Nerfs to Corki/Tristana, large-scale changes to Aurelion Sol, and much more!
With the Riot Games Summer Break ending, the League of Legends 14.14 Patch Notes are now on the horizon. According to the official schedule provided by the game's developers, Patch 14.14 is set to be released on Wednesday, July 17, 2024. After an extended period with Patch 14.13, Riot has had ample time to carefully identify necessary adjustments for several over-tuned and under-tuned champions. With large-scale changes to Aurelion Sol, nerfs to various meta staples, and targeted changes to Warmog's Armor, this new patch is poised to shake up the competitive landscape.
Buffs:
Aphelios, Cho'Gath, Jayce, Sion, Smolder, Teemo, and Zed.
Nerfs:
Bel'Veth, Brand, Corki, Jax, Kindred, Lillia, Nidalee, Rumble, Tristana, Zyra, Absorb Life (Rune), and Warmog's Armor (Item).
Adjustments:
Aurelion Sol, Hecarim, Irelia, and Milio.
New Content:
- New Champion: Aurora, the Witch Between Worlds
- New Game Mode: Swarm: Operation Anima Squad, League of Legends' new PVE Mode!
- 2024 Anima Squad Skins: Battle Dove Seraphine (1820RP), Battle Bunny Aurora (1350RP), Battle Bat Xayah (1350RP), Primordian Rek'Sai (1350RP), Primordian Bel'Veth (1350RP), Cyber Cat Yuumi (1350RP & Prestige Edition), & Admiral Battle Bunny Miss Fortune (Mythic Variant - Capsule Reward)
Note: Anima Squad skins for Aatrox, Briar, Yasuo, Illaoi, and Leona (+ Prestige Edition) will be released during patch 14.15, which is set to release on Wednesday, July 31, 2024.
Riot's Reasoning
Read more about League of Legends changes on the X account of Matt 'Phroxzon' Leung-Harrison.
Absorb Life (Rune)
- We're moving a lot of the power budget for this rune out of the early game and into the later portions of the game with non-linear scaling
- We're moving it further to compete with Triumph in the mid-late game especially if you're split pushing (not proccing triumph) vs team-fighting (proccing triumph)
Warmog's Armor
- Warmogs is finally in a spot where it's seeing play which is good
- It's a little too good in general though, especially 1st on supports
- For some champs, we're OK with it as a first rush but primarily gearing it towards being good second and just nerfing it generally
- We think Warmog's is a great tank pattern in general and are happy it's seeing more play though
- We're moving Warmogs to be harder to trigger as a first item without having innate HP in your kit
- It's intended to hit supports, but be unchanged for 2nd item use cases
Aurelion Sol
- Asol's adjustments in this patch are aimed at reducing the impact of his tap Q and compensating with power elsewhere
- We'll be monitoring the impact of this and how it affects his MMR skew
Milio
- Currently, Milio has a lot of power budget in being reactive, as his tools to be proactive are mainly gated behind certain champion pairings
- We're moving more power budget out of his E and into his Q to harass in the early lane
Corki/Tristana
- Corki and Tristana will both be hit by the Absorb Life nerfs
- Reducing the power of Corki's scaling to skew him a bit towards bot lane and an overall nerf. His normal win rate is also depressed because of wrong max orders
- Our changes in this patch for Trist are aimed at giving her Q push a real cost, which typically will impact Mid more than Bot, as Tristana rarely gets priority in Bot lane compared to Mid
- Trist's presence coming down will naturally also reduce Corki's presence
- Corki's high armor is intended to be more useful in Bot Lane especially when Trist's priority is reduced
- Reducing his base health will make him more susceptible to all-ins in Mid especially
Bel'Veth/Kindred
- Bel'Veth and Kindred are two elite-skewed junglers that we're bringing down a little this patch
- For Bel'Veth we're reducing her ability to outrange other melees outside of her R form
AP Junglers
- We're continuing to get champions in a good spot after adding Fated Ashes which allows more AP champs to jungle and increases jungle diversity
- Our philosophy with adding these items is to get the systems in the right place first and then adjust the champions
- When we add an item that systemically buffs these champions, it's intended to be good on those champions and in some cases become their primary item
- We don't intend to make that item weak so we will get the item in the right spot and then adjust the champions
- Nerfs in this patch are mainly targeted at continuing to get these champions into the right spot (Lillia, Nidalee, Zyra)
- We'll incur some short-term instability to increase the health and diversity of the role
Jayce/Zed/Irelia
- A few AD solo laners that we're looking to get back into the meta, especially with the advent of AP Junglers
- As mentioned yesterday, we're looking to add a little bit of skill skew back to Zed and early game pressure with a rank 1 Q buff
- For Irelia, while this looks like a heavy nerf on paper, making her Passive Attack Speed linearly scale with level, rather than being breakpointed is a pretty decent buff
- We're intending to make her more threatening on the wave
- We moved her away from being strong in the early game over time and that's weakened her identity somewhat
AD Carries
- ADC meta is in a pretty reasonable spot right now with many different ones being viable
- Aphelios and Smolder are mostly absent though so we're giving them a little touch up
Various Future Changes & Thoughts
Un-Pro skewing some champs
- Over the years, we've unskewed a lot of champions from Pro, including Akali, Sylas, Irelia, etc. to make them more effective for normal players
- These champs are now really playable for regular players, which is great, but we're investigating adding some of their skews back so they're more usable in Pro/High MMR in some situations
- Pro has been suffering from a lack of viable aggressive options and even the ones that do (Ahri, LB, etc.) frequently purchase things like defensive boots, etc.
Teleport
- It's been a long time coming, but we're investigating changes to Teleport to resolve its ability to wash lanes, while also still avoiding the bot lane party
- We haven't been happy with it in its current state or how inelegant some of the solutions we're thinking about but it's gotten to the point where early TP's are so uninteractive, we feel we need to act
Defensive Boots
- Defensive boots are a little too strong and have been for a while (eg. Mercs), though the changes we did earlier to Steelcaps ended up being too power-positive, so we'll likely scale them back
- It might take a bit of time to land on a good solution here, but we're thinking about the problem"
A Competitive Impact
Bringing many changes to staples of the game's META, only a few champions are set to truly bring a lasting impact on competitive play. Among these changes, nerfs to Corki and Tristana should help open up the midlane to more champions and alleviate the ongoing AD Carry META. In addition to this, Riot is also nerfing several other oppressive champions like Brand, who has recently risen as a strong jungler and even saw a large amount of competitive play.
Coming in as another impactful change, Riot has elected to nerf Warmog's Armor and increase its necessary HP Threshold, making it impossible for supports to build it as a first item, something that had recently gained major traction among professionals. Finally, coming in as a major relief for many, Rumble will take major nerfs, with 45 flat damage removed from his rank 1 Flamespitter (Q). Ever since his mini-rework last year, the champion had remained at the top of the META. Will these changes finally dethrone him from the top lane staples?
