New Skins in the Store

• Major Ziggs
• Mad Scientist Ziggs
• Scarlet Hammer Poppy

PVP.net v1.53

• Co-op versus AI aka "Rise of the Bot Army"
  • You can now queue to play against a much wider roster of Champions in Co-op versus AI
  • Beginner and Intermediate queues are now available for Dominion in addition to Summoners Rift
  • The 3-game per day rewards limitation for Level 30 Summoners has been removed
  • The flat IP penalty for Co-op versus AI games has been removed. You will now earn IP at the following rates (as a percentage of the normal rate):
    • Summoner level 1-9
      • Beginner: 100%
      • Intermediate: 100%
    • Summoner level 10-19
      • Beginner: 85% (was 75%)
      • Intermediate: 100%
    • Summoner level 20-29
      • Beginner: 70% (was 50%)
      • Intermediate: 90% (was 100%)
    • Summoner level 30
      • Beginner: 55% (was 25%)
      • Intermediate: 80% (was 75%)
  • View more information on the expanded Co-op vs. AI game mode, including a full roster of bots!

League of Legends 1.0.0.133
Ziggs, the Hexplosives Expert

• Short Fuse (Passive) - Every 12 seconds Ziggs' next basic attack deals bonus magic damage. This cooldown is reduced whenever Ziggs uses an ability.
• Bouncing Bomb - Ziggs throws a bouncing bomb that deals magic damage.
• Satchel Charge - Ziggs flings an explosive charge that detonates after 4 seconds, or when this ability is activated again. The explosion deals magic damage to enemies, knocking them away. Ziggs is also knocked away, but takes no damage.
• Hexplosive Minefield - Ziggs scatters proximity mines that detonate on enemy contact, dealing magic damage and slowing.
• Mega Inferno Bomb (Ultimate) - Ziggs deploys his ultimate creation, the Mega Inferno Bomb, hurling it an enormous distance. Enemies in the primary blast zone take more damage than those further away.

Alistar

• Fixed a bug where Triumphant Roar was not granting assists

Amumu

• Fixed a bug where Despair was dealing less damage with Ability Power than intended

Ashe

• General
  • Base health increased to 474 from 438
  • Base armor increased to 14.9 from 12.7
  • Mana per level increased to 35 from 27
• Volley cooldown reduced to 16/13/10/7/4 from 20/16/12/8/4
• Enchanted Crystal Arrow now grants vision while in flight.

Caitlyn

• Fixed a bug where Headshot did not trigger while Taunted or Silenced

Cho'Gath

• Fixed a bug where Feast would fail to kill shielded targets

Ezreal

• Trueshot Barrage now grants vision while in flight.
• Fixed a bug where Ezreal would lose his run animation after 390 movement speed

Gragas

• Fixed a bug where Barrel Roll immediately detonated when Gragas died

Heimerdinger

• Fixed a bug where his turrets would not be demolished when he died if the turret was being teleported to (by Summoner Teleport)

Jarvan IV

• Fixed a bug where Cataclysm immediately crumbled when Jarvan IV died

Jax

• Mana regen per level increased to 0.7 per 5 seconds from 0.45
• Fixed a bug where Empower's cooldown was higher than stated at earlier ranks
• Counter Strike
  • Dodge duration increased to 2 seconds from 1.5
  • Now additionally reduces the damage from area of effect abilities by 25% while Jax is dodging
  • Now can be activated again after 1 second to end the effect early
  • Damage adjusted to 50/75/100/125/150 (+0.5 bonus attack damage) from 40/70/100/130/160 (+0.8 bonus attack damage)
  • Now deals 20% increased damage for each attack dodged (up to a maximum of 100% increased damage) instead of 10/15/20/25/30 bonus damage per dodge
  • Cooldown reduced to 18/16/14/12/10 seconds from 22/20/18/16/14
• Grandmaster’s Might duration increased to 8 seconds from 6

Lee Sin

• Flurry attack speed bonus reduced to 40% from 50%
• Sonic Wave missing health damage reduced to 8% from 10%

Morgana

• Soul Shackles ability power ratio reduced to .7 from .8
• Fixed a bug where Soul Shackles would sometimes fizzle

Master Yi

• Fixed a bug where Meditate's ability power ratio was shown as lower than it actually was

Nunu

• Fixed a bug where Absolute Zero's slow did not grant assists

Rammus

• Minor tweak to Rammus' dance to actually rotate around his center axis when on his back

Sejuani

• Fixed a bug where Glacial Prison did not detonate if Sejuani died

Sivir

• Boomerang Blade
  • Damage reduced to 60/105/150/195/240 from 70/115/160/205/250
  • Bonus attack damage ratio reduced to 1.0 from 1.1
• On The Hunt
  • Movement speed bonus reduced to 20% from 25%
  • Duration reduced to 10 from 15

Sona

• Fixed a bug where Power Chord did not trigger while Taunted or Silenced

Swain

• Fixed a bug where Swain had reduced mana regeneration while in Raven form

Viktor

• Power Transfer missile speed increased to 2000 from 1400
• Gravity Field activation time reduced to 0.25 seconds from 0.5
• Fixed a bug where Chaos Storm's tooltip stated that it dealt less damage than it actually did

Items

• Emblem of Valor (remake)
  • Components:
    • Cloth armor
    • Rejuvenation Bead
  • +25 armor
  • Unique Aura: Nearby allied champions gain 10 health regen per 5 seconds
• Locket of the Iron Solari (new)
  • Components:
    • Emblem of Valor
    • Heart of Gold
  • +300 health
  • +35 armor
  • Unique Aura: Nearby allied champions gain 15 health regen per 5 seconds
  • Unique Active: Shield yourself and nearby allies for 5 seconds, absorbing up to 50 (+10 per level) damage (60 second cooldown)
• Stark's Fervor has been changed and renamed to Zeke's Herald
  • Components:
    • Dagger
    • Vampiric Scepter
    • Kindle Gem
  • +250 health
  • Unique Passive: +15% Cooldown Reduction
  • UNIQUE Aura: Grants nearby allied champions 12% Life Steal, 20% Attack Speed
• Will of the Ancients spell vamp reduced to 20% from 25%

Masteries

• Deadliness changed to 0.5 Attack Damage per level (9 Attack Damage at champion level 18) at 4 points from 4% Critical Strike Chance

General

• Added a new option, "Show Smartcast Ranges"
• Spectator mode will now indicate if a Champion is at very low health on the side bars to draw attention to the area
• Fixed a bug where the Demolitionist mastery sometimes interfered with character global passives
• Heal over time effects now show as health regen per 5 rather than discreet heals
• Summoner's Rift (Winter)
  • Removed holiday decorations
  • Fixed prop visibility/collision issues in bases
  • Fixed particle glitching in river areas
  • Changed lighting and terrain to improve visual clarity

Summoners,

We will be scheduling the release of the Ziggs Patch for early February. We have discovered a potentially serious issue with the update, and – as part of our continued commitment to providing the best possible game experience – we want to take the time make sure conditions are perfect for this rambunctious yordle’s debut on the Fields of Justice. 

We will have further details on the availability of the Ziggs Patch as they become available. Stay tuned for more updates in the near future!

Thanks for your patience, and thanks for playing League of Legends.

I certainly understand it is frustrating to not have the patch notes yet, so I will shed some light on exactly what happened.

We found what was considered a blocker bug that would severely impact many players enjoyment of league of legends, so rather than pushing the patch live and causing lots of players to have a bad experience, we wanted to fix the issue before it went live.

Here is why the patch notes aren't out yet:
We are preparing two different patches for everyone, one with everything we had planned to go out and one with several things stripped out of the patch. The first option is what we hope to go with if we can fix the blocker bug quickly, while the second option is what we will use if we can't fix the issue quickly.

The patch notes aren't out because we haven't commited to using either patch yet.

Summoners!

In the next patch you’ll be seeing a new aura item making its way into the item shop on the Fields of Justice alongside with a couple of remakes for old classics. In addition to a new spin on Emblem of Valor and Stark’s Fervor, you’ll now have the option to purchase the Locket of the Iron Solari to round out your arsenal. These remade aura items, along with the new one, should bring you more options throughout the early and mid game. 

The Item Formerly Known as Stark’s Fervor

The base stats of Stark’s Fervor grant a substantial Attack Speed bonus, a stat that primarily benefits a team’s Attack Damage carry. In addition to its base stats, however, Stark’s Fervor also grants additional Attack Speed and Lifesteal as an aura. And while these stats are shared to the rest of the team, the primary beneficiary is still the Attack Damage carry. 

To combat this, we decided to rebuild Stark’s Fervor into an item that would be more beneficial to a champion who would typically purchase an aura item, such as a tank or support. Since these champions usually aren’t the ones you typically see racking up gold, however, an expensive component item like the Recurve Bow needed to be removed from the recipe. Moreover, champions in these roles benefit much more from Cooldown Reduction and durability stats than they do from an aggressive stat like Lifesteal or Attack Speed. In the end, we decided to change the root item to Kindle Gem, letting the aura carry the aggressive bonuses.

• +250 Health
• UNIQUE Passive: +15% Cooldown Reduction
• UNIQUE Aura: Grants nearby allied champions 12% Life Steal and 20% Attack Speed.

These new base stats make Stark’s Fervor a much more viable purchase for any tank or support player looking to give Attack Damage champions a boost while still enhancing their own effectiveness and survivability. 

Also, while we were revisiting this item, we wanted to take the opportunity to honor one of the top contributors to our Refer-a-Friend program. So we decided to rename the new Stark’s Fervor to Zeke’s Herald in honor of the efforts of this summoner. Congratulations Zeke, and thank you for introducing more players to League of Legends!

Emblem of Valor Now a More Viable Option

Another item that we wanted to revisit was the Emblem of Valor. In its initial incarnation, this item offered players two disparate methods of restoring health: Health Regen and Lifesteal. While both of these are viable methods of keeping your champion healthy, Lifesteal is most effective on hard-hitting champions like Attack Damage carries, while Health Regen is a more effective choice for a fighter or tank that can absorb a ton of damage on his own.

Rather than splitting the utility between these two demographics, we decided to remake Emblem of Valor as an item with higher utility for players in either a support or tank role. Since these roles tend toward cost-effective durability items early, we changed Emblem of Valor to build from both Cloth Armor and Rejuvenation Bead, providing both Health Regen and Armor as base stats and maintaining its standard Health Regeneration aura. This both re-focused the statistics provided by Emblem of Valor and gave players in the support and tank role an additional upgrade option from the popular Cloth Armor. 

• +25 Armor
• UNIQUE Aura: Nearby allied Champions gain 10 Health Regen per 5 seconds.

Introducing the Locket of the Iron Solari

Naturally, with Stark’s Fervor now building from the Kindle Gem, we wanted to create a new mid game upgrade for the Emblem of Valor. Since we had just remade this item with support and tank champions in mind, we also wanted to make sure this new item was tailored to these roles. Thus, the Locket of the Iron Solari was born.

For the components of this new item we selected the Emblem of Valor along with another durability item popular amongst tank and support champions: the Heart of Gold. Providing additional Health, Armor and Health Regen along with an upgraded Health Regeneration aura, the Locket of the Iron Solari is a cost-effective way to keep your Emblem of Valor viable as the game wears on. And to top it all off, you’ll also be able to activate the item to give your team a brief damage shield nearby allies under attack by area of effect damage!

• +300 Health
• +35 Armor
• UNIQUE Aura: Nearby allied Champions gain 15 Health Regen per 5 seconds.
• UNIQUE Active: Shield yourself and nearby allies for 5 seconds, absorbing up to 50 (+10 per level) damage (60 second cooldown).

The Bottom Line

These new upgrade options for the popular early game items Cloth Armor, Heart of Gold and Kindle Gem should provide those of you in the support or tank roles with more options. With these new aura items, we hope to see players employing even more diverse builds through the early and mid game.

- Byronic Hero, Web Content Editor, via the official forums.

We plan to add a new supportish item with the -armor aura, but with better/more aligned stats for who might actually purchase the item.

Viktor will be getting some good quality of life buffs next patch, a couple that you mentioned in this post. We don't think Viktor needs any more damage, just some usability and reliability tweaks.

Shen is a project we are currently actively working on. We want to not only just buff Shen though, rather we are attempting to take this opportunity to experiment with some gameplay changes that would make Shen more fun to play overall. 

On Live, most of Shen's fun comes from the power and feel of his ultimate as it controls the flow of the battlefield. While that is awesome, we want to make sure Shen players can have interesting gameplay while his ultimate is not up. On Live, this gameplay currently consists of Shadow Dashing into a fight hopefully taunting the right targets, expending the rest of his energy rapidly by choosing to use Vorpal Blade or Feint, and then standing around looking pretty with no Energy for the rest of the fight.

The #1 issue we want to resolve with Shen is to make sure that he can have a sustained threat presence/utility in late game team fights. In my opinion, this starts with addressing his current Energy issues. Imagine a Shen who can Shadow Dash 2-3 times across the battlefield per fight, first locking down enemies and then returning to the aid of his allies to thwart off attackers. Not that this is necessarily exactly what we'll eventually do, but these are the kinds of thoughts we are currently toying with.

At the same time, we want to make sure that we keep Shen's extremes in check. For example, top lane Shen actually has a ton of sustain and early on can out harass / out lane many of the popular top lane champions used today. It can be an extremely frustrating experience. Another pain point in playing against Shen is the dreaded side push strategy in which he forces one of your team to stop him and then suddenly teleports to the team fight making it a 4v5. Although these are valid strategies and situations Shen excels at, we want to make sure opponents have the necessary counterplay options to fight against them.

These are the types of issues we are tackling while working on Shen, and unfortunately it does take a good amount of time to get right, especially with the multitude of other projects going on.

[is he ranged or melee? What resource system will be use?]

 Ziggs' basic attacks are ranged and he is indeed a mana user.

[Who was the designer?]

I was.

[Is he AP or AD scaling?]

He's AP scaling.

[ Is he ALL AoE damage?]

His basic attack/passive do single target damage - we tested AoE versions but they both caused uncontrollable lane pushing early on, which felt terrible when last hitting, and forced us to pull power away from his active abilities which are the more important part of the kit.

All his other abilities deal AoE damage.

[What are the cooldowns and AoE ranges for his abilities?]

The size of AoE's pretty linked to the cooldown of the ability:

Q: Low CD, small to moderate AoE
W: Long CD, moderate AoE
E: Medium/Long CD, decent sized area covered by mines (enough to roughly block some jungle paths say)
R: Longish CD by ult standards, huge AoE.

The mines behave like traps, though are easily deployed and have a much shorter lifespan than other traps - they're particularly focused on area control/denial in or just before a potential fight.

[Would you classify him as a burst or sustained damage mage?]

 Moderately bursty, though with quite high variance depending on how many skills you manage to land/whether you choose to use his Satchel Charge or Minefield for other purposes. Decent poke too.

[How difficult is he to use?]

 Very skillshot and timing dependent so a decent skill cap as a result, he's got a few quirks ability wise too. Proper ult usage, particularly when mid, is also likely to be pretty key to getting the most out of him, there's a bit of split push potential as well, though that's pretty risky if you get it wrong compared to some split pushers.

[What constitutes the bonus damage on his passive and how much will it be cooled down per ability cast?]

Base damage + AP.

The cooldown reduction's such that you'll want to weave the occasional well timed auto attack into a fight when safe to do so, but won't feel forced to do so between every cast.

[How does ( Q ) Bouncing Bomb work? Is it like Fizz's pole jump ability?]

There's an initial arc that easily clears terrain/enemies. After that the bomb will explode on contact with terrain or enemies when it lands or bounce a couple of times if in a clear zone. The length of the bounces is determined by the distance of the initial arc and the bounces can pass over very low/small terrain or enemies in certain circumstances, particularly if you know what to look for. Each time it bounces the bomb slows down a bit. Because of this combination of effects the bombs have a distinct feeling to throw and can get away with having a pretty decent range/low cooldown compared to many skillshots.

[Since ( W ) Satchel Charge knocks Ziggs back, can it knock him over small terrain?] 

Yup. For both balance (ordinary skill with a placed knockback) and thematic (actively trying to grenade jump) reasons the knockback on Ziggs is quite a bit further than the knockback on enemies

[How far can Ziggs actually knock himself back with his W?]

The knockback range on Ziggs himself is somewhat shorter than Trist's rocket jump, if you get the timing right though you're knocking yourself away from an enemy and them away from you though so the gap created can be pretty big. That's assuming you're not using Satchel Charge offensively to set up other spells of course.

[If I knock myself back, can I use abilities while airborne?]

You can indeed use other abilities while airborne.

[If you step on one of the ( E ) Hexplosive Minefield land mines do they all blow up?]

Each mine can detonate seperately.

[Do the ( E ) Hexplosive Minefield mines work on minions?]

The mines can be detonated by minions/monsters. 

[Are the mines visible to the enemy team?]

Mines are visible to enemies - ensuring a decent amount of counterplay was a key goal.

[Range on his ult?]

 Somewhat more than lux ult.

[Range on his ult? #2]

High damage, very long range. Uses a warning effect like Panth's ult - allies know where it's going to land as soon as he launches it, enemies get a warning a little bit before impact.