The five biggest changes in League of Legends Patch 25.09

League of Legends Season 2 (of the 2025 season) is here as Riot Games have released a huge collection of updates as part of Patch 25.09.

Following on from Season 1’s focus on Noxus, Riot have opted for something much lighter with a new Spirit Blossom theme including a beautiful new visual update to Summoner’s Rift with colours much more calming than the previous red hue. Even the death screen is changing colour to be slightly less aggressive.

This patch is bringing a lot of change with significant champion updates, balancing updates for both ARAM and the recently extended Arena mode, an all-new Atakhan form, and the ability to swap roles in champion select just some of the many updates coming to the game when the update launches on Wednesday, April 30.

If you don’t have time to read everything that’s changing this season, here is a nice breakdown of the headline changes from the new patch:

Annie buffs

“Annie released weaker than intended, specifically during her early game. We’re looking to amplify her identity as a burst mage, ease her laning phase, and reduce her mana costs which have been a pain point as of late.”

Q – Disintegrate: Damage increased from 70 / 105 / 140 / 175 / 210 (+ 80% AP) to 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 240 (+ 80% AP)

W – Incinerate: Mana costs decreased from 90 / 95 / 100 / 105 / 110 to 70 / 75 / 80 / 85 / 90

R – Summon Tibbers: Passive Magic Penetration has been increased from 10-15% to 15-20%.

Annie has only been played a pitiful five times in pro play this season in the top five leagues and that’s with Fearless Draft enabled. And of those five games, she only was on the winning team once thanks to support player Nguyễn “SiuLoong” Hoàng Lam of MGN Vikings Esports. She was also oddly played top in the LEC by Movistar KOI’s Alex “Myrwn” Pastor Villarejo but his 0/0/4 KDA tells you it wasn’t very succesful.

With these new changes, Annie could become more prevalent in pro play.

Biscuit of Everlasting Will nerfs

“Biscuits are intended to be a lane sustain tool with some decision-making around their optimal usage, but their current state highly rewards saving them until as late in the game as possible and using them at as close to death as possible. Some decision-making is desirable, but we don’t love the hold-for-midgame-skirmish strategies or how pushed the power of biscuits are when the user is extremely low, so we’re taking a swing at both of these.”

Health Restoration 12% of missing health, 20+2% maximum health, increased by up to 100% based on missing health. (Note: this maxes out at 70% missing health)

Popularised in pro play over in the LPL, as Riot mentions many players were holding onto biscuits until key fights in the game and using them to unexpectedly survive while on extremely low health. This should change that

New Thornbound Atakhan

“Atakhan’s been captured by the Black Rose, who are using him for some dark and mysterious purpose. On the new Spirit Blossom Rift, this means Atakhan now has a singular new Thornbound form in place of Season 1’s Voracious and Ruinous—with a new reward for helping the spirits remove him from the Rift.

“Just like before, Atakhan spawns on the side of the map which sees the most PvP action, and causes Bloody Roses to spawn near kills and around his own pit. Unlike before, the team that slays Atakhan will get an immediate Bloody Petal bonus as well as all remaining Bloody Roses left on the map, and purify them into Spirit Petals. Additionally, they gain the Spiritual Purification buff for the rest of the game.”

The Season 2 update is bringing big changes to how Atakhan works as the objective now only has one form. The problematic Voracious form has thankfully been completely removed, including its ridiculous instant revive power. Instead,  he will only spawn with a new version of his Ruinous Form which is now known as Thornbound.

Thornbound Atakhan will still spawn bloody roses, which reward bonus experience and damage for your team, near where champions die and around his pit. However, after defeating Thorbound Atakhan, he will reward the team with a new buff which collects all remaining petals on the map, plus a few extra, and then all petals are “purified” to have their effects increased by 25%.

And if that wasn’t enough, for the remainder of the game whenever anyone on the team who slayed Atakhan gets a takedown, they will gain a petal and unleash an AoE ability that slows and deals damage. That’s a powerful, permanent buff.

Tier 3 boots are more viable

“Feats of Strength have two rewards: immediate power in the form of Triumphant boot upgrades, and the option to later purchase tier 3 boots. Over time, as we’ve seen players optimize the Feats system, it’s become apparent that having the option to upgrade to T3 boots generally isn’t useful as they are mostly too weak for their cost. We’ve held off on buffing them as we didn’t want to inject significantly more overall MS into the game, but with a rework to Swiftmarch and some small changes to the other tier 3 boots, we’re moving the system to a place where the T3 boots can be made more competitive with other options.”

• Tier 3 boots cost: decreased from 750 to 500.
• Swiftmarch’s move speed has been decreased from 70 to 65. But now grants Adaptive Force equal to 5% of move speed.
• Forever Forward: total bonus move speed out of combat is 10 to 8%.
• Spellslinger’s Shoes: Magic Penetration 8% to 7%.

It will be fascinating to see whether these price decreases will make Tier 3 boots viable at esports events. While initially it doesn’t feel like a big change, Riot are correct in stating just how powerful movement speed can be. Especially when pro players lie Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok have an otherworldly ability to dodge skillshots.

Gold Bounties

“We’re adjusting Bounties this season to make them a more useful comeback mechanism. They are now more powerful for the losing team, can no longer hurt the losing team, and should more accurately reflect the game state. We’re generally paying out more gold than before and cleaning up some rules for accuracy and fairness.

“To explain the shift in champion bounty suppression: Currently in close games where one individual on each team is trying their hardest to carry, they can both get large bounties. The first one to claim the shut down surges far into the lead, which feels unfair, especially if one of them is playing a higher-risk champion like a diver or assassin. Now, both of those champions will be worth the default kill gold until their team starts meaningfully winning. We’re also delaying positive bounty accrual until after a champion leaves combat, as a 1-for-1 trade shouldn’t so obviously benefit the one who died first by potentially giving away a shut down.”

• Objective Bounties:
  • No longer pays up to 60% more gold (300g) based upon the calculated lead
  • Now pays up to 10% of the gold difference on top of the base bounty payment, capped at 1000g total
  • Lesser objectives (such as Outer Turrets) that have lower base bounty also have lower payouts from the gold lead
  • Calculation: Adjusted Objective Bounty calculation for accuracy: Gold leads are more important; other objectives are less important
• Champion Bounties:
  • Suppression:
    • Still waits until 6 minutes in the game until champion bounty suppression is active
    • No longer suppresses bounties when a team is moderately behind
    • Now suppresses bounties unless a team is moderately ahead
  • Tuning:
    • Base kill gold now scales up by 10g per level from level 7-18 (Maximum: 420g)
    • Positive bounty accrued from kills and assists has been increased by 17%
    • Positive bounty accrued from farming has been increased by 14%

One of the most frustrating systems in LoL has been the bounty system, which has regularly felt unbalanced and inconsistent for players. If these changes are effective, it will go on long way in making matches more balanced and hopefully it will lead to more exciting comebacks in pro play.

Jack Stewart

In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most proud of the latter.