Patch 6.12 Notes

Corki

Continuing our work from last patch, we're giving Corki some love to help reclaim the mid-game power he once possessed. As we progress on the (flight) path of Corki buffs, we're taking care to emphasize his unique traits rather than give him generic strength. This time around, smoother Gatling Gun shreddage and more ROFLcoptering should play up Corki’s fantasy of ‘yordle fighter pilot’.

W - Valkyrie

E - Gatling Gun

Fizz

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before - a sticky assassin builds primarily defense and is hard to interact with. Snark aside, Fizz’s changes this patch are just another shade of Ekko’s from updates past - namely, cutting the amount of base damage he has access to and limiting his effectiveness with cooldown reduction. Expanding on that last point, cooldown reduction was previously a hard stat to come by - making things like ‘8 second cooldown on Playful/Trickster’ feel more acceptable, given the inherent sacrifices in Fizz’s build. Now that we’re embracing CDR heavy builds, limiting what Fizz (and other assassins like him) can do when capped is key to their long-term health. In the end, these changes should make Fizz less threatening when he’s not investing in the necessary offense.

General

W - Seastone Trident

E - Playful / Trickster

Shaco

When champions can turn front or back on a dime, knowing when someone’s facing towards or away from you can be a bit of a challenge. Cassiopeia’s Petrifying Gaze gets around this by showing you some pretty clear feedback - ‘are they stunned? Guess they were facing me.’ For Shaco, this isn’t always so simple. Factor in all the different ways that Shaco can amplify his basic attacks (critical strike, Deceive’s bonus damage, sheen, etc) and you can lose track of whether or not you’reactually backstabbing pretty quickly. This is a very long context to say something pretty simple: if you see more sets of numbers, you’re doing it right.

Passive - Backstab

Syndra

Syndra’s fantasy as an all-powerful transcendent being has always been at odds with her power curve in-game. Traditionally, Syndra spikes hard mid-game, looking to ride a series of Scatter the Weak stuns to pick off stragglers, leading her team to a massive advantage. While that part of the bargain’s stayed constant post mid-season, Syndra’s now falling off harder than anticipated. Tossing power into Syndra’s scaling should give her a nice fall-back when struggling, as well as push her even further ahead when unleashing her power.

W - Force of Will

E - Scatter the Weak

Xin Zhao

Xin’s taken a hit in a post-Devourer world, but for most of the game we’re actually pretty happy with the pace of his damage after diving in. Pre-6.9, Devourer + Rageblade allowed Xin to kill enemies too quickly - they’d rarely have time to react. Rather than tune his damage up (and shorten that reaction window again), we’re upping Xin’s durability to keep him feeling happy about ramming his face into the back lines, especially given his lack of an exit-strategy once committed.

General

Zed

While our last round of changes to Zed in 6.11 have made him less powerful, fighting him can still be a daunting task. Even though some of Zed’s inherent frustration is intended (it’s his job to kill people and dying isn’t really fun), we’re always looking into addressing that frustration head-on without removing his ability to compete. To that end, we’ve added some shiny new indicators to Zed’s shadows to keep foes out of the dark when he starts his shifting-shenanigans. We like Zed’s skill-intensive plays, but getting the upper hand simply because your opponents can’t see what you’re doing isn’t fair.

General

Infinity Edge

Standard marksman itemization is centered around combining a B.F. Sword upgrade and a Zeal upgrade. This pairing is an engine of efficiency for basic attack strength: attack damage adds raw power, while crit chance and attack speed multiply it. Stats from subsequent items further fuel this engine, which is why most marksmen excel as late-game damage threats.

At present, the two-item threshold is slightly less impactful than it should be for the 6k+ gold investment it demands. Marksmen shouldn’t transform into unstoppable killing machines with just two items, but they should at least feel like they can contribute to their teams. We're adding a bit more bang for the buck to ensure a marksman’s initial gold investment feels like progress toward late game power, not just a prerequisite for it.

Essence Reaver

Essentially the same context as Infinity Edge above. Go read that.

Lord Dominik's Regards

Last Whisper's upgrades give marksmen options to pierce through defense-stacking foes, sacrificing generic damage for effectiveness against tanks. In their current state, however, these 'options' are only viable when their effects can be applied to multiple enemies. At 40 AD, Lord Dominik's and Mortal Reminder force an excessively high damage tradeoff versus, say, The Bloodthirster or Mercurial Scimitar. In other words, investing in them hamstrings a marksman's ability to kill anything that's not a tank. We're giving Lord Dominik’s and Mortal Reminder a bump so itemizing against the enemy frontline doesn't forfeit your ability to fight their backline.

Mortal Reminder

Reminder that we gave context for this change in the Lord Dominik’s section above!

Bilgewater Cutlass

The combine cost of Bilgewater Cutlass pays exclusively for its active effect - you gain no stats by upgrading it. 400 gold is a steep price for a small slow and a bit of damage, so we're dropping the cost to more reasonable levels.

Youmuu's Ghostblade

Just as marksmen scale with critical strike and attack speed, casters and assassins scale with cooldown reduction and flat armor penetration. Youmuu's Ghostblade fills this ‘core scaling item’ niche for casters and assassins, but also everyone who builds AD due to how much power it brings in raw stats. We want Ghostblade to stay useful for the classes it serves, so rather than reduce its secondary stats, we're shaving off a bit of attack damage. Combined with buffs to other AD items this patch, we're hoping the relative difference is sufficient to create a meaningful tradeoff for picking Youmuu's if CDR and flat pen aren’t your main stats.

Rod of Ages

There are two issues here, so let’s tackle them separately. First off, Rod itself is a little too efficient. We want to preserve the item’s appeal to its core users (i.e. mages that need the health for close-quarters brawling with large mana-sinks), but Rod’s statline is such a strong incentive at present that even non-Rod users are making the switch - so we’re taking it down a peg.

As for the other changes, that’s more to do with Catalyst’s upgrades at large than Rod specifically. Simply put, the sustain that Catalyst’s mana to health conversion gives seems fair for the stage of the game in which you initially pick it up, but gets out of line as users amass even larger mana pools to bolster their health bars. Considering ‘amassing larger mana pools’ is what catalyst users actually want to do, we’re cutting the sustain instead.

Hextech GLP-800

Like we said in the above section, Catalyst’s upgrades heal too much once you start getting a big mana pool. Context!

Righteous Glory

We’re not going to repeat ourselves. Scroll up to the other sections!

Grasp of the Undying

Despite our efforts earlier this season, Grasp of the Undying is still far too common in the top lane, crowding out other keystone masteries. Grasp is supposed to give tanks a little more oomph in combat, but its sustain is fairly excessive, cheapening the risk and reward of aggressive action. Grasp of the Undying should still be the go-to mastery for beefy solo lane champions, but combat from Grasp users will now mean something rather than immediately being sustained away.

Fervor of Battle

Fervor of Battle is simply too good at what it does. It works great as an basic attacker’s best friend, letting those with attack speed quickly gain stacks. Currently, single target abilities grant stacks of Fervor as well - twice as many as a basic attack, to be precise. While abilities should count toward building Fervor, champions who work spellcasts into their attack cycles are overperforming in the race to full stacks. We’re maintaining Fervor of Battle as a great choice for attack speed lovers while leveling the playing field in the marksman mastery space.

Double Edged Sword

For ranged champions, the risk/reward nature of Double Edged Sword doesn’t hold a candle to the power of Feast. The benefits Double Edged Sword offers to melee champions give them respectable value, so we’re bringing ranged champions up to speed.

Natural Talent

In an effort to make Natural Talent more competitive with the sustain of Vampirism, we decided to shift its power forward towards the early game. Natural Talent still grows with champions who have the potential to deal mixed damage, but now the effects are felt a little earlier.

Veteran's Scars

Veteran’s Scars is close to a good place but the wide range of situations in which Runic Armor can be helpful (healing, shields, etc.) means Veteran Scars needs a nudge if it wants to be a relevant alternative. Also, #cleannumbers are just better, it’s science.

Bard

In a lot of ways, ARAM is a fun-sized League of Legends experience, compressing many of the core elements of Summoner’s Rift (laning, teamfighting, killing towers) into a shorter, streamlined experience. To account for the shorter game duration, ARAM dishes out accelerated gold and experience. This appropriately compensates most champions: put in gold/experience and they get stronger at a pretty consistent rate. A few champions break that convention, drawing their scaling from some secondary source that correlates loosely with time spent in game. Those champions are currently missing out on a good deal of their identity, so we’re cleaning up their experience on The Howling Abyss.

Bard’s secondary scaling comes from his chimes, which spawn at a fixed duration. We’re giving more chimes to grab so that he can still get his meep on.

Passive - Traveler's Call

Nasus

With nine other people in his lane, Nasus doesn't have the luxury of waiting for the right minion to siphon, so we're giving him double value on all unit stacks, not just the cannon.

Q - Siphoning Strike

Thresh

Bard needs his chimes, Nasus needs his stacks and Thresh needs his souls. It’s a two-for-one soul sale on The Howling Abyss! And yes, that means Nunu is worth four souls.

Passive - Damnation

Mark / Dash

We’re happy with the effect Mark/Dash has had on ARAM since its addition (i.e. letting Olaf and Udyr actually play), but widespread adoption of the spell has shown that it’s a little too warping on the average game.

Clarity

With extra summoner spell cooldown coming to Howling Abyss, we’re looking to keep Clarity from going off the rails in terms of the mana that it provides to an entire team. These large infusions of mana disproportionately benefit already-powerful poke compositions, so we’re focusing Clarity on filling your own mana pool rather than your ally’s.

Oracle's Extract

On Summoner’s Rift, where you have trinkets, detecting hidden units is as easy as buying a Sweeping Lens. But ARAM doesn’t play by your rules, Summoner’s Rift! Right now, the two detection items - The Lightbringer and Arcane Sweeper - are pretty niche purchases that only some champions want. Rather than bloat the game with stealth items for everybody, we’re removing those two and giving Oracle’s Extract some much needed love. The duration prevents Oracle’s Extract from spelling disaster for stealth champions. But replenishing your Extracts every time you die is pretty harsh for a map where you can’t heal up.

Guardian's Horn

The Doran’s line of items offers something very specific in Summoner’s Rift: cheap, efficient laning power. Given that ARAM often resembles an eternal 10-man laning phase, Doran’s items seem like a natural fit. However, with much higher starting gold, it’s often much more efficient to dive straight into mid-tier items and hasten your power spike. We’re replacing the Doran’s items with souped up and cost-appropriate versions that won't hog all of your inventory slots.

Doran’s Shield already feels made for ARAM, with damage reduction to weather the trade-heavy ARAM life, and health regeneration to sustain through it. While the new Guardian’s Horn is stronger in both aspects, we chose to lean harder into the sustain to make melee champions feel like they aren’t doomed once they take a little poke without in turn making them too tanky to burst down.

Reducing incoming damage

Guardian's Hammer

Much like Doran’s Shield, Doran’s Blade doesn’t require much tweaking to fit ARAM. While we are enhancing the the raw combat stats, the bulk of the gold value increase is coming from a good deal more lifesteal, so users have the sustain they need.

Guardian's Orb

Doran’s Ring requires slightly more substantial tweaks than the other two Doran’s items, thanks to its passive. Without a lane of minions all to themselves, Doran’s Ring users feel a bit underwhelmed by the mana-on-kill. Instead, we’re replacing that power with flat mana regen, so you don’t have to steal every minion from your teammates just to have mana.

Refillable Potion

Holding on to our ARAM-as-extended-10-man-laning-phase metaphor, ARAM exacerbates the gold drain of potions. Having access to repeatable potions should make players feel better about their ability to withstand heavy poke.

Corrupting Potion

Poro-Snax

Right now, fattening up a Poro until it explodes takes a good deal of coordination, not just from your own team, but the opposing team as well. While we do want to see more glorious Poro explosions, we don’t want to just hand out free power. Instead, we hope to ensure that the team that is better able to control objectives will be rewarded with a faster Snaxplosion. We’ll check back in future patches to make sure this isn’t snowballing games too hard out of control.