It’s almost time for the League of Legends World Championship, which means it’s patch time. Patch 6.18 tries to smooth out some of the rougher edges of competitive play, toning down some champions that have been dominating the meta.
With this patch, Riot is really trying to nail down competitive play and implementing a new “feature” for Master and Challenger tier players. Players who haven’t played that day will lose 100 LP, which is insane. You can still save up 18 days of play time, but this change will force good players to use their main accounts regularly if they want to keep their high rankings.
Anyway, onto the buffs and nerfs:
Buffs
- Lux’s Lucent Singularity slows for five to nine percent more per rank.
- Love Tap does 50 percent more damage to turrets. Miss Fortune is going to be a major force to reckon with this patch.
- Nocturne has been really useless for a very long time. Why would I play a squishy bruiser when I can have Rek’Sai ? Riot is making the nightmare a little scarier by increasing the Terrify duration on Unspeakable Horror by .25 seconds.
- Ashe’s Volley has a shorter cooldown.
Nerfs
- Riot really got the nerf hammer ready for the World Championship. Ekko lost four base Attack Damage, hopefully making trading with him in lane a little easier.
- Gnar lost five damage on his Hyper passive and increased the cooldown on his Hop and Crunch.
- Lissandra lost nine health per level, making Rod of Ages an even more important buy on the ice queen.
- Rek’Sai lost 4.3 base armor and .25 per level armor.
- Shen has been a must pick champion in competitive League , so Riot is trying to tone him down a bit. His Ki Barrier shield has less health (20 less at level 18) and Twilight Assault deals one percent less damage at all ranks.
- Vladimir and Taliyah have also been top-tier champions, being picked or banned in the mid lane almost every game.To compensate for other champions being so weak in this meta, Riot is nerfing the king and queen of mid-lane. Threaded Volley’s rocks no longer do bonus damage to minions and Unraveled Earth deals 10 to 30 thirty less damage, depending on the rank.
- Vladimir’s Transfusion heals for less and Tides of Blood deals two percent less percent health damage and has a four second longer cooldown at rank one (!!!)
- The wind ninja Yasuo has been a bit too good since his last set of buffs, so Riot is toning him down a bit. He’s got less base Attack Speed and he gains .7% less AS per level. Last Breath’s passive no longer gives bonus Armor Penetration to all his attacks, now it just affects his Critical Strikes.
- Frozen Mallet and Gnar go hand in hand; you can’t nerf one without the other. FM builds out of Giant’s Belt instead of Pickaxe, gives 10 less Attack Damage and 50 more health.
- Relic Shield stacks heal for five less. Deal with it.
How do you like Patch 6.18? Tell us in the comments.
