What’s up cool cats! It’s patch 13.5 and the cat’s out of the bag!
In this week’s patch we have Yuumi’s much anticipated rework, several adjustments to Azir to help address his Pro skew, some buffs to roaming mid laners, and some buffs to counter jungling. In other news, we have some changes to ARAM including removing tower rubble, an update on the champion pricing changes, and an announcement about the depreciation of our 32-bit client.
As always, thanks for reading and see you on the Rift!
These aren’t the TFT patch notes you’re looking for? Well you can go check out the TFT patch notes here!
Yuumi rework, all abilities adjusted.
Yuumi's rework is arriving in 13.5 with a few new spells, some cuddly VFX, and aims to address some core frustrations that have plagued our feline friend. The biggest change is to her Passive, Feline Friendship, which now builds a special bond with her teammates until one becomes her BEST FRIEND. This new bestie will then enhance Yuumi's abilities as long as she’s attached to them. Our goal is to make laning matter much more for Yuumi, especially if she is going to scale just as well as other enchanters while being untargetable. We've kept it as a dynamically growing bond because.... well, that's what cats do, but also in case something goes furociously wrong you should feel free to swap and not be hindered the entire game.
Beyond her Passive, we've made a few more swaps to Yuumi’s abilities, such as making her healing more combat-based and her enchantments more Marksmen skewed. These should abate some of the high frustration moments when Yuumi can abandon her lane partner and follow powerful bruisers.
While we're not pawsitive that this completely solves every problem for Yuumi, we hope this puts her in a better place for most players while making her less dominant in Pro environments.
W cooldown decreased late, slow now increases with rank. R bonus AD granted increased later.
Aatrox was slightly overnerfed as a reaction to his dominance last season. We felt that his Q and E were relatively capped on power and didn't want to put strength back into those skills, so instead we opted to make his W scale into the late game better. As an important tool for catching enemies, the slow needs to be more powerful to pull enemies later in the game when movement options are faster and more plentiful. The R buff is another way to give some scaling power back into his kit as well.
Q mana cost decreased, empowered duration increased. W base damage decreased. R cooldown increased early, decreased late.
Ashe is a cool (ha) champion for solo queue and she's balanced in both ADC and support, even across MMRs. However, she's completely reigning supreme over all support picks in Pro play right now and her ban rate is rapidly climbing in solo queue as well. So here are some nerfs focused on Support Ashe with some compensation buffs aimed at ADC.
Health growth and armor growth decreased. Q burst proc AP ratio decreased.
Aurelion Sol’s made quite the impact with his CGU and we’re glad that so many of you have been excited to try him out! While he’s sitting at a relatively healthy spot in higher level play, his performance at lower skill levels is a bit too powerful. These nerfs should help curb his power just a bit to help address this skill skew.
Base stats, passive, Q, W, and E all adjusted.
Azir is a pretty nifty champion and is exciting to watch. However, the vast majority of players, even in Challenger, don’t find appropriate success with him. Here's the rationale behind these changes: First, weaken his early game and give him compensation in the late game. Second, push him away from early Q poke and awkward soldier spam and raise his overall DPS otherwise. Third, update his base stats to bring back Nashor's Tooth as a viable option. Fourth, buff tools that especially help fledgling Azir players: more auto-attack damage in case his soldiers aren't in range and a stronger passive turret that's up more frequently so that Shurima's Legacy itself can protect him.
Base armor decreased, base attack damage decreased.
It doesn't take an ace detective to see that Caitlyn is the queen of ADCs in Pro play right now. As the wielder of a sniper rifle, she's entitled to her long range and punchy auto-attacks, but only while they’re within reason. After these changes she'll be a bit easier to kill when caught and you’ll have a bit more time to find that opening.
W mana restoration increased. E - Playful damage adjusted, mana cost decreased.
Fizz still hasn't found his land legs this season. While he performs adequately against most immobile mages, his more common AD matchups are having a field day bullying him. In these tough matchups, Fizz finds himself having to choose between using spells to dodge abilities or kill minions, but their enormous mana costs make each choice feel like a lose-lose. We’ll be increasing his mana in lane so that Fizz will have a few more casts of E - Playful/Trickster in lane, but he will still need to weigh the costs of wave clearing versus having kill pressure.
Passive damage decreased. E now shows all players how many kegs Gangplank has, keg recharge rate increased.
Gangplank is currently in the top 25% of champions for "Win rate loss due to low-mastery players trying and failing." Thus, a balanced Gangplank is likely one who rests below 50% win rate until that trend changes. So let's talk tactics: Gangplank has armed himself with the newly buffed Essence Reaver and Navori Quickblades. Suddenly, he has very short cooldowns and no mana cost concerns. Accepting that these items are his core build now, he still needs to have appropriate downtime. In addition, now that he builds substantial AD and Critical Strike Chance, Trial by Fire is just dealing too much damage.
Attack speed growth increased. W mana cost decreased, slow increased. R damage cap to monsters increased.
Jinx hasn’t been popping off thanks to the IE or Navori second purchase changes, and her power isn’t quite up to par with her marksmen peers, so we’re comfortable giving her a little more oomph. These changes should help W feel more effective with only one point in it while the R changes are to help Jinx have a shot at those sweet cross map Baron steals.
Q cooldown decreased, magic damage increased. W range indicator for marked targets added. E damage to minions increased.
Kennen has been lacking an exciting mage feeling for a while now. Additionally, his farming, especially under turret, makes the champion difficult for players to pick up and find success. We also wanted to give Kennen players a range indicator on W to help clarify the range at which Kennen can hit enemy champions when they're marked, which should be especially useful when fighting near minions.
Q now refunds 100% of mana and 30% of cooldown upon killing a unit, now deals bonus damage to minions. R bonus damage to minions is replicated on R > Q cast.
LeBlanc's always struggled with a balancing act between clearing waves and assassination power. In solo queue, she boasts one of the highest average kills, but also has some of the lowest average minions killed. That means that players that can perfectly last hit with auto attacks and save their W for trading, get a much larger jump in power compared to other champions. This has resulted in LeBlanc being… well, not the strongest champion. We're aiming to smooth out her power curve so that if LeBlanc players want to guarantee some last hits, they're sacrificing a small cooldown without completely losing out on their Mana pool and lane pressure.
Base health regeneration decreased, attack speed increased. Q cooldown decreased early, mana cost decreased, Q tap windup time decreased. E cooldown increased late.
Pantheon has been underperforming in the top lane lately, and his mid lane power has performed even worse. While we do support Pantheon’s ability to flex into mid, this round of buffs is intended to help his performance in top lane more. We’re also addressing some game health concerns around how much Pantheon can access his E in the late game when speccing into Ability Haste builds.
Q base damage increased. E cooldown decreased.
Qiyana, like other roaming mid laners, has been struggling to find success recently. We’re introducing a bit more damage into her kit and some cooldown on her mobility spell so she’s able to move around the map a bit more.
Attack damage growth decreased. Q base damage decreased.
Rammus is still powerful after everything has shaken out in the jungle. We’re tapping down a bit of his damage so he's a little less of a murderadillo but still able to keep his core strengths intact.
E magic resist shred increased, total shred on two hits increased.
Rumble is very sad and definitely not overheating, especially in his primary role of top lane. He's historically been an early spiking champion whose entire power budget is wrapped up in his ability to win the first few team fights. This time we’re giving him some tools aimed at scrapping it out in the late game.
Passive movement speed per stack increased.
Samira was nerfed in patch 13.4 as a way to address her early game snowballing and drain tanking. However, this nerf went too far and made her weak when she was supposed to be balanced. These changes simply walk back the severity of some of those nerfs. You still shouldn't have to ban her, but now Samira players should be able to enjoy playing Samira.
Health growth and AD growth increased.
Tryndamere has fallen a bit behind in terms of his power levels, but rather than buffing his early game, these buffs should help Tryndamere to scale better into the match with a bit more survivability and some harder hitting auto attacks.
E AP ratio decreased.
Oh, AP Twitch. You're one of my favorite champions. You're also overpowered. You're also INCREDIBLY frustrating to play against if you don't have to actually lane, since you can be anywhere at any time. At least Evelynn has to wait until level 6. That's the worst part of it, honestly. Back off of Evelynn's niche, you jerk. I'd say you stink, but you'd probably like that.
E base damage decreased, cooldown increased.
Xayah’s buffs in patch 13.1 ended up going a bit too far, bumping her into the upper echelons of AD carries. Players are finally catching on to her soaring power levels, so she needs to be addressed. We’re happy with her higher attack speed, but she’s simply dealing too much damage right now.
Bonus damage from Ghouls decreased.
This patch we’ll be nerfing Yorick's uninteractive blast-you-with-ghouls playstyle so that being caught by one E with lethality builds doesn't end your life. This should bring down the overall power of this frustrating playstyle, but we’ll be keeping an eye out to make sure Yorick isn’t completely underground after these changes.
Base magic resist decreased. E cooldown decreased late.
In 12.23's hotfix, we hit Zed's late game E - Shadow Slash cooldown along with a few other nerfs to bring down his winrate and ban rate. These succeeded, but left Zed's late-game combos feeling pretty awkward and eliminated some of his cooler shadow shenanigans. We think his winrate is in a pretty good spot for a quick, combo-centric assassin, so we're adding a small nerf in exchange for reverting the original cooldown change.
We experimented with junglers having advantages in their own jungle for clearing camps to disincentivize early counter jungling and keep newer jungle players from getting dominated from minute one. Early invades and steals are among the more miserable experiences in the role and a major contributor to players not opting into jungle.
That being said, the costs to the rest of the game with respect to early ganking safety and some higher level strategy have seemed too high, so we're pulling this mechanic back. We’re glad we've explored this and we always believe it's worth trying changes that we think can help rather than being afraid of the potential downsides.
We introduced the jungle treat system in Preseason, which was a large influx of gold into the jungle and pulled a fair bit of gold away from individual camps. This swung the meta heavily toward gankers, so we're compensating some gold back into camps now that we've drained some from treats.
Junglers can get very ahead of their enemies by sapping early lane experience on ganks or when catching waves for dead allies. We think junglers who commit to early ganks should fall behind in experience to an enemy who is regularly farming, so this change should help reinforce that.
Sweeping lens was a very powerful tool for clearing out vision and forcing enemies to play safe or risk dying to the enemy jungler. While this nerf will be felt more in the early game, it should also help tune down vision denial throughout the game as a whole.
Cosmic Drive has been niche and unpopular for a while now. This stat change aims to make this item a more attractive purchase for damage-focused mages.
Plated Steelcaps will now check for a much wider range of auto attacks so that when you bonk someone with a staff it really will be protected by Steelcaps.
Seraph's got a breath of new (old?) life with the return of its shield and Ability Power, quickly becoming one of the most powerful mage items. As a result, most of the current meta mid-laners are those who can purchase Archangel's and use it to the fullest. We're doing a small efficiency nerf here to bring the outlier down a bit. However, our longer term goal is to increase mage item satisfaction and the overall power of the class by trimming some power from it’s stronger itemization options while simultaneously buffing its weaker ones.
Healing from runes has crept up over time due to the durability patch last year and other system buffs like the updated tank items from preseason. These changes aim to slightly lower that "invisible" healing not coming from items.
Grasp of the Undying has been benefitting fighters more than tanks with the power of its heal, and this change aims to lower the overall power of the heal component and increase the stacking tank stats to make the change feel less painful for its tank users.
This Triumph change is meant to be a net nerf that flattens the extremes of the rune leading to slightly more healing when it matters less (high hp) and slightly less healing when it matters more (low hp) with an even breakpoint around the 35% hp mark.
As a follow up to our /dev: State of Modes post, we’ll be making a few adjustments to ARAM this patch. In case you haven’t already, make sure to check out the full article here.
First things first, we’re starting by removing the tower rubble from the Howling Abyss. Ultimately, we’re making this call because the rubble didn’t meet player expectations for what ARAM should be—a series of chaotic teamfights with non-stop action. Unfortunately, the rubble alongside the vision games it brought with it were just too much to be a healthy addition to ARAM, but we appreciate your patience as we tested it out!
We’re also doing some work this patch to make Howling Abyss turrets a bit more lethal in the mid and late game as they haven’t been much of a threat recently. We’re also adding a defensive Inhibitor Turret buff which should help teams protect themselves against enemies taking two towers in quick succession.
A quick reminder that the first Clash tournament of the year is upon us! Here’s a look at the upcoming Bilgewater Cup dates:
In case you missed it, we announced that we’ll be altering our champion pricing structure this patch—you can read more details behind this change in the announcement post here. This update is scheduled to go into effect during patch 13.7, so plan accordingly!
TL;DR: New champions will still be released at 7800 BE and 975 RP, and after a week they’ll be dropped to 6300 BE and 975 RP, and after seeing 2 seasons of play they will be dropped into one of the corresponding price tiers:
AFKs are a common problem in League games, but our data shows us that most players who leave games do so infrequently enough that they don’t ever get a penalty. We know that sometimes disconnects happen, but we still want to ensure we still provide a reminder that leaving games always hurts your teammates. For more information on how leaverbuster works check out this article. We are continually updating and revising our systems to improve your experience in-game, so we’ll be keeping an eye on this addition as it rolls out.
Support for 32-bit Windows OS will be deprecated on April 4, 2023. After this date a 64-bit version of Windows will be required to play League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics. For more details, please see our minimum spec requirements.“What does this mean?”, “Do I need to do anything?!”
Well for those who are already on 64-bit operating systems and hardware (which is 99.9% of players) you won’t notice a difference when we stop supporting 32-bit and you won’t need to do anything. However, for those that are playing on a 32-bit operating system, starting in 13.7 you’ll start to get a message in the client telling you that the client may stop working in the future for you. We’re giving some time to message this heads up before we fully stop supporting 32-bit operating systems both in the patch notes and in the launcher, but in the future you’ll need to be playing on 64-bit capable hardware, and 64-bit operating systems in order to keep playing League.
Why is the League team doing this?
As with other decisions we’ve made in the past like deprecating XP and Vista, continuing to release new content while maintaining older hardware requires significant investment both from a development and a testing standpoint. By removing some of these barriers, we can continue to push the boundaries of new features while delivering engaging player experiences. While we don’t have any direct targeted improvements to communicate to you just yet regarding this migration, it will be something that leads into our continued investments in the future of League.
Dodge penalties are increasing proportionally to the LP increases in patch 13.4.
The following skins will be released in this patch:
The following chromas will be released this patch: