells 1% more often.

It will be uncapped, meaning you can build as much of it as you want. You’ll never be able to reach zero-second cooldowns on your abilities, but you’ll have the chance to get upwards of 50% cooldown reduction unlike the hard 40% cap now.

A simple comparison to help understand Ability Haste is that it's just like Armor / MR. You can get as much of it as you want and the value is always the same.

More armor -> more physical reduction
More ability haste -> more casts per minute

— Mark Yetter (@MarkYetter) August 7, 2020

How is it different from CDR?

There’s a few key differences between cooldown reduction and Ability Haste. The biggest difference is that the two stats scale differently.

Ability Haste works linearly, meaning at all values it’ll have the same impact. CDR works exponentially, meaning that as you get more CDR it becomes more valuable. This key distinction means that it’ll be easier to calculate the power of the new stat versus CDR.

As we mentioned earlier, Ability Haste will be uncapped. While you won’t be able to hit 100% CDR ⁠— it’s mathematically impossible ⁠— you can definitely get some crazy values going. At 66, you’ll break through the current CDR cap. 100 will be the equivalent of 50% CDR. If you really want to focus on casting fast, you’ll be able to.

The less “oppressive” nature of Ability Haste also means we might see it on more items than we did CDR too. CDR is a finicky stat that’s hard to keep balanced due to its raw power. However, with Ability Haste, it should be a bit easier to keep its power in check.

Almost every champion in League builds CDR in some capacity, and it’ll be no different with Ability Haste.

What items give Ability Haste in League of Legends?

It’s unclear what items exactly will have Ability Haste on them come Season 11. We can assume that every item with CDR ⁠— or CDR components ⁠— will make the switch. However, with Riot looking to remove or drastically rework over half of the items, the shop could look very different.

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Here’s a list of all items that currently give Ability Haste in League of Legends:

Our goal when tuning the move from CDR to Ability Haste is that there is on average the same amount of Cooldown Reduction on champs.

The upside (and why we're doing it) is that build flexibility is dramatically better and there are more choices around haste vs non haste builds.

— Mark Yetter (@MarkYetter) August 7, 2020

Ability Haste will be launched in pre-season 11 as part of the new League of Legends item rework. Riot are also eyeing off major changes to Grievous Wounds and Tenacity. You can read about the overhaul here.

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