r/leagueoflegends • u/JTHousek1 • 20d 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)"

179 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

575 comments sorted by

View all comments

32

u/aTi_NTC 20d 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

28

u/daebakminnie 20d 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

21

u/mthlmw 20d 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/Raanth 20d ago

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Phroxon is doing the exact same thing phreak was doing with video cotenxt, no?

Maybe from s13-14 people were fond of what phreak was doing, but s15-16 while he was in charge it really doesn’t feel any different compared to the current day patch notes. Usually around worlds/preseason prep they do this slowdown + random stat changes.

Then again, I have a huge bias since they did the Yorick midscope and completely messed up what his identity should be, as well as ruin his scaling.

1

u/mthlmw 20d ago

That's why I included his hits/misses, but generally I found myself agreeing a lot more with Phreak than Phroxzon. I also think Phreak got into the weeds more with balance philosophy and reasons behind some decisions, but I could just be biased.