Don’t worry, they’ll be back!

Faerie and Chrono flew too high too fast with their respective reworks. We’re turning back the clock on a bit of their new power, but are happy overall that their reworks move these verticals into a playable (and more practical) space.

Our reworks to Jinx, Varus, and Smolder left them in a weaker space than intended. For Smolder, we’re significantly buffing his Mana, allowing him to launch fireballs more often. His rework changed his ability to enhance his next four attacks, but during these attacks, he’s locked out of gaining Mana, making the uptime of his power few and far between. As a note, flat damage on Smolder is much better post-rework, so don’t sweat the lack of bows. Veigar got the short end of the nerf stick and was left without enough sting to carry a comp, even when that comp is made up of little bees. We’re almost entirely reverting the nerf but keeping part of the three-star nerf.

The greatest tragedy here is that A Golden Quest no longer uses a number related to gold, but hey, at least it’s clickable again.

The Golden Frying Pan, colloquially referred to as the Frying Pan—or if you’re on a first-name basis with Pengu (readers here are), just the Pan—has arrived, allowing you to cook up previously uncraftable Class Emblems. Emblems lead to some of the most fun and creative moments in TFT, so having craftable access to more of them is good long term even as we look past Magic n’ Mayhem. And with our additional craftable Emblems, there’s no such thing as Uncraftable ones anymore!

Ready to cook? Scope the recipes!

Introducing the Pan has also allowed us to rework the Tactician’s Crown and add two new powerful Tactician’s tools!

For our new Tactician combos with Spatula and Pan, we wanted to keep things relatively simple. Most of their power lies in their +1 team size, but they give enough of an additional bonus to make you feel good about putting them on an extra unit that you don't want to put other combat items on. Even your one star trait-bot deserves to wear a fancy cape every now and then!

Early on in PBE, we heard feedback that accessing specific Spatula verticals would be harder since the pool of these high value items is diluted with the additional Pan. That’s why we’ve added the ability to reforge a Pan into a Spatula, and vice versa. Things like Pandora’s Items will also swap these.

Now that we know how and what to cook, how are we adding Pans to the Convergence?

Well, as they say, out of the Orbs, Portals, and Charms, into the Frying Pan!

Play more flexibly, slam more reliably, and itemize with the confidence of an Item Remover on your bench.

That’s a lot of stars, but the only star that matters to me is the one that just finished reading this sentence. Hey there.

Armories are the shop takeovers where you choose from a selection of Items, Artifacts, etc. They appear from various Augments, Anvils, and even some Champion effects. We’re shipping a quality of life buff here to allow you to fully take advantage of your incredible APM (actions per minute or ability to click really, ridiculously fast).

We’re closing the book on Tome of Traits now that we have new ways to craft Emblems with more straightforward and intuitive rules.

We’re making hitting 4-costs a little more consistent at level 8. Currently, rolling down on level 8 to power spike is higher risk than a lot of reroll strategies that have already spiked, especially when you have to seek out specific 4-costs to button up your comp.

Chrono’s rework makes the trait more beneficial as a vertical at 6 Chrono. Previously the excess Attack Speed wasn’t helpful for most of the roster, and the time freeze happened so late into a fight that it could already be over before Chrono champions could clock back. Now, we’re shifting the buff more into Ability Power than Attack Speed, increasing the time freeze duration, and letting the pause come two seconds sooner in a fight.

Faerie is most often played at Faerie 2, where the Queen’s Crown grants a significant amount of power. Stretching to hit 4/6 often isn’t worth it in the late game, while Faerie 9 lacks the consistency you’d expect from a chase trait of its caliber. We've reworked the trait to a 3/5/7/9 system, making it more challenging to hit, but more rewarding. At 5, you get the Queenguard’s Armor for diverse tank setups; at 7, a second Crown for dual carries and enhanced healing; and at 9, you'll have three Radiant Faerie items!

Honeymancy had a unique scaling challenge caused by the Bees dealing the same damage at each breakpoint, which didn’t allow for enough balance levers to get the trait into a stable spot. Any buff to the individual Bee output for Honeymancy 5 and 7 also buffed 3, which was already good, and players were rarely encouraged or rewarded for pursuing Honeymancy 7. Now, each breakpoint will offer 5 Bees, but you’ll transfer 2 Bees to an ally on death, making it more beneficial to build a hive full of Honeymancers. We’ve also added specific balance levers to the damage from the bees so we can pack each trait breakpoint with enough stinging power to merit its investment.

With the Golden Frying Pan, high vertical classes and new chase traits are now possible. Since 9 Mage felt underwhelming, we made 10 Mage Prismatic-worthy. At 10, your mages get a massive AP boost and have their max mana set much lower, triggering a wild casting frenzy that's genuinely exciting when hit. The Frying Pan also allows us to re-examine vertical classes like Hunter, Shapeshifter, and Scholar to add new ways to make their highest breakpoint exciting and unique!

Sugarcraft 6 is one of our better-performing verticals on 14.17, and while it’s still dependent on early access and lots of item components, we’re lowering some of the raw ingredients stats that the trait provides—Sugarcrafter mains knead not worry though, many of the trait’s sweetest champions are receiving reworks or buffs that’ll have them rise to the to challenge.

The duration-based nature of Ashe’s output forced her into a limited Attack Speed build that she had to be balanced around. These changes should help open the door for Ashe to carry or just use more items effectively while still having an exciting fight-ending fantasy when heavily itemized for Attack Speed and additional casts.

Nomsy’s role in Dragon is to help finish off targets whittled down by her pals. The problem is, if you’re all in on a single target and end up overkilling a unit, it feels wasted. So we’re making her overkill damage overflow to the closest two enemies, with her Dragon Upgrade extending this to 4!

Twitch’s output scales well into the game with more targets to hit, but his early/mid-game feels too unreliable, as he often fails to hit multiple enemies—rats! This new logic should help him be just a little more consistent during those early stages.

Ahri’s ability makes her dependent on hitting as many enemies as possible, and her passive makes her too reliant on Arcana and specific itemization. We’re changing her ability so the orb only hits the current target while a ramping number of foxfires seek out nearby enemies to deal the true damage. Ahri should now be easier to slot in with various items, positioning options, and comps.

The windowed output of Cassiopeia’s ability made her reliant on items like Rageblade without viable AP-focused build options. With this rework, she’ll retain her affinity for Attack Speed but now have access to more diversified builds and higher, more reliant baseline power.

Shyvana had a bit of an identity crisis trying to perform both as a strong frontline pseudo-tank and an AP carry. Rather than trying to force the tank aspect on her with the Dragon bonus, we want to empower her current identity as an AP carry. By the time you run 3 Dragon, you have plenty of connections into other compositions that can provide you the frontline this trio will need.

Past our reworks, we’re continuing to lessen damage across the board, focusing on slowing down combat pacing by slightly nerfing many champions’ damage rather than nerfing specific units or traits.

With Ryze and providing ample multi-target damage, Portal could benefit from a champion who deals some heavier single-target damage to the frontline. Although Ezreal’s blink could get him out of trouble on occasion, we want him to focus on being a stand-and-deliver champion, so his blink will be reserved for getting out of serious trouble.

Hecarim’s passive suggests the dream of a reset champion, but that dream depends on circumstances (enemies being far away), often outside his control as a melee champion. Rather than only powering up when a unit is out of range, charges now trigger after any takedown, giving this horse more opportunity to go buck-wild. We’re also updating the visuals for his charge, which will make the passive more exciting, resolve faster, and allow him to get to cleaving sooner!

Jinx’s ability pushes her in two directions: The true damage tells you she wants to be a tank buster, while the refresh tells you she wants to chew through weaker targets to keep resetting. This update should plant her more firmly as an anti-tank without investing too heavily into true damage which has limited counterplay.

Mordekaiser’s shield scaling with Ability Power that also scaled with the total number of casts left him in a position where he was a serious threat to enemy teams when he was well itemized and took the role of a secondary tank, allowing him to ramp throughout the fight. We’d like him to lean more into his frontline bruiser role with a shield that focuses on serving the clash of early fights rather than something that reaches an unkillable state, so we’re leaning even further into his ramping damage while shifting the shield power into a base value that’s stronger earlier in the fights.

Wukong’s passive combined with his ability’s Armor and MR scaling led to a feast or famine situation where a Wukong with three items performed exceptionally well, while a Wukong without any felt weak. As a standalone threat-like unit in the set, he should feel flexible enough to be played with and without items, as an item holder, or as the capstone of specific compositions when well-itemized. Our rework to his passive here should make his unitemized version feel much better. At the same time, the unkillable solo-frontline Wukong with perfect items will be slightly easier to take down later in a fight.

Even with a nerf to Veigar’s damage last patch, our short king still puts up damage charts that are way too tall. We’re reducing his output by about 10% across the board, which should feel most notable at three stars, where he’s typically scaling well off of Charms.

Although Gwen’s Ability is a familiar pattern, she doesn’t have the protective mechanics of bonus Armor and MR, or Shadow Isles’ shield from previous incarnations. This often leads her to cut too close to the edge of her health bar as she attempts to cut down the enemy’s. Instead of adding more defensive stats to allow her to survive as she threads through the frontline, we’re making her much smarter. Now you can expect Gwen to dash to a more optimal position, hit even more foes, snip them faster, and get back to snipping again even sooner, all while prioritizing her safety (unexpectedly so for someone who runs with scissors)!

Varus is meant to be the “Big Boom” caster of the set, but has been seeing some consistency issues. These changes should help him be more reliable in his output. Additional Attack Speed scaling on his cast time will help higher tiers of Pyro feel good on him, though players should still want to build all-out damage for the bigger supernova chunks!

You might be sensing a trend of reducing the number of champions that feel like they MUST have Attack Speed items, and Smolder is on that list! We want to provide diversity in his build while still allowing Attack Speed to be one of the better build paths. For the Dragon Upgrade, we wanted to focus on offensive power like the other Dragons. That said, Smolder is meant to benefit less from this bonus than his 1- and 2-cost comrades. Lastly, we put a movement speed cap on Smolder, because in testing this lil flying lizard dude with two Mittens attempted to escape the arena and break into reality.

Xerath’s accomplishing his LIGHTNING LIGHTNING LIGHTNING fantasy as well as his past, present, future Charm-reading fantasy, but his random targeting with infinite range occasionally obliterated backlines in a way that didn’t feel great to be on the receiving end of. Now, he’ll have backline access that’ll increase as the frontline falls, and skillful positioning (read same-side him as enemy carry) can make this access come even earlier.

Arcana and Dragon’s trait Augments return with an all-new effect that’ll have Arcana units conjuring items and Dragons giving you a goal to meet their young friend!

As an incredibly fun Augment with a power ceiling that exceeded that of the Gold tier, we’ve moved Flexible from Gold to Prismatic. Rather than nerfing/removing the part of what made Flexible fun, we’ve opted to lean into the unique playstyle it offers by increasing the rate you get new Emblems and the HP buff you receive for each one.

Lastly, a new Champion Augment is joining the ranks. Pillar of Flame trades Shen’s durability for AOE damage that continues dealing damage each second for 6 seconds. Try Pillar of Flame in a Bastion-heavy comp with Varus, prioritizing items like Bloodthirster, Archangel’s Staff, and a newly buffed Titan’s Resolve for Shen!

Though Bandages I & II look sad in our data, we’ve fixed a bug that should make the Augments much more effective throughout the game. Alongside the fix, we’re shipping a compensation nerf that’ll have these Augments ready for combat without being instant clicks.

Restart Mission was previously able to provide multiple two-star copies of the same champion, leading to incredibly early (albeit rare) three stars.

We’ve taken a pass on most of our Champion Augments that have been overperforming consistently across the board. These Augments have generally been too safe and powerful, especially as builds have continued to be optimized.

A Golden Quest was a bit too easy of a quest for the exciting loot it offered. Instead of lowering the power of the loot, we’re increasing the risk of the quest and changing the 161.8 golden ratio requirement to the atomic mass of gold.

We’ve disabled Defensive Arts, which requires you to get to max Incantor stacks (which is difficult and rare) before receiving the increased Mana regeneration buff for Incantors. Having a gold Augment where most of the time some of its power wouldn’t activate, wasn’t something we wanted to continue offering. And with the buff being so hard to activate, simply strengthening the buff Incantors get upon reaching max stacks wouldn’t help.

We’re giving What the Forge another large buff, but this time to improve its early game, where it significantly lags behind other Prismatics. Now, upon selecting the Augment, you’ll receive an Artifact Anvil to kick-start your collection with more control over the outcome.

Spam casters have had their run of the Magitorium for our first few patches of Magic n’ Mayhem, and part of the reason is due to their items being a bit more valuable than other more damage-oriented AP options. We’re lowering some of the power of our “cast more” items, and shifting Nashor’s Tooth into a more Attack Speed-focused role, which should open up more build variety across all our mages, witches, wizards, and fae.

All the way back in Inkborn Fables we reduced the AP that Titan’s Resolve grants. This was primarily due to the amount of dual AP/AD scaling that champions like Gnar and Volibear had. Now that our champion kits lean more to one stat than the other, we can give Titan’s Resolve back some AP which should make it more appealing on AP bruisers and tanks alike.

They’re glowing with alignment.

If we had one gold for how many times we’ve had to nerf Mogul’s Mail since its arrival in PBE, we still wouldn’t have as much as the item created in a single combat upon release.

We have 9 brand new Charms, including more powerful late-game Charms that can compete with your favorite Summon Dragon. These are pricey but impactful Charms. Before purchasing, be sure to scout, but if you’re in doubt, buy to avoid going out!

Speaking of Summon Dragon, we’re lowering the power and cost. Summon Dragon is simply too much of an outlier for the rest of our Charms, and with the addition of other late-game charms that encourage Charm-rolling (rolling purely to hit a strong combat charm), we want to make sure they’re all similarly appealing.

Desperate Plea is back, but before you (rightfully) raise an alarm, hear me out. Previously, Desperate Plea offered a unique, magical gameplay element, but the complete invulnerability was often used to cheat just one extra placement out at the cost of your opponent’s mental fortitude. We’re returning the unique protection aspect of Desperate Plea but making it so you still want to fight your hardest to survive the lobby, as it no longer grants complete immunity. While, on occasion, this can still eke out a 3rd from a 4th, we expect its lowered impact to be far less frustrating.

The reinforcement timer moved at the start of Magic n’ Mayhem. We’re returning it to the intended 11-second delay, which should reduce the early-game invasions we’re seeing so much of (or not enough off—please help, partner!!!!).

Even with reinforcements coming a bit later, Double Up player damage is a bit too high during Stage 3 and 4. We’re lowering it oh-so-slightly, to allow for potentially one more loss from your partner (cause all my readers are flawless 100 HP Double Up pros).