Hello Yordle portal poppers, Colossus board boppers, and Socialite carry swappers!
It’s the first patch of the new set, so get ready for a series of balance changes to your favorite champs, traits, and Hextech Augments. There’s a lot to get into, including the launch of Double Up, so stop reading this intro and start scrolling to the next section!
Patch 11.23’s mid-week update comes a few days earlier than normal to ensure a more balanced game state during the holiday here in the States.
Katarina at 3-stars with full damage items was a bit too powerful. A slight damage nerf and a nerf to her 3-star mana refund will keep this Academy student from cutting class again.
Recent optimizations of Spotlight Tyrant Sion have him dealing unbelievable amounts of damage, while being insanely tanky, and having devastating team-wide CC. We’re leaning harder into his tanky disruption identity by taking an axe to his damage.
Metamorphosis is the best defensive version of mutants, but it’s also getting a lot of unnecessary offensive power, so we're effectively removing it so we can keep Metamorphosis’s identity as the tanky trait intact.
Double down for Double Up! Here’s the TL;DR and a link to more info on the game mode (written by someone still accepting Double Up partner applicants).
We've made the decision to disable Tactician social scouting in Double Up for its launch due to a critical bug. It’s a bummer to be missing our fun social feature in our most social game mode, so we’ll be working on a fix to deliver by the next patch. Thanks for your patience and we hope you enjoy our latest Lab!
We’ve gone from eight possible Augment arrangements, the order by which you are offered varying Augments throughout the game, to fourteen to create more unique experiences. As a reminder, the weakest Augments are Silver, and the most powerful are Prismatic. The six new arrangements are quite rare, ranging from a one percent chance (Prismatic, Silver, Prismatic), to a ten percent chance (Gold, Silver, Silver).
Ever wanna inspect a champion on your board to remind yourself of its ability scaling or traits? Well, yeah, us too.
Large, like my need for a Double Up partner. Kent? Mort? Leelor? FireNRain? Anybody? Hello!?
With over 140 Hextech Augments, it’s no surprise that we have to adjust a few of them. Some need easy adjustments, while others like Underdogs and Titanic Force need finer tuning to lessen their power in certain use cases. Various Ornn items from the Portable Forge Armory are also getting buffed to increase the value of our favorite Artifacts!
Knowledge is power… too much power. With continued education (even into adulthood @Garen) granting more and more stats to Academy champs, this trait needs to be taken from a Doctoral level, down to a Master’s.
Bodyguard has struggled as a trait, so we're adding more selfish power to help them perform. Now after they taunt adjacent enemies they’ll shield themselves against some incoming damage.
Traits with summons tend to be powerful early, when the extra health bar can swing close fights in your favor. We’re tuning Innovator’s power to lessen its strength early, but ensure your summons can take flight and maul your foes later on.
We’re reducing some of the value you get from the Mercenary trait to keep these treasure chests, for the treasured, best (that’s still you btw). Expect slightly less gold and less Krakens (powerful rolls). Even Mercenary 7 will receive a bit less gold, but will give you the same level of other loot (items, Neeko’s Help, etc.).
Lastly, we’ve adjusted Sniper to passively grant an extra hex of attack range. This is to allow for more creative and interesting uses of the Sniper Emblem. To avoid buffing every Sniper unit, we are reducing their attack range by one hex—a zero sum change with the new trait bonus. Fun fact, Jhin now has a 4 hex attack range with the exclusion of the 1 extra range he gets from being a Sniper.
Mercenary not Mercen-carry. Econ trait champions should not be as strong as they currently are.
Samira’s too good. She stabilizes too quickly midgame and stays dominant even into the late game. If you manage to three-star her she’ll be able to bring her foes into negative Armor, creating weird and less readable damage amplification. With a handful of nerfs, we’re giving her some compensation strength to her cast animation to make her feel better with Blue Buff, which you should try out, especially if you want to use Samira as a mobile Last Whisper in your physical damage comp.
With guns for kneecaps we’re in kneed to keep this guy’s power capped, but with how strong he is with just about any Attack Damage item, he’s in need of a nerf.
The 5-costs of Gizmos & Gadgets have generally been overperforming (see small changes). But our favorite party-going gargoyle has struggled to nail his entrance.
Small, like my free time now that G&G is out.
Most of our smaller changes to Augments are making ‘feels bad’ moments feel less bad by offering you Augments that make more sense in each game.
Scrap champions have gotten pickier in their selection of items from the Junkyard. Tanks will stop picking up AD carry items and carries will stop grabbing tank items just because they’re shiny.
The strong early game trait also has strong early game champs, so we’re flinging a nerf their way.
Since when does Death’s hand heal?
Helping those content creators with their Cho’Graph highlight VODs.
Call the doctor, but not for me… Dr. Mundo is getting a few nerfs to his damage output and burst healing, but a compensation buff in his healing over time.
As alluded to earlier, 5-costs in G&G have been too impactful as a whole. It’s time to bench the Kench, confine the feline, disgrace the Jayce, and brutally remind Jinx of her past (sorry, couldn’t find a rhyme).
They see me rollin, they hating. Patrolling, and tryna’ catch me ridin Yordles.
Mobile is getting a new currency to make things easier on our back-end. Pricing of all products has not changed, you’ll just be using TFT Coins to buy them. Read more about it here.