You get a Buff Wisp! YOU get a Buff Wisp! You ALL get Buff Wisps!
Did you all catch MSI? Huge congratulations to JDG for coming out on top! Riding the esports wave, we also have a skinline to celebrate last year’s World Champions, DRX, coming out this patch, with a special Prestige skin for Aatrox to celebrate Kingen’s dominating MVP performance!
In other news, we also have some exciting changes coming this week like Rell’s midscope update, universal buff sharing for junglers, some nerfs for Aphelios and Jinx, and quite a few followup changes to the Midseason update that came out in 13.10.
Looking to live out your TFT dreams like Urgot joining the Star Guardians? Check out the TFT patch notes here!
Midscope, all abilities (except ultimate) adjusted.
We think Rell’s fantasy of being a mounted lancer on horseback who transforms into heavy infantry by literally metalbending her horse into armor is compelling and exciting, but unfortunately she hasn’t fully lived up to that fantasy. In a Dev Blog back in March, we outlined the following goals:
- Lean into the Mounted/Dismounted fantasy: Let Rell feel fast—like she can charge enemies down while mounted—and let her feel like a formidable fighter while dismounted.
- Increase Play Pattern Variance: Give Rell more options in lane and teamfights besides landing W, and make sure that while she’s dismounted, there are useful things she can do.
- Sand off some QoL issues: We’ve heard your feedback on some of the more frustrating parts of Rell’s kit, so we wanted to help alleviate some of them. We want to smooth out things like poor ward clearing, not being able to use E while alone, and Q having reduced power on subsequent enemies.
Rell’s new E should provide the giddyup she needs to charge down her enemies and proactively start fights, and the extra range and attack speed while dismounted let her participate more in the fight.
Adding a stun to her Q will let her have a more varied combat pattern that's not just looking for engages with W. Now she can fish with Q and follow up with a Crash Down if she lands it. With some new combos in her saddlebags, she should be feeling less binary and more flexible.
And finally, we’ve given her a normal attack speed, and removed the cap on how fast she can go while dismounted, which goes a long way to help improve how she feels to play (ward clearing is also much faster now!).
Q base damage increased.
Akali is currently struggling to pull off her cool ninja shenanigans in both solo queue and Pro play. In this patch we’re looking to buff her Q damage slightly so that she has a more manageable time in lane before scaling into the slippery assassin we know her to be.
W damage decreased.
Amumu might be lonely in lore, but he hasn’t been left out of the patch notes recently. Our 13.9 buffs went a bit overboard, specifically on the power of his early clear and skirmishing. So we’re going to lower them back down to near the previous values, but leave the scaling damage increase on Despair.
Passive bonus AD decreased.
Since Aphelios typically likes to spec into AD early, he’s able to leverage the extra damage to dominate early laning which feels a little odd considering he’s more of the scaling silent type. This should help make laning against him a bit easier for opponents.
E mana cost increased, magic damage AP ratio decreased.
Mages as a whole got a small power increase from the changes in patch 13.10, including the already powerful ones. Our friendly space dragon was already sitting above the stars, so we have a few changes to bring him down to earth. We’re making his Singularity cost more mana in the early laning phase to help opponents delay his farming while also lessening how much damage the spell does due to its incredibly good utility scaling.
Q cooldown decreased. W summon range increased, AP ratio increased.
Azir's skill bracket skew has flattened significantly and he isn't seeing any Pro play, which means there’s some room for smaller buffs. This time around, we're aiming for changes that have been specifically requested by live Azir players, so the goal here is that he'll be a much more satisfying champion without breaking the Pro play bank.
Q follow up adjusted, cast range increased, now refunds cooldown when used on non-Epic monsters. W adjusted, now gives allies bonus on-hit damage, vision from spawn duration increased, brush despawn conditions changed. E shield now refreshes if no enemies were hit by the detonation. Daisy stats adjusted, Slam! Damage increased.
With buff sharing becoming a part of the game this patch, we wanted to offer Ivern some buffs to the rest of his kit in exchange for removing his unique mechanic. Overall these changes shouldn't be too transformative, but his base spells should feel better in almost every situation they're cast in. Ivern’s Q will be able to reach between most camps on both sides of the map, and Daisy should feel a lot more responsive with faster attacks and move speed!
If you go through the change list, you’ll quickly realize that this isn’t the midscope we promised for Ivern. The reason we’ve decided to not give Ivern a midscope this patch is because player feedback around our proposed midscope was indicating we were on the wrong track, and internally we just didn’t feel like the designs were hitting the quality bar to ship. So for now, we’re offering Ivern some buffs that will help him become a healthier tree until he’s ready for a transplant.
Attack speed growth decreased.
Jinx has been getting away with strong laning phases despite her identity being a scaling marksman. We’re reverting her Attack Speed Growth introduced in patch 13.5 to reduce her overall rocket DPS.
Base health increased, health regeneration increased, attack damage decreased. Passive vision interaction adjusted, on-hit damage increased. Q damage increased. E cooldown decreased, damage adjusted.
Kalista’s auto attacks are feeling weak at the moment due to the 90% total AD ratio and missing during vision loss. We noticed that Kalista was really hurting after 13.10, so we're targeting some pretty large buffs aimed at usability and durability for her. The changes to base AD, Q, and E keep her damage output roughly equal to before.
Passive refresh rate increased, heal increased. Q (Unburrowed) cooldown now decreases with rank, buff duration decreased, attacks refresh buff duration, buff no longer ends prematurely when underground, (Burrowed) vision duration increased. W adjusted.
Rek'Sai was one of the non-Assassin champions that was bound to the old Prowler's Claw and took a big hit in power with its removal. We're taking this opportunity to shift Rek'Sai away from Assassin-burst builds (which her kit was never really made to support) and move her strengths towards a more durable Fighter with a chunkier passive heal and better feeling auto attacks. We're also including a few small QoL buffs that should make playing the Queen feel a bit more royal.
E cooldown decreased. R cooldown decreased, magic damage increased.
Renekton has been a bit weak in solo queue, feeling more like a plush than a terrifying butcher, so we’re looking to decrease his E cooldown to bring the timing a bit closer to his other abilities. This will give Renekton more opportunities to engage/escape, and will make losing the Prowler's Claw active not feel as bad. We’re also looking to increase both the power and uptime of his ultimate.
W cooldown decreased, no longer decreases with rank.
Twisted Fate’s been drawing quite a few of the wrong cards recently, and he could use the odds being a little more in his favor. Lowering the cooldown on his W should give him more opportunities to draw what he needs and put more pressure on his opponents early.
Ardent Censer is currently the highest winrate second item purchase for enchanter supports which goes against our goals of promoting support item diversity. We’re tuning down some numbers to keep it in line with Staff of Flowing Water to avoid one becoming clearly better than the other.
Duskblade has been overshadowed by its purpler sibling. Duskblade is meant to be the more damage-heavy counterpart to Ghostblade in longer fights with enemies getting low, but simply lacks the punch compared to the other options.
With these changes we're buffing the passive amp so that it's a more viable damage option. We're also looking at if the Mythic Passives are in a healthy place, but for now we're staying with the small buff to Duskblade and a big nerf to Ghostblade.
Echoes of Helia is too strong at healing, no way around it. We envision Echoes as an offensive enchanter item that excels in skirmishes, but right now it's just performing too well, especially when it comes to healing (which starts to get into Moonstone’s niche). Going forward we’ll be keeping an eye on this item’s healing outputs, but will mainly be focusing on crafting it into a support damage item option.
Despite popular opinion heading into the patch, it turns out Galeforce is indeed strong, even with the opportunity cost of Infinity Edge and Navori Quickblades. We're walking back some of the preemptive buffs it got heading into 13.10, specifically targeting its strongest synergies in Yasuo and Yone, where the item far exceeds their other options.
Crit marksmen are dealing too much magic damage in long engagements, so we're switching Kraken Slayer to deal physical damage instead of magic. Because champions all have more armor than magic resist, this necessitates increasing its numbers just to keep it power-neutral. In addition, we're looking to buff Kraken Slayer slightly. Now Kraken will deal more damage to minions in all contexts and typically deal more damage to champions after building some form of armor penetration. Otherwise, the numbers should be pretty similar against most targets. One final note: Because more of its damage is coming from base damage, low-AD builds like Rageblade on-hit builds are even more buffed here, where the item is severely underperforming.
Moonstone Renewer is weaker compared to the other Support Mythic item options, so we want to bring it more in line so it feels like a choice worth making. We’re planning to do this by doubling up on healing in order to make it a more useful tool for the champions looking to buy this item, namely, healers. We also fixed a bug for Moonstone that was not visually reflecting the chain and another where the AOE shield was not functioning properly.
Quickblades has fallen pretty far behind its crit brethren in recent times. The item doesn't need more ability haste than it already has, and overall the Marksman class is about dealing extra damage in the first place, so we're shifting some of its ability haste into attack damage to better fit this role.
Hurricane’s a bit overtuned after the added extra power last patch, despite the small increase in gold cost. We’re tapping down the on-hit damage which should help keep crit Marksmen from dealing too much magic damage.
Shiv launched a bit underpowered. Its gold efficiency is in a reasonable spot, so we're amping up its more unique aspects. While we've seen some mages like Veigar try this item out, it doesn't appear to be too powerful in their hands, so we’re leaving the AP ratio in place.
Stormrazor came out of the Midseason gates swinging, landing a bit too strong. It's overly gold efficient and is contributing a bit too much burst. We're aware that Kai'Sa currently relies on Stormrazor in order to access Q evolutions easily and we'll be looking at this facet of hers in the near future.
Of all the new items in patch 13.10, Ghostblade was a clear winner.
We want Ghostblade to be the ideal item for roaming around the map with a small bump in damage for one big initial burst. It's currently giving way too much damage way too often, so we're lowering the bonus Lethality and slowing down how fast the stacks accumulate. This should keep Ghostblade as the speedy item option, but should limit how often it's giving tons of damage to its users.
Buff sharing has been pretty similar since the dawn of League. You get your first two or three buffs, but then your mid laner and ADC start thinking they deserve them. Can you believe it?? The nerve of those laners.
In its current state there is pressure for Junglers to give up their buffs to laners at their own expense, which also creates some social friction and coordination challenges. Our goal with the introduction of buff sharing is to reduce the “feels bad” moments when jungler’s have to give up their buffs. This should help Jungler’s feel like they have control over their own jungle while still letting them be a team player and help out those needy laners.
The Bandle City Cup Clash kicks off this weekend! Yordle-only comps are not required, but they are highly recommended.
The following skins will be released in this patch:
The following chromas will be released this patch: