Tormentula

@agr0ing @AryasDemise Pre-rework skarner didn't have 3 tails.

@AryasDemise skarner had that skin before the rework

"League Classic" and they have the newest skins picked, only Lee Sin is on his old models and Skarner is literally new Skarner's model and animations slapped onto old Skarner's kit. Surely I am not the only one who finds this weird right???

@RiotPhroxzon > mages bot also need to be viable picks to allow teams to undoom themselves in champ select for an ad mid pick like zed/yone/Yasuo But I feel doomed picking Elise when she's 49% winrate RN masters+. How about buff traditional AP junglers instead of off-role or AD junglers.

Patch 26.14 Full Preview! Mages Bot - we've pulled brand from the patch given the concerns around mages bot - that said, we know this is a contentious topic, and I'll give some high level thoughts on how we see the situation (and more detailed thoughts in the patch rundown) - we see mages bot as creating healthy diversity for the bot lane experience overall (roughly 4:1 ratio of traditional marksmen to mages), even though for some traditional marksmen, they can be quite frustrating - it's important that players experience a mix of games at high intensity (eg. Playing adc against rengar/talon + mages bot) and also games that are more comfortable and low threat (maybe ivern jungle) as it creates the variety and flow state that keeps the game fun - too much intensity or too little intensity would make the game unfun in the long run as you'd never really feel those spikes of cortisol and triumph (which is one of the reasons assassins need to be strong for example) or be constantly stressed - marksmen are still the most popular bot carry in both pro and regular play - mages bot also need to be viable picks to allow teams to undoom themselves in champ select for an ad mid pick like zed/yone/Yasuo - that said, mages bot have pretty high winrates (often the highest), so aren't they overpowered? - The winrates don't really tell the full story, but they are definitely strong for several reasons. Mages, especially simple ones like brand, veigar or Swain for example have quite shallow mastery curves (usually only gaining 3-4% after playing ~50 games and also starting very high on game 1) in addition to not being deeply played in bot lane (ie. many mage bot players haven't progressed the mastery curve that far when you encounter them AND the mastery curve is not that steep) -> a similar effect to if you played autofilled malphite top (high skill floor) - adcs by contrast are typically harder to play but also reward that mastery depth more, meaning their winrates are relatively suppressed compared to mages bot - I'm not saying that mages at high levels of mastery/skill are weak (see them in pro play or high elo ranked), but mainly saying that winrates don't tell the full story and we see them as relatively similar in power level overall, just often more forgiving and can be more tolerant of matchup - adcs also have accelerated 3 item spikes in this season (compared to the other roles) due to bot quest, which also presents an interesting strategic balancing point (the mages a bit stronger on early item spikes and weaker on later ones) - another balancing aspect of mages bot is that they typically represent a composition tradeoff. Eg. ori + yunara/lulu bot lane and win on 2/3 items or AD mid plus ziggs+engage bot and need to end the game fast - if struggling with mages bot, champs like ezreal/sivir/zeri can be quite effective against them (dodge skills and have strong 2/3 item spikes and out scale) - anyway, a nuanced conversation that I'll dig into more in a video later Azir - players have been complaining about a bunch of bugged functionality for Azir ever since we made the changes to make on hits work on him - the team has fixed the vast majority of these bugs, eg. Things like jungle monsters not getting shuffled, pta not working, conq stacks, etc. - thanks to all your bug reports in helping track these down and keep them coming! Proto Harness - when looking at our jungle nasus nerfs, we ended up deciding that a better nerf would be to target proto harness - other users like shen jungle are also pretty strong, so we think pulling the champ nerfs and nerfing the item instead is a better direction and helps retain the power level of top nasus for example The other changes in this patch are relatively straightforward, but lmk if there's any more detail wanted and I can cover them in the rundown next week

@RiotPhroxzon @Spideraxe30 Buffing brand jungle back into the game before Elise jungle which has a dying playrate and struggling winrate. Can’t make this shit up.

Patch 26.14 Preview! MSI is in full swing! Had some awesome games and we're pretty happy with the meta overall. There's decent representation across each class (assassins in jungle, a few LeBlanc picks). Nerfing down some of the strongest picks in bot lane have also led to mages bot being more present in the meta. We don't find this state particularly problematic right now, but we have had several conversations about the true power level of mages bots (especially when they carry high winrates). That said, there are a few that are over performing in soloq (seraphine) so she's receiving a nerf, but the overall conversation is a lot more nuanced (which pairings, familiarity as opponents, etc.) Locke - Locke has had a really resonant start - players have resonated with his executes, resets and stack into burst gameplay - he's shown to be a little skill skewed in the same way that a Katarina, akshan or other resetty, roamy champions might be, but not overly so - that said he's still a bit strong when account for mastery growth and true power level - his level of early game snowballing is a bit too high right now - that said, we think his damage is appropriate if he needs to work a little harder to access it. As a result we're nerfing his waveclear (currently) to hit his ability to access it so reliably - we know that one of the things that players find confronting is his damage output right now, but we think it's valuable to retain these types of unique edges in the game for champions Systems - Rocket belt has been one of the premier items for mages (especially immobile) at the highest level for several months now. - We like and embrace this type of innovation, but it's also providing a bit too much versatility and removing a core weakness of these champs (ability to be killed), so forcing a bit stronger of a tradeoff - The other major systems change for this patch is a nerf to the mid boots upgrade for gluttonous greaves - it's adding a nice texture for playing say, mid vs top riven, but it's also the strongest performing boot in that lane and lacks clear counterplay - again, the innovation here is great, but just a bit strong

@Samnbino @RiotPhroxzon Nidalee can take over a whole game with invades and preventing the enemy jg from ever touching CS, Elise is pretty restricted to her only niche being tower dives before level 6 and then she doesn't do anything else over a sylas ekko or zyra.

@Samnbino @RiotPhroxzon 2% PR is the lowest she's been since season 8 actually. she always hovers 50% or higher cause of the coinflip nature of first 5 minutes of the game. When its any lower its indicative she either a) can't win first 5 minutes (s8) or b) is so bad shes a mid game detriment (s4)

Patch 26.13 Preview! Mostly champion changes today for our final MSI Patch, so going to go a bit lighter on context to chat more about them tomorrow. Locke - Locke will also hit the Rift some time during Patch 26.13 - We're super excited for his release (I know I will be playing him a bunch :D) and have seen a lot of community hype for him as well - Currently, we're trying to lock down a few tunings and timings on some of his abilities as well as where we want his power budget and maxes to be (a process called fine tuning) - A lot is changing day by day, in particular, the amount of power budget in his W has been something we're trying to fine tune as well as how Normal vs Elite skewed he is Doran's Helm - Doran's Helm has started to be picked up on a few ADC's, especially ones that have particularly strong synergies with the resists (Senna through healing and the effective health it provides synerging well with the resists) and Jhin (as he has a lot of his early damage in base damage) - We're looking to keep these incentives intact directionally, but try to make the item a little more balanced for these users, while trying to grow the user pool a bit as a result Imperial Mandate - For systems changes, we have an Imperial Mandate buff. So far it has added a few users into the pool, however a bunch of these are midlaners like Galio, fringe TF, Liss, etc. - This set of changes is meant to position it to be more fantasy forward for Support champions while also giving it a bit of a power up. It's not really the "best item" on any support at current tuning and for an item with as strong kit synergies as this it probably should be if it's appropriately powerful Champion Changes - At a high level, changes this patch are mostly aimed at making some of the fringe picks a little more viable and tailored towards the situations teams might want to pick them, especially in later series of the MSI tournament

@Greivun @RiotPhroxzon > Lillia legitimately worst jungler in the game since 2025 Elise says hi. AP junglers in general have been dogshit for awhile since they're either diana/ekko/sylas or a glass cannon skirmisher that either one shots or gets one shot trying (elise & lillia are here)

@RiotPhroxzon Lillia legitimately worst jungler in the game since 2025 now but sure let's buff syndra sylas and jax like they aren't picked every pro match and stomp every pub lobby already 💀💀💀

Patch 26.12 Full Preview! Cassiopeia - We pulled Cassiopeia nerfs from the 26.12 patch, but intend to nerf her in 26.13 - We still want to work on a changelist that preserves some of her strengths and the things that her players love about her, Top Lane Meta - Aatrox has been generally a little on the weaker side, especially for higher levels of play and so these changes are targeted at rewarding him for matchups where he's already favored and able to get sweet spot hits off more reliably - Gwen is also being buffed a bit with her early laning strength (which we walked back pretty significantly in an earlier patch). With K'Sante rising in priority (from DHelm buff and other meta shifts), we're also positioning Gwen as a good pick into these tanky Sion and K'Sante style picks - Similarly, Jax is getting more throughput in early trades both in regular matchups and in some of the matchups that favor short trades (eg. ranged matchups) - Overall, we expect the Top meta to have a few more fringe and counterpick options available Hwei - Some of the slow stacking changes to Hwei were a lot more power impacting (negatively) than the buffs that he received in the positive direction - As a result we're adding a bit more power back into his utility aspects that allow him to be a jack of all trades, rather than just being a master of none Tristana - Tristana, has a bit of room in bot lane and especially in the midlane where changes to the role quests (that favor a bit more utility/roaming > farming) have been a bit unfavorable there - One of the changes that impacted her negatively was adding a mana cost to Q and so we're adding a bit of that back to give her a bit more pushing power - This is especially impactful because of Tristana's low base and scaling mana pool Ryze - Ryze is a bit too durable, especially in the early game and he often wins lanes/gets push by simply autoing champions and hitting them with guaranteed damage through W's, E's and autos - Ryze will still be on the durable side, especially with his early catalyst purchases, but these nerfs are intended to make him work a bit harder for it Lee Sin - Changes to Lee are targeted at bringing down some of his damage through both guaranteed means (as he is more likely to get on top of people with more access to W hops) and unreliable means (Q hits) - He received a pretty strong net buff in the highest levels of play, more than the winrate movement would indicate Lethality Varus - Lethality Varus continues to be one of the strongest bot lane champions and also acts as a meta suppressant - We're attempting to open up the meta a bit by moving more of his power budget into attacking builds and also nerfing the throughput of his Q poke in the AD heavy builds

@RiotPhroxzon @SkinSpotlights Revert the 26.08 Elise R rescripts.

26.11 Full Patch Preview! The major changes this patch are to the Systems mentioned yesterday to adjust the relative balance of Ranged vs Melee supports in bot lane. There are also some changes to Statikk Shiv to make it slightly more attractive on AD users and a nerf to Hexplate for Ranged which are primarily being picked up on Varus and Vayne Top Lane. We're not looking to remove it from them, but are looking to get it into a spot where its top end balance doesn't need to be maintained around those 2 champions. We're also restoring some of the power we removed from Heartsteel a while ago as it lost some of its fantasy and power in a way that we think we can restore now. It will also incidentally help some of the Tank Supports in niche cases when they start snowballing Deathfire Touch - We're adjusting Deathfire Touch this patch to deal Magic Damage - Part of the impetus for this is how strong the synergy is with Black Cleaver and in addition, it feels like more of a magic coded effect - So we think this strikes a reasonable balance of fantasy fulfilment and practical balance considerations - Otherwise, we think Deathfire Touch is in a pretty reasonable spot Brand, Smolder - Brand Botlane and Smolder have both benefitted from Deathfire Touch - While we are making changes to the Deathfire Touch interaction that will affect Smolder, we still think he will be too strong after these changes - The changes to Smolder are targeted at also making his squishy Crit builds more optimal so he is more assailable later in the game Heimerdinger - After the minion changes in the previous patch, Heimer's turrets are a bit worse for wear - We're giving him a feelsgood QOL change so that his turrets aren't killed by ranged minions without being able to attack back - Despite being 550 range on paper, 550 range champions (which are most of them) will still be able to outrange turrets at max range due to the way this range is calculated - In addition, there is a small increase to the E vision duration so that the Beam actually manages to fire before losing vision in some cases Teemo - For Teemo, he is one of the more powerful Top laners, while also being on the higher end of frustration - He is also receiving a small buff to Statikk Shiv this patch and so we're compensation nerfing him with an intent for this to be lightly power down Quinn - Quinn has landed in a pretty weak spot for Jungle and in this state, it's pretty close to griefing team when picked - So we're giving it a pretty sizeable buff to give it a legitimate shot at being powerful and viable - Players so far have expressed interest in playing it!

@TroyKv @Norman_Asspxrn @Finchinator2 Volc is stop walled with just bug/fire/grass/psychic coverage by a lot of things, with tera blast it was hypothetically using would be counters as setup fodder bait (ground for heatran, fairy for dragonite, water for skeledirge/moltres), now its not longer a guess when it loses.

@Norman_Asspxrn @Finchinator2 I wasn't super familiar with the OU Meta, so I didn't know which Mons became Ubers with Tera Blast... Outside of Regieleki, that boy is the biggest Tera Blast merchant in the market.

Volcarona is being retested in SV OU: #post-10981001" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">smogon.com/forums/threads…

@ProxyFreak @Finchinator2 Difference is you could easily live with that by just having a ghost type. Every pokemon could learn explosion but it won't sweep the whole team because of it (can't imagine why) and ghost types have a 100% counter rate for it while TB the element of every type is rough.

This is wrong Tera Blast was the biggest suspect in 3+ years, only trailing Tera itself this gen Implying there was some agenda to assure a ban when both Tier Leaders voted Do Not Ban is preposterous, too can we pls stop spreading misinformation when we don’t get what we want

@drewlevin Not sure how recent this goes but my account (as well as anyone I'm in lobby with, seems like there's a connection between being premades since I dont get these in solo queue) gets these FR after about 30 minutes of premade games (any queue) and two days ago last i played.

that's been a lot of hard work behind the scenes from our accounts and infosec teams. I'm curious whether, from this point on, people are seeing that kind of behavior persist. from what we can see, it's stopped for now, so I'd love to hear if it kicks up again (and where).

we've gotten a lot of flags from folks over the last few months about a persistent network of chatbots that were spamming people with friend requests with the ultimate goal of directing them to discord and then onlyfans. we think we've degraded their operations almost entirely.

@bjayers_ @CentroLeaks Complaining about something valid =/= "never happy" There's 0 reason to not include 6v6 in a private custom battles format and that was what the majority of players were looking forward to; getting to play 6v6 megas again instead of 3v3 coinflip simulator.

@CentroLeaks You people are just never happy unless you're complaining about something—including about people who are so tired of you complaining about everything that they'll defend inconsequential things just to spite your complaints.

there are people right now defending that Pokémon Champions doesn’t have 6v6 private battles you read that right

@RiotAugust @_LucasBorges You don't know if that WR will stabilize by just assuming "its op day 1" cause who knows what even beats her at this point. Not disagreeing that she is strong, disagreeing with the philosophy of using day 1 for anything constructive.

@RiotAugust @_LucasBorges respectfully disagree cause you're not factoring in the other champion interactions as well. 1 Day on a very easy to play champion with a familiar kit isn't the same as every matchup inting into her seeing if they can win the stat check now or whether to invade or gank more.

Shyvana’s rework came out strong (57% winrate). We expect her to only get stronger as players optimize so we put together a micro patch nerf. It should be live now.

@RiotAugust fear in general on her is counter intuitive when you want to land on who you're fearing, and even more awkward when you factor in the E slow, like tbh it should be a very strong slow itself or at least really damn good to justify being a fear now over the carry knockback

@RiotAugust The R fear nerf is a mistake. Its easily the worst part of her VGU since its so inferior to the carrying knock-back the old ult had. You guys just buffed her base stats as a knee jerk response to early feedback, nerf her base stats they're ridiculously high as is, keep 1s fear.

@RiotPhroxzon I just don't get how she hasn't hit any thresholds that would cause a deeper look into her kit / gimmick cause this is not long term sustainable.

@RiotPhroxzon It amazes me how neeko has gotten more nerfs than documented bug fixes (with a list rivaling old morde) and buffs in the past few years. At some point she's going to need a rework either to clean up how inconsistent all her problems are or to make her less projailed.

Patch 26.5 Preview! Ranked EUW Test - We ended up getting delayed and the new plan is to deploy around 6pm PST tomorrow (roughly 2-3AM EUW) - There will be about 5-10m of Ranked downtime, so we're doing this in off peak and monitoring that things are working correctly First Stand on 26.5 - We made a significant number of changes on 26.4 and so 26.5 is a more conservative set of changes to ensure a good Pro meta for First Stand - Ori, Azir, Neeko, Lethality Varus are some of the strongest outliers in Pro Play currently, and so we're tapping them down Items - Hubris is looking just generally underpowered - It doesn't really have an audience and also doesn't exhibit the same properties that other snowball items like Mejais have (higher winrates because being purchased when snowballing) - Bandlepipes is looking pretty strong, especially on second item. Locket is one of its primary competitors so we're giving it a buff on second item by flatting some of the shield value Patch Followups - Lillia is looking a bit worse for wear after her buffs in a previous patch were over magnitude, so we're giving her a bump back up (it may end up getting delayed to a future patch if we need more time to land on a higher quality changelist, but haven't decided) - We're looking to see what Mel looks like at a higher power level after making some of the frustration lowering changes in 26.3

@RiotPhroxzon Good patch but please nerf fucking ekko, idk how this champ has been allowed to exist not even just overpowered this patch but for the past few years as well.

Patch Preview 26.02! Gameplay Thoughts - Game Time & Snowballing: For the most part, our metrics around snowballing have come in and they're not looking any higher than last season (and for average play are lower). This is pretty much the same across every region. Game time is also looking slightly longer in each region, and even moreso given that the game starts earlier. But at the same time, players have reported that games feel a lot faster. We have a few hypotheses: Certainly, downtime with more frequent minion spawns and homeguards makes it feel like there's constant action happening. Hitting towers and getting those chunks of damage from crystalline overgrowth both feels more rewarding (and more confronting on the receiving end), so it feels like progress is being made faster, even if it's not actually that much faster. Barons are being taken earlier, since they're spawning again at 20 minutes, even though Baron takes are a bit weaker than they were before (gives +150G instead of +300G), so games don't typically end after the first Baron push. Players have often associated the first Baron take with the game being over, but that is a bit less of the case this Season. For now, we're not going to make any changes to Snowballing and Game Length, but will continue to monitor how things play out. Balancing the needs of the Summoner's Rift audience is pretty tough. There is a section of the audience who really enjoys the slow, methodical form of "Classical Chess/League" and at the same time, there are some sections of the audience who love "Blitz Chess/League". While we don't intend to go all the way down to Bullet chess speeds, we also need to be very responsive to the needs of our audience, especially global players and younger players who are often looking for a game with less downtime and faster pacing. At the same time, we don't want to move so quickly that we're alienating our long time core players who might be looking for a slower, more strategic game. We'll continue to fine-tune this over the course of the season. Vision: The amount of vision has also been a hot topic. We've heard a lot of your discussions on Faelights and the overall state of vision. We've opted not to do anything to do them for 16.2, but are in active discussion for 16.3, especially in terms of how they affect early jungle ganks. Otherwise, we're not planning anything major until Pro Play starts. Role Agency & Strategy: We're going to hold a little bit on taking a definitive stance on which roles are most and least powerful, we don't feel any are so out of line that we need to act now. It's been fun to observe how some players are putting roles at the top of their tier list and different players are putting the same role at the bottom (cough ADC cough). There are a lot of things for players to optimize here, but so far, we've been pretty happy with how the game, especially in the mid-game feels a bit more strategic; should I greed tempo to get an Overgrowth proc here, should I push next wave to try and get that turret chunk for gold. Bugs & Features - [Fixed] Draven Q: Bug that was causing reduced damage has been micropatched onto Live - [?] Dropped Inputs: We've been actively triaging some reports of dropped inputs on 16.1 when sequencing abilities. Things like Q -> Hydra -> W on Fiora working differently in 15.24 compared to 16.1. If you have any more examples of these, please pass them over, so we can track them down. - [16.3] Support Quest + Control Ward Bindings: We've been testing 2 changes to address some of the bad feels around control wards. The first is to put the control ward in the role quest slot at the start of the game (this has some weirdness with how the UX of the slot is conveyed and can be confusing to players). We're also testing an option where control wards can be double bound to both the role slot and the item slot where you hold it in your inventory. We've also been investigating whether we should be reverting V be defaulted back to caution ping and to re-bind the role quest slot to a different button. - Cassio: Please remember to buy boots on Cassio, she has feet now Ranked - [16.2] Champ Mastery: We're actively resolving an issue where Champ Mastery grades are higher than normal in certain situations (S's in situations where it's not warranted) - [16.2] Aegis of Valor: We've resolved an issue where in <1% of games Aegis of Valor was not proccing in situations where it should (eg. when autofilled) - [16.2/3] Start of Season LP: For players in OCE & China who played games during the period where Ranked placements were compromised, we will be granting players bonus LP for games played during that period - [16.2] KR and JP Ranked Climbers: For players in Korea and Japan who started their climbs during the compromised period, we're also looking to remedy their situations sometime during Patch 16.2. - We're seeing reduced dodge rates across all MMR's - We've also been seeing some successful lobby terminations for disruptive behavior and are continuing on our journey to roll this out in more regions - But overall the Ranked changes have rolled out pretty smoothly and we're happy with how things have gone there

@drewlevin @GenisObrado I think the idea is ok, I get the direction, but there should be more time to ward your topside - > buy sweeper - > go botside at least to make it less egregious when these invades happen. currently 100% WR with the yolo lvl 1 strat rn, 1 enemy jg had same idea and lost 1v1 riv

@drewlevin @GenisObrado Hi in masters mmr RN we're flipping level 1 invades anyways. The changes made it so that no one can ward and buy sweeper so jgs can just right click to each other's buffs with no intervention, either they find you starting it, you 1v1 river, or map split without wards.

In Season 16 League of Legends, Riot is forcing people to hold it in for hours as they queue up, immediately get into game, can’t dodge champ select, the games have no breaks, and then they come to your house and force you to queue up again right away. It’s inhuman.