League of Legends Patch 26.21

PC Azir Buff Share

We've kept the Emperor of the Sands’ mana pool pretty dry to make sure he needs to use soldier attacks properly for lane control early instead of just spamming [Q] Conquering Sands, but this is overly restrictive now that there are strong rank up incentives on his [W] Arise! We’re buffing his Mana Growth so he can more freely use his abilities to contest lane.

PC Darius Buff Share

Darius has moved a bit too far away from being a persistently durable damage threat that needs to be kited to more of a one shot combo playstyle. Since he has some room for power, we’re giving him a slight boost so he can swing that axe more often in sustained fights.

PC Miss Fortune Buff Share

Miss Fortune has been in a relatively decent place throughout the year, but with the Hubris nerf this patch, we’re looking to compensate with a couple buffs to her damage output.

PC Nunu & Willump Buff Share

The boy and his yeti lost some power when we nerfed Hextech Rocketbelt earlier this year so that ranged mages weren't just buying it for a dash to safety, so we’re restoring some of that damage elsewhere.

PC Orianna Buff Share

We’re tapping up Orianna’s scalings to help her chunk a bit harder with her bread-and-butter combo in the late game without giving too much additional power to her laning phase.

PC Ryze Buff Share

After the significantly early game nerfs to Ryze in 26.19, he hasn't been rewarded enough for succeeding when he does scale, so we’re buffing that.

PC Sion Buff Share

Our favorite unstoppable juggernaut is looking rather stoppable in recent patches. We’re giving him some buffs to his baseline durability and rewarding him when he succeeds at using his ult to GET IN THERE rather than run away.

PC Taliyah Buff Share

Taliyah is one of a handful of mage junglers, and we think she can be better supported for meta diversity. We’re buffing her [E] Unraveled Earth damage to make it more satisfying to land her CC combo.

PC Twisted Fate Buff Share

Alongside the Taric QoL changes, we’re giving Twisted Fate’s R the same treatment so he can reveal champs even if they’re untargetable at the time of activation.

PC Vel'Koz Buff Share

Vel’Koz has been a fairly quiet pick this year, having little presence or meta impact in mid and support. We’re looking to give him a little bit of help by rewarding him for landing his combos.

PC Xin Zhao Buff Share

Following Sundered Sky's nerfs, we feel like Xin Zhao has room for buffs to both his AD Bruiser and AS focused builds, so we’re helping out his scalings.

PC Zyra Buff Share

Like Vel'koz, Zyra has had relatively little impact in the meta as tanks and enchanter supports have reigned supreme. We’re giving Zyra a greener thumb this patch to help her combat the forces trampling over her plants.

PC Caitlyn Nerf Share

Caitlyn’s been at a very high pick and ban rate for most players for months now despite adjustments to other marksmen and the bot meta, so it's time to nerf her. We have felt that her late-game scaling has been too strong for a while now, so we’re moving some of her power from her eyepopping full build headshots into her early game Q damage to rebalance her power curve.

PC Jinx Nerf Share

Like her best friend Caitlyn, Jinx has been similarly dominant in the meta, even with the Hurricane nerf last patch. We’re slowing her roll to make it a tad harder to get her snowballing.

PC Lee Sin Nerf Share

Lee Sin has continued to be extremely popular since his adjustments to how his [W] Safeguard cooldown works with allies. While we like the extra flexibility that has given him, it's a bit too much power, so we’re nerfing the cooldown a bit along with a minor bug fix to how his E reveal works against invisible enemies and another small nerf to his [R] Dragon's Rage damage.

PC Nidalee Nerf Share

Our favorite huntress has been sitting at an extremely high winrate in high skill brackets, toeing the line into overpowered territory for some time now, even if she's not currently meta. Now that we’re bringing down the power of some other powerful meta junglers like Lee Sin, we’re giving Nidalee a minor nerf to prevent her from getting out of paw.

PC Qiyana Nerf Share

Damage on Qiyana's Q turned out to be a lot more impactful than we anticipated, so we’re partially reverting the buff we gave her back in 26.17.

PC Rammus Nerf Share

While Nidalee's winrate has been borderline overpowered in the high skill levels, Rammus has been rolling over pretty much everyone else, so he’s getting a light nerf too, ok?

PC Tristana Nerf Share

Tristana’s early laning has devolved a bit into "Level 1 press [Q] and just auto attack to take complete control of the lane", which is a pretty low gameplay and off flavor way for her to succeed. We’re hitting her early [Q] attack speed so she’ll have to work a bit harder before jumping on her foes.

PC Viktor Nerf Share

It’s time for the Glorious…Devolution. It seems Viktor has evolved past the point of exploitable weaknesses, so we’re opening that up a bit by making him slightly more vulnerable in early game skirmishes and across the board.

PC Yone Nerf Share

The last changes to Yone successfully got him to start considering crit in his first item purchases, but also put him at a somewhat unsustainable power level. We are giving him a moderate nerf to bring him down a bit.

PC Locke Change Share

Locke’s been out for long enough now that we have a better picture of where he’s overly excelling and where he’s falling a bit short. Some of those areas are his extremely generous mana tuning and ability to shrug off harass, and we’re also refining his power curve by improving his scaling damage slightly, because he falls off a bit too fast if he’s not able to close out games early.

PC Taric Change Share

We're smoothing out some of the rough edges in Taric’s kit to allow him to shine a bit more. Way back in the day, Taric’s W was adjusted to combat the popular Master Yi + Taric funnel strats. A consequence of this was that his spells would fizzle if they were cast at the same time that his bound ally became untargetable. We believe this harsh restriction to how his abilities function is no longer necessary given the existence of Role Quests, so we're partially reverting this change so that spells now work on untargetable allies, though we are still keeping an existing exemption on [E] Dazzle for champions that disappear on screen because the gameplay is too unclear (sorry, Master Yi).

PC Varus Change Share

In this set of changes, we’re mainly looking to snipe top lane Varus, where he tends to max W, unlike the more common Q max in bot. This won't bring his [Q] Piercing Arrow back up to prior Lethality Varus levels of power, but we believe it will help a lot with our ability to tune him for bot lane. As a maxed ability, it also offers more gameplay to Varus and his opponents to interact with than some more passive damage on W.

PC Wukong Change Share

Like Lee and Qiyana, Wukong has been a meta staple whirlwind of a force in the jungle for a while now. We’re looking to tap down his strength in the jungle while compensating for lane Wukong.

PC Dawncore Buff Share

Dawncore is the enchanter capstone that isn’t, and currently only Soraka picks it up. Even when other supports get to full build, they often prefer other purchases. We’re buffing its AP value to make it less purely bound to Healing and Shielding.

PC Hubris Buff Share

While Hubris has been a bit weak for melee champions, it’s clearly been overperforming for ranged users. We’re delineating between the two now to encourage melees and disincentivize ranged users from building it.

Bastion Breaker was buffed into being a bit of a generic stat stick in order to give it a proper swing in the meta. Now, we’re nerfing that generic power with a QoL improvement to keep it a satisfying item in its niche.

PC Gluttonous Greaves Nerf Share

The greaves are overperforming for marksmen, even when getting very few stacks, so we’re hitting it with a nerf to its cost to delay early acquisitions from getting too much value.