Patch 6.21 Notes

Nidalee

Nidalee is no stranger to patch notes, but we’re revisiting her this patch to look at the frustration enemies face when they try to punish Nidalee’s mistakes. In the jungle, punishment is less about trades, and more about tradeoffs. Camp clearing takes time away from map pressure, map pressure takes time away from clearing, and getting chunked to low health makes it unsafe for you to do either.

Nidalee is too good at avoiding that punishment right now. Her high mobility and clear speed minimize the map pressure sacrifices she makes to farm, while her constant sustain keeps her topped off the whole time. Even if you catch her while her abilities on cooldown, those cooldowns are so low that she’s got a good chance of winning the fight anyway.

Basically, Nidalee just doesn’t leave a lot of openings for enemy champions to fight. Normal opportunities—abilities on cooldown or missing some health—don’t apply consistently enough to her. We want Nidalee’s opponents to feel like there are correct times to pick fights with her, rather than letting her fully dictate the tempo of engagement.

Cougar Q - Takedown

Cougar W - Pounce

Cougar E - Swipe

Human E - Primal Surge

Ashe

This one’s for the button-spammers of the world.

Q - Ranger's Focus

Graves

Graves is the marksman for players who want to get right up in the enemy’s face. True Grit gives Graves enough durability to take a few hits when going toe-to-toe with opponents, but it’s also making him too tanky when he’s kiting away from a fight. Graves’s defenses are meant to enable aggressive Quick Draws, so we’re weakening the reward when he isn’t dashing in.

E - Quickdraw

Ivern

These changes went out last patch. Just making sure you’ve seen ‘em.

General

Kog'Maw

Back during the Marksman Update, we shifted Living Artillery to be more about executing enemies as they back off, rather than a primary damage tool in its own right. Now that Kog’Maw’s back to his old kiting/spellweaving ways, he’s frequently casting his ult (and stacking its mana cost) while foes are well above the execution thresholds. This leaves Living Artillery feeling pretty lackluster. So, we’re re-tuning it to fit better into Kog’s new (old?) playstyle while holding on to some of the spicy execution feeling we gained from the Marksman Update.

R - Living Artillery

Lee Sin

Back in 6.19 we fixed a bug causing Lee Sin to dash directly on top of his targets, rather than next to them. The fix ended up creating worse issues - namely, Lee’s been getting dropped on the wrong side of walls. So, we’re reverting the 6.19 change.

Master Yi

Like Zed, Azir, and others before him, we dug into Master Yi’s code to fix a bunch of bugs and came out the other end with a new plan: rewrite the busted stuff. This patch, we’ve got a ground-up recoding of Alpha Strike to help ensure that you only die in Alpha when you deserve it.

Passive - Double Strike

Q - Alpha Strike

E - Wuju Style

Nasus

Nasus is a quintessential juggernaut: a force of inevitability, a raid boss for the enemy team. There’s no question that he brings enough late-game damage to the table with super-stacked Siphoning Strikes, but damage doesn’t mean anything if Nasus dies before he can reach his opponents. So, rather than yet another source of damage, we’re retooling Fury of the Sands to give Nasus the ability to survive long enough to get into the thick of the fight.

Q - Siphoning Strike

R - Fury of the Sands

Nocturne

It was pretty hard to see Shroud of Darkness on a few of Nocturne’s skins. We’re switching them to use his base skin's VFX to keep things clear.

W - Shroud of Darkness

Nunu

We gave Nunu’s Consume some updates in 6.20, and it looks like we overshot. The new amount of bonus health Q stacks grant, when combined with a properly-functioning Cinderhulk multiplier (hooray bugfixes), has simply made Nunu too tanky, too easily. We’re toning down his health stacking so that opponents feel like they can kill Nunu every once in awhile.

Q - Consume

Zac

Zac’s shown back up on our radar thanks to Elastic Slingshot’s unique gank opportunities. But when the counterplay to an ability is “dodge it”, it’s important that players have access to consistent information about where it’s headed. Elastic Slingshot isn’t hitting that clarity bar right now, so we’re making it more clear where you should (and shouldn’t) stand if you don’t want to get slime-smushed.

General

E - Elastic Slingshot

Yorick

Yorick has the tools to split-push, but sometimes the Maiden of the Mist didn’t seem to understand that. Right now, if no minions are around when she's summoned, she’ll continue to follow Yorick around. Yorick should be able to send the Maiden split-pushing without having to walk all the way down to the minion wave, so we’re helping her find her a way more easily.

R - Eulogy of the Isles

Ziggs

If you dashed through Ziggs Minefield, sometimes you wouldn't get hit. This wasn’t a super-common occurrence, but it felt weird when it happened. So, we’re making Hexplosive Minefield do what you’d expect.

E - Hexplosive Minefield

Teleport

Bugfixed.