Patch 26.11 Preview! In 26.11, we're making a few adjustments to the Support ecosystem to improve diversity, especially in terms of melee vs ranged balance.  We're also doing some continued followup to champs after some of the Season 2 changes have been optimized.  AP Xin Zhao has popped out as one of the most striking and fun champs, but his healing is a bit on the high side, especially when he's outhealing some of the champs designed around healing.  That said, we still think healing a bunch is exciting and worth supporting, just not at this magnitude.  Systems - With the role quests in Season Start, ranged supports have risen to the top of the pecking order - They're both the best at multiplying ADC's who are strong currently, as well as benefiting the most from being in lane for role quests - Roaming also pays a higher systemic cost as it puts both yourself behind on quest progress and makes it so your ally ADC can't stack their quest - Overall, this has been desirable, as we think in 2025, roaming was too high for the most part and especially undercut the satisfaction of players in bot lane wanting to a play a “real laning phase” - At the same time though, we do want to open up a bit of roaming power on the grub timing after early lane is done and so we're buffing up the reward of grubs just slightly - We're making a broad set of changes to both improve the desirability of some underpurchased items, as well as more finely tune the purpose of various items in the ecosystem - Other systems adjustments this patch are changes to Experimental Hexplate that aim to make it shine on both melee and ranged users.  - Currently the best users are champs like Nocturne, Olaf, Vayne, Varus and we think we can strike a better balance on more champions while also making the item tradeoffs more apparent for durability vs damage on Vayne and Varus (mostly manifesting in Top) - The other systems impacting changes are some adjustments to Diana and Ekko jungle who have been slightly worse for wear there (though Mid is mostly fine)

Wanted to clarify a few things for the upcoming Apex Reset in NA, EUW, EUNE, TR, LAN, BR (other regions didn't experience enough instability to meaningfully affect competitive integrity) 1. There will be no advantage to rolling a fresh account or a smurf vs playing on your existing account, so please play on your existing account 2. After the reset, the intent is that there will be no accounts with an LP or MMR higher than Master 0LP 3. We are planning to disallow Apex+ duoing for at least the first patch to allow MMR's to settle a bit Thanks for all your patience and hope that we can make Season 2 climbs a great experience

Patch 26.9 Full Preview (Champions)! No changes to the items or systems changes, so just wanted to focus on Champions today. Ambessa - After being out for almost a year and a half, we've learnt a lot about Ambessa's power curves, strengths and weaknesses, good and bad matchups, etc. - One area we feel has slightly less counterplay than we think is long term healthy is Ambessa's ult warning - Given its long cast range, it often feels more missable (burden is on the caster) than dodgeable (counterplay for user) - We played around with several timings and think this timing strikes the best balance between dodgeability, requirement to combo CC and still satisfaction for the Ambessa player Shyvana - The goals of these changes are to increase differentiation between the AP and AD builds - Create satisfying incentives for Shyv players who want to be more of a durable Dragon, rather than a squishy burst champion - It's also been a common pain point that Shyv's shield is both easily popped and having the Movespeed tied to that makes her play pattern quite binary and unsatisfying in the moment, so we're making the Movespeed from W more consistent and available - In the AD build, we're looking to have the Q + W pattern be more supported, as she needs to stick onto targets more and be more durable (W cooldown should help here) - In this build, we're looking to balance the satisfaction of Q button presses and repeatedly attacking - We've also added more incentives for her Sheen synergies with Trinity Force in particular by buffing her AD growth - While she's lost a few incentives to build AD overall, we intend to support the AD Bruiser oriented build as best as we can - In the AP build, we're looking to create stronger incentives for E to be maxed and play around E + W - More of a fireball oriented in and out pattern - We'll continue to followup to ensure that Shyvana's tuning supports her builds as they play out Zeri - While Zeri has been statistically balanced in her more bursty form, especially across ranks, her satisfaction and identity have taken a hit - These changes are aimed at trading off some of her damage output to re-emphasize her speed outputs (some of the main reasons players play her) - Along with this are some feelsgood changes (like E refunding on attacks vs everything) - While we're increasing some of the speed on her ultimate, we'll keep an eye on the stack dropoff duration to ensure it strikes the right balance of fantasy fulfilment and balanceability Tahm Kench - We overnerfed Tahm Kench last patch; we intended to buff TK support overall and these buffs are more skewed there, though they will overall affect both roles Briar/Warwick - Briar is a bit too strong, especially in average play, where she is also building very squishy on first item (often Collector, etc.) - These changes are aimed at incentivizing her to build a bit more tanky - Warwick on the other hand has been languishing, especially in Average play where we'd expect him to succeed

Patch Rundown Video 26.8! First Patch Rundown is now Live on Youtube youtube.com/watch?v=fGuB75D5… It's been a while since making videos, but excited to start making them again. In this video: - Some insights into how we think about Champion Fantasy (though note that not all changes are done with fantasy in mind, some are just routine balance adjustments) - Explanations about changes in the Patch LMK what things you liked/disliked and want to see more/less of!

It was really fun to have some transparent discussions with players and get our honest takes back and forth on things, like "why are there frustrating things in games", "whether losers queue is real", etc. The goal wasn't to win the debates, but more to display some of the thinking around player feedback on certain topics and get honest player feedback! Hopefully it was entertaining for folks. 😂

Patch 26.8 Update 1. We have pulled Viego from the patch after reviewing some of the data issues from yesterday that led us to want to buff him in the first place. There's a bit of weirdness that happens with his data, due to some of the form swapping that goes on and how that makes its way into the data pipelines for both internal and external data that were investigating and resolving 2. The Ambessa changes that were originally planned for this patch have been punted to 26.9. We still intend to change her on that patch

Patch 26.8 Full Preview! Viego - There's some notable discrepancies for specifically Viego's data in our internal data that led us to want to initially buff him - Looking at external data however seems to be notably different - Going to double check this data tomorrow and validate the data pipelines before determining whether or not to proceed with the buff Hwei - In line with the fantasy fulfilment I was talking about yesterday, Hwei changes are leaning into his identity as a combo mage - It is a cool pattern and in particular, this set of changes skews him more towards being effective in mid lane compared to bot lane with the level scaling - We're not opposed to him being viable in bot lane, but pushing him towards midlane - We think this makes Hwei more uniquely satisfying compared to say having his damage come from predominantly single QQ, QW or QE casts Lillia - Lillia's power clearing and movement speed are some of her most defining aspects - We're restoring some of that clear speed to better fulfil her fantasy there Lucian - Lucian in bot lane doesn't have a strong differentiation from Corki as a similarly early game dominant ability focused caster - These changes are trying to put more of Lucian's power into his early mobility and giving him more casts of it - We're going to monitor Lucian in solo lanes Mel - We separated some of Mel's damage output in 26.3 by creating a separation between her first initial hit and the subsequent hits - We're reducing how much value she gets from this initial Q landing and backloading the damage more to give her damage more counterplay - We still think we need to do more work to Mel long term - (ARAM) Another note here is that we've been investigating some ARAM specific changes to Mel, since her reflect can be harder to play against in that mode, given the narrowness of the play area Mundo - Mundo rates very highly on our frustration metrics and our changes here are targeted at average play Jungle - Not much to say here, we think top is in a more reasonable spot