| Tank Updates Items Summoner Spells |
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Howdy folks,
The midseason train is leaving the station, so hop onboard and we’ll take a look at the cargo we’re carrying.
In the first row we have the Maokai, Sejuani and Zac updates. We’re making their kits more distinct and sharpening each of their identities. With tanks on the mind we seized the opportunity to revisit our durability items and how resistances were performing in general. We have some good stuff down below with new items like Gargoyle Stoneplate and Adaptive Helm, as well as shifts of power in items like Guardian Angel and Abyssal Scepter.
Since we’re on the subject of items, we also wanted to make sure our damage items play nice with the durability changes above. We’re cool with how ability power items are doing, but to hit the right balance on the AD front we need to siphon some power from armor penetration into other stuff.
We’re also adding quests to Support starting items! We wanted supports to have more room to be interactive and meaningful in lane without throwing raw stats and gold at them. We’re also improving the clarity around how they support their team: items now have more detailed stat tracking, crowd control is more visible, and the end-of-the-game screen has some beefed up stats!
Last but not least, Rift Herald has a brand new encounter and reward. Whenever defeated, she can be summoned to wreak havoc on the closest lane - you better pay attention to her otherwise there won’t be much of your base left.
Now that we’ve gone over our itinerary, it’s time for this train to get rolling. Choo Choo.
Paul "Aether" Perscheid
Mattias "Gentleman Gustaf" Lehman
Lucas "Liquizilla" MoutinhoMID-PATCH UPDATES
5/5 Updates
Sejuani
Shipping the Frost Armor changes we alluded to earlier.
Fullscreen Mode
5/4 Balance Update
A few firefighting changes based on early midseason trends. We'll have additional followup in normal patches once we've had enough time to properly assess how midseason has landed.
Sejuani's hit the ground running harder than anticipated. We're tapping down some of her newfound strength.
NOTE: A few of the changes we want to make can't be done with the tools that ship quick balance fixes. Expect another update soon with adjustments to Frost Armor.
Base stats
W - Winter's Wrath
Zac's update introduced new mechanics to learn and make new decisions around. These buffs should ease the learning process a bit.
Q - Stretching Strike
E - Elastic Slingshot
Rift Herald
Support Attack Animations
These missed the original round of patch notes so we'll call 'em out now. If something felt different in your first few matches of the patch, you weren't crazy!
- Annie, Janna, Morgana, Nami, Sona, and Soraka have had non-gameplay impacting adjustments made to their attack animations
- Janna, Nami, and Sona will now use their crit animations when doing empowered attacks
- Janna and Nami have had adjustments to their basic attack visual and sound effects
Tank Updates
While most tanks bring specific strengths to the table, Maokai does everything at once. So, when the Twisted Treant is at- or above-par with his classmates, he quickly becomes the go-to pick. At the same time, no specific strategy or team comp depends on Maokai’s particular set of skills to succeed. When he’s weaker than other tanks on average, he vanishes off the face of the earth.
This update's about establishing strategies and situations where you really want Maokai, as well as ones where you really don't. We're shaving away generic strengths like Vengeful Maelstrom and its damage reduction aura, and replacing them with situationally-powerful tools like Nature's Grasp, which can lock down bunches of enemies at once but requires setup to succeed. With new potential to claim and control areas (plus a clarified hatred for spellcasters), choosing Maokai is now a much more intreeguing decision.
General
Base stats
Passive - Sap Magic
Q - Bramble Smash
W - Twisted Advance
E - Sapling Toss
R - Nature's Grasp
Nature’s Grasp creates a massive wall of brambles that slowly advances forward. Each bramble damages and roots the first enemy champion hit.
Charred
Totemic
Festive
Sejuani's ult is in the running for one of the strongest abilities in the game, but that distinction comes at a cost. Her basic abilities have been kept in a watered-down state to allow Glacial Prison to shine. We're evening things out by converting some of Glacial Prison's power into more impactful things for Sej to do across the rest of her kit. (Real talk, her ult was so bonkers before that the trimmed-down version is still powerful in its own right.)
In terms of what's new, we're keying into Sejuani's themes of Freljordian warleader and heavy cavalry. Frost Armor now augments her mount, Bristle, allowing Sejuani to charge into battle unfettered by slows. She calls melee allies to arms as she approaches the fray, empowering their strikes to render enemies vulnerable to Permafrost's point-and-click stun. With greater strength in her basic abilities, Sejuani’s the tank to pledge fealty to when your team prefers to get up close and personal with the enemy.
General
Base stats
Passive - Fury of the North
FROST ARMOR: After not taking damage for a while, Sejuani gains bonus resistances and slow immunity. Frost Armor briefly lingers after Sejuani takes damage.
ICEBREAKER: Enemies stunned by Sejuani are frozen, causing her first spell or attack against them to deal bonus damage.
Q - Arctic Assault
W - Winter's Wrath
Sejuani swings her mace in an arc, then lashes out in a line. Both hits deal damage and apply Frost.
E - Permafrost
R - Glacial Prison
Sejuani throws her True Ice bola, damaging and stunning the first enemy champion hit. Bolas that travel before exploding are empowered.
Empowered bolas also leave behind an ice storm that explodes after a brief delay.
Dark Rider
Sabertusk
Traditional
Zac’s already got some cool stuff going for him, particularly when it comes to diving in with Elastic Slingshot. The thing is, he uses most of his gooey flair to make his way into a fight, leaving him without anything remarkable to do once he’s there. This is a narrower problem than what our other tank updates aim to address, but bringing more of Zac’s kit up to Elastic Slingshot’s bar is a goal we feel is well worth pursuing.
Goo lets us do some thematically weird stuff - an opportunity Zac hasn’t taken full advantage of. We’re using this update to give Zac two new ways to cause chaos once he’s made his way into a fight. Zaun’s Secret Weapon knocks enemy skulls together with Stretching Strikes, and Let’s Bounce! gives him the ability to kidnap people standing on top of him. These new tools give Zac the means to shuffle opponents around the battlefield with sticky, stretchy abilities that feel uniquely his own.
General
Base stats
Passive - Cell Division
Click to expand HEAL ON GOO PICKUP : 4% max healthREVIVE COOLDOWN : 300 secondsHEALTH ON REVIVE : 10-50% health, based on remaining bloblet healthBLOBLET REFORM TIME : 8/7/6/5/4 seconds (at levels 1/6/10/14/17)BLOBLET HEALTH : 12% of Zac’s max healthBLOBLET RESISTANCES : 50% of Zac’s armor and magic resist
Q - Stretching Strike
Zac’s arm stretches, grabbing the first enemy it hits. Zac then grabs the next enemy he basic attacks and throws them toward each other.
W - Unstable Matter
Click to expand COST : 4% current healthCOOLDOWN : 5 secondsCOOLDOWN REFUND : 1 second every time Zac picks up a Goo chunkDAMAGE : 40/55/70/85/100 flat, plus 4/5/6/7/8% (+2% per 100 ability power) target’s maximum health (max 200 versus monsters)
E - Elastic Slingshot
R - Let's Bounce!
Zac squishes himself down on-cast, becoming immune to crowd control and slowing enemies above him while charging.
Fully-charged casts cause Zac to suck up all enemies standing on top of him and carry them to the target location.
New Durability Items
NEW Adaptive Helm
Provides health and magic resist. Increases durability against repeated casts of the same spell.
Tanks have been struggling to deal with certain types of magic damage, specifically battle mages like Ryze or Cassiopeia who churn spell after spell into their enemies. Because burst mages have longer cooldowns - and rarely enough damage to one-shot tanks, tanks are less likely to die to them than they are the followup damage from marksmen. Battle mages - with their low cooldowns - circumvent that pattern by continuing to threaten tanks throughout a fight.
This leaves tanks feeling a bit underwhelmed with their available MR against battle mages. We can’t simply tune up MR items, however, without causing tanks to entirely invalidate other mages. Instead, we’re introducing Adaptive Helm to allow tanks some breathing room against persistent spellcasters. Tanks already have items that are tuned sustained damage from physical sources, with items like Randuin’s Omen or Frozen Heart helping them weather the storm. Adaptive Helm is a similar item for incoming magic damage.
NEW Gargoyle Stoneplate
Provides armor and magic resist. Gain more resistances when near multiple enemy champions. Active grants bonus health but reduces your damage; more health granted if near multiple enemy champions.
Two types of champions stack durability items: fighters, and tanks. Tanks go all in on durability, so they can keep protecting, disrupting, and enabling carries throughout a fight. Fighters, on the other hand, want to pick up a bit of durability but ultimately care about their damage as well.
This puts pure durability items in a weird place. If they provide too much raw tankiness, they risk making fighters too hard to duel. On the other hand, if they don’t provide enough, tanks eat too much ambient damage in teamfights to feel safe doing their job. We’re introducing Gargoyle Stoneplate to give tanks - and maybe fighters who have already fallen behind in the one-on-one - the option to gear up for teamfights without making them impossible to duel.
Durability Item Adjustments
Health is a pretty generic stat, making you tanky against everybody. Resistances are a bit more sharpened, granting increased durability against one type of damage. And then there’s the unique effects on each item, which are much more specific. At the moment, we think items which provide health and resistances are falling too far towards the generalist end.
Most of those items split their stat value about 50/50 between health and resistances. Since health is such a generic durability stat, that gives tanks a pretty efficient one-item power spike. We want the type of damage you itemize against to be more of an intentional decision, so we’re tweaking those generalist items to be more directed in what type of damage they protect against. In other words: less health, more resistances, stronger unique effects.
Sunfire Cape
Health down, armor up. Burn radius down. Burn damage down versus champions, up versus non-champions.
Sunfire Cape has been the top lane first-buy for quite some time, and it’s not hard to see why. With waveclear, durability, and champion combat power, it has everything a growing top laner needs. We’re sharpening its identity as the “pushing” item by pushing (sorry) more strength into damage against non-champions - at the expense of dueling potency.
Burn radius down.
Enchantment - Cinderhulk
Burn radius down. Burn damage down versus champions, up versus non-champions.
Higher burn damage to monsters should help tank jungler clear speed without overtuning their dueling potential. It also now matches Sunfire’s burn numbers, which is nice from a symmetry standpoint.
Spirit Visage
Health down. Magic resist up. Healing bonus up.
Magic resist tank items aren’t very robust at the moment. Spirit Visage is by and far the top choice, and Banshee’s Veil is pretty much there for more stats. Spirit Visage is meant to be enticing for champions with high healing (or a strong healer on their team), but we don’t want it to outshine every other option in every other case.
Spectre's Cowl
Magic resist down.
Now that tanks have more magic resist options available, Cowl doesn’t need to be quite so potent on its own.
Dead Man's Plate
Health down. Armor up.
Dead Man’s Plate is designed to help melee champions close the gap so they can put the hurting on their opponents, but it was also bringing a lot of unnoticed damage of its own. We’re trimming the smaller damage moments in favor of more uptime on chasing power.
Randuin's Omen
Health down. Crit strike damage reduction up. Active slow strength up but duration down.
Randuin’s Omen is “the health/armor item that’s pretty good against basic attacks”. We’re sharpening that even further by greatly increasing its power against critical strikes, while reducing its effectiveness against other threats.
Warmog's Armor
Warmog’s Heart passive activates at a lower threshold and regenerates more health.
Pulling health out of our tank items left Warmog’s Armor feeling a bit inaccessible. We’re compensating for the lower expected health from items, while also providing light buffs and quality of life improvements to its passive.
Warmog's Heart passive
UPDATED Banshee's Veil
Now a mage item! Health removed, ability power added.
For tanks, Banshee’s Veil isn’t bought for being Banshee’s Veil, it’s bought because it’s another Spirit Visage stat line. When it comes down to it, a spell shield is a much more carry-oriented ability, because tanks won’t instantly die if caught out by stray crowd control. We’re reworking Banshee’s Veil’s statline to make it more enticing to carries.
UPDATED Abyssal Scepter
Now a tank item! Health added, ability power removed.
Like Banshee’s Veil, Abyssal Scepter is an item whose passive doesn’t quite line up with its statline. An area-of-effect damage amp is much more appropriate for a durable champion that’s comfortable in the thick of things, but the ability power currently on there makes it much more appropriate for mages. We’re shifting stats around to make Abyssal Scepter the item for tanks who feel comfortable sacrificing raw durability to give their team a bit more damage.
UPDATED Guardian Angel
Now a physical damage item! Attack damage added. Magic resist removed.
Like Banshee’s Veil, the Guardian Angel passive is much more appropriate for carries who could easily find themselves bursted in an instant and in need of a second chance. While we toyed with the idea of finding a way to make the resurrection effect available in both magic damage and physical damage forms, mages have Zhonya’s Hourglass for a stasis effect, and two stasis effects makes for a really frustrating “playing against” case. As a result, we’re retuning Guardian Angel to have more appropriate stats for carries who churn out physical damage.
Sterak's Gage
Base attack damage bonus up. Lifeline shield now scales with bonus health, not max health.
Sterak’s Gage is supposed to be a clutch tankiness item for Juggernauts, giving them the base damage increase and burst of durability they need to withstand focused fire. We’re doubling down on that by tying its scaling to bonus health (rather than base health) and upping the damage scaling to boot. With their health-heavy builds and base attack damage, Juggernauts (and other fighters) should feel best about these changes - especially in the late game.
UPDATED Doran's Shield
No longer reduces damage from basic attacks or single-target spells. Now regenerates health after taking damage from an enemy champion.
Doran’s items give champions a lot of laning strength at the expense of mid-to-late game slot efficiency. In that context, Doran’s Shield is the item that lets you weather a tough lane, so we’re updating its passives to keep you in lane and help you last hit while you save up for your big-ticket items.
Lifesteal Items
Blade of the Ruined King’s 7.6 update put it on the strong side, making it the go-to item for every marksman. Alongside with a small tune down BotRK (just a small one, given the durability changes), we’re giving other items a bit more power to restore diversity to the marksman itemization landscape.
Critical Strike Items
Crit is an integral part of traditional marksman itemization but it’s been underperforming for a while. We’re giving marskmen earlier access to their one-and-a-half item power spike (Infinity Edge + Zeal, generally) while also sharpening the identities of each Zeal upgrade.
Runaan’s Hurricane is supposed to be about area of effect damage and waveclear, but due to all the things it offers (smoothest build path among all Zeal items, best raw single target damage per second due to the on-hit damage and best area damage) it was simply the best choice in all cases. We’re shifting power to the secondary bolts - preserving Hurricane’s identity as the area-effect Zeal upgrade - but the other things must go.
Rapid Firecannon and Statikk Shiv cannibalize each other’s strengths due to Energized proc damage not stacking between sources. We’re trying to better differentiate the two in ways that also make their combination more compelling (Long range chain lightning? We’re in there.) RFC is here to not only amp up your range but also charge your other Energized effects faster. Rapidly, one might say.
Rapid Firecannon and Statikk Shiv cannibalize each other’s strengths due to Energized proc damage not stacking between sources. We’re trying to better differentiate the two in ways that also make their combination more compelling (Long range chain lightning? We’re in there.) Shiv already had what it needed to be the burst-oriented option (remember: the lightning can crit for double the damage) so we’re tuning it to push that distinction harder.
Phantom Dancer’s already doing its own thing pretty well, so we’re adjusting costs to match the other Zeal upgrades and calling it a day.
Armor Penetration Items
Let’s get straight to the point: between Lethality, Last Whisper, and Cleaver, there’s been too much armor penetration in the item system. With the shift in durability items to favor armor over health when dealing with physical damage dealers, those physical damage dealers can’t also have their current degree of effectiveness in mitigating those armor buffs.
These numbers might look kinda harsh, but most of that power was siphoned into the crit and lifesteal item buffs above.
Support Items & Quests
Earn enough gold from a support item to unlock a new effect.
Playing well as a support often means intentionally foregoing actions that grant gold or experience - the two main axes of power in League. In the past, we’ve given supports their own unique items to prop up their lower gold income, but this led to problems (and subsequent nerfs) when other positions found ways to abuse them. We want to give supports additional rewards for good play that aren’t just gold and experience.
While the Targon’s and Spellthief’s lines encourage supports to play an active role in the laning phase (last-hitting/trading), Ancient Coin’s gameplay consists of “be in lane”. We want to make Ancient Coin’s rewards less consistently safe, allowing users more ways to show off skillful aggression while giving opponents more opportunity to punish mistakes.
Favor update
Supports often lag behind the rest of their team in experience, denying them access to base stats and skill ranks. Ancient Coin’s new quest gives supports a boost to stay competitive in ability ranks, granting them a skill point when they complete it.
Quest rewards
Tanks want to be more tanky. A sweet shield - regenerated over time and accelerated by executing minions with Relic Shield - should give tank supports the durability they need to withstand poke, as well as a chunk of health to bolster their initiations.
Quest rewards
Most mage supports already churn out pretty decent damage (looking at you, Zyra/Brand), so rather than give them more damage as a quest reward, we wanted to give them something that feels distinct from the mid lane experience. Extra mobility gives them a tool to dance in and out of fights, giving them a unique reason to be played as supports, rather than mid laners.
Quest rewards
Tribute mechanics
Contribution Clarity
Many aspects of League showcase damage and kills, but not many focus on what leads to those outputs - the stuns, heals, peels, and big beefy cows that set you up to kill the enemy squishies. We’re making the contributions of said unsung heroes more prominent, with the added benefit of improving tactical clarity for all.
This is our first step of many towards improving this space - look for more across the rest of the season.
Crowd Control Name Display
Crowd control effects can be easy to lose amidst the hubbub of battle, even moreso in a full-on teamfight. By temporarily replacing Summoner Names with the name of the effect, recognition of this vital information goes up. With this, you can tell just how many friends Amumu’s trying to make.
End of Game Stats
Four new stats have been added to the End of Game screen for your perusing pleasure!
Active Item Feedback
Ever wonder just how effectively you used your items? Wonder no longer, as we’re giving you numbers to track the answer to that very question. Gloat on, friends.
- Knight’s Vow: Damage Redirected and Healing Received
- Mikael’s Crucible: Successful Cleanses
- Redemption: Healing Done and Damage Dealt
Spell Attribution VFX
It can be hard to tell, and thus appreciate, who cast certain summoner spells or items on a target. This change adds a small VFX trail from caster to castee.
Death VFX
Our old death VFX were too slow and too subtle. We want players (and viewers) to be able to instantly discern when an ally or enemy dies, so we updated the VFX to be much snappier. This better communicates the flow of a teamfight. Youtube Link
Active Item HUD
The active (castable) portion of our items contain a lot of power and gold-efficiency … when used. This change adds a thicker and more prominent border to our major activatable items, reminding you to take full advantage of pickups such as Redemption, Zhonya’s Hourglass, and Blade of the Ruined King.
Rift Herald
Rift Herald has new visuals, a new fighting style, and can be summoned to wreak havoc to turrets.
We always wanted Rift Herald to be a compelling objective up toward top, but she’s historically failed to earn her place on the map. So, we revisited the encounter and its rewards for midseason. With a brand new fighting style (but same lack of protective eyewear), Rift Herald will feel like a more epic fight. Once defeated, the big changes come into play. She is imprisoned in a trinket that can be crushed to summon her. Once unleashed, she marches down to the nearest lane, ignoring enemy champions in her mindless drive to slam turrets (and inhibitors and the Nexus) into little pieces until killed. So maybe try to kill her while you still have a base left.
The encounter
The reward
Rift Herald returned
Champions
Magic Resist Per Level
With Aegis of the Legion's old aura out of the game, squishy champions who were relying on it to give them enough magic resist find themselves a bit on the burstable side.
Graves
Hmmm...
Collateral Damage can have strong combo potential, but Graves can't have a built-in way to ignore its tradeoffs.
General
Cleanin’ up a bunch of stuff.
General
Passive - Reign of Anger
Q - Cull the Meek
E - Slice and Dice
R - Dominus
Ryze
Spell Flux still spreads if its target dies while E is mid-air.
We’re making Spell Flux more forgiving on higher-latency environments.
E - Spell Flux
Heading off what would’ve been an unintentionally harsh interaction with Maokai’s updated passive.
W - Seastone Trident
Heading off what would’ve been an unintentionally harsh interaction with Maokai’s updated passive.
Q - Twilight Assault
Items
At its old price tag of 750 gold, Poacher’s Dirk was almost always a worse purchase than two Long Swords. We want to make Poacher’s Dirk a more competitive option, but we don’t want to power creep the item system. So we’re shrinking its cost and its stats. If you have the option to get two Long Swords, you’ll probably still want to go that route. But if you can’t pony up 700 gold, Poacher’s Dirk offers a chance to recover some tempo by making riskier plays, compared to the safer - but slower - option of stacking consumables instead.
Recall VFX
Cleanin’ up a bunch of stuff.
Summoner Spells
Usability improvements.
Rotating Game Modes
Dark Star: Singularity runs from 5/4/2017 at 11 AM PT to 5/15/2017 at 11:59 PM PT. Play as Dark Star Thresh in a 3v3 match on Cosmic Ruins, a new map with a Dark Star Thresh announcer and chilling new music.
- Hook or Flay opposing players and Abyss Scuttlers into the black hole in the center of the map to gain points
- You’ll fly further the more damage you’ve taken, but you can’t die from health loss
- The first team to 100 points wins the round, and the first team to win two rounds wins the game
You can unlock two icons for this game mode. Look out for more information as the Dark Star nears.
Queue Health Update
- What does this update mean?
Solo/Duo Queue
Ranked Flex
Bugfixes
- Enemies knocked out of a dash by displacement effects are now properly locked out of other actions (ex. Flash) for the duration of the displacement
- Vilemaw’s damage can no longer be avoided by standing in very specific spots along the wall
- Amumu's Curse of the Sad Mummy VFX no longer appear in the wrong place if Amumu flashes during its cast time
- Amumu's Curse of the Sad Mummy VFX no longer stay on the map forever if Amumu dies while casting it
- Redemption no longer erroneously counts as a spellcast for effects like Tear of the Goddess
- Shaco's clone no longer crashes the game if it dies in the fountain on ARAM
- Instances of Deathfire Touch are no longer overwritten by new instances that would expire sooner
- Singed’s Poison Trail damage now increases as soon as he puts another skill point in it, rather than waiting until he toggles it off and on again
- Volibear's Frenzy attack speed bonus now increases as soon as he puts another skill point into it, rather than waiting until the buff falls off and is reapplied
- Fixed a bug that could cause Rakan’s Gleaming Quill to cost no mana in certain situations
- Fixed a bug preventing Rakan from reliably proccing Kalista’s Sentinel soul-mark damage if he attacked too quickly after the mark was applied
- Udyr’s Tiger Stance damage over time no longer melts wards
- Cosmic Dawn Rakan no longer leaves behind a purple ghost of himself after Recalling
- Similarly, Cosmic Dawn Rakan no longer turns himself purple when his Recall is cancelled
- Fixed Cosmic Dawn Rakan’s Recall and death audio
- Cosmic Dusk Xayah’s splash has been flipped in Xayah’s AIR client champion info page so she’s not covered up by the interface
- Fixed a Mac bug causing Cosmic Blade Master Yi’s Meditate and Highlander visual effects to flicker rapidly in some situations
- Fixed Conqueror Karma’s channeling animation (ex. when capturing Skarner’s Crystal Spires)
Upcoming Skins & Chromas
The following skins will be released during patch 7.9:
Dark Star Kha'Zix
Dark Star Orianna
The following chromas will be released during patch 7.9:
Sandstorm Ekko
Officer Vi
Warlord Shen
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