Patch 6.3 Notes

Akali

When we set out to make Duskblade (the shiny new assassin item you can read all about below), we evaluated a lot of our assassins together to see if anyone was significantly ahead or behind the pack. When looking at those left behind, it's no surprise we found Akali in much need of some love.

Most assassins are measured on two major axes: time needed to kill a squishy, and what movement / utility is available to get to the next target (this cycles back and forth). On our current assessment, Akali's pretty good on the former, so we're looking into the latter.

Q - Mark of the Assassin

R - Shadow Dance

Alistar

Alistar's got two very different things going on here, so let's tackle 'em separately.

First, Alistar's lane sustain is pretty out of line. For a champion who's supposed to be weak to poke and attrition, the strength of the Meditation mastery and the mana regeneration available to supports just means Alistar outlasts and then all-ins once you've exhausted your resources. Temporarily Ignoring towers and initiating are cool things we like the cow doing, given that he's not guaranteed to be at full health all the time.

Next, the combo. Alistar's Heabutt + Pulverize combo is one of the strongest interactions in the game, but also makes the champion incredibly tricky to balance. It's not the easiest thing to pull off 100% of the time (even in pro play), which means that whenever we have to buff or nerf Alistar, it disproportionately affects players that can hit the combo or not. Not anymore. After 6.3, It's now just a thing Alistar can do with regularity. Now your decisions should be around 'Do I want to use the combo in this situation?' instead of 'Can I do the combo?'

It's a scary world, I know - but we'll be there to hold your hand. Under the tower. While Alistar's diving us. (help)

W - Headbutt

E - Triumphant Roar

Corki

Let's be clear - Corki's doing a lot of damage. Too much, in fact. Preseason's magic damage conversion has done wonders for Corki's burst damage, especially on targets without the cash to invest toward significant defensive items. These two changes are slightly related in tuning down Corki's power, but they have two differing goals. On the topic of Phosphorous Bomb: when a spell has high base damage and a lot of additional damage per level, it means that a Corki who gets ahead in levels stays ahead (even without items). For Missile Barrage: its uptime was tuned around a previous season (and itemization), and with Essence Reaver being a core item, we're tapping down those oppressive missiles just a bit.

Q - Phosphorus Bomb

R - Missile Barrage

Ekko

As a midlaner, Ekko's potential is a little too limited by high cooldowns and melee range. Upping his ability to scrap with opponents (or even last-hit) early game levels the playing field against the long-range, crowd-controlling mages Ekko's often asked to tango with.

Q - Timewinder

Gragas

It hasn't been too long since Gragas was top dog of jungle, but these days he's sitting at the bottom of the barrel. Graggy's strategic niche as a disengage jungler is still there, so we're boosting his early reliability and clear speed to help compete against the rest of the lineup.

Q - Barrel Roll

W - Drunken Rage

Graves

Now that the dust has settled and builds are optimized, the results are in: Graves bursts you real fast, and he's not a fan of taking damage. We're cool with the G-man doin' his thing (as long as he's not smoking), but we're addressing his dominance in two ways.

First, we want to force Graves' to make a bigger tradeoff for his damage vs defenses, seeing as his baseline output is so high that he transitions into tank stats early while still managing to make heads roll. Next, we're targeting just how quickly he pumps lead into his targets - often obliterating challenges in a series of animation-cancelled spellcasts.

Graves being the slow-moving, burly guy makes sense for a shotgun-toting gritty outlaw, but introducing more counterplay to his patterns should help you settle the score.

Passive - New Destiny

Q - End of the Line

E - Quickdraw

Illaoi

Illaoi's a champion that suffers a few problems - not only is she pretty difficult to play for a melee champion, but being on the receiving end of a fight for your own soul can feel incredibly frustrating to play against. This patch, we're addressing both. A little bit of QoL for the Illaoi's that are just learning how to shatter their opponents souls, and a little bit of leeway for opponents hoping to break free of becoming a vessel. Now your team is actually helping when taking out Illaoi's tentacles. It's the thought that counts, right?

E - Test of Spirit

Kog'Maw

Now the definition of 'Glass Cannon' in League, Kog'Maw finds himself a little too brittle to get out of lane and into a state where he can aim for a high-scaling fantasy. The primary goal is to clean up Kog's rank-ups to feel less like a trap and help him smooth out that transition from 'free kill botlane' to 'hyper-vomit omnicarry' without just handing him a free pass. (Trivia: did You Know that previously ranking W gave you noincrease in damage? Sorry about that.)

Q - Caustic Spittle

W - Bio-Arcane Barrage

Jax

Surprise, he's back (we've made that joke before. Maybe even twice). Whether in the top lane or the jungle, Jax is a champion that's all about taking the time to ramp up before brutally smashing your face in with a lamppost. Traditionally that's been the case, but with powerful items like Rageblade and Devourer thrown into the mix, Jax's ramping threat has become more of a formality than a rule. We're installing speedbumps into Jax's powercurve to force him to commit a little longer in fights.

Passive - Relentless Assault

Poppy

Poppy's popularity has skyrocketed since her rework, and it's not hard to see why. Though it's taken a bit of getting used to, Poppy's proven to be one tough yordle, with massive damage and even bigger utility, no matter the position. Stopping dashes and ejecting threats out of a teamfight is all well and strategic, but Poppy's potential to chain-CC her opponents for 5+ seconds all while murdering them is a pretty big no-no from a counterplay perspective.

On a secondary front, Poppy's got a lot of high base damage abilities, letting her put out serious numbers without actually buying the items. We're adjusting there.

Q - Hammer Shock

E - Heroic Charge

R - Keeper's Verdict

Rengar

After analyzing Rengar's performance and listening to feedback on 6.2, we're pulling back a bit on exactly how easy it is to outplay his ganks. For instance, Rengar's delay on casting Bola Strike is high enough that running toward his leap causes the Bola to whizz right right over. We're in search of… not quite happy kitty time, but content kitty time for this change.

General

E - Bola Strike

Ryze

To put it lightly, the discrepancy between a new Ryze player and a Ryze veteran is staggering. Not unlike Alistar's changes above, Ryze is often balanced around what he's capable of doing rather than what he does realistically with those 5 seconds of Supercharge. With the long-term goal of finding a sustainable balance state for Ryze long-term, we're starting off by giving him a clearly defined and achievable 'best case' for Arcane Mastery. With a hard cap in place, we can follow-up by making the rest of Ryze's kit work within that band - like focusing Ryze's mastery around how many times you can enter (and optimize) Supercharge, instead of just cramming spell combos into one rotation. There's lots to adjust going forward, but this is a necessary first step if Ryze is ever to get off the wild balance rollercoaster he's been on for a while.

Passive - Arcane Mastery

R - Desperate Power

Xin Zhao

Xin Zhao's been left in the dust as far as stabbin' folks goes, underperforming in every role across the board. One of our old-school 'melee carries', Xin's always had a lot of flexibility in builds - able to swap between 'max cooldown lockdown machine' or 'crit-fueled basic-attacking monster' based on his team's needs. That said, itemization changes in 2016 have impacted that flexibility pretty heavily. These changes are aimed at bringing back Xin's ability to opt-in to an early snowball rather than feeling pressured to always aim for the lategame (via Sated Devourer and Guinsoo's on-hit synergies).

A point of clarification: To those of you worried about Xin's new crit mechanic's getting out of control with the already-popular Sated Devourer builds, it's important to note that the crit occurs every thirdattack, not every third hit. This means Sated's Phantom Hit passive won't let him double down into more crits, so you're better off with regular ol' attack damage and attack speed to make the most of his new Battle Cry.

W - Battle Cry

E - Audacious Charge

Zed

Back in 5.23 we added a bit more Death into Zed's Death Mark, citing a lack of itemization and scaling for AD-assassins as a whole. Now that Duskblade's entering an item shop near you, we're partially reverting that change so that Zed doesn't spike and snowball too heavily off just a single item purchase.

R - Death Mark

Ziggs

Folks aren't contesting objectives like they used to, meaning Ziggs' poking and sieging strengths have gone largely unnoticed in 2016. We don't want thing to go back to the '1v1 Mid Ziggs Only 50 Minutes' stall-fests of the past, so we're ratcheting up his hexplosive power to punish teams out of position.

R - Mega Inferno Bomb

Duskblade of Draktharr

It's well known that many AD assassins who relied on attack damage items took a hit with the transition to 2016, especially with the changes to Last Whisper. These days the 'core' item build that feels good often only goes to 'build Ghostblade and Maw and hope that's enough to finish them off.'

Balancing around core items is something we do for every class, but assassins have been left in the dust - forced to scrape by on whatever the best damage items happen to be, making our balancing points for them somewhat… very inconsistent. Duskblade means we can give those folks a core item that not only helps multiply damage in a full build, but also offers a clear expression of power for those with a gold lead. marksmen have Infinity Edge, mages have Deathcap - and now, assassins have Duskblade.

Duskblade's passive, Nightfall, provides a different angle for assassins to contribute meaningfully in a teamfight. Missing health damage is unique in that it can be considered a damage amplification for your team - capitalizing on all the work your allies have done so far - allowing assassins to feel more capable on clean-up duty and less pressured to throw their lives away in pursuit of bopping a marksman.

Seeker's Armguard

For those looking for buffs to Zhonya's Hourglass, it should be clear we're not doing that. Given how game-warping Zhonya's active can be - and how powerful a deterrent it is against dudes who want to blow you up - we're pretty firm on gating this active with a fair combine cost.

That said, Seeker's. Even when it's the right situation to buy Seeker's, itfeels wrong, so that's where we're making changes. Mixing in an extra armor item makes it more effective when you're looking to counter physical damage (read: Zed) in lane.

Warden's Mail

Similar to Seeker's, Warden's is a specialized item that feels bad to purchase when compared to more broad defensive components, like Chain Vest or Giant's Belt. Now it's cheaper.

Dead Man's Plate

If you've played League in the last month, chances are very high you've bought this item. That's not a crime in itself, but Dead Man's Plate brings so many strengths between its stat efficiency, bonus damage, and catch potential that even when you do want a Randuin's Omen (say, vs. a crit-heavy composition), it's hard to give up the value. We're tuning back the general power of DMP to make the decision a little more complex than 'buy this always no matter what'.

Sunfire Cape

Continuing from the Dead Man's Plate discussion above, Sunfire is an armor item that feels a little lost from an identity perspective. Increasing the potency of its waveclear potential should transform tanky folks without access to waveclear into split-pushing threats faster than you can type 'Shenpai.'

(In case that wasn't clear, buy this on Shen. You're welcome.)

Randuin's Omen

Rounding out our talks on armor items, we're removing some of the tricky math comparisons between this, Dead Man's Plate, and Sunfire Cape, so you don't have the second guess yourself when buying this against the mythical all-marksmen, all-Infinity Edge team.

So, in summary - Sunfire to push. Dead Man's to chase and engage. Randuin's to punish basic attacks and crits. But don't just take our word for it. Build what you like. Follow your dreams.

Kircheis Shard

We'd like you to feel better about getting that early burst for lane.

Rapid Firecannon

Welcome to Zeal items part 3. The re-rebalancing.

Similar to Dead Man's Plate, Rapid Firecannon is the go-to Zeal upgrade. It's safe, it bursts, it picks, it slices, it dices - you get the idea. While these read like general nerfs, we're just trying to prioritize Firecannon as the 'safe' ranged option over its other counterparts.

Statikk Shiv

With Rapid Firecannon's damage decreasing, Statikk Shiv's damage is going up to really push it as the one you get when you're looking to burst. Important reminder: Shiv's damage can crit (while RFC's cannot), meaning that in a heavy crit build, Shiv's ability to lay the smackdown on a close-knit group of units is nothing to sneeze at.

Phantom Dancer

Phantom Dancer was supposed to be more expensive relative to the other Zeal upgrades because of its extreme dueling/damage potential. As it turns out, having to do the extra work to access that damage potential (unlike Statikk or RFC) on top of being harder to build ended being a pretty big miss. In light of this, we're pulling back on the cost so would-be duelists of all shapes and sizes can buy their item and use it too.

Boots of Swiftness

Simply put: the gap between the 'utility tier' of boots (Swiftness, Lucidity and Mobility) and 'combat boots' (Mercury Treads, Berserker Graves, Ninja Tabi and Sorceror's Shoes) is too big. We're digging all of the interest in utility-tier kicks, but they're so cheap that it makes everyone else feel left in the dust.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity

Same as the above section, bringing these in line with the alternatives.

Boots of Mobility

While the cost is increasing for Mobi's, we're off-setting that upgrade with a power boost to keep them worth the tradeoffs you make to take them. Unlike the others, Mobility's risk/reward paradigm stays constant throughout the whole game - so get out there and make the best of your zoom-zoom.