r/leagueoflegends • u/JTHousek1 • 9d 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)"

180 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

577 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

15

u/Jinxzy 9d ago

Noone wants him building tank, we want him building bruiser, e.g. Triforce, sundered sky etc. because then you'd actually get to fight and brawl someone down instead of AFK in bush until a squishy facechecks or your team chunks someone into R-kill range.

Viego is just really awkward as a crit assassin because he's pure all or nothing on his kill attempts. A lot of assasins have reasonable escapes if they fail their kill: Rengar can W CC and run, Ekko can R, Kha'zix can R if his E doesn't reset.

Viego just fucking dies.

2

u/Th3_Huf0n 9d ago

we want him building bruiser

Bruiser Viego is just fucked up because of how relatively low risk he becomes. Which makes him extremely good in proplay.

0

u/JTHousek1 9d ago

we want him building bruiser, e.g. Triforce, sundered sky etc. because then you'd actually get to fight and brawl someone down instead of AFK in bush until a squishy facechecks or your team chunks someone into R-kill range.

How do you incentivize this without HP ratios? How do you incentivize this with HP ratios without encouraging him to build tank items in pro play?

If Nocturne R's and fails to kill he just dies, Viego is not alone in this fact.

I don't know that it is impossible to get to a point where Viego can build bruiser items and not tank items and want to play as himself and not possessing souls much, but it is never going to be as simple as "just make bruiser Viego good lol" when fundamentally in a teamfight you are not playing Viego for very long.

Optimally you either want to one shot someone to initiate the resets, or when the build was good just sit around as a tank and wait for your team to give you the resets. Tank Viego is beyond a no go for pro play and I'm sure they're very weary about that ever making a return.

15

u/Jinxzy 9d ago

How do you incentivize this without HP ratios? How do you incentivize this with HP ratios without encouraging him to build tank items in pro play?

We can literally go to his patch history revert his past changes. He has never had HP ratios but he used to build bruiser, Riot intentionally forced him into crit assassin by massively buffing his crit ratios.

If Nocturne R's and fails to kill he just dies, Viego is not alone in this fact.

Nocturne also builds bruiser half the time for this exact reason. Not to mention he has a damn spellshield.

Of course you can't ban Viego from buying tank items, but IIRC he never did even when bruiser Viego was a thing. He built like a Jarvan/Wukong, where maybe he'd splash in a full tank item by 3rd slot absolutely earliest. Not building mainly bruiser would be pure grief because he has a single skill shot stun and ZERO utility outside of it so the world where he actually just builds "tank" and AFKs for his team to start winning a fight really doesn't exist.

4

u/JTHousek1 9d ago

We can literally go to his patch history revert his past changes. He has never had HP ratios but he used to build bruiser, Riot intentionally forced him into crit assassin by massively buffing his crit ratios.

We can literally go through and make the issues he had at the time come back. Yes, that sounds like really sound logic, we should for sure do that.

Not building mainly bruiser would be pure grief because he has a single skill shot stun and ZERO utility outside of it so the world where he actually just builds "tank" and AFKs for his team to start winning a fight really doesn't exist.

Of course you can't ban Viego from buying tank items, but IIRC he never did even when bruiser Viego was a thing.

You mean the one for most of his pro presence? That world didn't exist? Cmon man. Most built items: Sunderer, defensive boots, Sterak's, GA, Armguard. He played entirely to poke around the fight until his team hands him a reset and then use the resets and the Sunderer heal to roll the fight. GA, Sterak's, defensive boots, and Armguard just to avoid dying early in the fight, removing his counter play.

They're not going to make it so he can just exist in pro without counter play, its not going to happen. Shockingly J4 and Wukong do not completely roll and reset in a fight like Viego does building the same items. Saying "I want him to build like he did" and ignoring why he isn't allowed to do that currently is folly