[Patch 4.21] Rek'Sai General Discussion

Azir

More bugfixes and we're making Azir a little smoother to play.

Having tweaked Azir just last patch, we're looking to see how he performs from here before really changing his power level. So... bugfixes. Always bugfixes.

W - Arise!

E - Shifting Sands

R - Emperor's Divide

Cassiopeia

Aspect of the Serpent now gains stacks over time and every second an enemy champion is poisoned (rather than on poisoned unit kill or when using Twin Fangs on an enemy champ). Twin Fang now adds a debuff that amplifies poison damage on the target.

Cassi's recent update definitely gave her the late-game we intended, but at two great costs: her early-game strength, and her identity as a 'Poison Mage.' We're trying to smooth out a bit of Cassiopeia's power here with some early buffs alongside some guaranteed scaling on her passive so that she can hit her early-mid-lategame fantasy (that is now a word) at the appropriate times. In short, we're looking to reach a middle ground between the update and her original feel of killing you slowly with venoms. Just quicker. (And with more venoms).

Passive - Aspect of the Serpent

Q - Noxious Blast

E - Twin Fang

Cho'Gath

Life's hard for a Cho'gath. You want to eat your enemies, they don't want be eaten, and all it takes is one little death to set this poor little monster back. These changes should help Cho get back into the fight, but we also wanted to create bigger decisions between saving Feast for a kill or nommin' down on some creeps.

R - Feast

Corki

Phosphorus Bomb travels slower.

Oh Corki. We've known about your strengths for some time, but we're always careful about balancing you because you're rarely a 'standout' in any particular category (unlike, say, Tristana or Kog'Maw who you know are strong when they're strong). But with power reductions coming for Lucian, we know you're up next on the "very strong, safe marksmen" list in competitive play, so we're taking some cautious steps to keep you in line as well.

Q - Phosphorus Bomb

Diana

Lunar Rush still gets the reset if Diana casts it on a Moonlight'd target but is interrupted mid-dash.

When getting the reset, two things can go wrong for Diana: missing her Q, or having R interrupted. Cancelling R not only removes all of Diana's damage options, but often just leaves her dead in the water, so we're throwing her a lifejacket (check that metaphor). As long as you target a unit affected by Moonlight, Lunar Rush's cooldown will be refunded even if the dash was cancelled. This change makes it a little easier for those hoping to become the living embodiment of the vengeful moon.

That line's in the tooltip. We wrote that.

R - Lunar Rush

Fiddlesticks

Dread now applies on things Fiddle interacts with, as opposed to a broad area of effect. Dark Wind no longer silences the same target multiple times but will try to prioritize new targets as it bounces along.

Terror's always kind of been Fiddle's thing, and he's certainly a pretty big one (terror, that is) given the current jungle environment. With that in mind, we're looking to drain some of his less-clear power and add more consistency (for him and opponents).

Passive - Dread

E - Dark Wind

Galio

Don't let me get in my zone.

Galio's ultimate has two major risks involved - either he's crowd-controlled during its channel or his opponents buy Mercury Treads. We like the teamplay that comes from coordinated interrupts but find it a little sad that tenacity messes with his flow so much. Is now fixed.

R - Idol of Durand

Jarvan IV

IF HE'S MAKING A CRATER SOMEONE'S GONNA GET HURT.

R - Cataclysm

Jax

Jax's E and R scale better into the late game.

Surprise - he's back. While it hasn't been too long since Jax's reign over top lane, now that his laning power is a little more manageable we think we can give him some more late game love as a reward for getting through the early to mid phases.

E - Counter Strike

R - Grandmaster's Might

Jayce

Before this change, you could activate Hyper Charge, wait a bit, then Double Hyper Charge someone, doing 'The Most Damage In League of Legends' (maybe?). It was unintended and kind of goofy.

W - Hyper Charge

Jinx

Rules are made to be broken. Like buildings. BUT NOT CLARITY. NEVER CLARITY.

Recent updates to the way buff icons are shown have made telling what weapon Jinx is using a little chaotic (and not the kind she prefers). We've changed it so Switcheroo's icon is always the gun you're currently using, and added a flashy-toggle swirl to show you're spending mana while using Fishbones.

Q - Switcheroo!

Kennen

General quality-of-life buffs for this weird lookin' Yordle.

Like many champions before him (Veigar, Karthus, and Cho'gath come to mind) Kennen has been held back by inconsistencies in the timing of his abilities. After a much-needed round of re-coding, we've fixed an issue with Electrical Surge while also tuning Slicing Maelstrom. It's worth noting for Kennen's R that this is a slight late game nerf to his single target ult burst, but a buff to his area-effect speed.

W - Electrical Surge

R - Slicing Maelstrom

Lucian

Lucian's got a shorter window to double tap people with Lightslinger, and deals less damage with it at lower levels.

Lucian is a character that's carefully defined by his low combat range (500) and being opportunistic to succeed within it. These changes are more along the lines of pushing that while creating more windows of opportunity against Lucian. We do say windows of opportunity a lot.

Passive - Lightslinger

Nocturne

We're going to copy paste the patch note into the summary: Nocturne now gains massively increased movement speed when moving toward feared targets. This works with other fears!

Waaaaaay back in 4.3 (That's February! Hi Vel'Koz!), we changed fear mechanics across the board to make the affected unit move away from you instead of in random directions. Unlike other champions, however, Nocturne has lacked a way to really capitalize on the consistency of his newer fear. So we're fixing that. Also, this means any of Nocturne's spooky friends (Shaco, Fiddlesticks, Hecarim, Lollipoppy) can set him up for some sweet ganks.

Because he's a nightmare.

A living nightmare.

E - Unspeakable Horror

Pantheon

As some who benefited a lot from the Preseason changes, Pantheon fits well within our expectations for a jungler: his ganks are amazing and he really benefits from the itemization paths available (see: Warrior enchant, Stalker's Blade, etc). From a durability standpoint however, Aegis Protection's been giving Panth a free pass in terms of health-pool, making him head-and-shoulders above other Assassins/Fighters when it comes to ganking-uptime. We're lowering his attack speed to make his passive proc less often unless he focuses more of his mana into casting spells, which translates to a riskier jungle for him overall.

To slightly compensate (and make his combo abilities better), we're speeding up Pantheon's attack frame animations, which gets a little complicated but basically means he completes attacks faster but doesn't attack faster overall.

General

Rengar

Haha oh dear.

Bonetooth Necklace

Sejuani

Sej has more base mana, Q no longer scales with max health but just does straight magic damage. W and E are more focused on consistent damage over time.

Winter is coming, and she's riding a boar. Sejuani hasn't been in the spotlight for some time, but in light of the updated jungle we figured we'd look back at some outliers. While Sej's far from the bottom of the ice-bucket, she's always suffered from not having incentives to stay in the fight compared to other tanks. Instead she just throws out her spells and then sits around waiting for them to recharge.

Seizing the opportunity to improve this, a lot of Sejuani's damage has been shifted out of her up-front burst (Q) and instead shoved into the damage-over-time of her Flail and Permafrost, making her a more active threat in prolonged fights. Sometimes icy hearts just need warm smiles. Or buffs for the holidays.

We're giving you both.

General

Q - Arctic Assault

W - Flail of the Northern Winds

E - Permafrost

Shen

Check out this awesome summary: Shadow Dash costs less energy. 20 less.

Though Shen is no stranger to the shadows, we all remember how crazy this ninja gets when he's gets out of control. That said, we think loosening some of Shen's larger energy constraints is a nice place to push his power without instantly putting him on top. We're still assessing where he's at, but hopefully this allows us all to see a little more Shen in our lives. Or not? (He's not a very good ninja).

E - Shadow Dash

Shyvana

Twin Bite has a slightly lower cooldown and Burnout now deals bonus damage to monsters.

In light of her recent exit from popularity, Shyvana's a character that's been left without a clear identity. Is she a human? Is she a dragon? Is she viable? Leaning on her original jungling roots, we've decided to boost Shyv's clearing speeds so that she can be one of the faster farmers out there, opening her up to make cooler decisions than just shoving in top-laners and living forever.

Q - Twin Bite

W - Burnout

Soraka

Soraka's base health regen and health regen growth stat have been reduced, but Astral Blessing's passive now scales better with ability power.

One of the problems the Soraka update tried to fix were the times when she would just sit in the back and heal things without ever being vulnerable. In practice, however, Soraka's synergies with health and mana regeneration allowed League's Premier Healer to overcome these obstacles and amp her annoying meter all the way to 11. Thanks to the way regen works in the 2015 preseason, we're able to mitigate the effectiveness of this strategy by lowering her base stats, but we're adding more power into Astral Blessing's passive to reward the most accurate of star-snipers.

Premiere healer.

General

W - Astral Blessing

Varus

Despite being an effective lane-bully, Varus's effectiveness is so heavily tied to his Q harrass that he often finds himself running out of gas when it comes time to leverage that early-mid advantage into a more substantial one. We think Varus is a pretty cool dude (if perhaps a little grumpy; all he does is grumble), so we're seeing if this small change helps him stay relevant into the late game.

General

Warwick

We bet nobody saw this coming.

Warwick's popularity (and subsequent insanity in the win rate department, even though we don't like using win rate as a statistic because it's loaded with so many other variables but let's not get into that) is a perfect storm of changes to preseason systems, the jungle, and the latent powers within his kit. We all know Warwick should be lowered a peg (or two. or five.), so we've decided to focus on Hunter's Call and Infinite Duress.

We're going to be monitoring Warwick heavily to see if we need to go harder, but we're confident this reduces his power enough that you might actually be able to compete with him in games. 60%. Never forget. Now let's not talk about win rates again (seriously though, win rates are a correlation of game health, not a cause).

W - Hunter's Call

R - Infinite Duress

Yasuo

Yasuo moves slightly faster and Steel Tempest has a lower cooldown at early ranks.

We might have overdone it a tad with 4.18, so we're stepping back just a bit. These changes should maintain Yasuo's vulnerability to ganks in lane but give him a little more leeway to make plays with Steel Tempest. A wanderer isn't always lost, but that doesn't mean he's over-nerfed. What does that mean. We don't know.

General

Q - Steel Tempest

Zac

Elastic Slingshot makes more chunks if Zac hits multiple champions, and Let's Bounce has a higher knockback range.

The last on our 'Naughty or Nice' junglers list, we wanted to give Zac a little more oomph for those who make it through his somewhat punishing early-levels. In-line with Zac's identity as initiator, buffing the knock-back effect on Let's Bounce! means finding fights at max-range lets Zac play more with his opponent's positioning to single someone out.

E - Elastic Slingshot

R - Let's Bounce!

Negatron Cloak

IT'S BAAAAACK.

We're currently happy with the magic resistance changes, except for Guardian Angel on squishy damage dealers. Right now, GA's got a preeeeettty big combine cost without providing much protection against Mages through its build path, so we're re-introducing Negatron Cloak as a stepping stone.

Guardian Angel

See above.

See above, which will direct you to above that. So see above the above.

Abyssal Scepter

While Negatron Cloak is here, we might as well use it in recipes that make sense.

We don't see this as being a permanent fix for Abyssal Scepter, but felt we could make this change just to clean up the recipe. While there's less Magic Resistance in the build path, it also consumes less inventory space!

Targon's Brace

Targon's Brace Spoils of War passive now executes at higher thresholds.

We've heard this request quite a bit from supports who don't know how to last hit (just kidding), so... here you go.

Face of the Mountain

See above, but replace Targon's Embrace with Face of the Mountain.

See above, then see above that. At this point we're going to repeat the joke about supports not being able to last hit.

Ranger's Trailblazer

Ranger's Trailblazer no longer reduces Smite's cooldown.

The goal of Ranger's Trailblazer was to either help a jungler double-down on their farming or help them get out of the dumpster when their teammate accidentally steals the first camp (or buff!). Unfortunately, reducing Smite's cooldown creates the wrong incentive as it gives all of the above advantages to junglers who are ahead while also letting them counterjungle and gank more by stealing enemy jungle buffs.

Poacher's Knife

Not a placebo.

Poacher's Knife is actually very impactful in counterjungling, but because we made it only track 'bonus' gold, the tooltip undervalued the actual use of the item. Changing the tooltip isn't a placebo, we're trying to reflect the contribution it brings!

Skirmisher's
Sabre

Attacking a Smited opponent now burns them
for true damage over 3 seconds, rather than just dealing true
damage on hit. Also truest damage.

While we're running into a few abuse cases with
Skirmisher's Sabre, the big reason we're changing it is
because it's weighted so heavily in favor of dudes who can
hit you in the face as fast as possible. Given our goal
with the new jungle items was to open up different
playstyles, we're balancing it out in favor of more
champions.


As for the bugfix, there are whispers of an ancient form of
damage in League of Legends - truer than True damage
itself. What that actually means is we have a tier of
damage above "True" damage called "Pure" damage or, as it's
more commonly known: the Fountain Laser
("Did that just kill me in Zhonyas?"). You can probably see
where this is going: an error in coding means we changed
Challenging Smite's debuff from True damage to Pure damage,
which let it kill things it really shouldn't have.

Enchantment - Devourer

Sliiiiiightly overtuned.

Kind of reminds us of launch Feral Flare. And nobody wants that.

Chalice of Harmony

More mana regeneration!

More mana regeneration!

Athene's Unholy Grail

This is going to get repetitive. More mana regeneration!

More mana regeneration!

Mikael's Crucible

Last one we swear. More mana regeneration!

More mana regeneration!

Forbidden Idol

Less mana regeneration.

When we realized Forbidden Idol was the only item in the game that didn't have mana regeneration that was a multiple of 25%, we figured it would be wiser to bring it in line than to let it sit at an odd 60%.

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