Riot Games has released the patch notes for the first League of Legends patch of 2026, Patch 26.1.

The major update completely overhauls the game, following on from the massive addition of WASD controls to LoL late last year.

Here’s everything to know about the biggest LoL update of the year.

Role Quests

Riot has introduced in-game quests for all five LoL roles, building off the item-based quests that junglers and support players have had for years.

Riot has added new lane-phase defining quests for the other three positions and updated the existing quests for support and jungle.

Players will be automatically assigned the position quest corresponding to the role they’ve queued up as, role swapping can’t be done in-game only during champion select.

Additionally, the game will now reward playing out your lane matchup, at least for the first few minutes every game to avoid boring lane swap shenanigans in pro play.

How to complete a Role Quest in League of Legends

In-game, players will complete their quest by playing out their assigned lane.

For each position, you’ll earn points—reflected in the UI near your item inventory—for taking appropriate actions based on what you’d be doing in that role.

Earn enough points and the Quest will give you a significant reward.

 Support and jungle players will earn points for taking basically the same actions as before—supports will stack their World Atlas, while junglers will grow their pets.

Top, mid, and bot lane players will earn points for champion takedowns, epic monster takedowns, minion kills, turret plates, turret takedowns, and some will passively generate over time.

Minion, turret, and plate rewards will be doubled in players’ assigned lane. Mid laners will also progress by dealing damage to champions.

Passive generation is a slow trickle outside of your lane, but is a significant amount of overall quest progress while you are in and around your assigned lane—roughly, past your outermost living turret in your assigned lane.

Top Role Quest

Appears that in Season 16 (pro) you will be bound to your role quest so there's no strategy or possibility of Caps taking the ADC quest and doing something with that etc...

Just giga cringe to me that this is the way we do things

— Molecule (@MoleculeLOL) January 5, 2026

Riot is giving top laners more agency with universal access to Teleport and increasing their level cap so they remain relevant in the late game.

Gold and experience from minions will be reduced by 25% outside of the top lane until level 3

 Quest Progress:

• 1200 points required for quest completion
• +1 per minion kill (+2 in Top Lane)
• +30 per epic monster takedown
• +25 per turret takedown (+50 in Top Lane)
• +20 per turret plate (+40  in Top Lane)
• +15 per champion takedown
• Starting at 1:05, +1 per 3 seconds passively, increased to +8 per 5 seconds in and around top lane

Quest Rewards:

• Level cap increased to 20
• +600 experience
• All future experience gains increased by 12.5%.
• If the top laner did not select Teleport as a Summoner Spell, gain Unleashed Teleport on a 7-minute cooldown.
• If the top laner did select Teleport as a Summoner Spell, they are also shielded for 30% of their maximum health on arrival, lasting for 30 seconds.

Jungle Role Quest

 Jungle quest completion is mostly unchanged except for some light tuning—you’ll complete your quest sooner, and the Gustwalker Hatchling’s reward is slightly reduced compared to the other options.

In addition to their previous rewards, junglers now get increased gold and experience after completing their quest and increased movement speed in the jungle.

Pet counters needed to fully finish the quest: 40 -> 35

Gustwalker movement speed duration: 2s -> 1.5s

Smite damage: 600/900/1200 -> 600/1000/1400

After quest completion, Junglers gain 4% movement speed in the jungle or river, increased to 8% while out of combat.

After quest completion, Junglers gain +10g and +10 XP per large monster killed

Mid Role Quest

Mid laners uniquely progress their role quest through dealing damage to champions.

For rewards, mid laners receive a free upgrade to their boots, and periodically get an empowered Recall.

The boots upgrades are based on the items introduced for Feats of Strength, but have been heavily reworked and are significantly more powerful now.

Quest Progress:

• 1350 points required for quest completion
• Ranged Champions gain 1.5% of damage dealt to Champions as quest progress
• Melee Champions gain 3% of damage dealt to Champions as quest progress
• +1 per minion kill (+2 in mid lane)
• +30 per epic monster takedown
• +25 per turret takedown (+50 in mid lane)
• +20 per turret plate (+40 in mid lane)
• +25 per champion takedown
• Starting at 1:05, +1 per 3 seconds passively, increased to +8 per 5 seconds in and around the mid lane

Quest Rewards:

• Tier 2 boots upgrade to their corresponding Tier 3 boots. If you do not have Tier 2 boots in your inventory upon quest completion they will be upgraded on purchase.
• Every 5 minutes, gain an empowered Recall, reducing the channel time from 8 to 4 seconds
• Champion takedowns reduce the cooldown on empowered Recall by 1 minute

Mid Quest boot upgrades:

Crimson Lucidity

Upgrades from Ionian Boots of Lucidity

Ability Haste: 20 

Movement Speed: 45

Ionian Lucidity: Gain 20 Summoner Haste.

Noxian Haste: Empowering or protecting allies with abilities, dealing damage to enemy Champions with abilities, or casting a Summoner Spell grants 10% Movement Speed for 4 seconds.

Swiftmarch

Upgrades from Boots of Swiftness

Movement Speed: 65

Fleetfooted: Reduce the effectiveness of Slows by 40%.

Noxian Fervor: Gain 5% of your Movement Speed as Adaptive Force.

Spellslinger’s Shoes

Upgrades from Sorcerer’s Shoes

Magic Penetration: 18

Magic Penetration: 8%

Movement Speed: 45

Gunmetal Greaves

Upgrades from Berserker’s Greaves

Attack Speed: 40%

Movement Speed: 45

Life Steal: 5%

Chainlaced Crushers

Upgrades from Mercury’s Treads

Magic Resist: 30

Movement Speed: 45

Noxian Persistence (15s cooldown): After taking magic damage from a Champion, gain a (10-120 [level scaling] +10% Health) magic shield for 5s.

Armored Advance

Upgrades from Plated Steelcaps

Armor: 35

Movement Speed: 45

Plating: Reduces incoming damage from Attacks by 10%.

Noxian Endurance (15s cooldown): After taking physical damage from a Champion, gain a (10-120 [level scaling] +10% Health) physical shield for 5s.

Bot Role Quest

[OFFICIAL] AD Carries will have a 7th item slot after competing the Botlane quest pic.twitter.com/pJ6lndflFu

— Sheep Esports (@Sheep_Esports) December 1, 2025

Riot are ensuring that bot laners are game-defining gold income carries.

Bot laners progress their quests more from minion kills than other positions.

They’re then rewarded with some up front gold, increased gold income for the rest of the game, and the ability to move their boots into their Role Quest slot to complete a 7th item (including boots).

Quest Progress:

• 1350 points required for quest completion
• +1.5 per minion kill (+3 in Bot Lane)
• +30 per epic monster takedown
• +25 per turret takedown (+50 in Bot Lane)
• +20 per turret plate (+40 in Bot Lane)
• +15 per champion takedown
• Starting at 1:05, +1 per 3 seconds passively, increased to +8 per 5 seconds in the Bot Lane playspace

 Quest Rewards:

• +300g
• +2g per minion kill for the rest of the game
• +50g per champion takedown for the rest of the game
• Boots move to the Role Quest slot, effectively opening up a 7th item slot

Support Role Quests

Riot is already happy with the state of support quests but is adding a quality of life update with an extra control ward slot so supports can complete full builds.

Gold and experience from minion kills and from Support Quest Items is reduced by 25% outside of bot lane until level 3

Zaz’Zak’s Realmspike, Solstice Sleigh, Bloodsong, Dream Maker, and Celestial Opposition: 5g per 10s -> 9g per 10s

After Quest Completion, Control Ward gold cost reduced to 40g

After Quest Completion, store up to 2 Control Wards on your Role Quest slot instead of your item inventory

Atakhan and Feats of Strength removed

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Atakhan and many of the unique features of the 2025 LoL season have been removed in LoL Patch 26.1.

Feats of Strength have been removed from the game.

First Blood once again grants +100g to the killer.

The first Turret destroyed once again grants +300g.

Atakhan has been removed from the game and will no longer spawn.

Blood Roses have been removed from the game and will no longer spawn.

Base kill gold devaluation per 1 gold given on death: 0.2 -> 0.4. For example, dying and giving away 300g will reduce your base kill gold by 75g.

Base kill gold revaluation per 1 gold earned: 0.1 -> 0.2. This change does not affect the accrual of positive bounties.

Epic Objective Tuning

Riot wants to increase the risk incurred when taking epic monsters, bringing it closer to the danger level of pushing for turrets.

To do this, they’re making these epic monsters more resistant to physical and magic damage, teams will take 10-30% longer to kill them. Late-game elemental drakes will be even slower.

This increase in resistances and a small buff to Smite is aimed at protecting junglers from some non-jungler objective steals to make the role more forgiving.

Riot has also tweaked epic monster rewards, each will give roughly as much gold and twice as much experience as a typical jungle camp.

But Riot is curtailing gold rewards of game-ending objectives like Baron and Elder to instead emphasise their buffs to power and experience.

Additionally, all epic monsters now have scaling with base stats and level-ups similar to how champions do i.e. armor and magic resist growth.

Elemental Drakes

 Elemental Drakes will have up to 35% more effective HP, increased further for teams who approach Dragon Soul, as the Dragon Vengeance mechanic that gives them damage reduction has been buffed, causing super late game soul takes to last about twice as long.

This is so losing teams have a fair shot at taking a low-value Elemental Drake, but Riot wants Dragon Soul to be strongly contestable. Drakes still don’t deal very much damage, which is an intended part of their combat.

Their local rewards are actually going up this season, unlike most other epic monsters, so junglers feel appropriately rewarded for skipping out on a camp or two to take a team-wide objective.

Riot has also simplified and buffed all dragons’ comeback experience mechanic, which rewards under-levelled champions on the losing team.

Minimum level: 6 (unchanged)

Health: 5,730-13,790 -> 3,625 + 375 growth (5,106-10,000)

Armor: 21 -> 34 + 8 Growth (66-170)

Magic Resistance: 30 -> 32 + 4 Growth (48-100)

Mountain drakes have +15% HP (4,200 + 430 growth) instead of +20 armor and magic resist

Dragon Vengeance damage reduction: 7/14/21% -> 15/30/45%

Dragon Vengeance no longer increases damage to champions by 20/40/60%

Dragon Vengeance tooltip now shows its numbers more accurately

Kill gold: 25 -> 75

Local XP: 150-330 (6-15) -> 160-400 (6-18)

Comeback XP is now linear instead of quadratic but still scales up to 2x at a 4 level deficit.

Elder Dragon

Elder Dragon already scaled its durability with level but Riot is cleaning up the functionality of it.

Like with Baron later on, its overall gold value is going down, while the experience value is being placed entirely into team-wide global XP and ensuring it’s amplified by the monster’s comeback experience for weaker players on the losing team.

Ultimately, Elder Dragon will have around 20% more effective HP but should otherwise feel similar.

Minimum level: 10 -> 13

Armor: 120-189 -> 34 + 8 Growth (122-170)

Magic resist: 70-113 -> 32 + 4 Growth (76-100)

Health: 13,650-17,130 -> 11,500 + 575 Growth (17,796-21,275)

Gold: 100 Kill + 250 Global -> 100 Kill + 150 Global

Total gold: 1350 -> 850

Experience: 830 Local + 500 Global -> 0 Local + 650 Global

Total experience: 3,330 -> 3,250

Comeback XP is now linear instead of quadratic but still scales up to 2x at a 4 level deficit.

Void Grubs

 Void Grubs have generally been an epic monster camp that’s more about getting yourself ahead and rewarding the whole team for running over to assist in the takedown.

With this season’s increased focus on pushing turrets, Riot think the buff already rewards that playstyle strongly, but wants to reduce the pressure on having whole teams roam up for Grubs.

Riot also wants to make it easier for laners to run over to take a single Void Grub and then leave back to their lane.

To accomplish these goals, the gold reward will be focussed purely on the killer of each monster and the rewards will be re-tuned to be more in line with Riot’s goals for camps like these.

The camp’s damage is also being reduced in order to make them less scary for non-junglers to engage with. As with most other epic monsters, their durability is increasing as well.

As a point of clarification, the changes to Voidmites only affect the monster camp version and have no impact on the reward mites summoned from taking down the camp.

Minimum level: 4 -> 7

Armor: 0 -> 34 + 8 Growth (73+)

Magic Resistance: 0 -> 32 + 4 Growth (51+)

Health: 2,250-3,750 -> 1300 + 200 Growth (2,269+)

AD: 30-45 by game time -> 12 + 2 Growth (22+)

Grubs now deal 50% more damage to non-champions, matching Dragon and Baron

Mite AD: 4.2-6.6 by game time -> 1.8 + 0.3 Growth (3+)

Mite HP: 470-710 by game time -> 180 + 30 Growth (325+)

Gold: 20 local + 50 global (210g) -> 30 local (90g)

Experience: 75 + 2% per level / 4 (79.5-84) -> 65 (195 for 3)

XP radius: 0 -> 2000

No longer heals its killer for 60 HP

Rift Herald

Riot says Herald’s ability to knock down towers is valuable so they’re increasing its unique reward a small amount while removing an odd optimization around delaying its summon in order to squeak out a level up and thus get more damage from the Rift Herald Mercenary’s charges.

Riot is making the “Eye” mechanic more solo-able by moving it to a simple cooldown that junglers can more easily claim by themselves.

They’re also changing its rewards to match Riot’s goals, especially by reducing the amount of local gold it gives nearby champions and instead rewarding the killer an appropriate amount.

Again, as with other epic monsters, its effective health has also increased.

Minimum level: 6 -> 9

Armor: 60 -> 34 + 8 Growth (88+)

Magic Resistance: 50 -> 32 + 4 Growth (59+)

Health: 10,688-14,250 -> 7,000 + 700 Growth (11,718+)

Rift Herald eye cooldown: 8 -> 6

Eye cooldown is no longer reduced on-hit

Rift Herald now deals 50% more damage to non-champions, matching Dragon and Baron.

Experience value: 309-330 -> 240

XP radius: 600 -> 2000

Gold: 200-600 based on nearby champions: 100g to killer

Mercenary charge damage: 2500-3000 -> 3000

Mercenary health: 4,770-6,360 -> 2,500 + 270 Growth (4,059+)

Mercenary armor: 60 -> 34 + 8 Growth (88+)

Mercenary Magic Resistance: 50 -> 32 + 4 Growth (59+)

Atakhan

Atakhan has been removed from the game.

Spawns -> No longer spawns

Baron Nashor

Baron Nashor is receiving a similar treatment to Elder Dragon, reducing its overall gold reward and ensuring the experience reward is impactful to drive exciting comeback moments after clutch steals.

However, Riot is preserving its buff power as a meaningful game-ender.

Baron’s various abilities have been re-tuned to ensure they’re not weaker than his regular attacks so he lives up to his raid boss aura.

His shred is also being empowered to consistently weaken all enemies around him, making the fight more lethal than before when an enemy team comes to contest.

Ultimately, Baron will be more durable than before and slightly more threatening, as his abilities will more accurately scale across game time and the increased shred will make the attacking team more prone to being more vulnerable to contests.

Spawn timer: 25m -> 20m

Minimum level: 11

Health: 15,600-19,020 by time -> 16,300 + 170 Growth (17,792-19,190)

Armor: 120 -> 34 + 8 Growth (104-170)

Magic Resistance: 70 -> 32 + 4 Growth (67-100)

Attack damage: 350-520 from 20-57 minutes -> 175 + 20 Growth (351-515)

Corrosion secondary attack damage: 70 + 20% total AD -> 35% total AD

Acid Pool damage: 200 + 10% total AD -> 100% total AD

Territorial Baron pull damage: 300 -> 100% total AD

All-Seeing Baron rift total damage: 1000 -> 140% total AD

Acid Shot damage: 200 + 50% total AD -> 100% total AD

Tentacle Knockup damage: 200 + 25% total AD -> 100% total AD

Re-added: Shreds 0.5 armor/MR per second to all nearby enemies

Experience: 800 local + 600 global -> 650 global

Total experience: 3800 -> 3250

Gold: 25 kill + 300 global -> 100 kill + 150 global

Total gold: 1525 -> 850

Baron Nashor is now subject to comeback experience like with dragons. Players on the losing team gain 25% increased experience per level behind they are, capped at 2x.

Fixed a broken icon in death recap from one of Baron’s abilities

Jungle Adjustments

Buff Camps

Riot removing the global red and blue buffs that were available after 25 minutes for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, Riot wants these buffs to be meaningful, and claims giving them out globally makes them less special. Red and Blue buff aren’t very impactful if given out to five champions at a time.

It also made it harder to appreciate the reward, since it could often show up without any effort, Riot prefers the version where someone intentionally walks over to pick up the buff their jungler left for them.

Secondly, Riot thinks the overall power level of these camps got too high with so many buffs given out, and considering the 2026 season’s emphasis on pushing for the enemy base over taking jungle monsters, reducing the power of team buffs was a straightforward decision.

This also means junglers are less likely to face off against an enemy who’s wearing matching buffs, giving junglers a little more late-game combat agency in their average fight.

Baron’s spawn no longer corrupts Red and Blue buff, which made their buffs global and gave the monsters 30% more HP. A second version of the buff still drops after the Elemental Terrain transition.

Red buff regen: 0.5/1/3% at level 1/4/6 -> 0.5/1/1.5/3% at 1/4/6/11

Red melee slow: 5/10/15/20% -> 10/15/20%

Red ranged slow: 5/7.5/10% (unchanged)

Red buff burn: 10-75 -> 15-54

Burn now displays its cumulative damage on its target

Red/Blue buff tooltips now show exactly how much power they provide.

Bugfix: Red/blue buff no longer last 30 seconds longer if a jungler kills a champion for it

Jungle rules

The jungle changes this season are aimed at slowing down their early clears in order to give more room for lanes to play out their early games without as much intervention.

Riot is reshaping the feel of early clears by giving junglers substantial damage reduction to help novice players have a more comfortable time when clearing their jungle and compensating the amount of health they get back to achieve fairly similar health for experienced players who kite camps well.

Junglers will also be a little better at killing epic monsters, as their pets will contribute more DPS regardless of class and build, and their Smite will be more powerful compared to spells like Lux’s and Jinx’s ultimates.

Additionally, the overall mid-late jungle gold and experience income is going up a little through a combination of a more valuable Rift Scuttler and increased gold and experience from their more quickly completed jungle quest.

Monster damage amp: 25% -> 10%

Smite damage: 600/900/1200 -> 600/1000/1400

New: Junglers take 50% damage from non-epic monsters

Maximum heal on kill: 81 + 13.5/lvl (1-10), max of 202.5 -> 90+20/lvl (1-9), max of 250

Minimum heal on kill: 36+6 (44% of max), max of 90 -> 0 (0% of max)

NEW: Now restores 15 energy on large monster kill

Pet heal per second: 14-37 (1-10) -> 6-36 (1-18)

Pet base DPS: 20-90 -> 20-150

Base pet DPS against epic monsters: 15.5 -> 20-150

Scuttle Crab no longer spawns at -1 level, thus increasing its gold/XP value

Kills required for first evolution: 20 -> 15

Jungle role quest completion: 40 stacks -> 35 stacks

Faelights and Vision changes

We're introducing Faelights, special predetermined locations that if you place a ward in them, grant extra vision beyond a ward’s typical range.

Some will spawn at the beginning of the game and more will appear when the Elemental Rift transforms 👀 pic.twitter.com/0vOU1NhbWX

— League of Legends // UK, IE & Nordics (@LoLUKN) December 1, 2025

Faelights

Faelights are a new map feature to improve the vision system. They appear as rings of glowing mushrooms on the ground—some present at game-start, and some upon the Elemental Rift transformation.

When you place a ward on the ring, it will temporarily reveal a nearby area of the map, which is not revealed to enemies unless they use a detector effect or ping the ward directly.

These were designed with a few goals in mind:

First, to make wards more usable for enabling plays (like a split-push), even if the support isn’t nearby to provide multiple wards (especially when coupled with the Scryer’s Bloom changes; see below).

This is a major motivator for the powerful faelight spots that spawn near side lanes after elemental rift transformation. It’s also why the bonus vision regions are long enough to make a play, but not long enough to dominate vision.

Secondly, Riot wants the vision game to be more approachable while still rewarding good decision-making and strategic skill (particularly as the game moves past lane phase).

This is why the island brush locations near side lanes are simple feels-good spots to ward during lane phase, while the areas towards the center of the map are sparser and less powerful.

It’s also why the system still forces you to make strategic decisions about when and how to use limited ward/trinket resources (rather than resembling a plant or hexgate, for example), including for playing-against (as asymmetric information is critical to depth of strategy).

Third, Riot wants to ensure the vision system has interesting mechanics to promote healthy new vision dynamics (e.g. enable split-pushes without turbo-charging jungle invades).

This is why each location has its own tuning levers, like location, elemental rift delay, bonus vision shape/size, and the location/frequency of nearby Scryer’s Blooms.

These enable faelights like those at base gates, which can be useful for offensive plays, but are designed to be easier than average for a losing team to retake and use to recover after being pushed in.

Finally, the vision system has historically been hard to understand and low-satisfaction, so Riot is keen on vision mechanics that feel visceral, alive, and aesthetically pleasing on the map.

Riot hopes the natural-magic visual motifs and punchy particle effects that hopefully make it a fun and inviting feature to interact with.

Faelight: Placing a ward (of any type) on a faelight makes the ward a faelight superward, applying the following effects:

• Grants +25% vision radius to the ward
• Reveals a bonus vision region for 45 seconds
• The bonus vision region shape is specific to that faelight location
• The bonus region particles are only visible to your team
• The bonus vision region  is not affected by the type of ward being used (e.g. Control Wards don’t enhance it.)
• This duration is represented by a countdown circle visual on the ward
• The bonus vision region can see into brush if the brush is in the region shape
• Enemies will know they’re in the bonus region while their team has a detector/sweeper effect within the region
• Enemies will know they’re in the bonus region if their team has ping-tracked the ward directly (including via Sixth Sense)
• All faelight superward buffs are suppressed while the ward has nearsight, and removed when the ward dies
• If your team already has a ward on the faelight, that ward will be destroyed to make room for the new superward
• For the sake of Vision Score, the ward has a +25% score mod
• For the sake of Vision Score, the bonus vision region is treated as an extra ward obeying the Position modifier rule, but no other modifier rules (e.g. staleness)

 Faelight Locations:

• One near each base gate (4 total), providing vision into the nearby jungle
• One in each island brush near top and bot (2 total), providing vision into river
• One in each river wall brush near mid AKA banana brush (2 total), providing vision of nearby river (hugging the mid lane brush but not overlapping it)
• [After Elemental Rift Transformation] One near side lanes in each quadrant (4 total), providing vision in the jungle path along the lane

Other Vision Changes

Faelight’s goals are meant to be delivered by a mix of Faelights themselves and other vision changes working in tandem.

First, Riot is buffing the cooldown of yellow trinket so non-supports are more readily able to access vision (with or without faelights) to make plays.

Similarly, Riot is also buffing the duration of red trinket so those trying to bypass/clear enemy vision are more able to do so (and to make them better for clearing detected Faelight superwards).

Additionally, more Scryer’s Bloom locations are being added and their respawn times are speeding up to theoretically to enable the “I have the vision tools to make plays” goal of Faelights, as well as increase access to ward-clearing (to offset the increased systemic vision from faelights).

Stealth Ward Trinket Cooldown: 210-120s (by level) -> 170-90s (by level)

Oracle Lens Trinket Duration: 6s -> 8s

Scryer’s Bloom Default Respawn Time: 260-350s (random) -> 200-260s (random)

At 15:00 (or elemental rift transformation), new Scryer’s Bloom locations become available:

• One at each river coast near side lanes (2 total)
• One behind each side lane inner turret (4 total)
• One near the rocks in base where Hexgates spawn (4 total)

Elemental rift Scryer’s Bloom locations near these points have been deprecated, and any other plants too close by have been repositioned

These new Scryer’s Bloom locations have much shorter default respawn times: 90-120s (random)

Homeguards

Homeguards is back and will be generally faster to remove dead tome and enable more propactive plays, especially later.

Players will now keep homeguards until a player reaches their outermost turret of their lane or the minion wave.

Homeguard no longer has a duration.

Homeguard is now removed after reaching the endpoint, entering combat, or entering the jungle.

Homeguard will always take you at least to just before your outermost living turret in a lane.

Homeguard will always take you at least to your Inhibitor in your base.

After 14:00 or after at least one turret on either team has been destroyed in a given lane, Homeguard will track the furthest minion in the lane, ending approximately 2000 units before reaching the minion wave.

Before 14:00, Homeguard grants 80% movement speed ramping down to 40% over 4 seconds.

After 14:00, Homeguard grants 150% movement speed ramping down to 65% over 4 seconds.

In Swiftplay, Homeguard always grants 200% movement speed, ramping down to 100% over 4 seconds.

Crystalline Overgrowth

Introducing Crystalline Overgrowth, the new pushing mechanic coming in 2026 ‼

Towers will build up crystals over time that, when hit, are destroyed and deal additional damage to towers.

With this, the Demolish rune will now activate after hitting a tower 3 times in a row. pic.twitter.com/YGs5Q4HQah

— League of Legends Leaks & News (@LeagueOfLeaks) December 1, 2025

Riot wants to encourage a wider variety of strategic play in 2026.

Especially making lane pushes better in situations outside Baron buff. Part of this is addressing the reward incentives (see below), but another part is addressing the actual ability to make damage progress on turrets.

Even if turrets are worth more, there are many situations where players don’t have the time or DPS needed to make meaningful turret progress.

Crystalline Overgrowth is a new mechanic on lane turrets to enable that damage progress, essentially every champion a Demolish-like tool.

Over the course of several minutes, crystals will begin automatically building up on turrets. When a champ hits that turret, the overgrowth will burst, dealing bonus true damage based on how much overgrowth has accumulated. It’s not based on the attacker’s stats (nor do they need to stay near the turret for long).

The tuning here is meant to be useful whether you’re pushing fairly frequently or only hit turrets a couple times per game. Riot wants this to be a mechanic that most champs feel empowered to use in most games, not something that’s only useful for perma-pushers or only useful for comebacks.

Targetable lane turrets are now subject to Crystalline Overgrowth.

Crystalline overgrowth will appear after a 90s startup/cooldown (30s in Swiftplay); at that point, the turret will take true damage the next time an enemy champion attacks it.

The overgrowth will stay at its minimum damage state for 60s (30s in Swiftplay), then scale the damage up linearly for 240s (180s in Swiftplay), then hold at max damage indefinitely.

The damage calculation is based on the average level of the attacking team:

At level 1, the damage range is 2% – 3.3% of the turret’s max Health (2.15% – 3.76% in Swiftplay).

At level 18, the damage range is 8.8% – 18.9% of the turret’s max Health (13.2% – 39.6% in Swiftplay).

The attack hitbox of the turret is increased for melee champions based on the size of the overgrowth.

Crystalline overgrowth will not proc from attacks while the turret has backdoor protection.

If an enemy unit is near the turret at that 90 second mark when it would become active, Crystalline Overgrowth will be suppressed and not appear. Once enemies are gone, the Overgrowth will then be applied and it will “fast forward” its state to make up for where it should be. This is to avoid sudden mid-push activations.

Demolish

Given that Overgrowth occupies a lot of the same space as Demolish (in visuals, complexity, and gameplay), Riot felt Demolish needed to be simplified.

Demolish trigger: Charge up a powerful attack against a tower while near it. -> Your third attack against towers deals bonus physical damage.

Cooldown: 45s -> 30s

Melee Damage: 100 + [35% of maximum health] -> 85 + [28% of maximum health]

Ranged Damage: 100 + [35% of maximum health] -> 50 + [20% of maximum health]

Game Start Time

Riot is trimming down the wasted time at the start of the game.

Minions and camps will spawn faster but the new Homeguards should make level one invades still possible.

Minion spawn time: 1:05 -> 30 seconds

Murk Wolf, Blue Sentinel, Red Brambleback, Raptor Camps: Spawn at 55 seconds

Krug, Gromp Camps: Spawn at 1:07

River Scuttler Camps: Spawn at 2:55

Baron Nashor: 25:00 -> 20:00

Epic Monster spawn times are unchanged unless noted above.

Ambient Gold Start Time: 65 seconds

Most miscellaneous start of game systems (for example, World Atlas’s first charge) start 35 seconds faster. 

Remake Eligibility: 1:30 through 3:00 -> 0:55 through 2:25

Early Surrender (with AFK) eligibility: 3:30 -> 2:55

Turrets

There are lots of changes to turrets coming in this patch beyond the new Crystalline Overgrowth mechanic.

The headlining feature is that all turrets (except Nexus turrets) now have turret plates, rewarding champions for partial success when sieging the enemy base and incentivizing smaller incremental pushes over taking a whole turret down in one fell swoop.

The total gold from these turrets isn’t changing much as the total local gold has mostly been shifted into the individual turret plates themselves.

Riot is also re-tuning the overall durability and damage, keeping outer turrets from scaling quite so far into the game, making mid-game turret takes a little less risky while still allowing them to provide solid safety early on.

Turret health is overall increasing a little to make room for the new Crystalline Overgrowth mechanic.

We still like several of the mechanics that turret plates afforded, namely that outer turrets start very durable but become squishier after the laning phase winds down, and that melee champions were rewarded for incurring extra risk when attacking turrets, so those mechanics have been preserved in this new world.

Bulwark resist duration: 20s, refreshing on each plate takedown: 20s, overlapping durations

Bulwark resist visualization updated and new effects have been added. VFX no longer disappear when champions walk out of range.

Turret plates take 17% less damage from minions and ranged champions -> Turrets take 20% more damage from melee champions

Updated all turret item tooltips to more clearly explain turret mechanics.

Turret true sight range: 1095 -> 1100. Tooltip updated to reflect the accurate range.

Outer Turrets

The primary change for outer turrets is that the health bar has been changed to make it easier to understand how durable a turret really is.

Instead of gaining permanent resists each time a turret plate dropped, the health bar segments are simply different sizes, which is mathematically almost identical but makes it easier to understand a turret’s true durability at a glance.

Though turret plates are now permanent, Riot like that outer turret durability changes over game time, becoming frailer as the game progresses.

So its resistances and value drop in the mid game, rewarding players who can press their lead early on but still leaving a moderate amount of gold for those who never had early pressure.

Nearby players are now rewarded a share of 300g for destroying the first turret of the game.

Plates are now permanent instead of falling off at 14 minutes.

Resistances: Set armor/MR to 40 at 14 minutes -> Lose 15 armor/mr per minute starting at minute 11, capped at -60

Plate gold: Turret plates drop at 14 minutes, awarding no further gold -> Plate value reduces by 10g per minute at minute 11, capped at -40

Plate thresholds: 20/40/60/80/100% -> 10/25/45/70/100% missing HP

No longer gains 50 permanent resists per dead plate.

In-world turret plate models have been removed. They now only show as health bar segments.

Base resists: 15 -> 60

Base HP: 5,000 -> 9,000

Maximum bonus AD: 192 at 16 minutes -> 168 at 14 minutes

Local gold: 250 -> 0

Turret plate gold: 125 -> 120

Maximum local gold: 875 -> 600

Minimum local gold: 250 -> 400

Inner and Inhibitor Turrets

As mentioned above, T2 and T3 turrets are receiving turret plates in order to reward partial progress.

Now crashing a minion wave and dealing a couple thousand damage will pay you for pushing up and incurring that risk.

Combined with more durable epic monsters, this should meaningfully push champions to care much more about pushing up and progressing toward destroying the enemy base.

The rest of the math here is simply a consistency pass that sets all turrets to 60 armor and MR in order to make it easier to read each health bar.

Riot is also removing some of their late-game stat scaling to make sure pushing them remains a strong option.

NEW: Turret Plates claimed at 10/25/45/70/100% missing HP

Inner turret local gold: 425/675 -> 600 spread across 5 plates

Inner turret health: 4000 -> 5000

Inner turret resistances: 55 -> 60

Inner turrets no longer gain up to 15 armor/MR at minutes 16-30

Inhibitor turret local gold: 375 -> 600 spread across 5 plates

Inhibitor turret regen thresholds: 33/66% HP -> 30/75% HP

Inhibitor turret health: 3500 -> 4750

Inhibitor turret resistances: 70 -> 60

Nexus Turrets

Nexus Turrets are a special case due to their unique location far inside the base.

As they already have partial-kill rewards due to their health regeneration mechanics, Riot aren’t doing much on the durability front.

However, they are leaving them weaker on respawn so that it’s never an optimization to leave the turret at low health instead of actually destroying it.

NEW: Turret Plates claimed at 10/25/45/70/100% missing HP

Nexus turret health: 3000 -> 3500

Nexus turret resists: 70 -> 60

Nexus turret HP on respawn: 100% -> 40%

6 HP/sec Nexus turret regen: 33/66% -> 40/70% HP

Added a separate tower item for Nexus Turrets to show that they respawn.

Minions

In order to create more windows for successful pushing, Riot is increasing the rate of minion wave spawns in the mid and late game.

In order to not balloon the amount of gold and experience given by these more frequent waves, Riot is pruning the occasional melee minion out of the mid game and overall reducing the value of super minions and cannon minions.

At 14 minutes, minion waves now spawn every 25 seconds. When a cannon minion spawns on these waves, one fewer melee minion spawns.

At 30 minutes, minion waves now spawn every 20 seconds. One fewer caster minion spawns on these waves.

Minion to turret damage: 55% -> 60%

Base Movement Speed: 325 -> 350

First cannon minion wave: wave 4 -> wave 3

Cannon AD: 39, +1.5 every 90 seconds -> 39, +1.5 every 90 seconds, then +4 every 90 seconds at wave 15

Super minion base AD: 210 -> 180

Experience share: 95/62/41.3/31/24.8/20.7% -> 100/65/43.3/32.5/26/21.7%

Melee minion XP: 65 (61.75 / 40.3) -> 62 (62 / 40.3)

Melee minion gold: 21 -> 20

Ranged minion XP: 32 (30.4 / 19.84) -> 31 (31 / 20.15)

Cannon/Super minion XP: 100 (95 / 62) -> 75 (75 / 48.75

Cannon/Super minion gold: 60 + 3 every 90 seconds -> 50 + 1 every 90 seconds

Cannon minion damage to turrets: 82.5% -> 84%

Cannon minion item updated to show its special rules for attacking turrets.

Champions

With every champion’s base crit damage being increased back to 200% this season, Riot is making some preemptive balance changes to those who currently get at least 25% crit chance in the average game.

Riot wants to move many of these champions toward auto attack scaling via their new and improved crit damage and away from ability scaling in order to make these ADCs shine as true auto-attack carries and less like mages.

When handling critical strike damage in general, Riot is pushing every ability to scale as a portion of bonus critical strike damage, which most consistently preserves the value of critical strikes. For abilities that are very close to basic attacks in functionality, they’ve tried to preserve a high crit damage ratio and the more spell-like the ability, the less it needs to scale with crit.

Cassiopeia

While Cassiopeia’s no boots passive is very thematic, the addition of more boot based systems over the years (like role quest rewards) has made it feel like a punishment at times instead.

Cassiopeia can buy boots again in LoL so she will have the opportunity to engage with these new systems.

Base Stats

Base Movement Speed: 328 -> 335

Passive – Serpentine Grace

Passive Rework: Gain 4-72 Movement Speed (Based on level), but she cannot purchase boots. -> Increased effectiveness of all Movement Speed buffs by 6-40% (based on level).

Samira

Riot likes that Samira’s R and Q are almost direct auto-attack replacements and want to preserve as much of their crit damage as possible.

However, with the value of crit going up, the value of AD must then go down.

Q – Flair

Q Non-Crit Damage: 5/10/15/20/25 (+ 95/102.5/110/117.5/125% total AD) -> 0/5/10/15/20 (+ 110% total AD)

Q Critical Strike Damage: 1.25/1.65x with IE -> 50% of bonus crit damage: 1.5/1.65x with IE

R – Inferno Trigger

R Non-Crit Damage: 5/15/25 + 45% total AD -> 20/40/60 + 30% total AD

R Critical Damage: 1.75/2.15x with IE -> 100% of bonus crit damage: 2.0/2.3x with IE

Aphelios

 Aphelios has a lot of intricacies and some of his abilities try to behave exactly like basic attacks.

With that in mind, Riot is converting Severum’s active to total attack damage in line with similar abilities and generally lowering the bonus AD ratios of several abilities that already scale well due to firing off basic attacks that can crit as part of their cast.

Calibrum

Bonus Damage per Mark: 15 (+ 20% bonus AD) -> 15 (+ 10% bonus AD)

Severum

Onslaught Damage per Hit: 10/15/20/25/30/35/40 (+ 22/25/28/31/34/37/40% bonus AD) -> (+ 19/22.5/26/29.5/33/36.5/40% total AD)

Still critically strikes for 100% crit damage (1.75/2.15x -> 2.0/2.3x)

Infernum

Duskwave Active Damage: 25/31.67/38.33/45/51.67/58.33/65 (+ 56/60/64/68/72/76/80% bonus AD) -> 20/35/50/65/80/95/110 (+ 10/11/12/13/14/15/16% bonus AD)

Follow-up attack still critically strikes for 100% crit damage (1.75/2.15x -> 2.0/2.3x)

Crescendum

Sentry Active Damage: 35/50/65/80/95/110/125 (+ 42/45/48/51/54/57/60% bonus AD) -> 35/50/65/80/95/110/125 (+ 30/32/34/36/38/40/42% bonus AD)

Still critically strikes for 100% crit damage (1.75/2.15x -> 2/2.3x)

Moonlight Vigil

Follow-Up Attack Critical Damage: 1.2/1.6x with IE -> 30% of bonus critical strike damage: 1.3/1.39x with IE

Caitlyn

Caitlyn’s top-end Headshot damage has gotten out of hand and with the value of critical strikes going up it’s about to get even stronger, so Headshot’s top end is taking a big nerf.

Her R will now scale with Infinity Edge, as it already scales with critical strike chance, but Riot is reducing its damage to make room for her stronger basic attacks.

Passive – Headshot

Crit Scaling: 0-148.75/182.75% total AD -> 100%*Bonus Crit Damage (0-100/130% total AD)

R – Ace in the Hole

Crit Scaling: Up to 1.5x -> 30% of bonus critical strike damage: up to 1.3/1.39x with IE

Tristana

Tristana’s E is one of the sharpest-scaling abilities in the game, and considering her late game is already poised to be great with a strong attack speed steroid, long range, and lots of crit damage, Riot thinks the top end of her E can stand to go down a few pegs.

E – Explosive Charge

Non-crit Damage: 60/70/80/90/100 (+ 100/110/120/130/140% bonus AD) -> 60/85/110/135/160 (+ 80% bonus AD)

Crit Scaling: 100%: Up to 1.75/2.15x with IE -> 40% of critical strike damage: 1.40/1.52x with IE

Nilah

Nilah’s in an interesting place where her Q didn’t scale with Infinity Edge, so unlocking that avenue marks a small power increase on top of her basic attacks getting better, so Riot sought to find other ways to slightly lower her late game scaling as compensation.

Base Stats

Attack Speed Growth: 2.25% -> 2%

Q – Formless Blade

Active Damage: 5/10/15/20/25 (+ 90/95/100/105/110% total AD) -> 0/10/20/30/40 (+ 100% total AD)

Crit Scaling: Up to 2x -> 80% of bonus crit damage: 1.8/2.04x

Armor Penetration Crit Scaling: 0-33% -> 0-30%

R – Apotheosis

Mana Cost: 80 -> 100

Jinx

Riot likes the overall shape of how Jinx functions and generally just want to preserve the value of her minigun’s high attack speed, so they’re making sure her two stances are more distinguished from one another and generally lowering a bit of spell damage to keep her attack-focused.

Base Stats

Attack Speed Growth: 1.4% -> 1%

R – Super Mega Death Rocket!

Maximum Flat Damage: 250/400/550 (+ 130% bonus AD) -> 200/350/500 (+ 120% bonus AD)

Jhin

Jhin won’t behave any differently next season as Riot wants to avoid letting his guaranteed crit fourth shot do too much damage.

Base Stats

Multiplicative Crit Damage Mod: 86% -> 75% (1.505x -> 1.5x)

Sivir

Sivir’s going to gain a lot of power from stronger Ricochet crits, so Riot is reducing her Q’s scaling.

Q – Boomerang Blade

Damage: 60/85/110/135/160 (+ 85% bonus AD) -> 60/85/110/135/160 (+ 70% bonus AD)

Crit Scaling: Up to 1.5x -> 40%: 1.4/1.52x

Zeri

Riot is updating Zeri’s E to crit exactly as a basic attack would, which means re-tuning some of her abilities to make room for that power.

W – Ultrashock Laser

Damage: 30/70/110/150/190 (+ 130% total AD) -> 30/70/110/150/190 (+ 120% total AD)

Through-Wall Damage: 1.75x, 2.15x with IE -> 75% of bonus critical strike damage: 1.75/1.975x

Tooltip now shows the enhanced damage

Damage now cosmetically critically strikes its targets when shot through a wall

E – Spark Surge

Damage: 20/22/24/26/28 (+12% bonus AD) -> 17/19/21/23/25 (+ 10% bonus AD)

Crit Scaling: Up to 1.85x every hit -> 100% of bonus crit damage on crit: 2.0/2.3x

R – Lightning Crash

Active Damage: 200/300/400 (+ 100% bonus AD) -> 150/250/350 (+ 100% bonus AD)

Lucian

Lucian’s builds are pretty sensible and as a spell-focused ADC, but Riot want to make sure his spell scaling is good.

So they’re updating his R to fire even more bullets with crit damage, which will make crit scale his ult just as well as it scales basic attacks.

Considering he’s already got extremely strong AD scaling and Riot wants to make sure that Navori Flickerblades feels good, they’re bringing down some of his Q’s AD scaling.

Base Stats

Attack Damage Growth: 2.9 -> 2.5

Attack Speed Growth: 3.3% -> 2.5%

Q – Piercing Light

Damage: 85/115/145/175/205 (+ 60/75/90/105/120% bonus AD) -> 80/115/150/185/220 (+ 100% bonus AD)

R – The Culling

R Extra Bolts from Crit Chance: Up to 25 -> 100% of bonus crit damage: Up to 22/28

Total R Bolts: 22-47 (based on critical strike chance) -> 22-44/50 (based on critical strike chance and damage)

Xayah

Riot is updating Xayah’s E to care about crit damage and adjusting her E’s overall damage profile to be more reliable and less snowbally.

E – Bladecaller

Damage: 55/65/75/85/95 (+ 60% bonus AD) -> 50/65/80/95/110 (+ 40% bonus AD)

Crit Scaling: Up to 75% -> Up to 50% of bonus crit damage: 1.5/1.65x

Draven

Draven is very auto-attack focused and averages about two crit items per game, so he’s also in need of some compensation.

Base Stats

AD Growth: 3.6 -> 3

W – Blood Rush

Attack Speed: 30/35/40/45/50% -> 20/25/30/35/40%

Yunara

Yunara has a crit build and an on-hit build, but even her on-hit build almost always picks up Hurricane, so she’s getting stronger no matter what she does next season.

Riot is looking for nerfs that will skew more toward low-Attack Speed high-AD crit builds, as they’ll be more directly buffed by the global crit damage increase.

Q – Cultivation of Spirit

Attack Speed: 25/35/45/55/65% -> 20/30/40/50/60%

R+W – Arc of Ruin

Damage: 175/350/525 (+ 150% bonus AD) -> 160/320/480 (+ 120% bonus AD)

Akshan

Akshan’s abilities currently scale crit in three different ways and Riot is making that more consistent in LoL Patch 26.1.

His passive auto, being functionally a true basic attack, will crit for 100% value. Meanwhile, the crit scaling on E and R are going down as compensation.

Riot is also doing some discretionary adjustments to allow Q-max and E-max to perform at similar levels of power by adjusting their rank-up incentives.

Passive – Dirty Fighting

P second shot crit damage: 30% of bonus crit damage (1.225/1.345x) -> 100% of bonus crit damage: 2/2.3x

Fixed a bug where the second shot could bypass blind if it didn’t crit.

Q – Avengerang

Damage: 5/25/45/65/85 (+ 80% total AD) -> 45/75/105/135/165 (+ 70% bonus AD)

E – Heroic Swing

Damage: 15/30/45/60/75 (+ 15% total AD) -> 8/16/24/32/40 (+ 25% total AD)

Crit Scaling: 1.575/1.935x -> 50% of bonus crit damage: 1.5/1.65x

Clarified that damage scales with attack speed in tooltip.

R – Comeuppance

Crit Scaling: 1.5/1.7x -> 30% of bonus crit damage: 1.3/1.42x

Gangplank

Gangplank is one of two champions (alongside Smolder) who Riot thinks is going to gain extra power due to Essence Reaver once again building from Sheen.

Riot expects GP to perform much, much better with his increased critical strike damage, so they’re pulling out many of the unique crit scalars that have been added over the years and delivering an extra hit to his E on top.

Passive – Trial by Fire

Damage: 50-250 (based on level) (+100% bonus AD) (+200% Crit Chance) -> 50-250 (+ 100% bonus AD) (+ 0% crit scaling)

E – Powder Keg

Bonus Champion Damage: 75 / 105 / 135 / 165 / 195 -> 75 / 95 / 115 / 135 / 155

Timer no longer reduces to 0.25 seconds at level 19.

No longer deals 5% more damage on critical strike.

Yone

Yone won’t be much different this year. Considering he doubles how much critical strike chance he gets from each item, he just isn’t allowed to crit for full damage.

Base Stats

Crit Damage: 1.75/2.15x -> 90% (1.8/2.07x)

Yasuo

Same as Yone, Yasuo won’t be much different this year either and is receiving the same change.

Base Stats

Crit Damage: 1.75/2.15x -> 90% (1.8/2.07x)

Miss Fortune

Miss Fortune tends to build quite a lot of critical strike chance and Riot likes that.

However, she can’t just be directly buffed so they’re compensating some of that value by softening her Q crit mod.

For her R, Ruot want to make sure that critical strikes feel like they have some impact, so they’re increasing the crit mod slightly, but in order to not push her scaling too hard, have compensated that with a new base damage and a lower AD ratio.

Q – Double Up

Active Critical Damage: 1.75/2.15x -> 50% of bonus crit damage (1.5/1.65x)

R – Bullet Time

Damage: 80% total AD (+ 25% AP) -> 20 / 30 / 40 (+60% Total AD) (+ 25% AP)

Crit Scaling: 1.2/1.28x -> 30% of bonus crit damage (1.3/1.39x)

Tryndamere

 Tryndamere is getting some real gameplay updates with this patch and some very real nerfs due to how much critical strike chance he normally has.

To weaken how incredible his early game all-ins can be with 200% crit damage, Riot is nerfing his early bonus AD from Q and nerfing his early E as well. However, he’s also getting some new tools.

Firstly, his Q now gives full value at 10% remaining health, meaning he can get the full bonus attack damage during his ultimate and it no longer has a disincentive for ranking up.

Secondly, his W will now slow enemies any time they are running away from Tryndamere, regardless of where they were looking when he cast it. Riot expects this substantial increase in reliability will be a big buff, so they’ve preemptively nerfed the slow itself. Though the slow duration is going down, the AD reduction is still the full four seconds regardless of facing.

Q – Bloodlust

Attack Damage: 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 (+ 0.15 / 0.25 / 0.35 / 0.45 / 0.55% missing HP) -> 0 (+ 0.2 / 0.35 / 0.5 / 0.65 / 0.8% missing HP)

Maximum Bonus AD: At 0% remaining HP -> At 10% remaining HP

Clarified the per-fury and maximum heal in Q’s tooltip.

W – Mocking Shout

No longer slows enemies who are facing away when cast for 4 seconds.

Now slows any enemy while they’re facing away from Tryndamere during the 2.5 second debuff.

Slow: 30 / 37.5 / 45 / 52.5 / 60% -> 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50%

Enemy attack damage is still reduced by 4 seconds.

E – Spinning Slash

Damage: 75 / 105 / 135 / 165 / 195 (+ 130% Bonus AD) -> 70 / 105 / 140 / 175 / 210 (+ 100% Bonus AD)

Twitch

Twitch’s late game team deletion with 200% crit damage will probably be too fast, so Riot is targeting some general late-game DPS nerfs.

Base Stats

Attack Speed Growth: 3.38% -> 3%

Attack Damage Growth: 3.1 -> 3

Q – Ambush

Bonus Attack Speed: 45 / 50 / 55 / 60 / 65% -> 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60%

Ashe

Ashe is already quite attack-reliant and pretty balanced but considering she buys about 1.5 crit items per game, Riot is lowering her late game strength a little to make room for the increased damage coming her way.

Base Stats

Attack Speed Growth: 3.33% -> 3%

Attack Damage Growth: 3.45 -> 3

Passive – Frost Shot

Crit Scaling: 100% (up to 1.75/2.15x) -> 100% (up to 2/2.3x)

W – Volley

Damage: 60 / 95 / 130 / 165 / 200 (+ 110% Bonus AD) -> 60 / 95 / 130 / 165 / 200 (+ 100% Bonus AD)

Smolder

Smolder, like Gangplank, stands to gain a lot of power from Essence Reaver’s changes in this patch so we’re taking a swing at how strongly his Q scales with critical strike purchases.

Q – Super Scorcher Breath

Crit Scaling: Up to 1.75/2.15x -> 50% of bonus crit damage (Up to 1.5/1.65x) (also affects passive Q stacks)

Kindred

Kindred’s E mechanics are rather confusing and they build several critical strike items already.

So Riot is updating the E to be much easier to understand and reducing the number and also modernizing the E’s monster cap to allow for more damage when building AD and ranking up the ability.

E – Mounting Dread

Missing Health Crit: 1.5/1.9x if target is below 25-75% (based on crit chance) Health -> 50% of bonus crit chance and crit damage always (up to 1.5/1.65x)

Pounce Damage: 1.75/2.15x on crit -> 50% of bonus crit chance and crit damage always (up to 1.5/1.65x)

Monster Damage Cap: 300 including base damage and bonus AD ratio -> 200 to only the %HP portion (This is a buff in almost all scenarios)

Corki

Corki isn’t particularly strong at the moment, so while this is a nerf on paper, Riot expects Corki will be overall stronger at the start of the season.

This nerf is aimed at weakening his ability to crush a minion wave right before a Recall.

W – Valkyrie

Damage per second: 40 / 55 / 70 / 85 / 100 (+40% bonus AD) (+ 30% AP) -> 30 / 45 / 60 / 75 / 90 (+40% bonus AD) (+ 30% AP)

Shaco

When Shaco crits during a Backstab or a Deceive, everything crits along with it for his full crit damage, so his top end can be very, very high.

Riot likes that he builds for crit sometimes and want to let as many of these tools inherit the new higher base crit damage, but also want to modernize his other scalings to respect crit damage mods more consistently and generally preserve the total power level of Shaco builds that don’t buy any critical strike chance.

Passive – Backstab

Damage: 20-35 (based on level) (+25% bonus AD) -> 20-35 (based on level)(+ 20% bonus AD)

Crit Modifier: 100% (1.75/2.15x) -> 100% (2.0/2.3x)

Q- Deceive

Backstab Modifier: 1.55/1.95x -> 60% of bonus crit damage (1.6/1.78x)

Backstab on Crit: 100% (1.75/2.15x) -> 100% (2.0/2.3x)

Graves

The functional result of these Graves changes should be almost nothing. He’ll deal about 1% more damage with his basic attacks when critically striking.

Base Stats

Crit Damage: 45% of bonus (33.75/51.75%) -> 35% of bonus (35/45.5%)

Total Damage on Crit: 250-357% total AD -> 252-360% total AD

Quinn

As Quinn builds a decent amount of crit and that crit manifests in stronger autos and more passive procs, Riot is compensation nerfing those same auto-reliant passive procs.

Passive – Harrier

Damage: 10-95 (based on level) (+ 16-50% (based on level) total AD) -> 15-120 (based on level) (+ 40% bonus AD)

Senna

Like Jhin, Yasuo, and Yone, Senna’s guaranteed critical strikes cannot sustain a 2x modifier, so Riot is lowering her base crit damage down to a value similar to last year.

Base Stats

Crit Damage: 100% of total crit damage (1.75/2.15x) -> 90% of total (1.8/2.07x)

Garen

Critical strike chance on Garen is pretty good since both his basic attacks and Judgment are improved by it.

Riot wants to continue to make space for non-crit Garen builds, so they’re compensating the global critical strike damage increase and updating the calculation to properly discount bonus crit damage.

E – Judgement

E Crit Ratio: 80% of total (1.4/1.72x) -> 30% of bonus (1.3/1.39x)

Rengar

Rengar is getting a heavy re-script. This is mostly intended to maintain current functionality and feel, while addressing bugs and tech debt. The list of bug fixes is too long to add here. 

Alongside the crit changes, Riot looking to make Rengar’s Q work more intuitively by letting the underlying attack itself roll for critical strikes, and if so, deal bonus damage based on his total AD.

This removes an optimization around rushing Infinity Edge to enhance the old forced-crit mechanic and also makes him not immediately lose 30% of his damage if his opponents build Randuin’s Omen.

Riot also states they’ll keep an eye on lethality-vs-crit Rengar and how it performs next season as we suspect Essence Reaver will be a big deal on him.

All abilities rescripted

Q – Savagery

Q is now consumed on plants

Q is no longer always always considered a critical strike

Q damage no longer deals up to  101.25% total AD bonus damage based on crit chance and damage

Q now deals 100/130% total AD bonus damage if Rengar crits the attack.

Viego

Viego buys a decent amount of crit chance and Riot wants to make sure those crits allow him to play out a consistent auto-attack pattern, so the larger nerfs are to the active damage of the Q and R.

Q – Blade of the Ruined King

% Current HP Crit Scaling: 100% of total (1.75/2.15x) -> 50% of bonus (1.5/1.65x)

Second Strike Crit Scaling: 100% of total (1.75/2.15x) -> 100% of bonus (2/2.3x)

Active Crit Mod: 100% of total (Up to 1.75/2.15x) -> 50% of bonus (Up to 1.5/1.65x)

R – Heartbreaker

Crit Scaling: Up to 2x -> 70% of bonus (Up to 1.7/1.91x)

Elise

Elise is in a silly spot where ability power quickly fails to scale her damage against monsters after the mid game.

Riot is delivering a change that will be a slight buff on average but is primarily meant to let her damage scale up with AP like it would for anyone else.

Q – Neurotoxin / Venomous Bite

Monster Damage Cap: 75/100/125/150/175 -> 65/85/105/125/145 (+ 90% AP)

Maximum Damage to Monsters: 115/170/225/280/335 -> 105155/205/255/305 (+ 90% AP)

Jax

Now that the top lane quest can raise champion levels to 20, Riot is looking for any champions who intermittently scale their passives and giving them another breakpoint if they deserve one.

Jax is one such champion who’s gaining a bit more attack speed at level 19.

Passive – Relentless Assault

Now gains an additional 1.5% attack speed per stack at level 19.

Item changes

Omnivamp

As Riot adds Omnivamp items back into the game, they’ve discovered a few ways in which the previously reworked (24.1) Omnivamp stat isn’t doing its job well enough.

Riot is updating it here to function fully as life steal, and for it to serve its purpose correctly when used against Minions.

Omnivamp: Now applies at 100% value, reduced to 33% value from pets, damage over time damage, and area effect spells against Minions.

Doran’s Blade

 Now that Omnivamp covers the needs of Doran’s Blade as a laning item, Riot is adding it back into the item in place of the Life Draining passive.

Removed: Life Draining passive

Added: 2.5% Omnivamp

New Items

For this Season Start, Riot took a look at itemisation across all of League’s classes and subclasses and made at least one item for each class, focusing on subclasses that have less existing itemization support to make sure that every subclass has a healthy number of satisfying items for champions to buy.

There’s also a few returning items from the past and a number of changes to existing items to refresh and improve the item system as a whole. 

Dusk and Dawn

Most AP fighters have incentives in their kit to autoattack, but they have very little access to items that actually support that pattern since Lich Bane and Nashor’s Tooth don’t offer the defensive stats that this subclass often needs.

Dusk and Dawn offers a Sheen pattern that doubles on-hits to help champions in this space live their dreams of sustained combat with lots of additional on-hits to enhance whatever their kit is already doing.

Build Path: Sheen + Blasting Wand + Kindlegem + Dagger + 300g 

Total Gold Cost: 3100g

Ability Power: 70 

Health: 300

Ability Haste: 20 

Attack Speed: 25% 

Spellblade (1.5s cooldown): After using an Ability, your next Attack deals 100% base AD + 10% AP bonus magic damage on-hit and applies on-hit effects an additional time.

Fiendhunter Bolts

When marksmen look at Zeal items, Riot wants them to have different options to choose from that are good in different situations or good for particular champions.

Fiendhunter bolts allows for a concentrated moment of power after casting an ultimate, which is particularly exciting for the marksman that already have that pattern like Twitch, Zeri, or Yunara.

Some others might like the ultimate haste this item offers, or just want to be able to get immediate combat value after ulting.  

Build Path: Zeal + Scout’s Slingshot + 850g 

Total Gold Cost: 2650g

Attack Speed: 40% 

Critical Strike Chance: 25%

Movement Speed: 4% 

Night Vigil: Gain 30 Ultimate Haste.

Opening Barrage (45s cooldown): After casting your Ultimate, your next 3 basic attacks within 8s gain 50% attack speed and critically strike for 75% of your normal critical strike damage. If an attack would already critically strike, it deals normal critical strike damage and also deals 10% bonus true damage.

Endless Hunger

Since the removal of Goredrinker and the removal of omnivamp on Eclipse, AD caster fighters have had little to no access to sustain via the item system.

Endless Hunger is a heavy AD-scaling item that rewards building high amounts of AD and can lead to some awesome popoffs in teamfights if you can get a takedown and keep casting through the enemy team.

Build Path: Caulfield’s Warhammer + Pickaxe + 1075g 

Total Gold Cost: 3000g

Attack Damage: 60 

Tenacity: 20%

Omnivamp: 5% 

Famine: Gain (5 + 10% bonus AD) Ability Haste

Feast: When a champion that you damaged within 3 seconds dies, gain 15% omnivamp for 8 seconds.

Bastionbreaker

 Most AD assassins aren’t particularly good at ending games, even when they are capable of getting lots of kills.

This can lead to pretty frustrating situations where the assassin player feels like they don’t have the tools they need to complete the game, and the players on the receiving end get continuously killed and stay trapped in a game where they can’t survive.

Bastionbreaker gives AD assassins a new luxury item that can help them close out games by giving them large amounts of damage to epic monsters and turrets as long as they’re building lots of lethality and can secure some takedowns.

Build Path: Brutalizer + Serrated Dirk + 863g 

Total Gold Cost: 3200g

Attack Damage: 55 

Lethality: 22 

Ability Haste: 15 

Shaped Charge: Dealing Ability damage to a champion or epic monster deals an additional (30 + 150% lethality) true damage.

Sabotage: Taking down a champion within 3 seconds of damaging them grants Sabotage for 90 seconds. While you have Sabotage, your next attack against an epic monster or turret deals an additional (300 + 2500% lethality) true damage over 3 seconds. 

Actualizer

It’s been a while, but LoL has got a new active item.

This one is made to support mana-stacking builds, to create more builds where mana isn’t just a limitation but instead make it so that it can be an advantage to have large amounts of mana.

Activating Actualizer significantly increases your manacosts in exchange for lower cooldowns and more ability damage, healing, and shielding for a short duration, so get your mana items ready for a very powerful popoff moment. 

Build Path: Lost Chapter + Blasting Wand + 1050g

Total Gold Cost: 3100g

Ability Power: 90 

Mana: 300

Ability Haste: 10 

[ACTIVE] Mana Made Real (60s cooldown): For 8 seconds, your mana is Empowered. While Empowered, your spells cost 100% more mana, you gain (15 + .005% bonus mana)% increased ability damage, healing, and shielding, and your basic ability cooldowns progress 30% faster. 

Hexoptics C44

Riot claims it has always wanted to support more diversity in crit marksman builds after the first item, so Hexoptics C44 is here to add an additional option for those looking to opt into big teamfight outputs.

If you can get one takedown, you can get some extra range to help you secure more kills, and on top of that you also get some bonus damage scaling based on how well you can space your opponents. 

Build Path: Pickaxe + Noonquiver + Long Sword + 275g 

Total Gold Cost: 2800g

Attack Damage: 50 

Critical Strike Chance: 25% 

Magnification: Deal up to 10% increased damage with attacks, based on how far away the enemy is (max damage at 750 range). 

Arcane Aim: When a champion that you damaged within 3 seconds dies, gain 100 additional attack range for 6 seconds.

Bandlepipes

Tank supports don’t have very many items, and the ones they do have generally focus on helping them roam or protect their allies.

Riot wanted to go a different direction this time, instead giving them a team-wide attack speed aura you can keep up in fights as long as you’re able to frequently apply crowd control to your enemies.

Build Path: Kindlegem + Cloth Armor + Null-Magic Mantle + 500g 

Total Gold Cost: 2000g

Health: 200

Armor: 20

Magic Resistance: 20 

Ability Haste: 15 

Fanfare: Slowing or Immobilizing an enemy champion grants Fanfare for 8 (melee) / 4 (ranged) seconds. Fanfare grants 20 Movement Speed. While you have Fanfare, nearby allies, including yourself, gain 30% (melee) / 20% (ranged) attack speed. 

Protoplasm Harness

Tanks have lots of tools to make them more durable in different ways, but Protoplasm Harness offers them a Lifeline item that has some movespeed and tenacity to enable a choice: do you want to keep going forward, or do you want to try to leave the fight?

If you’re tanky enough to survive, you can even get the full benefits from the healing over time this item grants, which scales with your armor and magic resistance to make sure it slots well into resistance-building tank builds. 

Build Path: Kindlegem + Giant’s Belt + 800g 

Total Gold Cost: 2500g

Health: 600 

Ability Haste: 15 

Lifeline: Taking damage that would reduce your health below 30% causes you to gain 200 maximum health for 5 seconds, then heal (200-400 [level scaling] + 250% armor + 250% magic resistance) health over the duration. While regenerating health, you gain 15% increased size, 10% Movement Speed, and 25% tenacity. 

Whispering Circlet / Diadem of Songs

This is a two-item pair for enchanters: a new evolving Tear item.

Some enchanters really like mana and some even step into the mage system to get it, so we’re going to offer a new item that allows them to get flat mana from the enchanter system but also scales well with additional mana purchases if anyone does want to get into a heal-based mana-stacking build. 

Whispering Circlet

Build Path: Forbidden Idol + Ruby Crystal + Tear of the Goddess + 850g

Total Gold Cost: 2250g

Health: 200 

Mana: 300 

Base Mana Regeneration: 75% 

Heal and Shield Power: 8% 

Harmony: Gain (.005% bonus mana)% Heal and Shield Power.

Manaflow: Landing Abilities grants 4 max mana (doubled vs champions). Transforms into Diadem of Songs at 360 max mana. 

Diadem of Songs

Health: 200 

Mana: 1000 

Base Mana Regeneration: 100% 

Heal and Shield Power: 8% 

Harmony: Gain (.005% bonus mana)% Heal and Shield Power.

Consonance: While you or any ally you’ve healed or shielded in the last 3 seconds is in combat with champions, each second, heal the lowest health nearby ally champion for (.008% bonus mana). 

Returning Items

Hextech Gunblade

Gunblade is one of the most requested removed items, as well as a popular item in alternate game modes despite a relatively limited champion user pool.

Riot think that they can control some of the negative gameplay of this item with tuning, especially on the amount of Omnivamp granted and on the frequency with which users can apply the powerful active effect, so it’s safe to add back in.

Build path: Vampiric Scepter + Hextech Alternator + Amplifying Tome + 600g

Total Gold Cost: 3000g

Ability Power: 80

Attack Damage: 40

Omnivamp: 10%

[ACTIVE] Lightning Bolt (60s cooldown): Shock the target enemy champion, dealing (175-253 [level scaling] + 30% Ability Power) magic damage and slowing them by 25% for 1.5 seconds.

Stormrazor

Stormrazor complements Riot’s efforts at increasing the variety of items available to critical strike-using champions, providing another Energized effect in that system.

Stormrazor will be the second Attack Damage + Attack Speed + Critical Strike option in the ecosystem, lowering the degree to which critical strike build paths funnel through Yun Tal Wildarrows.

Build Path: B. F. Sword + Cloak of Agility + Scout’s Slingshot + 700g

Total Gold Cost: 3200g

Attack Damage: 50

Attack Speed: 20%

Critical Strike Chance: 25%

Energized: Moving and Attacking generates an Energized Attack.

Bolt: Your Energized Attack applies 100 bonus magic damage and grants 45% Movement Speed for 1.5s.

Updated Items

Unending Despair

The dual resistance version of Unending Despair was intended to slot well into health-stacking builds in the second or third slot, but it ended up being so generically useful that it overrode the choice structure in top and jungle tank builds regardless of what their first item was.

Riot is returning it to armor-only, but this version has a bit more ability haste in order to differentiate it from the other armor plus health items in the tank system.

Build path: Aegis of the Legion + Giant’s Belt + 800g -> Chain Vest + Kindlegem + Ruby Crystal + 800g 

Total Gold Cost: 2800g (unchanged)

Armor: Increased from 25 -> 50

Magic Resistance: 25 -> 0 (REMOVED)

Ability Haste: Increased from 10 -> 15

Aegis of the Legion

Without Unending Despair, Aegis as an epic item doesn’t build into anything and doesn’t have any items that it makes sense to build into. As such, it’s being removed.

Horizon Focus

Horizon Focus has bounced around between an artillery mage item, a crowd control synergy item, and a control mage item over the past few years.

Riot is going back to the artillery mage version since that was high-fantasy and exciting for that subclass, whereas the other versions have been mostly functional but not particularly interesting for the other subclasses this item has supported. 

Build Path: Fiendish Codex + Fiendish Codex + Blasting Wand + 200g -> Fiendish Codex + Fiendish Codex + Amplifying Tome + 600g 

Total Gold Cost: 2750g -> 2700g

Ability Power: 125 -> 75

Ability Haste: 25 (unchanged)

Hypershot: Dealing ability damage to champions at 600 range or more units away from the cast position reveals them for 6 seconds -> Dealing ability damage to champions at 600 range or greater reveals them for 6 seconds. Deal 10% increased damage to enemies revealed by Hypershot.

Focus (30s cooldown): When Hypershot is triggered, reveal all other enemy champions with 1400 range of them for 3 seconds. 

Sundered Sky

With base critical strike damage going up, Sundered Sky needed to be retuned, and Riot also believes it’s a bit too generically powerful as it is now, so they’re doing some adjustments that should be overall slightly power down and make the item a little bit less generically appealing to help let other fighter items shine in the system. 

Attack Damage: 40 -> 45

Lightshield Strike: Critical strike damage decreased from 100% -> 80%

Lightshield Strike Cooldown: 8s -> 10s

Luden’s Companion

Guns are cool, but so are staves. Riot is bringing this back to the old name.

Name: Luden’s Companion -> Luden’s Echo

Icon: Reverted to the staff

Echoes of Helia

Echoes of Helia was intended to help fill in the space between the enchanter and mage system, but it ended up being a bit too far towards the enchanter space and didn’t quite fill that space.

Riot is making it more synergistic with mage items and more accessible by making it less necessary to be spamming both heals/shields and damage effects which made it unnecessarily narrow.

Kindlegem + Bandleglass Mirror + 500g (2200g)

35 Ability Power

200 Health

125% Base Mana Regen

20 Ability Haste

Soul Siphon: Gain 35% of pre-mitigation damage dealt to champions as Soul Charges, up to (80-250 [based on level]) charges. Healing or shielding an ally consumes all Soul Charges to restore 100% of that value as health.

Essence Reaver

Sheen Essence Reaver is back.

Previously it was removed in favor of a statstick Reaver that was intended to be more broadly appealing, but as it turned out while it did serve some additional champions it ended up just being a fairly flat and unexciting item, so Riot is bringing back the Sheen with some tweaks to make this version of Sheen Essence Reaver more balanceable.

Build Path: Pickaxe + Caulfield’s Warhammer + Cloak of Agility + 375g -> Sheen + Caulfield’s Warhammer + Cloak of Agility + 350g

Total Gold Cost: 2900g (unchanged)

Attack Damage: 60 -> 55 

25% Crit Chance

Ability Haste: 15 -> 20

Spellblade (1.5s cooldown): After using an ability, your next attack deals (125% base AD + [50 * crit chance]) bonus physical damage and grants 50% of the damage value as mana on-hit.

Essence Drain passive is removed.

Umbral Glaive

In its current form, Umbral Glaive is tailored to fit supports and is not structured to be powerful for anyone that has a real income.

This has led to it being a fairly unpopular and mostly unsatisfying item, and it’s not fulfilling its purpose as a way for AD assassins to have an advantage in interacting with the vision system.

Riot is giving it an update to make it more functional for jungle and midlane assassins while still looking to retain some of the aspects that make it very exciting to buy as a support for the Pyke players out there. 

Build Path: Serrated Dirk + Caulfield’s Warhammer + 450g -> Serrated Dirk + Caulfield’s Warhammer + 750g

Total Gold Cost: 2500g -> 2800g

Attack Damage: 55 -> 60

Ability Haste: 10 -> 15

Lethality: 15 -> 18 

Nightstalker: After being unseen by enemies for 1 second, your next attack against a champion deals an additional (50 + 150% lethality) true damage.

Blackout (90s cooldown): When you are near enemy Stealth Wards and traps, reveal them for 8 seconds. While revealing wards, your attacks deal 3 (melee) / 2 (ranged) damage to them. 

Extinguish is removed. (It’s rolled into the above Blackout)

Redemption

Redemption has been an extremely broadly appealing item for supports recently, especially in pro play.

When it was first made Riot says LoL had many fewer tank support items and it was intended to be purchasable for both enchanters and tank supports.

In the current day, LoL doesn’t need Redemption to be as broadly appealing so Riot is pushing it more towards the enchanter space to make sure it works very well for them and making it a higher opportunity cost for tank supports to pick up so that it’s not first slot for almost every support every game. 

Build path: Kindlegem + Forbidden Idol + 900g -> Fiendish Codex + Forbidden Idol + 850g

Total Gold Cost: 2300g -> 2250g

Health: 200 -> 0

[NEW] 30 Ability Power

Zeke’s Convergence

All of LoL’s other ultimate trigger items give ultimate haste, and Zeke’s has room for a bit more power and could be a bit more unique in the tank support item space, so Riot is giving it a bit of ultimate haste to spice it up.

[NEW]: Cryocombustion: Gain 15 Ultimate Ability Haste.

Tear Items (Muramana, Fimbulwinter)

Riot is bringing back the ability to stack multiple Tear items for those games that are really going long and players want to get max value out of every item slot.

Also, Riot says they have been happy with the effects of increasing the flat mana on Seraph’s Embrace a bit, so they’re extending that to Muramana and Fimbulwinter.

Tear (Manaflow items)

Unique >>> Semi-unique

You can now have one stacking Tear item in your inventory at any given time. Once your Tear item transforms, you can get a new Tear and stack all over again.

Muramana

Mana: 860 -> 1000

Fimbulwinter

Mana: 860 -> 1000

Mortal Reminder

Riot is re-tuning on crit Last Whisper items in Patch 26.1 to help make marksman crit damage a little lower against squishy targets and a bit better against tankier targets. 

Build Path: Executioner’s Calling + Last Whisper + Cloak of Agility + 450g -> Executioner’s Calling + Last Whisper + Cloak of Agility + 150g

Cost: 3300g -> 3000g

Armor penetration: 35% -> 30%

Lord Dominik’s Regards

Riot is re-tuning on crit Last Whisper items in Patch 26.1 to help make marksman crit damage a little lower against squishy targets and a bit better against tankier targets. 

Build Path: Last Whisper + Noonquiver + 350g -> Last Whisper + Noonquiver + 550g

Cost: 3100g -> 3300g

Armor penetration: 40% -> 35%

[NEW] Giant Slayer: Deal up to 15% bonus damage against champions based on their bonus health. Maximum damage bonus reached at 1500 bonus health. 

Yun Tal Wildarrows

Yun Tal was intended to be a powerful scaling first item with some tradeoffs in terms of its immediate power, but it’s so generically powerful that it’s crowding out the first item space for crit marksmen.

This is a little bit of a power shift to make its unique first item aspect (attack speed) stand out, but also a little bit of power down to make it more comparable to other first items in terms of power. 

Build Path: B. F. Sword + Scout’s Slingshot + Long Sword + 750g -> B.F. Sword + Scout’s Slingshot + Long Sword + 850g

Cost: 3000g -> 3100g

Attack Damage: 55 -> 50

Attack Speed: 35% -> 40%

Infinity Edge

With baseline crit damage changes, of course Infinity Edge needs a bit of retuning.

Riot wants it to remain a powerful capstone item, but with baseline crit being higher it can’t give quite as much critical strike damage.

Build Path: B.F. Sword + Pickaxe + Cloak of Agility + 675g -> B. F. Sword + Pickaxe + Cloak of Agility + 725g

Cost: 3450g -> 3500g

Attack Damage: 65 -> 75

Critical Strike Damage: 40% -> 30%

SR Ranked and Matchmaking

2025 Season 3 End and 2026 Season 1 Start

The S3 Ranked 2025 season will end on local server time 2026-01-07 at 23:59:59. Ranked Queues (Solo/Duo and Flex) will be disabled briefly as the season ends. S3 2025 Ranked Reward Mission will end at around the same time. 

Shard Transfers will be disabled 2026-01-07 at 00:00 PST globally while Riot prepares to grant ranked rewards.

Ranked Season 1, 2026 will start on local server time 2026-01-08 at 12:00:00. Ranked Queues (Solo/Duo and Flex) will be re-enabled on season start. Season 1 2026 Ranked Reward Missions will start at the same time.

When the new season starts in 2026, player ranks will reset, and after playing five provisional games, players will be assigned a starting rank of the season to climb with.  

Aegis of Valor

Riot is launching the Aegis of Valor system alongside the 2026 season start. 

If you are autofilled and get mastery C or above rating, you will have no LP deduction on a loss, or you’ll gain double LP gain for a win.

In order to make sure autofilled players are trying their best Riot have also made some behind-the-scenes updates to the Mastery System to better detect player contribution.

Autofill status won’t go away by dodging the champ select. If a player dodges an autofilled game during champ select, the status would carry on until the player plays their autofilled game. 

For Master or above players, dodging a ranked champ select would cost more LP. 

Ranked Flex will have better and more reasonable skill rating based on your Solo/Duo queue rank.

Apex Duo Restriction Update for Solo/Duo Queue

 For most regions (excluding KR and CN), you can now duo queue all the way to Challenger, with the premade party lower band at Diamond 1.

Riot have also made updates to improve the high-ranked premade MMR offset to make sure the high rank duo play is both fair and competitive. 

 Duo queue specs are as follows:

D1 can duo with D3-D1, Master, Grandmaster and Challenger. 

Grandmaster can duo with D1, Master, Grandmaster, Challenger

Challenger can duo with D1, Master, Grandmaster, Challenger

Master can duo with D1, Master, Grandmaster, Challenger

Arena

 With the start of a new season of League of Legends Riot didn’t want to leave Arena out of all the fun and are introducing many of the brand new items into Arena, a new Fame track, New Augments, and some light balance changes.

Riot promised a larger Arena update later this year and are still hoping to deliver that, but felt like they could sneak in some new toys to celebrate the start of a new season. 

General

Critical Strike Damage

Critical Strike Damage increased from 190% > 200%

Fame Track

With a new Fame Track comes new augments to augment your builds, you’ll unlock these as you gain fame from playing the mode.

Hybrid – 100 Fame

Righteous Fury – 1,600 Fame

Combat Intro Card – 3,600 Fame

Panic Room – 6,100 Fame

Bonus Reroll – 9,100 Fame

Multitool – 12,600 Fame

Energetic – 16,600 Fame

Combat Intro Card – 21,600 Fame

Hive Mind – 26,600 Fame

Aim for the Head – 31,600 Fame

Quest: Rite of the Forge God – 37,600 Fame

Combat Intro Card – 47,600 Fame

Augments

Riot is introducing 9 new augments to the mode. 

(New) Hybrid

Hitting an Ability boosts your next Attack. Hitting an Attack boosts your next Ability.

(New) Righteous Fury

Healing/Shielding increases your Ability damage for the round.

(New) Panic Room

The first time you would die, instead be safely whisked far away.

(New) Multitool

Gain a special item that becomes a new item of your choice each round.

(New) Energetic

Become Energized much faster. Triggering Energize shoots magic missiles.

(New) Hive Mind

Attacking plants harvest Bees! Damaging enemies launches the Bees at them.

(New) Aim for the Head

Your Crit Chance is capped lower. Gain a ton of Crit Damage.

(New) Quest: Rite of the Forge God

After buying some Item Anvils, all your Items become Masterwork.

(New) Unshackled

You can now cast your ultimate on allied champions. Gain 50 Ultimate Haste.

Champions

Zaahen has been a dominant champion in Arena since his release, so Riot feels like they should step in and make some adjustments.

Zaahen

Passive AD ratio: 1.5-2.8 -> 1-2

Passive Heal Amount: 30%-75% -> 30%-45%

Q AD ratio: 20-60%  -> 10-50% 

Q Champ Healing: 5%-9% -> 3%-7%

R Damage: 250/400/550 200% bonus AD -> 200/350/500 150% bonus AD

Items

Riot isbringing over all the new items from Summoner’s Rift into Arena, with the exception of Bastionbreaker, as its focus on objectives doesn’t make a lot of sense in Arena.

Bugfixes

Fixed a bug where Die Another day wouldn’t cast if you were untargetable when you pressed it.

ARAM Mayhem

Champions

Ivern

Damage Dealt: 95% -> 100%

Shielding Done: 80% -> 100%

Janna

Damage Dealt: 95% -> 100%

Damage Taken: 105% -> 100%

Healing: 90% -> 100%

Shielding: 95% -> 100%

Karma

RQ Bonus Damage: 40 / 90 / 140 / 190 -> 40 / 100 / 160 / 220

Milio

Healing: 95% -> 100%

Shielding: 90% -> 100%

Ability Haste: -10 -> 0

Nami

Damage Dealt: 95% -> 100%

Damage Taken: 105% -> 100%

Renata

Damage Dealt: 95% -> 100%

Shielding: 80% -> 100%

Sona

W Heal Ratio: 20% -> 30%

W Shield Ratio: 20% -> 25%

Q Cooldown: 10s -> 8s

Augments

Snowball Roulette

Augment Tier: Prismatic -> Gold

It’s Killing Time

Instead of storing damage from all sources, now only store from the augment owner.

Flashy

Instead of refreshing 1 charge every 180s, will now refresh all 3 charges every 120 seconds.

Quest: Steel Your Heart

We’ve updated the functionality of the reward to now multiply future stacks by 3 and not just the stacks at the time of completion.

The tooltip implied this but it didn’t actually work this way, so we’re just making it do that to match the expectation and so Heartsteel can go brr.

Quest: Urf’s Champion

Golden Spatula Stats:

Attack Damage: 60 -> 90

Ability Power: 80 -> 110

Movement Speed: 5% -> 10%

Immolate Range: 300 -> 400

Lobby Hostage Taking & Player Behavior Updates

Trying to manipulate other players to do what you want,  pushing a dodge penalty onto someone else, or playing out a game with something like disco Nunu isn’t something Riot wants in League.

Starting with LoL PAtch 26.1, Riot has added the capability to terminate lobbies during champion select with detection systems that will evaluate players for hostaging when they’re reported in champion select.

Riot doesn’t expect it to be perfect or catch every case on release, but will continue to build upon these detections throughout the year.

And Riot isnists as a reminder, trying something off-meta or having strategic disagreements with your team does not automatically qualify as hostage taking. 

Champion selects will be terminated when a player in champion select is reported and determined to be holding the lobby hostage to force a dodge or for any other reason. This will never trigger without a report in champion select, so Riot asks users to report players they believe are hostaging.

When a champion select is terminated by hostaging detection, the offender will receive a penalty that will not allow them to immediately queue again, and all other players will re-enter matchmaking similar to if a player dodges today. 

Penalties for repeated disruptive gameplay have been increased.  

Improved detections for intentional non-participation in-game.

If you receive an Account Ban for having an inappropriate Riot ID, you’ll be unable to change your Riot ID until the ban is over.

Lane Based Autofill Matchmaking

Riot is working on some changes to make games where players are autofilled players more fair by matching them by role. This means if your team had an autofilled jungler, the enemy jungler would also be autofilled as well to help keep games competitive. 

Riot claims they’re still working on these changes, but don’t expect to have them ready in January like originally planned.

Riot states they want to make sure they get this right so they’ve delayed these changes to February.