You're not being paranoid, Patch 13.22 is really here!
Outside of normally-sized balance changes, this patch has two big updates. The first is a sweep of mage and mage-like champion attack speed. We noticed that many mages had slow-feeling attack speeds and want to bring (almost) all of them up to a new baseline for missile speed and snappiness of their basic attack animations—with exceptions for champions who have functional auto attack replacements, like Karthus and Fiddlesticks. We're also injecting some early attack speed into mages who tend to run the attack speed stat shard, don't have any strong basic attack synergies in their kit, and don't already have elevated level 1 attack speed.
The second is a major kit update (salute) to Janna. We're bringing back elements of her kit from a few years ago with the goal of turning her into a more active participant in the game and less about long-range tornadoes.
Also in this patch be ready to pop off with the new Heartsteel skins, remix it up with the new Mythic Variant Breakout True Damage Ekko, or checkout the new rotation of the Mythic Shop. We also threw in some ARAM and Nexus Blitz adjustments for good measure!
It's the last patch of Runeterra Reforged before TFT moves on to their next set, so be sure to read about all the changes right here!
Passive Monster damage modifier increased. E damage increased.
We got Brand really close to our power level goals last patch and just want to nudge him over the line. We'd like to ignite Brand Mid and Jungle as his best roles while still retaining Support Brand as viable. So we're nudging up the ability he frequently gets to max in jungle and mid that support tends to leave at one skill point.
Q damage and Armor Shred decreased. R damage decreased.
As players have improved (and inted less) as Briar, she's continued to climb the ranks as a jungler. We're seeing all of her builds overperform at the moment but specifically her lethality builds. Ability damage and armor shred both synergize with lethality, which is why we've chosen these nerfs, hoping to bring her fighter and lethality builds closer together in power.
E Passive bonus damage increased.
Our Dr. Mundo nerf from last patch ended up hitting his win rate more than we intended and we'll be partially reverting it. To give Mundo some agency back, we'll be reverting some of the E passive attack damage nerf, as it's a more impactful change than our active E nerf (since it's not dependent on his missing health).
E cooldown reduction increased. R travel time decreased.
While not strictly powerful, max-ability-haste Gragas's ability to remove enemies from being able to play the game is just not acceptable gameplay. However, we also acknowledge that Gragas could use some love. This patch we're hoping to buff Gragas through a better cooldown refund on E (up until about 70 ability haste) plus an extra buff to the reliability of his ultimate. We expect these changes to help jungle Gragas most of all, so if you're raring to rabble-rouse some raptors, ‘ragas is ready to roll.
E bonus armor per stack decreased.
Graves, who was already in a good spot, benefitted from our 13.20 jungle companion adjustments due to the bonus armor he gains through E. He has safe clears with his range and passive and can also skirmish aggressively due to his in-kit durability. This allows him to reliably scale into the mid and late game where he performs quite well.
To give his opponents more of a chance to fight him in the early game, we'll be adjusting the bonus armor on his E. While we're reducing both the level 1 and 5 values, this is mainly intended to increase his early vulnerability while still keeping his mid–to-late game power intact.
Stats and abilities adjusted to fit the playstyle of a more aggressive harasser around her W and auto attacks.
We've noticed that Janna's play rate has languished despite being a relatively strong pick in many skill brackets. Looking at her prior iterations, we identified elements that seemed to really resonate with her potential player base, so we're bringing back some past versions of her abilities.
Most importantly, we're shifting her from a low-interaction champion who fishes for tornadoes and reactively shields into an aggressive high-uptime auto-attacker and Zephyr caster. Many of these changes are just shifting incentives and power budgets around: With auto attacks and Ws becoming better and more frequent, she's losing some power in her Q. With mana costs going down to incentivize repeat Zephyr casts, her mana pool follows suit.
Overall, we expect her to max Zephyr before Eye of the Storm and play an aggressive harass-based game.
Q bonus health for minimum cast time cap increased.
We micropatched K'Sante early on in 13.21 and this note is here to make sure you all see that this change went live last week. His changes over the past few weeks have closed the gap between elite and average skilled play. He's still much better in the hands of well-practiced players, which is very much intended. Now that he's accessible and strong in the hands of many more players, we're going to wait and see how his new strengths and weaknesses manifest in Pro play but will continue monitoring his performance in other tiers.
E damage decreased. R non stack damage decreased.
Kassadin, like other scaling champions, benefitted from reduced snowballing in the game and can use some toning down. We decided to reduce the damage on his E and R, because now that he scales more consistently, he gets to access these high AP ratios which allow him to reliably deal a significant amount of damage. This adjustment is intended to require him to stack more R's before having as much upfront damage.
Q bonus attack speed decreased. R damage over time decreased, and maximum total damage decreased.
Nilah has been a strong performer for a long time and that strength has finally caught on. This patch we're lowering her ability to single-handedly carry team fights with her whip-blade.
W bonus armor increased.
Rammus gained a ton of power in 13.20 as armor became a much stronger stat in the jungle. Then he lost a bit more than he gained in 13.21 between direct nerfs and systemic buffs to AD junglers. We're looking to return Rammus to his power level from 13.19 and before. We're choosing to unwind some of his 13.21 nerfs with the hope to hit that power level goal.
Q damage and healing decreased.
Senna gained a lot of power due to the anti-snowballing changes of 13.20, so she needs to take a step back, especially in Elite play. It's cool that she's a strong scaler with a lot of agency and some strong matchups, but she's currently too successful as a lane bully and too bursty in the mid game. Both Q damage and healing are higher in Elite MMR than normal, which explains our target selection.
Passive damage adjusted. Q cooldown increased at lower levels. W shield decreased.
Seraphine's changes last patch brought her up in all roles and has made W-max support Seraphine significantly stronger than it was before. However, because all of her roles went up, she's now a little too strong as a bot laner, which we'll be addressing in this patch. The passive is shifting to a higher base value with lower AP ratios, which should help mid and support while bringing bot lane more in line with her other roles. Reverting the Q cooldown buff from last patch and adding a W AP ratio nerf will end up lowering her power everywhere, but should disproportionately hit bot lane. We'll keep an eye on her performance in this patch and follow up where necessary to bring her various roles closer to parity.
Passive bonus magic damage decreased.
Tahm Kench gained plenty of power from our buff last patch and while we're going to let him keep a lot of it, we've chosen to walk back on some of it. Since he's performing reasonably as a support, we'll be particularly targeting his gold scaling by nerfing his passive bonus health ratio. We intend for this change to put Tahm Kench in a more reasonable spot while still keeping the power increase from patch 13.21.
Basic attack windup increased, base armor decreased.
Ziggs has been enjoying his increased Q reliability from patch 13.20 a bit too much and we've decided to adjust him so he can keep it. He's quite a safe pick due to how far back from his opponents he can play, and this nerf is intended to increase his vulnerability in certain mid and many bot match ups so that his AD opponents gain more for reaching him. He's also getting slightly nicer basic attacks as part of a sweep on all mages, which you can read more about below.
This patch we've taken a broad sweep across every champion that can reasonably be considered a mage and noticed that many of them have weak-feeling basic attacks. While we don't expect most of these champions to feel as snappy as marksmen, or to basic attack as well as they do, it's important that something they do hundreds of times a game feels good, even if it doesn't represent much of their power.
We're broadly doing three things here:
Basic attack speed growth and windup increased.
Base attack speed, ratio, and missile speed increased.
Basic attack windup and speed increased.
Basic attack windup increased. Restored an attack animation.
Basic attack speed and ratio increased. Attack speed growth decreased.
Basic attack speed, ratio, and windup increased.
Basic attack missile speed and windup increased.
Basic attack speed and growth increased.
Basic attack windup and speed increased. Basic attack animation pattern changed.
Basic attack speed and missile speed increased.
We're modifying how vision is granted when attacking from fog of war on Summoner's Rift. Experienced players understand that attacking from brush makes the brush nearly unusable and so don't bother but it's also nearly impossible to know how long you're revealed when performing fairly normal behaviors like attacking enemies from over a wall. This also has the negative downside of occasionally betraying your hiding teammates. We're shrinking the reveal circle to give away teammates less frequently and shortening the reveal in order to make the delay before dipping back into fog of war more intuitive.
Overall, we're continuing to evaluate the ping changes and currently consider them successful in reaching our original goals. We've seen measurable improvements in players feeling respected and safe in the game after shipping these and the ranked restrictions. We're still working on hitting a balance between available constructive communication options and protecting the experience from destructive comms.
Nexus Blitz has been live for a patch, and the team has been hard at work squashing bugs and addressing player pain points.
Aspect of the Dragon has been removed from the general reward pool. If a team manages to win three events, they will be rewarded with Aspect of the Dragon.
Due to its high impact on game state and perceived power level, Aspect of the Dragon has been contentious ever since its addition as an event reward. Not all rewards are intended to be equal, but Elder Dragon's power was a step too far. We wanted to preserve the fantasy of obtaining the Elder Dragon buff, but restrict it only to teams who have clearly earned that power.
Quickplay will be released to live region by region in patch 13.22. Blind Pick queue will be disabled along with Quickplay release.
Players will now have the ability to select their preferred game language in the LoL settings menu of Riot Client. Our goal in this update is to ensure that players can experience the core game in their preferred language, regardless of where they live in the world. Note that there will be some language inconsistencies with publishing content in the client since we do not localize all of our regional publishing content.
The following skins will be released in this patch:
The following chromas will be released this patch: