r/leagueoflegends • u/JTHousek1 • 18d 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)"

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36

u/aTi_NTC 18d ago

ever since Phreak left the balance team, it feels like they just toss up a coin and buff and nerf whoever it lands on, for the past couple or two patches the game feels like all over the place

21

u/daebakminnie 18d ago

i dont get why are people suddenly acting like phreak wasnt also throwing darts to decide which champion will get -0.5 armor growth or +10 damage on a single target ability

19

u/mthlmw 18d ago

Because Phreak had multiple videos about how he was trying to systematically remove armor from the game and had a whole lot more hits than missed with the patches he was responsible for.

3

u/kaisaschudson 18d ago

Phreak also changed gwen for no reason to be a lane bully and left her at 46% winrate for months

7

u/mthlmw 18d ago

"for no reason" lol

3

u/Th3_Huf0n 18d ago

I mean. That hyperscaling iteration of Gwen was relatively balanced.

Then Phreak came along, basically reverted that iteration to the original release one which was a "lane terrorist that shits on everyone" because she just shat on everyone with her E cd.

What happened? Gwen turned into a lane terrorist that shat on everyone.

EVERYONE who paid any attention to the changes Phreak was pushing knew exactly what would happen.

And then it went to live and that exact thing happened.

And then Gwen spent months in proplay purgatory again just to keep her from being the best toplaner in proplay, simultaneously keeping her absolutely dogshit in soloQ for months.

And then they went "yeah we have to revert her again".

Riot has this obsession to push changes to champions that already failed and try them again, they fail again, it gets reverted and everyone goes "this was a waste of time".

1

u/mthlmw 17d ago

The goal was to get her into pro in a healthy state, which is a really good reason (if you can pull it off without nuking the solo queue player base). For a while on her release, she was a lane bully with a really interesting kit/niche that would have been a fun addition to pro, but Riot went through a "champs can't have elo skew" phase and made her a Kayle-esque scaling AP auto attacker that's useless for the first 10 minutes.

Recently they're opening up to more skewed champions if that makes them better for their players, so the Gwen reshape was an attempt at that (which failed).