Author: Geekmandem

Patch 26.6 Preview – League of Legends

Posted on by Geekmandem

The 26.6 full patch preview for League of Legends is out, with another handful of champion buffs and nerfs. From @RiotPhroxon on X Source

Patch 26.6 Preview

Another push has been made to the LP gains in Apex. The plan is for this to be the final fix.

Note: The Xerath changes are a joke

Patch 26.6 Nerfs

Shen

See Highest Win Rate Shen Builds
Shen Jungle has really started to take off recently, which is really awesome to see! That said, he is a tad strong, especially in lower levels of play

Zaahen

See Highest Win Rate Zaahen Builds
We’re really happy to see Zaahen picking up a sizeable audience in both Top and Jungle, but now that regular players, in addition to experienced players are starting to demonstrate that top end mastery performance, he’s looking too strong across the board. Currently, we think his Jungle is a bit stronger than Top, so the nerfs are mostly focused there

Patch 26.6 Buffs

Skarner

See Highest Win Rate Skarner Builds
Skarner has been out of the spotlight for a while and since we’ve tapped down a few of the things that were causing him to be overbearing in Top (especially W max and the E point blank kidnaps), we think he can get a bit more power there

Olaf

See Highest Win Rate Olaf Builds
– These changes are targeted at Jungle, which has been languishing a bit
– Top is a little bit weak, so he will be getting buffed there a bit too

Azir

See Highest Win Rate Azir Builds
We’re buffing Azir to distribute some of his power back into regular play capabilities through scaling power that Azir players hopefully will appreciate

Lissandra

See Highest Win Rate Lissandra Builds
– Lissandra hasn’t really felt the same since her Q cooldown was nerfed in Season 9
– Times have really changed since then and her perma priority waveclear + aftershock taking days and in the vein of making champions feel better to play, we’re seeing if she can sustain having this cooldown again

Systems

  • Chempunk Chainsword has been one of the weaker Grievous items for a while. While we don’t want Grievous items to become too commonplace, as it subtly degrades champion kits when too common, it is still just a bit weak for even that purpose
  • The support item minion penalty has been a pain point for support users, and with role quests, the risk of funnelling (why it was there in the first place) has been reduced pretty significantly, so we’re removing that drawback
  • Sunfire’s build cost (1000g) has long been cited as a pretty painful experience with the item. While we think having some painful build paths is valuable for the long term value of League, we think this one is a bit too painful

EUW/VN Matchmaking

  • We’ve had about a week and a half now of autofill vs autofill matchmaking being Live and we’re seeing excellent results
  • In regions like Vietnam with a high autofill rate, we’re seeing autofill vs autofill go from ~25% of games to 75% of games
  • In EUW, regular play was already good (90% of the time autofill vs autofill), but in high MMR, we went from 30% to 85%
  • We will continue to roll out to more regions over the coming patches as we’re seeing positive results here

Apex LP

  • So far, so good on Apex LP fix resolving most of the issues. The fix looks to be good and is holding
  • >98% of players should be between 19 and 21 in terms of LP gains, calibrating up and down in small amounts (+19/-21 or +21/-19 or +20/-20)
  • We have one small fix coming in 26.6 to make this even more consistent

League of Legends Added a Feature That Teaches You When to Kill Minions

Posted on by Geekmandem

Announced back in 2025, the Last Hit Assist feature has made its way into the live League of Legends client. Though it has very limited use for now, it acts as a training feature for players.

Last Hit Assist is Live

After months of testing on the PBE, the Last Hit Assist feature is now live with Patch 25.5. The feature aims to help new players get to grips with the game, allowing them to see when a minion is low health and able to be “last hit.”

Any initial worries from LoL fans about it ruining the game have been put to bed, however. The feature will only work in a few modes:

  • Tutorials
  • Co-op vs AI
  • Custom Games
  • Practice Tool
  • Swiftplay
  • Rotating Game Modes on Summoner’s Rift (Brawl)

The new feature will be turned off by default, so you will need to be turned on in-game via the Settings – Interface – Show Last Hit Assist. However, new accounts will have the feature turned on by default. This will then show you a white indicator when the minion is able to be killed by you.

The visual will also show the area as you get closer to it. The area will scale as you level up and increase damage against mobs. So if you buy a Long Sword or level up an ability that impacts your base damage, it will take that into account. Things such as Sheen or Jax W won’t alter it. This is to avoid any temporary buffs to your damage, causing the bars to jump around too much.

Speaking about the feature, the developers explained:

After a very long time on PBE, we’re excited to bring Last Hit Indicators live! These are primarily aimed at players who are still learning the game (Summoner’s Rift specifically). Because let’s be real, we all used to just randomly hit minions in the hopes that it would kill them without knowing when to do it. We’re going to be letting the indicators sit in queues that newer players are mostly playing and will be monitoring how they’re going before thinking about whether we should extend them further.

The aim is to help new players, alongside such features as the “WASP” movement. The feature does not currently work for Azir (W) or Graves due to their unusual attack patterns. The feature is not likely to roll out into Ranked or Draft.

10 New League of Legends Skins Just Hit the PBE, Including Victorious Braum

Posted on by Geekmandem

A number of new skins arrived on the League of Legends PBE. Skins for the upcoming April Fools line, alongside a number of other skins, have all landed. We also get our first look at the Season 1 Victorious Skin, which will feature Braum.

The dates for these skins vary, with the April Fools skins coming first and the rest coming later. We also get a first look at the full Shyvana Rework skin changes.

April Fools Skins 2026

April Fools Blitzcrank

Starting off is April Fools’ Day, which will arrive on the Rift on April 1st. Four skins will be availible Vex, Blitzcrank, Tahm Kench, and Sejuani. There is no theme connected to the styles of the skins outside of them being “silly.” Thanks to LeagueOfLeaks for the PBE images.

Other PBE Skins

A number of other skins have also joined the PBE that are due to drop across the next few patches. Starting off is a Mythic Variant of PROJECT: Master Yi, coming April 15th. This skin will be joined by a Space Groove Zac and PsyOps Vladimir skin coming on the same day. The skin for Vladimir has not yet been shown, but was confirmed alongside Space Groove Zac earlier in the year.

Victorious Braum

We also have our first look at the Victorious Braum skin for those who won at least 15 games during Season 1 of 2026.

Shyvana Rework Skins Updated

Shyvana’s Rework is set to release on March 18th alongside patch 26.6. Thanks to SkinSpotlight, we have a full look at all the reworked skins for Shyvana when her rework is live.

This League of Legends Mythic Skin Used to Cost $200. Not Anymore

Posted on by Geekmandem

Peacemaker High Noon Yone is set to return to the game via The Sanctum gatcha mechanic in Patch 26.5. It will join the Divine Architech Porcelain Aurelion Sol skin currently on the Sanctum for the same minimum 40 Ancient Sparks.

Peacemaker High Noon Yone

As with the Sol skin, it will cost no more than $100 to unlock the new Peacemaker High Noon Yone skin. Though any bad luck protection from previous skins will carry over. As with Divine Architech Porcelain Aurelion Sol, the Yone skin will be a Mythic.

When the skin was first added to the game, it technically cost $200 due to it requiring between 100 and 150 Mythic Essence or capsules.

Patch 26.5 New Skins in Act 2 Damacian Pass

Alongside the return of the Peacemaker High Noon Yone skin, we will also get three new skins added in Patch 26.5.

The first new skins will be Corrupted Petricite Maokai and Xerath. The two skins will come included in the new Act 2 Demacian Pass, alongside the Prestige Requien Sona skin. These two Corrupted Petricite skins are an improvement on Act 1, which only had one skin, with Capsules filling in the gaps before we unlocked Morgana.

Corrupted Petricite Maokai
Corrupted Petricite Xereth

Prestige Requiem Sona and Act 2 Bundle

Prestige Requiem Sona is the final reward in the Demacia Act 2 Battle Pass. Similar to Prestige Veiled Lady Morgana from Act 1. The skin will also feature a Chroma if you purchase a higher tier of the Battle Pass, alongside borders, emotes, and icons.

The skin will feature a unique recall animation, visuals, and sound effects. As with many Sona skins, it’s incredibly detailed and full of life.

League of Legends Brings Back Its Team Deathmatch Mode for Two Months

Posted on by Geekmandem

League of Legends Patch 25.6 will see the return of the Brawl game mode. Brawl was first added in May 2025, before leaving the game in June of 2025. With the recent success of ARAM Mayhem, Riot Games looks to be trying to keep fans engaged with more game modes.

Brawl Returns in Patch 25.6

Brawl Returns

Brawl is back, baby! Grab your friends, grab your enemies, they’re brawling everybody out here! Brawl will be live from March 4, 2026 through April 28, 2026.

The team-deathmatch mode will return to LoL between March 4th, and April 28th 2026. A similar period to 2025. The mode focuses on quick combat, condensing the LoL MOBA format into one lane. The draft-based format is the same 5v5 gameplay, but with an added escort element. The pre-game works much like Swiftplay does in the current client, with players picking a loadout, picking a champion, runes, and summoner spells.

Players can choose between Cleanse, Flash, Ghost, Heal, Ignite, and Barrier. If you are playing in a party, you do all of this before matchmaking, as there is no champion select screen. Once 10 players are found, the game starts after an AFK check.

Brawl Features

Set on one large lane, with terrain separating it into smaller sections, teams will fight in a team deathmatch format. The entire map is visible to both teams.

The aim of the map is to reduce the enemy team’s health to “0” by killing each other or minions.

  • Killing an enemy champion does 5 damage to the enemy team
  • Killing minions does 1 damage to the enemy team
  • Escorting your own minions to the enemy pandle portal will deal 1 damage

IF one team is losing by enough, they will get a buff that increases their damage by 20% and reduces the damage they take by 20%. This effect will last until the health difference has normalised.

Teams are able to surrender at 15:00, with a 4/5 requirements to pass the vote.

Champions and Minions

Brawl was first shown off in 2025 (6:19 in the above video)

As with any special game mode, it comes with a few changes to the way champions and minions work.

  • Champions start at level 3
  • Attack speed is capped at 3
  • 0:20 into the game, Homeguard is active, granting a 165% movement increase for 2 seconds inside the spawn
  • On Fire is a buff awarded when players chain together takedowns. The buff gives bonus movement speed, attack speed, and HP, alongside halved basic ability cooldowns. You will take increased damage, however, and be worth a large bounty.
  • All champions chain the following buff
    • +100 summoner spell haste
    • Increased base mana by 100%
    • 5 experience per second, increased to 7.5 after 5:00
    • Gold 150 per 10 seconds, increased to Gold 200 after 5:00
    • Minion gold is shared between allies nearby
    • Empowered Recall

Minions will also get a few changes.

  • Spawning starts at 0:30
  • Minions take 75% increased AoE damage
  • Minions waves spawn every 25 seconds and feature two caster and two melee minions, with a siege minion spawning every alternate wave between the sides.

As with any mode, there are hundreds of individual champion buffs and nerfs. For example, Teemo does 5% reduced damage, and his Noxious Traps recharge at a slower rate.

League of Legends Chat Bans Are Being Replaced With Something Much Worse

Posted on by Geekmandem

League of Legends Patch 26.5 bans are about to level up. Riot Games has revealed plans to punish people who are abusive in chat with huge bans. Starting in Patch 26.5, gameplay bans will be given for players who are “severely disruptive” in comms, rather than just chat bans.

Why are Riot Games Making These Changes

No longer will chat bans be issued for players who are highly toxic in chat. Instead, Riot Games is getting serious and will now issue full gameplay bans for players who are severely abusive in chat. The change comes as part of the new Community Pact guidelines with a clear message: Play with respect, or don’t play at all.

Previously, players would be issued a chat ban, essentially muted, and informed that their team they were muted. This new change looks to finally take action against players who ruin the game for others. This could mean a player could use hate speech against another player or a threat of violence, and they would only get muted. Riot has finally admitted that this “doesn’t align with player expectations.”

League of Legends Patch 26.5 bans

Riot Games has been cautious in its language to distinguish between what “mild flame” and “severe offences” are. So, you can still call your jungler an “idiot”, while discouraged, you won’t get banned. However, the following forms of communication will get you a gameplay ban:

  • Hate speech
  • Threats of physical violence
  • Severe and egregious aggression towards another player

One other change is that this ban won’t just look at your public chats. Direct Messages (DMs) will also be taken into account, though not until later in 2026. This should stop players from adding another player just to flame them after a game.

This isn’t the first time Riot Games has claimed to be strong on chat abuse, sadly. Since 2025, when the “Escalation Ladder” came into effect, a four-strike system was implemented to move players up bans, from 10 to 25-game chat bans, to suspensions and permanent bans.

Riot Games also has a zero-tolerance approach in Valorant, with “real-time mutes” since 2022; however, that game has a similar reputation to League of Legends when it comes to toxicity.

It remains to be seen if these changes will help, but they can’t make things any worse.

Source: League of Legends News

Posted in LoL

Riot Moved Thousands of League of Legends Players Out of Their Ranks

Posted on by Geekmandem

Riot Games is looking ahead to Ranked in 2026, alongside how the changes they’ve already made have impacted the game.

A number of positive changes were discussed; there was also a mention of the EUW-ranked “trial”, which got a more detailed update in the follow-up blog post.

LoL Ranked Changes 2026 Impact

The changes Riot Games has made to ranked have had an impact on the game already. According to Riot Games, they’ve seen:

  • Time to get into the game is down about 30% on average
  • Dodged lobbies dropping from 19% to 4%
  • MMR distribution at the top and bottom of the ranked ladder
  • 14% of players are in Iron, Riot want to change that, as most of these players are actually veteran players
  • For now, Riot has moved those players into Bronze, to keep Iron as the “new player” rank
  • The skill gap between Diamond IV and Diamond I was roughly the difference between Bronze IV and high Silver. Riot has moved those in Diamond I into Master
  • Master MMR range has been widened, making the LP requirement for Apex higher
  • New top and bottom tiers could come in future
  • More adjustments to LoL ranked are expected in future

Overall, Riot Games talked about the varied range of skill levels in League of Legends. The redistribution of ranks seems to be a major issue that they’ve solved.

MMR, Autofills, and Secondary Roles

On the changes to autofill and matching up players, alongside secondary role parity. The only news was that the change is coming, and that autofilled players should be more likely to play against an autofilled player. This should also impact players in secondary roles. Though, as of publishing, that hasn’t gone live yet, with the update still awaiting official release.

EUW trial has now gone live in 26.4, with OCE and VN servers to follow. If the testing of this goes well, it will roll out to other regions in 26.5.

On X, Matt Leung-Harrison, Lead Gameplay Designer for LoL confirmed that testing had “gone quite well (it is now fully Live and chugging along).” Matt continued with some examples of the impact.

So far, we are seeing a dramatic reduction autofill vs primary mismatches, eg. Autofill JG vs Main JG in high MMR (Master+) go from 35% >>> 5%. ie. Players should expect >90% of games to have role assignment balance. Outside of high MMR, this was already happening, so not much is changing.

Riot Flew Shyvana Mains to Los Angeles to Get This Rework Right

Posted on by Geekmandem

Riot Games has officially given the details of the full Shyvana Rework kit. The release is set to be released in March, and the rework brings an end to one of the longest waits in League of Legends history for a rework.

The rework has been in the works for nearly a decade, being announced alongside Volibear, Udyr, and Fiddlesticks.

Shyvana Rework: Abilities

Passive – Scalemail

When Shyvana secures takedowns on enemy champions, large minions, and large monsters, she is granted Scalemail stacks. Permanent stacks that grant Armor and Magic Resist.

Q – Emberstrike

Human Form – Shyvana’s new Q will deal damage to the primary target and those in the area around her. The attack will also reset her auto-attack.

Dragon Form – An additional recal that deals increased single-target damage, rather than the current design.

W – Inferno Aegis

Human Form – Grants a shield and increases movement speed before detonating in an area around her after a short delay.

Dragon Form – The explosion from the shield will now also heal Shyvana if it hits an enemy champion or monster

E – Molten Burst

Human Form – A fileball that now also slows enemies when hit

Dragon Form – The fireball now passes through targets and explodes at the end of the cast. This leaves a trail of fire from Shyvana.

R – Dragon’s Descent

Human Form – Transform into a dragon and leap forward, fearing enemies along the path.

Dragon Form – All basic abilities are now empowered

One note on the Syvana Rework in Riot Games’ video is that Shyvana is a dragon now. As such, she will use all parts of her form to attack, like her claws, wings, etc.

Speaking about the rework, Riot Games talks about working with fans to make sure their favourite champion wasn’t changed too much. They noted, though were not specific, about times in the past where this had happened and upset champion mains. This included flying out Shyvana mains to the Riot Games HQ in Los Angeles to provide feedback on changes and the design.

Shyvana Rework Release Date

The rework will drop with patch 26.6 on March 18th. We have Patch 26.5 still to come, meaning the Shyvana rework is just two patches away at the time of publishing.

Shyvana’s Rework Finally Has a Date, and Riot Dropped New Skins Too

Posted on by Geekmandem

During the LCK Playoffs, Riot Games gave fans a glimpse at a few new skins, alongside a good look at the Shyvana Rework coming on March 18th.

These new Warhounds skins will offer up a chance to support League of Legends Esports, while we also get to look at April Fools Blitzcrank, and the Corrupted Petricite skins for Xereth and Maoki.

Warhounds Senna, Warwick and Naafiri Skins

The first three skins shown for the Warhounds skin line, with skins for Senna, Warwick, and Naafiri shown off. These are due to release alongside the Shyvana Rework on March 18th.

These new Warhounds skins will also see a percentage of the sale go to League of Legends Esports teams. The new skin line will allow fans to support the global esports scene in another way outside of the usual World Battle Pass.

Blitzcrank April Fools

The end of the trailer gives us a horrifying look at this year’s April Fools skin. Blitzcrank is the one to get the skin this year, and it’s very on-brand.

Shyvana Rework

The reveal also gave us a much better look at the new Shyvana Rework. Showing off her abilities, alongside her Dragon Form.

We also get a brief look at the Corrupted Petricite Xerath & Maokai skins during the trailer, which we knew were coming but have only really seen as splash art until now

League of Legends Fans Waited 10 Years for This Shyvana Rework

Posted on by Geekmandem

We’ve known for a long time that the Shyvana Rework was the next major League of Legends character to get a rework. Now, Riot Games has finally given us the first details with a reveal trailer.

Shyvana Rework Release

Shyvana’s Rework is set to drop on March 18th in the second Act of the Demacia story. The rework to Shyvana the Half Dragon, is a VGU/rework that aims to bring the character more in line with modern characters. The new rework is expected to drastically change both the human and dragon form. At the end of the trailer above, we get a pretty good look at what she’ll end up like in-game.

Gameplay details have not been made public; however, some leaks suggest the majority of her kit will be reworked. Her human form Q is rumoured to be an empowered auto-attack. The Dragon Form is likely to offer a similar ultimate, seeing Shyvana fly across a large area and do massive AoE damage.

The other note from Riot Games was a look at fixing the “visual clarity” of Shyvana, specifically on her Flame Breath (E). Shyvana’s rework is a very long time coming. In fact, it was announced nearly 10 years ago alongside Volibear, Udyr, Fiddlesticks and more. Those three have had theirs for a long time, which has made Shyvana’s wait even harder for fans of the half dragon.

As for why she needs a rework, Shyvana has been at the lower end of the scale when it comes to Jungle performance for some time.

Sitting at B in our Jungle tier list currently, with a fairly poor Pick Rate, it looks like only diehard Shyvana mains are sticking with her for now. Which is most likely inflating the poor win rate to a somewhat respectable level. Regardless, the rework will be sure to increase her pick rate. So be prepared to see a lot of Shyvana when she releases on March 18th.

Posted in LoL