Our 14.10 nerf to Trickshot went a bit too far, so we’re adding half the power back to keep it tricked out for players who are locked in on the comp.

In 14.10 we updated Lillia's targeting pattern, allowing her smaller casts to look at the 3 closest enemies to Lillia’s target and pick the line that will hit the most people. This greatly increased her effective damage, resulting in a buck-wild buff that was more than intended for our deer friend. We like that Lillia is now more selective with her cast, but we’re pulling back on the consistent damage from her small orbs, especially at 2-stars to prevent her from deleting backliners consistently.

The Fated Dryad comp rose to prominence during the second week of 14.9, when our changes were already locked (Note: patches are locked a full week before they go live unless we do an A-patch the Monday before live. A-patches have limited ability for change, and little time for testing, localization, and more, so while we do them on occasion, we reserve them for emergencies). Instead of nerfing the comp on an A-side patch, we opted to make changes with higher confidence (and thus quality) with a B-patch now.

Much of Fated Dryad’s power comes from the effective HP that Ornn gets from repeated casts of his shield (+item) which buys time for Syndra to ramp up. We’re also addressing Syndra’s ramping damage by reverting the buff she got in 14.9. This will be a 12.5% nerf on her first cast, which reduces to a 6.25% damage nerf by her 8th cast.

We want Prismatic Orbs to feel as exciting as their visuals make them seem, but with their current frequency and power they feel too standardized. It’s time to add the Wow-factor back in to make Prismatic Orb lobbies feel much more Prism-like (err, I mean Prismatic) and rare.

Lots of trait buffs are coming for verticals who haven’t been able to ink their own stories. Will this finally be the rise of vertical Behemoth, or will vertical Warden reign supreme as the deep beefcake trait? Find out, this patch.

We’re also giving Exalted a lighter buff to make it more attractive to play. For how tough it is to play right now, it is often not worth the risk to field. There’s a chance we have to do even more here, especially for Exalted 5, but for now, let us know what you make of the buffs!

Another Garen buff means we’re also getting a Storied Champion Augment buff!

Kobuko’s getting a buff that should also help out his Hero Augment, Lucky Paws, but also the late-game interest scaling fantasy. Do you love Kobuko? Well, we do too, and we’re always looking to talk more about him, like in this Talking Tactics piece here!

We want Aatrox to be more than a trait-bot. So we’re accelerating his cast cadence, allowing him to deal more damage while reducing the healing so he’s getting close to the same as before this buff. With this new damage potential, expect him to be better with things like Bloodthirster, Crownguard, or just about any item you might put on Sylas.

While Kindred has seen some success recently, it’s often on the shoulders of their powerful friends: Gnar, Kane, or Yone (circa Patch 14.7). We’re giving them and Reaper a buff that should allow them to hop into their full carry potential.

Reroll Teemo is back, please don’t tell anyone in my lobbies.

While Yorick has found success with his Hero Augment, he has struggled to dig much more than his own grave without it.

Increasing Zoe’s ricochet (secondary) damage will allow her to snowball fights harder making her a reroll carry who’ll make great use of your items—especially since we’re slightly lowering the damage of her initial cast.

Right now the meta is too dependent on 4-costs, especially the tanks. While we're happy with the direction of the adjustments we made two patches ago (Yay 4-costs are viable), they went a little too far, so a slight backtrack should allow other playstyles to shine.

Last patch we nerfed Lissandra during a mid-week update as she was the most fielded end-board Champion, even while not necessarily being the best. When Lissandra was good though, she created a frustrating experience: completely negating a melee carry, or super tank, by stunning them and throwing them backward to only require them to walk back (sometimes around their allies somewhat clumsily) to the fight, taking damage throughout the entire process. On top of that, she also did a bunch of AOE damage AND printed items/gold. So we’re eliminating that frustrating part of her ability, which is a significant part of her power, and giving this ice witch the nice witch treatment with a compensation buff to help her keep dishing out damage and printing items on porcelain platters.

In general, we’re lifting our struggling Augments, and lowering the power of a couple of overperformers. A few callouts here: The Call to Chaos buff adds one more random Emblem to your arsenal giving you just that much more power to cook with. With this Low Interest buff if you slow roll at 40 gold, you’ll be making 6 gold per turn, perfect for 2 and 3-cost reroll comps! Lastly, with more diverse and niche Artifacts, Living Forge has gotten a bit less consistent and harder to play. We’re accelerating the rate at which you receive Artifacts, but we’re also taking a large pass on our struggling Artifacts, which should also give the Augment a much needed boost.

Our new Artifacts landed in a good spot last patch, so we’re not looking to do major reworks. Instead, we’re buffing some of our lowest performers with a bit of stat padding.

Our new Support Items landed a bit on the weaker end, so we’re giving them a bit more support to support with. Our Spite buff is rather large, but as one of our least picked, lowest performing, and hardest Support Items to use, it’s quite necessary. Do note that the Item is best used when running multiple clumped melee carries—just make sure the holder dies first!

Now that we don’t have a specific patch-focused goal, such as lowering the number of 3-star 4-costs or reducing the impact of 3-cost 3-stars, we’re able to take a balance pass on some of our less frequently impactful systems.

As noted in the Large Changes section for 4-costs, we’re taking a small step back here to allow for other strategies to prosper alongside our 4-cost-dominated meta.

It removes things, now available on Stage 4-2.

If you Doubled Up with a partner consistently, you had a pre-assigned order for choosing gifts that was consistent across games.