As a reminder, patches usually go live early Wednesday morning (or is it Gwensday), but this one will be hitting live Thursday!

Bilgewater is in a pretty good spot when the seas are calm, you’ve locked in early, and you’e capitalized on plundering the strongest items and units from the Black Market, but the seas aren’t always calm, and the disparity between the trait’s strongest units/items and weakest are enough to capsize many-a-lost ship. We’re hitting the most powerful items which alongside a nerf to Graves (who’s performing very well at high ranks) should keep Bilgewater’s high tide in check, but don’t hit the deck in despair. We’re righting the comp’s course with substantial buffs to both Twisted Fate and Miss Fortune later on.

While the Path of Prosperous can rebuild the Placidium with gold, other paths wander astray, oftentimes being too difficult to build around than they are worth. We’re leveling out these trails with buffs for the Path of Transcendence and Spirits, while the Prosperous will have to pay a tax in reduced stats (but no change in gold drop chance).

At the highest level of play, a few dominant Ixtal strategies have emerged. We’re looking to once again even the trait out by making one of the hardest quests a bit easier, while nerfing the 550 cashout, which was far above the greatest value for the Sunshards.

As our greedier tank trait that doesn’t provide the same team-wide benefit as Defender or Bruiser, while not being as strong as Warden, Juggernaut (6) could be a bit more durable.

Barring rare exceptions (Noxus 3 early is strong and Silco’s Revenge), Noxus and Zaun have been two regions that have had little success with our opening patch. We’re giving both considerable buffs, especially at later break points to get them back on the map.

Bard as a carry is not as strong as using him as an econ-generator for loss streaking. We are happy that he is seeing time on the board, but the Bard fan in us is saddened that he’s typically sold off before his reroll dreams come to fruition. A small nerf for the rerolls in Stage 3 and 4 and a buff to his ability damage (which is further amplified by three-stars) should open up this comp and bring the struggling reroll Bruiser/Bard (or other variations yet to be discovered) back into the meta.

Some couples are carried by just one partner, but on TFT we’re all about reciprocal relationships full of support and a healthy balance of trading items with the Teamwork Cannon. With 16.2, we’re taking a couple of couples to couple therapy, at times, rebalancing their roles and at other times just nerfing Tryndamere. With high-damage and Durability Tryndamere just needed CC Immunity to become an unstoppable stacking stat-check machine. We’re bringing down a few components of his kit, that should result in a large nerf to the unit.

We really want reroll Yordle to be a thing—and it almost is—it’s so close! With a quick Teemo three-star buff, and a buff later on to Ziggs, we think our Yordle fans will have something to celebrate in this patch.

It may be the League of Draven, but it’s not Dravenfight Tactics. We’re significantly lowering the damage on Draven’s empowered axes, but we’re buffing his base AD to even things out a tad (this will still be an overall nerf for Draven). This allows us a bit more power-budget for some brotherly love, giving Darius a decent sized buff through Mana and heal on his ability. The goal here is to open up Darius as an itemizable tank that can still contribute to stacking Adoration for Draven. It also opens up more room for a LeBlanc buff, allowing us to ensure each Noxian is worth fielding.

Kobuko was healing for double his intended amount at the end of his ability, but despite that he was still pretty balanced. We’re fixing this bugfix with a near power-neutral change. We didn’t simply double the heal of the ability, because the bug happened at the end of his cast, where he could die before the full benefit.

We’ve completely rescripted Jinx’s ability to be (hopefully) bug-proof in the future. But even with her ability now correctly firing on all cylinders/bullets/rockets, she could still use a buff to keep her shooting faster, with a little bit of energy! P.S. Those are the lyrics to Get Jinxed which is definitely NOT 12 years old now…

Diana’s Bloodthirster, Rageblade, Titan’s build had her surviving with infinite casts and shields, while dealing a whole lot of unintended physical damage as fights went on. We’re nerfing her base AD and shield, in the hopes that this evens out her build paths to be more in line with her AP form.

While AP Kai’Sa has found success, her AD form has been lost to the void. A small damage boost should help.

Along with a buff to the Shadow Isles trait, we’re also giving Kalista a small buff to have her casting a bit faster, and be less dependent on Spear of Shojin to get there. She’ll also be hitting more targets, but with an unchanged total damage, allowing her to proc more utility effects like Burn/Sunder.

We’re giving Singed a small buff and adjusting his role to signal that you should be playing this guy as a utility tank (Shred/Burn/Wound, heck maybe an Evenshroud to help your newly buffed Jinx pop off) more than a damage carry.

Yunara has been the most dominant 4-cost for our winter-break patch. We’re lowering her damage a tad, but especially hitting her access to backlines. Combined with adjustments to Kraken’s Fury (see below), she should fall in line among the other AD 4-costs.

For how hard he is to unlock, Aurelion Sol isn’t able to have the impact we’d expect from a star crashing dragon.

Ah T-Hex. We’ve got a series of large nerfs for the apex-predator of the patch, from cutting the caster Mana regen to less than half for those three-star Caitlyns, to lowering the shield and damage and finally increasing the rate it falls off (less bursty to backliners). We really do not want a 1-star T-Hex one-shotting backliners.

While T-Hex has certainly taken over the meta, a few other Legendary units are also outperforming their peers. We’ve got nerfs for Kindred, Lucian & Senna, and Baron Nashor to preemptively open up more late-game options in a meta where a dino-bot is the ruling tyrant!

Part of the AD dominant meta is due to the power of Kraken’s Fury. With that a bit less furious (and the rest of the patch’s balance changes) we expect to see more AP lines emerge.

You ever get last pick on the Carousel and only have a choice between a Spatula and a Pan? That should be a special moment, being in first place and still getting a golden cooking utensil, but instead, it’s just become a moment of just holding and hoping for another to make a Tactician’s item, rather than an Emblem. The power of Emblems has long been tied to the power of verticals, but with Lore & Legends, individual units and flexible trait splashing reigns supreme—and this is good as it is what makes the set so flexible. So, to maintain our set’s flexibility, we’re buffing the Emblem items to be at roughly 3 components of power (still weaker than Core Items). This should create interesting use-cases where these Emblems are good slams on secondary (or more likely tertiary) carries, with more stats that can amplify other bonuses the unit may have from their traits/other items.

For readability, we’ll go through Origin Emblems first (which are receiving bigger buffs on average) and Class Emblems second.

Overall, we’re taking a balance pass to make sure our new Artifacts are on par with the rest of their roster.

Buffing our Aegises (Aegisies? Aegezzus? Aegusie?) to tick faster, stealing more resistances over time, with a slight decrease in the multiplier for their combo which will keep the combo power-neutral despite the individual Aegissesess (certainly the correct spelling) being stronger.

Darkin Scythe Yasuo has swept through backlines and LP alike, as the slash has been bugged to apply critical strike/on-hit effects. A quick bugfix here will keep the item functioning as intended and allow for us to buff Ionia without taking a strong use-case into completely over-powered territory.

All buffs to our underperforming Radiant Items, except for Kraken’s Fury, which is being nerfed to be in-line with the nerfs to its core form. This is a follow-up on our Radiant Item overhaul that we did at the start of the set where we changed the roster to be about two times their core versions power.

We’re temporarily removing our Prismatic Axiom-based Augment that just couldn’t keep up with Augments on its tier, as we rework it for a return in patch 16.3. The Silver versions are pretty close (and fun), so we’re keeping them with a nice positioning buff!

We’re also removing Growth Mindset and Hexgate Travel, two Augments that produced unhealthy design outcomes. Growth Mindset required unintuitive and unhealthy econing by holding gold until stage 4-2, where you’d hope to hit the Augment and then power level, while Hexgate Travel made it too easy to access T-Hex and boost him with a three-star unit.

Finally, as we’re buffing our Emblems, the World Runes is getting quite a large indirect buff. We’re preemptively lowering the cashout for the Augment as it will have a lot more combat power.

Small, like little Yordles.