Patch 26.8 Preview – League of Legends

Posted on by Geekmandem
The 26.8 patch preview

The 26.8 patch preview for League of Legends is out. A small handful of buffs and nerfs were announced ahead of the full release next week. From @RiotPhroxon on X Source

Viego Buffs are now “delayed”

26.8 Buffs

– In line with the fantasy fulfilment I was talking about yesterday, Hwei changes are leaning into his identity as a combo mage
– It is a cool pattern and in particular, this set of changes skews him more towards being effective in mid lane compared to bot lane with the level scaling
– We’re not opposed to him being viable in bot lane, but pushing him towards midlane
– We think this makes Hwei more uniquely satisfying compared to say having his damage come from predominantly single QQ, QW or QE casts
– Lillia’s power clearing and movement speed are some of her most defining aspects
– We’re restoring some of that clear speed to better fulfil her fantasy there
– Lucian in bot lane doesn’t have a strong differentiation from Corki as a similarly early game dominant ability focused caster
– These changes are trying to put more of Lucian’s power into his early mobility and giving him more casts of it
– We’re going to monitor Lucian in solo lanes
– There’s some notable discrepancies for specifically Viego’s data in our internal data that led us to want to initially buff him
– Looking at external data however seems to be notably different
– Going to double check this data tomorrow and validate the data pipelines before determining whether or not to proceed with the buff

26.8 Nerfs

– We separated some of Mel’s damage output in 26.3 by creating a separation between her first initial hit and the subsequent hits
– We’re reducing how much value she gets from this initial Q landing and backloading the damage more to give her damage more counterplay
– We still think we need to do more work to Mel long term
– (ARAM) Another note here is that we’ve been investigating some ARAM specific changes to Mel, since her reflect can be harder to play against in that mode, given the narrowness of the play area
– Mundo rates very highly on our frustration metrics and our changes here are targeted at average play Jungle
– Not much to say here, we think top is in a more reasonable spot
– Base AD reduced from 51 to 49
– AD growth reduced from 3.3 to 3

26.8 Yuumi Changes

– We recently discovered a Yuumi bug where her ultimate was healing her attached ally each time it heals another ally
– While the number of times you’re hitting multiple people with ult are rare, it is a significant nerf to the healing in the best case
– We’re fixing this bug and compensating the ultimate (and other sources of healing)

Future Changes Philosophy

A lot of the direction of our changes in the near future are aimed at emphasizing the unique strengths/strategic differentiators of champions.Eeven if it will cost some aspect of the champion being flat in winrate across skill levels.

In many ways, a champion that has lost resonance with a core portion of their user base, even if they can sit at a higher power level may represent a downgrade in experience for players of that champion.

Expect the buffs this patch to translate more of the power budget into the area of the champions that are unique to them, and we want to be moving the power of the roster like this over time.