Patch 5.1 Notes

Alistar

Alistar has been updated! Check out the article if you want the full story, or below if you just want the specifics.

General

Ahri

General

Azir

Another patch, another Azir bug-fix. Jokes aside, this specific problem would Arise (heh) when Azir would issue an attack at maximum range, walk out of that range, re-enter range and issue the attack again. In effect, Azir would trick himself into thinking the soldier could attack when it couldn't, creating the illusion that it should have dealt damage. Shoutouts to NA summoner 'A Mana Potion' for helping us track this one down.

W - Arise!

Corki

For a champion with such high burst potential, trade-offs needed to be made to keep Corki's high-power, high-damage lane in line. Increasing Valkyrie's mana cost allows for us to maintain an important lever that presents options to Corki's opponents: either he uses so many spells that he can't escape, or he gets forced to use Valkyrie to escape and gives you some breathing room before beginning his barrage all over again.

W - Valkyrie

Elise

With 5.1, we've decided to continue passing along love to some junglers that haven't had the greatest time thus far. With this in mind, we begin with our resident ex-top-tier-spider, Elise.

This one's pretty cut-and-dry; previously we had kept Elise's bonus damage low to curb some of her clearing power, but now that the jungle's got a much larger health pool, well, we felt we could accommodate her accordingly. While obviously not a "this changes everything!" patch note, we'll continue to keep an eye on Elise in the new season to see if she needs a little more love.

Q - Neurotoxin / Venomous Bite

Evelynn

Continuing with Evelynn, we're adopting the same 'slow-but-steady' approach as with Elise. Mana's always been a huge issue for Eve, and that's never been more clear than in a season without Spirit Stone's sustain. Doubling Evelynn's passive mana regeneration while stealthed should see her more active in fighting jungle monsters and champions alike, while adding on-hit effects to Ravage opens up unique item synergies (such as Blade of the Ruined King, Devourer Enchant, the Sheen family) to take advantage of those mid-game spikes.

Passive - Shadow Walk

E - Ravage

Fizz

Previously, Urchin Strike wasn't applying sheen effects when it was used too close to his targets. Now you can Q in without fear of your spells...fizzling.

Excellent.

Q - Urchin Strike

Gnar

Unlike Gnar's origins, this yordle's strong laning phase is no big secret. Pulling back on the uptime of his harass should make things more manageable in the early game, while ranking his ultimate lets him keep up with the pace of frantic late-game teamfights.

Q - Boomerang Throw

R - GNAR!

Hecarim

Next stop on our 2015 Jungle Love Train is none other than the Horselord himself, Hecarim. Jungle difficulty's been rough on our little pony, and with no spirit items to keep his sustain up, he's found more time in the stable than we'd like.

Q - Rampage

W - Spirit of Dread

Janna

Janna's the type of champion whose kit keeps her consistently powerful. Even when she fails to see widespread play competitively, she's never far from showing up and surprising the world with just how useful she can be. These days she's back to her old tricks - namely, protecting carries and disengaging teamfights for days on end - but while digging deeper we found that her Tornado's width was actually hitting much wider than the particle indicated. Refactoring it to match the visuals certainly decreases her power, but in a way that promotes the type of dodgeability she needs to not dominate the support role.

Q - Howling Gale

Jayce

For a guy so strong when it comes to long-range combat, it doesn't make the most sense that he should blow you up in close-quarters without the use of his hammer. Lowering Hyper Charge's late-game shenanigans should keep even the most fed Jayce's out there from getting too unfair. It's also unfair for him to be that good looking, but that's not something we can nerf.

W - Hyper Charge

Kalista

Though Kalista hasn't had her time to shine just yet, few out there fail to acknowledge her potential. Unlike many marksmen, Kalista's power can be harder to access due to the responsibilities of her Oathsworn to follow-up or create opportunities for her to make plays. Instead of reducing Kalista's reliance on her soulbound partner (that would be making her less unique!), we're increasing the potential rewards for successful coordination.

Passive - Martial Poise

W - Sentinel

Nautilus

When handing out post-holiday season buffs, there was no way we could leave out League's very own Anchor-man. Similar to our Sejuani changes in 4.21, we think Nautilus has acceptable weaknesses in the beginning phases, and we're not looking to change that here; rather, new scalings on his shield (remember, maximum health vs. bonus health is a significant change) makes Titan's Wrath hold pretty even - until Nautilus hits his 2nd health item, where he starts to see significant gains.

W - Titan's Wrath

Rek'Sai

Rek'Sai's a unique champion with a lot of mastery required to make full use of her piles of strategic mobility options - all of which is currently undermined (heh) by her raw strength as a duelist. While we want the queen to hold her own in a fight, holding her own in a fight against 4 people and getting out alive isn't quite what we had intended (sorry marksmen).

Q - Queen's Wrath

Q - Prey Seeker

W - Unburrow

Renekton

All hail the fallen king of fighters - Renekton was once the Titan of Top Lane, now pushed to the wayside by armor-stacking tanks able to weather his onslaught. To solve some of his issues without giving him the throne back, our top investiGators put fury under the microscope as well as tuning up Cull the Meek's healing.

Fury as a mechanic is designed to give Renekton a way to scale meaningfully through combat, but currently falls a little flat, often just auto-winning trades due to its generation via minions. As of 5.1, Renekton gains more Fury while fighting champions (along with new bonuses to Fury on Ruthless Predator/Dice!) but gains far less for mindlessly shoving minion waves. This keeps Renekton's strengths when fighting 1v1 (god forbid the 1v2 or 1v3) but gives more rest between his fury-charged trades while on the losing end of the lane.

Lastly, we've changed Cull the Meek to heal based on the number of champions hit rather than calculating the heal after mitigation occurs. This keeps Cull the Meek as a competitive option in the later stages of the game after the enemy team starts stacking armor which, in turn, provides a massive boost to Renekton's survivability in teamfights.

There a lot of gross numbers below, but the short of it is: +Fury hitting champs, -Fury hitting minions, +Healing on champs. King Croc is back - long may he reign. In anger (that's his passive.)

Passive - Reign of Anger

Q - Cull the Meek

W - Ruthless Predator

E - Dice

Rumble

Haaa... Oh dear. This wasn't a massive difference, but there was one all the same that we didn't see until now.

E - Electro Harpoon

Sion

Zombies already have Grievous Wounds, man.

Passive - Glory in Death

Skarner

2015 Jungle Love Train ends its 5.1 run visiting all the Skarner mains out there missing their kind. For similar reasons we've stated for Evelynn and Hecarim, Q cost reductions are here to compensate for the lack of Elder Lizard sustain, while a lower cooldown on Fracture Skarner can continue to be annoying in those late game teamfights.

Q - Crystal Slash

E - Fracture

Sona

For a champion that has her fair share of counters (ex. Leona, Blitzcrank, vocal chords), Sona's pattern lacks significant counterplay when these champs aren't present, leaving her laning phase pretty oppressive. To give her opponents more windows to counterattack, we're reducing some of her skirmishing power so she's not so obnoxuious with that harp. Etwahl, sorry.

General

Q - Hymn of Valor

Syndra

Syndra's strength as a single-target burst-mage makes her a valuable pick considering the field of assassins she's currently facing. While we're a fan of her strength in focused pick compositions, her ability to dictate the early laning phases of would-be counterpicks makes her more of an all-rounded laner than we'd like. Weakening Dark Sphere in the first few levels and making her Scatter the Weak stun line up better visually should decrease the frustrations of her lane without curbing too much of that untapped power (hehe).

Q - Dark Sphere

E - Scatter the Weak

Xerath

Tooltips often contain numbers. Sometimes, we accidentally write those numbers smaller than they are. This is one of those times.

E - Shocking Orb

Zed

Ah, Zed. With your amazing plays topping many a competitive player's highlight reel, how could we not love you? All in all, Zed is one of the best examples of what we call a "healthy assassin" in League of Legends.

That doesn't mean there aren't problems - while Zed's ability to delete squishies with a button press and some smooth moves is going to remain intact, he has so many other additional strengths that seem to push him over the edge. Given his amazing AD stats and his waveclear, should Zed be a top-tier tower-taker? Should he have amazing clean-up when his resources are depleted? While Zed's not receiving changes in this patch, we're committed to keeping LoL's favorite playmaking ninja fun to play as, and to play against.

Smite

Right now, Smite's a pretty important ability for a lot of reasons (securing buffs, smiting other folks, farming the jungle), so we're seeing most junglers start to 'hoard' their smites as the game progresses. When you think about it, that's a pretty significant chunk of cool things a jungler misses out on (as long as Dragon or Baron are up), so we looked for potential solutions.

Like Smite charges.

Zz'Rot Portal

Think of this new item as a follow-up to our original preseason promise of adding more strategic diversity to League of Legends. Specifically, the Zz'Rot Portal is designed to provide tanky dudes with a new way to opt into pushing strategies while also having enough utility to be used in other creative ways.

Hunter's Machete

Back in patch 4.21 we added extra gold to Hunter's Machete and all tier 2 / tier 3 jungle items, but noted that we might have gone a little light.

Well, now that we've seen the impact of the changes, we can go just a little harder. So here we are. Design levers!

Stalker's Blade

Chilling Smite's a little too effective at what it does, so we're looking for ways to reduce its power without making the ganker feel bad about the decisions they've made. Switching Smite's slow from a straight 50% kneecap to a movement speed steal means the smited champ can still dodge skillshots or get under the tower, rather than hobbling along eating all the Ezreal Mystic Shots in the world.

Guardian Angel

Just a small cost correction after we removed and revived Negatron Cloak. There's a Guardian Angel joke in here somewhere but we're not looking for it.

Infinity Edge

We've been keeping an eye on marksmen power for some time and specifically wanted to tackle Infinity Edge, the new ubiquitous AD item that's replaced Bloodthirster since patch 4.10 (wow has it really been that long?). Rather than straight chopping away damage, however, reducing IE's crit chance means we can accentuate its reliance on othercrit multiplier items in order to scale well into the mid-late game.

Phantom Dancer

Your required reading for Phantom Dancer context is to read the Infinity Edge context (above) before starting here.

We can wait.

There isn't much else to add beyond the Infinity Edge context (shifting crit multipliers to mid-game items), except that we're hoping to solidify PD as a single-target focused item versus Shiv's area-of-effect power strengths.

Morellonomicon

Right now Morellonomicon is a super cost-efficient item for it offers, so we're pushing it to be more on-par with its mana regeneration alternative - Chalice.

Greater Stealth Totem

Greater Vision Totem

Farsight Orb

Oracle's Lens

Guardian's Horn

Hail Ragnarok!