GET READY TO RUUUUUUUMBLE, it’s time for the Soul Fighters to enter the Rift!
Welcome to the League of Legends summer event: Soul Fighter! We’re excited for all of you to see what we’ve been cooking. In this event will be a brand new game mode, Arena, a new in-client metagame, Tournament of Souls, and a whole roster of fighters sporting our brand new Soul Fighter skinline.
Speaking of fighters, make sure to keep an eye out for Naafiri, our newest champion, who will be looking to claim her place as the apex predator on the Rift.
This patch also marks the beginning of Ranked Split 2. Make sure to check out the Mid-Season Ranked Reset section down below which contains ranked kickoff times alongside all the changes coming to ranked this split, like the new Emerald tier.
Now to your regularly scheduled patch content. This week we are incrementally raising top lane carry potential, lowering early jungle gank power, and nudging down bot lane mobility. We have some nifty QoL adjustments to Zyra, Xerath, and Lissandra, some assassin tuning, and another round of ARAM balance adjustments coming.
League won’t be the only place for you to hop into the ring! Make sure you check out TFT’s take on Soul Fighter with their new game mode, Soul Brawl, in the TFT patch notes here!
With this mid-patch update we’re aiming to bring down a few of the top performers in Arena to help increase the likelihood of other champs taking the stage. We’re currently working through a set of buffs for some underperforming champs which is taking a little more time, but you can expect to see them alongside the patch 13.15 patch notes.
One more quick note. We are aware that there are some level up tooltips that may be incorrect within Arena. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working on a solution for Arena’s next appearance.
As players begin socializing Naafiri with other champions on the Rift, we're tightening the leash on her mid- and late-game scaling so she doesn't stat-check her way through the enemy team after an early kill or two.
Arena balancing aplenty to ensure the meta isn't stale heading into our first weekend!
Season 2023 Split 1 Rewards will start being distributed during patch 13.14, and all rewards should be distributed by the end of patch 13.15 on August 14th.
It's our first mid-season ranked reset! Since this is a new process for all of us we want to make sure you all have accurate dates and times to work with. If you've been procrastinating your ranked climbs like me, then these will be your hard deadlines.
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Just as a reminder in case you've missed it, Split 2 will feature a handful of major changes to the ranked climb experience:
Looking to learn more about these changes? Well check out the full post, What's Next for Ranked here!
The restriction on duoing in Ranked Solo/Duo with an MMR of Masters or above is disabled until patch 13.15. Note that duo restrictions based on visible rank are still active, so a player who reaches Master or above will not be able to duo.
It’s here! The new 2v2v2v2 game mode is launching this patch and we’re excited for all of you to try it out! In the new Arena game mode, four teams of two players each fight one another in rotating combat rounds. After each round of combat, they will power up with unique Augments until only one team is left standing. Combat takes place on four different battlefields which vary in size, terrain density, and theme. Champions from the Soul Fighter universe will make occasional cameo appearances in matches. Sometimes they’ll help, sometimes not so much.
Think you have what it takes to be the #1 Gladiator on our leaderboard? Well get ready to test your mettle in the Arena!
In case you haven’t seen it, check out our full rundown on Arena here!
Tournament of Souls is a style-rating-focused combo-battler that takes place in the client. As Samira, you will gain Reputation by playing games of League, which in turn allows you to face new opponents and unlock new abilities for Samira to progress further in the tournament. The objective of the tournament is to become the champion by defeating all ten opponents. You can claim rewards after each victory and take on new challenges after unlocking the Story and Expert difficulty levels.
Interested in learning more? Check out our Player Support article detailing how to progress, rewards, and more here! (Note: The player support article will go live on July 20 at 7:30 pm UTC.)
Let the world hear our howls and know that death awaits. Join the hunt with Naafiri on July 20th, 2023.
Q damage increased, minion damage modifier increased.
Aatrox hasn't been on his Aa-game since the end of last year. Not only is his win rate for most players quite low, there is also a criminal lack of A Darkin Carry (ADC) in Pro play. In all seriousness, Aatrox has been lacking since we took down his self-healing. We'd like to give Aatrox players power in ways they'll appreciate without it being simply more sustain, so we’re bumping his AD ratios and wave clear power up which should keep him on AD builds and increase his ability to carry come late game.
W shield strength increased, damage per orb increased. E magic damage increased.
Diana has been weak since our adjustments to her and her tank build. This has become a little more apparent over the last few patches to the point where she's deserving of a buff. In this patch we’re buffing Diana's carry potential so that she's more able to convert leads into wins. More specifically we’re looking to shore up her higher damage builds as well as a bit of early jungle health/laning power.
W bonus armor and MR decreased.
Hecarim has been doing great in solo queue, a little too great. He's currently able to build a high amount of damage while relying on the built-in durability of his kit. Combine that with the fact that Duskblade is his most commonly purchased mythic item, and you have a spooky tank assassin ghost horse. Since Hecarim is generally strong and one of his core items (Spear of Shojin) is getting buffed this patch, we'll be toning down his W resistances to reduce how durable he can be without investing into more direct durability stats.
E cooldown increased. R mana cost increased.
Jax has been a strong top laner in both Pro and solo queue for quite some time now. With the upcoming Shojin buff we'll be increasing the cooldown on his E as it currently has great synergies with Spear of Shojin and we'd like to reduce the frequency at which Jax has access to this impactful ability. We'll also be reverting an unintentional mana buff that shipped with the Jax update earlier this year.
Q base damage decreased, damage to monsters increased. E mana restoration decreased.
Karthus bot lane has been a very potent force, quickly overtaking games that he's given free reign in, not to mention the fact that he’s been picking up in popularity. With these changes, we are aiming to preserve his jungle power where possible while nerfing the components of his kit that manifest in lane, like early non-monster damage and mana refunds, since jungle Karthus has access to Blue Buff and his jungle item for mana restoration.
Base health increased, base armor increased. Q base damage decreased, cooldown increased.
Kindred have been a top tier jungler in high-skill brackets for a few patches now. Our nerfs from last patch, while overall reducing Kindred's strength, did not have enough of a skew in high MMR to hit our goals. In this patch we'll be nerfing both the base damage and cooldown of their Q which we expect to mostly impact Elite-level Kindred players due to their statistically higher Q cast frequency.
Kindred’s most common and successful builds are pretty tanky right now with items like Trinity Force, Black Cleaver, Wit’s End, and even Sterak’s Gage. Trinity Force is a pretty logical inclusion in their build but we’ll be discussing whether or not they should need squishier builds to succeed in the future.
Passive QoL changes added. Q will now slow all enemies hit. R heal increased, damage and slow application increased.
Our goal with this set of changes is to smooth out rough edges for Lissandra. Her Q is a spell that most players don't realize doesn't slow beyond the first target, so we want to align the spell with player and spell expectations. This may end up being a bit powerful since her slow amount has been balanced around the first hit unit being slowed only, but we’ll be keeping an eye on this change to see if it needs retuning in a future patch.
Another goal we have is making Lissandra's Frozen Thralls more responsive to enemy actions and not feel as if they’re giving up damage and kills. Their interactions around Fog of War and stopping prior to exploding ended up feeling like her kit was working against her. We’re also buffing her R healing to ensure that this spell doesn't feel bad to cast on yourself come late game so that Lissandra really does feel like a frost lich. Last but not least, we want to ensure that her R's effects happen responsively to enemies foolish enough to enter into the area of her tomb.
Passive burn damage decreased. E bonus movement speed decreased.
Milio is overall pretty balanced for most players, albeit with a bit of room to move down. That said, he does have a high risk of overtaking Pro play in the near future. In this patch we're targeting Pro-skill-skewed parts of his kit that scale strongly with both coordination and the skill level of your ally. We’d rather preserve his signature outputs such as his AoE cleanse and bonus attack range and reduce his less unique tools.
W - Unburrow base damage decreased. E damage decreased.
Rek'Sai gained a lot of power with her update a few patches ago, and while she was nerfed last patch, we didn't go quite far enough. We're targeting her overwhelming early gank power since she already has such great target access, which means she doesn't need to also guarantee the kill quite so easily.
Base armor decreased. Passive Armor and Magic Resist steal decreased.
Our goal last patch was to increase the power of Rell jungle and decrease her strength as a support. While we achieved both of those goals, we didn't quite nerf Rell support enough. As many Pro leagues around the world are using 13.14 as their playoff patch, we want to dial in how powerful she is in Pro play before we’re able to collect data heading into Worlds. Our goal this patch is for Rell to still be a strong pick but to be less overbearing.
We’re reducing Rell’s baseline armor so that she will have below-average tank stats for a support since both her passive and W give her more of them. Meanwhile, it's incredibly important that Rell feels like a fast horse rider and that each of her button presses carries enough damage to feel good. Each of her individual damage numbers are already quite low, so we're targeting another balance lever that is much less noticeable: her passive.
Base health regeneration decreased. Q critical strike damage conversion decreased.
Rengar just loves to cuddle with squishy champions and then collect their teeth for his necklace. We're glad he's building damage items, has a unique love for critical strike chance, and plays as an assassin. However, he's succeeding too well in elite game lobbies. The speed at which he one-shots his foes leaves little room for counterplay, hence the Q nerf. Also, he’s been more successful in top lane than jungle recently, which is where the base health regen nerf comes in.
Q AD scaling increased, backstab damage increased. Bugfixes.
Full AD assassin Shaco builds have been struggling to finish off kills after the adjustments we made to Duskblade and Infinity Edge a few patches back. We’re looking to give back a little of his lost power with these changes, ensuring that his primary AD assassin build remains well supported.
Q AD scaling increased, attack speed increase added, cooldown increased. E now additionally scales with bonus AD.
Shyvana’s builds have been skewing heavily towards AP lately, and her AD builds haven’t been getting much love. She was depending on items and a few other in-game systems to keep her strong in the past, but with these getting adjusted, a lot of her power went along with it. Our goal with these changes is to give Shyvana more solid reasons to build and scale with AD-centric builds. And we’re also adding built-in attack speed so she doesn't have to rely on items to provide it for her.
Passive AP scaling increased. Q QoL change. W heal increased.
Volibear buffs! Wizard bear is a relatively popular, yet underpowered Volibear build, and the champion is underperforming in top lane overall. So we’re giving him some simple buffs aimed at making both builds scale better in order to help Voli become a beary scary carry.
Base mana decreased. Passive cooldown increased, now reduced cooldown upon killing a unit, now procs with turrets. R number of casts increased, damage decreased, now deals additional damage with successive bolts upon hitting a champion.
Despite Xerath’s success as a support, he has been an unpopular and mediocre mid laner. While we don’t mind Xerath support being viable, we’d like to make picking Xerath mid a more consistent and realistic option for those who want to play him there. With these changes we’re giving him more access to mana, particularly in the mid lane, to help him trade and clear waves. We also want to reward Xerath players for landing consecutive missiles while using their ultimate, so we’ll be adding bonus damage and adjusting the numbers accordingly. While the base mana nerf will be a hit to Xerath support (there’s room as he’s currently quite strong there), the passive proc on structures will be helpful for him no matter which role he’s picked into.
Several QoL updates to Zyra's abilities.
Zyra remains a popular and very deep champion with her roots sunken into her devoted fanbase, so while she may not be the perfect queen of plants, we believe she’s clearly a character players love as she is. With these changes we’re looking to help polish her up and ensure that playing her is enjoyable and that her gameplay doesn’t feel like it’s fighting against you. These changes should make her feel more responsive and function more in line with what her players would expect.
We’re also making her jungle mod make sense as an additional change. We don't expect that to be her primary or even secondary role, but we want to make sure it's at least a little viable for the players who are excited to play her there. Meanwhile, we also want to retain some parity for ranged AoE users who are intentionally damaging down these units with auto attacks.
A few lethality items have been underperforming. In this patch we’re looking to ensure that core AD assassins have strongly tailored legendaries that have unique outputs.
We’re modifying Axiom Arc into an exciting lethality capstone that can help assassins push games to a close with almost solo carry levels of potential. We believe the idea of getting off two ultimates in a fight should be an exciting game-closing dream for assassins to solo carry. We realize this sounds terrifying for ADC players, so we’re testing this out to see if it's acceptable for the class come late game when speccing into heavy lethality (and thus glass cannon) builds. The start of the split is a good time to test it, but we’ll be keeping a very close eye on these changes.
Galeforce launched far too strong in midseason and has become balanced in the hands of the majority of players. But considering it's an active item, it's even stronger at the highest levels of play where AD carries are a little overpowered. We think lowering the impact of the active will bridge that gap a little. Infinity Edge is also receiving a small buff this patch, so champions like Caitlyn and Jinx can simply sidegrade over to another Mythic option, while those who are more hardbound like Nilah already perform very well and can safely lose a bit of power.
Infinity Edge has been a reasonable marksman capstone since midseason, but isn't quite hitting the excitement bar that we want it to. IE should be the clear late-game auto-attack DPS winner, and while it's close, many players aren't getting the enjoyment they want out of this historic item. In truth, the changes here are pretty small. It's roughly power-neutral as a second item and then trends toward 3-4% more auto attack DPS in full builds. The important thing is having auto attack crits stand out, which should safely happen here.
After its rework, Prowler’s Claw is still a bit weak compared to the premium damage carry item we’d like for it to be for lethality assassins. To give it some help we’re bringing its baseline lethality up to match the alternative lethality options.
Randuin’s Omen has been an unpopular item, as most players are opting for Thornmail or Sunfire for their HP and armor. Since Randuin’s already offers a reasonable amount of stats, we’ll be sharpening what it uniquely offers to justify its price compared to alternative options.
Spear of Shojin should be an exciting capstone-level item for fighters but currently has very few purchasers. This item does fulfill a very specific niche but there are other champions that could potentially do well with it that are intimidated by its high price. We’ll be reducing its gold cost and increasing its HP offering to make this item more of a realistic option for users that aren’t as well established, like Jax or Hecarim.
Spirit Visage, like Randuin’s, has been a mediocre magic resistance option compared to other items. While it has a unique passive that is well utilized by certain champions, we’d like to increase the amount of base stats it offers to help increase its general viability.
Statikk Shiv's minion damage has been tuned to nearly kill caster minions but not quite do it unless you're at the cutting edge of experience gain. Unfortunately, this very specific goal has meant it's easy to eclipse that mark with Minion Dematerializer. Additionally, the item can stall games with its late-game minion damage requiring Baron buff to push through. Outside of those worries, the item is pretty well balanced, so with a nerf to its wave clear comes a compensation buff to its base stats.
With the goal to increase fighter agency during later stages of the game, we’ll be giving Sterak's a nice HP buff while bringing down the price. Sterak’s should be a strong option for any fighter who needs to wade into a 5-on-5 teamfight and requires the burst resistance to ensure they have the time to do their job.
Trinity Force got massive buffs in midseason and finally has a home in several fighters' inventories. Several marksmen have found Trinity Force's bundle of stats to make a lot of sense as well. After all, anyone with short cooldowns and easy ways to auto attack is going to use Spellblade well, while the ramping %AD passive from Threefold Strikes also rewards long-duration auto attack patterns. We’re pretty happy with its suite of users and think they all make sense. With that said, we want to make sure that balancing the item for marksmen still allows fighters to deal tons of damage.
The changes to Trinity Force this patch are pretty light, all things considered, but shift its strengths toward fighters who can't maintain target access for as long. The Threefold Strikes change is a net buff across the first 11 attacks of a fight, only falling off for champions who get to attack even more (read: marksmen). Also, the number 3 is far more prevalent now, which is very important.
Ghost is catching on as an incredibly strong Summoner Spell and is rapidly becoming the go-to pick for bot laners. We're happy that players have identified another strong tool to use, but Ghost is just a bit over-tuned right now. It appears to be slightly stronger in the bottom lane than in top, jungle, and mid but tends to out-compete alternatives in all of those roles. We're nerfing Ghost's best case scenarios because it contributes to the winning team snowballing even harder, which we'd like to walk back a bit. The duration extension disproportionately benefits ranged champions, who tend to live longer in fights to make use of the extension, while the compensation buff to the base duration should keep it at a similar power level for melee ones.
This patch, we're taking a swing at early jungle gank power. It's important that junglers exist and are threatening so that laners have to keep an eye out for uninvited guests in their lane. However, the balance has swung too hard in the favor of junglers. Not only do junglers have the advantage of Fog of War and innate numbers advantages, their first ganks also frequently come with double buffs: extra slowing, extra damage, and even extra ability casts all contribute to jungle ganks being more successful than we'd like in the early game. So they're all being tapped down. The late-game compensation to Blue Buff is there to make it a bit more valuable as an objective later on, as only Red Buff really matters in the late game right now.
As some extra context for top laners, we don’t have great immediate solutions for directly changing top lane to make the experience better, but it’s something we want to incrementally work toward improving. Nudging down early game gank success—as many junglers place that first gank top lane—is one of many small steps we will take to try to improve the experience of playing top.
For this patch we’re mainly looking to buff/nerf clear over and underperformers. We also want to reduce modifiers on a few Champions who are not a must buff or nerf, but have room for modifier reductions. We're giving Ashe more damage back to help her ADC build, and we're also trying out some alternative levers for Vi and Quinn to avoid giving them too much damage dealt and damage reduction.
The Void Cup Clash kicks off this weekend! I hear you get Baron on your team if you can assemble 9 void champs. (Disclaimer: This is a joke. Baron will not be joining any players’ teams.)
As a reminder, we have quite a few changes coming to Clash this split which are as follows:
Make sure to check out all of the details regarding the Clash changes and the schedule for the rest of the year here!
With the launch of Arena, we’d like to ensure partners are aware of our developer API policy regarding the new Augments system. Third party sites will not be allowed to share the following:
We’d like to dive a bit into the philosophy behind this approach with Arena. Arena is meant to be a game mode that encourages players to experiment and try new things. We believe it will be at its strongest when, through that experimentation, we can see significant meta shifts as the mode progresses. We want to avoid a scenario where data points to a currently “optimal” choice, since the sheer number of potential combinations of champions, items, and Augments is meant to force players to think on their feet as opposed to following a specific script.
We know this is very different from how League has approached sharing data in the past, particularly around Summoner’s Rift. Our goal is for Arena to be a place for players to theorycraft and adjust the meta more naturally instead of focusing on raw win rate data. Raw win rate data can be misleading and can cause a stagnant meta in an unhealthy way that will likely make the game less enjoyable. We will still be sharing a healthy amount of data to allow players to inform themselves based on pick rates or subjective recommendations based on particular players’ perceptions or reads on the game state.
We’re excited to see what combinations players come up with for Arena, and will be keeping a close eye on how the meta develops once the mode goes live. We will be actively exploring options on how to further improve in-game information to help players with the decision making process on what their preferred progression paths could be based on the options available to them.
The following skins will be released in this patch:
The following chromas will be released this patch: