NERFPLZ.LOL Official Patch 13.19 Notes Released!

Summary:

Nerfs: Azir, Briar, Leblanc, Rek'Sai, Renekton, Zeri

Buffs: Galio, Gangplank, Jhin, Lee Sin, Lissandra, Nunu & Willump, Pyke, Syndra, Twitch

Champions

Azir

Q cooldown increased.

Last patch we changed Crown of the Shattered Queen in hopes of nerfing the item for Pro play while maintaining its power level in solo queue. That said, we still want to be cautious around Azir taking an overly dominant position at Worlds this year. Here's a light nerf to his early laning to open up more counterplay against him. This will make an Azir pick a dedication to late game power without smooth sailing through the laning phase.

Q - Conquering Sands

Cooldown: 12/10.5/9/7.5/6 seconds ⇒ 14/12/10/8/6 seconds

Attack speed growth decreased. W healing decreased, damage against minions and monsters increased, maximum percent health damage against minions and monsters decreased. Various quality of life changes and bugfixes.

While Briar on release looked quite weak, her power level has increased as players have learned the in(t)s and outs of her kit and item builds. We're reducing her healing once she gets a few items, especially against jungle monsters, to give opponents a better shot at bringing down a fed Briar. On top of that, we're adding a host of quality of life changes and bug fixes, including a frenzy bar! Now it should be easier to tell how much time is left to activate Snack Attack.

Base Stats

Attack Speed Growth: 2.5% ⇒ 2.3%

Q - Head Rush

newLogic Update: Q is now properly tagged as an attack reset for interactions like Hail of Blades

W - Blood Frenzy

newShow Me the Fury: Added a Fury Bar to display the remaining duration of Frenzy
Tooltip Update: W - Blood Frenzy's tooltip now clarifies that casting W does not remove or replace the empowered Blood Frenzy granted by R.

W - Snack Attack

Healing: 35/42.5/50/57.5/65% ⇒ 36/42/48/54/60%
Increased Damage Against Minions and Monsters: 20% ⇒ 10%
Maximum Percent Missing Health Damage Against Minions and Monsters: 500 ⇒ 400
Bugfix: Fixed a bug that caused the percent missing health damage to be able to critically strike.
newSlow Down There: Added a short minimum cooldown after casting Snack Attack to prevent double casts with high haste builds.

E - Chilling Scream

Bugfix: Fixed a bug where knocked back enemies would sometimes not be stunned after hitting player-created terrain.

R - Certain Death

newINCOMING!: Pinging R now tells teammates which enemies are in range.
Bugfix: Fixed a bug where Briar would become stuck attacking the wrong targets if Certain Death's target died during the cast time.

Miscellaneous

Challenges: Briar is now properly tagged as a Noxian champion for Challenges.
Item Recommendations: Briar's recommended items have been updated.
Rune Recommendations: Briar's recommended runes have been updated.

Galio

R cooldown decreased.

Galio mid is currently weak in all skill brackets and has room for some more power. Since he's already successfully fulfilling his role as an anti-mage in lane, we'll be buffing him in a way that increases his general power without altering his matchups. We're targeting his R cooldown as it's currently quite high compared to most other globals, and we want to give Galio players more opportunities to use this defining ability to impact the map.

R - Hero's Entrance

Cooldown: 200/180/160 seconds ⇒ 180/160/140 seconds

Gangplank

R cooldown decreased, Death's Daughter upgrade slow increased, Raise Morale upgrade movement speed increased.

Gangplank is an underperforming top laner whose raw damage numbers can't really get much higher than they already are. So instead we're giving him some power in his more unique niches: ultimate upgrades and his ability to affect two parts of the map at once. Some of his tooltips are hooked up in weird ways, so the tooltips for his upgrades won't be updated until the next patch.

R - Cannon Barrage

Cooldown: 180/160/140 seconds ⇒ 170/150/130 seconds
Upgrade - Death's Daughter Slow: 60% for 1 second ⇒ 75% for 1 second
Upgrade - Raise Morale Movement Speed: 30% for 2 seconds ⇒ 40% for 2 seconds

Jhin

R minimum physical damage increased.

Last patch we identified Jhin as an underperforming champion who doesn't find significant success in solo queue or pro play. However, we knew we were buffing Stormrazor that patch, so we elected to wait and see how those changes affected him. We think he's still a bit below the bar so we're providing him with some more power this patch. We're seriously ramping up his ult damage for two reasons: First, where possible, every champion should have a reliably powerful ultimate so that even if you're having a bad game, you can rely on a long cooldown window of power to try to get back into the game. Second, Jhin is canonically someone who wants to murder, so it's important that his damage is up to snuff.

R - Curtain Call

Minimum Physical Damage: 50/125/200 (+25% total AD) ⇒ 64/154/244 (+25% total AD)

LeBlanc

Attack speed ratio decreased, attack speed growth increased, AD growth decreased, mana growth decreased, mana regeneration growth decreased. W magic damage increased. E magic damage increased.

LeBlanc's core build has shifted into a manaless AD build that turns her into a very frustrating top lane split pusher. If she wants to build like a fighter, then she should also have meaningful mana constraints which we’ll be introducing here. Meanwhile, mage builds can rely on bonus mana from sources like Lost Chapter and Luden's Tempest. Since nerfing her baseline mana pool and even her late game attack damage is a nerf to her mage power level, we're giving her compensation in the form of some AP ratios. The change to her attack speed ratio and attack speed growth will result in identical attacks per second for LeBlanc unless she acquires sources of bonus attack speed.

Base Stats

Attack Speed Ratio: 0.625 ⇒ 0.4
Attack Speed Growth: 1.4% ⇒ 2.2%
Attack Damage Growth: 3.5 ⇒ 2.7
Mana Growth: 55 ⇒ 25
Mana Regeneration Growth: 1 ⇒ 0.8

W - Distortion

Magic Damage: 75/115/155/195/235 (+60% AP) ⇒ 75/115/155/195/235 (+65% AP)

E - Ethereal Chains

Magic Damage from Initial Cast: 50/70/90/110/130 (+30% AP) ⇒ 50/70/90/110/130 (+35% AP)

Lee Sin

Base armor increased. W lifesteal and spell vamp increased. E magic damage decreased.

We're certainly aware of the "It's Worlds, time to buff Lee Sin" memes but in all honesty, most Lee Sin players aren't finding much success in their games at home, even in high-skill games. We're targeting a mix of guaranteed power via armor and making a button press for Lee more impactful. A short window of 5% omnivamp is just not enough power to make W2 worth pressing outside of activating his passive, so we're giving it a solid increase in early power that falls off late game. We're also aware that some players have begun taking him into solo lanes, where he maxes E - Tempest/Cripple second. Bringing up early Iron Will sustain will disproportionately help those lanes, so we're preemptively addressing that role with a nerf.

Base Stats

Base Armor: 34 ⇒ 36

W - Iron Will

Lifesteal and Spell Vamp: 5/10.5/16/21.5/27% ⇒ 10/14/18/22/26%

E - Tempest

Magic Damage: 35/65/95/125/155 (+100% AD) ⇒ 35/60/85/110/135 (+100% AD)

Lissandra

W root duration increased.

Lissandra's been on thin ice in terms of power, both in solo queue and in Pro play. To increase her power as a counterpick against certain champions like LeBlanc, Fizz, and Akali, we're slightly increasing the root duration on her W. The intention is to increase her advantage against champions who need to get up close to trade with her while not affecting other matchups.

W - Ring of Frost

Root Duration: 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5 seconds ⇒ 1.25/1.35/1.45/1.55/1.65 seconds

Nunu & Willump

E AP ratio increased.

AP Nunu is quite popular despite not being very strong. This patch, we're giving some love to a well-liked off-build, as tank Nunu is performing just fine. GET READY FOR SOME EXTRA MAGICAL SNOWBALLS!

The choice to buff Snowball Barrage here is to create some tension in AP Nunu's combat. Their ultimate and W snowball already deal a ton of damage, but AP Nunu should be more than a burst mage. Requiring him to remain in close range to get maximum power out of buying AP should enrich the gameplay for them and their opponents.

E - Snowball Barrage

Magic Damage per Hit: 16/24/32/40/48 (+10% AP) ⇒ 16/24/32/40/48 (+15% AP)
Maximum Total Magic Damage: 144/216/288/360/432 (+90% AP) ⇒ 144/216/288/360/432 (+135% AP) (Note: Including the damage upon rooting an enemy, this totals to 164/246/328/411/492 (+215% AP))

Pyke

Health growth increased. W cooldown decreased.

Pyke has been lurking below the surface recently, and not in his usual "I'm fine being underwater" sense but more like he's just not quite where we want him to be in terms of power. To give him some power back without making his damage too oppressive, we'll be increasing his mid-to-late-game survivability. We also intend to give Pyke an alternative ability max option with W for lanes where he won't be aggressively using E as much.

Base Stats

Health Growth: 104 ⇒ 110

W - Ghostwater Dive

Cooldown: 12/11.5/11/10.5/10 seconds ⇒ 12/11/10/9/8 seconds

Rek'Sai

Passive heal decreased. Q damage decreased. W - Unburrow movement speed decreased. W - Unburrow base damage increased.

Rek'Sai gained a lot of power with the Stridebreaker buffs a few patches ago so we're taking another swing and bringing down her power level. Instead of primarily targeting her early damage (though we are providing some small changes here), we're targeting the power level of burrowing, which high MMR players use disproportionately well, as she's not nearly as strong in other skill brackets.

Passive - Fury of the Xer'Sai

Maximum Heal when Burrowed: 15-125 (+2-12% maximum health (increases every 3 levels)) ⇒ 10 (+2-10% maximum health (increases each individual level))

Q - Queen's Wrath

Bonus Physical Damage: 34/38/42/46/50% Total AD ⇒ 30/35/40/45/50% Total AD

W - Burrow

Bonus Movement Speed: 15/20/25/30 (levels 1/6/11/16) ⇒ 5/10/15 (levels 1/6/11)

W - Un-burrow

Physical Damage: 50/65/80/95/110 (+80% Bonus AD) ⇒ 50/85/120/155/190 (+80% Bonus AD)

Renekton

Base magic resistance decreased.

Renekton has been performing particularly well in high MMR solo queue and Pro play. He has a very high Elite/Pro pick rate due to his safety and consistency as a blind pick, so we're targeting his base Magic Resistance to make him more vulnerable to certain matchups such as Gwen, Kennen, and Rumble, while preserving his much needed early game strength against other champions.

Base Stats

Base Magic Resistance: 32 ⇒ 28

Syndra

Q magic damage increased.

Syndra is an iconic mid lane Champion who has historically been stuck in Pro jail. Thankfully, her update in 12.19 has given us the space to make her strong in the hands of most players without being a Pro play problem. With this newfound power budget, we'll be increasing her Q base damage slightly to help her get early lane priority, amping up a slim strategic niche among mages.

Q - Dark Sphere

Magic Damage: 70/105/140/175/210 (+70% AP) ⇒ 75/110/145/180/215 (+70% AP)

Twitch

R missile speed increased.

In a routine sweep of champion viability and satisfaction, we identified Twitch as a Champion that isn't necessarily weak but could use some quality of life improvements. We think Spray and Pray is the coolest part of Twitch's arsenal and want to play up the differences between R being up and R being down. The change here is a small increase to the reliability of his ultimate as it'll be less likely that someone simply walking sideways will dodge the bolts. Plus he won't feel as much of a need to be in melee range just to make his attacks hit. His attacks are still Flashable and other fast dashes can get out of the way, but Spray and Pray will be a bit more reliable.

R - Spray And Pray

Missile Speed: 4000 ⇒ 5000

Zeri

Base movement speed decreased.

Zeri has had the highest Pro ADC presence in top Leagues this season, and with the 13.18 Xayah nerf she's expected to become even more prevalent of a pick at Worlds. To ensure more bot lane diversity, we've decided to nerf her. While her solo queue win rate isn't particularly problematic, she still has a very high Elite pick rate and is clearly a contested Champion. We're targeting her base movement speed as she already has plenty of mobility with her E and R, and we want to increase her vulnerability throughout the game.

Base Stats

Base Movement Speed: 335 ⇒ 330

Items

Randuin's Omen

Some items are highly specific in their niche, and that's perfectly fine. However, it's important that these items are strong in their appropriate game states. Randuin's Omen should be the go-to anti-crit item, but its price and overall efficiency make it bad, even when the opposing team's champions suggest it should be good. A 10% cheaper Randuin's Omen (now matching many other tank legendaries) should make it best in slot when critical strikes are the primary damage you're receiving without it becoming the default tank armor item.

Total Cost: 3000 ⇒ 2700

Seeker's Armguard

Low-price reactive purchases should be solid options that let you slightly delay your offensive buildup in order to slow down threats against you. They're not meant to turn you invulnerable, but meaningfully shift how easily you can be killed. If these items are strong, players should be willing to buy them sometimes without them being default purchases every time the appropriate matchup shows up. Right now, Seeker's Armguard is below the bar set by items like Hexdrinker and Bramble Vest. This is a small buff aimed at making the occasional detour into early armor worthwhile for mages.

Armor: 15 ⇒ 20

Statikk Shiv

Statikk Shiv was modified in 13.18, lowering its minion damage and increasing its stat profile. These changes landed a bit higher power than we intended, so we're once again reducing its anti-minion power.

Electroshock Damage to Minions: 200 ⇒ 150

ARAM Adjustments

Buffs

Briar: 100% Healing ⇒ 130% Healing, 100% Damage Taken ⇒ 95% Damage Taken, 100% Damage Dealt ⇒ 105% Damage Dealt

Nerfs

Galio: 95% Damage Dealt ⇒ 90% Damage Dealt
Kennen: 95% Damage Taken ⇒ 100% Damage Taken
Taliyah: 105% Damage Dealt ⇒ 100% Damage Dealt

OS Minimum Spec Updates

Starting with patch 13.19 our minimum Mac OS requirement will move to 10.13.6. This is a change that will impact a small number of players (roughly 300 total) across both LoL and TFT who will have to update their OS prior to patch 13.19.

Behavioral Systems

Ranked Solo/Duo tends to be the queue with the highest rate of disruptive behavior. The added intensity of every game mattering is fun, but sometimes the pressure proves to be too great. We want to give players who are feeling the pressure of the ranked environment a way to reconnect with a more relaxed version of League of Legends, while at the same time introducing a penalty that is hard to work around by switching accounts for a week. For more detailed information on ranked restrictions check out the Player Support article here!

Ranked Restrictions: Now when receiving penalties for disruptive behavior you can receive ranked restrictions in addition to your other penalties. These keep you from playing ranked game modes until you clear them.
Reenabling Ranked: Get rid of your ranked restriction by playing 5 games of a non-ranked mode. These queues include Blind Pick, Draft Pick, ARAM, and Rotating Game Modes.

Ping Adjustments

In an effort to alleviate some of the toxicity players can face in their games, we've developed some new functionality that allows us to adjust the recipients of pings. While self pings, enemy pings, and neutral pings are unaffected, we're changing the behavior of pinging allied states. We think it's important that you can quickly understand exactly how long it'll take for an ally's ultimate or Summoner Spell to come back from cooldown, but a significant segment of players ping their teammates' death timers and the like for non-constructive reasons and we think the game as a whole is better without this.

In this patch, we're tuning every ally ping to display only to the pinger so that they can gather whatever information they need without abusing the feature as a means of harassing teammates. We also have work in progress for the "Bait" ping that is nearing completion.

We'll monitor player feedback and behavior to see if we need to make any updates going forward.

Pinging any allied information on the tab scoreboard and UI now only displays that information to the pinger in the chat and will be designated by [SELF]. This will affect the following pings:

Allied Portrait (Alive and Time until Respawn)
Allied Level
Allied Ultimate Cooldown
Allied Primary and Secondary Rune Trees
Allied Summoner Spell 1 and 2
Allied Item Slots 1-6
Allied Trinket Slot

The following pings have not been changed and will still be displayed to your entire team:

Pinging your own information in the scoreboard pings as normal to allies.
Pinging neutral and enemy information in the scoreboard (dragon timers, enemy summoner spells, etc) prints out as normal to allies.
Pinging your own character portrait prints out that value for your team.

Accessibility Update

If a Sion ults you in the jungle and you have no sound, it definitely still happens. That's why we are introducing our newest accessibility update: Champion Sound Notifications! These callouts will help you spot key champion abilities whether you are playing without audio or if you're just engaged in an epic duel and can't hear.

You can now opt into visual notifications for global sound effects in game (Sion Ultimate, Corki Package, Briar Ultimate etc.) This notification will be off by default. When enabled, they will appear next to the kill callouts you're already familiar with.
You can enable this feature in the "Interface" tab of the game settings menu in a new section called "Accessibility." The option is labeled: "Display Champion Sound Notifications"

Intro Bot PBE Test

In case you missed it, we've been working on some new bot AI in the background! Having your bots grow up and go onto the Rift for the first time is scary, but we finally think they're ready to go out onto PBE! This first test will only include bots at the introductory level, but they'll be waiting in queue for you on PBE servers for the next two weeks before we bring them back for some tune ups. If you have some friends looking to learn League, have them download PBE—we'd love to get both new and veteran player feedback!

Bugfixes & QoL Changes

Fixed a bug that caused Malzahar's E - Malefic Visions to not spread if it was cast on a minion as it was dying.
Fixed a bug that caused Ivern's E - Triggerseed to not apply the second shield if he had Moonstone.
Fixed a bug that caused Ornn's Passive - Living Forge to not increase his bonus stats by 4% when upgrading additional Mythic items into Masterwork items.
Fixed a bug that caused Evelynn to be unable to hear her Q cast if it hit the target at max range.
Fixed a bug where Briar's R - Certain Death leap would inflict AoE damage when the leap is canceled by the mark/dash Summoner Spell.
Fixed bugged interactions between Briar's R - Certain Death and Tahm Kench and Kalista's ultimate abilities.
Fixed a bug that caused Karthus's passive form to deal damage to allied teammates when he was slain by Briar in a berserk state.
Fixed a bug that allowed Briar's R to maintain vision of enemies if Briar was in a revive state.
Fixed a bug that was causing Briar's R - Certain Death VFX to not play when cast at maximum range.
Fixed a bug that caused Briar's W dash to cancel existing move commands.
Fixed a bug that caused Briar's Q to not bring her over walls if the target was standing next to said wall.
Fixed a bug that caused Street Demon Briar's E SFX to not play correctly.
Fixed a bug that caused Briar's Passive to be applied by abilities through spell shields under certain conditions.
Fixed a bug that caused Briar's R true sight to stop working on Yuumi while she was untargetable.
Fixed a bugged interaction with Briar's W and R that would cause Briar to not be in a Berserk state upon reaching the target and create two explosions under certain conditions.
Fixed a bug that caused Briar's transition between attacks to her idle animations to not play correctly.
Fixed a bug that caused Hextech Drake's lightning chain to not trigger while the drake was attacking.
Fixed a bug that caused First Strike to not grant gold for abilities that had killed a target.
Fixed a bug that caused First Strike to not grant gold for damage dealt to enemy shields.
Fixed a bug where First Strike would not grant gold for damage dealt right before the effect ended.
Fixed a bug where self-casting abilities like Lulu's shield near one of Naafiri's packmates would grant the shield to Naafiri instead.
Fixed a bug that caused Naafiri's packmates to ignore crowd control effects.
Fixed a bug that caused execution announcements to play for both teams even if the champion was executed in the Fog of War. Note: This should still play for both teams in situations where a champion is executed by an Epic monster.
Fixed a bug where the camera would lock for a moment if a player was slain or untargetable during K'Sante's ultimate ability animation.
Fixed a bug that caused Rift Herald to be able to charge the same tower twice if the original target was destroyed.
Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Ahri's Q to not properly update its location when returning to Ahri if she was in the Fog of War.
Fixed a bug that caused Orianna's R - Command: Shockwave to be castable beyond its intended range.
Fixed a bug that caused Viego to fail to possess enemies within his attack range if he attempted to do so while Berserked.
Fixed a bug with Unsealed Spellbook where you could get stuck with Unleashed Teleport if it upgraded while you were swapped to it.
Fixed a bug that caused Jhin to use his homeguards running animation to play instead of his normal running animation.
Fixed a bug that caused visual issues with Renata Glasc's model if she cast her ultimate ability while she was running.
Fixed a bug where Duskblade and Heartsteel's effects would not reset upon dying.
Fixed a bug that caused Bard's R stasis to not stop the drake from moving.
Fixed a bug that caused Jax's E and R ability VFX to be visible from the Fog of War.
Fixed a bug that caused Neeko's ultimate ability VFX to be visible from the Fog of War.
Fixed a bug that caused Yone's E to fail to return him to his original position if he was Bard ulted during a specific time.
Fixed a bug that was causing Duskblade's granted invulnerability to not correctly interact with other forms of invulnerability.
Fixed a bug that was causing Warden Jax's cape and shoulder armor to clip with the champion's model during certain animations.
Fixed a bug where Battle Boss Ziggs' Satchel Charge (W) VFX was cut off on elevated terrain.
Fixed a bug where Odyssey Ziggs' Satchel Charge (W) VFX was cut off on elevated terrain.