$ cat lol/patch/26.21
93 changes. Source: official patch notes.
We've kept the Emperor of the Sands’ mana pool pretty dry to make sure he needs to use soldier attacks properly for lane control early instead of just spamming [Q] Conquering Sands, but this is overly restrictive now that there are strong rank up incentives on his [W] Arise! We’re buffing his Mana Growth so he can more freely use his abilities to contest lane.
Base Stats
Darius has moved a bit too far away from being a persistently durable damage threat that needs to be kited to more of a one shot combo playstyle. Since he has some room for power, we’re giving him a slight boost so he can swing that axe more often in sustained fights.
Q - Decimate
Miss Fortune has been in a relatively decent place throughout the year, but with the Hubris nerf this patch, we’re looking to compensate with a couple buffs to her damage output.
E - Make It Rain
R - Bullet Time
The boy and his yeti lost some power when we nerfed Hextech Rocketbelt earlier this year so that ranged mages weren't just buying it for a dash to safety, so we’re restoring some of that damage elsewhere.
R - Absolute Zero
We’re tapping up Orianna’s scalings to help her chunk a bit harder with her bread-and-butter combo in the late game without giving too much additional power to her laning phase.
Q - Command: Attack
W - Command: Dissonance
After the significantly early game nerfs to Ryze in 26.19, he hasn't been rewarded enough for succeeding when he does scale, so we’re buffing that.
Q - Overload
W - Rune Prison
Our favorite unstoppable juggernaut is looking rather stoppable in recent patches. We’re giving him some buffs to his baseline durability and rewarding him when he succeeds at using his ult to GET IN THERE rather than run away.
Base Stats
R - Unstoppable Onslaught
Taliyah is one of a handful of mage junglers, and we think she can be better supported for meta diversity. We’re buffing her [E] Unraveled Earth damage to make it more satisfying to land her CC combo.
E - Unraveled Earth
Vel’Koz has been a fairly quiet pick this year, having little presence or meta impact in mid and support. We’re looking to give him a little bit of help by rewarding him for landing his combos.
Passive - Organic Deconstruction
Q - Plasma Fission
Like Vel'koz, Zyra has had relatively little impact in the meta as tanks and enchanter supports have reigned supreme. We’re giving Zyra a greener thumb this patch to help her combat the forces trampling over her plants.
W - Rampant Growth
Like her best friend Caitlyn, Jinx has been similarly dominant in the meta, even with the Hurricane nerf last patch. We’re slowing her roll to make it a tad harder to get her snowballing.
Base Stats
Lee Sin has continued to be extremely popular since his adjustments to how his [W] Safeguard cooldown works with allies. While we like the extra flexibility that has given him, it's a bit too much power, so we’re nerfing the cooldown a bit along with a minor bug fix to how his E reveal works against invisible enemies and another small nerf to his [R] Dragon's Rage damage.
W - Safeguard
E - Tempest
R - Dragon's Rage
Our favorite huntress has been sitting at an extremely high winrate in high skill brackets, toeing the line into overpowered territory for some time now, even if she's not currently meta. Now that we’re bringing down the power of some other powerful meta junglers like Lee Sin, we’re giving Nidalee a minor nerf to prevent her from getting out of paw.
W - Pounce
E - Primal Surge
Damage on Qiyana's Q turned out to be a lot more impactful than we anticipated, so we’re partially reverting the buff we gave her back in 26.17.
Q - Elemental Wrath / Edge of Ixtal
While Nidalee's winrate has been borderline overpowered in the high skill levels, Rammus has been rolling over pretty much everyone else, so he’s getting a light nerf too, ok?
W - Defensive Ball Curl
Tristana’s early laning has devolved a bit into "Level 1 press [Q] and just auto attack to take complete control of the lane", which is a pretty low gameplay and off flavor way for her to succeed. We’re hitting her early [Q] attack speed so she’ll have to work a bit harder before jumping on her foes.
Q - Rapid Fire
In this set of changes, we’re mainly looking to snipe top lane Varus, where he tends to max W, unlike the more common Q max in bot. This won't bring his [Q] Piercing Arrow back up to prior Lethality Varus levels of power, but we believe it will help a lot with our ability to tune him for bot lane. As a maxed ability, it also offers more gameplay to Varus and his opponents to interact with than some more passive damage on W.
Q - Piercing Arrow
W - Blighted Quiver
It’s time for the Glorious…Devolution. It seems Viktor has evolved past the point of exploitable weaknesses, so we’re opening that up a bit by making him slightly more vulnerable in early game skirmishes and across the board.
Base Stats
Q - Siphon Power
The last changes to Yone successfully got him to start considering crit in his first item purchases, but also put him at a somewhat unsustainable power level. We are giving him a moderate nerf to bring him down a bit.
Q - Mortal Steel
Caitlyn’s been at a very high pick and ban rate for most players for months now despite adjustments to other marksmen and the bot meta, so it's time to nerf her. We have felt that her late-game scaling has been too strong for a while now, so we’re moving some of her power from her eyepopping full build headshots into her early game Q damage to rebalance her power curve.
Passive - Headshot
Q - Piltover Peacemaker
Locke’s been out for long enough now that we have a better picture of where he’s overly excelling and where he’s falling a bit short. Some of those areas are his extremely generous mana tuning and ability to shrug off harass, and we’re also refining his power curve by improving his scaling damage slightly, because he falls off a bit too fast if he’s not able to close out games early.
Q - Ritual Nails
Base Stats
W - Soul Ignition
E - Ashen Pursuit
We're smoothing out some of the rough edges in Taric’s kit to allow him to shine a bit more. Way back in the day, Taric’s W was adjusted to combat the popular Master Yi + Taric funnel strats. A consequence of this was that his spells would fizzle if they were cast at the same time that his bound ally became untargetable. We believe this harsh restriction to how his abilities function is no longer necessary given the existence of Role Quests, so we're partially reverting this change so that spells now work on untargetable allies, though we are still keeping an existing exemption on [E] Dazzle for champions that disappear on screen because the gameplay is too unclear (sorry, Master Yi).
Q - Starlight’s Touch
E - Dazzle
R - Cosmic Radiance
Alongside the Taric QoL changes, we’re giving Twisted Fate’s R the same treatment so he can reveal champs even if they’re untargetable at the time of activation.
R - Destiny
Like Lee and Qiyana, Wukong has been a meta staple whirlwind of a force in the jungle for a while now. We’re looking to tap down his strength in the jungle while compensating for lane Wukong.
Base Stats
Passive - Stone Skin
Following Sundered Sky's nerfs, we feel like Xin Zhao has room for buffs to both his AD Bruiser and AS focused builds, so we’re helping out his scalings.
Q - Three Talon Strike
E - Audacious Charge
Dawncore is the enchanter capstone that isn’t, and currently only Soraka picks it up. Even when other supports get to full build, they often prefer other purchases. We’re buffing its AP value to make it less purely bound to Healing and Shielding.
While Hubris has been a bit weak for melee champions, it’s clearly been overperforming for ranged users. We’re delineating between the two now to encourage melees and disincentivize ranged users from building it.
Bastion Breaker was buffed into being a bit of a generic stat stick in order to give it a proper swing in the meta. Now, we’re nerfing that generic power with a QoL improvement to keep it a satisfying item in its niche.
The greaves are overperforming for marksmen, even when getting very few stacks, so we’re hitting it with a nerf to its cost to delay early acquisitions from getting too much value.
Karma is doing poorly, especially in support. As we want her to be viable in both of her primary roles in mid and support, we’re delivering buffs especially skewed toward her low-income role. We’re also delivering a large buff to Spirit Bond, as it can be rather hard to use on teammates.
Q - Heavenly Wave
W - Spirit Bond
Kassadin has continued to be one of the more-banned champions but at this point, it’s clear he just isn’t his old 90% ban rate self. So we’re reverting every nerf we gave him ahead of launch. Go forth and enjoy your full power self! Make your enemies regret leaving him up!
Q - Null Sphere
R - Riftwalk
This patch we’re continuing to relive the glory days by returning peak Atma’s Impaler, as it hasn't had the same impact it historically used to.
Aatrox isn’t doing so well, especially in top lane, so we’re delivering some level-scaling buffs and overall tankiness buffs to help top lane more than jungle. These are buffs from 2014 and 2015, before his first minor rework in 2017.
Passive - Blood Well
Say it with me now, “Better nerf Irelia!” Indeed, she’s come out too powerful, so we’re here to bring her down to size. We’re making her weaker by reverting some buffs from back in 2012, making her less outright durable and forcing her to rely on her high mobility and clever target selection. We’re also adjusting her passive to stack with Mercury Treads like it used to, which is a nerf whenever she builds Tenacity items.
Base Stats
Passive - Ionian Fervor
Mordekaiser is back with his kit from 2010-2015! Would you like to eat every single possible minion wave, plus both your and your enemy’s Wraith camps? Mordekaiser is the champion for you. All his abilities cost health, but damaging enemies generates a shield, so you can keep fighting no matter how low you go. And when it’s time to win a fight, your ultimate can turn it into a 6v4. Beat them with their own AD Carry!
Passive - Iron Man
Q - Mace of Spades
W - Creeping Death
E - Siphon of Destruction
R - Children of the Grave
Ghostman yannik cannot compete to mojo style master yu, but he can do the babushka trick to make him double the champion and unleash omen of smell and omen of battle. If that didn’t make any sense to you, you missed out on an all-timer of a forum post. Yorick is back to his original version from 2011-2016, summoning ghouls with every ability he casts and cloning or temporarily reviving his teammates. If you want a quick jumpstart to playing Yorick to his frustratingly immovable best, consider maxing Omen of Famine and getting an early Chalice of Harmony so that you’ll never run out of mana as you constantly drain your opponents and heal while doing so.
Passive - Unholy Covenant
Q - Omen of War
W - Omen of Pestilence
E - Omen of Famine
R - Omen of Death
Hecarim was released in 2012 and hasn’t changed that much over the years, only undergoing some minor mechanical updates to his Q and W. Overall, he goes fast, dives in, and has strong sustained damage while galloping alongside his foes.
Passive - Warpath
Q - Rampage
W - Spirit of Dread
E - Devastating Charge
R - Onslaught of Shadows
Lucian is the newest champion to grace League Classic, as he was released in the back half of 2013, but we couldn’t release a bunch of Shadow Isles champions without having our old pal back to keep them in check. There are a few small differences to Lucian here compared to the one you may have played recently. Most notably, he has 550 attack range, which makes him an extremely potent laner.
Passive - Lightslinger
Q - Piercing Light
W - Ardent Blaze
E - Relentless Pursuit
R - The Culling
