Patch 9.21 notes
Hi. Happy post-10-year! Did you get to catch the team's stream? We loved getting to answer your questions, play with some of you, and work on fixing some bugs that you outlined on the Boards. Thank you for interacting with us on that very special day.
We hope you enjoyed all the amazing things coming to League of Legends soon, including the preseason changes we've been alluding to for the past couple of patches. The bulk of our time is going into preparing for the Rise of the Elements gameplay update, but some notable work going live this patch includes follow-ups to the champions that received bigger changes in 9.20.
From all the past, present, and future writers of Patch Notes, thank you for making the last 10 years awesome. Here's to another 10 years of dumb jokes, obscure references, and "CTRL+F __, no results?" comments!
Hanna "shio shoujo" Woo
Mid-Patch Updates
10/30/2019 URF Balance Changes
As promised, we'll be reacting more quickly to out-of-line champions during this iteration of URF! These changes are meant to bring a few of the highest and lowest win-rate champions towards the middle.
Champions
Runes
10/28/2019 URF is now live!
We’re bringing back URF as a one-time experiment to celebrate League’s 10-year anniversary. From now until November 8, jump into cannons, wreak havoc, and rapid fire it up on Summoner's Rift. As promised in the /dev article on Nexus, we've implemented some balance changes, similar to the way we did them in ARAM earlier this year, to keep the games snappier and less "solved."
Champions
Due to our extended testing window on PBE, we’ve been able to utilize a similar balancing approach to ARAM for URF, dialing in the approach specifically for the champions that really pop off. We’ve tried to make sure we adjusted champions in ways that do not hamper their classic URF patterns, while also not invalidating other champions as reasonable options. The changes below are the adjustments made from how each champ normally is on Summoner's Rift.
Systems
To keep URF fast, we want objectives that are powerful and threaten the end of games. That being said, older iterations of URF would end too quickly once these objectives were taken.
Additionally, turret plates are great for rewarding even small amounts of lane aggression in normal SR, but the tunings for that game mode often under-rewarded the risk it takes to hit turrets in URF, especially due to the speed at which enemies arrive back in lane. We’ve reduced the risk to get early plates, and we’ve dramatically increased the reward to make these a more interesting strategic option. Changes below are the system's values in this iteration of URF.
Runes
We wanted to take a minimal change approach to runes, and tried to bring down only a few runes that really distorted the options last time URF was live. Similar to the system changes, the adjustments below are what they are now in this URF iteration.
10/23/2019 Waterwalking Bugfix
Waterwalking
Patch Highlights
Bewitching Miss Fortune, Count Kassadin, and Witch's Brew Blitzcrank will be available on October 24, 2019.
Champions
Garen
E base damage per spin decreased.
Nerfing Garen after his changes in 9.20. While this change might look large, we've kept the ratios the same, so it shouldn’t feel like a huge nerf.
E - Judgment
Kayn
Q damage increased; Rhaast's modified damage ratio increased; bonus damage to monsters decreased.
Both of Kayn's forms are underperforming right now, so we're adjusting his damage to give him a bit more oomph against champions, regardless of which form you choose.
Q - Reaping Slash
Kog'Maw
Base stats rounded up. Q and E base damage increased.
Right now, Kog'Maw's E does not feel rewarding to cast, even when it lands successfully. Rather than decreasing the costs on his E's or other abilities' early ranks, we're upping their value so that Kog'Maw’s kit still has a risk vs reward element.
Base Stats
Roundin'
Q - Caustic Spittle
E - Void Ooze
Lulu
E shield and damage increased later.
Lulu's transition into the mid-game could be better. We want Pix to offer more to fights and for players to make choices that are more worthwhile as Lulu scales.
E - Help, Pix!
Maokai
W cost flattened; damage increased. R root duration increased.
Maokai is underperforming across all levels of play and needs some help to keep up with his would-be lumberjacks.
Q - Bramble Smash
W - Twisted Advance
R - Nature's Grasp
Master Yi
Phantom Hits now proc Double Strike and apply Double Strike stacks.
Passive - Double Strike
Pyke
Base health growth decreased. Passive Grey Health from damage decreased.
When Pyke gets ahead, he takes advantage of the situation without any real risk, killing off folks left and right and becoming near-impossible to take down. He should still have trouble escaping after an assassination, even if he's doing very well. And if he makes a second pass at a kill, he shouldn't be at near full life.
Base Stats
Passive - Gift of the Drowned Ones
Shaco
W box duration decreased.
Shaco landed in a strong spot after 9.20, so we're doing some light touch-ups to address specific concerns about his lane presence and early jungle power.
W - Jack In The Box
Sona
Follow-up QoL change and passive bugfix for the adult woman.
General
Viktor
Base stats rounded up. Q damage increased.
Viktor is a little weaker than we expected after the changes last patch. We're going light on the follow-up, since we know people are still getting accustomed to him. We're also including a bugfix that already happened in a mid-patch update in 9.20, since we weren't able to widely message it out at the time!
Base Stats
Roundin'
Q - Siphon Power
W - Gravity Field
Warwick
Q damage ratio increased later. W bonus attack speed increased.
Warwick is falling behind the pack, especially when he maxes his Q before his W. We want him to still have the option of maxing out one over the other based on the situation, but they should both be on a more equal footing.
Q - Jaws of the Beast
W - Blood Hunt
Bugfixes
- When Kindred casts W - Wolf's Frenzy, Wolf now properly attacks enemies in range when she is not attacking anything
- When walking over a Rift Scuttler Speed Shrine, champions will now have a Revealed Eyes marker over them
- Enemies spotted by Ashe's E - Hawkshot will no longer have the vision Eyes above their heads until the end of the game
- Qiyana's R - Supreme Display of Talent VFX no longer desynchronize with its effects and they properly follow the outline around terrain all the way through from the enemies' perspective if it is cast in Fog of War
- Heimerdinger's R - UPGRADE!!!'s tooltip no longer mentions that his E - CH-3X Lightning Grenade's slow is improved to 80%
- Only champions can pick up Eye of the Herald. Dashing as Yasuo through it with R - Last Breath or having the living shadow from Shadow Assassin Kayn's W - Blade's Reach stand on it will no longer have those non-champion entities pick it up
- When Sylas Hijacks Nidalee's ultimate and uses her Q - Takedown, he'll now properly do damage with it
- Aurelion Sol's R - Voice of Light's VFX are no longer globally visible in Fog of War
- Neeko can once again select herself to deactivate her disguise, putting it on a 2-second cooldown
- Kled will no longer lose his untargetable status when dismounting near turrets/walls
Upcoming Skins & Chromas
The following skins will be released this patch. Grab the League Displays app for full-res splash art!
The following chromas will be released this patch:
264 Comments
Ricooooooooo88 votesSona Follow-up QoL change and passive bugfix for the adult woman.
lmfaoooo
SnowPirate22 votesI hate it lol First baby girl, now this.
Riot weird, man.
mage19211734 votesSomebody was probably upset with baby girl so they jokingly did the exact opposite
drian44 votesLS in his 9.20 rundown ripped riot a new asshole for calling sona babygirl lol I imagine it’s to poke fun at him more than anything :p
Swissroll v27 votesDaily reminder that Riot Games is a company run and plagued by incels. Don't forget about the sexual harassment lawsuit!
Poreotix2951 votesThese quotes were written by a woman developer who is a sona main u dipshit, don't take everything seriously u dumb sjw idiot.
TheRawMaster9 votesthe memes write themselves lmao
PurpleKingCrazy17 votesRiot likes their Sona, yo.
Green09 voteswhat*[sg-lux-2]*
Shineui26 votesThey probably did that after people pointed out baby girl last patch. It was cute last time and the "adult woman" is hilarious this time. Way to go Hanna Woo lol
Daedric Etwahl15 votesYeah, exa tly. Seriously no idea why people in the comments and LS make such a big deal over it, it doesn't take half a brain to know what they mean, and why it's typed out.
Fnfemas44 votesRevert Maokai ult back to the old one with the ring around him this one is so easy to dodge its so slow
Snake225023 votesGiving your team flat damage reduction for just being near you and then blowing up for damage was a dumb ability.
FlameHalbrdOkido13 votesright it also didn't help that it was anti fun for the enemy team, instant "do any damage to me or my allies within this circle" and i gain damage from it, its was like Galio's old ult where not only did it punish the player since they didn't get MUCH bonus resistances while it was active but it also punished enemies for doing well or just trying to play the game. In fact you could say the ability was counter-intuitive for Maokia's team because in this case while the ult isa active they WANT to take damage...which is only going to cause the enemy team in most cases to completely back off which makes the ability defeat its OWN purpose which means the ability can become useless especially against good teams.
Sure maybe it could be better implemented and sure maybe they could come up with a better vanguard ability. I am ALWAYS saying that vangaurds don't need to be designed around HARD CC. They can still accomplish their design goals w/o having hard CC. But as someone who played both versions the new one is MUCH better on a design, mechanics and FEEL level. Because when u cast it you just make the entire enemy run and that feels pretty gud.
AvatarRoku225 votesWhile you make fair points about the faults of the old ult, its still better than the current one which is wholly ineffective. The fact that the enemy can actually just run out of it is the problem and for most people nothing about that 'feels pretty gud'.
It's way to slow to be an effective gank tool on all but the most aggressively pushed lanes and in that situation its faster to just run up and get them with your W than trying to land and ult that you started in the river in hopes of getting a reasonable root duration.
It's a terrible team fight tool for the same reason. It's super slow so the enemy team can just fall back to the safety of their towers before it reaches them or just sidestep it comepletely. If used mid fight most of it is likely to be body blocked by the front line and it wouldnt go far enough for the the carries who you really want to catch to even have to think about (if the enemy carries are mildy observant they would position themselves to have their tanks/bruisers between you and them anyway)
Ultimately the current R is worthless and although the old one was "counter intuitive" it was at least effective.
Velasan13 votesYeah agreed! Using him as a warden champion who would protect his teammates from enemies with aoe ults made a lot more sense than giving him another form of crowd control. Then he just competes with all the other champions that specialize in engaging team fights like Sejuani, Zac, and so on; but those other champions do it better. Maokai was always better at single target disruption and being a wall, and the old ultimate played better into that theme while having better counter play. At least the old ultimate he had to hold onto to get measurable power from it, the new one he can just W straight on top of someone and cast it point blank and there's nowhere for the enemy to go. Not sure what it was about the old ultimate that Riot didn't like.
Shnabbydoodle34 votesGaren's R isn't judgement :p
DCYOUNG88815 votesThink the patch note writers were smoking weed when the balance team decided to change garen's e base damage to 4-20.
4zazle33 votesi am very surprised at the lack of discussion on how orrn has only 1 skin and they just gave mf another
Fella Air71 votesIt's simple
MF has bobs vegane [slayer-jinx-catface]
MICROSOFT STORE5 votesAnd annie is about to get another skin too
Remnant Ryku10 votesFlat is Justice.
LightningShado12 votesshe's 10 wut
HipstaEevee6 votesAnnie was released in 2009, wasn't it said she was 9 or 10 back then, its 2019 bro, she's 19 now!
Demilius4 votesbro you think ornn has it bad? my bro mordekaiser has not gotten a new skin in 4 years, omega lol.
Azurasfire21 votesTo be fair he literally just got reworked
AwShucksÄShuckle9 votes
only has 1 skin you can buy year round and that was her release skin
Lildog3 votesIt's probably because a company that makes a free to play game is capitalizing on the champions that actually make them money.
ViperVenom24 votesPlease dont nerf jungle xp. Jungle leveling already feels awful, especially when enemy top gets ahead and gets rewarded with a 3 level advantage, meanwhile if jg is equally fed they are still down in levels.
Stereo314 votesjust clear 4head...
lmao, but all in all, i dont think it should be buffed or nerfed, but krugs are getting xp nerf and gromp is getting buff, so not really that bad, it will just make people kill gromp more.
or just play
even with the nerf to his clear it is still really strong.
Vancethan9 votesThe clear is the same, 15 dmg was removed from Bonus Dmg to Monsters because 15dmg was added to the General Q Dmg. He will output the same to monsters with his Q but deal more to Champions. It was just a foresight nerf so Kayn isn't clearing much faster with an already strong clear.
Rocker3k23 votesI don't really understand Garen's changes, from what they've done it seems like Garen can now go full damage, one shot people, and then still be tanky. Since the changes, Garen's running around one shotting people with 500+ movement speed, shielding for 10% of his maximum damage, reducing 30% damage, getting 60% tenacity for .75 seconds, AND he's still receiving the 30 armor and 30 magic resist purely from killing minions. If you want him to be a damage dealer nerf his survivability gut his W. If you want him to be a juggernaut nerf his damage. All this and his does true damage now.
Anecdotal evidence but in the past game I played vs him he mitigated 31k damage as a full damage build champion, thats more damage mitigation than total damage dealt to him. I honestly wish there was a cc reduced/broken number to show just how broken it actually is.
Aeo2k15 votesI see you have heard from LS about Sona. 😁
mvmlego4 votesI've heard other people mention LS criticizing Riot over the "baby girl" comment. Why exactly was he so upset over it?
Laserch1cken5 votesIt was just really bizarre that they called her that
mvmlego5 votesWasn't the guy who wrote the patch notes a Sona main, though? I'm a Taric main, and I refer to him as "my boy" all the time.
MissRippedJeans14 votesThank you for fixing the bug with Ashe's E! Appreciate you guys
DCYOUNG88810 votesNot a big fan of the Pyke nerfs in my opinion, personally I prefer if he had his bonus gold on his ult removed since he can snowball way too hard with it. With this change if he falls behind he will suffer from extended fights more than before if he doesn't get his ult off and he will be much squishier and he cannot build hp to compensate for the loss hp growth.
Skaiserus19 votesPyke can't build HP at all, what are you saying?
DCYOUNG8887 votesI mean he cannot build hp to compensate for the loss hp growth meaning that he will be squishier is what I am saying unless he tries to build armor or magic resist but he already has a lot of those stats in general though so it won't be as effective.
Noraver67 votesGood. Pyke needs a downside if he loses. He has everything you could ever want in his kit; he shouldn't be able to just jump into fights without risk if he loses.
FlameHalbrdOkido11 votesi mean YES the bonus gold needs to go, BUT the health nerfs are much appreciated since he doesn't get to disengage and then get all his HP back.
SO why not both, lose HP and grey hp regen this patch, and the bonus gold next patch
Whistler933 votesThe health nerfs should not have happened, players need to learn to anti-healing items like 
and 
. Combined effort from both bot lane players can easily eliminate a Pyke, he is extremely squishy. If you struggle against a Pyke because he gets away and heals that's your problem and you need to learn how to eliminate him effectively or play the lane within his presence.
snarkk40 votesThese items do not affect Pyke's healing at all, since Pyke's healing comes from being out of vision and out of combat. All of those are combat items and would not have any affect on Pyke's healing.
kittytush1010 votesthose buffs wont help maoki accomplish anything. They are actually just completely useless. His R will never hit anything anyways and he maxes w last.
Pl0x3r 260515 votesI land R almost every time, its a better zoning tool than anything. And why are you maxing W last when maxing second is often better for shorter CD on root. Not to mention the very small % damage growth on E. But I do agree that these "buffs" don't do anything good or bad lol as an experienced Maokai player. I suppose the W damage is okay for early.
1m Uzi9 votesPlease deleteADC，they are already losing their purpose in the game while you guys are buffing top laner and assassins for years. Really tired to be a bot player.
Fella Air54 votesI wish someone would make an electrical generator that's powered by the tears of ADC mains. I swear I hear this crap all the time and it's pretty tiring tbh. Some of the most popular and highest winrate champs in the game are adcs. Kai sa and ashe come to mind, along with ezreal having an absolute reign of terror for a while even though he's not quite as good now... But for whatever reason people who main adc just bitch and moan all the time. As a support main, I've gotten sick of it.
IpleadedInsanity15 votesLMAOOOOO NOT THE GENERATORRR
Koz for Koncern8 votesI'm sitting here as a support main realizing that because I actually buy control wards I'm better than most gold adcs, and it's easier for me to climb as adc just playing ashe and kai'sa than it is as a support.