Darkin are ancient warrior gods trapped within powerful weapons. When someone unknowingly (or knowingly) wields such a weapon, the Darkin will fight to take control of the host’s body.
The first Darkin champion in League of Legends, Aatrox, was released in 2013. The second was Kaynin 2017, followed by the Varus retcon the same year, which altered his original Ionian lore and turned him into a Darkin. The last Darkin champion released was Naafiriin 2023. Like the other Darkin, Zaahen has possessed a host (Xin Zhao) and League even temporarily removed Xin Zhao from play to reflect the takeover.
Zaahen, the Unsundered will hit the Rift November 19th at 11 AM PDT.
League of Legends’ newest Darkin champion, Zaahen, is a powerful skirmisher with built-in armor penetration, a revive for risky dives, and has plenty of attack damage and sustain.
Zaheen Abilities
Exact data subject to change upon release.
Passive: Cultivation of War
Cooldown: 300 / 240 / 180 / 120 (based on level)
Innate: Zaahen’s damaging basic attacks and against enemy champions generate a stack of Determinationfor every instance of damage dealt to each target, lasting for 5 seconds, refreshing on subsequent damage, and stacking up to 12 times.
After the duration, the stacks expire by 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 (based on seconds elapsed) every 0.5 seconds. Determination: For each stack, Zaahen gains bonus attack damage equal to 1.5% – 3.3% (based on level) AD; at maximum stacks it is further increased to 36% – 79.2% (based on level) AD.
Periodically, if Zaahen would take lethal damage while at maximum stacks, he enters resurrection for 4 seconds: becoming invulnerable, untargetable, and unable to act. He restores 30% – 75% (based on level) of his maximum health over the duration.
Active: Zaahen empowers his next basic attack within 5 seconds to have an uncancelable windup and gain 25 bonus range. On-attack, he will strike the target twice and heal himself. The strikes deal modified physical damage and the heal is reduced against non-champions.
Each strike applies on-hit effects and can critically strike for 50% bonus critical damage AD bonus physical damage.
In 1.5 seconds after the attack, The Darkin Glaive can then be recast within the next 5 seconds.
Recast: Zaahen empowers his next basic attack within 5 seconds to have an uncancelable windup, gain 25 bonus range, deal bonus physical damage and knock up the target for 0.75 seconds.
The Darkin Glaive deals 150% damage against monsters.
Both casts will reset Zaahen’s basic attack timer.
Active: Zaahen extends his glaive in the target direction, dealing physical damage to enemies hit. Upon reaching maximum range, all enemies hit are dealt the same physical damage, stunned for 0.25 seconds, and pulled 225 units toward Zaahen.
Active: Zaahen launches to the target location. He then slams his glaive, unleashing a shockwave that deals physical damage to nearby enemies and heals himself for 33% of the post-mitigation damage dealt to champions.
Zaahen is unable to act, gains crowd control immunity, and gains 50% damage reduction from the start of the cast time, and retains these effects until 0.9 seconds after the dash.
The Preview Patch notes for 25.23 are here. From Riot Phroxzon via X (Source)
Patch 25.23 Preview
Zaahen
-Zaahen is starting out development as a support.
-We hadn’t made a support for a while and we already had a headstart on wanting Zaahen to be a Darkin with eye/all-seeing motifs.
-The first iconic ult Squad5 tried was swinging his Glaive to Deathmark everybody (think Deathmark meets Xin Ult)
-One of the issues with this was that Zaahen had a support economy, so he’d do this and just die. It wasn’t a fatal flaw, but it wasn’t quite cool enough to build a kit around.
-Another idea tried was to embody the idea of sacrifice; Zaahen would gain stats each time he got a takedown or died (because supports die a lot)
-Teammates weren’t super enthusiastic about this though, even if it ended up being powerful and useful
-At this point, we decided that Top lane might be a better fit, especially because some of the Xin Zhao parallels weren’t quite working out from the support role
Zaahen in Top Lane
-We were taking a bunch of inspiration from Erlang Shen and Guan Yu throughout development.
-Erlang Shen has a third eye, which is often known for being all-seeing and associated with enlightment/higher levels of consciousness in Hinduism or Buddhism and some other Eastern religions.
-So some of the ideas were related to these motifs.
-Squad5 tried some ideas like Ult makes him untargetable to non-targeted abilities (think Gwen W), but this only lasted a test (was very experimental)
-Also tried versions where he learned about his opponents while fighting them.
-Another version that was interesting was dodging attacks every X seconds (but that became kinda hard to use and was already similar to old Pantheon’s passive)
-Kind of late in development however, we had a pretty functional kit that was working well and was satisfying, but it still felt it was missing something, and August suggested adding the revive back as max stacks on the passive. That just immediately clicked in Playtest and so we kept it.
-Rek’sai was erroneously listed as a buff yesterday, sorry about that.
-For those watching Worlds, or playing high ELO solo Q, Rek’sai has been pretty pretty powerful in Top Lane, but we’re OK with her Jungle strength currently.
-In particular, she is sustaining too much, so we’re taking those aspects down.
-Thanks to Faker for raising visibility on Mel, we’re making some relatively power neutral adjustments that move power out of some of her high frustration and lower counterplay builds (eg. E max) into other places with higher counterplay and interactivity (eg. Passive)
-The E max build in particular is pretty fire and forget and is looking quite a bit stronger than Q max in many situations
-This is relatively unintuitive to players and lower gameplay, so we’re making adjustments to it
-Recently, the team found a quite impactful bug where Mundo was getting max damage at 30% missing health instead of 70% missing health.
-While it didn’t result in a change in his winrates overall (he was still balanced around this), it did change his overall power budget, so the damage is being adjusted back up to compensate.
-Despite his recent rise to fame in several series’, we still think he’s overall pretty balanced, but just has pretty sharp success/failure cases which seems OK for now (might re-consider later).
-As one of the beneficiaries of the sustain nerfs in previous patches, Vlad has benefited quite a bit, so we’re tapping him down a bit and making him more vulnerable in top lane especially.
ADC Meta
-ADC meta has been stale for a while, so we’re looking for a bit of a shake up here. Most of the changes here are pretty self-explanatory
Alternate Junglers
-This patch, we’re looking at a lot of novelty oriented changes around adding new champs into the jungle (and some old ones)
-Many regions suffer from high jungle autofill rates and being able to play your mains when you’re autofilled we think is overall net positive.
-Some of these changes are more experimental (we’re trying Fizz in the jungle for example), but will be monitoring closely to see how they shake out.
League of Legends 25.21 Patch Notes are here and include a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch notes for additional details from Riot (source).
ARAM: Mayhem brings in elements from Arena and TFT into the Howling Abyss. You will receive four to five augments to power-up your champion. Augments become available at Levels 7, 11, and 15, and are available in 3 tiers: Silver, Gold, and Prismatic. Check out our Tier List for each augment tier below.
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 4th 2025
Prismatic Augments
S
Scopiest Weapons
Biggest Snowball Ever
Ultimate Revolution
Ultimate Awakening
Jeweled Gauntlet
Infernal Conduit
Goliath
Fey Magic
Clown College
Quest: Sneakerhead
A
Back to Basics
Giant Slayer
Transmute: Chaos
Tap Dancer
Quantum Computing
Symphony of War
Omni Soul
Mad Scientist
Goldrend
Baby Kitty
Draw Your Sword
Empyrean Promise
Dashing
Mystic Punch
Snowball Roulette
Slow Cooker
Can’t Touch This
B
Blade Waltz
Windspeaker’s Blessing
Ominous Pact
King Me
Protein Shake
Glass Cannon
Circle of Death
Gold Augments
S
Apex Inventor
Firebrand
Flashy
Soul Siphon
From Beginning to End
Restless Restoration
Quest: Urf’s Champion
Perseverance
It’s Critical
A
With Haste
Vulnerability
OK Boomerang
Shrink Ray
Magic Missile
Quest: Steel Your Heart
Overflow
Get Excited
Holy Fire
It’s Killing Time
Marksmage
The Brutalizer
Outlaw’s Grit
Thread the Needle
Keystone Conjurer
Ethereal Weapon
Demon’s Dance
Impassable
B
Vampirism
Skilled Sniper
Minionmancer
Nightstalking
Silver Augments
S
Buff Buddies
Scoped Weapon
Tank It Or Leave It
Witchful Thinking
Blunt Force
ReEnergize
Deft
Heavy Hitter
Leg Day
Frost Wraith
Homeguard
Goredrink
A
Ocean Soul
Mighty Shield
Wind Beneath Blade
Adamant
Dive Bomber
Infernal Soul
Self Destruct
Upgrade Zhonya’s
Transmute: Gold
Light ’em Up!
Upgrade Immolate
Tormentor
Spin To Win
Flashbang
First-Aid Kit
Executioner
Erosion
ADAPt
Guilty Pleasure
Hat on a Hat
EscAPADe
Poltergeist
Swift and Safe
Ultimate Unstoppable
Upgrade Cutlass
Veil of Warding
B
Don’t Blink
Repulsor
Shadow Runner
Fetch
ARAM Champions Tier List
Looking for the highest win-rate champions in ARAM for Patch 25.21? Check out our ARAM Tier List
League of Legends 25.21 Patch Notes are here and include a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch notes for additional details from Riot (source).
Patch 25.21 Overview
NEW! ARAM Mayhem
Patch 25.21 brings a new style of ARAM.
ARAM: Mayhem brings in elements from Arena and TFT into the Howling Abyss. You will receive four to five augments to power-up your champion. Augments become available at Levels 7, 11, and 15, and are available in 3 tiers: Silver, Gold, and Prismatic. Check out our Tier List for each augment tier below.
League of Legends 25.20 Patch Notes are here and include a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch notes for additional details from Riot (source).
U.GG and Theta Network Launch First Interactive Blockchain AI Agent Delivering Real-Time, Champion Insights and Meta Analytics to Millions of Players
U.GG and Theta unveil first interactive AI agent powered by over 30k decentralized GPUs offering champion builds, tier lists, and live stat checks
October 1st, 2025 – Theta Network, the leader in decentralized cloud infrastructure for AI and gaming, has joined forces with U.GG, the premier League of Legends analytics platform trusted by millions of monthly players around the world. The partnership is set to launch a next-generation AI-powered agent for gamers, starting with League of Legends and expanding to further games. Powered by Theta EdgeCloud Hybrid, U.GG’s new AI agent delivers instant, data-driven champion builds, up-to-date tier lists, and real-time stat checks, all accessible directly from U.GG’s website and Discord.
Millions of League of Legends players can now engage with the U.GG AI agent 24/7 to receive the latest champion build recommendations (including runes, skill priorities, and itemization), discover which champions are dominating the current patch, and access in-depth champion statistics like KDA, pick rate, and ban rate. The AI agent also provides direct links to comprehensive champion pages on the U.GG website, driving deeper engagement and helping players level up their game with the most accurate and timely information available.
“U.GG’s mission is to give players the most reliable tools and data-backed insights for League of Legends and other competitive games,” said Ben Evans, General Manager of U.GG. “Through our partnership with Theta Network and leveraging their EdgeCloud Hybrid technology, we can now deliver real-time, AI-powered insights straight to players. Whether you need the right build before a ranked match or want to track rising champions, our new AI agent makes that information instantly accessible.”
Chris Egan, Senior Director of Product at Enthusiast Gaming, added: “At U.GG, our focus is on building tools that make players better, win more, and ultimately have more fun. With the Theta Network, we’ve been able to quickly add a fun new layer of AI-driven engagement to the platform, helping us explore fresh ways to enhance the U.GG experience while staying true to our core mission.”
Launched in 2024, Theta EdgeCloud is the first hybrid cloud-edge AI computing platform, powered by over 30,000 distributed GPU nodes. This robust infrastructure enables U.GG’s AI agent to provide highly scalable, always-on access to the latest League of Legends meta and champion data, ensuring players are always one step ahead of the competition.
“Thrilled to welcome U.GG and millions of League of Legends players to Theta’s AI-powered blockchain Agent seamlessly integrated into U.GG’s website and Discord server,” said Mitch Liu, co-founder and CEO of Theta Labs. “The tech is built on EdgeCloud Hybrid offering high-performance NVIDIA A100/H100 GPUs and cost-effective community run NVIDIA 30-40-50 series GPUs recently launched in Theta’s decentralized GPU marketplace. We’re now able to deliver real-time analytics and champion insights at scale to U.GG’s data-driven, passionate community.”
U.GG users can start interacting with the AI-powered agent today on U.GG and in the U.GG Discord community.
About U.GG
U.GG is a leading data-driven stats and analytics platform trusted by millions of gamers to provide the most accurate real-time recommendations, builds, rankings, and performance insights for League of Legends, Valorant, World of Warcraft, and more. U.GG holds itself to the standard of having the best user experience and offering easily digestible, actionable insights that players need during each of their gameplay sessions. By aggregating in-game data from millions of matches, U.GG delivers optimized builds, tier lists, and player analytics that help players make quick decisions, allowing them to focus on what’s most important in gaming, having fun.
About Theta Labs
Theta Labs is the leading provider of decentralized cloud infrastructure for AI, media and entertainment powered by a global network of 30,000 community-run edge nodes and a native blockchain. Backed by Samsung, Sony, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and Creative Artists Agency, Theta is among the top AI tokens on Binance.com and DePIN blockchains by market capitalization on Coingecko. Theta’s enterprise validator and governance council is composed of global market leaders including Google, Samsung, Sony, CAA and Binance.
Theta EdgeCloud is the first hybrid cloud-edge computing AI platform offering over 80 PetaFLOPS of GPU compute power combining enterprise-grade NVIDIA H100/A100 GPUs, community-run NVIDIA 30/40/50 series, and AWS’s next-generation AI instances, Inferentia and Trainium custom silicon. The platform now counts over 50 global customers including 4 of the top 5 South Korea universities, Stanford, Syracuse U, top professional sports teams including France Ligue1’s Olympique de Marseille, NHL’s Las Vegas Knights, NBA’s Houston Rockets and global esports teams Cloud9, Gen.G, among others.
League of Legends 25.19 Patch Notes are here and include a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch notes for additional details from Riot (source). Be sure to check out our tier list page once Patch 25.19 drops on Wednesday, September 24th to see how these changes have reflected in the League meta.
Patch 25.19 Overview
Brawl Is Back!
Riot is bringing back one of League’s more popular rotating game modes, Brawl, for the next 2 patches. League is testing Brawl as a potential game mode and learning tool for new players who are playing League of Legends for the first time. Brawl is a fast-paced, quick match game mode that helps introduce concepts of full 5v5 games in a more relaxed setting, making it a great starting point for new players.
-Ahri gets a buff to her overall Damage Per Hit on her R Ability – Spirit Rush
Brand
-Brand’s Passive (Blaze) gets a slight buff to Monster Damage Modifier
-W – Pillar of Flame gets a sizable AP buff
-Brand’s Ult, Pyroclasm, also gets a AP% buff
Caitlyn
-Caitlyn receives a small Base AD buff, jumping form 60 > 62
Corki
-Corki receives a Nerf to his Q – Phosphorus Bomb’s damage
Diana
-Diana’s Passive gets a buff to help strengthen her Jungler role. Monster Mod increases from 2.6x > 3x
Draven
-Draven’s W – Blood Rush gets a sizable Attack Speed buff
-Draven’s Ult also gets a damage buff
Jax
-Jax’s Base HP gets increased from 665 > 650
-Jax gets a buff to his ult, increasing his Initial Armor Gain giving him top-lane strength.
Jinx
-Jinx gets a buff to her early game with increased Bonus Range to her Q – Switcheroo
-Jinx’s E – Flame Champers also gets a sizable Damage increase.
LeBlanc
-LeBlanc’s W and R damage has been buffed with hopes of increasing mid-lane use and play.
Lee Sin
-Lee Sin gets a small nerf to his Armor Growth Base-Stat, but receives a balanced buff to his Q-Ability Damage
Lillia
-Lillia finally gets her long-awaited Jungle buff, with increases to both her Ult’s Bonus Damage and Cooldown.
Mel
-Mel’s Passive gets a buff to both her Bonus Damage on attack per spell, as well as her Maximum Bonus Damage on attack (both scaling based on level)
Pantheon
-Pantheon, one of league’s strongest Junglers currently, gets a Jungle nerf to both his Q and W abilities.
Seraphine
-Seraphine’s Base Stats get increased for both Mana Growth 25 > 40, as well as HP Growth 90 > 95
Sivir
-Sivir is receiving a nerf this patch to her Q Ability, with Initial Damage taking a Bonus AD nerf from +100% > +85%
Syndra
-Syndra receives a balance adjustment this patch, with both nerfs and buffs.
-Syndra has her Base Stats decreased, with Health Growth nerfed from 104 > 100, and Armor Growth from 4.6 > 4
-Syndra also gets a small Cooldown nerf on her E-Ability, decreasing from 17 > 15
-Her Q-Ability gets a small AP% and damage buff
Items
Redemption
Celestial Opposition
Runes
Unsealed Spellbook
Arena Updates
That’s a wrap on the latest patch for 25.19. Don’t forget to check out our tier list in the coming days to see how this patch affects the current tier list and meta across all league ranks. Thanks for reading, and feel free to check out our discord for all updates to both our website and U.GG App.
Time to celebrate patch 25.18 and our 2024 World’s Winners, T1!
This patch’s live balance updates don’t have any new champion-role injections, simply a bunch of follow up and fine-tuning. Notable highlights include a Bami’s Cinder buff for junglers, some Illaoi QoL, our first big nerf patch for Yunara, Qiyana, and jungle Sylas.
In other news, we’ve also got some updates to ARAM, Doom Bots, and Arena in this patch, so if you’re a modes enjoyer this is your time! We’ve also got our 2024 World’s Winners skins (go T1!), the return of Your Shop, updates to the game tracking information changes we introduced last patch, a clash on SR, and last, but certainly not least, we’re going to start rolling out bans and punishments for botted and purchased accounts as well and players engaging in boosting.
As always thanks for reading and we’ll see you on the Rift!
Looking for more information on all things League of Legends? Check out League’s community-run wiki here!
Wrong patch notes? You can find the TFT patch notes here!
Patch Highlights
T1 Gnar, T1 Vi, T1 Yone, T1 Varus, T1 Pyke, and Prestige T1 Sylas will be available September 10th, 2025 at 19:00 UTC.
T1 World’s Winners Celebration
In this patch we’re celebrating T1’s 2024 World Championship run with their World’s Winners skins! Created in partnership with our champions, we’ve created five skins to honor Zeus, Oner, Faker, Gumayusi, and Keria’s incredible performances last year. Keep an eye out for custom recalls including easter eggs inspired by these players like Zeus’ trophy mishap and Gumayusi’s good croissant!
These skins will be available throughout patch 25.18 and 25.19, either by themselves or in our Signature and Mega bundles.
Signature Editions: Includes champion skin, player’s signature border and icon, elite chroma, T1 ward, and the champion (if not already owned).
Mega Bundle: Includes all champion skins, all player’s signature borders and icons, all elite chromas, T1 Ward, golden T1 World Champions icon, and all champions (if not already owned).
Note: The T1 Ward and champions are 50% off if acquired through the bundles.
Also coming this patch is our 2024 World Championship Sylas Prestige skin celebrating Faker’s MVP performance! Prestige T1 Sylas, alongside the matching border and icon, will be in the featured section of the Mythic Shop for 150 ME for two patches (25.18 & 25.19). After this run Sylas will exit the shop and enter the biweekly rotation, but without the icon and border included.
In recent years, we’ve updated borders on higher-rarity skins to better match their themes, with Mythic Shop Prestige skins being an exception. Going forward, we’re exploring bringing thematic borders to Mythic Shop Prestige skins as well, starting with Sylas.
Bots, Boosters, And Bans
League is a game that’s at its best and highest quality when both teams have a fair shot at winning, and we want to make that a reality when you load into each game. But that doesn’t happen when there are people out there who purposefully make games they’re in worse by griefing, inting, smurfing, or verbally abusing others—just to name a few.
As Riot mentioned back in August, this sort of behavior is not, and has never been, welcome in League and Riot will be cracking down on it.
A few days ago Riot started rolling out bans for purchased and botted accounts and starting in this patch they’ll also be rolling out bans and other punishments for accounts that Riot’s systems flag as having been used for boosting and hitchhiking, common forms of smurfing. It won’t be all at once though, Riot will roll out these penalties over time so that they can ensure that their Player Support organization can address any appeals in a timely manner.
While Riot is very confident in the accuracy of their detection systems, if you believe you were wrongfully banned please reach out to Riot’s player support team here!
Game Info Tracking Improvements
We kept an eye on your feedback about the jungle timers and updated death recap we introduced last patch and now we’re back to make some adjustments. Thank you for all the feedback and please keep it coming so we can keep making League the best it can be!
Death recap has received visual polish.
Death recap can now be moved anywhere on the screen or redocked to the corner.
Re-added the damage type pie chart that shows the proportion of physical, magical, and true damage that you took. Hover for a full damage type breakdown.
Shortly after 25.17 launched, we hotfixed jungle timers providing full information about a camp’s respawn time immediately on gaining vision of it. Now, you gain timer information 10 seconds before respawn for basic camps or 60 seconds for buff camps which is consistent with how it worked before
Your Shop
Your Shop is coming back this patch, but with a special surprise! In this appearance of your shop you’ll have the chance of a Legendary skin to appear in your discounted offerings so make sure you check it out!
It’ll be here until October 7th so make sure you stop by before then.
Amumu has been very sad in support for a while now and we’d like to give him some power back to add a bit of pep to his step. We think he’d be tickled pink if he could start maxing Q first, so we’re leaning in that direction by giving it a lower cooldown per rank while also lowering the mana cast so he’ll be able to cast two charges relatively cheaply.
Annie’s been on fire in pro play for quite some time as is also OP for regular play with the right skill order. Her W-first-max tech is quite powerful compared to her Q max, despite it being very uncommon outside of Pro, so we’re going to reduce the power of this under-the-radar tech.
Ashe is once again finding herself near the bottom of the ADC list. We’re pretty happy with her current shape with crit and some on-hit items being solid options for her, so all we’re really doing here is looking to nudge her success rate up just a bit.
In a similar boat as a few other mages in this patch, Aurora has been outcompeting and dominating the mid meta in Pro. We’re looking to take some power out of her pro specific advantage of baseline target agnosticism without buying into high AP, as well as worsen her lane phase slightly so she is less capable of supporting her team in early skirmishes.
Passive – Spirit Abjuration
Base Percent Max Health Damage: 2.5% ⇒ 1%
Percent Max Health Damage AP Ratio: 2% per 100 AP ⇒ 2.7% per 100 AP
Attack Speed growth decreased. W damage decreased.
Azir has been at the top of his rule, especially in pro play. He’s reliably able to get to a high point of power, so we’d like to reduce how effective he is when that happens by bringing down his Attack Speed growth and late-game W damage.
Base Stats
Attack Speed Growth: 5.5% ⇒ 5.0%
W – Arise!
AP Ratio: + 45 / 50 / 55 / 60 / 65% AP ⇒ + 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60% AP
Q damage decreased, now deals physical damage. W bugfix. R alert sound now plays after a delay, range increased, damage decreased.
Briar’s ultimate is a little too hard to hit, especially against aware players. While it’s intended that the spell has high counterplay, we wanted to ensure smart Briar players are able to find situations where it is much more in their favor to land. To do this, we’re delaying the global warning sound until after the 1 second cast time, which should make R much easier to hit when cast at nearby enemies from out of vision. To compensate, we’re nerfing her damage a bit as she’s quite strong right now and doesn’t have room for a straight buff.
We also took this chance to move Q back to physical damage for all you lethality enjoyers out there.
Mana increased. E damage vs poisoned targets increased.
Cassiopeia has been stagnating in the grass for a while ever since the early few patches of Noxus earlier this year. To help her out we’re adding a small buff to her offensive power and early laning by giving her (twin) fangs a bit more bite.
Galio is currently one of the most dominant mid picks and has been for a few patches now. His mid-game is by far his strongest point, which has meaningfully contributed to him out competing other picks, so we’re looking to bring it down to a more reasonable spot. With these changes we’re looking to target both tank and full damage builds to keep his itemization between the two healthy.
Garen is hitting a historical low breadth (the amount of unique players), and we’d like our signature accessible top lane fighter to be more enticing for more players. We’re going to buff him up by showing some love to his E AD Ratio, which should further incentivize more fighter-y runes and items.
E – Judgment
AD Ratio per Spin: 36 / 39 / 42 / 45 / 48% AD ⇒ 38 / 41 / 44 / 47 / 50% AD
Passive and E abilities’ damage increased. WQ movement speed increased.
Hwei has been producing fine art, but we’ve seen some player feedback saying that he struggles to find footing, partially due to his strength waning over gametime, which we agree with. To fix this we’re buffing his AP ratios to give his art more impact as he gets gold, and giving him some higher-mastery skewed buffs that will help his WQ feel smoother to use.
Piltover’s poster boy Jayce hasn’t been defending tomorrow very well lately, and has seen little presence in pro play despite the top lane meta being one he should thrive in. To help him out a bit we’re going to give him a high skill skewed buff to make his shock blasts all the more… shocking.
Passive QoL change. W damage decreased. E vessel duration decreased.
When we nerfed Illaoi’s vessel duration, she was left in a state where she could sometimes fail to get any follow-up tentacle attacks on a newly-minted vessel in the early game. We’re extending the debuff duration slightly to make it more likely that she can get her well-deserved follow-up slap, but as this has a meaningful power impact, we’re also giving her a small compensation nerf. We’re also delivering a nice QoL buff requested by Illaoi players: no longer will she waste her passive cooldown while channeling or travelling with Summoner Teleport.
Passive – Prophet of an Elder God
QoL Change: No longer spawns tentacles during Summoner Teleport. Her passive now waits until she’s done teleporting.
W – Harsh Lesson
Target Max Health Damage: 4% per 100 total AD ⇒ 3.5% per 100 total AD
Base AD and Armor Growth decreased. Passive damage decreased.
Qiyana’s recent buffs were quite potent, bringing her into the spotlight as arguably the strongest champion in the game and driving her ban rate up significantly. This queen has been shining too brightly, in both mid and jungle, so to take the attention off of her (and so that her players can play her) we’re bringing her power down across the board.
As players have gotten better at him, Sylas jungle has continued to rise up the ranks and now is more performant than we’re comfortable with. Since we’re happy with his power level in mid lane, we’re simply walking back a portion of his prior jungle buffs.
Q and Q2 mana cost decreased, damage decreased. E mana cost decreased, damage decreased.
Taliyah has been no stranger to higher level play and we think the culprit is a combination of reliability and durability in her most common builds. We’d like her to be weighed down less by her high mana costs in order to make her less reliant on Tear of the Goddess. Additionally, we would also see her build more aggressively so we are lowering her base damage in order to make AP a larger portion of her power budget. We’re improving her jungle modifiers as a way to offset these adjustments to mid lane.
Volibear has clawed his way to the top of the ranks of junglers as the rest of them were brutally wounded by nerfs in the last hunt. While it’s acceptable for this thunder god to be potent, his current strength is just a bit too thunderous. As such we’re tapping down his AP Ratio on his passive, which should make his first item power spike less electrifying.
Passive – The Relentless Storm
Attack Speed AP Ratio: 4% (up to 20%) per 100 AP ⇒ 3 (up to 17.5%) per 100 AP
Base Health and AD decreased. E bonus movement speed and duration decreased.
Yunara has quickly risen to be the strongest marksman in the game accounting for mastery while also seeing high pick/ban priority in professional play (especially in China and Korea). In this patch we’re looking to nerf her across the board, ideally lowering her priority in professional play, which should also lower her ban rate in higher levels of play as well.
Zac can rarely get stuck on units in his ultimate. The original Zac ultimate allowed him to pass through units to prevent this, so we’re bringing that functionality back!
R – Let’s Bounce!
Going Ghost: Now grants Ghosting during ultimate.
Items
Bami’s Cinder
We’ve revisiting Bami’s this patch to help keep it in line with Fated Ashes, which has seen a clear dominance between the two options. We’d like the difference to be less decided between the two components for jungle clear power, so these buffs should help do just that.
Percent Amp on Monsters: 50% ⇒ 100%
Sunfire Cape
Sunfire Cape has been the clearly worse option for tank junglers when compared to Liandry’s, and while a meaningful amount of that difference is generated from the early clear impacts of Bami’s vs. Fated Ashes, there is still a degree of power and excitement missing from Sunfire once completed that we want to bring to the item.
Percent Amp on Minions and Monsters: 50% ⇒ 60%
Mercurial Scimitar
When you find yourself forced to rush a QSS to survive an enemy Malzahar, Warwick, or just a team with heavy CC, it’s still usually in your best interest to complete this item last. Even then, you still may feel like you’re giving up more power than you can afford due to the meager stats that the item gives on completion. We’re looking to make sure the item still feels appropriately tuned while keeping a focus on the active as its main strength.
Attack Damage: 40 ⇒ 50
Magic Resistance: 40 ⇒ 35
Active Movespeed Duration: 1.5 ⇒ 2 seconds
ARAM
Map Rotations
Due to popular request, we’re going to be keeping the ARAM rotations from the Season 2 ARAM updates. This means that for the foreseeable future Butcher’s Bridge and the Koeshin’s Crossing are here to stay! Each map will now have an equal chance of appearing each time you go into an ARAM game.
Free-to-Play Pool
We’re updating the free to play list in ARAM to contain the last 5 rotations (previous 4 added with the current week) of the Summoner’s Rift rotation.
The ARAM free to play list is no longer a static list of 65, it will instead be the combined last 5 weeks of Summoner’s Rift free-to-play champion rotations. This means you’ll typically have over 95 champions made available per game from now on.
NOTE: The chances of obtaining a third card in champion select is unchanged, it will continue to only count champions that you own.
In case you missed the news, the first three patches in Doom Bots’ run will all activate a different Trial of Doom. In the last patch, all three Trials will be reactivated so you have one last chance to get those wins. If you can defeat all of Veigar’s Trials, you’ll earn the title “Definitely Not a Bot”, which we really want, so we’ll see you there! The first trial was Veigar’s Evil where every bot got Veigar’s Phenomenal Evil passive. The second trial is… drumroll please…
Trials of Doom – Veigar’s Curse!
In Veigar’s Curse, Bots are buffed to just below the level of the Hard queue, and the level cap for players and Doom Bots is raised to 30. The Bots will gain 100% bonus experience from all sources. Players can do the same… if they buy Veigar’s Talisman of Ascension! This item offers 100% increased experience, but no stats. If you make it to level 30, Veigar’s Talisman will transform into something much more powerful!
In addition, more minions will also spawn in all lanes from partway through the game. Finally, Veigar’s attacks might burn a little more in this Trial, as we’ve given him Liandry’s Torment.
So, figure out your strategy, and pick your Champion. How are you getting to level 30? Can you survive, one item down?
Veigar’s Curse will be live on September 10th at 8:00 AM PT (or September 10th at 15:00 UTC).
Balance Changes
–King of the Hill Mission: Reduced number of Doom Bots ordered to defend the area
–King of the Hill Mission: Disabled Teleport on Doom Bots during the event.
–King of the Hill Mission: Increase value of points scored by players.
–King of the Hill Mission: Reduced maximum penalty for losing the mission.
–Defeat Karthus Mission: Assigned a Doom Bot to defend Karthus and his Crystal.
–Veigar: Reduced his damage reduction cap, but also lowered the threshold at which he will start to individually target high-damage-dealing players.
–Aurelion Sol: Removed the Cooldown increase on E – Singularity.
Bugfixes
-Fixed an issue where players could get triple rewards if they killed all the Super Evil Pumpkins simultaneously in the Doom Bot Power Up Mission.
-Fixed issues where players or Veigar could become untargetable / invulnerable during the final boss fight.
-Corrected the maximum damage calculations for On-Hit Items to update throughout the game.
-Fixed an issue where Doom Bot Malzahar’s Voidlings could kill the Nexus from Moredekaiser’s Death Realm, or during cutscenes.
-Fixed a bug where Smolder’s burn damage was not being applied to Veigar ( the execute will continue to not apply).
-Fixed a bug where Charm spells would permanently break Mini-Singed and Mega-Ziggs pathfinding in their missions.
-Fixed a bug where the Target Dummy in Target Dummy Duel could be killed by certain Curses.
Doom Bots Bot Adjustments
Doom Bot Lee Sin
Okay we all saw this adjustment coming, but we love that Lee Sin has become the #1 villain of the mode. We’re gonna bring him a little more in line with where we’d like, so he feels slightly less “LPL Lee Sin”.
Arena comes with a set of challenges due to its unique ruleset, so we’ve customized a few rules to better fit this game mode. Players who AFK in Arena should now be flagged and punished appropriately, and their teammate who is stuck with 1v2’ing every fight will be able to exit the game sooner.
That said, we are not introducing “early forfeit” to Arena like you find in Summoner’s Rift or ARAM, because we cannot simply remake the game as it would be unfair to the other 7 teams still playing. Our goal here is to make it so you aren’t trapped for as long as you would have been previously, and that players who AFK often are getting appropriately punished so AFK’s will occur less. As always, we’ll be monitoring feedback here so please give us your thoughts.
AFK Detection Rules
-AFK Warning will pop up after 70 seconds of no activity
-Moving, attacking, casting spells, shopping, choosing an augment or anvil, and clicking to spectate an ongoing match all count as activity
-Taking damage, being teleported into combat and dying do not count as activity
-After 180s of no activity, your vote is no longer counted towards forfeiting
-After 300s of no activity, your client is disconnected
-Detection is disabled for players who are on a bye round or are eliminated
Surrender Rules
-Minimum time to FF remains unchanged at 6 minutes
-NEW Minimum game time played (for eligible game modes) to count toward remedial games: 10 minutes
General (Arena)
Early on in Arena, ranged champions needed a lot of extra support to feel viable. With the addition of Hexgates and additional augments/items this hasn’t been the case for a while, so we’re looking to pull back some of the extra power that they no longer need.
-Arena stat package : Ranged champions no longer gain +20 MS.
Going forward we’re including the current week of free to play champions in other game modes on top of the static list of 31 champions in Arena!
-Champions that are free to play in Summoner’s Rift for the current week are also available in Arena now.
Katarina struggles in a gamemode with only 2 opponents, so we’re adjusting her passive to fully reset her ultimate while giving her some more force behind her basic abilities.
Passive Refund: 30s ⇒ 75s
Q Damage: 80-220(+40%AP) ⇒ 80-300(+65%AP)
E Damage: 20-60(+0.25AP%AP)(+.40TAD) ⇒ 40-120(+0.40%AP)(+.40TAD)
AP Kog’Maw has always been an off build, but is a little less viable than we think makes sense for Arena’s build philosophies.
R AP ratio increased: 55% ⇒ 55%/60%/65%
Guest of Honor (Arena)
Guest of Honor (Arena)
The existing Guests of Honor were built for the idea that they would be enabled for a few months, with Arena’s extended run, we wanted to take a swing at spicing up some that have lost some of their luster.
Kled
Landing time reduced from 2s ⇒ 1.5s
Elise
Now grants 1 additional revive in addition to its previous effects.
Cocoon size increased.
Mordekaiser
Duration increased from 10 ⇒ 28s (just before the Ring of Fire spawns.)
Sion
The Ring of Fire moves slightly faster over a greater distance.
Samira
Trigger condition changed from the 1st hit ⇒ 1st time you drop an opponent to below 50% HP.
Trundle
Grants +1 Reroll every 3 rounds in addition to its previous effects.
Items (Arena)
Hullbreaker
Isolation Range: 1000 ⇒ 1500
Kraken Slayer
Attack Damage: 30 ⇒ 40
Third Hit Increase based on missing Health: 50% ⇒ 75%
Max shield reduced from 200-500 ⇒ 100-400 per level
Stat Anvils (Arena)
Prismatic Omnivamp Anvil
Now has a Melee / Ranged split
Melee: 25% Omnivamp
Ranged: 12.5% Omnivamp
Magic Pen Shards
Silver Magic Pen: 10 ⇒ 8
Gold Magic Pen: 22 ⇒ 18
Arena Bugfixes
-Fixed an issue where the Madhatter hat (the kind you’d expect from a long-winded owner of a certain domed establishment) was missing when a player reconnects.
-Fixed an issue where the Madhatter hat was reduced more than expected after each round loss.
-Put in a minimum champion size as a failsafe in case a player gets too many size reduction effects.
-Fixed an issue where Darius was not healing/granting gold on team eliminations.
Clash – Summoner’s Rift Cup
The Summoner’s Rift Cup will be happening this patch! Grab your 5 stacks and get ready to rumble!
Registration Begins: September 9 @ 11:00 AM (Local Time)
Tournament Dates: September 13 and 14 (~4-7 PM Local Time, varies by region)
If you have any questions or you’re just looking for the full 2025 Clash schedule, make sure to check our Riot’s Clash FAQ support page.
Bugfixes & QOL Changes
Custom Game Bugfixes and Improvements
-Fixed an issue that had Custom Games showing up as public games.
-Removed the five-second countdown warning when leaving a Custom Game or Practice Tool.
-Fixed an issue that allowed Custom Games to give mission credit.
-Fixed an issue in Custom Game lobbies’ player-ordering that prevented players from being able to re-order themselves by swapping teams.
-Fixed an issue that prevented Nexus Finishers from working in Practice Tool.
-Fixed an issue that prevented some players from creating Practice Tool games.
-Fixed an issue that allowed players to attempt to ban a bot’s champion in Custom Games.
Bugfixes
-Fixed a bug that caused Briar to stop moving when her frenzy state had ended.
-Fixed a bug that caused the death recap detailed view button to have to be pressed twice if it was left expanded in the previous death recap.
-Fixed a bug that caused Gangplank’s E to be able to reset his and his enemy’s in-progress attacks. We thought we fixed this last patch but Gangplank just E’d our fix. We got it this time though.
-Fixed a bug that caused Xin Zhao’s W to be able to sometimes deal additional damage with the first part of the ability if it was used immediately after Flash.
-Fixed a bug that caused Lunar Emperor Thresh’s hook projectile SFX to remain at Thresh’s location instead of the hook’s location.
-Fixed a bug that caused Thresh’s passive soul spawning SFX to be missing from ally’s and enemy’s point of view.
-Fixed a bug that caused some of Thresh’s skins to be missing the soul absorb SFX at the end of his taunt emote.
-Fixed a bug that caused Kathus’ W wall VFX to be cut off in areas with elevation changes.
-Fixed a bug that caused Milio’s passive empowered attacks to stop Zac’s blobs from reviving via his passive.
-Fixed a bug that caused Xin Zhao’s ultimate VFX to not be visible when moving in or out of Morderkaiser’s Realm of Death.
-Fixed a bug that caused Xin Zhao’s Q+E VFX to linger after being cc’d towards another champion via one of their abilities.
-Fixed a bug that caused the minimap and scoreboard timers for Red and Blue buff to be inconsistent with one another.
-Fixed a bug that caused Font of Life to sometimes be placed on cooldown if triggered while nearby allies were at full health.
-Fixed a bug that caused Aurora’s R buff duration to last longer than her rift’s duration.
-Fixed a bug that caused multiple issues to occur when Yunara used a Tiamat based item.
-Fixed a bug that caused some of LeBlanc’s recall props to appear during her W and RW.
-Fixed a bug that caused Teemo’s R on-hit VFX to not appear if the trap was placed in the Fog of War and then triggered.
-Fixed a bug that caused Diana’s R VFX to occur in a smaller area than that actual area of the ability’s damage.
-Fixed a bug that caused Nilah’s W VFX to render over nearby impassable terrain, structures, and units.
-Fixed a bug that caused Syndra’s orb VFX to disappear after 20 seconds.
-Fixed a bug that caused structures like Nexus Turrets to be untargetable to allies after their inhibitor respawned.
-Fixed a bug that caused Graves’ R cone smoke VFX to spawn slightly before the projectile hits an enemy
-Fixed a bug that caused Red and Blue Jungle Camps to sometimes not play their attack SFX.
Upcoming Skins & Chromas
The following skins will be released in this patch:
Prestige T1 Sylas
T1 Vi, T1 Gnar, T1 Yone, T1 Varus, & T1 Pyke
The following chromas will be released this patch:
When Deadlock blew up in August 2024, it immediately caught our attention. As passionate fans of League and MOBAs, we scrambled to secure beta invites and jumped right in. The fast-paced gameplay and 1920’s New York, cult-inspired aesthetics hooked us instantly. We quickly started work on a prototype builds tool to help make sense of the early alpha in-game store.
Earlier this year, we connected with Will Seagar to learn more about his project, Tracklock. What started as two competing products quickly grew into a partnership, and ultimately, an acquisition. Since then, Will and the Tracklock team have been working alongside us on U.GG, bringing their passion and expertise to our community.
With Deadlock’s player base continuing to grow and Valve rolling out regular updates, now feels like the perfect time to give Tracklock some love. In the coming weeks, you’ll see fresh visual updates and seamless U.GG build integrations that make the app even more valuable for Deadlock players.
We’re thrilled about the future of Deadlock and can’t wait to keep building tools and experiences that support its growing community.
Q – Bandage Toss
W – Incinerate
R – Summon Tibbers
Passive – Spirit Abjuration
W – Arise!
Q – Head Rush
W – Blood Frenzy
R – Certain Death
E – Twin Fang
Passive – Colossal Smash
Q – Winds of War
E – Judgment
Passive – Signature of the Visionary
WQ – Serenity: Fleeting Current
E – Subject: Torment
Passive – Prophet of an Elder God
W – Harsh Lesson
E – Test of Spirit
Passive – Royal Privilege
Passive – Petricite Burst
Q – Threaded Volley
E – Unraveled Earth
E – Tectonic Disruption
R – Life Form Disintegration Ray
Passive – The Relentless Storm
E – Kanmei’s Steps
R – Let’s Bounce!
