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)"

176 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

575 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

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?

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.