The League of Legends Patch 26.20 Preview is here. This is the second of two patches that prepare the game for Worlds. League of Legends Esports closes out the year. Riot Phroxzon on X with the Patch 26.20 Preview.
Champions
Lucian’s best pairings (eg. Enchanters like Milio) have received a large nerf as a result of the 26.19 changes and so we’re returning some power back to Lucian in generic power.
In combination with the Support laning changes from last patch, Lucian’s early kill threat has gone down significantly and so we think we can buff him up a bit.
Vayne also received a nerf recently due to her strength in Top lane in both Pro Play and high level SoloQ.
We’re being very careful about adding more Ranged tops back into the meta as that has been something players have been complaining about, but think that a generic buff + a nerf to Hexplate will make her neutral there (or at least have to go for squishier builds) while buffing Vayne bot back up.
We’re making an adjustment to Sylas, to give him a slight buff in Mid, while keeping his Jungle steady overall.
Overall, this will be a bit of a reshape to Sylas to make him more powerful in the matchups he’s good in, while not having much change in matchups he’s already bad in.
System
Hextech Rocketbelt
Rocketbelt continues to be one of the premier items on Pro Play mages that gives them a bit too much durability. We think Rocketbelt is better positioned as a “go in button” and so we’re making it better at that use case and worse at the flexible use cases for mages (though it is skill expressive).
It mostly results in Mage champions having minimal weaknesses in the highest levels of play while also making them need to be nerfed for regular players (see Orianna’s winrate).
That said, there are some “go in” Ranged champions that we expect this to be power neutral on (eg. Annie, Neeko) that their player bases still love this item on, it should just take a larger tradeoff on damage repeatability.
- We’re further nerfing Experimental Hexplate to allow us to buff up some champions that have been balanced around it (Vayne top). This will also allow us to give Vayne bot a buff
- Hurricane was a little overbuffed, and so we’re pulling back the buff ever so slightly (not by a huge amount here). We’re also featuring a Yunara nerf in the patch, but we’re being careful not to overdo it there in combination