Welcome to patch 13.19, the official patch for the League of Legends World Championship!
In terms of balance work, we're doing a final tuning pass on several champions who've had an outsized impact on the Pro scene this summer and otherwise doing more routine balance on champions (or builds) whose overall power level is out of line.
In other news, in this patch we're introducing new ranked restrictions and ping adjustments to help tackle toxicity, a new audio accessibility update for global ultimates, a brand new skin line, La Ilusión, and the Tenfold Triumph chroma set! We'll also be testing some new introductory bot AI on PBE, so check it out if you're interested!
It's our first patch after our final midset update! Check out the TFT patch notes here!
Q cooldown increased.
Last patch we changed Crown of the Shattered Queen in hopes of nerfing the item for Pro play while maintaining its power level in solo queue. That said, we still want to be cautious around Azir taking an overly dominant position at Worlds this year. Here's a light nerf to his early laning to open up more counterplay against him. This will make an Azir pick a dedication to late game power without smooth sailing through the laning phase.
Attack speed growth decreased. W healing decreased, damage against minions and monsters increased, maximum percent health damage against minions and monsters decreased. Various quality of life changes and bugfixes.
While Briar on release looked quite weak, her power level has increased as players have learned the in(t)s and outs of her kit and item builds. We're reducing her healing once she gets a few items, especially against jungle monsters, to give opponents a better shot at bringing down a fed Briar. On top of that, we're adding a host of quality of life changes and bug fixes, including a frenzy bar! Now it should be easier to tell how much time is left to activate Snack Attack.
R cooldown decreased.
Galio mid is currently weak in all skill brackets and has room for some more power. Since he's already successfully fulfilling his role as an anti-mage in lane, we'll be buffing him in a way that increases his general power without altering his matchups. We're targeting his R cooldown as it's currently quite high compared to most other globals, and we want to give Galio players more opportunities to use this defining ability to impact the map.
R cooldown decreased, Death's Daughter upgrade slow increased, Raise Morale upgrade movement speed increased.
Gangplank is an underperforming top laner whose raw damage numbers can't really get much higher than they already are. So instead we're giving him some power in his more unique niches: ultimate upgrades and his ability to affect two parts of the map at once. Some of his tooltips are hooked up in weird ways, so the tooltips for his upgrades won't be updated until the next patch.
R minimum physical damage increased.
Last patch we identified Jhin as an underperforming champion who doesn't find significant success in solo queue or pro play. However, we knew we were buffing Stormrazor that patch, so we elected to wait and see how those changes affected him. We think he's still a bit below the bar so we're providing him with some more power this patch. We're seriously ramping up his ult damage for two reasons: First, where possible, every champion should have a reliably powerful ultimate so that even if you're having a bad game, you can rely on a long cooldown window of power to try to get back into the game. Second, Jhin is canonically someone who wants to murder, so it's important that his damage is up to snuff.
Attack speed ratio decreased, attack speed growth increased, AD growth decreased, mana growth decreased, mana regeneration growth decreased. W magic damage increased. E magic damage increased.
LeBlanc's core build has shifted into a manaless AD build that turns her into a very frustrating top lane split pusher. If she wants to build like a fighter, then she should also have meaningful mana constraints which we’ll be introducing here. Meanwhile, mage builds can rely on bonus mana from sources like Lost Chapter and Luden's Tempest. Since nerfing her baseline mana pool and even her late game attack damage is a nerf to her mage power level, we're giving her compensation in the form of some AP ratios. The change to her attack speed ratio and attack speed growth will result in identical attacks per second for LeBlanc unless she acquires sources of bonus attack speed.
Base armor increased. W lifesteal and spell vamp increased. E magic damage increased.
We're certainly aware of the "It's Worlds, time to buff Lee Sin" memes but in all honesty, most Lee Sin players aren't finding much success in their games at home, even in high-skill games. We're targeting a mix of guaranteed power via armor and making a button press for Lee more impactful. A short window of 5% omnivamp is just not enough power to make W2 worth pressing outside of activating his passive, so we're giving it a solid increase in early power that falls off late game. We're also aware that some players have begun taking him into solo lanes, where he maxes E - Tempest/Cripple second. Bringing up early Iron Will sustain will disproportionately help those lanes, so we're preemptively addressing that role with a nerf.
W root duration increased.
Lissandra's been on thin ice in terms of power, both in solo queue and in Pro play. To increase her power as a counterpick against certain champions like LeBlanc, Fizz, and Akali, we're slightly increasing the root duration on her W. The intention is to increase her advantage against champions who need to get up close to trade with her while not affecting other matchups.
E AP ratio increased.
AP Nunu is quite popular despite not being very strong. This patch, we're giving some love to a well-liked off-build, as tank Nunu is performing just fine. GET READY FOR SOME EXTRA MAGICAL SNOWBALLS!
The choice to buff Snowball Barrage here is to create some tension in AP Nunu's combat. Their ultimate and W snowball already deal a ton of damage, but AP Nunu should be more than a burst mage. Requiring him to remain in close range to get maximum power out of buying AP should enrich the gameplay for them and their opponents.
Health growth increased. W cooldown decreased.
Pyke has been lurking below the surface recently, and not in his usual "I'm fine being underwater" sense but more like he's just not quite where we want him to be in terms of power. To give him some power back without making his damage too oppressive, we'll be increasing his mid-to-late-game survivability. We also intend to give Pyke an alternative ability max option with W for lanes where he won't be aggressively using E as much.
Passive heal decreased. Q damage decreased. W - Unburrow movement speed decreased. W - Unburrow base damage increased.
Rek'Sai gained a lot of power with the Stridebreaker buffs a few patches ago so we're taking another swing and bringing down her power level. Instead of primarily targeting her early damage (though we are providing some small changes here), we're targeting the power level of burrowing, which high MMR players use disproportionately well, as she's not nearly as strong in other skill brackets.
Base magic resistance decreased.
Renekton has been performing particularly well in high MMR solo queue and Pro play. He has a very high Elite/Pro pick rate due to his safety and consistency as a blind pick, so we're targeting his base Magic Resistance to make him more vulnerable to certain matchups such as Gwen, Kennen, and Rumble, while preserving his much needed early game strength against other champions.
Q magic damage increased.
Syndra is an iconic mid lane Champion who has historically been stuck in Pro jail. Thankfully, her update in 12.19 has given us the space to make her strong in the hands of most players without being a Pro play problem. With this newfound power budget, we'll be increasing her Q base damage slightly to help her get early lane priority, amping up a slim strategic niche among mages.
R missile speed increased.
In a routine sweep of champion viability and satisfaction, we identified Twitch as a Champion that isn't necessarily weak but could use some quality of life improvements. We think Spray and Pray is the coolest part of Twitch's arsenal and want to play up the differences between R being up and R being down. The change here is a small increase to the reliability of his ultimate as it'll be less likely that someone simply walking sideways will dodge the bolts. Plus he won't feel as much of a need to be in melee range just to make his attacks hit. His attacks are still Flashable and other fast dashes can get out of the way, but Spray and Pray will be a bit more reliable.
Base movement speed decreased.
Zeri has had the highest Pro ADC presence in top Leagues this season, and with the 13.18 Xayah nerf she's expected to become even more prevalent of a pick at Worlds. To ensure more bot lane diversity, we've decided to nerf her. While her solo queue win rate isn't particularly problematic, she still has a very high Elite pick rate and is clearly a contested Champion. We're targeting her base movement speed as she already has plenty of mobility with her E and R, and we want to increase her vulnerability throughout the game.
Some items are highly specific in their niche, and that's perfectly fine. However, it's important that these items are strong in their appropriate game states. Randuin's Omen should be the go-to anti-crit item, but its price and overall efficiency make it bad, even when the opposing team's champions suggest it should be good. A 10% cheaper Randuin's Omen (now matching many other tank legendaries) should make it best in slot when critical strikes are the primary damage you're receiving without it becoming the default tank armor item.
Low-price reactive purchases should be solid options that let you slightly delay your offensive buildup in order to slow down threats against you. They're not meant to turn you invulnerable, but meaningfully shift how easily you can be killed. If these items are strong, players should be willing to buy them sometimes without them being default purchases every time the appropriate matchup shows up. Right now, Seeker's Armguard is below the bar set by items like Hexdrinker and Bramble Vest. This is a small buff aimed at making the occasional detour into early armor worthwhile for mages.
Statikk Shiv was modified in 13.18, lowering its minion damage and increasing its stat profile. These changes landed a bit higher power than we intended, so we're once again reducing its anti-minion power.
Starting with patch 13.19 our minimum Mac OS requirement will move to 10.13.6. This is a change that will impact a small number of players (roughly 300 total) across both LoL and TFT who will have to update their OS prior to patch 13.19.
Ranked Solo/Duo tends to be the queue with the highest rate of disruptive behavior. The added intensity of every game mattering is fun, but sometimes the pressure proves to be too great. We want to give players who are feeling the pressure of the ranked environment a way to reconnect with a more relaxed version of League of Legends, while at the same time introducing a penalty that is hard to work around by switching accounts for a week. For more detailed information on ranked restrictions check out the Player Support article here!
In an effort to alleviate some of the toxicity players can face in their games, we've developed some new functionality that allows us to adjust the recipients of pings. While self pings, enemy pings, and neutral pings are unaffected, we're changing the behavior of pinging allied states. We think it's important that you can quickly understand exactly how long it'll take for an ally's ultimate or Summoner Spell to come back from cooldown, but a significant segment of players ping their teammates' death timers and the like for non-constructive reasons and we think the game as a whole is better without this.
In this patch, we're tuning every ally ping to display only to the pinger so that they can gather whatever information they need without abusing the feature as a means of harassing teammates. We also have work in progress for the "Bait" ping that is nearing completion.
We'll monitor player feedback and behavior to see if we need to make any updates going forward.
Pinging any allied information on the tab scoreboard and UI now only displays that information to the pinger in the chat and will be designated by [SELF]. This will affect the following pings:
The following pings have not been changed and will still be displayed to your entire team:
If a Sion ults you in the jungle and you have no sound, it definitely still happens. That's why we are introducing our newest accessibility update: Champion Sound Notifications! These callouts will help you spot key champion abilities whether you are playing without audio or if you're just engaged in an epic duel and can't hear.
In case you missed it, we've been working on some new bot AI in the background! Having your bots grow up and go onto the Rift for the first time is scary, but we finally think they're ready to go out onto PBE! This first test will only include bots at the introductory level, but they'll be waiting in queue for you on PBE servers for the next two weeks before we bring them back for some tune ups. If you have some friends looking to learn League, have them download PBE—we'd love to get both new and veteran player feedback!
The following skins will be released in this patch:
The following chromas will be released this patch: