Greetings, Summoners.
Welcome to patch 6.16, the one that’s a lighter patch than usual, but don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you. We’re hoping the quiet on the Rift will help you - and us - suss out the outliers going into Worlds. But to hear that quiet, we need to bring down the noise, which means nerfs to some loud and dominant champions. Sona throws a mean party, but it’s time to turn the music down. We’re also tidying up: some of our previous buffs or nerfs have left room for followup on champions who could use more clear identities. We’re revisiting those champions to make sure that their strengths - and only their strengths - shine.
Oh, and then there’s the new guy Kled. Speaking of strengths, we’re pretty sure his is “kicking your ass”, so get out there and ride Skaarl to victory!
Good luck, have fun, and remember: a little courage goes a long way.
Mattias "Gentleman Gustaf" Lehman
Champions
Kled, the Cantankerous Cavalier, will be released in this patch! To learn more, check the following links:
- Champion Bio
- The Reunion
- Champion Reveal
- Champion Insights
- Inside Kled dev with the designers (podcast)
- Kled Q&A
- Champion Spotlight
Irelia
Passive now adds tenacity based on how outnumbered Irelia’s team is, rather than how many enemies are nearby.
Irelia’s the type of against-all-odds champion who turns disadvantages into advantages. Stunning her opponents when they get ahead and shrugging off crowd control when surrounded lets her pull off surprising comebacks and flashy moments of aggression. Irelia is known for fighting off a Noxian invading force while fiercely outnumbered, but her passive isn’t currently hitting that tone; it just makes her generically hard to lock down in teamfights. Playing Irelia should feel like beating impossible odds, but when she’s surrounded by her team, she doesn’t have any odds to beat. Irelia’s passive will now track the number of allies as well as enemies, with a shorter range so your backline Xerath isn’t ruining your sick plays.
Passive - Ionian Fervor
R - Transcendent Blades
Leona
Praise the sunlight.
We recently gave Leona more ways to apply her passive, but it’s often unclear to Leona players just how much damage Sunlight contributes to a fight. With a bit more clarity, Leona will better perceive the impact she’s having.
Passive - Sunlight
Lulu
W cooldown reduced. Bonus attack speed increased.
The last time we looked at Lulu, we took some efforts to dial back on her ability to nullify the solo laning phase. After waiting a bit for the dust to settle, we’re comfortable with where her laning phase is but feel she could use some power back. We’re sharpening her identity as “enchanter for auto-attack based carries” by ensuring that she - and her allies - feel the impact of her buffs with higher frequency.
W - Whimsy
Mordekaiser
Cleaned up Mordekaiser’s Ghost AI.
R - Children of the Grave
Nautilus
R stuns all targets struck by the line.
Nautilus is a go-to champion for players who want to scatter disruption and crowd control everywhere. Earlier in the season, Nautilus saw a period of dominance due to his high base damage, but our resulting nerfs have left him a bit underwhelming. With less power tied up in his damage, we want to focus on giving Nautilus even more multi-target disruption in teamfights. Depth Charge will be as strong as ever when used to isolate and lock down a priority target, but skilled Nautilus players should be even more rewarded for deftly placing their ultimate to lock down multiple targets.
R - Depth Charge
Sona
E’s self movement speed lowered. R’s cooldown reduction lowered at early ranks.
Sona’s recent changes have solidified her identity as the hard-scaling utility support, but her scaling is kicking in a bit too early. Her power should rise over time, but the key phrase there is “over time”. Late game scaling doesn’t start at level 6, so we’re muting Sona’s early ranks of Crescendo to give enemies a chance to punish her before she gets to her late-game power.
However, punishing Sona is also proving too hard overall: she may be squishy, but she is often too speedy for opponents to capitalize on her mistakes. We’re trimming some of her elusiveness so that opponents can feel better about catching her out of position.
E - Song of Celerity
R - Crescendo
Viktor
R’s maximum speed is slower, but minimum speed is faster. R begins losing speed sooner. ‘Return’ speed bonus removed.
With the midseason update to Viktor’s ultimate, we committed to the notion that Viktor should have to earn a full duration Chaos Storm with risky positioning or help from his team. He’s not far from that state, but we’re seeing a few too many cases where Chaos Storm is running opponents down without the help of Viktor or his team. We’re tweaking the speed of Chaos Storm so that Viktor has to stay a bit more up close and personal - or rely on crowd control- to keep his victims trapped inside.
With these changes, we’re also following up on our change from last week, which made returning Chaos Storm to Viktor less generous. Even that version was still overly mitigating the risks of Viktor’s least aggressive use case, going against our intent to heighten Viktor’s risk/reward profile.
R - Chaos Storm
Champion Select
During the 6.15 patch, we introduced a feature showing how much lower or higher queue times may be based on the positions selected.
Queue times can vary dramatically depending on the roles a player picks, so we’ve added queue time impact estimates to position select. Now you can decide if you prefer getting into game or getting your primary.
Bugfixes
- Fixed a bug where Lux’s R - Final Spark wasn’t dealing damage to champions it hit if Lux couldn’t see them
- Ahri’s R - Spirit Rush, Fiora’s Q - Lunge, and Xerath’s E - Eye of Destruction no longer fire in weird directions when cast while the cursor is hovering over the minimap
- Vayne’s Q - Tumble now properly damages inhibitors and the nexus
- Soraka’s R - Wish now properly grants Ardent Censer’s attack speed buff to faraway allies she heals
- Orianna’s ball no longer visually disappears until next spellcast if an ally dies while holding it
- Fixed a bug where an enemy hit with multiple shells from Graves’s basic attacks only applied a single stack of Black Cleaver
- Grasp of the Undying’s cooldown no longer refreshes when Yasuo attempts (and fails) to cast E - Sweeping Blade on a target he recently dashed through
- Fixed a bug where Tibbers would repeatedly cancel his bear slaps when you ordered him to attack a unit he was already attacking
- Champion clones no longer steal part of the Turret First Blood gold bonus
- Righteous Glory now properly grants movement speed when moving toward champion clones
- Twisted Fate no longer cancels his recall when pressing the hotkey for E - Stacked Deck at ranks 2 or higher
- Arcade and DJ Sona aura VFX have been increased in size to match her recent gameplay changes
- Championship and Deep Sea Thresh’s W - Dark Passage once again create a glowing trail behind the lantern when Dark Passage is cast
- Put Cottontail Fizz’s health bar in the right spot
- Rocket Girl Tristana Punk chromas no longer use Tristana’s base visual effects
- Deep Sea Nami no longer keeps talking when Voice Volume is disabled
- Pool Party Miss Fortune’s E - Make it Rain no longer causes coconuts to visually hit people from weird directions in certain situations
- Dragonslayer Braum no longer becomes momentarily blurry after casting a spell
- Buff particles (ex. Banshee’s Veil shield) now properly rise with Gravelord Azir during his recall animation
- Smoothed out a crack in PROJECT: Katarina’s textures
- Syndra’s start and end poses during her recall animation have been fixed to smooth her movement out
- Super Galaxy Shyvana’s hands are no longer stretchy during her death animation
Upcoming Skins
The following skins will be released during patch 6.16
SKT T1 Alistar SKT T1 Azir SKT T1 Elise SKT T1 Kalista SKT T1 Renekton SKT T1 Ryze |
Sir Kled |
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