V7.4

Champions Cho'Gath

Feast can stack infinitely against champions and epic monsters, and stacks no longer fall off on death. Feast’s ability power ratio down; bonus health ratio added.

Cho’Gath’s been pretty weak for a while now: his last visit to the patch notes back in 6.20 made Feral Scream a fairer ability to play against, but ended up weakening Cho by removing some reliability from his kit. We’re updating Feast to boost the cool aspects of Cho’Gath’s colossal, slobbering Void monster fantasy while removing the frustration of losing stacks when killed (it was a pretty terrible experience to reverse-snowball after a death). This makes Cho less of a gamble, while making tank builds feel like a good choice.

updatedR - Feast

Changes to the rules around Feast stacks. FOOD MEMORY Cho’Gath no longer loses Feast stacks on death FEED THE VOID Feast can now stack infinitely (only five stacks can be gained from minions and non-epic monsters, though they don’t have to be the first five) NOT THAT FILLING Feast no longer heals Cho’Gath when it kills a unit at max stacks (nomming a sixth minion or non-epic monster doesn’t do anything beyond damage) INDISCRIMINATE DIGESTION Feast no longer grants two stacks on champion kill or half mana and cooldown refund on minion kill FOOD CRITIC Feast’s tooltip on the buff bar now tracks what Cho’s eaten

All the other stuff. RATIO 0.7 ability power ⇒ 0.5 ability power and 10% bonus health BONUS HEALTH PER STACK 100/140/180 ⇒ 80/110/140 BONUS HEALTH AT 6 STACKS 600/840/1080 ⇒ 480/660/840 MAXIMUM ATTACK RANGE BONUS +50 (175 attack range) ⇒ +75 (200 attack range) LET’S NOT GO CRAZY HERE Cho’Gath reaches his maximum size (and bonus attack range) at 10 stacks Bard

Bonus movement speed when collecting Chimes increased.

Bard’s been away from the Rift for a while now (*sad chimes*). To help the golden boy out, we’re boosting his wandering skills to help Bard do what Bard does best: roaming and playmaking.

Passive - Traveler's Call BONUS MOVEMENT SPEED 18%, plus 12% for each chime beyond the first ⇒ 24%, plus 14% for each chime beyond the first MAX BONUS (5 CHIMES) 66% ⇒ 80% Cassiopeia

Cassiopeia is now slick. Fixed a Flash + Ult bug. General NO HOVER SNAKES Cassiopeia’s tail now follows her realistically as she moves and turns Bugfixes DIZZY SNAKE Flashing during R - Petrifying Gaze’s cast time no longer resets the direction the cone fires in. It now consistently fires in the direction Cassiopeia faced before Flashing. This addresses a bug that sometimes caused Petrifying Gaze’s visuals to not line up with the actual effect. Corki

Normal missile damage down. Missile count now tracked on secondary resource bar.

Corki stands out as one of the strongest midlaners at all levels of play. He brings a lot to the fray: strong poke damage, wave clear, and a fantastic moustache. We’re toning down Missile Barrage’s contributions to the first two, but leaving the Big One intact as an impactful moment for Corki and his opponents to play around. To that end, we’re adding a tracker for Corki’s progress toward the Big One so foes can react accordingly.

R - Missile Barrage

Normal missile damage numbers: BASE DAMAGE 100/130/160 ⇒ 75/100/125 TOTAL ATTACK DAMAGE RATIO 20/60/100% ⇒ 15/45/75% ABILITY POWER RATIO 30% ⇒ 20%

Big One damage numbers: BASE DAMAGE 150/195/240 ⇒ 150/200/250 TOTAL ATTACK DAMAGE RATIO 30/90/150% (unchanged) ABILITY POWER RATIO 45% ⇒ 40%

AMMO RACK The number of missiles Corki has stored is now shown in his secondary resource bar. The resource bar turns red when the next missile is a Big One. Jhin
 * 1) clarity:

R bullets’ slow duration decreased.

Jhin’s been plenty powerful throughout the beginning of the season, giving us a generous number of opportunities to evaluate more nuanced approaches than raw damage nerfs. We’re targeting one of the most frustrating aspects of playing against the Virtuoso: Curtain Call’s slow. Eating a single bullet often makes it near-impossible to dodge the rest. This neither provides sufficient opportunities to outplay Jhin, nor does it let Jhin demonstrate his mastery. The slow on Curtain Call still works as a set-up for his team to dive in, but won’t allow him to single-handedly kill squishies by spoon-feeding him every ult shot.

R - Curtain Call SLOW DURATION 0.75 seconds ⇒ 0.5 seconds Katarina

Minus 2 MR from Slytherin.

Katarina had 2 more base MR than she was supposed to. Whoops.

Base stats BASE MAGIC RESISTANCE 34 ⇒ 32 Maokai

Q mana cost up. E impact damage removed.

Maokai has been the dominant super-tank in top lane, and not even the hefty Courage of the Colossus changes back in 7.2 felled this tree. Thanks to his seemingly-limitless waveclearing, the Twisted Treant has basically no losing lane matchup. We’re forcing Maokai to commit more resources if he wants to squash enemy minions, allowing opponents to win by attrition if they can sap him of his mana before a fight. Maokai will still be a mighty oak in the late game, but unless he branches into some early mana items, he won’t have the resources to farm and fight if he’s on the losing side.

Q - Arcane Smash COST 45 mana at all ranks ⇒ 45/50/55/60/65 mana E - Sapling Toss removedFAT SAPLINGS Saplings no longer deal damage when they land (they still draw jungle monster aggro) Ryze

Q bonus damage on E’d targets reduced.

Despite 7.1’s changes to reduce Ryze’s early game safety, the Rune Mage is still machine-gunning everyone to death once he eventually scales into mid/late game. That said, this is a far larger problem in pro play than normal play, and nerfing base damages would just make that worse. We’re targeting Q’s bonus damage, ensuring power’s pulled more heavily from matches where Ryze players are far more diligent in priming their targets with Spell Flux before tossing out an Overload.

E - Essence Flux Q BONUS DAMAGE VS FLUX’D TARGETS 40/55/70/85/100% ⇒ 40/50/60/70/80% Yordle Finger Unification Pass

Don’t ask what we did with the fingers we cut off. It’s better for you not to know.

JHIN WOULD BE PROUD Various Yordle splashes and in-game models have been updated to all have four fingers

Armor Penetration Items

There’s no denying Lethality builds are overtuned, but the solution isn’t as straightforward as “revert the buff from 7.2”. That buff addressed Lethality’s initial problem of being lackluster against squishy targets in the early game, and we want to preserve as much of that correction as possible. The nuanced (rather, lack-of-nuance’d) issue we now face is that Lethality builds are effective against everyone. To address this, we’re putting a damper on how efficiently Lethality builds pull in tank-busting items - washing out those builds’ intended weakness without significantly stalling their anti-squishy gameplan.

We’re digging into three percent-penetration items this patch: Black Cleaver, Last Whisper, and Lord Dominik’s Regards. In each case, generic damage is being shifted into the specific strengths desired by the classes those items are meant for. Enforcing Lethality’s weaknesses by tightening up its alternatives creates space for other builds to shine while leaving Lethality itself effective in cases where it’s supposed to succeed.

The result of this focus on the broader item system is that we’ve only got two direct nerfs to Lethality. One’s to Ghostblade; the other’s to the Precision mastery in the Cunning tree (scroll down a bit). Where we go from here will depend on how this patch shakes out, though there’s one step we know for certain we’ll be taking. Edge of Night’s got so much going on that changing it correctly is a more complex challenge than with most other items. We want to get this one right, so we held off on lumping it in with our initial batch of changes. Expect nerfs in 7.5.

Youmuu's Ghostblade

Lethality down.

Up until the introduction of Lethality, Ghostblade granted 20 flat armor penetration. We wanted to avoid shrinking that number during the transition away from flat penetration, which was a big enough change to get used to on its own. Now that Lethality’s found its place in the stats system, we’re bringing Ghostblade in line with Dirk’s other upgrades.

LETHALITY 20 ⇒ 15 The Black Cleaver

Builds out of Kindlegem instead of Caulfield’s Warhammer. Health up, attack damage down.

While The Black Cleaver is meant for fighters like Darius and skirmishers like Fiora, it packs so much offensive power that glass cannon champs are buying into it as well. We’re shaking up Cleaver’s build path and stat offerings to better align with the extended fights its intended users thrive in. Swapping Caulfield’s Warhammer for a Kindlegem works out well for champs who need to live long enough to cycle through several rounds of spellcasts, versus champs who want to down their target in one go.

Fun fact: this is basically the version of Black Cleaver we had between patches 5.8 to 5.22, with a few gold numbers moved around. Though the change to Warhammer made sense in the 2016 pre-season, a lot’s changed about the game since then and the old version’s a better fit for where we are today.

BUILD PATH Phage + Caulfield's Warhammer + 850 gold (3100 total) ⇒ Phage + Kindlegem + 950 gold (3000 total) HEALTH 300 ⇒ 400 ATTACK DAMAGE 50 ⇒ 40 Last Whisper

Armor penetration up, attack damage down.

For marksmen, reacting to tanky threats required a 2700-gold investment in the form of Lord Dominik’s Regards or Mortal Reminder. The problem: “build an end-game item” doesn’t pass muster as a ‘reaction’, given how long it takes to bank that much coin. We’re letting Last Whisper serve as that reactive purchase all on its own, at the expense of effectiveness against targets without armor to pierce.

BUILD PATH Pickaxe + 425 gold (1300 total) ⇒ Long Sword + 950 gold (1300 total) BONUS ARMOR PENETRATION 30% ⇒ 45% ATTACK DAMAGE 25 ⇒ 10 Lord Dominik's Regards

Damage bonus requires enemies to have more health than before.

Lord Dominik’s draws an interesting parallel with The Black Cleaver: one scales with enemy health, the other with enemy armor. There’s no right way to itemize against that combination, so to keep LDR+Cleaver from taking over as the new flavor-of-the-month build, we’re making Lord Dominik’s far less tolerant of Cleaver’s bonus health. Fortunately, this shouldn’t impact champs who are happy to buy Lord Dominik’s on its own.

PASSIVE Deal +1.5% physical damage per 50 ⇒ 100 maximum health difference against targets with greater max health than you (up to +15%) MAXIMUM BONUS THRESHOLD 500 max health difference ⇒ 1000 max health difference Giant Slayer

Carry-over changes keep Giant Slayer and Lord Dominik’s consistent. PASSIVE Deal +1% physical damage per 50 ⇒ 100 maximum health difference against targets with greater max health than you (up to +10%) MAXIMUM BONUS THRESHOLD 500 max health difference ⇒ 1000 max health difference

Items Knight's Vow

Build path simplified.

A support’s inventory quickly fills up with multiple items like Sightstone, gold items, boots, and wards, leaving little room for components. We want supports to feel comfortable building towards Knight’s Vow, so we’re simplifying its build path.

BUILD PATH Crystalline Bracer + Crystalline Bracer + Cloth Armor + 700 gold (2300 total) ⇒ Crystalline Bracer + Chain Vest + 850g (2300 total) ARMOR 20 ⇒ 40 BONUS ARMOR WHEN LINKED 40 ⇒ 20 TETHER RANGE 900 ⇒ 1000

Masteries Fervor of Battle & Warlord’s Bloodlust

A good trade is the first step towards winning a lane; repeat enough times and you can go for a kill. Hitting minions from range and lifesteal enables marksmen to weather the storm through lost trades far too easily. This is making bot lane pretty noninteractive; if there’s no real gain from risking a trade, why bother? We want to make sure trades feel worth the risk so aggressive bot laners can feel good about creating an advantage.

Fervor of Battle

Stacks last longer. STACK DURATION 6 seconds ⇒ 8 seconds Warlord's Bloodlust

Less lifesteal. MAXIMUM BONUS 20% ⇒ 15% Lower-Tier Mastery Tuning

Reducing damage from masteries. Meditation mana regen down. Fearless base resistances down.

Ultimately, we want a player’s impact to come from the decisions they make and the actions they take in-game. Masteries supplement that power, but over time the amount of power they bring has crept up. We like the gameplay that is created by impactful Keystone masteries, but we’re looking to trim some of the invisible power from masteries which only provide passive stats.

Ferocity Cunning Resolve Tier 4 Bounty Hunter BONUS DAMAGE PER STACK 1.5% ⇒ 1% Double Edged Sword BONUS DAMAGE DEALT 5% ⇒ 3% BONUS DAMAGE TAKEN 2.5% ⇒ 1.5% Battle Trance BONUS DAMAGE MAX 5% ⇒ 3% RAMP-UP Bonus ramps up over 5 seconds ⇒ 3 seconds

Stealthed Trap Interactions

The introduction of control wards has given League of Legends too many trap-disabling effects, leaving trap-reliant champions in the same position stealth champions used to be: countered by a cheap item/trinket. We’re removing trap-disabling from most vision effects, but we want to ensure melee champions can attack the traps they reveal without accidentally stepping on them in the process.

Trap Hitbox Adjustments

Traps are more easily targetable by melee champions. Teemo's R - Noxious Trap MUSHROOM CIRCLE Now shows collision radius TARGETABLE HITBOX 50 units ⇒ 125 units (collision radius unchanged) Jhin's E - Captive Audience TARGETABLE HITBOX 50 units ⇒ 125 units (collision radius unchanged) Nidalee's W - Bushwhack TARGETABLE HITBOX 25 units ⇒ 50 units (collision radius unchanged) Shaco's W - Jack In The Box TARGETABLE HITBOX 25 units ⇒ 50 units (collision radius unchanged) SPOILED SURPRISE Jack in the Boxes now trigger when they’re revealed by a Sweeping Lens, Oracle’s Alteration, or Control Ward Trap-Revealing Item Adjustments

Items that reveal traps no longer disable them. Sweeping Lens HOW LAZY No longer disables traps (still reveals them!) CARRY-OVER Also affects Oracle’s Alteration Control Ward HOW LAZY No longer disables traps (still reveals them!) Duskblade of Draktharr HOW LAZY Duskblade’s Blackout passive no longer disables traps (still reveals them, and still disables wards!) BUGFIX Champion clones (ex. Wukong’s W - Decoy) no longer instantly gains the Blackout passive when spawned

Game System Adjustments Ward Reveal Rewards

Revealing wards is more rewarding.

Until now, you’d earn half a ward’s worth of gold when your allies destroyed a ward you’d revealed. This caused situations where players would compete for the last hit on wards, rather than getting rid of them ASAP. We’re changing things up so whoever reveals the ward and whoever kills it both get those precious gold coins without having to compete with one another.

WELL-EARNED Wards now grant full gold to both the player who revealed them and the player who killed them (bonuses don’t stack if the revealer also kills the ward) BLOOMING BANKROLLS Scryer’s Bloom now ‘tags’ wards for the revealed bonus OVEREXPOSURE If a ward is killed while revealed by two sources, the first source is the one that counts as having revealed the ward THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN SILLY Permanently visible wards (Control Wards, Farsight Wards) don’t grant the revealed bonus Catch-Up Experience

Underleveled champions can better catch up to their teammates.

Should they ever fall behind in levels, certain champions - supports, utility junglers, what have you - have an exceedingly difficult time ever catching back up, even if they manage to contribute to their team’s successes in the face of that deficit. (In some cases, contributing to their team is the reason they fell behind in the first place - see: champs who roam between lanes or play into the deep vision game.) We want champions to be fairly rewarded for setting up the plays that lead their teams to victory at the expense of their own leveling.

Sidenote: we're also keeping a lookout for similar changes to stuff like Baron, Dragon and Turret kills.

newTeamwork bonus experience

When you’re lower level than your team. I'M STILL RELEVANT Earning a kill or assist while below your team’s average level now grants bonus experience OFFICIALLY BEHIND Teamwork bonus experience kicks in at just over one full level behind your team’s average, scaling with XP (not level) LET'S NOT GET TOO CRAZY The bonus scales slightly more aggressively at first, capping at +60% bonus experience at four full levels’ difference Underdog bonus experience

When you’re lower level than your opponent. SUBTLE STUFF Bonus experience for kills/assists on higher-level champions has been slightly increased. (At 4 levels’ difference, this adds about 10% more bonus experience) Turret First Blood

Gold reward down.

There’s a fine line between “working towards first turret is a valuable goal” and “let’s just always 5-man gank bot”. In the name of bot lane feeling less like everyone’s favorite karaoke joint, we’re dialing back the first turret benefit. That won’t mean bot lane won’t be pressured by other lanes, but we don’t want the gains from first turret to snowball the game quite so hard.

LOCAL BONUS 275 gold ⇒ 300 gold removedGLOBAL BONUS No longer grants 25 gold to all teammates TOTAL BONUS 400 gold ⇒ 300 gold

League Client Update

Practice Tool is here, and we’ve also made significant upgrades for better performance and stability across a variety of machine specs. Beleaguered owners of potato-PCs may now see a notification about Low-Spec Mode (which we’ve buffed over the last few patches). If you’re still seeing issues with performance, we strongly recommend enabling it from the settings menu top right of the client window.

We’ve released a beta update that talks about our plans for replacing the legacy client and future development of the client. Check it out here.

You can also find solutions to most common issues in the known issues section of our support site.

New features

Practice Tool and a big ol' buff to Low-Spec Mode. newSICK (CPU) GAINS Enabling Low-Spec Mode now automatically closes the client once you've made it through champ select, focusing more of your machine's precious resources on the match at hand. If you enable this mode, you'll notice that it takes a few seconds longer to get to the end-of-game screen after your game ends. That's because a background process has to automatically re-launch the client. It's gonna look a bit like your client is exploding when this happens, but we intend to keep working on this feature to make it less jarring. newPRACTICE TOOL Practice Tool is now available exclusively on updated client, finally destroying an ancient and exceedingly dank meme. Notable fixes

Fixed the missing buttons to give permission / kick players in the lobby. Removed the loud ass sound effect when transitioning from champ select into game loading. Improved overall responsiveness during champ select. Reduced the time it takes to login to the client. Added a notification before matches to let you know if you’re not going to be earning IP/XP. When typing, words should no longer be awkwardly split across lines. Added a counter to folders so you can see at a glance how many of your friends are online. Removed unobtainable skins from champ select. These cluttered skin selection and made collectors feel mega bummed. Added a quick link to the League of Legends support portal from the client. You can find it in the client's top right corner. Players can now use tournament codes to enter a custom game without having to search for it. Players can now befriend, kick, or view the profile of a spectator in their custom game lobbies.

Queue Health Update What does this update mean?

Ranked Solo/Duo Ranked Flex

Rotating Game Modes

All Random Ultra Rapid Fire (ARURF) is back from 2/24/17 - 2/28/17 and 3/3/17 - 3/6/17. Enjoy superspeed cooldowns, infinite mana, blazing attack speeds, randomized champ select, and the return of Runeterra's most renowned manatee.

Some things to note:

Along with the points made above, we've also boosted gold gains, movement speed, and tenacity to keep things Rapid Fire. In this mode, you can spam the custom Urf emote, which replaces the Mastery emote. Rerolls are shared with ARAM, so using one in either mode consumes it in the other. To compensate, we’ve increased the rate you rack up rerolls for the weekend. You should stack a reroll every game or two depending on how many champs you have unlocked. Many non-ultimate shield scalings are down by 50%. Don't worry, shields are still awesome.

Join in on the insanity and GLHF, URFers.

Bugfixes

Blackout passive no longer triggers individually on clones. We’re looking at you, Wukong Fixed a bug where abilities with circle range indicators were not displaying them correctly across elevation change Elise now correctly is not hit by turret missile projectiles during her E - Rappel invulnerability phase Jhin’s fourth shot now correctly crits after he takes Thresh’s W - Dark Passage Fixed a bug where Camille’s second cast of E - Hookshot wasn’t granting attack speed on hitting an enemy champion if she buffered her R - The Hextech Ultimatum Kled now can correctly dash through player-created terrain with his second cast of E - Joust Fixed a bug where Edge of Night’s active showed a radius when hovered over Kha’Zix now no longer is prevented from using his R - Void Assault passive by being “in combat” when stepping on Honeyfruit or attacking plants Fixed a bug where Gangplank got a massive Movement Speed boost upon killing multiple units with E - Powder Keg while being hit by Nautilus’ E - Riptide Nasus no longer plays the SFX for R - Fury of the Sands for the whole duration if he is dead Fixed a bug where clones killing the Rift Scuttler caused erratic behavior. Fixed a bug where game scoreboard icons would overlap The larger sphere from the Hexdrinker/Maw of Malmortius buff now appears in the appropriate location Classic Anivia no longer uses Blackfrost Anivia’s falling particles for R - Glacial Storm Buffs on Anivia now correctly align on her body even when she flies around for her Q - Flash Frost and R - Glacial Storm Blackfrost Anivia no longer has two bones jut out of her neck when using her Joke emote. You could say we got rid of her funnybones. Heartseeker Varus now correctly gets audio when hitting an enemy in Fog of War with Q - Piercing Arrow Blood Lord Vladimir now correctly gets audio quotes when he attacks Fixed a bug where Lunar Wraith Caitlyn’s Q - Piltover Peacemaker SFX were distorting when hitting multiple minions Primetime Draven’s Q - Spinning Axe no longer incorrectly uses Pool Party Draven’s SFX Fixed a bug where Urf the Nami-tee’s side fins bent outwards during her recall animation Fixed a bug on Arcade Corki where his model didn’t immediately reappear after his recall animation.

Upcoming Skins

Be on the lookout for Festival Queen Anivia, bringing samba to the Rift later in patch 7.4! Festival Queen Anivia