Praes

Patch 26.9 Full Preview (Champions)! No changes to the items or systems changes, so just wanted to focus on Champions today. Ambessa - After being out for almost a year and a half, we've learnt a lot about Ambessa's power curves, strengths and weaknesses, good and bad matchups, etc. - One area we feel has slightly less counterplay than we think is long term healthy is Ambessa's ult warning - Given its long cast range, it often feels more missable (burden is on the caster) than dodgeable (counterplay for user) - We played around with several timings and think this timing strikes the best balance between dodgeability, requirement to combo CC and still satisfaction for the Ambessa player Shyvana - The goals of these changes are to increase differentiation between the AP and AD builds - Create satisfying incentives for Shyv players who want to be more of a durable Dragon, rather than a squishy burst champion - It's also been a common pain point that Shyv's shield is both easily popped and having the Movespeed tied to that makes her play pattern quite binary and unsatisfying in the moment, so we're making the Movespeed from W more consistent and available - In the AD build, we're looking to have the Q + W pattern be more supported, as she needs to stick onto targets more and be more durable (W cooldown should help here) - In this build, we're looking to balance the satisfaction of Q button presses and repeatedly attacking - We've also added more incentives for her Sheen synergies with Trinity Force in particular by buffing her AD growth - While she's lost a few incentives to build AD overall, we intend to support the AD Bruiser oriented build as best as we can - In the AP build, we're looking to create stronger incentives for E to be maxed and play around E + W - More of a fireball oriented in and out pattern - We'll continue to followup to ensure that Shyvana's tuning supports her builds as they play out Zeri - While Zeri has been statistically balanced in her more bursty form, especially across ranks, her satisfaction and identity have taken a hit - These changes are aimed at trading off some of her damage output to re-emphasize her speed outputs (some of the main reasons players play her) - Along with this are some feelsgood changes (like E refunding on attacks vs everything) - While we're increasing some of the speed on her ultimate, we'll keep an eye on the stack dropoff duration to ensure it strikes the right balance of fantasy fulfilment and balanceability Tahm Kench - We overnerfed Tahm Kench last patch; we intended to buff TK support overall and these buffs are more skewed there, though they will overall affect both roles Briar/Warwick - Briar is a bit too strong, especially in average play, where she is also building very squishy on first item (often Collector, etc.) - These changes are aimed at incentivizing her to build a bit more tanky - Warwick on the other hand has been languishing, especially in Average play where we'd expect him to succeed