Patch 7.16 notes
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Hey there, friends!
As we approach Worlds, our changes lean a little bit more on tweaks to make high competitive play more balanced. Along with several mid-laners getting changed, we have some other stuff such as Cinderhulk and the Ancient Coin line.
Also, ARURF is making an extended comeback, so watch out for carpal tunnel.
Bam, ultra rapid foreword. We’ll see you on the Rift.
Paul "Aether" Perscheid 
Phillip "Costy" Costigan 
Mattias "Gentleman Gustaf" Lehman 
Lucas "Luqizilla" Moutinho
Mid-Patch Updates
8/16/2017 Bugfix
Relic Shield line
8/11/2017 Balance Update
Orianna
The change we made to Orianna's W cast range ended up having unintended effects on her ult as well, so we're reverting it. Sorry, Orianna!
Champions
Caitlyn
Q deals less damage to targets beyond the first. W base damage decreased at early ranks; ratio reduced.
While recent changes to Caitlyn have focused on her late-game teamfighting* (headshots and traps), this patch is about how the Sheriff gets there. Cait’s historically had a rocky mid-game: her early strength wanes as lane phase ends, but she doesn’t hit carry status for another few thousand gold’s worth of items after that. That mid-game lull was largely erased when we smoothed out marksman item progression. We’re re-establishing it by tapping down her effectiveness prior to completing multiple end-game items.
*Sidenote: even accounting for their role as Caitlyn’s ideal teamfight contributions, trap procs were hitting slightly too hard in the late-game. Hence, a flat ratio nerf.
Q - Piltover Peacemaker
W - Yordle Snap Trap
Fiora
Duelist’s Dance bonus movement speed increased at later ranks of Grand Challenge.
Back in 7.14 we gave Fiora’s opponents better opportunity to both retaliate as she aimed to pierce their vitals, and out-maneuver the Grand Duelist during Grand Challenge. Removing Grand Challenge’s free movement speed had the desired effect, but the hit to Duelist’s Dance left Fiora less nimble than we’d like. We’re pulling back a bit on the changes to her passive in response.
Passive - Duelist's Dance
Kayn
More bugfixin’.
Passive - The Darkin Scythe
W - Blade's Reach
R - Umbral Trespass
Maokai
Sapling Toss damage down at early ranks.
The Twisted Treant is simply performing too well in both the jungle and top lane. Currently Sapling Toss is both an excellent one-point-wonder and a totally lackluster option to rank up. We’re lowering its single-rank damage but preserving its maxed-out strength, giving Maokai the option to max E for super-effective saplings while making him easier to bear until that point.
E - Sapling Toss
Sion
W grants more health for killing small units. R’s max damage increased.
Sion never truly recovered from midseason’s durability item changes. Through this lens, giving him the means to win back some late-game tankiness is fairly straightforward. Past that, we’re packing more punch into Unstoppable Onslaught to bring Sion’s teamfight initiation up to a more appropriately threatening level.
W - Soul Furnace
R - Unstoppable Onslaught
Vi
R cooldown decreased. E attack can’t be canceled.
Vi’s calling card is reliably singling out a priority target with Assault and Battery, then punching everyone around her into the dirt. We’d like to see her flex that strength more frequently as a single-target-lockdown champ in today’s jungle meta of AoE-disruption tanks and lethality-wielding assassins. As a separate feels-good change, we’re also making it easier for Vi to properly weave Excessive Force between other actions without accidentally canceling her punch in the process.
E - Excessive Force
R - Assault and Battery
On-Hit Interactions With Wards
It makes sense for attack reset abilities (ex. Blitzcrank’s E - Power Fist) to consume their on-hit effects when used on wards: you’re choosing to burn a cooldown to play the vision game. But you can’t choose not to use a stack- or timer-based proc (ex. Caitlyn’s Passive - Headshot) when it’s up - you’re just forced to pay an extra cost to play the vision game. This is more ‘uncontrollable punishment’ than ‘interesting tradeoff’, so we generally avoid having these effects be consumed against wards. The changes below bring a few abilities in line with this thinking.
Aatrox
W third-hit effects no longer proc against wards.
Changing Blood Thirst / Blood Price to be consistent with the on-hit context above, though Aatrox comes with a few extra considerations. The Darkin Blade benefitted from his on-hit bonuses proccing on wards: Thirst is a heal and Price stacks the Blood Well. We discussed special-casing Aatrox to let W continue proccing on wards, but came up against another issue. We removed the ability to lifesteal off wards during preseason, and Blood Thirst’s heal is inconsistent with that change. This shifted the scales back toward standardizing W’s interaction with wards. While the loss of situational utility stings, it shouldn’t critically impact Aatrox’s strength since he can’t control when he has an enemy ward to attack.
W - Blood Thirst / Blood Price
Jax
R third-attack effect no longer procs against wards.
Changing Grandmaster’s Might to be consistent with the on-hit context above.
R - Grandmaster's Might
Jayce
Transform on-hit effects no longer proc against wards.
Changing Mercury Cannon / Mercury Hammer’s transform bonuses to be consistent with the on-hit context above.
R - Mercury Cannon / Mercury Hammer
Riven
Passive stacks no longer proc against wards.
Changing Runic Blade to be consistent with the on-hit context above.
Passive - Runic Blade
Mid-Lane Worlds Balance
We’re fast approaching the Worlds patch! (7.18, for reference.) Last patch marked the start of our preparation with light changes to 20-some champions across many positions and roles. That work continues with 7.16, and while a number of changes above fall into the Worlds prep bucket as well, we’re paying particular attention to mid lane today. It’s important to note that if we only tweaked the absolute top picks, others would soon raise as top contenders - keep that in mind if any of the names below seem to be coming out of left field. You can get the context for each champion individually below, but we wanted to let you know why we changed a bunch of mages (and Fizz) at the same time.
Cassiopeia
Mana per level increased. E base damage down, AP ratio increased.
Cassiopeia is known and picked for her ability to control her lane very well during early levels. We’re okay with her having some early kill pressure, but opting into the level 1 non-empowered “E-spam” strategy shouldn’t automatically win the lane.
Base stats
E - Twin Fang
Corki
Base attack damage decreased.
Now that Corki scales better into the late game with magic penetration, he doesn’t need to have such a strong early game.
Base stats
Fizz
E cooldown decreased.
When facing the enemies Fizz should excel against during early laning phase, the nimble Trickster is not faring so well so we’re giving him a bit of power in that front.
E - Playful / Trickster
Galio
R cooldown increased at earlier ranks; R ally damage reduction reduced at later ranks
When teams can coordinate around Hero's Entrance (hello pro players), Galio’s playmaking becomes too consistent and too strong. We're toning the how much he gets to do it on early game, along with his ability to make allies unkillable as the game goes on.
R - Hero's Entrance
LeBlanc
Q damage against minions decreased.
While there’s more comprehensive work to be done on LeBlanc, doing so this close to Worlds risks destabilizing the entire tournament. We have plans to revisit her later on but right now, we want to tackle her how much her wave-clear gives her room to roam. The Deceiver can burst entire minion waves using Shatter Orb passive, giving her the freedom to pay a visit to other lanes or Chain her combos (heh) on her laning opponent since there are no minions around to block Ethereal Chain.
Q - Shatter Orb
Orianna
W base damage decreased, buffer range with Q decreased. E shield decreased.
Orianna's strong laning phase and mid-game trades make her the best option when compared to other generalist mages. We want her to be picked for her unique properties rather than because she can brute-force everybody out through trades.
W - Command: Dissonance
E - Command: Protect
Syndra
Q AP ratio reduced. E AP ratio increased.
For someone with such high burst potential, Syndra deals a bit too much sustained damage.
Q - Dark Sphere
E - Scatter the Weak
Taliyah
Q mana cost increased.
Taliyah often gets to push her opponents in lane freely, getting to itemize straight into raw damage instead of solving the mana issues her counterparts have to deal with.
Q - Threaded Volley
Items
Ancient Coin Line
Mana coins restore less mana.
We recently double-buffed the Ancient Coin line by increasing the gold and mana bonuses provided by coin drops, then reworking its quest reward the following patch. These changes left Coin too strong overall. We’re pulling back on the mana it provides so supports like Soraka and Sona aren’t able to keep their lane partners perpetually healthy.
Enchantment: Cinderhulk
Combine cost up.
As tanks continue their return to jungle prominence, we’ve been keeping an eye on Cinderhulk. The strength Cinderhulk offers isn’t off the mark, but it’s coming online a little too early, getting tank junglers rolling faster than their non-Cinderhulk competition. Delaying Cinderhulk by a camp or so is just enough of a push to get tank scaling to a similar pace as other junglers.
Vision Ping
This one is long coming, but we're happy to say the "enemy vision here ping" is finally here! The ping hasn’t yet been integrated into the ping wheel - we’re looking into solutions that don't result in the UI looking like a pizza - but the functionality has made it to live. No more allied jungler running straight past a ward on their way to try to gank your lane.
Skin Splash Portraits
Your champion’s portrait in the HUD now uses your skin’s splash! (This is the big circle to the left of your abilities. Kill callouts, the minimap, etc. will still use base splashes for immediate recognizability.)
Things affected:
- EVERY
- SINGLE
- SKIN
In-Game Performance
We've made a bunch of performance optimizations! You should experience better frame rates across the game, particularly during teamfights and around giant herds of minions. More improvements to come over the next few patches!
Spectator Indicator Cleanup
Cleaning house on some extraneous visuals (for Spectator only).
While many UI indicators (the blue/red circles and lines) need to be super eye-grabbing for normal gameplay decisionmaking, a lot of them are adding too much visual noise for Spectator. This cleanup removes some of the less important ones.
Champion Select
The skin selection menu will now pop up as soon as you've locked your champion. No more waiting until the draft phase is over.
Free To Play Champion Rotation
The Free to Play Champion rotation will always be 10% of the current champion roster. Today, that means 14 champions, up from the longstanding 10.
Rotating Game Mode
All Random Ultra Rapid Fire (ARURF) is back from 8/11/17 12:00 PT to 8/24/17 11:59PM PT (Yes, the entire duration!) Enjoy superspeed cooldowns, infinite mana, blazing attack speeds, randomized champ select, and the return of Runeterra's most renowned manatee.
Some things to note:
- Along with the points made above, we've also boosted gold gains, movement speed, and tenacity to keep things Rapid Fire.
- In this mode, you can spam the custom Urf emote, which replaces the Mastery emote.
- Rerolls are shared with ARAM, so using one in either mode consumes it in the other. To compensate, we’ve increased the rate you rack up rerolls for the weekend. You should stack a reroll every game or two depending on how many champs you have unlocked.
- Many non-ultimate shield scalings are down by 50%. Don't worry, shields are still awesome.
Join in on the insanity and GLHF, URFers.
Bugfixes
- Fixed a bug where Twitch's R - Spray and Pray dealt two instances of damage to inhibitors and the Nexus if he attacked from slightly outside his normal basic attack range
- The damaging effects of Corrupting Potion, Deathfire Touch, Red Buff, and Challenging Smite now properly count as damage-over-time effects (see Kayn’s note above for why this matters)
- Fixed a bug where Rift Herald would hit both Nexus turrets simultaneously if spawned on the mid-lane
- Fixed a bug where Irelia casting Q - Blade Surge on the other side of a wall would cause damage but not bring Irelia over the wall.
- Heimerdinger's UPGRADE!!!’d Q - H-28Q Apex Turret’s beam attack no longer breaks for the rest of its duration if its target walks out of range during the beam attack’s wind-up
- Nautilus now properly stops if he collides with player-created terrain (ex. Anivia’s W - Crystallize) created in his path while pulling himself to Q - Dredge Line’s anchor
- Snow Day Singed’s Q - Poison Trail VFX have been adjusted to be more opaque
- Omega Squad Tristana's SFX have been restored during her dance and death animations
- Omega Squad Teemo's chromas now have proper mushroom VFX during the toss and bounce animation of R - Noxious Trap
- The hand trail VFX during Omega Squad Teemo's chroma's Q - Blinding Dart has been restored
- Poro Rider Sejuani's baby poro once again runs over to Bristle during Sejuani's death. *cue sad music*
- Nightbringer Yasuo no longer faces the wrong direction during his channel animation
- Vintage load screen border for Pumpkinhead Fiddlesticks has been restored
- The “Power Up” summoner icon is now centered properly in game lobbies and player profiles
- Arcade Corki’s E - Gatling Gun visuals no longer shoot sideways when under the effect of Lulu's W - Whimsy
- Master Chef Tahm Kench once again holds his knife and fork properly during all animations, like a true southern gentleman
- Honor level-up notifications will no longer pop in matchmaking, champ select, or the Honor ceremony because that was a tilter
Upcoming Skins & Chromas
The following skins will be released during patch 7.16:
In addition, Lancer Zero Hecarim debuts this patch as a Hextech Crafting exclusive!
The following chromas will be released during patch 7.16:
340 Comments
Well we have URF this weekend. Wonder if they will be happy or complain that is Random URF.
I remember months and months ago, as a Syndra main, saying when they were first testing Syndra changes that the Q nerfs (and then Q passive changes) would lead to more and more focus on her ult. At the same time, I predicted that this indirect R buff would lead to R nerfs, and that Riot would continue backing themselves into a corner on this issue until she's nothing more than another burst champ/veigar wannabe. At which point she'll be reworked because a champion centered around nothing but a point-click R isn't much fun to play as or against and that niche is already filled anyway.
Looks like we're right on schedule.
Syndra is looking less and less like the champion people originally fell in love with. Riot has done nothing to this champion but continue to nerf the parts of this champion that actually made her fun for the sake of preserving what is probably the least-loved aspect of the champion.
Spamming Q and throwing damage in every direction and manipulating that was what made her kit unique. Her R is not only the most gameplay-toxic part of her kit, it's also the least interesting part to use! Spamming Q and the trade-centric gameplay that makes is fun. Repositioning spheres with W to be threatening from multiple angles is fun. The positioning game between players that E creates is fun. And not only is it fun for the Syndra, all of these are full of counterplay and can be fun for her opponents, too.
Counting spheres and point-clicking? Not very interesting. Not very engaging. Is it a necessary tool on her kit? In our world of assassin/mobility creep, sure, that reliable burst plays an important role. But is the ult the part of her kit that makes her fun? No.
So why are we focusing her kit more and more onto the part with the least counterplay? Why are we focusing her kit more and more onto the part that's the least fun, both playing with and against it? The only answer I can come up with is that Riot doesn't understand this champion at even the most basic of levels. That no one on the gameplay team plays this champion, and no one bothered to even try to ask anyone that does play her what actually makes her a fun and unique champion.
This one is long coming, but we're happy to say the "enemy vision here ping" is finally here!
This has been long awaited and is much appreciated.
Now I just have to remember to bind it.
Every 2 weeks I come to see what the new rotating mode will be, and every 2 weeks I'm horribly horribly disappoi---
Wait, is that an URF mode? Oh hell yeah! lol
Visiting the comments for my daily salt intake
ARURF is so much better than URF imo. It allows everyone to (for the most part) experience a greater range of champions, finding hidden fun picks and strong picks at the same time. It also means that when you do find a generally 'Over-Powered' pick, it means more than if you had been spamming them every game.
No 
nerf? Did anyone see SKT vs KT Rolster? Game 1. Huni 1 shot Pawn's 2000 health Taliyah with just an R. His full-tank chogath did the most damage in the entire game, and ended up being banned for the rest of the series. I think there's something wrong when a full tank does the most dmg
Yeah that Fizz change is suuuuppppeeerrrr fair, thanks Riot. [slayer-jinx-unamused]
We should be able to trade skin shards. I'll trade my DJ Sona shard for a Spirit Guard Udyr. Also, can this years Victorious Skin be for Viktor? It would be....Viktorious.
If i spend my last reroll in arurf and i get 
what should i do? go to lane and die to all the op champs? or sit in spawn afk?
Arurf is just as Unbalanced as Normal Urf and Rito should really stop making modes random like ARSR, what kind of Sad excuse for a mode was that!? you could literally make the exact same mode in Custom games anytime you want!
The reason why i liked playing Urf was to play different champs and test wacky builds with them, but now i have to depend on luck that im able to try something at least once, basically in Arurf which ever team gets the more op champs will usually win while the other team has to suffer with champs that arent as good, Some champs were banned for a reason ya know. and worst of all you decide to give us anything close to urf when School is about to start again.
Still no new skin for warwick or yorick. And no star guardian urgot
Does anyone else think riot should update the cursor? Its always been that same cartoony gauntlet since forever ago, and it's just kind of out of place now IMO .
All bow down to Battle Boss 
!
So I am to believe that Hero's Entrance is available to quickly but Lux with her 30 second cannon isn't a bit hasty? Urgots 70 second virtually unstoppable execute that ignores shield isn't just up a little too often?
Is nobody talking about Cho? That trash can literally flash R and 1 shot any squishy in game while being the tankiest champ in a given game. Unreal man, banrate has skyrocketed and rito can't put 2+2 together and realize that stupid champ needs a NERF.
Given how you max shield last on orianna and max w second, those ori nerfs don't seem so bad at first but are actually pretty substantial when you think about it.
Whelp, there goes Riot nerfing a champion with an already abysmal win rate in solo queue again because she's played too often in LCS. Poor Taliyah. She already has a 47.72% win rate according to OP.GG. That's one heck of a huge nerf too.
I wish Riot wouldn't base their buffs and nerfs off of LCS and organized play so much.
's Q bug has been known for weeks now but is not listed in the bugfixes. Is anyone working on it or is just going to have to deal with his Q going on cooldown but not giving him anything if he's standing on his Spirit Blade?
Cass's update summary is wrong. Her E was changed, not Q.
Riot, please nerf the gold coin's gold generation. You should really take a look at the numbers comparison for the second tier version in comparison to Frost Queen's and Targons. It's insanity how much gold the gold coin offers for doing next to nothing. Mana, while a problem, was not the main issue with the item and the reason why most supports are now using it. Gold Coin forces you to be near minions, doing nothing, while the opposing items force you to fight for your gold. How do you not see this as a problem?
I actually have a question though, why does it take so much effort to install the patch sometimes? It freezes and doesn't even start loading or finishes loading and won't switch over to the client even after waiting 10 minutes, and I have to try over and over again to install the patch. I'm sure others are having this issue, just thought I'd try to make riot aware of this problem. I even have the hextech repair tool and that doesn't seem to help. I'm running everything on windows 10 just in case that's relevant.