With this being our Tactician’s Crown patch, we’re acting very fast to ship a critical fix for an Augment-related bug introduced this patch while also reverting a buff that went too far for Jinx and adding another nerf to Shyvana, whose initial nerf was not enough.

Treasure Golems is my favorite Portal. They are lovable item piñatas you throw in the frontline to throw out goodies to your team. So when I heard it was one of our least-picked Portals and was actively complained about, I was devastated. So I’m actively reframing their removal as one done out of love for Treasure Golems—we’re setting these item-packed sentient piñatas free by sending them to Treasure Island or that same nice farm my childhood pets went to.

Arcana is getting another adjustment that should have Arcana players swapping to Xerath as their High Arcana in the late game. We’re also lowering some of the HP that comps like Arcana Varus are getting from going wide in the trait web—maybe swap to Xerath in the late game if you’re buying lots of Charms!Eldritch has continued to be one of our weaker verticals, currently only finding success in specific situations (School Mascot, reroll high rolls, etc). We’re adding more power to the summon’s ability in hopes that the vertical can find a more consistent space conveniently timed to a time of year when fright factor is delight factor. We’re giving Honeymancy more stinging power after their last nerf left them feeling more like Stenotritidae, an Australian bee family that doesn’t sting.

Multistriker reroll could use a real weapon, but instead, we’re giving the comp a defensive lift with a buff to a 1-cost tank that hasn’t seen success since our early patches. “AWHHOOOOOOnderful,” is what Warwick would say if he could fathom this change. Warwick as a unit has struggled except when paired with very specific prerequisites, the greatest offender being Corrupt Vampiric Scepter, which was so strong on him, that we haven’t been able to buff him as a unit. We’re cutting our losses by removing the item (see Artifacts section), which has been a balance pain during our Tactician’s Crown patch when it matters most.

With Shapeshifter, Shyvana is too tanky for the damage output she can provide, and with the right AP Hybrid items that damage is all too consistent. We’re happy with Shyvana’s dive and deal ambient damage identity, but we’d like to see her be killable after she dives in. By reducing her base HP we can cut into the excess Health she’s getting as she stars up and from Shapeshifter. With this nerf, we’re hoping to continue seeing Shyvana in Dragon and Shapeshifter boards, but hopefully she won’t be carrying those boards through the mid game and beyond.Syndra never really recovered from the nerfs that ended her reign of terror. We’re giving back a tiny bit of scaling for her bonus casts, but this shouldn’t have her strong enough to return to her old ways, nor manifest into reality and seek retribution from the live balance team…unless.

Jinx’s go-to comp is getting a few nerfs to its power ceiling—things like Augments (Category Five, Hunting Frenzy) and traits (Hunter 6)—but the power floor, her unaltered baseline, could use a 3 AD lift. Hmm, that sounds like a small change, right? Well, typically, we’d categorize that as a small change, but since Jinx builds AS, and a lot of it, 3 AD is substantial enough to place in the large category.

I just thought of something. If Xayah and Rakan were in Remix Rumble, they could’ve been a band called Xaylophone and Rock-on. Alas, here’s a Rakan nerf for you instead.

Cauterize (Pyro) and Fast Forward (Chrono) are trait-linked Augments that skew towards higher unit cost compositions, making them exceptionally weak early game. They’re performing fine as a second or third Augment pick, so we’re just going to disable them on 2-1 to prevent a tragic click. Speaking of tragic clicks, we’re also disabling Assassin’s Toolbox and Support Golem II, Augments that have failed to be competitive with their Prismatic peers.

With the removal of the Treasure Golems Portal we’re able to buff our worst-performing Support Item. And with the worst performer being much better, we’re also lowering the power of the best performing, Zephyr, which has become the most flexible and general source of power ever since we nerfed Moonstone.

14.20 had Mage shipping too strong, but we followed up with a B-patch hours later that had them just slightly over the line. We’re excited that Mage has finally found a viable build path ‘cause double casting is heckin’ fun, but we’re giving the comp’s strongest point Mage (7) a small bump down. Scholar (6) has proved that the power of knowledge is healing, but it’s a bit too healing.

We’re allowing Swain to cast sooner ‘cause the early bird gets the worm, while we’re lowering Bard’s damage ‘cause the late baker gets the nerf.

Raid Boss has benefited from the deaths of other friendly units, not just Bastions, so we’re updating the tooltip to match the functionality.

It’s our last patch with the Dawn of Heroes Rival, which deactivates on November 4th at 4:30 PM PT. Be sure to pursue your Dawn of Heroes skill tree goals, as those fancy nameplates you get for achieving Oracle and Visionary will stick around until the end of Magic n’ Mayhem.

Time to raise some hell(ion armies)!

Making sure our set revival-exclusive Champion Augments are all strong enough to inspire a good time. This Death Approaches buff is the stuff of nightmares for sure.