LoL Patch 14.13 Notes

This patch cycle overlaps with Riot's annual summer break, so League (and Riot) is going on a week-long pause to recharge, relax, maybe finish our HoL Passes, check out some shadows under a tree, or even adventure at dawn down a trail. This week-long break during July 4th will make patch 14.13 last 3 weeks, until July 17th brings patch 14.14. For a bit more context on our summer break check out our Riot article here.

Brand

Passive mana regeneration reduced. E damage decreased.

Brand is performing well almost everywhere so we're taking back some power. We're mainly targeting mid and bot with these changes through his passive and rank-up incentives (mid and bot max E second) since support and jungle are at more reasonable power levels.

Passive - Blaze

• Mana Restore: 30-50 (based on level) ⇒ 20-40 (based on level)

E - Conflagration

• Magic Damage: 60/90/120/150/180 (+60% AP) ⇒ 60/85/110/135/160 (+60% AP)

Gangplank

E slow formula adjusted.

As itemization has changed around Gangplank, so too must he, as Trinity Force is basically mandatory so he can no longer rush crit chance. We're walking back some of his crit scaling and giving him guaranteed value in its place as both a direct buff and a continued invitation to find alternate builds that aren't solely based around one-shotting enemy teams with critical strikes.

E - Powder Keg

• Slow: 30/37.5/45/52.5/60% (+0%-25% based on critical strike chance) ⇒ 40/50/60/70/80%

Gragas

Passive heal reduced.

Gragas is quite hard to answer in lane due to his low-counterplay trades combined with his sustain. So we're targeting his sustain by tamping down power from his passive to make him less immovable. The heal was buffed for jungle clear years ago, which is no longer necessary due to healthier clears nowadays.

Passive - Happy Hour

• Maximum Health Heal: 6.5% ⇒ 5.5%

Graves

E bonus armor increased.

Graves' build, damage amount, and clear speed are reasonable, but he could use some extra durability. Our 13.22 nerf to his E was too harsh. So we're reverting the nerf as he certainly has the room for it.

E - Quickdraw

• Bonus Armor Per Stack: 2/5/8/11/14 ⇒ 4/7/10/13/16

Kalista

Base Attack Damage reduced. W minimum non-champ damage and non champ execute threshold removed. W non-champion damage cap reduced. R cooldown increased.

Kalista's win rates are roughly appropriate considering she's harder to play than the average ADC but she's also been a top-tier Pro threat all year long. As she's getting pretty stale in the Pro scene, we're delivering some nerfs that we hope will disproportionately affect Pro play. We're toning down her coordination-reliant pieces and clarifying the special rules of her W by removing some of them and adding the rest to the tooltip. We're also doing a small pass on recommended runes, updating a few that appear to have better alternatives.

Base Stats

• Attack Damage: 61 ⇒ 59

W - Sentinel

• [REMOVED] Minimum non champion damage: 75/100/125/150/175
• [REMOVED] Non-Champion execute threshold: 125/150/175/200/250
• Non-Champion Damage cap: 250/300/350/400/450 ⇒ 100/125/150/175/200

R - Fate's Call

• Cooldown: 150/120/90 ⇒ 160/140/120

Karthus

Q Damage reduced.

Karthus is still performing too well (particularly in higher levels of play) and reliably scaling into dealing oppressive damage that is difficult to avoid. So we're lowering his early damage and clear to account for how much more consistent Blackfire Torch makes his games.

Q - Lay Waste

• Magic Damage: 43/62/81/100/119 (+35% AP) ⇒ 40/59/78/97/116 (+35% AP)

Kennen

Base health reduced.

Moving while casting his ultimate feels great and carries a meaningful amount of power, so we're simply taking some away to account for that. He's best in higher levels of play, so we're targeting there. We're reducing his base health to give his opponents a better window to kill him once they get the jump, as he's now more elusive and his R resistances are more valuable.

Base Stats

• Health: 611 ⇒ 580

Lee Sin

Health Growth increased. W shield increased at lower ranks.

Lee Sin is weaker than he ought to be, so he's getting some buffs. He's already pretty lethal right now, so we're playing up his defensive outputs instead. Also noteworthy is that about 25% of Lee Sin players max Tempest / Cripple second, which appears to be worse than the more traditional W-max, so we're making that less wrong by frontloading some of W's power.

Base Stats

• Health Growth: 105 ⇒ 108

W - Safeguard / Iron Will

• Shield: 50/100/150/200/250 (+80 AP) ⇒ 70/115/160/205/250 (+80% AP)

Lissandra

Q damage increased. W cooldown reduced at lower ranks.

We're improving how well Lissandra does into her good matchups, as we don't think she does well enough to justify picking her over other champions. So we're decreasing her W cooldown for more catches and waveclear, and buffing the damage on her main spell.

Q - Ice Shard

• Magic Damage: 80/110/140/170/200 (+80% AP) ⇒ 80/110/140/170/200 (+85% AP)

W - Ring of Frost

• Cooldown: 12/11/10/9/8 ⇒ 10/9.5/9/8.5/8

Miss Fortune

Base AD increased. W damage lock out, move speed delay decreased. W initial and max bonus move speed increased.

Miss Fortune is a very straightforward and easy to play ADC, which means she should be winning more often than average. While she's technically dealing as much damage per game as she was before the midseason item update, she's still missing some of her old strengths. Now that she's not rushing Youmuu's any more, she's not spiking as quickly or zipping around the map the way she used to, so we're giving her a small increase to laning power and a lot of extra juice to Strut's bonus move speed.

Base Stats

• Base Attack Damage: 52 ⇒ 55

W - Strut

• Damage Lock-out: 5 seconds ⇒ 4 seconds
• Upgraded Move speed delay: 5 seconds ⇒ 3 seconds
• Max bonus move speed: 55/65/75/85/95 ⇒ 60/70/80/90/100
• Initial Bonus move speed: 25 ⇒ 30/35/40/45/50

Orianna

Base AD increased.

Orianna has fallen a bit behind her mid lane counterparts following the changes to mage items this season. We're looking to give her some power by bringing her base AD up to let her early attacks match other mages when combined with her passive.

Base Stats

• Attack Damage: 40 ⇒ 44

Pantheon

W minion/monster damage increased.

We're pretty happy with the way the 14.11 Pantheon changes shipped, but we're adding a small QoL buff on W to bring his last hitting back to what it was before 14.11.

W - Shield Vault

• Minion/Monster Minimum Damage: 50 ⇒ 60

Skarner

Q mana cost increased. Q max health damage reduced.

As Skarner has been out for a while and players have gotten better at him, we've seen a continued rise in his ban rate and an overwhelming presence in Pro play. As a fairly new, moderately difficult champion, he's simply winning way too many games, and signs indicate that top lane is his most egregious role. So we're nerfing Skarner this patch with a few goals in mind: First, we'd like to make sure that Skarner fulfills the role of a tank so we're taking away damage instead of durability. Second, we want to make the early game counter-play of Top Lane a bit more fair: Harsher mana costs before he buys Tear and overall worse trading from Q hopefully make for a better experience for his top lane opponents.

These nerfs won't have as meaningful of an impact on jungle since he easily hits the damage cap on his first clear but still affect his damage while fighting champions.

Q - Shattered Earth / Upheaval

• Mana Cost: 30 ⇒ 50
• Max Health Damage: 15% ⇒ 10%

Taliyah

Q bonus monster damage reduced.

Taliyah is currently extremely over-performant in the jungle, so we're specifically hitting some jungle levers. She has one of the fastest initial clears in the game while also having great late-game clears due to Runic Ashes and its upgrades so we're slowing those down to more reasonable levels.

Q - Threaded Volley

• Bonus Monster Damage: 25 (+5% AP) ⇒ 10

Varus

Base AD and AS growth decreased. Passive reworked. W damage and basic ability refund increased. W cast lockout on Q increased.

Varus has two builds right now: Lethality and on-hit. Lethality Varus is much stronger than most players realize, as maxing Hail of Arrows second is better but less common. Meanwhile, on-hit Varus has the problem of quickly approaching the attack speed cap of 2.5 attacks per second and suddenly doesn't have a passive any more. And all the while, Varus is the most picked bot laner in pro right now. We'd like to not only shake up the pro scene but also make Varus a more enjoyable and intuitive champion to play for everyone else.

The primary change here is a retooling of his passive. Instead of granting increasingly large amounts of attack speed, it will give a smaller amount up front that should feel similar in the laning phase, but as the game goes on, give stats that synergize with attack speed: AD for autos, Q, and E, and AP for the entire W loop. We're also powering up the spell-weaving loop by giving more cooldown refund on Blight pops. Ideally, Varus will have a strong spell-weaving AD-AS item build alongside his pure lethality and on-hit ones.

The secondary changes are around making his skill orders more intuitive and whittling away at his pro strengths. As mentioned before, most lethality Varus players were maxing W second, so we're making ranks in W matter a bit more for Lethality builds to close the power disparity there. Meanwhile, early game nerfs to his attack damage through base AD and Q+W damage should make him less of a lane bully. Finally, we're making it a little more forgiving to use the W+Q spell combo, giving more time to activate Blighted Quiver while charging up.

Base Stats

• Attack Damage: 60 ⇒ 57
• Attack Speed Growth: 4% ⇒ 3.5%

Passive - Living Vengeance

• Minion kill: 10/15/20% (+20% Bonus AS) ⇒ 10% Attack Speed, (10% Attack Speed) AD, and (10% Attack Speed) AP
• Champion Takedown: 40% (+40% Bonus AS) ⇒ 40% Attack Speed, (15% Attack Speed) AD, and (15% Attack Speed) AP
• [NEW] Attack Speed scaling: Now includes attack speed from champion levels
• Attack Speed cap increased from 2.5 to 2.763 during champion takedown passive, meaning the passive itself can bypass the AS cap

W - Blighted Quiver

• Damage: 7/13/19/25/31 ⇒ 7/14/21/28/35
• Missing Health Damage: 6/8/10/12/14% at levels 1/4/7/10/13 ⇒ 6/8/10/12/14% based on rank
• Q cast lockout: .25 seconds ⇒ .85 seconds
• Basic Ability Cooldown Refund per blight pop: 12% ⇒ 13%

Xayah

E cooldown reduced. E damage increased.

Xayah's a little weaker than she should be and has completely fallen out of contention in the ADC pool. As such, we'll be reverting some of her recent ability nerfs now that she doesn't have the same ability haste and damage that the old Navori Quickblades provided.

E - Bladecaller

• Cooldown: 13/12/11/10/9 ⇒ 12/11/10/9/8
• Base Damage: 50/60/70/80/90 (+60% Bonus AD) ⇒ 55/65/75/85/95 (+60% Bonus AD)

Zac

Passive formula reworked to scale off level instead of R ranks.

Lane Zac provides a pretty poor experience to everyone who has to face him as his trades are nearly guaranteed and his sustain makes him almost impossible to trade against. We're nerfing his early game passive healing in hopes of opening up more opportunities to whittle him down and push him out of lane.

Passive - Cell Division

• Healing from blobs: 5/6/7/8% Max HP (based on R ranks) ⇒ 4-8% (based on level)

Opportunity

Opportunity currently has only one core melee user and is otherwise the optimal AD caster item for most physical ranged champions. In order to promote more choice inside of items, we're nerfing the lethality on ranged champions and buffing its move speed, which should help more melee champions decide to pick it up.

• Preparation Lethality: 5-10.5 (based on level) ⇒ 5-10.5 (based on level) (melee) / 3-6.3 (based on level) (ranged)
• Extraction bonus move speed decaying over 1.5s: 150 ⇒ 200

Dark Harvest

We're changing Dark Harvest and Electrocute this patch with the goal of making them have more defined roles. For Electrocute, we want this to be the more reliable and early game focused rune, picked for lane dominance in order to start your game off right. For Dark Harvest, we want it to be the riskier cousin to Electrocute. You'll have to get your opponent low without a keystone to help you, but if you can do so reliably, it'll outpace Electrocute by the late game. As Dark Harvest currently has a decent number of users in the jungle, we're hoping the level scaling vs. stack scaling ends up being roughly power neutral, while the baseline cooldown buff is meant to attract laners, as very few solo laners currently take the rune.

• Damage: 20-80 (+5 per Soul) ⇒ 20 (+9 per Soul) (bonus ratios unchanged)
• Cooldown: 45 ⇒ 40

Electrocute

• Damage: 30-220 ⇒ 50-190 (bonus ratios unchanged)
• Cooldown: 25-20 (based on level) ⇒ 20

Greetings ARAMers! We don't have any balance changes for this patch, but we are keeping our eye on champions impacted by the recent Rune changes. Skarner is also on our radar, but, since he's already getting changes on Summoner's Rift, we need to see how those land on Howling Abyss. That said, we do have a QoL update! GLHF!

• New Reroll-to- Bench Cooldown: Previously, if players rerolled their champion, then their previous champion could be picked by their teammates immediately. Now, your rerolled champion will have a three second “bench cooldown” for your teammates, meaning they will be unable to pick said champion and you can get them back without any stress. Goodbye bench sniping minigame! This change won't impact any of the existing swap-with-bench behavior as it focuses on rerolling, meaning if you swap with a bench champion, your teammate will still be able to pick the champion you gave up immediately.
• Quick Purchase Panel Update: ARAM's boots and elixir sections will now be included in the quick purchase panel to align with the recent changes in the Summoner's Rift shop.
• Item: Hullbreaker has been added back to the Howling Abyss.

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