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Greetings, Summoners.
Welcome to patch 6.13, the one where supports get to have nice things, too. We’ve got a few more support changes in patches to come, but let’s focus on the here and now.
For the most part, supports aren’t really that weak. The issue is their influence can be hard to appreciate compared to more obvious things like kill streaks. In a certain light, however, perception is reality: when players believe they’re weak, they’re more reluctant to make risky - but impactful! - plays. With that in mind, our goal this patch is to sharpen support gameplay satisfaction, making success a bit easier to observe. Better rewards for doing support things and a healthy assortment of quality-of-life improvements should make supports feel better about their place in the world.
Botlane happiness aside, we’re also taking steps to address recent warps in the top lane landscape. This means reining in overperformers (Irelia, Vladimir) and bringing up a few picks we think should have a seat at the table (Gnar, Jarvan). Whichever approach you prefer, this patch’s biggest shift to top lane is a reduction to the reliability of Teleport plays, so be sure to check those changes out below.
...On further inspection, occasionally surviving TP ganks will make support life more pleasant, so we’ve really come full circle with this introduction.
That’s all for us (now l
Patrick "Scarizard" Scarborough
Paul "Aether" Perscheid
Mattias "Gentleman Gustaf" Lehman
Boka "LaBoka" Agboje
Champions
Blitzcrank
E duration decreased. R cooldown changed.
In his current state, Blitz is an unstoppable force in the bot lane. His standard pattern of engagement - hook, knockup, ult, BM - is reliably performed and extremely effective. At the same time, some aspects of Blitzcrank’s design are simply annoying, not just when facing him but when playing as Blitz as well. Some nerfs paired with the feel-good tweaks should make the Great Steam Golem less frustrating for everyone.
Q - Rocket Grab
E - Power Fist
R - Static Field
Lulu
Q damage on additional targets decreased. W grants bonus attack speed.
Historically, our previous changes to nerf solo Lulu for her competitive viability led to her support play being underwhelming. The problem lies in the fact that both mid and support Lulu value the same things: decent waveclear while enhancing and protecting allies. To be clear, we don’t want to eliminate solo lane Lulu. Players finding novel ways to explore the strengths of champions is part of what makes League of Legends great. That being said, support Lulu deserves some love as well. We’re directly enhancing what makes her a worthwhile support pick but at the same time making sure these buffs don’t spill into top and mid unchecked. This way, Lulu offers reasonable value wherever she goes.
General
Q - Glitterlance
W - Whimsy
Tahm Kench
Passive changed. Q damage increased. E shield weakened. R range increased.
“OH MY GOD,” he types angrily onto his keyboard. “HOW CAN YOU BUFF TAHM KENCH?!?” We hear you, Imaginary Straw Man. Do not worry.
Many moons ago, Tahm Kench was a monster in the bot lane. Impossible to kill yet also dealing massive damage thanks to the passive on his R, the catfish/frog/demon thing was an abomination to champion diversity and basic biology. Early this season, nerfs to his Q, combined with changes to the greater ecosystem overall resulted in The Benching of The Kench. Since then, Tahm’s nerfs have proved to be too effective. In his current state Tahm Kench is both unplayed and depressingly weak. But how do we buff Tahm without dealing with the same problems he had before?
We're taking a direct shot at a part of what makes Tahm so frustrating to face, his pseudo-invincibility. Tankiness is always going to be a part of The River King, but it was a bit insane for a support to take on both members of the opposing bot lane without a care in the world. Instead, we're moving some of Tahm's power from defense to offense with the help of a changed passive. In addition, Abyssal Voyage will now get ol’ Two-Coats where he needs to go much more effectively. These buffs should more than compensate for Tahm Kench's reduced tankiness without making facing him such a rage-inducing task.
Passive - An Acquired Taste
Q - Tongue Lash
E - Thick Skin
R - Abyssal Voyage
Thresh
Epic monsters give two souls. W scaling changed.
Everyone knows that taking the souls of fallen enemies should be a fun and pleasant experience. For Thresh, however, collecting the souls of the damned currently doesn’t capture how awesome it is to slay epic monsters. We're making the soul hunting mini-game more rewarding and changing the scaling on Thresh's W to match. In addition, we're cleaning up some of the interactions between Thresh's hook and lantern, letting players feel a little more confident in landing their “Flash, Hook, Lantern” combo.
Passive - Damnation
W - Dark Passage
Zyra
Fixed plant AI. Increased Passive and W cooldowns.
Yet another support champion with an immensely strong laning phase, Zyra has spread like a weed through the bot lane. She should certainly be great at zoning with her plants, but right now they're a little too good at their job, targeting enemy champions before Zyra herself (never show initiative in the workplace). In addition, seeds spawn much too quickly, letting Zyra sow whenever she pleases. We're bringing her plants in line, giving other supports a chance to blossom.
Passive - Garden of Thorns
Q - Deadly Spines
W - Rampant Growth
Zilean
Fixed a bug.
Fixed a bug.
R - Chronoshift
Gnar
Mini-Gnar range scaling up. Q returns farther. W damage up.
It’s been a season of tanky melee tops, so you’d expect everybody’s favorite sometimes-tanky-melee-sometimes-tank-shredding-ranged-top laner to be doing well. Despite this, Gnar has been out of sight all season. With top lane shifting towards mages and Trinity Force users at the moment, we don’t want to push too hard, but some usability buffs for last-hitting and kiting should help Gnar feel more consistent.
Passive - Rage Gene
Q - Boomerang Throw
W - Hyper
Irelia
R cooldown up.
Irelia exhibits a classic duelist problem: her ult is back up before you can say “didn’t she just kill me with that?” With Trinity Force’s increased cooldown reduction, this experience has moved into “she killed me twice without recalling” territory. When Irelia can ult every second minion wave to avoid fighting her opponent (or just ult her opponent to avoid letting them be alive), finding the right window in which to punish her can be a ridiculous task. Those blades can transcend the laws of physics, but they shouldn’t be transcending downtime.
R - Transcendent Blades
Jarvan IV
Increased W teamfight value.
For somebody who wants to lock as many opponents as possible into a caged deathmatch, Jarvan lacks the tankiness to survive in the fray he creates. We’re heightening Golden Aegis’ deep-behind-enemy-lines power to make sure that when Jarvan’s helping, he’s actually helping.
W - Golden Aegis
Kindred
Base armor down. Armor per level up. W no longer heals, but Wolf reduces monster damage.
No stranger to the patch notes, Kindred’s back for another round of changes to address their unparalleled jungle dominance. Before we talk about the changes themselves, let’s get into a little bit of history.
While ranged junglers aren’t unheard of these days, setting out to develop a marksman jungler was no easy task. After lots of internal failures in testing, we felt it was necessary to give Kindred higher-than-average base stats and sustain (relative to marksmen) to even be able to clear their jungle. We accepted those extreme stats as necessary evils for Lamb and Wolf to be considered functional.
Fast forward to today, and we’ve clearly learned some lessons. While Kindred does possess a steep learning curve, part of that mastery is in learning how to kite the jungle monsters - meaning good Kindred players take little to no damage during their clear. That’s totally fine, but it means those ‘necessary evils’ aren’t so necessary after all. Kindred are marksmen, so they should be killable when caught out of position. Instead, Lamb and Wolf just walk around at full life and outduel just about everyone.
So that’s the deal. The changes below are all about emphasizing that weakness in Kindred while still retaining their ability to clear the jungle. The Eternal Hunters have been tough to balance before now, but we’re confident that by softening their dueling strength, we can work towards a more balanced Kindred long-term (one that isn’t nerfed in every patch consecutively, that is).
General
W - Wolf's Frenzy
Swain
R cooldown and recast lockout up.
One of Midseason’s primary beneficiaries, Swain carries himself more like a juggernaut than a mage these days. In a world where mana management was harsh on the Master Tactician, Ravenous Flock provided a brief but powerful window of functional invincibility. With mana pools larger than ever, Swain’s ultimate is less of a ‘high moment’ and more of an extended stat-check. Similar to Maokai last season, Swain’s low-cooldown high-uptime ult leaves virtually no window for opponents to engage without getting a face full of ravens. We’re opening Ravenous Flock’s window to lean harder on Swain’s ability to accurately predict the length of his battles to succeed. Ravenous Flock will still turn Swain into a tanky monster, but baiting him into prematurely ending the effect should have very real consequences.
Passive - Ravenous Flock
Syndra
Bugfixes galore.
With Syndra’s update a few patches ago, it’s clear that some of her older and harder-to-track-down bugs are holding her back from feeling effective. Syndra’s skirmishing power depends on her flow between combos, so we’re patching up some of the holes in that flow to keep her firing on all cylinders.
W - Force of Will
R - Unleashed Power
Trundle
Health regen down.
Trundle’s stat-sapping abilities make him very hard to fight 1-on-1. In most top lane metas, he is kept at bay by his weakness against poke and short trades. However, our recent efforts to knock down systemic sustain (like Grasp of the Undying) have made Trundle’s passive sustain stand out even more. High base health regeneration on top of his passive prevents most top laners from forcing him out of lane before his ultimate is back up again. We dig the uniqueness of his passive, but there’s no need for him to have so much additional extra health regeneration on top of that.
General
Twitch
Q doesn’t accidentally drop Twitch into stealth instantly.
While it wasn’t the easiest to trigger, ‘instantly stealthing Twitch’ was as nightmarish as it sounds. It was also entirely unintended. Bugfixed.
Q - Ambush
Vladimir
Passive ratio reverted to pre-rework. Q base damage down, but ratio up.
Vladimir’s the latest in a series of champions piling on heaps of damage while purchasing almost entirely defensive items, but with a slight twist. Unlike Ekko or Fizz, Vlad’s at least intended to be a tanky nuisance. We don’t want Vlad to stop building defensively, we just want him to stop being so effective when that’s all he builds. We’re pulling back on some of our Midseason changes to get Vlad into a spot where he still feels like a sticky, sustained damage dealer - just not one that’s killing you with pure health items.
Passive - Crimson Pact
Q - Transfusion
Volibear
W damage and attack speed down at early ranks.
When it comes to taking over games, Volibear’s dominated the jungle for a couple of patches now. Similar to Rammus, Voli relies on his powerful early ganks to transition into a mid-game meatshield. What’s out of line isn’t the strength of Volibear’s ganks, but his ability to keep up with his opponent’s jungle clears. We’re lowering his effectiveness when fighting monsters in the early game so teams that successfully respond to Volibear’s early aggression can maintain a meaningful lead come mid-game.
W - Frenzy
Ziggs
More bugfixes!
Bouncing Bomb is already unique among skillshots, thanks to its defining bounce mechanic. This gives Ziggs some neat plays (bounce a bomb over a frontline to explode a squishy target), but also leaves room for some really wonky visuals when fighting bigass monsters. We’re cleaning up the bounce’s detection to help Ziggs take these objectives without feeling cheated by his bomb casts (and before you ask, yes, six-stack Cho’Gath is basically an objective).
Q - Bouncing Bomb
Terrain Abilities
Dynamically created terrain attempts to preserve your pathing commands.
The ability to create terrain has always come with its own set of challenges. At the forefront of these is the interactions between walls and pathing. For those who’ve luckily dodged this interaction, we’ll break it down: attempting to path through a wall (or accidentally clicking on it) will instead force your champion to look for the easiest path around that wall. While it sounds all good and logical when explained like that, it creates more frustrations than you’d expect - failing flashes, buying the enemy that extra second to escape - the list continues.
Taliyah’s wall, however, is different. Aware of this long-standing complication with created terrain, you can imagine everyone’s concern when they heard she was going to make a wall half the size of the map itself. New tech was implemented for Weaver’s Wall to help retain your pathing, and now that Taliyah’s been out for a bit (and nothing’s caught on fire), we’re comfortable applying it to existing walls. In short: if you wanted to move towards a wall to flash over it or snipe someone, your character won’t get really confused and try to walk back to base just to get to the other side.
Howling Abyss
Mordekaiser
W no longer ignores Mordekaiser’s target selection on Howling Abyss.
Sorry, Mordekaiser.
W - Harvesters of Sorrow
Taliyah
Worked ground despawns faster on Howling Abyss.
Amidst our ARAM changes last patch, we balanced a few champions whose mechanics didn’t lend themselves to the single-lane brawlfest. Taliyah’s Threaded Volley seems like a powerful tool when her opponents can’t dodge, but Worked Ground dictates that she’s gotta keep moving to pump out the damage she needs. Considering you can’t really move anywhere on Howling Abyss, we’re helping the Stoneweaver’s chances of keeping up with the rest of the pack.
Q - Threaded Volley
Items
Ancient Coin line
Early cooldown reduction increased. Talisman of Ascension now builds out of Raptor’s Cloak instead of Forbidden Idol.
For an item that enables explosive initiation, Talisman of Ascension isn’t giving its users the tankiness they might need to survive contact with the enemy. Forbidden Idol as a component didn’t leave much room for defensive stats, so we’re replacing it with Raptor’s Cloak - a natural fit given its movement speed passive. Ancient Coin and Nomad’s Medallion are also struggling in lane, so granting them Talisman’s CDR a bit early should help them feel better.
Relic Shield line
Minion execute now scales with level.
Relic Shield’s execute establishes a simple feedback mechanic: damage low-health minions and you’ll gift a nearby ally both health and gold. However, we don’t want executes to get harder later in the game as minions get tankier. On a more case-specific note, allowing the execution of pets like Zyra’s plants removed some of the consistency of the gold share, given their significantly lower value.
General
Spellthief's Edge line
Killing pets no longer puts Tribute on cooldown.
Spellthief’s Edge offers you a tradeoff: don’t farm and you can build up gold by trading with your opponents. Much like with Relic Shield, pets were disrupting Spellthief’s tradeoff as well.
Forbidden Idol
Cost increased. Now amplifies heals and shields.
Forbidden Idol is in a pretty odd spot at the moment. With many other mid-tier items picking up a mini-power spike with the mage item rework, Forbidden Idol feels somewhat outdated in that you aren’t really any stronger when you pick it up. We wanted to give Forbidden Idol something that reflected the items it builds into. With Talisman of Ascension no longer tied to Forbidden Idol, that left us with Ardent Censer and Mikael’s Crucible. Since they both have healing components, we’re assigning Forbidden Idol the identity of “mid-tier healing item”.
Ardent Censer
Cost and ability power increased. Mana regen decreased. Now amplifies heals and shields.
Moar AP for moar heals costs moar money.
Mikael's Crucible
Cost increased. Now amplifies heals and shields.
To account for the new Forbidden Idol power, Mikael’s Crucible has to get a bit more expensive.
Ruby Sightstone
Cost decreased. Active item cooldown reduction increased.
Ruby Sightstone’s high cost and lack of combat efficacy has prevented it from being a consistent alternative support rush. Rather than add more stats to Ruby Sightstone, we’re tuning up its business with active items to create a more distinct feeling difference between the Eyestone and Ruby Sightstone routes.
Hextech Protobelt-01
Spells can no longer be cast during Protobelt's dash.
Abilities can't fire during Protobelt's dash, so they delay their effects until the dash ends. Problem is, abilities can only resolve one at a time. When they all attempt to fire at once, only the last ability cast gets to play out. The others never do anything, even though their mana cost and cooldown were incurred on-cast. This is a waste of resources at best and a thrown game at worst, so we're preventing the interaction altogether.
Wards
Wards grant experience. Attacking them no longer puts you in combat.
Wards are on the far end of strategic gameplay in League of Legends, standing in stark contrast to combat. While combat risks are typically quite apparent, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ can often describe vision rewards quite literally. We generally like to keep strategic and combat gameplay distinct, but currently clearing wards can often feel too high risk and low reward. Leaving lane to place and clear wards contributes to some of the XP drain that supports face, although other champions than supports also feel it. Losing out-of-combat bonuses just to clear a ward can make it seem like clearing a ward is disproportionately harder than defending it. We’re letting champions keep their out-of-combat bonuses while clearing wards to soften that discrepancy. With these changes, we hope to dial back a bit of the risk of ward clearing and add consistency to the reward.
Global Experience Pacing
Catch-Up Experience
Catch-up experience now scales smoothly.
(Reminder: we're talking about the bonus experience granted from various sources when you’re underleveled.)
Up until now, catch-up bonuses have scaled with level difference. Sounds logical, but means you get the same bonus whether you need 1 or 1000 experience to fill your XP bar. Those bonuses drop off the moment you level up, even though you’re basically just one minion kill closer to even. This is confusing and weird to balance, so we're modernizing catch-up experience to scale continuously instead.
NEWPost-Death Kill Experience
Dead champs now gain experience from nearby kills.
Life’s tough for initiators. Their job is to throw themselves into the enemy team, which often results in death even when done right. Many initiators are also tasked with target lockdown, meaning they only ‘enter combat’ with (and get assists from) a few opponents, despite paving the way for every kill in the fight. A vicious cycle emerges: initiators don’t get full teamfight experience, leaving them underleveled for the next fight, making them even more likely to die. We’re putting a stop to this to ensure initiators are rewarded - not punished - for doing their jobs.
Early Kill Rewards
Early kills grant less experience.
Given how small low-level experience requirements are, early kills are super rewarding: a single victory can fast-track progression by up to half a level. As it so happens, early deaths are also super punishing. Early on, minion waves grant more experience than kills, and dead people miss out on a lot of it. That means early kills double dip in the rewards bowl, creating advantages two to three times larger than you’d expect. Lanes shouldn’t be decided by a single kill, so we’re toning these advantages down.
Summoner Spells
Teleport
Channel time increased. Clarity improvements for both allies and opponents.
For the power an extra champ brings to a fight, Teleport plays are generally too successful. Widening the window for enemy reaction means Teleports will more frequently fail to create advantages if teams don’t coordinate properly. At the same time, well-executed Teleport plays still deserve to be rewarded, so we’re making it easier to tell exactly where your reinforcements will come in.
Dragons & Rift Herald
Dragons and Rift Herald no longer level up during combat.
Junglers already have enough to focus on during objective contests - all the normal teamfight stuff, plus the xpecial challenge of Smite timing (or stealing). Unlucky level-ups are one factor junglers have no way of accounting for, so the pit-denizens of the Rift have graciously agreed to stop trolling their murderers.
Attack-Move
Attack-move works properly when used with move commands.
Sorry, marksmen.
Ranked Emblems
Earn one of three different emblems winning dynamic ranked games solo, in groups, or alongside fully-stacked teams. Flaunt them on your Profile and Leagues pages.
We hear you on needing new ways to show off individual skill in ranked, and this is just a first step towards that. If you climb as a solo inhibitor-crushing machine, your emblem shows that off. Emblems change over time based on your recent wins, swapping between solo, dynamic, and team as your style evolves.
Ranked Tier Restrictions
Tier restrictions in Diamond and above now allows three divisions of separation between teammates instead of two.
We made it a bit too hard for top-tier players to play with friends in ranked, so we’re relaxing restrictions to allow three divisions of separation. We’ll keep an eye on things in terms of playing with friends versus flinging the door open to packs of boosted animals.
High-tier premade skill ranges
Reminder: From Diamond V and up, premades are limited to duos or trios. The entire premade has to be within a three-division skill range of each other.
Scheduled Ranked 5s
Ranked 5s queues return during scheduled windows.
We disabled ranked 5s at the start of the season because we were unsure how match quality would be affected by the addition of dynamic queue. When we limited the highest MMR players (Diamond V+) to solo, duo, or trio queues, those players had no option to play ranked as a group of five. Even among players below Diamond V, we've heard that people miss the ranked 5v5 queue so we’re bringing it back while hopefully avoiding the low population/high queue time problems the old version had by restricting it to certain time periods. Each region will have different times and days, so check out the schedule for your region in the announcement. Otherwise, this queue works exactly like the old Ranked 5s did.
Bugfixes
- Fixed a few cases where Ninja Tabi weren't properly reducing damage from empowered basic attacks (ex. Ashe's Q - Ranger's Focus)
- Fixed a bug where Fiora would be locked out of Flash and Teleport if she died during Q - Lunge until casting Lunge again
- Corrected Leona’s Q - Shield of Daybreak tooltip to indicate the stun lasts 1 second, not 1.25 seconds (actual stun duration unchanged)
- Miss Fortune’s Passive - Love Tap and Shaco’s Passive - Backstab no longer apply extra stacks of Black Cleaver’s armor shred
- Champions no longer get stuck when trying to walk behind Blue Sentinel’s little rock buddy
- Fixed a bunch of cracks in the Zac Sweet Chromas on Very Low visual settings
- Fixed a bug where toggling Relative Team Color wouldn't adjust the color of existing minions
- Adjusted colors on a few of Challenger Nidalee's visual effects to improve readability
- Restored custom particles for Blight Crystal Varus's E - Hail of Arrows when the arrows land
Upcoming Skins
Deep Sea Nami will be released during patch 6.13!
Deep Sea Nami |
In addition, Soulstealer Vayne has been added as a Hextech Crafting exclusive!
Soulstealer Vayne |
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