Greetings, Summoners.
Items. The new frontier.
Not entirely, but we’ve got one in this patch. Technically you could say the same with champion updates because we have a Ryze update, so maybe we’ll say that.
Items and Ryze. The new frontier(s).
Oh, and a pile of changes for Howling Abyss. That’s entirely too many frontiers.
Jokes aside, patch 5.8 is looking pretty diverse with the new Black Cleaver, a Ryze gameplay update, and some Howling Abyss upgrades (now everyone gets Lee Syndrome) rolling down the pipe. All three of those are fairly easy to discuss in their respective contexts, so we won’t dwell too much here in the foreword. Instead, we just wanted to say that we’re once again happy with the upward trend of champion diversity in all tiers of play, and we’re very excited to see the experimentation being tried by so many players. Sometimes you really have to get outside of your comfort zone to find the new hotness. For those of you searching for the next support Nautilus, why not round up a group of ranked 5s buddies to experiment? This diversity dirigible (that’s right, we’re airborne now) isn’t going anywhere.
Chris “Pwyff” Tom & Patrick “Scarizard” Scarborough
CASTING CHANGES
Back in 5.7 we re-wrote how spell inputs worked, which introduced quite a bit of disruption for players who used Quick Cast with Range Indicators. While we’ve since restored functionality to the old ways, we decided that we could at least make our work available for those who want it. Check out the “Quick Cast with Indicator” label under the hotkeys tab to try out this new behavior!
We’re also piggybacking a few new features with this change, including the ability to individually bind abilities as Quick Cast with Indicator, the ability to aim / fire spells through your HUD, and some general minimap aiming cleanup (so when you Riven players accidentally hop back into the enemy team, that’s on you).
TOGGLES, TOGGLES EVERYWHERE There are two toggles at the bottom of the key bind menu – one that enables Quick Cast with Range Indicators on all keys bound by the quickbind UI (that fancy thing at the top of the menu), and one that makes it so that if you’re holding down one quick cast key and press a second key, it will immediately fire the first ability.
KEYBINDS, KEYBINDS EVERYWHERE You can now individually bind keys to be Quick Cast with a Range Indicator, but it requires you to manually bind each that you want (we couldn’t get it stuffed into the quickbind hotkey UI without some considerable recombobulations)
NEW! Added a new option “Disable HUD Spell Click,” where abilities can now be aimed through the HUD unless the ability can normally be aimed through self / ally portraits. Technically this doesn’t affect the mini-map but we’re rolling out a second change below…
Fixed a bug where a player would misfire their ability in a different direction if their cursor landed on the minimap. Generally speaking, short-range abilities should no longer be affected by having your cursor on the minimap.
BALANCE CHANGES
Charm (E): Charm no longer interrupts ‘Unstoppable’ effects (such as Malphite’s R – Unstoppable Force, Hecarim’s R – Onslaught of Shadows and Vi’s R – Assault and Battery).
Patch 5.7 saw Bard’s mellifluous meandering trending in a positive direction, so we’re adding a few last tune-ups to his passive before we feel comfortable allowing players to embark on the magical journey of learning Bard rather than over-buffing him.
Traveler’s Call (Pasive): Chimes will avoid spawning in the enemy jungle before 5 minutes.
20 flat XP ⇒ 20 + 1 XP per minute (after 5 minutes).
Though we liked the direction of Blitz’s last changes the numerical values we went with left the ability feeling much more like an Underdrive, so we’re beefing up the boost by keeping too much of his speed from leaking too fast.
Overdrive (W): Movement speed bonus decays more slowly over 5 seconds.
Overdrive’s movement speed bonus cannot decay below 10%.
While it’s still a good idea to place your traps in brush, you should be ensnaring enemies by exploiting their habits, not their inability to see.
Yordle Snap Trap (W): Increased visibility when placed in brush.
Ever a staple among the tanks of toplane, Dr. Mundo’s a safe option for those that want to go where they please in teamfights. We’re tossing him an infected bone to ease the pain of health costs when behind without pushing his jungling to be just as crazy as he is.
Adrenaline Rush (Passive): Added dynamic recovery numbers to the tooltip (no value change).
Infected Cleaver (Q): NEW! Now refunds 100% of the health cost on killing blows.
Sadism (R): Added dynamic recovery numbers to the tooltip (no value change).
Tough as nails and strong like Gromp, Malcolm Graves is the go-to when you need a lane demolished. We want him to keep his signature explosiveness (and all that southern Bilgewater charm), but at a distance he prefers: up close and personal. Simply put, trading at long-range will see Graves getting less bang for his buck-shot but, once he gets in their comfort zone, it’s the end of the line
Buckshot (Q): BASE DAMAGE 60/95/130/165/200 ⇒ 60/90/120/150/180
RATIO 0.8 bonus attack damage ⇒ 0.75 bonus attack damage
BONUS DAMAGE PER BULLET 40% ⇒ 50%
MAXIMUM DAMAGE (3 hits) 108/171/234/297/360 (+1.44 bonus attack damage) ⇒ 120/180/240/300/360 (+1.5 bonus attack damage)
Jinx nerfs? EVERYBODY PANIC! Jinx is a champion that plays the game fast and loose, manipulating her range and using her toolbox of diverse (and colorful) explosions to control the battlefield. The only real way to stop this swiss-army-machine-gun was to get in her face, at which point she’d Super Mega Execute You At Close Range and gleefully skip away. It’s worth highlighting that Super Mega Death Rocket still has that execute, which means Jinx can continue to get those mid to long range snipes but will just need to be more strategic about it, rather than just shotgunning it into the nearest baddie.
Super Mega Death Rocket! (R): MINIMUM DAMAGE 125/175/225 (0.5 bonus attack damage) ⇒ 25/35/45 (+0.1 bonus attack damage).
With potent ganks and snowball potential, Kha’Zix’s risks might outweigh some of his reward when it comes to taking him into the jungle. Bumping up the early heal to impact his early clears should see this bug working as intended.
Void Spike (W): HEAL AMOUNT 40/70/100/130/160 ⇒ 60/85/110/135/160.
The last time we visited the Master of Metal, we changed Creeping Death to be all about bringing people together (so you could crush your opponents and command their souls). We’re adding some improvements this patch to benefit Mordekaiser and all of his murder-buddies when engaging in their favorite pastime.
Creeping Death (W): Mordekaiser can now move while casting Creeping Death (previously would be instant when cast on self, but stopped a quarter second to cast on allies).
Now automatically targets the nearest Allied champion if self-cast.
For a champion that has two separate avenues of multiplying his health (thanks to Consume and Cinderhulk), it didn’t make as much sense for Nunu to have one of the higher health pools in the game without items, so we’re toning it down to make up for his gains later.
HEALTH GROWTH STAT 96 ⇒ 90.
Blood Boil (W): Now automatically targets the nearest Allied champion if self-cast.
Like Rek’Sai and Twisted Fate before him, League’s battle-baker is exercising his manners and letting his team know where he’s landing for easier follow-ups.
Grand Skyfall (R): Now issues an ‘On My Way’ ping after fully committing to casting Grand Skyfall.
Already a potent guardian, Shen’s leveled up his teleport game to naturally position himself in the best spot to defend his teammates.
Stand United (R): Now places Shen between his target and the closest visible enemy champion.
The undead hulk that is Sion dies more often to jungle monsters than champions these days, mostly due to the strength of Soul Furnace. While we like that he takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ (do zombies tick?), Soul Furnace’s offensive capability often seals a winning lane for him once he’s able to build enough Health, creating a situation for opponents where beefing up makes the shield’s damage more effective (as it scales off an enemy’s maximum health), while building more damage to pop Soul Furnace opens them up to being crushed by a Decimating Smash. Limiting his shield’s flexibility offensively while keeping it sturdy enough to mosh 5v5 should keep him as threatening as ever without being a catch-all solid pick.
Soul Furnace (W): SHIELD DETONATION TIMER 2 seconds ⇒ 3 seconds
RATIO 10% maximum health ⇒ 6/7/8/9/10% maximum health
This was a notorious bug that kept particularly sneaky players from taking full advantage of their ability to ambush unsuspecting base structures. Shout-outs to the community for helping sniff this one out.
Rat-Ta-Tat-Tat (R): Bugfix: Now hits inhibitors and the Nexus.
We cleaned up some of Blood Scent’s coding behind-the-scenes that was keeping him finishing off his prey.
Blood Scent (E): Fixed a bug where it could take Warwick up to 2 seconds to detect low-health enemies with Blood Scent.
We tried to fix this with an earlier hotfix but that didn’t stick. This should do it.
Rite of the Arcane (R): Fixed a bug where Xerath could accidentally fire his first Arcane Barrage on top of himself if he presses R too fast.
While we’re excited to give Ionia’s roamin’ ronin some love, it’d be a lie to say the task was easy. One of League’s most complex and stylish champions, the slightest change can instantly turn this wind-waking warrior into a whirlwind of pain. We’re increasing the shield’s amount at all levels to soften the blows he’s had to his early-game, but at the cost of his early flow generation; we want Yasuo players to have ways to be successful but, as always, he’ll have to work for them.
Way of the Wanderer (Passive): SHIELD STRENGTH 60 – 470 ⇒ 100 – 510
FLOW CHARGE RATE 100% at every level ⇒ 78/89/100% effectiveness (at levels 1/7/13)
CHAMPION UPDATE
Ryze’s ability visual effects, audio and icons have been updated!
BASE MANA REGEN 6 ⇒ 5
MANA REGEN GROWTH STAT 0.8 ⇒ 1
ARMOR GROWTH STAT 3.9 ⇒ 3.0
Arcane Mastery (Passive)
Casting a spell grants a stack of Arcane Mastery for 12 seconds. At 5 stacks, Ryze becomes supercharged for 3/4/5/6 seconds (increasing with ranks of Desperate Power), gaining a shield that blocks (20 + 5 per level) (+8% of maximum mana) damage and causing his spellcasts to reduce the cooldown of his other spells by Overload’s cooldown, to a minimum of 0.25 seconds.
Overload (Q)
REMOVED No longer passively grants cooldown reduction.
NEW! Is now a line skillshot that stops at first enemy hits.
NEW! WIDTH 50
RANGE 625 ⇒ 900
COST 60 mana ⇒ 30/35/40/45/50 mana
MANA RATIO 6.5% of maximum mana ⇒ 2/2.5/3/3.5/4% of maximum mana
ABILITY POWER RATIO 0.4 ability power ⇒ 0.55 ability power
COOLDOWN 3.5 seconds ⇒ 4 seconds
Rune Prison (W)
BASE DAMAGE 60/95/130/165/200 ⇒ 65/95/125/155/185
MANA RATIO 4.5% of maximum mana ⇒ 2.5% of maximum mana
ABILITY POWER RATIO 0.6 ability power ⇒ 0.4 ability power
NEW! Spell Flux (E)
Unleashes an orb that deals damage and reduces the Magic Resist of targets hit by a percentage, stacking up to 3 times.
After hitting, Spell Flux bounces to nearby enemies and Ryze (up to a total of 6 secondary targets) before returning to the original target.
DAMAGE 50/66/82/98/114 (+2% maximum mana) (+0.3 ability power)
RETURN DAMAGE 25/33/41/49/57 (+1% maximum mana) (+0.15 ability power)
Desperate Power (R)
COOLDOWN 70/60/50 seconds ⇒ 80/60/40 seconds
DURATION 5/6/7 seconds ⇒ 4/5/6 seconds
NEW! Increases Arcane Mastery’s duration to 4/5/6 with rank
NEW! Passively grants 10/20/30% cooldown reduction
SKINS
The following skins will be released at various times during Patch 5.8:
Blood Moon Zilean – 975 RP
Master Arcanist Ziggs – 1350 RP
Forsaken Jayce – 1350 RP
Risen Fiddlesticks – 1350 RP
TEXTURE REBALANCES
With this last bundle of champions, the “Mass” part of our Texture Rebalancing has been completed. That doesn’t mean we’ll never update a texture again – we’ll continue to do so as opportunities arise – but this is the end of seeing these as a major patch note item. Thank you everyone for your continued feedback!
For those interested in final numbers, these ten installments have rebalanced around 311 skins across 62 champions over 7 months (we started back in patch 4.17)!
Teemo
Poppy
Scarlet Hammer Poppy
Ragdoll Poppy
Shaco
Shyvana
Lux
Steel Legion Lux
Imperial Lux
Spellthief Lux
Commando Lux
Sorceress Lux
SUMMONER ICONS
A new summoner icon featuring Baron.
GAME MODES
The update to Summoner’s Rift gave us the opportunity for some quick wins on Howling Abyss, which was using many of the same assets as the original Summoner’s Rift anyway.
NEW! The loading screen for Howling Abyss matches now has background art.
Minion, inhibitor and nexus models have been replaced with reskinned assets from the updated Summoner’s Rift. We’ve kept the blue-purple color scheme since red doesn’t fit Howling Abyss’s thematics.
REINFORCED HEALTH BARS Structures now have custom health bars.
Howling Abyss brush now sways and moves when champions move through it.
Fixed various cases of champion ability visual effects disappearing under the ground.
Surrender Timer
Since ARAMs tend to be shorter than Summoner’s Rift matches, we’re scaling down the surrender timer to a proportionately appropriate level.
SURRENDER TIMER 20 minutes ⇒ 15 minutes
Global Gameplay Updates
Modernizing minions to be in line with recent changes we’ve made on Summoner’s Rift.
MINION RESISTANCES Minions no longer gain resistances over time. Cannon minions no longer have base armor.
MINION HEALTH Minion health gain over time has been increased to keep minions roughly as durable as when they had resistances.
SUPER MINIONS Now grant nearby allied minions increased damage and resistances.
Tower diving is already strong on Howling Abyss as it is, and with the reintroduction of Warmog’s Armor (spoilers!!) we’re toning up turret damage to make sure turrets stay threatening.
OUTER TURRET BASE DAMAGE 160 ⇒ 185
INNER TURRET BASE DAMAGE 160 ⇒ 195
NEXUS TURRET BASE DAMAGE 130 ⇒ 175
NEW! Mark / Dash
One of our takeaways from Legend of the Poro King was that there are a ton of champions who could actually be pretty healthy on Howling Abyss if they had better engagement tools. We’re introducing Mark / Dash as a summoner spell option to address that need.
MARK Throw a snowball a long distance, dealing (20 + 10 per level) true damage to the first enemy unit hit. If it hits an enemy, this ability can be recast for 3 seconds to Dash to the tagged unit. Dashing to the target will reduce the cooldown of Mark by 25%. Mark projectiles are not stopped by spell shields or projectile mitigation.
DASH Dash to the unit hit by Mark. Casting Dash will reduce the cooldown of Mark by 25%.
ITEM CHANGES
Bloodthirster added
With last season’s rework which removed The Bloodthirster’s stacking mechanic, our concerns over snowballing were largely assuaged. We’re re-adding it to Howling Abyss as part of this patch’s pass on the map.
Sanguine Blade removed
Sanguine Blade offered an early, cost-efficient power spike for marksmen that tapered off as the game progressed (though never really reaching “bad” status). The Bloodthirster is basically Sanguine Blade’s bigger, badder brother – it’ll take longer to complete but more than compensates with tons of additional lategame power. There isn’t a compelling need to have both on the same map, so we’re saying goodbye to Sanguine Blade.
Warmogs added
Similar to Mark / Dash, we’re looking to give some love to tanks so they can survive poke long enough to initiate at the right time. That said, Warmog’s is an HP behemoth and we’re keeping a close eye on it to make sure tanks don’t become too overpowering.
Skin Boosts; Turning the Random Dial to 11:
Temporary random skins for the random champions played by your (sometimes) random teammates. And some IP.
Skin boosts have been permanently enabled on ARAM. They cost 95 RP and grant you and your teammates a one-time random skin for your randomly-selected champion, as well as 100 IP (200 for you).
Map & Art Changes; No More Nexus Gnomes:
We’ve skinned some of the art from Summoner’s Rift to match the Howling Abyss theme and bring some consistency between the maps. We also took this opportunity to do some general art polish, make some performance improvements and fix an issue that caused champion spells to sometimes be clipped when drawing on the ground. Check out these screenshots for more details.
Reskinned Nexuses (Nexi?)
Reskinned Minions
New Victory/Defeat animated banner!
New Loading Screen
ITEMS
NEW! The Black Cleaver
We’re going to be blunt – when The Black Cleaver’s good, it’s good at many things: blowing up squishies via flat armor penetration and busting down tanks with its stacking armor shred. Because of this, we’ve had to tune the item accordingly, making it pretty mediocre at both of its aforementioned jobs.
No longer!
Well, sort of. One of our goals with a revisit to The Black Cleaver was to basically choose one of those paths and go sprinting down it. There are already a bevy of options when it comes to blowing up squishies, so tank busting became the name of the game for the new Black Cleaver. The design here should make sense for anyone who wants sustained, tank busting combat patterns, so we won’t dwell too much on that. Go try it out!
NEW! RECIPE The Brutalizer + Ruby Crystal + 1263 gold ⇒ Phage + Kindlegem + 825 gold
TOTAL COST 3000 gold (unchanged). In case you couldn’t do the math.
REMOVED ARMOR PENETRATION 10 ⇒ 0
HEALTH 200 ⇒ 400
ATTACK DAMAGE 50 ⇒ 40
COOLDOWN REDUCTION 10% ⇒ 20%
ARMOR SHRED DURATION 4 seconds ⇒ 6 seconds
ARMOR SHRED MAXIMUM STACKS 5 ⇒ 6
NEW! UNIQUE PASSIVE: Rage – Dealing physical damage grants 20 movement speed for 2 seconds. Killing any unit or receiving an assist on a champion that has any amount of Black Cleaver armor shred grants 60 movement speed for 2 seconds instead.
Righteous Glory
Health reduced to 600 from 650.
Recurve Bow
NEW! UNIQUE Passive: Deals 10 physical damage on hit.
Item Cost increased to 1100g from 900g.
NEW! Recipe: Dagger + Dagger + 200g
Runaan’s Hurricane
COMBINE COST 600 gold ⇒ 500 gold
TOTAL COST 2400 gold ⇒ 2500 gold (some odd math here with Recurve Bow going up by 200 gold, but we only wanted to make Hurricane slightly more expensive)
NEW! UNIQUE PASSIVE Deals 10 physical damage on hit.
Secondary Bolt damage remains unchanged.
Blade of the Ruined King
Itemizing against tanky bros (and sisters) can be pretty difficult for an AD champion, so we’re seeing if we can give a bit of love back to Blade of the Ruined King – the present day high-health AD tank demolishing item. Giving lifesteal to the on-hit passive means the more health your enemies stack, the more you’ll be able to recover while kiting around. Now everyone gets a sustained combat pattern!
NEW! On-hit passive now benefits from lifesteal.
PASSIVE MINIMUM DAMAGE 3 ⇒ 10 (bet you didn’t know there was a minimum damage before)
Total Cost 3200g (Unchanged.)
NEW! Recipe: Bilgewater Cutlass + Recurve Bow + 700g
Wit’s End
Recipe Cost reduced to 550g from 750g.
TOTAL COST 2600 gold (unchanged)
Enchantment: Devourer
NEW! Recipe: Dagger + Dagger + 500 gold ⇒ Recurve Bow + 300 gold
TOTAL COST 1400 gold for the enchant, 2250 including jungle item cost (unchanged).
SUMMONER’S RIFT
This is a little complicated, but the short of it is that the Dragon’s Might buff was calculating its +6% AD a little weird. First, it didn’t multiply with bonus attack damage (so that’s no good) and second, it assumed a 1.0 AD ratio for anything that used an AD ratio (even if that ratio was, in reality, much lower). This isn’t to say that AD scaling spells were all using 1.0 ratios, just that the +6% AD on Dragon’s Might was scaling like that. This also probably exposes a bit of how math works in our game, but that’s a confusing bag of goodies in and of itself. The super short of it is expressed below:
Auto attack damage for champions with Dragon’s Might and AD items will now be slightly higher
Physical damage spells will now deal slightly less damage when interacting with Dragon’s Might (unless the champion has a lot of bonus AD or their abilities scale higher than 1.0 AD)
HOWLING ABYSS, TWISTED TREELINE & CRYSTAL SCAR
Had a few items that missed updates and finally knocking those out. Sorry it took so long.
NEW! HOWLING ABYSS Added trap finding functionality to Howling Abyss version!
COMBINE COST 630 gold ⇒ 730 gold
TOTAL COST 2300 gold ⇒ 2400 gold
TWISTED TREELINE & CRYSTAL SCAR
Moonflair Spellblade
Had a few items that missed updates and finally knocking those out. Sorry it took so long.
RECIPE Seeker’s Armguard + Null-Magic Mantle + 920 gold ⇒ Seeker’s Armguard + Negatron Cloak + 570 gold
TOTAL COST 2620 gold (unchanged)
Lord Van Damm’s Pillager
Unchanged. Just in case you were concerned we were going to bring it line with Infinity Edge. Nope.
CRYSTAL SCAR
Odyn’s Veil
Had a few items that missed updates and finally knocking those out. Sorry it took so long.
RECIPE Null-Magic Mantle + Catalyst the Protector + 800 gold ⇒ Negatron Cloak + Catalyst the Protector + 450 gold
TOTAL COST 2500 gold (unchanged)
FRIENDS LIST
In preparation for the upcoming Add Friends feature, we’ve made a few improvements to the friend list aimed at reducing the confusion that sometimes occurs when players reach the friend list cap.
8.33% MORE FRIENDS The friend list cap has been increased from 300 ⇒ 325.
TOO MANY FRIENDS Players will now see an alert when trying to add friends past the friend list cap.
TOO MANY FRIENDS 2 Players will now also see an alert when trying to add friends who are themselves at the friend list cap.
BUGFIXES
- Skin-specific sound effects for Ghost Bride Morgana’s R – Soul Shackles and Firefighter Tristana’s E – Explosive Charge have been restored.
- Gnar’s VO while dancing has been restored.
Video Source(s): SkinSpotlights, Loleaks
