Official Patch 5.14 Notes Released!

Introduction/Summary

Check out the latest and greatest in the patch note series! This time around, AP Ezreal's been brought back down to earth, and Elise finally kicked back with some new buffs. Azir got a pity nerf courtesy of the LCS, solo queue players will likely be a bit upset. Check out the scoop below!

Buffs: Ahri, Darius, Ekko, Elise, Tahm Kench;
Nerfs: Azir, Rumble, Ryze, Runeglaive (Bai Ezreal);
Tweaks: Miss Fortune, Evelynn;

Patch 5.14 notes

BY PWYFF AND SCARIZARD

Ahoy mateys,

… That's about the extent of our pirate references for patch 5.14. We actually negotiated for a pirate-themed foreword because even though Bilgewater isn't really about pirates, we thought there was more creative space than saying ahoy and mateys.

Alas.

With patch 5.14 comes some follow-up work on Runeglaive, along with a bloodthirsty new support item in the form of Zeke's Harbinger (who has also punted Zeke's Herald out of the game, read the context for more information on that). Hopefully with our changes, both items will solidify their identities within the game and we'll begin to see some real choice and diversity as a result of their use. We've also got our usual array of balance tweaks to certain oppressive champions (Ryze, Azir) and some of the more sadder ones (Elise, Tahm Kench).

Oh, and there's an event.

… Swab the poop deck!

P.S. This patch is going to be a bit larger than most, as we've got a lot of stuff in here. You've been warned!

 Chris "Pwyff" Tom &  Patrick "Scarizard" Scarborough

Bilgewater: Burning Tides

Our next League of Legends event, Bilgewater: Burning Tides, kicks off this patch! Dive into the port city of Bilgewater with a host of new features that'll be rolling out over the next few weeks, including:

• Champion updates for Gangplank and Miss Fortune
• Six Bilgewater-themed skins
• New Bilgewater wards and icons
• The Butcher's Bridge ARAM map
• Black Market Brawlers, our latest Featured Game Mode
• A special guest announcer for all game modes
• New music on Summoner's Rift and Butcher's Bridge

Keep an eye on the Bilgewater: Burning Tides microsite for updates as the event unfolds.

HUD Update

The HUD has been updated! Check out our HUD launch microsite for more information!

Champions

Gangplank

Gangplank, the Saltwater Scourge, will be updated with the launch of 5.14. Head to his update article for details on his new look and kit!

Miss Fortune

Miss Fortune's been updated! Head to her update article for a preview of her new visuals and check below for details on her balance updates.

General

VISUAL UPDATEMiss Fortune and her skins have received a visual update, including new models and textures (except for Arcade Miss Fortune), new VFX and animations, new spell icons and an updated base splash!

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Q - Double Up

DOUBLED DOWNNow deals 150% damage if the first shot kills an enemy unit

DOESN'T FAVOR FOOLSBounce logic is now more predictable; Double Up will attempt to find a target directly behind the first. If no target is found, will go to the closest target in a 60 degree angle.

BOUNCE ANGLE100 degrees ⇒ 60 degrees

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W - Impure Shots

REMOVEDGROG-SOAKED BULLETSNo longer applies Grievous Wounds

SET SAILOn activation grants Strut's Movespeed bonus

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E - Make It Rain

SLOW25/35/45/65% ⇒ 40/45/50/55/60%

Ahri

Charm always had a weird interaction with Monsters. Maybe they're shy? Maybe they're not used to the attention? Whatever the case may be, we don't want Ahri players to worry about resetting or 'bugging out' a camp while charming, so we've fixed that to make it easier when grabbing a buff or otherwise casually feasting on the essence of your friendly jungle monsters.

E - Charm

ACT NATURALCharm no longer causes monsters to freak out, regen, or otherwise act unnaturally

Azir

Passive's attack speed portion shifted to W. E no longer knocks up.

THE CONTEXT IS GIVEN. True to his nature as emperor, Azir has a habit of making everything about himself. Specifically in professional play where his massive range of threat and ability to single-handedly control battles of any shape or size necessitates the game be played around him. From champion select to laning to teamfights, Azir's dominating position makes it difficult for his enemies to interact.

Our changes this patch are all in the name of giving his opponents a way to play around Azir's almost impenetrable posturing. The approach here is twofold; removing his ability to turn the tables onto assassins and divers alike broadens his champion-specific counter-picks, while shuffling around his Attack Speed to ensure his explosive mid-game is kept down for a little longer before his ascendancy to god-hood takes hold.

Passive - Shurima's Legacy

REMOVEDWILL OF THE EMPERORNo longer gains attack speed based on Azir's Cooldown Reduction

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W - Arise!

NEWDROP AND GIVE ME 20 TO 60Now passively gains 20/30/40/50/60% Attack Speed

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E - Shifting Sands

REMOVEDSHIFTING POWERNo longer knocks up the first enemy champion hit

Darius

E provides vision when cast.

Apprehend now gives vision to help you react to the things you grab (particularly over walls), or to show you just how far off you were. This'll give you and your allies a little more time to pounce on the unlucky carries you drag in - or more time to jump away in fear if your haul yields an Amumu to the middle of your team.

E - Apprehend

NEWLOOK BEFORE YOU REAPNow briefly grants vision in the area around the pull

Ekko

Q cost down. E Cooldown reduced.

While not the darkest timeline, we've arrived in a place where Ekko's much weaker in his intended role than we'd like. Basically, building tons of damage and smacking people into the next season's not as rewarding as grabbing a Cinderhulk and CC'ing entire teams with impunity. While we're not directly addressing that here, we're first looking to bring up the baseline level of power for Ekko's DPS builds before evaluating how (if at all!) to bring Tank Ekko in line.

Q - Timewinder

COST60/70/80/90/100 mana ⇒ 50/60/70/80/90 mana

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E - Phase Dive

COOLDOWN15/13/11/9/7 ⇒ 13/11.5/10/8.5/7

Elise

Stun duration up at all ranks. Spiderlings deal magic damage, scale better, move faster, and actually work.

We'll be up front here: Elise has proven a challenge for us to balance for quite some time - both during her meteoric rise to the top of the jungle food-chain and dominance for two seasons, as well as her absence so far in 2015. At first, we poked around at making a number of feel improvements and quality of life fixes for some of Elise's more awkward cases, but after patches of very little movement it's become pretty clear that the spider queen just isn't succeeding at doing her job.

So let's talk more about that. What is Elise's "job"? Amidst the toolbox of tricks and mechanics within her kit overall, she's an early-pressure jungler that punishes mistakes and poor positioning. When working, she instills fear into her opponents at the thought of setting up ganks or taking objectives without the proper vision and awareness and can turn the tide of a game off of a single cocoon. This patch we're 'ripping the band-aid off', so to speak. Letting her access more of her signature pick-potential as well as more follow-up from her spiderlings in combat, Elise can finally start to secure kills and map control in the dominating fashion many of her subjects have come to expect.

E - Cocoon

STUN DURATION1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds ⇒ 1.6/1.7/1.8/1.9/2 seconds

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R - Spider Form

SPIDERLING DAMAGE ON-HIT10/20/30/40 physical damage ⇒10/20/30/40 magic damage

SPIDERLING RATIO ON-HIT0.1 ability power ⇒ 0.15 ability power

SPIDERLING MOVEMENT SPEED345 ⇒ 355

ITSY BITSYFixed a bug where Spiderlings wouldn't move or attack for 4 seconds after the initial cast of Rappel

Evelynn

Q damage down. R slow up.

Eve's changes in 5.7 certainly hit the mark of making her earlygame skirmishes pack more of a stiletto-wielding wallop, but they've pushed her too far into 'murdering everyone relentlessly' territory. We're keeping the early damage changes so she doesn't return to the darkness indefinitely, but trading some of her solo-kill power for stronger catch potential, especially when backed up by a team.

Q - Hate Spike

DAMAGE40/55/70/85/100 ⇒ 40/50/60/70/80

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R - Agony's Embrace

SLOW30/50/70% ⇒ 40/60/80%

Kalista

Updating Kalista's recommended items to reflect her more popular build and dependency on Attack Speed and cleaning up an issue we introduced in 5.13.

General

NOW WITH MORE HURRICANERecommended items updated

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Q - Pierce

QUEUE YOUR QNow properly queues up to cast after her basic attack completes

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W - Sentinel

QUEUE YOUR W?Now properly queues up to cast after her basic attack completes

Rumble

Q and R don't damage untargetable enemies. Q can be outranged.

Over 3 years ago, Rumble's Flamespitter that changed it to apply damage-over-time effect to give him greater control of his harassment tool, especially when turning or stuck in minion waves. While this greatly improved Rumble's usability, it also functionally increased his DPS by 33% on his highest damage ability. Needless to say, this was a pretty big deal.

So what's that history lesson got to do with 5.14? Well, the downsides of making a DoT were some weird cases where people thought they could escape the 'last tick' of Flamespitter, blowing flashes or movement abilities at the last second only to die a fiery death. We're still investigating if Rumble might need heavier changes as a result of 5.13's AP Refactor (we'll get back to you on that), but cleaning up some edge-cases and removing traps keep his counterplay where we'd like it to be.

Q - Flamespitter

PHANTOM PAINNo longer damages untargetable enemies

OUT OF THE FRYING PANNo longer damages enemies who outrange Flamespitter's distance

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R - The Equalizer

PHANTOM PAINNo longer damages untargetable enemies

Ryze

Passive stack duration down. Q damage down. E ratio and damage down as well.

Not much to see here, just toning down Ryze's damage in a few areas, particularly his early-game spikes in the laning phase. We still view Ryze as a hyper-carry that needs team support to make it to his ultra-rapid-fire lategame, but the compensation buffs we gave him for removing the 'Perma-Root' in 5.12 went too far in making him self sufficient. Hypercarries without any exploitable windows are no bueno, so we're ensuring Ryze has the appropriate amount of risk for the reward you get for letting him reach his super-charged, spell-slingin' slaughter-state.

Passive - Arcane Mastery

STACK DURATION10 seconds ⇒ 6 seconds

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Q - Overload

DAMAGE60/95/130/165/200 ⇒ 60/85/110/135/160

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E - Spell Flux

DAMAGE50/66/82/98/116 ⇒ 36/52/68/84/100

RATIO0.3 ability power ⇒ 0.2 ability power

Tahm Kench

Q damage up. R's passive damage increased. R's active cooldown reduced.

League's newest river devil's bitten off a bit more than he can chew with early performances pointing towards the weaker side of the spectrum. This shouldn't be too hard to swallow - as a new champion with lots of utility loaded into interacting with allies, players need to get a taste for playing with and against Kench before we'll see his true power emerge.

All that said, we're tossing Tahmmy Boy a few crumbs to help him when he's falling behind. Some better trades in lane and more opportunities to test the waters with his powerful Teamwork-Teleport should help gauge if he needs a little more cook-time before devouring to his over-sized heart's content.

Q - Tongue Lash

DAMAGE80/115/150/185/220 ⇒ 80/125/170/215/260

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R - Abyssal Voyage

BONUS DAMAGE RATIO4/5/6% bonus health ⇒ 4/6/8% bonus health

COOLDOWN160/130/100 seconds ⇒ 120/110/100 seconds

Vayne

for your trumble

Not much here other than some re-tuning to Tumble's responsiveness. We're not sure how much this actually helps, but ideally you should feel better about rolling around and shooting folks with your crossbow. Enjoy!

Q - Tumble

COOLDOWNBegins upon hitting a target ⇒ Begins upon launching the attack

GOT THE RESETTumble's attack will be consumed even if the target becomes invulnerable mid-flight

Yasuo

Q3 applies on-hits correctly.

Yasuo's Whirlwind wasn't working the same as the other two casts of Steel Tempest. So we fixed it! Have fun using a tornado to set your enemies on fire.

Q - Steel Tempest

PROC YOU LIKE A HURRICANESteel Tempest's Whirlwind now properly applies on hit effects to the first target

Items

Hunter's Machete

Mana regeneration up.

Riot Games: helping mages with their early clears since 5.14. While Runeglaive unlocks a lot of potential for mage junglers in the mid game (with these changes, RG will probably trivialise the jungle post-purchase, but that's a Good Thing), we've heard your feedback that those mage junglers have to get there in the first place.

It's worth highlighting here: that's not +1 mana per 5 seconds, that's +1 mana per second, which is actually a significant buff for mana-hungry junglers in the early game. This has the secondary effect of also buffing other spell-based junglers like Pantheon and Wukong, which is also something we're looking forward to.

MANA REGENERATION3 mana per second while in combat with monsters⇒ 4 mana per second while in combat with monsters

Enchantment - Runeglaive

AoE damage only applies on monsters. First monster takes double damage. No longer converts the basic attack to magic damage.

Ah, Runeglaive. Let's talk about the things you do. Our goals with Runeglaive (unlocking mage junglers) are still the same, but we're taking a different approach. First, while we're not directly opposed to laners picking up jungle items, we still need to see these items primarily used in the jungle so we can have a real understanding if they're accomplishing their intended goals. By pushing Runeglaive's power back into its jungle clearing speed (along with the machete buffs above), we can get a better assessment of what this item's doing for mage junglers, and then we can adjust accordingly.

On the topic of the changes themselves: while this certainly reduces Runeglaive's PvP combat power, our decision to push its damage onto monster camps also highlights an important place for Mage junglers to exist: clearing their camps quickly so they can be scrapping on the map. In other words, this RG should unlock more map presence for mage junglers, not so much just being a raw damage power spike.

REMOVEDTOO SOONGLAIVENo longer converts basic attack damage into magic damage

AOE DAMAGEOnly applies on monsters

NEWKABOOMGLAIVEDeals double damage to the first monster hit

NEW

Zeke's Harbinger

Zeke's Herald no longer exists. Zeke's Harbinger binds with an ally for brief windows of super-charged combat.

Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about auras?

In trying to balance auras, not only do you have to account for the super-strong case (five friends stacked up together) but, on the flip side, you've also got to be thinking about the times when it's just you and a buddy. Keeping an aura balanced for both cases is often a difficult challenge and, even if we can solve for that, usually leaves us wondering how to add satisfying gameplay beyond… an aura. This was the first reason we decided to take on a Zeke's Herald remodel when bringing more support itemization to the scene.

Second topic: let's get some goals in here! We wanted to build a high-impact “let's get some hurt in the mix" item that still identified itself as a support tool. Like how Mikael's is the item you buy when you know there's one mate you need to protect, Zeke's Harbinger should be the aggressive counterpart for when you want to smack some faces. As an additional goal here, we really wanted to amp up the satisfaction for the support - something that the old Zeke's Herald suffered from (unless you really liked auras, we won't deny that).

Third topic (whew this is getting long): why not just make a new item and leave Zeke's in? We very lightly poked this topic with Runeglaive but might as well address it now. Beyond the issue of leaving an extremely difficult to balance item in the game (particularly one that is relatively weak until the ‘right' team comp taps into it [and then it becomes very, very strong]), when something becomes so niche in its optimal use it can quickly become a trap item for players believing all items (and item premiums) were created equal. We do want to support the ability for players to make smart, contextualised decisions based on the state of the game, but can't do so by leaving really specialised things lying around. Instead, our hope is to either focus an item so that it becomes a clear choice for a broad enough set of champions (see: Black Cleaver) or we can normalise and push out a wider swathe of options that are actually supportive of Good Decisions (see: our ability power item changes).

BUILD PATHGlacial Shroud + Amplifying Tome + Amplifying Tome + 480 gold

MANA250

ARMOR35

ABILITY POWER50

COOLDOWN REDUCTION10%

UNIQUE ACTIVEBind to target ally. This will remove all other Conduits on your target (60 second cooldown).

UNIQUE PASSIVE - CONDUITWhen within 1000 units of each other, you and your ally generate Charges, stacking until 100 are reached and lasting for 8 seconds. Attacking or using abilities generates extra Charges. At maximum Charges, causing damage consumes all Charges and increases you and your ally's Ability Power by 20% and Critical Strike chance by 50% for 6 seconds.

Summoner's Rift

Dragon and Baron Encounters

Dragon and Baron timers are now updated instantly for both teams, regardless if you have vision of their death.

We're going to kick things off with the origin story of a discussion. It all started when we were talking about Dragon / Baron encounters and how teams could often track their deaths by a variety of ambient indicators - like the global Dragon death sound, when opponents got that orange Dragon +1 visual effect, the appearance of Baron buff, when Baron buff ran out, etc - even if they didn't have vision of the objective death in the first place.

It was an interesting conversation overall (you'll have to trust us on this), but beyond that it lead us to a couple conclusions: one, since these things were easy to track if you just “knew" what to look for, the best way to ‘hide' an objective death was to get everyone off the map and out of enemy vision before you took out the baddie (super obtuse). Two, and this gets more big-picture, we had to ask ourselves what we wanted to be rewarding in taking objectives. There's certainly something to be said about maintaining vision and map control, but that should be on a level playing field as opposed to one team snowballing their previous Dragon / Baron takedown into a serious advantage. Our hope is this will encourage teams to be more proactive about their Barons and Dragons - each time they come up.

INSTANT FEEDBACKDragon and Baron timers are updated instantly for both teams, regardless if you have vision of the objective at the time of its death

NEWGRRAAAAAAHHHWARRRBLEDragon and Baron now have new global death sounds

Rift Scuttler

Scuttles

Consistent Scuttles. The summary here is really that all kinds of soft crowd control should weaken Scuttles as well.

EMOTIONAL SCUTTLESCharms and Taunts will lock Scuttles in place instead of making her confused

SENSITIVE SCUTTLESCharms, Taunts, Fears and Flees will all weaken Scuttles like other hard CC does

CRAB BATTLEAatrox's Q - Dark Flight now properly removes Scuttles' resistances

Death Recap

We found this story pretty funny, so we're going to tell it. Basically last patch we didupdate a lot of the Death Recap system so it would play nice with champion damage, but we didn't fix a bug where Death Recap had inverted the priority listing for damage types. In other words, Death Recap was properly calculating the damage you were taking from champion spells, but it was not stack ranking them properly. Instead of displaying the top three highest sources of damage, it was showing you the bottom three.

So… yeah. Fixed.

REVIVE STILL DOESN'T DEAL 12 DAMAGEFixed a bug where Death Recap was showing the lowest three sources of damage, rather than the highest

Bugfixes

• Syndra can no longer pick up Baron with W - Force of Will
• Zilean's Q - Time Bomb now properly interrupts enemy recalls if cast directly on them
• Fixed a few cases where debuff particles (ex. Exhaust) persisted even after the effect was purged with Cleanse

Upcoming Skins

The following skins will be released at various times during Bilgewater: Burning Tides:

Captain Fortune

Cutthroat Graves

Cutpurse Twisted Fate

Sea Hunter Aatrox

Rogue Admiral Garen

Corsair Quinn