Riot Games has revealed the 2026 Lunar Skin line for League of Legends. The 2026 lineup is split into two halves: Firecracker Ziggs, Caitlyn, Ashe, Poppy, Seraphine, & Yuumi, and Petals of Spring Yasuo, Katarina, Jayce, Camille, and Lilia.
The 2026 Lunar Skins will celebrate the 2026 Chinese Lunar New Year. Which is the year of the fire horse, hence the theming and overall fire aesthetic.
Lunar 2026 Skins Cost
Each of the skins will cost 1350 RP, meaning each skin costs around $10 each with some change.
Revenant Reign Viego is here, and it’s the next Exalted Skin to hit the Rift after Arcane Jinx. The new skin completely changes how Viego looks in-game, altering his appearance as the game goes on. It features unique visual effects on each ability alongside unique sound effects. The skin also has a new set of emotes, including a new recall animation so you can show off your flashy new skin.
Revenant Reign Viego Cost
The new skin is available via the Ancient Spark Currency, allowing you a chance to summon the skin or a number of other rewards. The skin has a 0.5% pull rate, which is guaranteed after 80 pulls. Each Ancient Spark costs 400 RP, meaning at worst this skin could end up costing you $250. Though that 80 pull guarantee does carry over from previous Exalted skin events. So if you tried and failed to get the Arcane Jinx skin, then those chances roll over to this event.
Revenant Reign Viego Closer Look
As you can see below, the skin evolves as you go through the swords, defeating enemy champions to finish the skin’s final form.
The second patch of 2026 is here, and includes a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch 26.2 notes for additional details from Riot (source).
Aatrox has struggled to find a place on the Rift in the new season with split pushing on the rise and fewer chances to flex his team fighting strengths. We’re giving him some additional power this patch, primarily in the jungle, where his growing audience has been kneecapped, as well as in the top lane where he could use more ways to benefit from experience. We hope this satiates Aatrox players, especially those with Endless Hunger.
Passive – Deathbringer Stance
Bonus Magic Damage based on Target Max Health: 4-8% (based on level) ⇒ 4-10% (based on level)
Ashe is underperforming in the new season so we’re here to bring her back up near her former power level. We like that she has a strong affinity for buying attack speed, so we’re just making those purchases multiply a little bit harder.
Gwen jungle has skyrocketed in both pickrate and winrate. While we’re excited to see her loving the new season and snipping from dusk til dawn, we need to make sure she’s not turning all opponents (especially jungle camps) into paper.
Jayce jungle (AKA Jungle Jayce) has become extremely popular and is also much too strong. One of those two things is awesome and the other isn’t. We’d like to retain JJ as a viable option in the jungle, but without him dominating the competition. So we’re delivering a light nerf that’s intended to bring him more in line with other junglers.
Lillia has been in a dream since the changes to Rift. Unfortunately we need to wake her up as it’s become a nightmare for her opponents. We want her to maintain her spot as our premier in-and-out skirmisher in the jungle, but without her prancing out of control. We are looking to nerf her ability to stay topped up as well as bring down some of her late game damage.
Passive – Dream-Laden Bough
Heal Against Large Monsters: 39 (+15% AP) ⇒ 39 (+9% AP)
Malphite’s been a frontrunner on the Rift for a while, both in top and in the jungle. We’re actually very happy that he’s found a real audience in the jungle! That said, he’s still overperforming, so we need to bring him down now while still leaving him with two roles to play. To do that, we’re reducing some of his trading and clearing damage while retaining his high durability to physical damage and strong engage power. We’re also hitting jungle a little more as it’s meant to be slightly weaker than his top lane, as opposed to slightly stronger, which is currently the case.
Master Yi has been struggling as a result of the changes in the new season. We’re looking to return some of his power so that he can keep up with other junglers and better live up to his full hyper carry potential.
Nunu & Willump are devouring the competition in the new season, so we’re here to bring them back to a fairer level of power. To do that, we’re reducing a mix of the PvP and PvE power out in their kits to give opponents a fighting chance.
Sivir has become an extremely dominant ADC pick, regardless of whether or not she buys Essence Reaver, so it’s time to bring her down a notch. Since she has very strong wave control and great damage scaling, we’re looking to bring down her top end a little.
As expected Smolder has become much more powerful with the new Essence Reaver and increased minion counts. Since we’ve tuned our systems to our liking for now, it’s time to take stock of individual champions, Smolder being one. We want to make sure Smolder’s strong late-game damage has durability tradeoffs, even when buying the occasional HP item.
Taliyah’s been missing from the jungle as of late and the gameplay changes for the new season didn’t help her, quite the opposite actually. To that end we want to get her rocking and rolling in the jungle again so we’re buffing up her mid game clear speed to help her out.
Q – Threaded Volley
Bonus Damage to Monsters : 20 ⇒ 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40 (Note: Empowered Boulder damage is still increased by 80% to primary target.)
Viego is performing worse this season due to direct adjustments and overall game-wide changes. As a result he needs some power added back in, both compensating some crit scaling that he lost and generally just making him a better fighter.
Base Stats
Attack Speed Growth: 2.25% ⇒ 2.75%
Q – Blade of the Ruined King
Percent HP On-Hit Bonus Crit Damage Mod: 50% ⇒ 70%
Zed’s recent jungle changes didn’t affect him as strongly as we had anticipated, and players have noticed, resulting in a resurgence of pick and ban rate. We’d like to slow his clear and lower his potency, this time with more accuracy now that we have a better understanding of how to tune him in the jungle.
Passive – Contempt for the Weak
Monster Damage: 1.8x ⇒ 1.2x
Items
In 16.1, we added nine new items. We’re mostly happy with how they landed in terms of users and use cases, but there’s definitely some balance work to be done here. This patch, we’re adjusting Bandlepipes down and Fiendhunter Bolts plus Hexoptics C44 up as we think they’re the furthest off from where we wanted them to be. At the moment we’re also keeping our eyes on some of the other items/cases like the fast powerspike offered by Dusk and Dawn or the distribution of power on Endless Hunger between damage, haste, and omnivamp. The synergy between Diadem of Songs and Echoes of Helia is very cool, but it’s something we’ll be monitoring to make sure that it doesn’t become the only way to build a champion to exist between the mage and enchanter space.
Bandlepipes
The pipes are sounding good on the rift but they’re crowding out other support options due to their low price point. While we’re excited for their newfound popularity, we don’t want them to completely steal the spotlight.
Price: 2000 ⇒ 2300 gold
Combine Cost: 500 ⇒ 800 gold
Fiendhunter Bolts
Fiendhunter Bolts is doing what it’s supposed to do, but it’s not quite well enough to get picked over its competition. We’re buffing up a little bit all around on the Bolts to help it hold up better against the other Zeal items.
Attack Speed: 40% ⇒ 45%
Damage Multiplier for Guaranteed Critical Strikes: 75% ⇒ 80%
Bonus True Damage for Critical Strikes: 10% ⇒ 15%
Hexoptics C44
Hexoptics has found a place in some situational builds for longer range champions, but is a bit too niche and a little weaker than needed for it to function for most of the marksman roster, so we’re giving it a general appreciable AD buff and easing the range requirement.
It’s been a few days since 26.1b dropped and just under a week since 26.1, the first patch of the year. Now we’ve just gotten the full preview for 26.2, which is scheduled to release on January 22nd. Source
Official Patch 26.2 Preview
Patch 26.2 Full Preview!
Jungle
Some of the main changes this patch are re-distributing some of the jungle power
This includes buffs to some of the AD junglers like Aatrox, Master Yi, Viego, Trynd (micropatched last patch) and nerfs to some of the outliers like Zed, Jayce who has been strong for a while
Several of the AP or Tank junglers have really benefitted from being able to kill Epic monsters from increased pet damage, where they otherwise previously lacked DPS to do so and so they’re being tapped down a bit as well
We expect that this shift within the Jungle role itself is going to have ripple effects into Pro Play, but are waiting to see the outcomes of this before taking larger swings and having Junglers hold more dominion over Epic monsters is an intended directional adjustment
Game Strategy
One of our major goals with this season was bring into better balance the 3 major strategic decisions
Sieging, Grouping for Objectives & Split Pushing are all intended to play a part
In 2025 in particular, Grouping for Objectives was by far the dominant strategy, so the adjustments to tower plates, homeguards, minion spawn rate and nerfs to objective power were intended to change some of this balance
In particular, it was hard to justify hitting towers sometimes without rewards for doing so and in some situations, champions were ready to hit towers, but there just weren’t minions in the right place at the right time to facilitate that especially in the sidelanes
We’re curious to see how strategy for this evolves over the course of the Season
Gameplay Thoughts –
Game Time & Snowballing: For the most part, our metrics around snowballing have come in and they’re not looking any higher than last season (and for average play are lower). This is pretty much the same across every region.
Game time is also looking slightly longer in each region, and even moreso given that the game starts earlier.
But at the same time, players have reported that games feel a lot faster. We have a few hypotheses:
Certainly, downtime with more frequent minion spawns and homeguards makes it feel like there’s constant action happening.
Hitting towers and getting those chunks of damage from crystalline overgrowth both feels more rewarding (and more confronting on the receiving end), so it feels like progress is being made faster, even if it’s not actually that much faster.
Barons are being taken earlier, since they’re spawning again at 20 minutes, even though Baron takes are a bit weaker than they were before (gives +150G instead of +300G), so games don’t typically end after the first Baron push. Players have often associated the first Baron take with the game being over, but that is a bit less of the case this Season.
For now, we’re not going to make any changes to Snowballing and Game Length, but will continue to monitor how things play out.
Balancing the needs of the Summoner’s Rift audience is pretty tough. There is a section of the audience who really enjoys the slow, methodical form of “Classical Chess/League” and at the same time, there are some sections of the audience who love “Blitz Chess/League”.
While we don’t intend to go all the way down to Bullet chess speeds, we also need to be very responsive to the needs of our audience, especially global players and younger players who are often looking for a game with less downtime and faster pacing. At the same time, we don’t want to move so quickly that we’re alienating our long time core players who might be looking for a slower, more strategic game. We’ll continue to fine-tune this over the course of the season.
Vision: The amount of vision has also been a hot topic. We’ve heard a lot of your discussions on Faelights and the overall state of vision. We’ve opted not to do anything to do them for 16.2, but are in active discussion for 16.3, especially in terms of how they affect early jungle ganks. Otherwise, we’re not planning anything major until Pro Play starts.
Role Agency & Strategy: We’re going to hold a little bit on taking a definitive stance on which roles are most and least powerful, we don’t feel any are so out of line that we need to act now. It’s been fun to observe how some players are putting roles at the top of their tier list and different players are putting the same role at the bottom (cough ADC cough).
There are a lot of things for players to optimize here, but so far, we’ve been pretty happy with how the game, especially in the mid-game feels a bit more strategic; should I greed tempo to get an Overgrowth proc here, should I push next wave to try and get that turret chunk for gold.
Bugs & Features – [Fixed]Draven Q: Bug that was causing reduced damage has been micropatched onto Live
– [?] Dropped Inputs: We’ve been actively triaging some reports of dropped inputs on 16.1 when sequencing abilities. Things like Q -> Hydra -> W on Fiora working differently in 15.24 compared to 16.1.
If you have any more examples of these, please pass them over, so we can track them down. – [16.3]Support Quest + Control Ward Bindings: We’ve been testing 2 changes to address some of the bad feels around control wards. The first is to put the control ward in the role quest slot at the start of the game (this has some weirdness with how the UX of the slot is conveyed and can be confusing to players).
We’re also testing an option where control wards can be double bound to both the role slot and the item slot where you hold it in your inventory.
We’ve also been investigating whether we should be reverting V be defaulted back to caution ping and to re-bind the role quest slot to a different button.
– Cassio: Please remember to buy boots on Cassio, she has feet now
Ranked – [16.2] Champ Mastery: We’re actively resolving an issue where Champ Mastery grades are higher than normal in certain situations (S’s in situations where it’s not warranted)
– [16.2] Aegis of Valor: We’ve resolved an issue where in <1% of games Aegis of Valor was not proccing in situations where it should (eg. when autofilled)
– [16.2/3] Start of Season LP: For players in OCE & China who played games during the period where Ranked placements were compromised, we will be granting players bonus LP for games played during that period
– [16.2] KR and JP Ranked Climbers: For players in Korea and Japan who started their climbs during the compromised period, we’re also looking to remedy their situations sometime during Patch 16.2.
– We’re seeing reduced dodge rates across all MMR’s
– We’ve also been seeing some successful lobby terminations for disruptive behavior and are continuing on our journey to roll this out in more regions
– But overall the Ranked changes have rolled out pretty smoothly and we’re happy with how things have gone there
Following the release of the 26.1 update, League of Legend’s first micro-patch of 2026 has arrived, and it includes a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch updated 26.1 notes for additional details from Riot (source).
1/9/2026 Mid-Patch Updates
“Here’s a summary of the changes planned for the next update: “We have a few changes to 26.1 that we wanted to get out before the weekend. We have a few early balance changes, some quick fixes to ARAM Mayhem, and some bugfixes that we have ready to go. Appreciate all your reports and your early feedback on the new season!”
Clash Schedule Updates
“We’ve moved the first Clash of the year back one week.
Clash registration will now open on January 19th @ 11:00 AM (Local Time)
Tournament days will now be January 24th and 25th.”
ARAM/ARAM Mayhem Updates
We’ve disabled the Bastionbreaker item from ARAM and ARAM Mayhem.
We’ve temporarily disabled the Executioner augment from appearing for Gangplank due to an unintended interaction.
We’ve temporarily disabled the Flashy augment while we resolve some bugs that have popped up with it.
Fixed an issue that allowed the ability to roll multiples of the same augment and stack them.
We’ve identified an issue that caused two Stormrazors to appear in the shop.
Fixed an issue where Zeri could reach over the attack speed cap. (This was actually fixed in the original 16.1 patch but was missing from the notes)
Many of Aphelios’s abilities can crit, and while we compensated for this power increase, he’s still become one of the strongest champions in the game. We’re here to reduce some of that burst damage while preserving the power of his weaker AD-AS builds.
Graves is looking worse for wear in the new season and seems to not need some of the preemptive crit damage mitigations we put in place. So we’re here to help his crit attacks have more oomph. Graves’s critical strikes are pretty complicated but the short of it is that now a crit will deal twice as much damage as a non-crit if all pellets hit.
Kayle – Q max is looking very strong this patch due to the top lane XP buffs. Removing some AP scaling we added back when there were less AP items available that improved attack power.
Nilah has been the biggest winner of this patch’s systemic changes to bot lane and so is deserving of a meaningful adjustment. Because she gets plenty of attack speed from her Q, we’re taking a chunk out of her base stat growth.
Quinn has suffered more than most in the new season from systemic changes like the removal of Symbiotic Soles and role quests. Since she was hit hardest in top lane, we’re targeting her level scaling and giving a boost to her passive. This should further reward effective snowballing and buff the early trading she needs to get her quest online earlier, supporting Quinn players whether they want to continue playing a heavy roaming style or lean more into split pushing.
Rammus has had a lot of success with some of the new map changes. We still want him to maintain his identity as a particularly strong pick into an AD comp, but we look to curve a bit of that power against magic damage champs.
We overcompensated for how much Tryndamere would gain from the base crit damage increases, so we’re here to make things better for him. We’re leading with a big E buff to make him less reliant on lucky crits for successful trades and help him not need a Tiamat for wave clear. He’s also getting a W slow duration to make him better at taking extended fights.
Fixed several issues where Actualizer could incorrectly increase mana costs indefinitely.
Known Issues
Some settings are not available when in Ranked games.
When in spectator mode if you skip forward in time towers will remain standing after being destroyed.
Winter Rift Baron is still appearing. (sorry Baron just wants to be on the Winter Rift a little longer, we’ll get him to put the mittens away later)
Patch Notes Preview
26.01b Preview!
Our first Micropatch of the year is coming!
Expected to be on Live in a few hours.
Overall – Patch overall has landed about within bounds a few balance outliers as expected but nothing crazy – We're continuing to monitor things like Faelights, Homeguards,… pic.twitter.com/kdIpqPuhXa
Patch overall has landed within bounds and a few balance outliers are expected, but nothing major.
Riot continues to monitor things like Faelights, Homeguards, general game snowballing and will have more details to share on Monday, January 12, after they’ve observed more of how things are playing out.
More details on how the team currently feels about role power is coming on Monday.
Game times are slightly up by around 1.5% on average, but long and short games are mostly the same.
Only the most extreme outliers are being addressed in this pass, they’re saving the rest for patch 26.2.
Bot Lane
Essence Reaver is the biggest outlier right now, so it’s being nerfed to see what it does.
Miscellaneous
They’re monitoring weak/strong items, including Bandlepipes, Dusk & Dawn, etc.
Power levels within the jungle role are looking a bit off, but nothing micro-patch worthy outside of Graves and Rammus.
Overall, AD junglers have dropped some, Tank junglers are up.
Non-Gameplay Related
Riot continues to triage a few things with Demacia Rising and there will be updates from LoLDev when it’s back online.
They intend to rectify KR and JP accounts who landed in the wrong Ranked buckets as soon as possible.
Some players are not receiving Aegis when they are autofilled and Riot’s investigating the root cause of the bug.
Riot Games has uploaded a new skin trailer for Revenant Reign Viego, set to go live with the 26.0.2 update on January 22, 2026.
A mad king betrayed by his most trusted knights, Viego has returned from the Land of Death to slay those who turned against him and his beloved. And he’ll use their seven traitorous swords to do it.
Earlier today, Riot has posted a video of Pabro and Meddler talking about the upcoming changes in Season 1 of 2026. If you’ve missed the video, you can watch it here.
Highlights
Can’t tune in? Here’s a quick summary of the key takeaways:
The map will feature a Demacia-themed reskin with towers and gold winged acdents.
Demacia Rising is a new evolving meta-game going live tomorrow, where you’ll help grow the Kingdom of Demacia.
ARAM: Mayhem’s run is getting extended and it’s also getting a bigger update in the forthcoming 26.03 patch.
Riot is trialing a new lobby hostage intervention system in some regions to take immediate action on bad actors in your lobbies. The feature will be rolled out over the next few patches.
The 2026 esports season kicks off with First Stand in São Paulo, Brazil, taking place from March 16 through March 22.
To decouple side selection and draft order, Riot’s introducing “First Selection”, giving pro teams more flexibility.
Bigger features currently being worked on include a brand new integrated client, a revamped Summoner’s Rift, changes to pre-game choices such as runes, and a reworked New Player Experience.
The first patch notes of the new season have arrived, and include a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch 26.1 notes for additional details from Riot (source).
Akshan’s abilities currently scale crit in three different ways and we’re making that more consistent here. His passive auto, being functionally a true basic attack, will crit for 100% value. Meanwhile, the crit scaling on E and R are going down as compensation. We’re also doing some discretionary adjustments to allow Q-max and E-max to perform at similar levels of power by adjusting their rank-up incentives.
Passive – Dirty Fighting
P second shot crit damage: 30% of bonus crit damage (1.225/1.345x) ⇒ 100% of bonus crit damage: 2/2.3x
Fixed a bug where the second shot could bypass blind if it didn’t crit.
Aphelios has a lot of intricacies and some of his abilities try to behave exactly like basic attacks. With that in mind, we’re converting Severum’s active to total attack damage in line with similar abilities and generally lowering the bonus AD ratios of several abilities that already scale well due to firing off basic attacks that can crit as part of their cast.
Ashe is already quite attack-reliant and pretty balanced but considering she buys about 1.5 crit items per game, we’re lowering her late game a little to make room for the increased damage coming her way.
Base Stats
Attack Speed Growth: 3.33% ⇒ 3%
Attack Damage Growth: 3.45 ⇒ 3
Passive – Frost Shot
Crit Scaling: 100% (up to 1.75/2.15x) ⇒ 100% (up to 2/2.3x)
Caitlyn’s top-end Headshot damage has gotten out of hand and with the value of critical strikes going up it’s about to get even stronger, so we’re taking a heavy swing to Headshot’s top end. We’re also making her R scale with Infinity Edge, as it already scales with critical strike chance, but we’re reducing its damage to make room for her stronger basic attacks.
Passive – Headshot
Crit Scaling: 0-148.75/182.75% total AD ⇒ 100%*Bonus Crit Damage (0-100/130% total AD)
R – Ace in the Hole
Crit Scaling: Up to 1.5x ⇒ 30% of bonus critical strike damage: up to 1.3/1.39x with IE
While Cassiopeia’s no boots passive is very thematic, the addition of more boot based systems over the years (like role quest rewards) has made it feel like a punishment at times instead of a boon. We think it’s important for Cassio to have the opportunity to engage with these new systems so we’re reworking the passive into a new movement based effect. (We also wanted to do Soobin a solid.)
Base Stats
Base Movement Speed: 328 ⇒ 335
Passive – Serpentine Grace
Passive Rework: Gain 4-72 Movement Speed (Based on level), but she cannot purchase boots. ⇒ Increased effectiveness of all Movement Speed buffs by 6-40% (based on level).
Corki isn’t particularly strong at the moment, so while this is a nerf on paper, we expect Corki will be overall stronger at the start of the season. This nerf is aimed at weakening his ability to crush a minion wave right before a Recall.
Draven is very auto-attack focused and averages about two crit items per game, so he’s also in need of some compensation. Considering he’s gaining direct auto-attack DPS, we’re trying to compensate him directly on the same axis.
Elise is in a silly spot where ability power quickly fails to scale her damage against monsters after the mid game. We’re delivering a change that will be a slight buff on average but is primarily meant to let her damage scale up with AP like it would for anyone else.
Gangplank is one of two champions (alongside Smolder) who we think is going to gain extra power due to Essence Reaver once again building from Sheen. We expect him to perform much, much better with his increased critical strike damage, so we’re pulling out many of the unique crit scalars that have been added over the years and delivering an extra hit to his E on top.
Critical strike chance on Garen is pretty good since both his basic attacks and Judgment are improved by it. We want to continue to make space for non-crit Garen builds, so we’re compensating the global critical strike damage increase and updating the calculation to properly discount bonus crit damage.
E – Judgment
E Crit Ratio: 80% of total (1.4/1.72x) ⇒ 30% of bonus (1.3/1.39x)
The functional result of these Graves changes should be almost nothing. He’ll deal about 1% more damage with his basic attacks when critically striking.
Base Stats
Crit Damage: 45% of bonus (33.75/51.75%) ⇒ 35% of bonus (35/45.5%)
Total Damage on Crit: 250-357% total AD ⇒ 252-360% total AD
Now that the top lane quest can raise champion levels to 20, we’re looking for any champions who intermittently scale their passives and giving them another breakpoint if they deserve one. Jax is one such champion who’s gaining a bit more attack speed at level 19.
Passive – Relentless Assault
Now gains an additional 1.5% attack speed per stack at level 19.
We like the overall shape of how Jinx functions and generally just want to preserve the value of her minigun’s high attack speed, so we’re making sure her two stances are more distinguished from one another and generally lowering a bit of spell damage to keep her attack-focused.
Kindred’s E mechanics are rather confusing and they build several critical strike items already. So we’re updating the E to be much easier to understand and reducing the numbers. We’re also modernizing the E’s monster cap to allow for more damage when building AD and ranking up the ability.
E – Mounting Dread
Missing Health Crit: 1.5/1.9x if target is below 25-75% (based on crit chance) Health ⇒ 50% of bonus crit chance and crit damage always (up to 1.5/1.65x)
Pounce Damage: 1.75/2.15x on crit ⇒ 50% of bonus crit chance and crit damage always (up to 1.5/1.65x)
Monster Damage Cap: 300 including base damage and bonus AD ratio ⇒ 200 to only the %HP portion (This is a buff in almost all scenarios)
Lucian’s builds are pretty sensible and as a spell-focused ADC, but we want to make sure his spell scaling is good. We’re updating R to fire even more bullets with crit damage, which will make crit scale his ult just as well as it scales basic attacks. Considering he’s already got extremely strong AD scaling and we want to make sure that Navori Flickerblades feels good, we’re bringing down some of his Q’s AD scaling.
Miss Fortune tends to build quite a lot of critical strike chance and we’d like it to stay that way, but she can’t just be directly buffed so we’re here to compensate some of that value by softening her Q crit mod. For her R, we want to make sure that critical strikes feel like they have some impact, so we’re increasing the crit mod slightly, but in order to not push her scaling too hard, have compensated that with a new base damage and a lower AD ratio.
Q – Double Up
Active Critical Damage: 1.75/2.15x ⇒ 50% of bonus crit damage (1.5/1.65x)
R – Bullet Time
Damage: 80% total AD (+ 25% AP) ⇒ 20 / 30 / 40 (+60% Total AD) (+ 25% AP)
Crit Scaling: 1.2/1.28x ⇒ 30% of bonus crit damage (1.3/1.39x)
Nilah’s in an interesting place where her Q didn’t scale with Infinity Edge, so unlocking that avenue marks a small power increase on top of her basic attacks getting better, so we sought to find other ways to slightly lower her late game scaling as compensation.
Base Stats
Attack Speed Growth: 2.25% ⇒ 2%
Q – Formless Blade
Active Damage: 5/10/15/20/25 (+ 90/95/100/105/110% total AD) ⇒ 0/10/20/30/40 (+ 100% total AD)
Crit Scaling: Up to 2x ⇒ 80% of bonus crit damage: 1.8/2.04x
As Quinn builds a decent amount of crit and that crit manifests in stronger autos and more passive procs, we’re compensation nerfing those same auto-reliant passive procs.
Passive – Harrier
Damage: 10-95 (based on level) (+ 16-50% (based on level) total AD) ⇒ 15-120 (based on level) (+ 40% bonus AD)
Rengar is getting a heavy re-script. This is mostly intended to maintain current functionality and feel, while addressing bugs and tech debt. The list of bug fixes is too long to add here so it’ll be added to the bugs section. Alongside the crit changes, we’re looking to make Rengar’s Q work more intuitively by letting the underlying attack itself roll for critical strikes, and if so, deal bonus damage based on his total AD. This removes an optimization around rushing Infinity Edge to enhance the old forced-crit mechanic and also makes him not immediately lose 30% of his damage if his opponents build Randuin’s Omen. We’ll keep an eye on lethality-vs-crit Rengar and how it performs next season as we suspect Essence Reaver will be a big deal on him.
All abilities rescripted
Q – Bonetooth Necklace
Q is now consumed on plants
Q is no longer always always considered a critical strike
Q damage no longer deals up to 101.25% total AD bonus damage based on crit chance and damage
Q now deals 100/130% total AD bonus damage if Rengar crits the attack.
We like that Samira’s R and Q are almost direct auto-attack replacements and want to preserve as much of their crit damage as possible. However, with the value of crit going up, the value of AD must then go down.
Q – Flair
Q Non-Crit Damage: 5/10/15/20/25 (+ 95/102.5/110/117.5/125% total AD) ⇒ 0/5/10/15/20 (+ 110% total AD)
Q Critical Strike Damage: 1.25/1.65x with IE ⇒ 50% of bonus crit damage: 1.5/1.65x with IE
R – Inferno Trigger
R Non-Crit Damage: 5/15/25 + 45% total AD ⇒ 20/40/60 + 30% total AD
R Critical Damage: 1.75/2.15x with IE ⇒ 100% of bonus crit damage: 2.0/2.3x with IE
Like Jhin, Yasuo, and Yone, Senna’s guaranteed critical strikes cannot sustain a 2x modifier, so we’re lowering her base crit damage down to a value similar to last year.
Base Stats
Crit Damage: 100% of total crit damage (1.75/2.15x) ⇒ 90% of total (1.8/2.07x)
When Shaco crits during a Backstab or a Deceive, everything crits along with it for his full crit damage, so his top end can be very, very high. We like that he builds for crit sometimes and want to let as many of these tools inherit the new higher base crit damage, but also want to modernize his other scalings to respect crit damage mods more consistently and generally preserve the total power level of Shaco builds that don’t buy any critical strike chance.
Passive – Backstab
Damage: 20-35 (based on level) (+25% bonus AD) ⇒ 20-35 (based on level)(+ 20% bonus AD)
Smolder, like Gangplank, stands to gain a lot of power from Essence Reaver’s changes in this patch so we’re taking a swing at how strongly his Q scales with critical strike purchases.
Q – Super Scorcher Breath
Crit Scaling: Up to 1.75/2.15x ⇒ 50% of bonus crit damage (Up to 1.5/1.65x) (also affects passive Q stacks)
Tristana’s E is one of the sharpest-scaling abilities in the game, and considering her late game is already poised to be great with a strong attack speed steroid, long range, and lots of crit damage, we think the top end of her E can stand to go down a few pegs.
Tryndamere is getting some real gameplay updates with this patch and some very real nerfs due to how much critical strike chance he normally has. To weaken how incredible his early game all-ins can be with 200% crit damage, we’re nerfing his early bonus AD from Q and nerfing his early E as well. However, he’s also getting some new tools.
First, his Q now gives full value at 10% remaining health, meaning he can get the full bonus attack damage during his ultimate and it no longer has a disincentive for ranking up. Second, his W will now slow enemies any time they are running away from Tryndamere, regardless of where they were looking when he cast it. We expect this substantial increase in reliability is a big buff, so we’ve preemptively nerfed the slow itself. Though the slow duration is going down, the AD reduction is still the full four seconds regardless of facing.
Viego buys a decent amount of crit chance and we want to make sure those crits allow him to play out a consistent auto-attack pattern, so the larger nerfs are to the active damage of the Q and R.
Q – Blade of the Ruined King
% Current HP Crit Scaling: 100% of total (1.75/2.15x) ⇒ 50% of bonus (1.5/1.65x)
Second Strike Crit Scaling: 100% of total (1.75/2.15x) ⇒ 100% of bonus (2/2.3x)
Active Crit Mod: 100% of total (Up to 1.75/2.15x) ⇒ 50% of bonus (Up to 1.5/1.65x)
R – Heartbreaker
Crit Scaling: Up to 2x ⇒ 70% of bonus (Up to 1.7/1.91x)
Yasuo won’t be much different this year. Considering he doubles how much critical strike chance he gets from each item, he just isn’t allowed to crit for full damage.
Yone won’t be much different this year. Considering he doubles how much critical strike chance he gets from each item, he just isn’t allowed to crit for full damage.
Yunara has a crit build and an on-hit build, but even her on-hit build almost always picks up Hurricane, so she’s getting stronger no matter what she does next season. We’re looking for nerfs that will skew more toward low-Attack Speed high-AD crit builds, as they’ll be more directly buffed by the global crit damage increase.
It’s been a while, but we’ve got a new active item. This one is made to support mana-stacking builds, to create more builds where mana isn’t just a limitation but instead make it so that it can be an advantage to have large amounts of mana available to you. Activating Actualizer significantly increases your manacosts in exchange for lower cooldowns and more ability damage, healing, and shielding for a short duration, so get your mana items ready for a very powerful popoff moment.
Build Path: Lost Chapter + Blasting Wand + 1050g
Total Gold Cost: 3100g
Ability Power: 90
Mana: 300
Ability Haste: 10
[ACTIVE] Mana Made Real (60s cooldown): For 8 seconds, your mana is Empowered. While Empowered, your spells cost 100% more mana, you gain (15 + .005% bonus mana)% increased ability damage, healing, and shielding, and your basic ability cooldowns progress 30% faster.
Bandelpipes
Tank supports don’t have very many items, and the ones they do have generally focus on helping them roam or protect their allies. We wanted to go a different direction this time, instead giving them a team-wide attack speed aura you can keep up in fights as long as you’re able to frequently apply crowd control to your enemies.
Fanfare: Slowing or Immobilizing an enemy champion grants Fanfare for 8 (melee) / 4 (ranged) seconds. Fanfare grants 20 Movement Speed. While you have Fanfare, nearby allies, including yourself, gain 30% (melee) / 20% (ranged) attack speed.
Bastionbreaker
Most AD assassins aren’t particularly good at ending games, even when they are capable of getting lots of kills. This can lead to pretty frustrating situations where the assassin player feels like they don’t have the tools they need to complete the game, and the players on the receiving end get continuously killed and stay trapped in a game where they can’t survive. Bastionbreaker gives AD assassins a new luxury item that can help them close out games by giving them large amounts of damage to epic monsters and turrets as long as they’re building lots of lethality and can kill some takedowns.
Build Path: Brutalizer + Serrated Dirk + 863g
Total Gold Cost: 3200g
Attack Damage: 55
Lethality: 22
Ability Haste: 15
Shaped Charge: Dealing Ability damage to a champion or epic monster deals an additional (30 + 150% lethality) true damage.
Sabotage: Taking down a champion within 3 seconds of damaging them grants Sabotage for 90 seconds. While you have Sabotage, your next attack against an epic monster or turret deals an additional (300 + 2500% lethality) true damage over 3 seconds.
Dusk and Dawn
Most AP fighters have incentives in their kit to autoattack, but they have very little access to items that actually support that pattern since Lich Bane and Nashor’s Tooth don’t offer the defensive stats that this subclass often needs. Dusk and Dawn offers a Sheen pattern that doubles on-hits to help champions in this space live their dreams of sustained combat with lots of additional on-hits to enhance whatever their kit is already doing.
Spellblade (1.5s cooldown): After using an Ability, your next Attack deals 100% base AD + 10% AP bonus magic damage on-hit and applies on-hit effects an additional time.
Endless Hunger
Since the removal of Goredrinker and the removal of omnivamp on Eclipse, AD caster fighters have had little to no access to sustain via the item system. Endless Hunger is a heavy AD-scaling item that rewards building high amounts of AD and can lead to some awesome popoffs in teamfights if you can get a takedown and keep casting through the enemy team.
Feast: When a champion that you damaged within 3 seconds dies, gain 15% omnivamp for 8 seconds.
Fiendhunter Bolts
When marksmen look at Zeal items, we want them to have different options to choose from that are good in different situations or good for particular champions. Fiendhunter bolts allows for a concentrated moment of power after casting an ultimate, which is particularly exciting for the marksman that already have that pattern like Twitch, Zeri, or Yunara. Some others might like the ultimate haste this item offers, or just want to be able to get immediate combat value after ulting.
Build Path: Zeal + Scout’s Slingshot + 850g
Total Gold Cost: 2650g
Attack Speed: 40%
Critical Strike Chance: 25%
Movement Speed: 4%
Night Vigil: Gain 30 Ultimate Haste.
Opening Barrage (45s cooldown): After casting your Ultimate, your next 3 basic attacks within 8s gain 50% attack speed and critically strike for 75% of your normal critical strike damage. If an attack would already critically strike, it deals normal critical strike damage and also deals 10% bonus true damage.
Hexoptics C44
We’ve always wanted to support more diversity in crit marksman builds after the first item, so Hexoptics C44 is here to add an additional option for those looking to opt into big teamfight outputs. If you can get one takedown, you can get some extra range to help you secure more kills, and on top of that you also get some bonus damage scaling based on how well you can space your opponents.
Build Path: Pickaxe + Noonquiver + Long Sword + 275g
Total Gold Cost: 2800g
Attack Damage: 50
Critical Strike Chance: 25%
Magnification: Deal up to 10% increased damage with attacks, based on how far away the enemy is (max damage at 750 range).
Arcane Aim: When a champion that you damaged within 3 seconds dies, gain 100 additional attack range for 6 seconds.
Protoplasm Harness
Tanks have lots of tools to make them more durable in different ways, but Protoplasm Harness offers them a Lifeline item that has some movespeed and tenacity to enable a choice: do you want to keep going forward, or do you want to try to leave the fight? If you’re tanky enough to survive, you can even get the full benefits from the healing over time this item grants, which scales with your armor and magic resistance to make sure it slots well into resistance-building tank builds.
Build Path: Kindlegem + Giant’s Belt + 800g
Total Gold Cost: 2500g
Health: 600
Ability Haste: 15
Lifeline: Taking damage that would reduce your health below 30% causes you to gain 200 maximum health for 5 seconds, then heal (200-400 [level scaling] + 250% armor + 250% magic resistance) health over the duration. While regenerating health, you gain 15% increased size, 10% Movement Speed, and 25% tenacity.
Whispering Circlet / Diadem of Songs
This is a two-item pair for enchanters: a new evolving Tear item. Some enchanters really like mana and some even step into the mage system to get it, so we’re going to offer a new item that allows them to get flat mana from the enchanter system but also scales well with additional mana purchases if anyone does want to get into a heal-based mana-stacking build.
Whispering Circlet
Build Path: Forbidden Idol + Ruby Crystal + Tear of the Goddess + 850g
Total Gold Cost: 2250g
Health: 200
Mana: 300
Base Mana Regeneration: 75%
Heal and Shield Power: 8%
Harmony: Gain (.005% bonus mana)% Heal and Shield Power.
Manaflow: Landing Abilities grants 4 max mana (doubled vs champions). Transforms into Diadem of Songs at 360 max mana.
Diadem of Songs
Health: 200
Mana: 1000
Base Mana Regeneration: 100%
Heal and Shield Power: 8%
Harmony: Gain (.005% bonus mana)% Heal and Shield Power.
Consonance: While you or any ally you’ve healed or shielded in the last 3 seconds is in combat with champions, each second, heal the lowest health nearby ally champion for (.008% bonus mana).
Returning Items
Hextech Gunblade
Gunblade is one of the most requested removed items, as well as a popular item in alternate game modes despite a relatively limited champion user pool. We think that we can control some of the negative gameplay of this item with tuning, especially on the amount of Omnivamp granted and on the frequency with which users can apply the powerful active effect, so we think this is safe to add back in.
[ACTIVE] Lightning Bolt (60s cooldown): Shock the target enemy champion, dealing (175-253 [level scaling] + 30% Ability Power) magic damage and slowing them by 25% for 1.5 seconds.
Stormrazor
Stormrazor complements our efforts at increasing the variety of items available to critical strike-using champions, providing another Energized effect in that system. Stormrazor will be our second Attack Damage + Attack Speed + Critical Strike option in the ecosystem, lowering the degree to which critical strike build paths funnel through Yun Tal Wildarrows.
Build Path: B. F. Sword + Cloak of Agility + Scout’s Slingshot + 700g
Total Gold Cost: 3200g
Attack Damage: 50
Attack Speed: 20%
Critical Strike Chance: 25%
Energized: Moving and Attacking generates an Energized Attack.
Bolt: Your Energized Attack applies 100 bonus magic damage and grants 45% Movement Speed for 1.5s.
