Patch 6.22 Notes

Introduction

Conceptually, stealth is easy to understand: “you can’t see me.” Mechanically, that means a few things. First, stealth is tied to the vision game: when you don’t know where someone is, there’s a chance they’re closing in on you. This creates both strategic and tactical advantages: for example, Evelynn roaming the map unseen or Wukong getting into initiation range. Second, stealth is a powerful (albeit unwieldy) form of in-combat defense, since stealthed champs can’t be targeted and skillshot aiming becomes rough guesswork. 

Across League’s history, we haven’t done a great job of handling these traits separately. Case in point: Vision Wards are the one-size-fits all counter to stealth, regardless of what enemies are trying to do while unseen. To keep things generallybalanced, we’ve had to give stealth champions more overall power to offset situations when pink wards shut them down, and that makes them overbearing when wards aren’t in play. There’s simply not enough middle ground. 

Crafting a more refined approach to stealth has implications on multiple parts of the game, and pre-season’s the best time for us to adjust all those levers at once. Make sure to read both this and the Wards section for the complete story!

Camouflage

The longer duration of Camouflage effects make them ideal for roaming around lanes and the jungle unseen, moving from one victim to the next. Nearby enemies can see through Camouflage, however, making it less reliable in the middle of fights.

• Evelynn’s Passive - Shadow Walk
• Rengar’s R - Thrill of the Hunt
• Twitch’s Q - Ambush

Invisibility

Invisibility effects don't last long enough for users to move from one lane to another, but are well-suited for maneuvering in combat (whether that's to start a fight or reposition within one). Turrets are the only entities that passively see through Invisibility, in line with their nature as safe havens.

• Akali’s W - Twilight Shroud
• Kha’Zix’s R - Void Assault
• LeBlanc’s R - Mimic
• Shaco’s Q - Deceive
• Talon’s R - Shadow Assault
• Teemo’s Passive - Guerilla Warfare (formerly “Camouflage”)
• Vayne’s R - Final Hour
• Wukong’s W - Decoy

Shimmer

This pre-season, we wanted to create a way to deal with stealth that isn’t just “turn it off.” This new shimmer mechanic is a means of scouting for—and reacting to—stealthed enemies without completely exposing them to retaliation.

Ward Rewards

The warding game has always been an important part of League, and that’s only becoming more true this pre-season. From one perspective, this means hunting for wards is its own reward. In another light, however, players are punished for contesting vision as an ‘objective’ since they sacrifice experience and map presence to do so. We’re upping the payoff for ward kills to make it clearer that yes, vision clearing is a thing you should do.

Ward experience

Ward lifestealing

With Control Wards no longer nullifying stealth, wards are moving away from in-combat interactions. This change is in line with that direction.

Lethality

Assassins have a snowball problem. When ahead, they’re really ahead, but when behind, they’re pretty underwhelming. In part, this is the nature of a 1-on-1, outplay champion. But for physical assassins, flat armor penetration is exacerbating the problem. Mages and marksmen—the assassin’s natural prey—don’t typically build defenses early on, so the bulk of their armor in lane comes from levels (Zhonya’s Hourglass is the main exception). So, if assassins start snowballing, flat armor penetration punches through a significant portion of their target’s armor, continuing the snowball. But if assassins fall behind, their threat is mitigated by their targets’ innate stats alone. To give attack damage based assassins more consistency, we’re reworking armor penetration to be more consistently impactful late game without being overbearing early on.

Lethality

UPDATEDPrecision (Tier 5 Cunning mastery)

UPDATEDFlat Armor Penetration Runes

UPDATEDHybrid Penetration Runes

Introduction

Pre-season is here and with it are new things to explore in the jungle. We want to make Summoner’s Rift feel more alive and that’s where Plants come into play. Plants create new ways for teams to take control of the map and approach objectives, as well as how you engage in future fights. Different plants spawn in on the map during certain parts of the game in order to provide interesting combat situations and rewarding players who adapt to them. 

Plants have evolved pretty significantly during their time on PBE, and we’ll continue iterating on them throughout pre-season. We’re excited to see how you use them!

Spawn locations

• Red = Blast Cone
• Blue = Scryer’s Bloom
• Green = Honeyfruit

General mechanics

Blast Cone

Scryer's Bloom

Honeyfruit

Monster Spawn & Reward Changes

The gap between fast-clearing and slow-clearing junglers is too high. Clearing is always going to be easier for power farmers and bursty clearers, but we think some aspects of the scaling of the jungle monsters is accentuating those differences out a bit too much. 

First, junglers pay too much of an opportunity cost when ganking, thanks to how quickly jungle monsters respawn. Champions with high clear speeds can afford to sneak in a gank or invade while their camps are respawning, while champions with lower clear speeds are far too often just leaving their camps sitting whenever they try to do anything. We want more time in between spawns so that slower clearing junglers aren’t giving up so much if they clear their camps before ganking. To compensate, we’re upping the gold and experience rewards for killing camps. 

Second, the way that monsters scale is disproportionately benefitting fast clears. The level of camps is based on the average level of the players in the game, which mean faster clearers end up fighting a weaker overall jungle (because they’re clearing it earlier). This is most notable early game, so we want to create brackets of levels that aren’t as sensitive to small variations in levels. These brackets should correspond approximately to “first buffs and first clear”, “second clear and second buffs”, and “next few clears”, but your mileage may vary depending on game pacing and jungle choices.

Camp Updates

We like what camps like Gromp and Raptors have done for making different camps feel distinct to clear. This pre-season, we’re sharpening those distinctions even more.

Rift Herald

Rift Herald is supposed to be a threatening objective for split-pushers to contest. It’s high damage renders it too threatening to be worth taking, as it often turns into a trap for players who try to start it, especially early on. We’re pushing Rift Herald’s spawn back to a time more appropriate to such a strong objective, and dialing back on its damage so that players have clearer opportunities to secure it.

Elder Dragon

Elder Dragon is supposed to be an epic late game objective that helps secure a win. The teams who should feel best about taking Elder Dragon are the ones who have already secured a few dragons. However, the more dragons you’ve already taken, the harder it is to take down. When Elder Dragon takes that long to kill, starting it can feel like a mistake, because it opens up baron to the other team. This is only compounded by the fact that Elder Dragon buff lasts half as long as Baron buff.

Minions

As the game scales past laning phase, some classes opt out of engaging with minions (hi, tanks and supports) while most others just steamroll through waves early on. We’re strengthening the differences between minion types in order to get a better picture of which champions are engaging with them and why they are doing so, creating more opportunities for other champions to interact with them as the game progresses.

Melee Minions

Ranged Minions

Turrets

Two years ago we made Inhibitors and Nexus turrets shoot laser beams instead of laser bullets. We're reverting that change from back then in order to streamline the way turrets attack across the board.

We’re standardizing the damage turrets deal to minions to ensure last hitting under turret isn’t changed with the minion health changes above. (Last-hit after one turret shot for casters, two for melees—in case you didn’t know.)

• MELEE~45% health per bullet
• RANGED~70% health per bullet
• SIEGE~14% health per bullet
• SUPER~5% health per bullet

Minimap Icons

Item Efficiency Pass

We’re bringing the costs down or the stats up. Everything must go!

Eye of the Equinox

Eye of the Oasis

Zeke's Harbinger

Talisman of Ascension

Frozen Heart

Last pre-season saw a ground-up rebuild of masteries with the goal of making mastery choices more about individual playstyle than numerical buffs. Though we’ve had a few balance challenges over the season, the basic premise has held up over time. We’re filling in the remaining holes in each tree with an eye toward further sharpening this ‘playstyle-first’ vision, and addressing two of the ‘problem children’ remaining in the system. 

Side-note: we recently shipped an article sharing most of the information in this section, so if you get deja-vu, you’re not crazy (or psychic).

Ferocity

The Ferocity tree caters to champions who prefer lengthier fights over bursting opponents down. We’re adding a few new ways for these types to customize how their fights play out.

Cunning

Cunning’s in a reasonably stable place, offering choices for champs who favor burst or utility—in some cases both, such as Stormraider’s Surge. We’re filling the last gap in the tree.

Resolve

The Resolve tree provides some solid options to make champions tankier, but ironically falls a bit flat in supporting the tank playstyle. We’re adding choices that reward tanks for actively doing their job rather than just making them passively beefier.

Once the beta begins, the download will appear for everyone launching the game, and if you don't feel like upgrading right away, you'll still have the option to upgrade through your launcher at any point during the beta. For testing purposes, open beta will hit OCE slightly earlier during patch 6.22 than other regions. 

We’ll be working out a few kinks and adding the remainder of the client’s missing features (like spectator mode) over the next few patches—it’s a beta, after all! To those of you who want to jump in right away: if you run into anything funky, be sure to hit us with that sweet, sweet feedback. 

Check out the open beta FAQ for more details.

New features

Finally, as a small thank you for the hard work of alpha testers, we created an exclusive summoner icon for everyone who participated in the alpha. Your feedback was invaluable for the client team. If you log in to the alpha before November 15th, you'll get it!

For real this time. This’ll be activated some time during the patch once pre-season is fully shipped and out in the world.

End of Season 2016

The 2016 ranked season has ended, and rewards will be distributed over the next few weeks! Head to the End of Season FAQ for a refresher on end of season rewards. 

Players who finished the season in Gold tier or higher in any ranked queue will receive the Victorious Maokai skin!

Victorious Maokai

Finally, to those who achieved Challenger: be sure to verify your email address! We’re currently vetting account eligibility, and will be sending instructions for ordering your physical rewards in the next few weeks.

2017 Ranked Updates

Testing for this season’s ranked queue changes will begin soon. In-depth explanations of those changes can be found here! 

Starting next patch, the patch notes will include updates on the health of each ranked queue. (“Health” here refers to stuff like queue times and match quality.) Our goal is to keep you in the loop so that if we need to make queue adjustments, they won’t come as a surprise.

We always fix more bugs than we list in the patch notes, but that's especially true this time around. Fun fact: this set of notes is 14 thousand words long.

• Gangplank's Q - Parrley! crits no longer travel faster than normal casts, fixing a bug that prevented him from chaining extra barrels during the travel time.
• Lucian's W - Ardent Blaze no longer auto-fires in the same direction as Passive - Lightslinger's second shot if cast between Lightslinger's shots
• Fixed a bug that allowed Thresh to cast W - Dark Passage globally under specific circumstances. No lantern was created, but Thresh gained vision of the target area.
• Illaoi's tentacles now normally swing at champions under the effects of Taric's R - Cosmic Radiance or Kindred's R - Lamb's Respite
• Jinx can no longer queue up Q - Switcheroo! during the cast time of R - Super Mega Death Rocket! This addresses a bug that sometimes caused the rocket to appear further ahead to enemies than it was.
• Master Yi's Q - Alpha Strike now properly charges Statikk Shiv's passive
• PROJECT: Fiora's Passive - Duelist's Dance Vitals indicators no longer visually disappear before the effect expires
• PROJECT: Yasuo's basic attack animations have been adjusted to visually slash the target at the same time damage is applied, rather than slightly after
• Blackfrost Anivia's W - Crystallize visuals have been widened to match her other skins (actual hitbox was never broken!)
• When cast on a turret, Star Guardian Janna's E - Eye of the Storm visuals now properly disappear if the shield is broken
• Ivern can no longer be flagged as AFK if he farms the jungle for too long without interacting with anyone else
• Wooglet's Witchcap's tooltip now properly indicates its active has a 120-second cooldown
• Lowered the volume of Creator Viktor's R - Chaos Storm churning
• Lulu's running animation has been restored on all skins
• Winter Wonder Lulu'x Pix attack VFX have been re-snow-ified
• Cassiopeia now properly plays VO lines when placing wards
• Star Guardian Jinx's corpse no longer gets stuck in a "T-pose" if she dued while casting Q - Switcheroo!
• Brolaf no longer plays two VO lines at once when activating R - Ragnarok
• Snow Day Gnar's E - Hop bouncing audio has been fixed when Gnar stomps on friendly targets