Look to the Horizon, and know you’re Bound for greatness!
Welcome to TFT’s final mid-set! In these notes, we’ll go through all the changes to existing systems, but to get a more detailed breakdown of what’s coming in the mid-set, check out our Horizonbound Gameplay Overview. For more information on the new cosmetics and Pass check out that link, and for a candid conversation on the history of mid-sets with Mort, Alex, and yours truly, click it here.
With Horizonbound’s launch, Bilgewater took over as one of our most dominant comps, so we’re bringing down the power of their cannonfire across the board, as well as reducing the power of both frontline & backline bonuses for Strategist at later breakpoints.
We’re also taking the opportunity to fix a few Trait-related bugs, and bring down new Horizonbound outliers like Nilah & Qiyana.
We’re temporarily removing Shurima’s Legacy due to a bug, and toning down the power on The Boss & What the Forge.
Bilgewater’s cannons aren’t the only cannons hit - we’re tuning down the damage amp on Rapid Firecannon.
Sorry Training Dummies, you had your moment.
The best place to check out our cosmetics is in game, but the second best place is the link here!
We’ve made some adjustments to Horizonbound’s Pass structure since our original Runeterra Reforged Pass release! The most notable differences for the Horizonbound Pass are additional Little Legends and an instant Treasure Token reward, but there will still be quite a few other stops along the pass to check out! To show this, we’ve got a handy graphic available ***rummaging sounds*** here!
And now that you’ve seen the bigger picture, let’s chat about the specifics. The Pass+ can be unlocked for 1295 RP, but as always, you don’t have to decide to buy it right away. You can upgrade to the Pass+ later, and retroactively receive everything you would have unlocked with the Pass+ active. Check out the below images for a peek at some of the content.
To get to Bilgewater Bay, you’re going to need a ship. Good thing the Pass+ has three of those along the way!
Now that we’ve seen where you can play, let’s see who you can play as with the Pass+. Our Pass+ has two Little Legends. Stellacorn Lightcharger can be found frequently grazing the crags of Mount Targon, but also within the Pass+ at one star! Don’t worry, there are plenty of Star Shards in the Pass to take Stellacorn Lightcharger to the top of Mount Targon! The other Little Legend, Scuba Sprite, can be found at the bottom of the deepest chasm, or the start of the Pass (whether you have the Pass or the Pass+).
Finally, when exploring a place like Runeterra, you're bound to come across the odd life-draining power or serpent slaying harpoon. The Pass+ will come with four unique Booms: Shadow’s Grasp from the Shadow Isles, Serpent Slayer from Bilgewater, Bandle Blast! from Bandle City, and Toxic Cloud from Zaun.
Dance like nobody’s watching. Fight like your homeland depends on it! You can repel the Noxian invasion (or bottom four) with Chibi Irelia directly from the shop for 1900 RP. She’ll come with her signature Boom, Vanguard’s Edge, that’s sure to swing the tide of battle.
With the power of a dragon and the cuteness of a Chibi, this goddess is here to blade-dance her way into your heart. Chibi Divine Sword Irelia is a Star Content drop from Treasure Realms, whose finisher alludes to her fabled dealings with Dragon Kings and fools.
Knife Pup and Knife Hound are TFT’s take on Naafiri’s packmates in Little Legend form, one the pinnacle of Darkin physique, and the other, well… Knife Pup.
Knife Pup and their variants are available for direct purchase for 750 RP (rare) and 925 RP for their epic variants. Check out their variants below: Knife Pup (base), Thunderstorm Knife Pup (rare), Kernel Knife Pup (rare), Soul Fighter Knife Pup (epic), Lone Loaf Knife Pup (epic), Kanmei Knife Pup (legendary).
You can pick up Knife Hound and their variants for 750 RP (rare) and 925 RP (epic). Check out Knife Hound’s variants below: Knife Hound (base), Akana Knife Hound (rare), Thunderstorm Knife Hound (rare), Shurima Knife Hound (epic), Soul Fighter Knife Hound (epic), Shiba Knife Hound (legendary).
You’ve bravely wandered Runeterra amidst a Convergence storm, and if you made it to Gold or higher along the way, there’ll be a special Chibi Aatrox emote emote for you to flex with!
If you played Hyper Roll and finished Green, Blue, Purple, or Hyper tier, then you’ll get an emote to signal that too!
And if you’ve been exploring Runeterra with a friend, good on you, ‘cause it’s dangerous to wander alone. Plus you could get any of these Double Up emotes if you hit Gold or higher!
The biggest change coming in Horizonbound aside from the new units and traits of course, is our overhaul of the item system, but I’ll save that for another section! We’ve got a few other small ones to go over below.
We’re changing the requirements for a trait to be Prismatic, so that if it is Prismatic, you can expect it to be unusually powerful and hard to hit. Otherwise, it may simply be another level of Gold trait power.
Shred (MR reduction) and Sunder (Armor reduction) have been reduced across the board. Items and Champs have been adjusted, so keep an eye out in those sections.
Getting over 100% crit now grants even more critical strike damage! For example if you had 110% critical strike chance in the past, you’d get 5% bonus critical strike damage. Now that 5% is 8%, hooray for crit stacking!
Sometimes you could get more than four item components with Krug or Wolves, which created an odd spike in tempo/decision making that we want to smooth out just a tad.
So big it gets its own section. Items are now divided into five main categories:
Components: Combine these to build core items
Core items: These are the standard, craftable items made from the base components. Each of these will focus on powering up the holder in exciting ways.
Radiant Items: Upgraded versions of core items
Artifact Items: Previously known as “Ornn Artifact” items; these are uncraftable items that present exciting, powerful item combinations and synergies.
Support Items: Uncraftable items focused on providing teamwide support and non-selfish outputs. All Support items will have a uniform 250 Health, and will be much more powerful than their core item versions.
We’ve swapped six items into our new Support Item category, where we can grant them more power to fulfill their fantasy. To read more about the design philosophy and use cases for these items, be sure to check out our Horizonbound Gameplay Overview, or keep reading for an overview on their use cases!
Crownguard is great on AP frontliners that want to survive burst. Try it out on Shen or Sejuani!
Night Harvester allows you to drop low on Health and then heal up. It’s exceptionally versatile, but it will be a particularly great slam on melee AP carries like Mordekaiser.
Evenshroud is the counterpart to Ionic Spark, but for AD comps. Its tanky stats may leave something to be desired, but the Sunder can go a long way.
Nashor’s Tooth provides unique windows of empowered Attack Speed after casting. Mix and match with items like Spear of Shojin to uncover powerful cast and attack faster combinations. Azir, are you listening? Write this down!
Sterak’s Gage is a melee AD beefcake’s best friend. If you can’t hit Bloodthirster, but you did manage to get a Belt, this item will help in a pinch.
Adaptive Helm makes tanks tankier, and carries… carrier? It’s preferred on champions who scale well with AP and want to cast more, but is incredibly flexible on just about any frontliner as well.
We’ve taken a pass on our existing core items to ensure they are of the appropriate power level. What this means is we’re lowering the power ceiling on many of our strong items, while also broadening use cases.
Our nerf to Bramble Vest is to keep the item from countering Critical Strikes too completely.
We’re shifting the power of Guardbreaker from Attack Damage to Attack Speed, making it a better fit for AP users as well as champions who need more sources of Attack Speed.
Rapid Firecannon is getting flat bonus damage at the cost of Attack Speed. This should make it much easier to use, especially if you get stuck with a bunch of bows on an AP heavy comp.
Support items are all about empowering your team in different ways. They all have a flat 250 Health, but you shouldn’t be banking on that as the source of their power.
Locket of the Iron Solari, Zeke’s Herald, and Chalice of Power all have a 2 Hex support range. They’ve also been granted quite a bit more power be it defensive stats, or in the case of Chalice of Power, bonus starting Mana to get that first cast off even faster!
Virtue of the Martyr is a new Support Item that will be especially useful on comps like with high max Health…hello vertical Bruiser?
Aside from some item moves, we’re making a few lighter changes for the existing Artifact items to keep them all around the same power level.
Artifact items that generate gold vary in power based upon WHEN you are offered them. By allowing our econ Artifacts to only appear before Stage 4, we’re able to keep them at an appropriate power level for their accessibility without them feeling like dead options later in the game.
With new Core items, come new Radiant versions. Check 'em out below!
We’re taking a pass on our Radiant Items to ensure each has a chance to shine… radiantly so.
Large, like the amount of information packed into our gameplay overview.
As mentioned in our intro, I’ll only be talking about the changes to existing systems within these patch notes. For information about completely new content coming with Horizonbound, please take a look at one of the 3rd party partners recommended below.
A quick word on our 3rd party data policy. During the first half of Runeterra Reforged, we updated our policy to disallow exposure of Augment win rates. We learned a lot during this period, and we were happy with some of the results, but due to the complexities involved in ensuring that everyone had the same access to the same type of data, we’ve ultimately decided to revert that policy change with the release of Horizonbound.
To make room for all the new content, we’ve got some farewells to say.
We’re buffing our Prismatic chase traits to make them worthy of chasing, as are all things containing ‘Prism’ in their name. You can’t see the finger guns I pointed at you there, but use your imagination.
Bastion is getting a large nerf, primarily to compensate for the Shred/Sunder changes, but also because of their current power.
Darkin is now a 2 piece trait, where fielding both Darkin champions (Naafiri and Aatrox) will increase both of their passive weapons’ power. This will allow reroll Naafiri to scale into the late game as soon as you add Aatrox to your army! Reroll players rerolljoice!
There’s no more randomness with Demacia. Each Elite will get a Radiant item exclusively for them, allowing you to better optimize their build knowing what Radiant item they will get. This should also standardize the power of the trait. We’ve also greatly buffed Demacia 9 as a Prismatic tier trait that should be worth the difficulty of hitting it.
Rogue bleeds now apply from Abilities and auto-attacks. They won’t stack, but they will be refreshed by additional damage instances.
Changing Shurima to a 2/4/6/9 makes the trait more splashable (for reroll Naafiri comps) and allows us to make that Prismatic 9 Shurima breakpoint even more powerful!
With two Zaunites leaving and only one taking their place, we’ve made some significant adjustments to Zaun that allow you to Overcharge your chem-mods at Zaun (4) and receive 5 different chem-mods at Zaun (6)! With chem-mods being more readily available to overcharge thanks to the new tech Silco has brought to the trait, we’ve had to do a bit of rebalancing.
If you’ve woken up randomly one night asking yourself why reroll Void isn’t a thing, go back to sleep. Get those 8 hours. Enjoy sweet circadian consistency, because Cho’Gath and Malzahar buffs are here.
With Yordle gone, we’re able to give Poppy more power that should make vertical Demacia even better.
With Noxus stats going up, we’re unintentionally buffing Samira, who benefits from both AD and AP, quite a lot. We’re preemptively nerfing her here to keep her Flair in check.
“I really think reroll Ashe carry is going to work now,” — us buffing Ashe’s ratios for the third time. This may be enough, but I’m willing to bet Morellonomicon is still the best use case for her. What can I say, she just loves a good book?
Losing Zeri takes away a significant amount of power for Jinx, who no longer has a late game partner-in-Zaun to take her go-to comp across the fourth place line. We’re giving her more access to her ability in compensation.
Swain has been dominant as an early game tank, but his mana-lock prevented him from finding success in late game boards, even though he was the early bird who got the tank items. We’re reworking his spell to allow him to recast it, repeatedly stacking Health and maybe becoming the night owl of your late game boards.
Vi has paid the Piltover tax (being weak due to being a core unit in an econ trait) for too long. It’s time to remind the world that Vi stands for VIABLE!
Since Darius’s new Vanquisher trait will provide extra power in bringing down tanks, we’re taking away some of his base stats to compensate.
We’re pulling some power out of Jayce’s ally AS boost so that he can be a better carry. Yes, rerolling the golden boy is a viable option now.
Rek’Sai is another melee reroll carry who has inherent weaknesses. We’re giving her Slayer to add a bit more sustain and bonus damage into her kit, which should allow for more diverse and offensive itemization (Titan’s Resolve will still be very important). To prevent Rek’Sai from becoming Rek’Sigh-there-goes-my-team, we’re taking away some of her base stats, and scaling.
Taric is now more selfishly tanky and spends less of his shield protecting allies. This will make him better as a primary tank who absorbs some ally damage without causing really frustrating scenarios where a bunch of low HP allies survive to deal extra player damage.
Now that Aphelios is a Gunner, we’re bringing down his AD scaling as the Gunner trait synergizes far better with his kit than Deadeye did. Despite the nerfs targeted at neutralizing the impact of Gunner, we’re also buffing the damage of Moonblast so that Aphelios is less dependent on Rageblade.
Nasus bonk build is online! This is a Thief's Gloves Nasus buff as there are plenty of viable items on this dog. We’re also reducing his tankiness now that shred/sunder have been nerfed.
We’re rebalancing Aatrox’s health since he now gains his own Darkin buff (which grants Health and Omnivamp). All in all, his total Health will go up from 1100 to 1250.
Over half a set of balancing, the power level of our Augments naturally tends to inflate a bit. The bulk of our changes below are small nerfs that bring down the power ceiling of Augments, with a few exceptions.
A Cut Above is most exciting and powerful when you can start ramping gold early. We want the Augment to continue being exciting, while staying balanced, so now you can only find it in the early game. This allows us to nerf the gold chance, keeping the early econ ramp in check. Escort Quest is getting a similar treatment.
We’re continuing to bring the general power level down for our Prismatic Augments, with a few exceptions. Our two-item-package-deal Augments are getting an extra component, which should bring their power level up significantly if you have the odd component lying around. Final Reserves has typically been used to massively open fort (intentionally lose to make more gold), saving as much gold as possible while sometimes selling your whole board, only to proc the Augment and power level to 9. We prefer players playing boards, so we’re nerfing this strategy specifically to cap how much gold you can effectively save.
What did they do to my baby boy? When we originally pitched Infernal Contact it offered 100 Gold, but the strategy and viability of reroll comps has made it a bit too powerful (and now my go-to Augment has to go to the nerf store).
A fresh roster means we’re reshuffling the units you receive when you pick a Trait-linked Augment.