Patch 4.18 notes

Sion

Sion, the Undead Juggernaut, will be released with the launch of 4.18. Check out his reveal for gameplay info, his insights article for a look at his development, or his teaser for a glimpse into his story.

Akali

Akali's one of those champions who, when she gets ahead, completely circumvents her meaningful weaknesses by having extra resistances from Twilight Shroud. A fed Akali ultimately turns into a bruiser-assassin Akali who hops into a fight, tanks out damage in Twilight Shroud, and then continues to obliterate the squishies. Rather than removing her defensive mechanics completely, we wanted to focus Akali's skills on more ninja-y things, hence the heavier focus on sneaking and agility. This also allows us to reinforce the proper counterplay to Akali (reveal her in stealth and beat her up), give her better themed mechanics, all while reiterating her focus on opportunistic assassinations. Up front: this is meant to be an overall nerf, but we hope Akali players will be more focused on the cool plays they can make with this new mechanic.

W - Twilight Shroud

Anivia

We're hoping to give some extra love for new players picking up Anivia, as they'll have a clearer understanding of how to use this cool chick.

Q - Flash Frost

Azir

Gauging a new champion's release strength has traditionally been a difficult task, given we have to account for player learning curves, the landscape of the game and, in Azir's case, how that champion's ability coding holds up in millions of unique games (and game interactions). All of the above also plays into the next steps we need to take in helping (or toning down) that champion. With Azir, we saw some small changes we could take to help out his laning phase, but we're going to take it easier on anything larger until these fixes go through.

General

Passive - Shurima's Legacy

Q - Conquering Sands

W - Arise!

E - Shifting Sands

R - Emperor's Divide

Bug Awareness

Ezreal

See above. We're trying to give Ez some extra love so he can keep up in a modern game of League of Legends.

Passive - Rising Spell Force

Q - Mystic Shot

NOTE: This change has already taken effect, but the tooltip hasn't been updated. We'll get to that as soon as possible. Thanks!

Gangplank

Real talk: this change doesn't do everything for Gangplank in the long-term, but a consistency pass on Cannon Barrage was one we saw we could do in a self-contained change without fundamentally altering GP's playstyle.

R - Cannon Barrage

Kha'Zix

While it's true that Kha'Zix has been a tough bug to balance, we wanted to talk about our approach with him. If you're not interested in a long Kha'Zix context for a single change, feel free to move on. WARNING: this discussion's going to get a little complicated!

So. Kha'Zix has once again found a way to prosper as a high-priority assassin, but the popularity of a champion doesn't automatically translate to them needing a nerf. To us, when someone becomes popular in high level / competitive play, we see them as exhibitingsymptoms of certain attributes that competitive players value: strength, overall effectiveness, and reliability. As such, we do keep an eye out for popular competitive champions, but our first goal is to understand if they're just powerful strategic picks in the current meta or if they're actually objectively better (or more reliable) than their peers.

In the case of Kha'Zix, Q was designed to be his main tool when assassinating targets, and it's important to maintain that relationship for game health / champion identity reasons. Right now, however, Kha's actually prioritizing W as a first evolution (and max rank), but he's still expecting to do all of his assassin-y things (note: without evolving or focusing on what should be his primary killing tool). We're fine with players opting for a W-first Kha'Zix, but this means he's gotta make some meaningful tradeoffs, like losing some offensive threat while gaining utility / poke. Unfortunately, this hasn't really been the case as we're still seeing Kha'Zix being very effective as an assassin while also getting all of the extra utility of evolved W.

What all of this tells us is one of two things: a.) The utility and strength of evolved W is too reliable in combination with Kha'Zix's base kit, so he can get the best of all worlds by maximizing his utility while alsobeing a high-threat assassin. Or b.) Kha'Zix's evolved Q is too weak to properly use as a primary play pattern, so he's forced to max / evolve W to stay relevant in the game but doesn't really want to. We strongly suspect the first case is more true (and this is reflected in our change).

It's tough to justify a champion being 'too weak' if they continue to be a high-priority pick in games where strength and reliability are the mostimportant traits. Final reassurance though: we do think Kha'Zix's play patterns are fairly healthy overall, so we're not planning to make any major changes in either direction, we just wanted to explain some of our thought processes as we work.

W - Void Spike

Lucian

When we originally re-balanced Lucian back in patch 4.12, we were actually concerned with him being too weak in the laning phase (hah), and so gave him compensatory buffs to keep up. Since then, however, Lucian's gone on to be a premiere lane bully with access to a pretty solid late game as well. These changes should make Lucian think a little more about that aggressiveness in lane.

E - Relentless Pursuit

Nunu

ABSOLUTE CLARITY!

R - Absolute Zero

Talon

Still not renaming it. Maybe in a future patch. Foot stab?

E - Cutthroat

Tristana

Apologies if we're repeating the same thing from 4.17 but we're looking for ways to give Tristana more moments of weakness. As another repeat: while these changes may not completely address that goal, we're hoping that by making Trist more dependent on Rapid Fire to deal damage, there will be clearer windows to engage or disengage against her.

General

Q - Rapid Fire

Viktor

GLORIOUS BUGFIXES!

Q - Siphon Power

Wukong

E - Nimbus Strike

Yasuo

As hypercarry swordsman, Yasuo should make early game tradeoffs for opponents to capitalize on before he grows to his late potential. Right now, that isn't quite the case as Yasuo's quite strong in the early game, even in unfavorable matchups, in addition to scaling extremely well. These changes are to more specifically highlight Yasuo's early weaknesses, including being squishier if his passive isn't up and, more importantly, being more vulnerable to ganks if he's pushed up and doesn't have minions to dash through for his retreat. We'll be keeping a close eye on Yasuo with these changes, however, as having an early game weakness will almost certainly have an impact on his late game reliability.

General

Randuin's Omen

WARNING: Due to a bug, this change is currently not in effect (the tooltip is simply wrong, it's still 10%). We'll be looking to hotfix this when we can and will update the patch notes accordingly. Sorry!

With hypercarry marksmen running rampant in the mid to late game, we're returning a little more power to Randuin's Omen to give tanky dudes better itemization choices when fighting back.