Portals? Portals! Portals!?
The big star of the patch is not in fact a star, but instead a portal from afar. So grab your friends, or make new ones, and give our Normals (With Portals!?) queue a try! Read more about the new mechanics and a history of our For Fun patches here.
As for the rest of the patch, we’re looking at the high cost units this time around, and making sure when you hit that 3-star Five Cost you are even more likely to win!
We’re shipping a small B-patch to address Gnar and Duelist power as we approach Regionals.
Our competitive scene is in full swing, and in 13.9 we shipped some bug fixes that had unintended balance consequences. The first being Gnar’s interaction with Prankster, which before 13.9 would disable the buff he gets from Gadgeteen. Now that the two work together, Gnar has been raging out too hard to be “just a prank, bro.”
We also found an issue where if you got over 3.0 Attack Speed or higher, it was possible to end up with slower attacks than intended. In correcting this issue, Duelist 6 and 8 got a huge buff. We are disabling the fix for now as we are too close to our peak competition to rebalance the game around it. That being said, we plan to ship it with the next set, when we will have more time to balance around its impact.
Finally, we’ve seen Kayle look particularly strong since we last buffed her. This could be due to the Attack Speed fix discussed above, but it’s also due to the buff we gave her and Gangplank this patch—so we’re responding by reverting her buff just to be safe.
Our For Fun patch has come early, with portals from various regions of Runeterra appearing in our Normals queue only, bringing loot and power to your comps! Read about the mechanic and the history of our For Fun patches with TFT’s best looking writer and three other devs here. You may also notice that the rules for our Portals have changed since we shared the announcement in the Talking Tactics article. That’s because we took in a ton of PBE feedback from the weekend to incorporate below and make the For Fun patch even more Fun!
STAGE 2-6 PORTALS
Common and game accelerating.
STAGE 3-3 PORTALS
Rare and eclectic.
STAGE 4-3 PORTALS
Uncommon and powerful!
THREE STAR LEGENDARY UNITS
Hitting a 3-star 5-cost is a rare endeavor, occurring in 2.6% of games (across all modes). So, when it happens we want to make sure it really HAPPENS for the player.
Large, like the spoiler for our next set’s theme and mechanic hitting this patch. NOTE: While this spoiler alludes to our mechanic for the next set, it is NOT the mechanic for the next set.
TRAITS
Access to 5 Gadgeteen early with an Emblem has provided too much consistency, especially for a trait full of youngsters who shouldn’t be expected to perform like a late game comp for at least a couple more years.
UNITS: TIER 1
A higher base Attack Speed means Gangplank will benefit a bit more when you need to run him in your vertical Duelist comp.
Last patch we changed Kayle’s Cease-fire Spellblade to no longer lock her out of attacking for a brief period. This patch we’re adding the Star to Kayle’s Starfire Spellblade to ensure you can itemize her as a reroll carry, especially when you take Divine Ascent as your Hero Augment.
UNITS: TIER 2
Is she a carry, or a utility champion? Neither. Currently, Camille lacks the damage and scaling to play as a reroll champion, while also providing unreliable crowd control that frequently fails to disable anything past the frontline. We’re cutting down her weaknesses with two smaller buffs that are sure to place her on the cutting edge of the meta.
UNITS: TIER 3
Kai’Sa seems to be successful when everyone but me runs her, so I’m not gonna lie… pretty stoked about this one.
UNITS: TIER 4
Aatrox is the least threatening of the threats—which is pretty soul crushing if you ask me. A bit more base damage will help here.
Garen’s ability has a big, high-impact stun. While a sword slamming from the sky should be stunning, we’re making it both take longer to get that initial cast off AND take even longer to cast again.
Viego and the Renegade vertical have been weak for a while. As a melee carry for the trait, Viego unreliably takes advantage of the extra damage for being the last one standing, so by giving him a bit more Health, we’re hoping he can keep breaking hearts on the battlefield.
HERO AUGMENTS
Buffing the worst performers and nerfing the best performers.
Jinx’s carry Augment, Get Excited! greatly benefitted from the Jinx buffs we shipped last patch. The power ceiling of this Augment is also dependent on correct itemization, which is far different from the standard “Jinx hold my items” build you frequently see her wearing in the early game.
Speaking of power ceilings, Garen can throw a giant sword right through them. We are buffing Garen’s Full Power to Sword here due to our Garen nerf above to make sure the already risky Augment doesn’t become unplayable. The Augment has some insane highs with the right itemization and comp, which you are welcome to pursue at the cost of your LP (and mine).
AUGMENTS
Certain trait-linked Augments provided too much access, too early, to powerful chase traits. We weren’t comfortable seeing these power thresholds broken so quickly and often, so we’ve changed the biggest offenders to only appear on Stage 4-2 (final Augment).
Small, like the list of ideas I had for this patch’s “small changes” one-liner.
UNITS: TIER 1
Bonky Kong may be a thing of the past, but Stone Skin Spin to Win still has its chance to thrive!
UNITS: TIER 3
His weapon gets realer by the minute!
UNITS: TIER 5
Very confused as to how these changes didn’t make it into the Large section. They impact almost every game I play—I assume it’s the same for you!?
ORNN (FORGE) ITEMS
Clean-up on aisle Ornn.
RADIANT ITEMS
Shining a light on the dimmer ones and putting a blanket over those shining too brightly.