[Patch 15.2] LoL 25.S1.2 Patch Notes

January 23, 2025

Mythmaker Jhin Mythmaker Nami Mythmaker Jarvan IV Prestige Mythmaker Cassiopeia Three Honors Shen

Champion Buffs

1. Evelynn
2. Master Yi
3. Kayn (Blue)
4. Smolder
5. Yuumi

• Mel tool tips and stats: HP: 600 + 93 growth HP regen: 6 + 0.55 growth Mana: 480 + 28 growth Mana regen: 9 + 0.9 growth AD: 54 + 3.3 growth Armor: 21 + 5.2 growth Magic resist: 30 + 1.3 growth Move speed: 330 Attack range: 550 Acquistion range: 625 Base AS: 0.625 AS ratio: 0.3 AS growth: 2.5% Attack windup: 15.6% Collision radius: 65 Selection height: 85 Selection radius: 120 Pathing radius: 35

Champion Nerfs

1. Cassiopeia
2. Tahm Kench

System Buffs

1. Domination
2. Yun-Tal

System Nerfs

1. Bloody Roses EXP
2. Voracious Atakahn Effect

System Adjustments

1. LDR
2. Voracious Atakhan will be more frequent

Overall

• As mentioned yesterday, we don’t think Feats or Atakhan are in the right spots (and in some cases like T3 boots, weak), but looking to keep certain more controversial elements slightly weaker than what we think is balanced to allow players to get used to them, especially as a lot of players don’t read the communications we put out

Atakhan

• We’re looking to make Voracious Atakhan a little more frequent as he’s showing up in less than 15% of games, but also reduce his effect’s power a bit as his effect is more warping than Ruinous
• Voracious has been showing up in the few Pro games this patch and looking pretty strong, but we’ll continue monitoring
• We know some people will say “extremely OP”, and while we agree it’s strong we also want to give it some time and exposure for counterplay to be developed (trading objectives, wait it out, other, etc.)
• We’re also looking to nerf Bloody Roses a bit more; they’re not a core part of what’s driving gameplay depth in the new package, so trying to put them at the minimum power level that’s still satisfying for them to be picked up

Domination Runes

• Several Domination users lost power from the replacement of the Domination minors
• We’re going to give that row a buff, but not so much to fully make up for the loss of the adaptive, in order to help those users explore other options (Sorcery, First Strike, etc.)
• After that, we’ll follow up on specific champions who are still underpowered
• We’re starting this patch with a few of those like Blue Kayn and Evelynn who were disproportionately hit

ADC Items and Tanks

• We’ve heard a lot of discussion around tanks recently; we’re going to continue monitoring but also making Tanks’ natural opponent ADC’s a bit better at killing them
• We’re looking at making Yun Tal and Lord Dominic’s Regards sharper at Tank busting without making them strictly much more powerful
• In their current construction, the Tank busting item builds are a bit too bad at killing Tanks
• This will help to differentiate that build line from things that are better at killing squishies like Collector, etc.

Tahm Kench

• Tahm has been slowly creeping up over time to be pretty strong and anytime he’s over 50% WR, he tends to be pretty frustrating
• So we’re looking to take him down a bit

Cassiopeia

• Since Cassio doesn’t have feet, she couldn’t use Feets, so we gave her a buff pre-emptively
• This buff ended up being a lot stronger than the actual Feats rewards, so we’re pulling it back

Other changes were mainly focused on particular outliers

Swiftplay

• In Swiftplay, Atakhan is showing up in Voracious form a lot more frequently than in Classic, so we’re reducing his frequency there by a moderate amount

• Additionally, we’re removing explicit Champion gold hooks from the rubber banding mechanisms to not punish this particular type of reward over say, giving a champion AD

• Other changes here are intended to be routine balance adjustments

• Item Changes

• Looking to increase the relative power budget of the Armor Pen stat on both Lord Doms and Mortal Reminder

• At the same time, we're sharping the differences between Yun Tal and Collector, by making Yun Tal more about sustained damage and Collector more about burst damage

• The intention is that if a champ opts into YunTal -> IE -> LDR build it would feel notably different against tanks than 3 item builds without LDR

Feats of Strength

• Yesterday, I forgot to mention that the First Blood is changing to be First to 3 kills! (Thanks to the folks who worked over the weekend to get this out)
• We tried going first to 5, but that led to visualization and mindshare concerns with players tracking 2 Feats at once, etc.

Atakhan

• We're further nerfing Roses as we're trying to reduce as much invisible power, as well as nerf both Atakhan's forms slightly
• For Voracious Atakhan he is showing up a lot in Pro Play and looking quite strong there, but not as much in normal play
• We're looking to narrow the difference in appearance between the two, so having him show up more in normal play and a bit less in Pro Play
• At the same time, we're looking to make him weaker; by increasing the tradeoff for using his buff reward
• If the enemy is expending resources to force you to withdraw, we think they should be rewarded a bit more than currently for it (we still think this clearly nets out positive for the Atakhan team), so we're increasing the reward from 100 >>> 200g
• We don't want to go so far that players feel like it's hurting them to use the buff though
• Atakhan bot vs top rate is looking pretty good at ~55% bot and 45% top, so we're not looking to chance it at this time

Minion Changes

• It's still early to tell the effects of the minion changes and there are a lot of players in high levels of play trying to discover optimal wave stack patterns
• It doesn't seem like there is much discernable difference in gold compared to the previous patch, at 5, 10, 15 min, it's the same and at 20 minutes players on average have ~3 less CS, which is not much

Viktor

• Adding a Viktor nerf into the patch as well
• He's been sporting pretty strong performance for a while, despite the influx of new players on him
• Looking to take a bit of damage out

Check out everything you need to know about the new season: https://www.tacter.com/lol/guides/patch-151-lol-151-patch-notes-51329cca