Month: November 2025

Patch 25.24 Preview – League of Legends

Posted on by U.GG

The Preview Patch notes for 25.24 are here. From Riot Phroxzon via X (Source)

Zaahen

  • Zaahen has been off to a powerful start, and after the micropatch nerf, he’s relatively stable
  • For regular players, he’s stabilizing out, but seems a little stronger in higher levels of play right now, especially with what we’re seeing out of his early mastery growth currently
  • We intend to nerf him in 25.24, but haven’t yet decided what nerf or by how much and want a bit more information before we act
  • We don’t think he’s so overpowered currently that he can stay in this state

Bloodline

  • Bloodline has fallen a little behind Alacrity especially for most champs, so evening it up a bit there

Jungle Changes

  • We’re monitoring a lot of the feedback coming in over the last patches about the jungle changes; doing a few small tap downs to get some of the top end into a better state
  • Overall, some of them are still not particularly viable, but not looking to take another swing at them at this point

Mel

  • Mel‘s changes this patch are aimed a bit at reducing frustration
  • eg. The lingering of her E zone and the particle are slightly mismatched (this follows the behavior of several other similar types of spells), but is resulting in a little more frustration than we think is worth it
  • E max is also being reduced in power level and being a little more costly for her to cast
Posted in LoL

Is Zaahen Good in League of Legends? Champion Stat Breakdown

Posted on by U.GG

Zaahen, the newest Darkin champion in League of Legends just released on November 19th with Patch 25.23. The question is, how strong is he, and can he be played in roles other than Top Lane?

View Full U.GG Data For Zaahen

What The Data Tells Us

Based on our data, Zaahen ranks as an S+ champion in the Top Lane across All Ranks. While he can also be played Mid or Jungle, he performs much better when he’s in the Top Lane.

To quote Phreak from the Champion Spotlight: “If you’re drawn to-unflinching champions like Illaoi, Darius, or Jax, give Zaahen a try.”

Zaahen at his core is an AD teamfighter that gets stronger the longer a fight goes on. If he’s able to reach maximum stacks during a fight, he is able to revive when killed mid-fight.

Some of his best items are Trinity Force, and Sundered Sky, though some Challenger players have been experimenting with Stridebreaker.

Top Lane Stats

RankChampion TierWin RatePick RateBan RateMatches
ChallengerS+53.16%10.5%25.5%269
Grand MasterS+50.99%9.3%29%506
MasterS+51.86%9.4%29.7%1587
DiamondS+50.89%10.1%30.8%4146
EmeraldS+50.23%10.9%31.2%10,309
PlatinumS+50.09%11.9%30.1%19,497
GoldA49.85%12.6%28.1%31,555
SilverB49.78%13.6%25.2%34,659
BronzeS+50.04%14.7%20.7%22,571
IronS+50.89%15.2%16.9%12,027
All RanksS+50.08%12.9%26.2%137,126

Top Lane Counters

Zaahen has quite a few counters, and interestingly, both Illaoi and Jax are among them, two champions that were listed as “Similar Champions” in the Champion Spotlight.

Unsurprisingly, an armor-heavy tank like Malphite counters him, as well as Teemo who can blind Zaahen and stop him from landing his Q.

Compared to other Darkin?

Finally, let’s compare Zaahen with Aatrox, another Darkin champion who also primarily plays Top Lane.

Overall, it seems that Zaahen is off to a hot start on the rift. Keep track of his best builds, stats, counters and more with U.GG.

View U.GG Zaahen Build
Posted in LoL

Patch 25.23 Notes – League of Legends

Posted on by U.GG

League of Legends 25.23 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 25.23 Overivew

New Champion: Zaahen

Zaahen

Zaahen, The Unsundered, is reborn on the rift November 19th.

  • Zaahen Abilities Rundown here!
  • Zaahen Champion Spotlight here!

Just a heads up that Zaahen’s Eternals are delayed to patch 25.24.

When we make a champ’s Eternals we normally use a champion’s PBE time to see how you all play a champion—what are the key moments that feel great that you’d want to track. However, since Zaahen had a different cycle (so we could keep him a secret until his cinematic) we didn’t get the normal time allowing this. So for the Zaahen Eternals, you have a chance to shape what his Eternals might be! So queue up, lock him in, and start swinging that glaive and maybe your match data will help us decide!

Champion Buffs & Nerfs

Aatrox

See Highest Win Rate Aatrox Builds

Here’s a fun story: Aatrox’s VGU was slated for the jungle for part of his early development before being shipped as a top laner. He’s a very interesting champion with fun mechanics to play around, so we’re alleviating some max-HP caps and adding some jungle juice to see how he performs in this new role.

Deathbringer Stance

  • Monster Damage Cap: 100 ⇒ 100 – 320 (based on level)

Q – The Darkin Blade

  • Bonus Monster Damage: 0 ⇒ 40 flat bonus damage (multiplied by other effects like sweetspots and multicasts)

Ahri

See Highest Win Rate Ahri Builds

Our latest buff to Ahri didn’t get her quite as high up as we’d hoped, so we’re back to deliver some more damage. We’re juicing up her W when used to pick off an individual target to reward her for landing autos, E, or generally just properly isolating her opponents.

W – Fox-Fire

  • Subsequent hit damage: 30% ⇒ 40%
  • Maximum single-target hit damage: 64 / 96 / 128 / 160 / 192 (+ 64% AP) ⇒ 72 / 108 / 144 / 180 / 216 (+ 72% AP)

Ambessa

See Highest Win Rate Ambessa Builds

Ambessa’s jungle play rate never really took off but it’s always been right behind top lane in terms of actual power. We’re giving it a light nudge that should make her balanced in this alternate role and especially help unoptimized players who can’t always get sweet spots to land on large jungle monsters.

Q – Cunning Sweep

  • Monster Damage: +125 ⇒ +150

Ashe

See Highest Win Rate Ashe Builds

We’re delivering a suite of ADC changes in this patch in order to shake up the end-of-season solo queue meta. A few of the most commonly picked are being nerfed and some of the least common are being buffed. We’d also like to move in a direction of making non-caster ADCs more attack speed-reliant, which you should notice in many of the ADC changes later on in this patch.

Ashe has been a top performer in terms of both pick and win rate for most of this season, so we’re tapping her down to create a little more equity in ADC pick rates. We’re maintaining Ashe’s appetite for attack speed by giving her a little bit less from Q.

Q – Ranger’s Focus

  • Attack Speed: 25 / 37.5 / 50 / 62.5 / 75% ⇒ 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60%

Caitlyn

See Highest Win Rate Caitlyn Builds

Like Ashe above, Caitlyn has also been eating up a lot of ADC pick rate. We think she should maintain her identity as a long-range lane bully, but she’s also bursting champions too hard with late game Headshots, so we’re bringing down the top-end damage a bit.

Passive – Headshot

  • Champion Damage Increase: 60 / 90 / 120% total AD ⇒ 60 / 80 / 100% total AD (Crit formula unchanged)
  • Non-Champion Damage Increase: 110 / 115 / 120% total AD ⇒ 110% total AD (Crit formula unchanged)

Cho’Gath

See Highest Win Rate Cho’Gath Builds

While he’s no stranger to being played in all sorts of alternate roles, Cho’Gath has a naturally fitting jungle kit and we’d like to make that work well. We’re adjusting his E damage vs. monsters to no longer care about their max HP and instead just deliver a solid punch to get through his camps. This should be an unequivocal buff to early monster damage.

E – Vorpal Spikes

  • Monster Damage: 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 (+30% AP) + up to 200 based on target max HP ⇒ 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 / 300 (+30% AP)

Dr. Mundo

See Highest Win Rate Dr. Mundo Builds

Dr. Mundo has once again risen up the ranks in popularity due to some very skilled players playing him very publicly. This time, in the jungle! We think Dr. Mundo is appropriately balanced in both roles at the present, but will continue to monitor how he’s performing in the coming weeks. All that said, we’re shipping a very impactful bug fix in this patch, which will increase his win rate, so we’re also preemptively nerfing him a bit. We’re happy with his recent reduction in burst damage, which this bug fix furthers, but want to maintain his overall sustained threat, so we’re re-buffing his functional attack damage.

E – Blunt Force Trauma

  • Bonus Attack Damage from Maximum Health: 2 / 2.2 / 2.4 / 2.6 / 2.8% ⇒ 2 / 2.3 / 2.6 / 2.9 / 3.2%
  • Fixed a bug where Dr. Mundo was getting maximum damage at 30% missing HP instead of 70% missing HP.

Fizz

See Highest Win Rate Fizz Builds

While Fizz wins an appropriate number of games in mid lane, he’s incredibly feast-or-famine and often relies on simply leaving his lane to go kill other champions, so we’d like to make him more robust in playing out his laning phase. In order to do that, we’re improving his early resilience so that he can take more trades and compensate elsewhere to make him a little less ult-reliant.

We’re also taking a swing at enabling jungle Fizz. We think this new role is a bit of a stretch and may not pan out in the end, but we’re swinging hard to get his first jungle clear into something comfortable and seeing if players will enjoy him here.

Base Stats
  • Base Armor: 22 ⇒ 26

Passive – Nimble Fighter

  • Increased by 10 against jungle monsters (now 14 + 1% AP)

W – Seastone Trident

  • Active and on-hit damage deals +60 damage to monsters

R – Trickster

  • Cooldown: 100 / 85 / 70 ⇒ 120 / 100 / 80

Jayce

See Highest Win Rate Jayce Builds

We think Jayce jungle is a bit of a longshot but there’s a chance he’s got a real player base in this new role, so we’re delivering some buffs to make his first clear more comfortable and watching to see how many players are interested.

Q – To the Skies! (Hammer Stance)

  • Bonus Monster Damage: 0 ⇒ 50 flat bonus damage

Q – Shock Blast (Cannon Stance)

  • Bonus Monster Damage: 0 ⇒ 50 flat bonus damage

Jhin

See Highest Win Rate Jhin Builds

Jhin looks quite weak at the present, so we’re giving him some damage buffs and found another place to include the number 4 in his tooltips, which is the only buff he really needs, right?

Base Stats
  • Base AD: 59 ⇒ 61

Passive – Whisper

  • Move Speed on Crit: 14% (+ .4% AS) ⇒ 14%(+ .44% AS)

W – Deadly Flourish

  • Damage: 60 / 95 / 130 / 165 / 200 (+ 50% AD) ⇒ 70 / 105 / 140 / 175 / 210 (+ 50% AD)

Jinx

See Highest Win Rate Jinx Builds

As with the other ADC nerfs above, Jinx wins a large portion of her games and risks crowding out other champions if left untouched amidst the other nerfs in this patch. We want to preserve her identity as a late-game auto attack monster, so we’re nerfing some of Jinx’s spell damage.

R – Super Mega Death Rocket!

  • Maximum Damage: 300 / 450 / 600 (+ 155% Bonus AD) (+ 25 / 30 / 35% missing HP) ⇒ 250 / 400 / 550 (+ 130% Bonus AD) (+ 25 / 30 / 35% missing HP)

Kai’Sa

See Highest Win Rate Kai’Sa Builds

Kai’Sa has been the most picked solo queue ADC in most ranks for months on end, so we’re delivering a small nerf to create more variety in the role. The primary nerf is to her base armor, where a bit less early safety should make her feel more assailable.

Base Stats
  • Base Armor: 27 ⇒ 25

R – Killer Instinct

  • Cooldown: 120 / 90 / 60 ⇒ 130 / 100 / 70

Hwei

See Highest Win Rate Hwei Builds

Hwei’s a well-performing mid laner who has low-quality gameplay when he can simply throw out Q-E and clear waves with little effort. We’d like to weaken his access to non-committal wave clear by nerfing that output. As the intended rank 5 magnitude would mark an over-nerf, we’re partially compensating him with an AP ratio buff. These changes will still result in a net reduction in power and should open up more room for laning phase interactivity.

QE – Molten Fissure

  • Hit Damage: 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 (+ 30% AP) ⇒ 20 / 35 / 50 / 65 / 80 (+ 30% AP)
  • Damage over time: 50 / 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 (+ 50% AP) ⇒ 50 / 87.5 / 125 / 162.5 / 200 (+ 60% AP)
  • Total Damage: 70 / 140 / 210 / 280 / 350 (+ 80% AP) ⇒ 70 / 122.5 / 175 / 227.5 / 280 (+ 90% AP)

Malphite

See Highest Win Rate Malphite Builds

Malphite has a natural jungle kit with a decent gank paradigm, and repeatable damage for killing monsters. He just doesn’t deal enough right now to comfortably clear, so we’re juicing both his early game clear (hint hint start W!) and late-game as well, since he often builds full tank and needs his damage to keep up with growth monster health.

W – Thunderclap

  • Monster Modifier: 1x ⇒ 2x

Mel

See Highest Win Rate Mel Builds

We’re glad that Mel is a viable mid laner (shoutout League’s GOAT for raising awareness!). However, she’s also proven to be one of League’s most frustrating champions, which we’re looking to alleviate. Her passive buffs that required her to take on more risk were successful in our eyes, so we’re headed back to that. To continue to expose her to more risk, we’re weakening Solar Snare’s lockdown and self-peel potential. We know she’s still got such sharp interactions that she’ll still sport one of League’s highest ban rates, but we hope this adjustment will be roughly power-neutral and frustration-reducing.

Passive – Searing Brilliance

  • Damage per spell: 24-99 (based on level) (+9% AP) ⇒ 24-150 (based on level) (+ 15% AP)

E – Solar Snare

  • Root Duration: 1.25 / 1.5 / 1.75 / 2 / 2.25 ⇒ 1.2 / 1.3 / 1.4 / 1.5 / 1.6

Miss Fortune

See Highest Win Rate Miss Fortune Builds

Miss Fortune isn’t winning as often as she should for how straightforward she is to play, and unlike many of the other ADCs in this patch, she is indeed a caster, so we’re looking to amp up her ability to take over teamfights with her ultimate.

R – Bullet Time

  • Damage per wave: 75% Total AD (+ 25% AP) ⇒ 80% Total AD (+ 25% AP)

Ornn

See Highest Win Rate Ornn Builds

While Ornn is a totally viable top laner, we think he could also shine in the tank jungle roster, so we’re buffing some of his monster damage caps. We’re also adding some tooltip clarity, as some of his numbers weren’t exposed to players.

W – Bellows Breath

  • Active Monster Damage Cap: 155 / 180 / 205 / 230 / 255 ⇒ 260 / 320 / 380 / 440 / 500
  • Passive Monster Damage Cap: 250 ⇒ 260 / 320 / 380 / 440 / 500
  • Level-up tooltip now displays the minimum and maximum damages per rank.

Rek’Sai

See Highest Win Rate Rek’Sai Builds

Rek’Sai top has been an enjoyable spectator experience but a fairly miserable one to play against and she’s significantly overpowered for those who know what they’re doing. We don’t want to remove this role from viability but we’d like to reduce just now immovable she is through her lane sustain. Her jungle will take a small hit from this nerf, but she can sustain a small nerf there, as well.

Passive – Fury of the Xer’Sai

  • Fury gained on minion hit: 20% ⇒ 16% (5 ⇒ 4)
  • Max HP gained: 10 – 20% (based on level) ⇒ 9 – 20% (based on level)

Riven

See Highest Win Rate Riven Builds

Riven’s native mobility, strong dueling, and interesting risk profile of having to burn damage in order to close the gap could make for a really compelling jungle champion. She’s also monstrously hard to play, but even accounting for that, she appears to be a pretty abysmal jungler at her current tuning. We’re substantially buffing her first clear to see if players will find a fun, dynamic, high-skill fighter compelling in this new role.

Passive – Runic Blade

  • Bonus Monster Damage: 0 ⇒ 50 flat bonus damage

Sion

See Highest Win Rate Sion Builds

Sion is pretty playable in the jungle but is slightly weak and deserving of a small nudge for players who want to yell “COWARDS!” as they barrel up and down the river. We’re just delivering a light touch to see how many players want to try their hand at Si-ungle.

Q – Decimating Smash

  • Monster Mod: 150% ⇒ 165%

Skarner

See Highest Win Rate Skarner Builds

Last patch’s Skarner changes unfortunately landed him weaker than we had hoped and anticipated. We’re now here to deliver direct buffs in order to give him the power he deserves. We were overly cautious on how much attack damage to give him, so we’re back for more, and his Q isn’t doing quite enough now that he can’t quickly get two cycles off, so we’re buffing its uptime and throughput.

Base Stats
  • AD Growth: 4 ⇒ 5

Q – Shattered Earth / Upheaval

  • Cooldown: 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 ⇒ 8 / 6.75 / 5.5 / 4.25 / 3
  • Target Max HP Damage: 8% ⇒ 9%

Swain

See Highest Win Rate Swain Builds

Swain is quite weak in his most-played role of support. We’re giving him a little more power in his E as well as lowering its mana cost to let Swain support have more room to work with without a mana item, since he typically doesn’t buy one there.

E – Nevermove

  • Damage: 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 240 (+ 70% AP) ⇒ 90 / 130 / 170 / 210 / 250 (+ 70% AP)
  • Mana: 60 / 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 ⇒ 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70

Tristana

See Highest Win Rate Tristana Builds

Tristana is a little underrepresented and could do with a small buff and we’d like to ensure she has good late-game attack power, so we’re bumping her AD growth.

Base Stats
  • AD Growth: 2.5 ⇒ 2.9

Vladimir

See Highest Win Rate Vladimir Builds

We’re continuing to identify ranged top laners who undeservedly gained laning dominance from our recent lane sustain changes, and Vladimir is next on that list of overperforming ranged tops. We’re looking to make his matchups more interactive by giving more room for typically-physical melee champions to strike back during Vlad’s moments of downtime. Also, the number 607 makes it uncomfortably easy to type 6-7 and we just can’t have that.

Base Stats
  • Base Health: 607 ⇒ 600
  • Base Armor: 27 ⇒ 24

Volibear

See Highest Win Rate Volibear Builds

Volibear’s last patch succeeded in addressing his jungle-vs-top gap but left him a little weaker than we wanted across both roles. We’re here to deliver him some more power to our favorite Zilean-hating demigod. We chose attack damage here to ensure that as a moderate-mobility melee champion, his attacks are appropriately threatening

Base Stats
  • Base Attack Damage: 62 ⇒ 65

Xayah

See Highest Win Rate Xayah Builds

While Rakan’s been making waves, Xayah’s been sitting on the sidelines for quite some time. We’re looking to bring up her feather damage to help her cut through her opponents.

Passive – Clean Cuts

  • Damage: 30 / 40 / 50% AD ⇒ 35 / 45 / 55% AD to secondary targets

Zeri

See Highest Win Rate Zeri Builds

Zeri’s in a relatively weak spot with pretty much no presence in pro play as well as a generally low pickrate. We want to bring her back toward those glory days of being one of the fastest ADCs in the game, so we’re buffing her top-end move speed during her ultimate.

R – Lightning Crash

  • Move Speed per Stack: .5% ⇒ 1%

Items

Sunfire Aegis

Sunfire Aegis has been strongly losing to Liandry’s on any tank jungler who can reasonably choose between the two. We’d like to bring back tank-forward itemization here and allow Aegis to return to the forefront.

  • Monster Damage Mod: 1.6x ⇒ 2x
Posted in LoL

All You Need to Know About Zaahen, League’s Newest Darkin Champion

Posted on by U.GG

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 Kayn in 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 Naafiri in 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 Determination for 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.

Q – The Darkin Glaive

Cost: 25 mana – Cooldown: 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 – Cast Time: none

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.

Total Physical Damage:
15 / 30 / 45 / 60 / 75 (+ 100% AD) (+ 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 / 70% bonus AD)

Healing:
5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9% of his maximum health

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.

Bonus Physical Damage:
30 / 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 (+ 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 / 70% AD)

W – Dreaded Return

Cost: 50 mana – Cooldown: 16 / 15 / 14 / 13 / 12 – Cast Time: 0.5s – Range: 850

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.

Physical Damage:
40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 (+ 50% bonus AD)
Total Physical Damage:
80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 240 (+ 100% bonus AD)

E – Aureate Rush

Cooldown: 10 / 9.5 / 9 / 8.5 / 8 – Cast Time: none – Range: 350

Active: Zaahen dashes to the target location. Upon arrival, he flourishes his glaive to deal physical damage to nearby enemies.

Physical Damage:
40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 (+ 50% bonus AD)

Enemies hit by the outer edge are dealt increased physical damage and bonus magic damage, with the latter capped at 400 against monsters.

Increased Physical Damage:
60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 (+ 100% bonus AD)
Bonus Magic Damage:
4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8% of the target’s maximum health

Aureate Rush deals 50 bonus physical damage against monsters.

R – Grim Deliverance

Cost: 100 mana – Cooldown: 110 / 95 / 80 – Cast Time: 0.5s – Range: 600

Passive: Zaahen gains armor penetration.

Armor Penetration:
10 / 20 / 30%

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.

Physical Damage:
250 / 400 / 550 (+ 200% bonus AD)

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.

Posted in LoL

Patch 25.23 Preview – League of Legends

Posted on by U.GG

Update: The full Patch 25.23 notes are live.

Check out the full patch 25.23 here

The Preview Patch notes for 25.23 are here. From Riot Phroxzon via X (Source)

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

-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.

Skarner

-Skarner has been pretty heavily overnerfed, so we’re restoring a bunch of power to him this patch.

Mel

-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

Mundo

-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).

Vlad

-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.

Posted in LoL