[Patch 14.18] LoL 14.18 Patch Notes

According to Riot’s patch schedule, League of Legends Patch 14.18 is expected to go live on September 11, 2024. Patch 14.18 will head to Oceanic servers first, with other servers slowly receiving it throughout the day.

Here are the key timings of Patch 14.18 for your server:

3 AM PT (NA) 5 AM GMT (EUW) 3 AM CET (EUNE) 8 AM KST (Korea) When patching begins, there’ll be a few hours of downtime, and matchmaking queues will be taken offline approximately three hours beforehand.

Changes for Worlds 2024 Many changes coming in patch 14.18 are aimed at balancing the game around professional play. This means changes to champions like Jax, Rell, and Gnar, who have seen a fair amount of play at the highest level.

ADC nerfs One class, in particular, is getting nerfed in patch 14.18 thanks to a nerf to Bloodthirster and a rework to Fleet Footwork, leaving ADCs a bit weaker than they were before.

Champion Buffs

1. Gnar
2. Jarvan IV
3. Jax

Champion Nerfs

1. Rell

Champions Adjusted

System Buffs

1. Turret Fortifications

System Nerfs

1. Bloodthirster

System Adjustments

1. Immortal Shieldbow
2. Luden's Companion
3. Shadowflame
4. Stormsurge
5. Trinity Force
6. Fleet Footwork

It's 14.18! The World's patch is here

A few changes are still in flux. I'm going to talk role by role here.

Aurora:

• We're optimistic that the issue with Aurora and Chronobreak will be resolved by patch day and so we're hopeful that Aurora will be enabled on the Worlds patch

As it's played out, Pros and Elite players have been extremely good at capitalizing on her R engage range and we're taking some of the training wheels off in enabling these types of engages and picks now that players are a lot better at her. She has W to enable some of these tricky engages and we'd like her to be a bit more reliant to pull those off.

The 700 >>> 450 wall jump change will mean that most of the large walls will no longer be able to be jumped (only the thin ones).

Her jump distance on pressing R without a wall is also being reduced.

Players will need to be much more selective about their engages now and her ult will lock down champions for less time, which will give her slightly less time at lower ranks to R -> back portal assassinate and portal back (or at least put a tighter time pressure on that play). We expect Fleet nerfs to impact Aurora more in top lane and harm her ability to be flexed

Systems:

• Lane Swaps: As League has matured, players and teams have gotten much better at utilizing and resisting lane swaps as well as min-maxing laning phases. This has gotten to the point where teams are willing to go down 3-4 plates to avoid certain matchups which results in low interaction states.

Viewers don't sign up to watch 3v0's and I don't think Pro Players are signing up to play that either.

The changes here are making taking the first plate in top take twice as long, while the plates that are dropped in bot lane are going to be far more significant, especially off the first crash.

• AP Items: Systemically, we're looking to buff some mage burst items to bring them up to Liandrys power level.

We currently believe Liandrys is not too strong, but that the other items are too weak; or not shaped in the right ways; the Stormsurge threshold is being reduced here to make it easier for Mages to proc (over melee champions who typically have less frequent, more bursty trades). We're bringing the other items up to that level (Liandrys, Lich, Horizon, etc.)

• AD Ecosystem: Fleet is receiving a big nerf for ranged champions; overall we think this is doing a lot to make it hard to assail ADC's in midlane especially.

We also overnerfed the rune for melees and so a bunch of these changes are to counteract some of those nerfs somewhat (melee healing is mostly back to where it was before)

Additionally, there are some nerfs to BT and Shieldbow for ranged. In general, we think ADC's are too durable holistically, while the melees who build these items are overall fine.

We've seen sentiment that this is a gutting of the items which seems a bit strong of a take... BT has been a bit too strong on certain champions for a while and we're not intending to make the items weak, just a little more balanced.

Top:

• In top, we're trying to add a few more situational picks in Malphite, Jax (buffs undecided currently), Gnar (though this is mostly compensating fleet nerfs), Shen.

Rumble will be receiving a nerf and Nasus is mostly unchanged for Top; we expect him to be an effective situational counterpick there

Jungle:

• In jungle, we have a good diversity of champions in AP, Tanks, Enchanters and Fighters (Vi). However we're looking to get a bit more variety in there and tapping down some of the top champions.

We'd like to see Viego, J4, Xin balance out the roster a little more AD wise, so that AP champions don't feel as pinched about their pairings.

Mid:

• Mid is having a lot of changes here; we're getting Ahri back in the meta and some indirect buffs to other champions like Syndra, Ori, etc.

We've also buffed a few champs recently that should be situationally viable; Ryze, Liss, TF, etc.

Of course, some of the ADC's in mid are being directly hit (Smolder, Zeri, Corki) and Aurora is expected to make an appearance as well. Azir is expected to be hit by Fleet nerfs, but he has some ready to go replacements in Conqueror and some situational answers in the meta as well that are being directly and indirectly buffed.

Overall, we hope Mid has a lot of shakeups.

Bot:

• Overall, the bot lane meta is quite utility focused as many carries are in mid lane mean that bot can afford to bring less damage

We're aiming to add a little bit of Jinx back in the meta and some increases to Samira's early damage to help with her trading and all-ins.

MF as one of the top champs is getting a nerf to both her first item and her base AD, not looking to make huge swings here and we still want her to be present in the meta.

Varus was overbuffed on the previous patch and so we're scaling it back

Ziggs has also been pretty prevalent with all of the AD mid action, but we expect his presence to reduce with a reduction of those AD mids and a direct nerf.

Support:

• Overall the support meta is in a decent spot. While ranged supports aren't as prevalent in the meta (other than Senna), they're still doing quite well in solo queue, so we're bringing most of the top champions down as a result

Rell and Leona are receiving direct nerfs, but we are buffing Lulu as she had a little bit of room there.

I won't be doing another preview tomorrow as this entails (mostly) the full changeslists. There will still be a few changes as the patch locks, but here's to an exciting Worlds!