Patch 5.24 Notes

Poppy

Poppy, Keeper of the Hammer, will be updated with the launch of patch 5.24! To learn more, check the following links:

• A Hero's Calling
• Champion Reveal
• Champion Insights
• Champion Spotlight
• Poppy Q&A

Ashe

In 5.22, Ranger’s Focus underwent a slew of changes to shift Ashe’s damage profile toward sustained combat. Unfortunately, we didn’t hit the mark with Q, so we’re trimming back that stat requirement.

Q - Ranger's Focus

Anivia

Anivia’s synergies with the new Keystone Masteries are pushing her to pretty absurd levels of power, especially in a metagame where teams primarily rely on sieging towers to succeed. These changes are all about forcing Anivia to commit herself to danger if she wants to command the same level of respect in controlling and defending objectives.

R - Glacial Storm

Azir

Another patch, another set of bugfixes for Azir.

W - Arise!

E - Shifting Sands

Bard

Bard’s the caretaker to call when you need to protect a dimension (or listen to some sweet tunes), but his early game struggles keep him from realizing his destiny. Pretty straightforward buffs to access that early game fantasy.

Passive - Traveler's Call

W - Caretaker's Shrine

Brand

Brand’s flown under the radar for a long time, but preseason’s outed him as one of the highest damage champions in the game. Since Deathfire Touch (Brand’s go-to- Keystone) is also being nerfed, we’re going a little lighter here, choosing to instead tap his efficiency in harassment / waveclear.

W - Pillar of Flame

Caitlyn

Better access to early health regen, combined with Caitlyn's update have taken the bite out of her poke-based laning style. We think Caitlyn plays best when she's able to bully her opposition a bit more, so we're bumping up that early game at the small cost of her late.

Passive - Headshot

Dr. Mundo

Seasons change, teams rise and fall... and Mundo goes where he pleases. The introduction of Rift Herald’s made it clear that Cleaver’s damage was never appropriately tuned for the jungle, letting Mundo free to gleefully slaughter large monsters without a care in the world. Combine this strength with the raw power loaded into Masochism’s on-hit from 5.20, and you’ve got an unstoppable force. We’re addressing both of these to bring Mundo back to brink of sanity and off the edge of ‘banned every game.’

Q - Infected Cleaver

E - Masochism

Ekko

A few savvy players (and one handsome patch-writer) found a slew of issues with Ekko’s passive not correctly applying on-hits. No more! Go forth and live your on-hit Ekko dreams, friends.

Passive - Z-Drive Resonance

Hecarim

Hecarim’s engagement pattern is consistently oppressive, and preseason’s only amplified the terror he brings to any 1v1 encounter. We’re emphasizing the value in striking back against him (especially when Spirit of Dread is down), and forcing him to play the same unit collision game as everyone else. No more free hits just because your opponent’s struggling through a blockade of enemy minions, buddy.

Passive - Warpath

E - Devastating Charge

Jinx

Increasing Jinx’s attack frame when using Fishbones had the unintended side-effect of rooting her for longer than attacking in mini-gun, so we’re bringing it in line to make it feel like it did pre-preseason. Her attack speed is still slowed, mind you, but you’ll regain control of your movement much sooner.

Q - Switcheroo!

Karthus

Another huge beneficiary of preseason, Karthus’s reliability with Wall of Pain makes the follow-up onslaught of Lay Wastes less ‘dodging and weaving’ and more of an inevitability. Karthus still retains his immediate catch potential, but now has to rely on some slick predictions (or follow-up from teammates) before dragging his prey with him to the great beyond.

W - Wall of Pain

Kindred

Kindred’s strengths have become pretty apparent as players continue mastering them, utilizing their high damage and sustain to take even the slightest advantage and run rampant. These changes are about restricting access to their more powerful tools when they’re most likely to pull ahead while introducing more risk to their death-defying maneuvers.

W - Wolf's Frenzy

R - Lamb's Respite

Kog'Maw

Kog’Maw’s the same vomit-happy hypercarry he’s always been, but the update went too far in removing base damages from his kit. What we end up with is a Kog that’s incredibly hard to stop once he gets going, but lacking in the tools to get there reliably. Removing the ratio and reinstating the base does trim Kog’s highs, but gives him an expected damage floor to tap into when he’s not consuming everything.

W - Bio-Arcane Barrage

Malzahar

Malzahar’s been sleeping just below the surface of too powerful for a long time, only just recently breaking through the top of Strong Mountain. Instead of taking away from his signature lane control and single-target lockdown, we’re opting to chip away at his unintended strengths, targeting incidental area damage instead.

W - Null Zone

Master Yi

Making it abundantly clear that this is just a tooltip bug, and Yi's had this AP ratio since 2013. Tooltip.

W - Meditate

Miss Fortune

Miss Fortune’s still ruling the laning phase with an iron fist, so we’re taking a crack at draining early power. Specifically targeted at the initial ranks, these changes reduce her raw effectiveness in trades (unless making good use of Love Tap) while adding a level of choice as to which you’d want to max second.

W - Strut

E - Make It Rain

Nidalee

Once queen of the jungle, Nidalee’s early game has been suffering when tossing spears at champions and monsters alike. So we’re making them hit harder. context.

Q - Javelin Toss

Quinn

If you’ve played against Quinn this patch, you already know that Blinding Assault does too much damage for the utility it provides. Hitting her damage across the board cements proper use of Harrier and Blinding Assault’s smokescreen effect to win duels, rather than just clicking on them really hard.

General

Q - Blinding Assault

Rammus

When it comes to shutting down marksmen while stacking armor, Rammus runs rings around the competition. Rolling into lanes at the speed of sound, Rammus’ oppressive ganks layer a domineering amount of crowd control on top of anyone looking to have a normal laning phase. We’re tuning back some of the bite from his surprise attacks, but tossing a little quality-of-life his way for when he’s gotta go fast.

Q - Powerball

Riven

You’re not dreaming - these are Riven buffs. Anyone playing attack-damage champions that don’t synergize with crit or attack speed is feeling a little sad these days. Just like last patch with Kha’Zix and Zed, this won’t improve heavily until we figure out some item-related solutions, but health regen should help her not lose her lane as often while we work it all out.

General

Sivir

Given marksmen have less attack damage in their builds, Sivir’s poor performance this preseason isn’t too surprising. She’s always scaled harder with pure attack damage than with any sort of crit synergies, so bumping her ratios a tad should help with her footing while we continue to monitor how she’s doing.

W - Ricochet

Skarner

Another gank-and-tank jungler, Skarner’s late-game revolves around a powerful mix of crowd control and durability. That said, Skarner’s alsomurdering everyone while being tanky, so we’re tuning that down. In exchange, he gets a buff for when we roll out 10v10 combat. Or waveclear. Very minor waveclear.

E - Fracture

R - Impale

Soraka

Preseason brought lots of indirect help to healers, and with the dust having settled it’s time to begin following up on the balance outliers.

Like Soraka.

Rather than touching the raw health output of League’s premier healer (™), we’re hitting Raka’s safety to increase her vulnerability and cap just how much healing she can actually do in a fight without a significant build adjustment or masterful positioning.

Q - Starcall

W - Astral Infusion

R - Wish

Swain

When Swain’s good, his dominance over the lane borders on abusive - and Swain’s pretty good right now, using Corrupting Potions and Deathfire Touches to terrorize the world. We’re making it so that Swain is priced into investing in Nevermove to get the same level of control on his prey.

W - Nevermove

Tahm Kench

Tahm Kench. River King. ‘Why didn’t you ban him?’ - whatever name you use, TK’s ability to save allies is the crux of his play-making potential and a cornerstone of his frustration when on the opposing team. We want to preserve Tahm’s clutch moments of supporting carries gone astray, but he should give up some of his personal safety to do so. Given his multiple health bars and massive size, making him slower while sheltering someone in his big ol’ gut makes sense as the first mechanic to send downriver.

W - Devour

Twisted Fate

Like slow creeping fungus, Twisted Fate’s been an under-the-table force for a while and it’s not hard to see why. Unparalleled map presence and point-click stuns reign supreme when it comes to securing leads, and there’s no better time like preseason to take advantage of the chaos. Lowering TF’s mid-game spike and waveclear should buy teams enough time to withstand his pressure game while mounting a response.

Q - Wild Cards

Xin Zhao

5.23 saw X to the Z’s Three Talon Strike refactored under-the-hood, which caused all sorts of unintended problems. We’ve patched him up so Xin’s better suited for the rage of war. Sorry!

Q - Three Talon Strike

Ziggs

Ziggs is a champion whose performance is tied intrinsically to the pace of the game, blooming when late-game sieges are common and wilting against speedy tower pressure. We’re going easy on the changes as we suss out the systems surrounding game flow, but wanted to send him off with an extra boom for when he’s trying to push an advantage.

Passive - Short Fuse

Banner of Command

Dolla dolla bills, y'all.

Dead Man's Plate

Overall usage and data has pointed to Dead Man’s being far-and-awaythe health and armor purchase for a while now, but we wanted to see how preseason potentially shook things up before pulling the trigger. About a month in and Dead Man’s Plate is more ubiquitous than ever, even when it’s less situationally powerful than, say, Randuin’s or Sunfire - so we’re knocking off some hit points to let the other items compete.

Guinsoo's Rageblade

Guinsoo’s is intended to have the same area-of-effect as Ravenous Hydra and Tiamat, but was significantly larger due to a bug. So now it’s not larger!

Essence Reaver

Essence Reaver’s providing a path for spell-casters as intended, but currently turning your next Zeal or Cloak of Agility into a cheap 20% cooldown reduction is a rate other items simply can’t compete with. The math below is a little wonky, but here’s the gist of it - at 20% crit (from say, Zeal), you’ll get 10% cooldown reduction. At 30% crit (from Zeal’s upgrades), you’ll get the same 20% cooldown reduction you’re used to. We’re digging the item’s path and what it does for carries mid-game, but we’re pushing back the ‘1.5 item power-spike’ to keep certain spell-slinging marksman in check.

Zeal

We don’t want to delay marksmen from participating in the game fortoo long, but their ‘1.5 item power spike’ is presently pushing them over the edge. Zeal’s newfound cost-efficiency is one of the culprits of this early-midgame bump, so we’re taking a little off the top to keep the pacing and power-growth of marksmen one that all can keep up with.

Trinity Force

Used far less as a true marksman item, we didn’t want ol’ Tons of Damage to be negatively impacted when we were hitting Zeal. Carry on, Trinity Force.

Phantom Dancer

Compared to its Zeal brethren, Phantom Dancer’s danced its way out of inventories in favor of newer, shinier Zeal items ever since preseason. While PD could stand to get more power, this is just a love tap - we’ve got more in store for the once-great crit item, but we’re waiting to see the effect of the Energized items not stacking damage before we get too hasty.

Farsight Alteration

The rock-paper-scissors of the trinket system is starting to catch on, but the widespread use of Farsight is providing too much long-term vision for teams to keep up with, turning most games into a constant spotlight-search of clairvoyance on both sides. We’re making the trinket less spammable and lowering the vision radius to make it less sufficient in multiples, especially when compared long-term to a few Warding Totems.

Enchantment: Devourer

Devourer users were pretty excited about a new Epic monster joining the Rift, ready to sink their teeth in and combine with their ghost dog for maximum wreckage - until they found out it was only giving 1 stack on assist. You may now Devour the Herald in peace.