Patch 7.14 Notes

Kayn

Kayn, the Shadow Reaper will be unleashed on the Rift later during patch 7.14. In the meantime, learn more about the shadow and his scythe here:

• Champion Teaser: The Path of Shadows
• Kayn Champion Spotlight
• Kayn Reveal
• Kayn Bio
• Kayn Short Story: The Blade of Millennia

Kayn

Soulhunter Kayn

Alistar

Alistar has always needed to get up close and personal, but these days he has to stay there a bit longer to access the full extent of his crowd control. As a result, the Minotaur needs to be a bit tankier when he commits to a fight.

R - Unbreakable Will

Caitlyn

Our goals today are the same as patch 7.11: we’re continuing to trim strengths aside from Caitlyn’s primary contributions (smart trap placement and juicy Headshots). Our previous changes to reduce the Sheriff’s sustained damage in the late game didn’t go far enough in this direction so we’re continuing along the path.

Base stats

Cho'Gath

In theory, Vorpal Spikes is a lot of consistent power for a melee character. In practice, Cho’Gath’s low mobility makes it a struggle to land more than a few attacks on any moving target. We’re windowing Vorpal Spikes so Cho’Gath only needs to land a few attacks to get the full value, and adding a slow to the ability to give him a better shot at doing so.

UPDATEDE - Vorpal Spikes

Q - Rupture

W - Feral Scream

Diana

Diana’s a champion with fractured identities, sitting somewhere in the middle of assassin and diver, laner and jungler. While this multifaceted nature works for some champions, we’ve seen what happens when an assassin gets to be tanky, or when a diver gets to blow people up. This makes Diana difficult to tune on a patch-by-patch basis, since we can’t responsibly balance Diana around a single identity without first giving her the tools to succeed in that role. (Read: she needs an update.)

In the meantime, it’s plain to see Diana simply isn’t fitting in anywhere. We’re tackling two aspects of Diana that hold true regardless of playstyle by alleviating some of her mana problems and better rewarding Diana for playing into her spellcaster/basic-attacker playstyle - the dual nature we’re happy to support.

Passive - Moonsilver Blade

Q - Crescent Strike

W - Pale Cascade

E - Moonfall

Fiora

Playing around Vitals gives Fiora a lot of power, but her opponents are at too much of a disadvantage to stop her from doing so. When Fiora’s striking lone Vitals, the movement speed Duelist’s Dance provides often lets her escape retaliation. When Fiora goes all-in with her ultimate, the movement speed she gets allows her too much leeway to out-maneuver her opponent even before hitting any Vitals at all. In both cases, Fiora’s movement speed rewards need to be toned down so opponents have a fair chance to win the game of footsies.

Passive - Duelist's Dance

R - Grand Challenge

Garen

Garen provides his opponents with a healthy amount of counterplay as his opponents learn to kite. This leaves Garen with not that much skill expression of his own, making the “skill” in “skill matchup” pretty one-sided. We’re giving Courage a skill check to make Garen a little less straightforward, letting the beastliest Garens flex their muscles and show off. While we were on Garen, we took this opportunity to modernize his passive by shifting it from a 3-tier model to one that transforms once around the end of laning phase.

All in all, we still think there’s more that can be done to make Garen more compelling in the future, so take these changes as the start of a larger Garen conversation.

Passive - Perseverance

W - Courage

E - Judgment

Rammus

Defensive Ball Curl’s self-slow is proving a bit too painful for Rammus players, so we’re tuning it less aggressively. Plus, with this patch’s Thornmail update having less synergy with the Armordillo’s passive (less armor and less armor scaling on the new Thornmail), the Armordillo could use a buff anyway.

W - Defensive Ball Curl

Singed

Singed isn’t on our VGU list for the near future, so we wanted to find opportunities to bring Singed’s existing abilities into 2017. The big issues we wanted to address: his build inflexibility and his struggles against slippery champions.

Empowered Bulwark meant that Singed relied on mana items for efficient durability. Instead, we’re giving him higher base durability and letting him itemize more freely. His new passive ensures Singed has the stickiness and closing power a growing melee champion needs.

While Noxious Slipstream should assist him in getting to opponents, Singed is still harshly countered by slippery champions. Mega Adhesive grounding those standing within it should give Singed more of a chance to get to those champions.

Finally, we’re shifting Poison Trail’s damage from base values into scaling so Singed can feel good about building damage when snowballing, rather than always feeling best about Righteous Glory.

Base stats

NEWPassive - Noxious Slipstream

Q - Poison Trail

W - Mega Adhesive

E - Fling

R - Insanity Potion

Taric

While Taric’s ult makes him one of the best supports in the late game, the penalty he’s paying in the early game is currently too steep. Starlight’s Touch is lackluster at early ranks, but prioritizing it can feel like a trap since its mana cost shoots through the roof for the 10-healing-per-charge each rank provides. While the core concept of Starlight’s Touch remains the same, we’re updating most of the details to make it a much more satisfying part of Taric’s kit.

We’re also upping Dazzle’s payoff. It’s a fairly difficult ability to land, and for how vulnerable Taric becomes when Dazzle misses, he deserves to win trades a bit more convincingly when it connects.

Base stats

Q - Starlight's Touch

E - Dazzle

Yorick

Yorick does quite well in the early game, but the Shepherd of Souls falls off pretty hard as the game goes on. We want to support his mid-to-late-game split pushing fantasy, so we’re giving the Maiden more late-game durability and a lower cooldown to increase her uptime.

Passive - Shepherd of Souls

R - Eulogy of the Isles

Thornmail

Against champions and teams that lean on heavy healing and regeneration effects, tanky melee types sometimes feel like they’re actually hurting their team by serving as convenient health batteries. While mages have Morellonomicon and other carries have Executioner’s Calling to help focus down healing-oriented threats, we wanted to make sure that melee champs can at least force high-sustain damage dealers to look elsewhere for their healing.

Bramble Vest

Thornmail’s redesign makes it a strong answer to healing-heavy comps, but its price point is too high for it to serve as a timely reaction to an out-of-control threat. We’re introducing Bramble Vest to make the Thorns passive available at lower gold investments. This is a paradigm you’re probably familiar with on other items: Hexdrinker into Maw of Malmortius, Quicksilver Sash into Mercurial Scimitar, etcetera.

Randuin's Omen

Randuin’s is the item to buy when you’re looking to counter crit-focused champions, but even then, it’s a bit weaker than it ought to be. We’re giving Randuin’s a bit more bang for the buck and changing its build path to make it easier to to pivot away from (or toward) as the situation warrants.

Serrated Dirk

The Headhunter passive rewards assassins for premeditated trades and kill attempts, adding a chunk of damage to their combos if they last-hit a minion or monster before going on the offensive. It also serves as a wave or camp clearing tool for champions with area-effect abilities, enabling the roaming Dirk’s movement speed previously encouraged.

Bonus context: Headhunter is basically Dirk’s original passive with a facelift. Where the previous version was a smaller, persistent effect best suited for ranged poke and harass (proccing off basic attacks and single-target spells), this one’s a larger effect on a cooldown that triggers off any damaging ability. Headhunter is better aimed at assassins than the original and should be more rewarding for them to play around.

Poacher's Dirk

Inheriting the changes to Serrated Dirk. This is a pretty significant buff to clearing speed!

Duskblade of Draktharr

Duskblade has the harshest build path of any Dirk upgrade as well as a passive that’s most effective in a glass cannon build (which leaves assassins susceptible to being blown up in fights before they can get their combos off). Both these factors make it unattractive as a first purchase, leaving Youmuu's as the only option for every AD assassin. To make Duskblade more competitive, we’re giving it Youmuu's cost and build path, and ensuring Nightstalker stands on its own even if Duskblade’s the only lethality item an assassin gets to buy.

Youmuu's Ghostblade

Doubling down on Ghostblade’s identity as the mobility-oriented Dirk upgrade, now that it’s the only one that grants movement speed. It already offers every damage stat a physical assassin wants (attack damage, lethality, and cooldown reduction) so we didn’t need to do much else here.

Edge of Night

Edge of Night faces steep competition with Maw of Malmortius and Mercurial Scimitar in the “magic resist items for squishy champs” space - a competition it tends to lose. We’re switching the MR to health so assassins can buy Edge and Maw or Scimitar, making it viable against all-physical-damage teams in the process. This does come with a downside: the health makes it harder to maximize the Giant Slayer bonus from Lord Dominik’s Regards (especially if The Black Cleaver’s in the mix as well).