Saving two seconds every fight is just under a minute each game, which means if you’re speed running 8th place you can get a whole 'nother game in every twenty or so games. Joy!

Our aim with traits this patch is to bring Origins and Classes closer together in power. Currently, some deep vertical Origins aren’t meeting the power bar for their commitment, while a few vertical Classes are providing too much combat power, leading to some especially powerful Emblems.Blossom: Blossom has proven to be a great splash with the value of upgraded Wisps, but the deeper verticals for the trait have yet to be fully explored, so we’re adding more stats to see what Blossom (7) and even (9) can bloom into.Coven: Coven’s Stage 2/3 cashout at 130 essence is too consistent and safe for a cashout trait. We’re lowering the rewards here since it’s outperforming the other ways to play the trait.Eclipse: For a (somewhat) hidden trait, Eclipse is supposed to be powerful, but it arrives too late, both in the calendar (with February 6th being our next solar eclipse), and in the fight itself, especially when the first few executes on the lowest health enemies tend to lack impact.Elderwood: Elderwood (9) is pretty good, but Elderwood (7) is currently tied to Emblems to create powerful boards. With Emblem-linked strategies coming down this patch, and with Elderwood (7)’s lackluster performance already, we’re shipping a solid buff to the Deepwood Protector, that alongside a Elderwood (9) nerf should be close to neutral (but still a nerf) at Elderwood (9).Fae: Fae is very dependent on an Emblem, so we’re taking some power away from the trait (and thus the Emblem) to budget more into three buffs for the Fae units.Juggernaut: Juggernaut (6) is currently too easy to hit, play, and flex around, providing a frontline backbone that’s just too far over its power budget for how easy it is to slot in.Lunar: No one is chasing Lunar, not even Warwick and Murkwolf (note this is a joke about wolves chasing the moon, not a tip to play Lunar vertical with Warwick and Murkwold). We’re adding a bigger AP incentive for going deep in the trait, which should also make Lunar Lux much more appealing.Sprkyin: For a trait that needs an Emblem and a 5-cost to hit, Sprykin (7) is pretty weak. We’re giving the BFF buff even more HP and AS, but as a reminder, this helps ALL your Sprkyins because at (7) the BFF applies to all of them.

Our 1 and 2-cost changes are mostly buffs, allowing more reroll lines to appear in the meta.Camille: Camille has been conditional since her nerf last patch, here we’re just buffing her three and four-star forms so when you do hit, she hits harder too!Kobuko: Kobuko sees play on a few boards, but most of those are Blackthorn boards where our favorite Yordle is sacrificed for tank stats. A better AP ratio may finally have him itemized and NOT just for the Blackthorn Item Extraction Augment!Xayah and Rakan: Birds of a feather get buffed together! Well, not all the time, but in this case we’re buffing both Xayah and Rakan to help give you a reason to itemize Rakan and to bring back their Solar reroll line that hasn’t been seen in a few patches. Both buffs here are to their AD/AP ratios which are amped a lot by the stats Fae provides.Varus: Varus has been hurting for this full set. He’s pretty close, so we’re upping his Attack Speed so he can get to casting more often—something that should help his consistency since he occasionally misses his big boom cast.Veigar: Veigar is currently the best performing 1-cost reroll line—perhaps the only one truly successful in 18.3. With the nerfs here, we still think he will succeed with strong starts, and specific Artifacts, but it should be a taller order than before…. Hehe.

Gromp: The AD form of Gromp is too slow to cast, while the AP form’s splash damage is too low. We’re adding more speed to Gromp’s AD cast and more splash to Gromp’s AP cast to make this adaptive frog fast and furious.Kayle and Shen: Kayle and Shen are potentially our fourth and fifth Solar reroll unit buffs (after Xayah, Rakan, and Varus as 1-costs). They're getting smaller buffs to enable Solar lines (which have been almost completely missing last patch), and other low-cost reroll lines.

Mama Beak: Mama Beak sees some play as an item holder for her 4 and 5-costs like Aphelios and Draven, but she’s never the reroll star despite having other 3-costs that fit well in comps with her. We’re giving her that attention she deserves here, alongside a Riftbeast (7) buff that should have her feeling as loved as her chicks are—who know, maybe sitting on those items for longer will hatch a new 3-cost reroll line.OK: Rammus three-star is a powerful tank that enables Azir/Zyra by stalling for them to clean up the fight.Rengar: While strong early, there’s often no need to chase Rengar 3-star as he falls off too fast to make rerolling worth it. We’re giving him a nice AD buff at 3-star which should feel even better if you’ve been stacking lots of takedowns.Tristana: Tristana is the last of our three Fae unit buffs, aimed at moving power from the trait into our friendly cannoneer.

Brambleback: Brambleback is really inconsistent, relying on his leap between targets to take out enemies in the backline. We’re moving some of this power into his consistent cast for those situations where he gets stuck on that super-Maokai. Overall, this should be a buff to Brambleback.Ezreal: With Executioner as a trait coming down in power, we’re able to give Ezreal a small buff, as his success is currently too tied to Executioner Emblem duo (or triple) carries.Nidalee: With an AP buff to Nidalee we’re hoping to add one more AP carry line for fast 8/9 strategies. Alongside that, we have a small nerf to AD Nidalee that tends to take over fights in the mid-game when she can clean up backliners more efficiently.

Ashe and Draven: We’ve got two quality of Life changes for our 5-costs that can (and rarely) whiff their ability. When Ashe and Draven do miss, they will refund some of their Mana to cast sooner. While having a small chance to miss abilities is a mechanic to allow for more interesting fights and powerful highs (when on the other side of the whiff) in an ability, we want to make sure our 5-costs aren’t subject to that inconsistency in the same way that 1-cost (e.g. Varus) are.Ashe: Ashe is already one of our better 5-costs even before giving her a consistency buff, so we’re also giving her a nerf that mainly targets her unitemized form.Draven: Since we’ve nerfed his bounty cashouts, Draven’s been struggling as an end-game carry. We’re giving him a better AD ratio on his bleed to help him cash in.Ivern: We’re taking a pass at rebalancing Ivern’s hexes. Since Damage Amp is too valuable due to its multiplicative nature with AD/AP and crit, Mushrooms are taking a hit. Meanwhile, the craggy Rock hexes are getting more Armor and Magic Resist to keep them on par with the more powerful forested Tree hexes.Kennen: Kennen is a terror of a two-star 5-cost, who ramps into the fight as more enemies burn. Since he gets a lot of AP from burning foes, nerfing his shield’s AP ratio should make him an easier flame to put out than before, especially when he becomes the focus of your backline. As a reminder, Edge of Night is and still will be one of his best items.Lux: Solar Lux rarely makes sense to add to your board, but when it does it’s pretty good. We’re making that niche even stronger by changing her Solar bonus to make her the highest damage dealing Lux variant, so even if you’re not playing Solar reroll, you may still want to pick her up if you have the right items.

Crownguard is the best tank item on units that CAN build it, while the more flexible Spirit Visage is our weakest tank item.

With our Elderwood (7) buffs we’re taking some power out of the already strong Elderwood Emblem.

Dark Ritual and Construct-A-Companion are back with some nerfs and a bug fix that guarantees you get the Companion you constructed as intended.Chosen of the Sun is moving from Gold to Silver to be played as a Leona focused (almost a Champion Augment style) Augment. It’s been struggling all set, and while we certainly think it will be a strong Silver Augment, we’re excited to see it shine here.Omega Riftbeast is getting a new hook to power up your Alpha Riftbeasts even more.Trait Ladder is one of the hardest to play Augments that we’ve ever printed, and while it is performing very very poorly in Gold and below (an average placement of 5.22), it’s taken over Grandmasters and above with a very high first place rate and an average placement of 4.24. As a reminder, the average placement in a game is 4.5. We may have to work on this Augment a bit more to make sure the fun fantasy it provides feels fair in our most competitive lobbies.

We’re noting a fix from a mid-patch update with Polymorph Wisps and reenabling Greater Polymorph after fixing a bug with it.Past that, we’re removing high risk/late-game scaling Wisps when you’re low HP, so you’re not left with 0 gold and 0 Combat Wisps after a few desperate last-life rolls.Speaking of 0 gold. With our Wisp system, we can only show you Wisps that you can afford, and we don’t have a lot of 0-cost Wisps, so we’ve seen some annoying optimizations. We’re adding variety to our low-cost Wisps both to make rolling for Wisps with low gold more fun, but also so you can’t force Salvager every game. As a note, you will only see these new Wisps if you have under 10 gold.