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There is no new champion this patch.
Patch 4.10: Live on June 18th, 2014
+ Show Spoiler [Patch Notes] +
Champions
Nidalee
With her oppressively high spear damage and catlike (maybe just cat-ish) elusiveness, Nidalee's been a contentious low-risk, low-interaction champion for quite some time. Specifically, old Nidalee's gameplay often revolved around the question of "when should I stop throwing spears?" to which the answer was typically "never."
To that end, our goals with this Nidalee gameplay update are to tone down some of her many frustration points while also giving her more options other than chucking projectiles. We also saw this as a great opportunity to cement Nidalee as a real shapeshifting huntress, which meant stronger ties from her human form to her cougar form. Additionally, by connecting Nidalee's offense with cougar form, she now has to balance her high escape potential against her ability to hunt down squishy targets ("Leap away or leap at their face?"). There's certainly more counterplay (and teamplay for those playing around Nidalee engages) when a cougar goes flying into the backline versus a single nuclear-tipped spear.
Visuals
PRETTY New icons have been added for all abilities
CLARITY Added a new particle to distinguish "Hunted" opponents
CLARITY Javelin Toss visuals adjusted for better readability
CLARITY Bushwack ground visual indicator improved to be more noticeable
General
KITTY All of Nidalee's cougar form abilities scale with ranks in R - Aspect of the Cougar
Passive - Prowl
MOVEMENT Moving through brush increases Nidalee's movement speed by 10% for 2 seconds, increased to 30% toward visible enemy champions within a range of 5500.
HUNTED Damaging champions with Javelin Toss or Bushwhack marks them as 'Hunted' for 4 seconds, granting Nidalee vision of them, 30% increased movement speed toward them (within a range of 5500) and enhancing her next Takedown, Pounce, and Swipe against them.
Q - Javelin Toss
Nidalee tosses her javelin, dealing magic damage. If it exceeds her basic attack range it gains damage based on distance flown, up to a cap at 80% of its additional range.
HUNTED Applies the 'Hunted' debuff to champions for 4 seconds
RANGE 1500 units (damage caps out at 1300)
MINIMUM MAGIC DAMAGE 50/75/100/125/150 (+0.4 ability power)
MAXIMUM MAGIC DAMAGE 150/225/300/375/450 (+1.2 ability power)
COST 50/60/70/80/90 mana
COOLDOWN 6 seconds
WIDTH Missile width 60 ⇒ 30
W - Bushwhack
Nidalee lays a Bushwhack trap. When an enemy springs the trap, they are revealed in addition to taking damage over 4 seconds.
HUNTED Applies the 'Hunted' debuff to champions for 4 seconds
MAGIC DAMAGE 20/40/60/80/100 + 12/14/16/18/20% current health (+1% per 50 ability power) over the duration of 4 seconds
DURATION 2 minutes
COST 40/45/50/55/60 mana
COOLDOWN 17/15/13/11/9 seconds
CLARITY Only affects one target per trap
E - Primal Surge
Nidalee heals a target ally champion and grants them bonus attack speed for 6 seconds.
HEAL 45/85/125/165/205 (+0.5 ability power)
ATTACK SPEED BONUS 20/30/40/50/60% attack speed
COST 60/80/100/120/140 mana
COOLDOWN 12 seconds
R - Aspect Of The Cougar
Nidalee transforms into a vicious cougar with the abilities Takedown, Pounce, and Swipe. Rawr.
RANKS Aspect of the Cougar has 4 ranks and Nidalee starts the game with 1 rank in it
COST No cost
COOLDOWN 3 seconds
Q - Takedown
Nidalee's next attack deals magic damage. Takedown deals additional damage to targets at lower health, up to 250% total damage.
HUNTED BONUS The first Takedown targeting a 'Hunted' champion deals +33% increased damage
UTILITY Nidalee gains +75 attack range for the Takedown attack
MINIMUM MAGIC DAMAGE 4/20/50/90 (+0.24 ability power)
MAXIMUM MAGIC DAMAGE 10/50/125/225 (+0.6 ability power)
COST No cost
COOLDOWN 5 seconds
W - Pounce
Nidalee lunges forward a short distance, dealing magic damage to enemies in the landing area.
HUNTED BONUS The first Pounce directly towards a 'Hunted' champions will have up to 700 range
UTILITY Killing a unit in cougar form reduces the cooldown of Pounce to 1 second
UTILITY Nidalee now pounces in the direction of the player's cursor
MAGIC DAMAGE 50/100/150/200 (+0.3 ability power)
COST No cost
COOLDOWN 5 seconds
E - Swipe
Nidalee claws at enemies, dealing magic damage in an area in front of her.
HUNTED BONUS The first Swipe that damages a 'Hunted' champion reduces the cooldown of Pounce to 1 second
UTILITY Nidalee now swipes in the direction of the player's cursor
MAGIC DAMAGE 70/130/190/250 (+0.45 ability power)
COST No cost
COOLDOWN 5 seconds
R - Aspect Of The Cougar
Nidalee transforms back into a human. Meow.
RANKS Aspect of the Cougar has 4 ranks and Nidalee starts the game with 1 rank in it
COST No cost
COOLDOWN 3 seconds
Skarner
Crystal Slash now gives Skarner Movement Speed per stack of Crystal Energy. Skarner's passive has been replaced with one that allows him to stun targets when he builds up spell hits on them.
And we're back with our second Skarner update! We've spoken at length about getting Skarner to a more exciting place since our initial changes in 4.2, but we needed to make sure we were giving him a stronger identity without bringing back his old gameplay issues (particularly his 'feast or famine' problem where he'd either succeed really hard or he'd get squished without contributing much to a fight).
In approaching these changes, we heard a lot of your feedback about getting Skarner closer to his old role as a sticky crowd-control focused tank-bug (arachnid, whatever) and less of a damage-dealing scorpion duelist. Ultimately these changes should give Skarner a stronger identity as a disruptive tank while also giving him more opportunities to peel in a team fight, even if he's behind. We've obviously had to tune back some of Skarner's offensive powers to give him that extra annoyance, but this time around he should feel closer to his old lonesome self.
Visuals
SHINY SKARNER Updated textures for base and all skins. Skarner also now has specular maps, making him all shiny-like
MORE SHINY Added new particles for Skarner's W and his new passive
EVEN MORE SHINY New icons have been added for all abilities
newPassive - Crystallizing Sting
CRYSTAL VENOM Skarner's damaging spells apply a 'Crystal Venom' debuff to enemy Champions and large monsters for 5 seconds
UTILITY If Skarner lands a basic attack on a target with 3 stacks of 'Crystal Venom', he will deal an additional 20-105 magic damage and stun the target for 0.5/0.75/1 second
CRYSTAL VENOM After being stunned, targets cannot be debuffed by Crystal Venom for 6 seconds
Q - Crystal Slash
newUTILITY Basic attacks reduce Crystal Slash's cooldown by 0.5 seconds (doubled against Champions)
newCRYSTAL ENERGY Crystal Energy now additionally grants +3/4/5/6/7% movement speed per stack (up to 3 stacks)
BASE PHYSICAL DAMAGE 25/40/55/70/85 (+0.8 attack damage) ⇒ 20/32/44/56/68 (+0.4 attack damage)
BONUS MAGIC DAMAGE 24/36/48/60/72 (+0.4 ability power) ⇒ 20/32/44/56/68 (+0.2 ability power)
W - Crystalline Exoskeleton
COOLDOWN 16 seconds at all ranks ⇒ 13/12.5/12/11.5/11 seconds
E - Fracture
MAGIC DAMAGE 80/120/160/200/240 (+0.7 ability power) ⇒ 40/60/80/100/120 (+0.4 ability power)
COOLDOWN 14 seconds at all ranks ⇒ 12 seconds at all ranks
R - Impale
newIMPALEMENT Impale consumes all stacks of Crystal Venom and deals 50/75/100 magic damage per stack consumed
COOLDOWN 130/120/110 seconds ⇒ 110/100/90 seconds
Galio
Magic resistance per level for Galio has been commonly requested by gargoyle fans around the world and, given our nerf to Athene's Unholy Grail (an item typically considered 'core' on Galio), we figured we could give him a thicker skin.
General
MAGIC RESISTANCE PER LEVEL 0 ⇒ 1.25
Gragas
Graggy's gotten better at drinking under fire. This change means Gragas will only have to worry about losing the damage buff if he's interrupted mid-drink, but he'll feel better about using W to tank out a brawl.
W - Drunken Rage
newFERMENTED Gragas no longer loses the damage reduction if he is interrupted during his drink
CLARITY Updated tooltip to specify that the percentage damage against monsters is capped at 250
Karthus
We're following up Karthus' visual update with a couple bug fixes and late additions. We're also continuing to keep an eye the on the readability of Karthus' spells.
BUGFIX Fixed a bug where Lay Waste appeared to give more vision than it actually did
BUGFIX Wall of Pain's VO will no longer be interrupted by movement commands
SWAG Added the screech of a certain bird of prey to Statue of Karthus' dance
CLARITY Requiem's visual effects are now more noticeable, so you can properly resign yourself to death
LeBlanc
No more silence. Only tears.
LeBlanc's a champion who has a lot of power associated with her character - omnidirectional movement, high burst damage, precise target selection, a cool hat - so it's been difficult to give her meaningful counterplay without directly hurting that identity. We're taking a more deliberate approach here because we want LeBlanc to remain an exciting champion to play and watch, but removing the silence on Q means at least her opponents can fight back when she's QRWEing (or WQREing or WRQEing for those long range fancy plays) around the fight. That said, LeBlanc will definitely stay on our radar as we track how she's performing post-change.
Q - Sigil of Malice
NAME Sigil of Silence ⇒ Sigil of Malice
removedSILENCE No longer silences target
Lucian
At higher levels of play, Lucian tends to be a master-of-all-trades marksman with his strong damage in lane, high mobility, decent scaling, and general safety in teamfights. With the new AD itemization changes, however, we don't want to implement bigger modifications with so much in the air. At this point in time we do think Lucian will need some broader changes to give him meaningful weaknesses, but a reduction on W (which was designed for utility as opposed to any form of burst damage) is something we're confident is in line with our potential changes in the future.
W - Ardent Blaze
BONUS ATTACK DAMAGE RATIO 0.6 ⇒ 0.3
Pantheon
As a side note, this might also affect Pantheon's ability to ignite opponents while he's falling through the air.
R - Grand Skyfall
BUGFIX Fixed a bug where Pantheon could use Summoner Spells before landing. Most notably, Flash could be used before landing to reposition Pantheon's landing damage area.
Sivir
While our previous mana cost nerfs accomplished their goal of reducing Sivir's uninteractive laning, they also made her mana pool too limiting in late game team fights, which we're compensating now.
General
BASE MANA 246 ⇒ 250
MANA PER LEVEL 43 ⇒ 50
MANA REGEN PER LEVEL 0.5 mana per 5 seconds ⇒ 0.9 mana per 5 seconds
Thresh
Apparently when Thresh's basic attack was charging up from Flay, it used the wrong buff icon. This change adds... CLARITY!
E - Flay
CLARITY! Now displays the correct buff icon
Tristana
Rocket Jump is cheaper and is more forgiving to use when jumping around / over walls. Buster Shot's range scales with character level.
We're giving Trist some modernization buffs to help emphasize her high moments (STOMP THEM ALL TRIST!). For additional context, the Rocket Jump change doesn't mean you'll make every wall-jump, but it should be more forgiving when used around terrain. If you're still failing wall-jumps, get closer before jumping!
W - Rocket Jump
COST 80 mana at all ranks ⇒ 60 mana at all ranks
UTILITY Now more accurately checks for nearby landing spots when jumping close to, or over, walls
R - Buster Shot
UTILITY Range now scales with level (like Draw a Bead/Explosive Shot)
Twitch
Twitch's passive does less damage per second. Twitch can now be delayed from entering stealth (through damage) for much longer than before.
We think Twitch has awesome lategame power, but he's also got a offensively strong early game on top of having a lot of safety throughout. To focus on that safety aspect, Ambush's stealth often let Twitch make an escape even when already caught out by enemies. We do think the new AD itemization changes will benefit the smelly rat, but the focus here is (mostly) to provide some additional counterplay for preventing stealth (hit him in the face!).
General
BASE DAMAGE 52 ⇒ 49
Passive - Deadly Venom
TRUE DAMAGE 2/4/6/8 (at levels 1/6/11/16) ⇒ 1/2/3/4/5/6 (at levels 1/4/7/10/13/16)
Q - Ambush
STEALTH TIMING Time to stealth without taking damage now 1.25 seconds ⇒ 1.5 seconds
STEALTH TIMING WHILE BEING HIT IN THE FACE Maximum time to stealth while taking damage now 3 seconds ⇒ 6 seconds
Zed
R - Death Mark
BUGFIX Zed no longer teleports to a random location if he Death Marks someone who is in the middle of a dash (eg: Xin Zhao's Audacious Charge, etc).
Offensive Physical Itemization
We've got some major itemization changes this patch with a specific focus on the marksman role as a whole. As we mentioned in the foreword, our goal is to open up the landscape of attack damage and attack speed item choices. In terms of specific challenges, we saw that in the 2014 season, lifesteal was quickly becoming a 'must have' stat for marksmen with Bloodthirster leading the pack. What ends up happening with BT being a dominant buy is that it both heavily favors burst-AD champions and also snowballs lanes toward who can get their BT first. Bloodthirster being the best first purchase also has a secondary effect of reducing a lot of mid to late game marksman power as they're not going for the multiplicative damage stats (crit and attack speed) to punch through the tanky dudes. We also took the opportunity to make other adjustments to items like Warden's Mail / Randuin's Omen so that they're not so straight up mean to auto-attack reliant champions.
What these changes should do is give all marksmen equal build paths forward without one being much, much better than the other. This also allows us to do two neat things:
1.) With the Doran's Blade change, marksmen can tailor their lifesteal needs by picking up multiple DBlades to sustain through the laning phase without having to always commit to an early BT or Blade of the Ruined King.
2.) We can set all end-game marksmen items to build out of a B.F. Sword with 80 attack damage as the baseline. This means when you pick up a B.F. Sword, you know it'll build into a strong end-game item - it's just a matter of deciding which sort of defensive or offensive utility you want to get out of it.
Lifesteal Items
newEssence Reaver
UNIQUE PASSIVE You gain 2-8% of the damage dealt by basic attacks as mana. This effect increases based on how much mana you are missing.
ATTACK DAMAGE +50
LIFESTEAL 10%
COOLDOWN REDUCTION +10%
RECIPE Vampiric Scepter + Pickaxe + 975 gold
TOTAL COST 2650 gold
Doran's Blade
removedLIFE ON HIT Basic attacks no longer restore health on hit
newLIFESTEAL 3%
HEALTH 80 ⇒ 70
ATTACK DAMAGE 8 ⇒ 7
Vampiric Scepter
LIFESTEAL 10% ⇒ 8%
Bilgewater Cutlass
LIFESTEAL 12% ⇒ 8%
Blade of the Ruined King
ACTIVE ABILITY Maximum health damage now 15% ⇒ 10%
ACTIVE ABILITY Active ability now steals 30% movement speed ⇒ 25% movement speed
PASSIVE DAMAGE Current health damage per hit now 5% ⇒ 8%
LIFESTEAL 15% ⇒ 10%
The Bloodthirster
removedBLOODTHIRSTY PASSIVE No longer grants bonus attack damage or lifesteal per unit kill
newBLOODTHIRSTIER PASSIVE Lifesteal can now overheal, granting a bloody shield that absorbs 50-450 damage (based on champion level). This shield decays when out of combat for 15 seconds.
ATTACK DAMAGE 70 ⇒ 80
LIFESTEAL 12% ⇒ 15%
TOTAL COST 3250 gold ⇒ 3500 gold
Attack Damage Items
B. F. Sword
ATTACK DAMAGE 45 ⇒ 50
Infinity Edge
ATTACK DAMAGE 70 ⇒ 80
Mercurial Scimitar
newMERCURIAL PARITY Active ability now gives the movement speed bonus to ranged characters as well
ATTACK DAMAGE 60 ⇒ 80
TOTAL COST 3700 gold ⇒ 3800 gold
Attack Speed Items
Dagger
ATTACK SPEED 12% ⇒ 15%
COST 400 gold ⇒ 450 gold
Berserker's Greaves
ATTACK SPEED 20% ⇒ 25%
TOTAL COST 950 gold ⇒ 1000 gold
Zeal
ATTACK SPEED 18% ⇒ 20%
TOTAL COST 1175 gold ⇒ 1100 gold
Wit's End
ATTACK SPEED 42% ⇒ 50%
TOTAL COST 2400 gold ⇒ 2500 gold
Youmuu's Ghostblade
newYOUMUU'S PARITY Active now lasts for 6 seconds on ranged champions as well (previously lasted only 4 seconds on ranged champions and 6 seconds on melee champions)
Recipe Cleanup
- The following items have had their recipe costs adjusted due to the Dagger and Zeal price changes, but their total price remains unchanged:
- Stinger
- Phantom Dancer
- Sword of the Divine
- Madred's Razor
- Wriggle's Lantern
- Runaan's Hurricane
- Trinity Force
- Statikk Shiv
- Blade of the Ruined King
Warden's Mail & Randuin's Omen
Warden's Mail
PASSIVE Passive Cold Steel's attack speed reduction now 15% ⇒ 10%
Randuin's Omen
removedPASSIVE Passive Cold Steel no longer reduces attacker's movement speed
PASSIVE Passive Cold Steel's attack speed reduction now 15% ⇒ 10%
Support & Ability Power Itemization
Support Items
In high level play, Mikael's Crucible was often being rushed as a primary 'core' item on most supports (beyond Sight Stone and a finished gold per 5 item), which meant long-cooldown, heavy engage teams had a lot of problems properly kicking off a teamfight if the enemy simply Mikael'd the caught target to safety. This ends up putting a lot more emphasis on teams who can 'catch' out targets multiple times (Elise, Morgana, etc) so that Mikael's is only useful for one of those cases. A Mikael's in every game also made things doubly sad for utility-focused marksmen like Ashe or Varus who bring big control abilities to the table. Our changes to Mikael's is to push it more toward a mid to late game luxury buy against heavy engage / pick team compositions but isn't so attractive as a purchase that it's found in every game.
This also lets us introduce a new mid-tier support item in the form of Ardent Censer! We're particularly excited about Censer because of all the possibilities it can bring to the support role, particularly the more defensively focused shield / heal champions like Alistar, Janna, Sona, or Soraka.
newArdent Censer
UNIQUE PASSIVE Your heals and shields on another unit grant them +25% Attack Speed for 6 seconds
UNIQUE PASSIVE +8% movement speed
ABILITY POWER +30
MANA REGENERATION 10 mana per 5 seconds
COOLDOWN REDUCTION +10%
TOTAL COST 2200 gold
RECIPE Forbidden Idol + Aether Wisp + 550 gold
Forbidden Idol
TOTAL COST 750 gold ⇒ 700 gold
Mikael's Crucible
TOTAL COST 1600 gold ⇒ 2450 gold
RECIPE Chalice of Harmony + 720 gold ⇒ Chalice of Harmony + Forbidden Idol + 870 gold
MANA REGENERATION 12 mana per 5 seconds ⇒ 20 mana per 5 seconds
COOLDOWN REDUCTION 0% ⇒ 10%
Locket of the Iron Solari
UTILITY Active's shield amount is now calculated using the recipient champion's level if the recipient is a higher level than the item owner
Ability Power Items
With Mikael's going up in cost and offering more mana regeneration / cooldown reduction, we felt we should also take a look at Athene's Unholy Grail, a very cost-efficient item that gives pretty much everything a wave-clearing AP mid laner needs to push all day (looking at you Ziggs). The reason we chose to tune down Athene's defensive stats rather than its offensive power is to make it a little less of a 'perfect' safe pushing item so opponents can potentially find windows of engagement. The buff to Morellonomicon is just to make it feel better as a late-game item.
Athene's Unholy Grail
MAGIC RESIST 40 ⇒ 25
MANA REGENERATION 15 mana per 5 seconds ⇒ 10 mana per 5 seconds
PASSIVE MANA RESTORATION ON KILL / ASSIST 12% ⇒ 15%
Morellonomicon
ABILITY POWER 75 ⇒ 80
MANA REGENERATION 12 mana per 5 seconds ⇒ 10 mana per 5 seconds
Summoner Spells
Teleport
We're generally happy with what the new Teleport changes are achieving, but it's a little too strong as a lane recovery ability. Particularly in competitive play we were seeing a lot of top laners constantly using Teleport as a way of stagnating the early lane rather than trying to set up for global map pressure.
COOLDOWN Cooldown when teleporting to towers now 200 seconds ⇒ 240 seconds
Heal
With the removal of Randuin's Omen's passive movement speed debuff, we saw that Heal was giving too much additional safety when a marksmen takes on a fighter, so we're tuning Heal down just a bit.
MOVEMENT SPEED BOOST Speed boost duration now 2 seconds ⇒ 1 second
Exhaust
BUGFIX Fixed a bug where Exhaust did not grant assists when used against slow immune targets (who are still affected by the damage reduction effect)
Masteries
Reinforced Armor
CLARITY Tooltip clarified to state that it reduces the total damage from critical strikes
Summoner's Rift
Dragon
By slightly raising the base gold reward of dragon, we're hoping to continue to emphasize its value as an early level objective. This also means teams who consistently kick off lane swaps will need to make greater strategic tradeoffs for a safer lane.
BASE GOLD 145 ⇒ 180
GOLD PER LEVEL 15 ⇒ 10
Bots
With our bot updates in Patch 4.6, we were able to take bots off their purple leash and introduce a little variety to which side players end up on. This has been a great addition for our Co-op vs AI enthusiasts, but it's a little jarring for new players trying to get a handle on how the game is played. In order to meet each group's needs, bots in Beginner Co-op matches will go back to always being the Purple team while Intermediate matches will continue to sometimes give Blue side to the bots.
- Bots in Beginner-level Co-op vs AI matches will always play from Purple side
Ranked Duo Queue
We're introducing a new restriction for ranked duo queues so players can only duo queue with teammates ranked within one full tier above or below them. We found that the vast majority of duos are already between players within these thresholds and this change allows us to curb some of the potential abuse cases we saw under the previous matchmaking system.
In the case of unseeded players, the new system will allow for duo queuing with Gold, Silver and Bronze players while their skill level is still being assessed. After they've been placed, the usual restrictions will apply.
- Players may only queue for ranked duo games with players ranked within one full tier above or below them. For example, a Silver III player may duo with players ranked anywhere from Bronze V to Gold I.
- Unseeded players who were ranked in solo queue during the previous season will use that rank to determine duo eligibility.
- Unseeded players who have never been ranked in solo queue are able to duo queue with Gold, Silver or Bronze players.
Team Builder
- Captains in Team Builder will now be able to see a list of "Suggested Players" that they are able to invite into their games. We'll be experimenting with this feature to include players that we believe you might have fun experiences with.
Bugfixes
- Players who use their keyboards to purchase from the shop should no longer see the shop close when a purchase fails
- Fixed a bug where players would occasionally need to unlock the camera twice for the setting to apply
