The League of Legends Patch 26.12 Preview is here, and it’s a big one as the game prepares for Act 2 and MSI. 26.12 will see 15 changes to champions, which will be the near sole focus of the patch. Full details from Riot Phroxzon on X.
Champion
Last patch, we had a change to Moonstone that fixed it being doubly impacted by either Grievous Wounds or Heal and Shield Power
Yuumi is one of the few champions who has Heal Shield power baked into her kit and so she was disproportionately impacted
As a result, we’re compensation buffing her
On 26.10, we made some adjustments to Lee Sin that gave power back to some of the fun elements in his kit that lost a lot of power over the years (namely the amounts of dashes he has access to, etc.)
This made Lee Sin a pretty strong champion in higher levels of play again and in a way that we think is fantasy aligned for him
However, the magnitude is a bit too much, so we’re pulling it back slightly
We’re happy with the shape of the changes and how it’s affected his power curve though
Some of the slow stacking changes to Hwei were a lot more power impacting (negatively) than the buffs that he received in the positive direction
As a result we’re adding a bit more power back into his utility aspects that allow him to be a jack of all trades, rather than just being a master of none
Tristana
See Highest Win Rate Tristana BuildsTristana, has a bit of room in bot lane and especially in the midlane where changes to the role quests (that favor a bit more utility/roaming > farming) have been a bit unfavorable there
One of the changes that impacted her negatively was adding a mana cost to Q and so we’re adding a bit of that back to give her a bit more pushing power
This is especially impactful because of Tristana’s low base and scaling mana pool
Ryze is a bit too durable, especially in the early game and he often wins lanes/gets push by simply autoing champions and hitting them with guaranteed damage through W’s, E’s and autos
Ryze will still be on the durable side, especially with his early catalyst purchases, but these nerfs are intended to make him work a bit harder for it
System
Teleport
Especially in Pro play recently, we’ve been seeing some usages of Teleport at very short ranges to prepare quite large shields for tactical usages in combats (such as objective fights)
While this is a cool usage of the spell, it’s a pretty unintuitive behavior and we want to skew its usage to be better to use for its cross-map and “joining fights” capabilities
As a result, we’re reducing the duration of the shield and increasing the shield amount by a bit to compensate
Mid Meta
- For average play, AP Xin Zhao has been tearing up the rift with a lot of his power budget in healing, especially in the early lane, creating some pretty uninteractive lane states.
- We’re tapping this down, as well as some of the top-end healing in the later game.
- Otherwise, a few adjustments to the champions who have a bit of room in Solo Queue, like Hwei, Sylas, Syndra and nerfs to some of the top end, like Cassio (who really benefited from Deathfire Touch being added), Ryze and Ori, who have been strong for pretty much the whole season.
Top Lane Meta
- Aatrox has been generally a little on the weaker side, especially for higher levels of play, and so these changes are targeted at rewarding him for matchups where he’s already favored and able to get sweet spot hits off more reliably.
- Gwen is also being buffed a bit with her early laning strength (which we walked back pretty significantly in an earlier patch). With K’Sante rising in priority (from DHelm buff and other meta shifts), we’re also positioning Gwen as a good pick into these tanky Sion and K’Sante style picks.
- Similarly, Jax is getting more throughput in early trades both in regular matchups and in some of the matchups that favor short trades (eg. ranged matchups).
- Overall, we expect the Top meta to have a few more fringe and counterpick options available.