In a twist from the usual, the LoL Patch 26.19 ARAM Mayhem and Arena updates mostly focus on Arena, with Mayhem taking a major backseat.
ARAM Mayhem has been incredibly popular since it launched, and it may stay as a permanent spot. But this week, the focus is on Arena, so let’s take a look.
ARAM: Mayhem
One of the biggest changes is that High Roller is getting nerfed again. Riot reckons it still snowballs way too hard if you grab it early, so its drop rate has been cut further. This should mean it shows up as a first augment way less frequently.
Mad Scientist is one of the notable bug fixes: it was meant to give you 30% Adaptive Force but was handing out 30% AD and 30% AP at the same time. That’s been fixed, so if it felt suspiciously strong on hybrid champs, now you know why.
Removing Upgrade Ravenous no longer leaves you with negative Life Steal on all your items, which is a sentence that should never have needed writing. Bel’Veth players with Ultimate Awakening will be happy to hear her Q now resets properly after ulting, too.
Arena
Guests of Honor
Three new Guests have shown up, and all of them change how rounds play out:
- Ivern spawns brush wherever a team is standing when they lose a round, and it stays for the whole game. Expect the map to get very leafy by the late rounds.
- Senna opens three portals to the Death Realm that anyone can hop into, then pop out of any portal to get back.
- Thresh lets downed players throw a lantern to allies every 8 seconds. It shields anyone nearby, and clicking it pulls you to your downed teammate.
New Augments
Twelve new Augments join Arena in patch 26.19. Ten are Mayhem imports (Hellbent, Surge Field, Sonata, Shark Bait and friends), so if you’ve been playing ARAM lately, you’ll recognise plenty of these. Shark Bait is a good one for pure chaos: you die, turn into a zombie for 3.5 seconds, then a giant shark bursts out of the ground and knocks everyone up. At max level, your whole team goes shark on death.
The other two are brand new and were made with VestionOCE and SoyJamiie, winners of the For The Win Creator Invitational:
- Death Dealer replaces Flee. Pop it on an enemy to drag you both into the Death Realm, with 2 seconds of invisibility on entry. At max level, killing your target gives your team another revive and delays theirs.
- Got That Dog In Em spawns a hot dog every 3 seconds that makes whoever eats it breathe fire. Anyone can pick them up, enemies included, and if an enemy eats one, they can damage their own team. Die while breathing fire, and you explode. We are going to see some absolutely unhinged teamfights.
Champion changes
The headline nerf is Bel’Veth. Her R passive bonus AD ratio drops from 3 to 1, and her E on-hit effectiveness is cut to 8 – 16 (from 12 – 24). It’s a pretty major nerf, so you should see her a little less often.
The stackers are getting reined in too. Veigar drops from 12 to 10 passive stacks per round with a longer E cooldown, and Sion goes from 133 to 111 stacks per round. Zed, Rell, Ornn, Dr. Mundo, Lillia and Rammus all take smaller nerfs.
On the buffs side, Elise is the big winner with her E cooldown slashed from 12 – 10s to 8 – 6s and W down to 10s. Neeko’s Q secondary-hit AP ratio doubles to 50%, Locke’s passive damage goes up across the board, and Aphelios gets a proper stat bump to his health and AD growth. Lee Sin’s W shield also scales much harder with AP now (80% to 120%), so AP Lee enjoyers, your time has come.
Augment balance
Scavenger doubles from 500 to 1,000 gold, which makes it a genuine pick now. Spellcraft gets a shorter cooldown and more base damage, while Giant Slayer takes a 5-point nerf at every rank. Chroma Flux has also been demoted from Prismatic to Gold.
One sneaky systems change: bonus Energy regen based on missing health now caps at 400% (up from 100%). Energy champs like Zed, Lee Sin and Kennen will barely run dry when they’re low.