Patch 5.8 notes
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
Patch Updates
4/30/2015
Charge-up abilities
Morgana
Xerath
Ryze
Jayce
Blitzcrank
EXCELLENT 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).
Champions
Ryze
Ryze has been updated! Check out the article if you want the full story, or just below if you want the specifics.
General
newPassive - Arcane Mastery
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.
Q - Overload
W - Rune Prison
newE - Spell Flux
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.
R - Desperate Power
Ahri
Never trust nine-tails and a smile.
E - Charm
Bard
Chimes spawn in safer locations early-game and grant more experience over game-time.
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.
Passive - Traveler's Call
Blitzcrank
Overdrive has a minimum speed, and decays more slowly.
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.
W - Overdrive
Caitlyn
Caitlyn's traps are more visible in brush.
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.
W - Yordle Snap Trap
Dr. Mundo
Q refunds its cost on kill. Passive and R tooltips are cleaner.
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.
Passive - Adrenaline Rush
Q - Infected Cleaver
R - Sadism
Graves
Buckshot deals less damage at max range and slightly more damage at close range.
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.
Q - Buckshot
Jinx
Super Mega Death Rocket's close-range damage has been severely reduced.
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.
R - Super Mega Death Rocket!
Kha'Zix
W heals for more at early ranks.
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.
W - Void Spike
Mordekaiser
W doesn't stop your movement to cast and auto-targets the nearest ally when self-cast.
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.
W - Creeping Death
Nunu
Health per level down. Blood Boil auto-targets the nearest ally when 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.
General
W - Blood Boil
Pantheon
HE'S GONNA JUMP
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.
R - Grand Skyfall
Shen
Shen is a better bodyguard (but still not that great at being a ninja).
Already a potent guardian, Shen's leveled up his teleport game to naturally position himself in the best spot to defend his teammates.
R - Stand United
Sion
W's health ratio is lower at early levels and takes longer to reactivate.
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.
W - Soul Furnace
Twitch
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!
R - Rat-Ta-Tat-Tat
Warwick
We cleaned up some of Blood Scent's coding behind-the-scenes that was keeping him finishing off his prey.
E - Blood Scent
Xerath
We tried to fix this with an earlier hotfix but that didn't stick. This should do it.
R - Rite of the Arcane
Yasuo
Yasuo's flow shield is stronger at every level, but takes more effort to build early-game.
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.
Passive - Way of the Wanderer
Mass Texture Rebalance (Part 10)
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)!
Lux
- Base, Commando, Imperial, Sorceress, Spellthief, Steel Legion
Nocturne
- Ravager (update to a previous rebalance)
Poppy
- Base, Battle Regalia, Blacksmith, Lollipoppy, Noxus, Ragdoll, Scarlet Hammer
Shaco
- Base, Asylum, Nutcracko, Mad Hatter, Roya, Workshop
- Base Jack-In-The-Boxes have also been updated for all skins that use them
Shyvana
- Base, Boneclaw, Darkflame, Ironscale
Teemo
- Base, Astronaut, Badger, Cottontail, Happy Elf, Panda, Recon, Super
- Base mushrooms (for all skins that use them) and custom mushrooms for Astronaut, Panda and Super skins have also been updated
Items
new
The Black Cleaver
New build path, much more health, much, much more armor shred stacking, but no more flat armor penetration. More cleaver-y, if that makes sense.
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
Recurve Bow
Now builds out of daggers, costs slightly more, and deals 10 damage on hit.
Can we say build path betterment? Yes.
Blade of the Ruined King
You can now lifesteal the bonus health damage you're dealing!
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!
Runaan's Hurricane
When you actually look at the item build in the in-game shop, it looks pretty cool. Seriously, check out that symmetry.
Enchantment - Devourer
Build path betterment.
Righteous Glory
We went a liiiiitttle overboard with this last time, so we're tuning back just a tiny bit.
Summoner's Rift
Dragon's Might (Dragon Buff #1)
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:
Howling Abyss
Visual Updates
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.
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.
Global Gameplay Updates
Modernizing minions to be in line with recent changes we've made on Summoner's Rift.
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.
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.
The Bloodthirster
It's here!
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
It's gone!
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.
Warmog's Armor
It's here!
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
Temporary random skins for the random champions played by your (sometimes) random teammates. And some IP.
Howling Abyss, Twisted Treeline & Crystal Scar
Twin Shadows
Had a few items that missed updates and finally knocking those out. Sorry it took so long.
Twisted Treeline & Crystal Scar
Moonflair Spellblade
Just getting that Negatron Cloak back in there.
Had a few items that missed updates and finally knocking those out. Sorry it took so long.
Lord Van Damm's Pillager
Crystal Scar
Odyn's Veil
Just getting that Negatron Cloak back in there.
Had a few items that missed updates and finally knocking those out. Sorry it took so long.
Friend 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.
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
Upcoming Skins
The following skins will be released at various times during patch 5.8:










Ryze has been significantly buffed, yes it will take more skills to play, but the skill cap will also be higher. I don't think ryze will see much competitive play unless being picked as a counter.
I actually expect
to become his core item. Gnar will be picked more often in the competitive scene with better kiting and armor shredding while still being a 4000-5000 healthy tank front line.
will remain pretty strong in this heavy tanks-that-can-do-camps-or-double-jungle-at-level-one Meta. Since
is still very strong. He will now have the choice between
,
Keep an eye around those champions, they might start being picked at a competitive level. Meta is slowly pushing them back toward their viability.
now has a sightly better situationnal response in her bag... or in the shop.
is more complicated. Riven is an assassin-bruiser, which means she wants to assassinate the squishy carries of the enemy team more than the heavy tanks that peel for them. For that, Riven will be weaker since she will deal less damage to them.
She also will have a sightly weaker shield, but that shield will have a lower cooldown and Riven will run faster.
Yes she will have 200 more health, but dealing less damage (resulting in life stealing less) and having a sightly weaker shield may make that health not worth it. I will have to test her with The Black Cleaver in order to make a better decision toward her concerns.
ult is UNCHANGED, meaning anything out of your zap range will still deal normal damage.
This change will actually make it more difficult to proc the gold/heal. I personally didn't have a fit about that, but others have, so I'd like to point it out for a possible buff to the FotM item line, so it procs on % health rather than a flat amount.
,
too strunk
It's been how many patches now?