Hello Summoners,
Welcome to patch 5.4 – the one where we follow up on patch 5.2 with some mage love. Up front: the new +120 AP item is currently slated for a future patch (soon(tm)), but this hasn’t stopped us from working on the few mages that needed help in a post-DFG world. Actually, like we mentioned in the patch 5.2 foreword, the impact of DFG’s removal hasn’t been all that noticeable in champion performance, but there were two we knew would have identity crisis (that’s the plural) in the aftermath: Mordekaiser and Veigar.
When we went into deep examination of what made Morde and Veigar who they are, we realized that a lot of their identity came down to “blow this fool up (and get a ghost!).” Unfortunately, amping up a play pattern like that makes for some sad times in the world of counterplay, so we had to take a longer look to see what could be done. Ultimately we’ll explain more in their individual context paragraphs, but the rundown of the issue is this: when a champion is tuned around a fine line between “functional” and “oppressive,” balance isn’t a question of number tuning; rather, it’s all about finding a healthy direction where that champ can prosper without getting paranoid about fame. Can you imagine a world where Veigar is the best – and most popular – champion in the game? That’s a tough vision to sell for his opponents, and we want to make sure his success is warranted. Check out those contexts for more information, but this is an important philosophy to keep in mind as you read through these notes!
And that’s it for this patch foreword – best of luck on those fields of justice. As a random tip for success in your solo (or duo!) queue adventures, remember that sometimes it’s better for everyone to do the wrong thing in perfect harmony than for one guy to do the right thing in angry isolation. But that’s only applicable for a team game of League of Legends and is probably incorrect for anything else. Sorry.
Chris “Pwyff” Tom & Patrick “Scarizard” Scarborough
BALANCE CHANGES
Did you know we were manually correcting LCS stats in the post-game roundup every time? We take fantasy stats seriously, man.
Shurima’s Legacy (Passive): Fixed a bug where killing Azir’s Sun Disc would result in a registered turret death in Spectator mode. Fantasy LCS stats were being manually corrected until now, so this fix is primarily for in-game spectating. In other words, you can’t blame this bug for your fantasy LCS team losing. SORRY.
As one of the premier supports at defending the back lines, few champions can shut down initiators and divers quite like Janna. That said, it’s never made a lot of sense for someone who’s so good at denying aggression to also be real good at enabling it (ever been chased by a Janna team?). Bonus movement speed’s strong like that. Changing Janna’s passive from being ‘always good’ to ‘situationally good’ solidifies her as the Queen of Disengage (also the Storm’s Fury, apparently). As an aside, we realize that if Janna leads the charge she can still enable some high-speed chases, but a Janna on the frontline is maybe not the best.
Tailwind (Passive): REMOVED Tailwind no longer gives Janna bonus movement speed.
NEW Tailwind now gives all allies in range a movement speed bonus only while they are moving toward Janna.
MOVEMENT SPEED 5% ⇒ 8%
RANGE 1000 ⇒ 1250
Zephyr (W): BASE PASSIVE MOVEMENT SPEED 4/6/8/10/12% ⇒ 9/11/13/15/17%
With the dust settled around the preseason changes, Jarvan’s proven himself to be true royalty, standing head and shoulders above the competition on his jungle throne (to be fair, Fiddlesticks doesn’t like to sit down owing to bad knees). Unlike his other Warrior-enchant-toting brethren, J4’s incredible gank pressure, clear speed and safety make him a threat throughout the game with no real weaknesses for opponents to exploit. Instead of hitting J4’s damage, chipping away at his resiliency should punish him for failed ganks without taking too much dunk out of his princely ways.
BASE ARMOR 24 ⇒ 27
Dragon Strike (Q): Fixed a bug where enemies would occasionally get knocked up when they walked into Jarvan IV after his dash completed.
Demacian Standard (E): REMOVED Demacian Standard no longer grants passive armor to Jarvan IV.
Though she hops relentlessly in pursuit of betrayers and backstabbers alike, it’s easy to forget an important rule in Kalista’s passive – she’s unable to cancel her basic attacks once committed. Increasing her basic attack wind-up might not sound like much, but it does emphasize her vulnerability at every stage of the game, making her take more time to launch her spears (and, by extension, hurricane-hop you to death).
Martial Poise (Passive): Kalista’s basic attack wind-up (the time between starting an attack and it firing) now speeds up at 100% of her attack speed ⇒ 66% of her attack speed.
Kassadin is a champion whose fantasy and identity are both defined by a single ability – Riftwalk. While this does makes him super effective as an assassin (as you might expect, ignoring walls and terrain makes it hard to hide your carries from him), it’s tough to both respect what makes him unique while also respecting the need for opponents to… fight back. With this change, we’re still trying to preserve the dream (one might say a very difficult dream) of letting Kassadin keep his trademark mobility but, unless he finds a specific flank or angle, he also needs to pay respect to the enemy’s tank line before rendering his squishy targets Null and Void.
Riftwalk (R): RANGE 700 ⇒ 450
BASE COST 75 mana ⇒ 60 mana
The deadliest Pentakill on two legs (and not even in the band!), Katarina’s a volatile and competitive option for those looking to shut out their solo queue competition. Voracity’s long duration means that nobody’s ever allowed to reenter the fight with low health, as they’re always at risk of setting off an avalanche of daggers and shunpos – even if Kat’s across the battlefield. This change is to focus Katarina’s rewards on the fights she’s intimately involved in, similar to Jinx.
Voracity (Passive): Scoring a kill or assist will reduce the cooldown of Katarina’s abilities ⇒ Whenever an enemy champion dies within 3 seconds of Katarina dealing damage to them, her cooldowns will be reduced by 15 seconds
Elevation changes to the new Summoner’s Rift made a few situations where Glacial Path’s indicator was hidden, turning obvious ganks into extreme ambushes, so we’re fixing it. Even Lissandra knows that’s not… cool.
Glacial Path (E): Fixed a bug where Glacial Path’s end marker could be hidden under terrain, even if it was supposed to be visible .
It’s no secret we’ve long considered Mordekaiser a thematically confused champion out the gate. Visually speaking, this guy’s a walking, talking suit of armor with a giant mace. If that doesn’t say scrappy fighter, we’re not entirely sure what does. That said, Morde’s found far more success in the present game as a bursty AP mage, picking up an early Deathfire Grasp to blow up and, subsequently, convert enemy marksmen into their team’s worst nightmare.
So what’s all this mean? Well, as customer numero uno for DFG (he actually might have been second with Veigar leading the way, but we’re not ones to get in the way of a good reference) we didn’t want to just take away Mordekaiser’s core build without any form of compensation (although as we mentioned in the patch 5.2 foreword, the results have been a little off of expectation). We also wanted to take this opportunity to try tying Mordekaiser and his thematic identity a little closer together (scrappy tank man!), but when we finally arrived at that world, we realized we it wasn’t a very exciting one.
And here we are now.
These changes aren’t going to solve Morde’s identity crisis in the present, but we did find a few ways to clean up his ghostly interactions so he can get the most out of his exploitative ways. Additionally, we really liked the new Creeping Death ‘magnet’ mechanic we were testing out with fighter Mordekaiser, so we figured we could give some extra utility love when he’s hunting high priority targets with a dive buddy. So, once again: not a holistic solution but one we felt was better at preserving Mordekaiser’s unique identity.
BASE HEALTH REGENERATION 8.37 ⇒ 3.37
Mace of Spades (Q): NEW Mace of Spades now grants Mordekaiser +75 range for the attack.
COST 25/32/39/46/53 health ⇒ 20/25/30/35/40 health
Creeping Death (W): NEW Mordekaiser now also gains the effects of Creeping Death if he casts it on an ally.
NEW Mordekaiser and any ally with Creeping Death gain +60 bonus movement speed when running toward each other.
Enemies will not take double damage from Creeping Death if they’re beside both Mordekaiser and his Creeping Death’d buddy. Just in case you thought that and got scared.
COST 26/32/38/44/50 health ⇒ 20/25/30/35/40 health
DAMAGE 24/38/52/66/80 (0.2 ability power) magic damage per second ⇒ 20/32/44/56/68 (0.15 ability power) magic damage per second
Children of the Grave (R): Enslaved champions grant Mordekaiser +20% of their attack damage and ability power ⇒ +25% of their bonus health and +30% of their ability power.
REMOVED Enslaved champions no longer gain 75% of Mordekaiser’s ability power.
Enslaved champions gain 75% of Mordekaiser’s total attack damage ⇒ 25/50/100 attack damage as a bonus.
Simply put, this was a novel idea for Rengar that was unlocked by the addition of Trinkets in the 2014 Season, but it ended up being super complicated and often caused a ton of bugs. By moving it to a buff, we’re keeping the exact same functionality but finally allowing Rengar to have a Poro Snax. You heard us.
Bonetooth Necklace: All trophy collection mechanics and bonuses have been moved from Rengar’s trinket slot to a permanent stacking buff due to some bug issues with trinket upgrade paths.
Similar to 5.2, we’re increasing the consistency of Syndra’s Scatter the Weak stun ever so slightly. This has proven a difficult skill to balance (feel-wise) without going overboard, so we’ve been taking a measured approach to get it right.
Scatter the Weak (E): Collision width of Dark Spheres has been increased. The reason we say complicated math is because this spell operates on multiple targeting / collision radius checks, and explaining each one gets… well, complicated. Hopefully we can just say it’s wider and your experience will be more reliable.
Of all the champions that were primary customers of the late Deathfire Grasp, none were more iconic than the Tiny Master of Evil himself. While we recognized and intended to preserve Veigar’s role as a 100-to-0 burst mage, flatly increasing the power of a champion with such a powerful combination of crowd control and single-target damage didn’t feel like the humane option (for everyone except Veigar).
Freeing up Baleful Strike to cover more range and doubly enable his AP-stacking minigame was a natural change to Veigar’s kit and made his laning better. We quickly learned, however, that a strictly better Veigar left opponents with less and less options, especially with the immense power that is Event Horizon. While old Veigar needed to rely on Event Horizon’s immediate stun to zone out potential threats, keeping its current iteration meant we either needed to reduce Veigar’s damage (but you can’t reduce a 100-0 burst mage to 100-20) or tackle his outright reliability. Ultimately we went with the latter.
The bottom line is this – characters with inflexible kits are often balanced on a knife’s edge, and the slightest change to a range or damage value can be the difference between unplayable or overbearing (Hi Ryze!). While Veigar’s reliability when it comes to “blowing fools up” has decreased, the added laning flexibility and higher late-game scaling should help make Veigar more than a one-trick pony. He has to work harder for his one-shots, but has the tools to earn them in a way that feels fair…ish for his opponents.
Baleful Strike (Q): NEW Baleful Strike is now a skillshot that passes through the first target hit and stops on the second target hit.
RANGE 650 ⇒ 850
COOLDOWN 8/7/6/5/4 seconds ⇒ 7/6.5/6/5.5/5 seconds
Dark Matter (W): COST 70/80/90/100/110 mana ⇒ 70/75/80/85/90 mana
COOLDOWN 10 seconds ⇒ 10/9.5/9/8.5/8 seconds
Event Horizon (E): NEW Appears instantly ⇒ Now has a 0.75 second delay before appearing.
COST 80/90/100/110/120 mana ⇒ 80/85/90/95/100 mana
COOLDOWN 20/19/18/17/16 seconds ⇒ 18/17/16/15/14 seconds
RANGE 650 ⇒ 700
Primordial Burst (R): RATIO 1.2 ability power ⇒ 1.0 ability power
COST 125/175/225 mana ⇒ 125 mana at all ranks
COOLDOWN 130/110/90 seconds ⇒ 120/100/80 seconds
Shocking Orb was originally designed as a ‘melee-friendly’ crowd control – better at keeping opponents at bay from afar, but worse at stopping people that had already closed on him. In practice, it amplified his already-potent long range burst when used offensively, giving him really high pick potential for such a siege-focused champion. We’re toning back the max duration to be less punishing for those brave souls looking to close the gap and stomp his face in. (Mask? Arcane headplate with eyesockets? You get it.)
Shocking Orb (E): MAXIMUM STUN DURATION 2.25 seconds ⇒ 1.75 seconds
IT IS TIME. It wasn’t too long since the Chronokeeper was last in the spotlight, but to bring him back in a healthy way meant taking the time to sort through his problems one by one. Zilean’s always had a ton of neat tricks (especially his signature move, Chronoshift), but has been held back, balance-wise, thanks to his oppressive “I’m-going-to-click-on-you” laning strength. Massive changes to Time Bomb seek to not only remedy this with a healthy dose of counterplay (skillshot sticky-bomb!) but let us play up the spell’s exciting double-hit case by making it the largest non-ultimate AoE stun in the game (say that 10 times fast). We looked for a proper Zilean quote to end this, but all in good time.
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- Passive: Heightened Learning
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- Q: Timebomb
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- W: Rewind
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- E: Time Warp
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- R: Chrono Shift
BASE ARMOR 17 ⇒ 19
ATTACK RANGE 600 ⇒ 550
Attack frame sped up slightly. This doesn’t mean Zilean attacks faster, just that he completes his attacks faster.
Zilean’s basic attacks have new particles!
ICONS Zilean has received new ability icons!
Timebomb (Q): NEW Time Bombs are now a lobbed skillshot with fixed travel time. The Time Bomb sticks to enemies and allies near it. If nothing comes nearby, the bomb detonates normally.
NEW When Zilean gets two bombs on the same unit, the first bomb detonates immediately, stunning all enemies in the area for 1.5 seconds
TIME BOMB DELAY 4 seconds ⇒ 3 seconds
DAMAGE 90/145/200/260/320 (0.9 ability power) magic damage ⇒ 75/115/165/230/300 (0.8 ability power) magic damage
RANGE 700 ⇒ 900
COOLDOWN 10 seconds ⇒ 12/11/10/9/8 seconds
COST 70/85/100/115/130 mana ⇒ 60/70/80/90/100 mana
Rewind (W): REMOVED Rewind no longer reduces the cooldown of Chronoshift.
Time Warp (E): DURATION 2.5/3.25/4/4.75/5.5 seconds ⇒ 2.5 seconds
SLOW AMOUNT 55% ⇒ 40%/55%/70%/85%/99% (yes, that is correct)
COOLDOWN 20 seconds ⇒ 15 seconds
COST 80 mana ⇒ 50/55/60/65/70 mana
RANGE 700 (center of Zilean’s hitbox to center of opponent’s hitbox) ⇒ 550 (edge of Zilean’s hitbox to edge of opponent’s hitbox) – this should be around a ~75 range reduction, which varies depending on how fat his target is.
Chronoshift (R): DURATION 7 seconds ⇒ 5 seconds
COOLDOWN 180 seconds ⇒ 120/90/60 seconds
SPELL SHIELDS
Spells that have ‘on-hit’ characteristics associated with them (Gangplank’s Parrrley, Ezreal’s Mystic Shot, Miss Fortune’s Double Up, Fizz’s Urchin Strike, Irelia’s Bladesurge) now have their damage properly blocked by spell shields
SPLASH ART
It’s been a little bit since we last addressed splash art changes but as with last season, we’re continuing our long-term project to update some of the oldest splashes in our game.
This patch also includes an updated splash to go with Tristana’s recent champion update. While we had wanted to bundle a new splash with the rest of her changes, we heard a lot of feedback from the PBE that our first update didn’t feel like the new Tristana. So, we made the call to hold onto Tristana’s new splash to address those concerns while moving forward with the rest of her changes. Fast forward two patches and we’re much more confident in the updated update to Tristana’s splash!
SKINS
DJ Sona, League’s next Ultimate skin, takes the stage in patch 5.4! She’ll be ~25% off (2450 RP) for the first four days following her release before returning to her normal price of 3250 RP.
DJ Sona comes with three different modes, which you can toggle by typing /toggle or pressing CTRL+5.
You can download all three tracks here!
DJ Sona has a bunch extra features and content that’s part of her package. Here is a more condensed list of what she has to offer!
Form Toggle:
Can be triggered by “/toggle” or “CTRL+5”
0.5 second cast time
Casting the transition, dealing damage, taking damage, or getting crowd controlled will invoke a 2 second internal cooldown for transitioning again.
Cooldown starts as soon as the toggle is activated.
You can rebind the toggle in the Options menu. Options > Hotkeys > Communication > Toggle (second row from the bottom)
Teammate Music Opt-In:
Only for DJ Sona’s Teammates.
To opt into her music experience, pull up the Scoreboard (Tab or o). With the Scoreboard up, look to the left by Sona’s portrait and click the grayed out music note to turn it green to turn on the music. You can opt out of the music by pressing the music note again to turn it red.
The button will soon be bigger, and the music note design the final image.
Ability Music Layers:
DJ Sona starts out with a base track at the start of the game. Upon using Q / W / E the first time in any form, it will add a new music layer to the base.
(ie) You start the game with base music in Kinetic form. Press Q once and it adds a new bass layer to the base music. This will already be applied if you change to any other form.
Epic Ult Music:
Upon using her ultimate the first time after she puts a point into it, the base music (with all layers applied) will change to sound fuller and more “epic.” This applies to all her forms.
Three summoner icons come with the skin.
Use one of the summoner icons to show off the corresponding profile banner.
ITEMS
We probably overthought on this one. Our initial goal was to let you change strategic course in the early game without incurring a setback, but most were just using it to switch to the “best” lategame smite before picking up their enchant. Well then.
Cost to change between tier 2 jungle items 0 gold ⇒ 255 gold
Sweeping Lens
We were intending to make this change to match the Oracle’s Lens cooldown change from Patch 5.1 but only the tooltip went out (the cooldown is still 60 seconds). We’ll fix this next patch!
Cooldown at level 9+ automatic upgrade 60 seconds ⇒ 60 seconds (but the tooltip says 75. We’re not crazy, people.)
Doran’s Shield
Fixed a bug where Doran’s Shield wasn’t blocking 8 single target spell damage.
Enchantment: Warrior The Warrior enchant seems to be outperforming of its other enchantment counterparts, but we’re still in the kitchen cooking up our long-term solutions. That said, we can afford to whip up a light stat adjustment snack in the meantime. Never write patch notes while hungry.
ATTACK DAMAGE 45 ⇒ 40
Zz’Rot Portal
Just doing some additional cleanup work for Zz’Rot Portal to help it adjust to life on the Rift.
Zz’Rot Portal’s Voidspawns are now more intelligent about finding the “nearest lane”
Void Gates will automatically ‘re-scan’ for a spawn direction shortly after a turret in its assigned lane has been destroyed
SUMMONER SPELLS
Smite
Time to be honest: the power of Chilling Smite is just too high. We love that it adds a new tool to the game, but it’s shoring up champion weaknesses so well (that is, every champion who uses Chilling Smite extends their engagement range to ~675) that we know we’ll need to do this range reduction sooner or later. Otherwise, Chilling Smite just becomes a necessary purchase in order for everyone to compete.
RANGE 750 (center of champion’s hitbox to center of opponent’s hitbox) ⇒ 500 (edge of champion’s hitbox to edge of opponent’s hitbox)
*The above change should roughly be a ~175 range loss against champions, with many monsters being unaffected (due to them being fat), although some might require you to be a little closer
Revive
REMOVED Revive has been removed from the game.
SUMMONER’S RIFT
We’ve been working over the past several months to standardize blue and red as team colors for League’s UI and environmental designs. The last step in the process is to fix the discrepancy between UI and environment for red side (well, North side now), which plays with red minions and structures but blue healthbars and minimap icons. When active, Relative Team Colors ensures your team’s minions and structures will always be blue while the enemy’s will always be red, mirroring the information provided by your UI.
Relative Team Colors shows all allied minions and structures as blue and all enemy units as red, regardless of your starting side. This option is enabled by default (Options –> Game).
MINIONS
Turns out we had this in our files for some time but they weren’t hooked up properly. Are now!
Melee and Caster minions now have four different animations based on how they die.
IN-GAME OPTIONS
Semi-Locked Camera
The patch note is the context, so the context can be the patch note: You now have semi-locked cameras!
In the options menu you can change to a new camera lock mode called “semi-locked camera.” In this mode, the camera still follows your champion around like locked camera. You can, however, scroll the camera via all the usual methods (keyboard, edge scroll, middle click). When you scroll it, it changes where on the screen your champion will stay once you stop scrolling. The camera will not scroll too far from your champion, so they will always be reasonably close to the center of the screen.
Drag Scroll Lock
Not sure why you guys were trying to save stuff in the middle of a game but now it won’t mess with your camera! (…whoops.)
Drag Scroll Lock is a camera feature originally built for Spectator mode which, when enabled, causes the camera to follow your mouse cursor. It’s been present but undocumented in all game modes for a long time.
NEW Drag Scroll Lock has been added to the Hotkeys menu for all game modes and is unbound by default (Options –> Hotkeys –> Camera Control)
REMOVEDPressing Shift + Ctrl + S no longer stealth-activates Drag Scroll Lock
PLAYER TOOLTIPS
Our first test of the updated player tooltips ran into some issues last patch. We’re fixing the problem and adding in a few more features in the process!
In addition to champion and match duration, player tooltips now indicate map and queue type for players in-game – ex. “Summoner’s Rift (Ranked)”
You can now see your own player tooltip by hovering over your name and icon at the top of the friends list.
BUGFIXES
- Fixed a bug that made unskinned wards… large.
- Fixed a bug where Panda Teemo’s R – Noxious Trap explosion wasn’t properly playing particle or sound effects.
- Fixed a bug where Xin Zhao’s Q – Three Talon Strike’s third strike would occasionally not knock opponents up.
- Restored Thresh’s max distance indicator for W – Dark Passage.
- Super Teemo has remembered how to fly while using W – Move Quick.
- Pulsefire Ezreal’s (well, PEARL’s) custom VO when first leveling his basic skills now plays 100% of the time.
DISCUSSIONS
Have any comments or questions regarding PBE updates or any other topic? Comment below or head over to Discussions (here). I would love to hear from y’all!
