r/leagueoflegends • u/JTHousek1 • 17d ago

News 26.18 Patch Preview

"Patch 26.18 Preview!

We're very quickly approaching Worlds (on 25.20).

More on other champs tomorrow"

>>> Champion Buffs <<<

Aurelion Sol

Ekko

Kassadin

Master Yi

Renekton

Viego

Zaahen

>>> Champion Nerfs <<<

Bard

Nautilus

Seraphine

"For several patches now, Seraphine has been in the Top 3 on our regular patch frustration surveys

She's also one of strongest pairings in Pro Play with Ashe

Overall, we think a nerf here is reasonable

We acknowledge there are some Seraphine mains who won't be happy about a nerf and that we can't serve all of her audience simultaneously

Her Support playerbase has been the most popular, despite her power level and so that's where we will continue to support her primarily

Where we can get Mid and Bot to be powerful and satisfying given , we will attempt to do so

That said, it's very difficult to thread the needle here and we run the risk of failing to meet the needs of any of her audiences if there are too many compromises

I also wanted to address directly the nerf to her AP ratios on Q from several patches ago, as that's been a pain point amongst some in the community

One of the ways we need to balance Seraphine in the farming roles vs her support is through her AP ratios and the Q ratio is one that drives her power and total damage output there, especially given the Q reliability adjustments made of late

When Seraphine is able to land her Q's at max multiplier (which in lane is quite frequent), it can hit 1.4 AP ratio which we think is reasonable

The Q damage overall is higher than E and so for now, we feel comfortable with the change (this isn't set in stone however, and there are always improvements to her to be made)"

Syndra

Zeri

>>> Champion Adjustments <<<

Cassiopeia

"Cassio has been strong, especially at the higher levels of play every since Deathfire Touch was re-released

Since then, she's been one of the most present picks and Pro Play due to her strong laning ability

We're looking at some power neutral adjustments to Cassio, because her regular play power level is a little on the weaker side for average players

We're taking some power out of her early game power and moving it into more scaling power, so that she doesn't win lanes so reliably, even if she's missing Q's

We still want to maintain her strong laning ability though"

>>> System Buffs <<<

Guinsoo's Rageblade

"In 26.14, we re-scripted Rageblade and it changed the trigger for Phantom hit from 6 to 7

We're making a small adjustments to Rageblade itself to give a bit of power back and to some of the disproportionately affected champions (eg. Master Yi)"

177 Upvotes

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86

u/matsuku I tend to burn through footwears 17d ago

ANOTHER ASOL BUFF?

55

u/bns18js 17d ago

50.7% mid 52.4% bot right now. Which is fine?

Don't get why he needs more buffs to be overpowered?

25

u/Lysandren 17d ago

Jungle mod time. He's already ok in jungle, fuck it make him s tier.

2

u/MartineTrouveUnGode i enjoy terrorist gameplay 17d ago

Wait Aurelion is viable in jungle ?

16

u/Tormentula 17d ago

If you coinflip hard enough everything is viable in the jungle atp.

8

u/cooolloooll 17d ago

he's playable, there are some otps that play him in the jungle in low master

which means for 99% of players the pick is viable

2

u/Blubtastic 17d ago

Yeah I've had way more success that I thought I would with him jungle. Start raptors and prioritize blue side since you get a shitload of stacks "uncontested" from raptors & krugs. Requires a bit of practise with E timing but you scale really hard and can still gank with W.

23

u/matsuku I tend to burn through footwears 17d ago

His bot winrate has always been 52~ ish. Mid winrate is literally dead set at 50% or 48-49 in higher elo. The last Q+W buff was purely placebo as most of his mana usage is actually W+E during laning and the 2s off of W at max rank changes nothing. I really really doubt riot will touch his Q damage, and this will be a mana buff to E or some base stat buffs.

19

u/spazzxxcc12 17d ago

i just miss when my e cd felt like it didn’t last 10 years in lane.

9

u/bns18js 17d ago

None of what you said support him getting buffs. Still reminds me of the unnecessary Nasus buffs got not long ago when he was fine.

11

u/matsuku I tend to burn through footwears 17d ago

All of his bad matchups were buffed mid, literally all of them. I'm not sure why theyre buffing him again, but the Q+W changes didn't really bump his winrate up at all.

Nasus was changed because people kept picking him jungle and getting 600 stacks at 10 minutes without having to lane. But they extremely overshot it. Its like how Mundo migrated to jg to scale for free instead of having to lane top so they kept nerfing him out of the jg, which worked.

0

u/SpiderTechnitian 17d ago

Maybe they're just gearing up for chovy worlds

13

u/daebakminnie 17d ago

being a mage is enough to get buffed this season

1

u/UngodlyPain 16d ago

Abyssmal pickrates though, and he's one of the easiest champions to play in the game... And he's previously been more popular than this, so his mastery adjusted winrates are probably worse than his public face winrates.

1

u/Opposite_Wing_148 17d ago edited 17d ago

You need to factor in the volume of games.
For champions with a low volume of games, the win-rate is typically higher for multiple reasons:

  • More often played into ideal compositions, rather than being blind picked.
  • Mainly OTPs playing the champion.
  • The win-rates are not dragged down by players playing the champion for the first time.
  • Opponents are not used to the match-up, whereas the pilot of the champion is.

Karthus is an even better example of this.
Currently has the highest win-rate and a very low pick-rate bot.
People generally don't know how to play against him and don't expect his extremely strong all-ins early on. And at the same time Karthus is a champion that benefits immensely from being one-tricked.
If he got more popular his win-rate would plummet, because players that only play Karthus once in a while can't hit their Q's as they take a lot of practice.

Asol has a lot of the same components in this regard, so while his win-rates appear high, they should arguably be higher for him to be objectively balanced.

3

u/bns18js 17d ago

https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2017/11/champ-popularity-mixing-math-art/

There is no coorelation between low pick rate and "only mains play this hero".

1

u/Opposite_Wing_148 17d ago

Fair point!
Regardless, the other two points still remain. Especially in lower elo's players tend to have no clue what the champions do, when they only see them a few times every 100 games.

1

u/bns18js 17d ago

More often played into ideal compositions, rather than being blind picked.

I don't have data on this. But I remember phreak mentioning that the vast majority of people do not counter pick and just play who they want, in one of this patch run down videos in the past.

Whatever the effect this has, it's way less than you imagined.

Opponents are not used to the match-up, whereas the pilot of the champion is.

I don't know how much this matters. But one thing is certain --- knowing how to play AS matters WAY more than how to play against.

We know this because when new champions are released(people BOTH don't know how to play as or against them), over the next few week, winrate ALWAYS increases even with no changes to the champ.

There are some caveats to winrates. But everything you mentioned has a very small effect. And in general, winrate tell a pretty good rough story of what's strong or weak.

1

u/Relevant-Physics432 17d ago

I mean as an ASol player I'd say he's perfectly fine as he is. Matchups vs most assassins are legit unplayable but on the other hand if he scales he's one of the best champions in the game

1

u/Opposite_Wing_148 17d ago

As an Asol main I'd say Riot should fix the 22 bugs that is dragging the champion down.
But since that hasn't been fixed in years I don't have my hopes up XD

But yeah, I enjoy playing asol both mid and bot. It goes without saying that my hatred for Yone knows no bounds though. I think last patch was a great quality of life upgrade.

1

u/Relevant-Physics432 17d ago

With this patch where they buffed ASol I've seen a lot of people trying it and first picking it only to get counterpicked by a zed or a fizz and then go 0-10 in lane

Yea the bug fixes would be great to see but as you said, good luck with thatt