Patch note highlights:
1.0.0.129/Fizz
Full patch notes
This patch contains one of the most
major changes League has seen in a while - a total overhaul of all three mastery
trees, and some significant alterations to all summoner spells as well. Most
notably, summoner spells are now categorized into three groups (offensive,
defensive, and utility), and a single-point mastery in each tree will grant the
upgraded forms of all Summoner Spells in that group.
There are also a couple of new 3-point masteries that
give statistics previously not obtainable outside of in-game items or champion
abilities - Vampirism in the Offense tree, which gives up to 3% life steal, and
Transmutation in the Utility tree, which does the same for spell vamp.
Given all the new possibilities opened up by the new
mastery trees, the other changes in this patch seem fairly insignificant (and in
some cases, actually are). Akali's passive has taken a hit from the nerf bat;
the initial bonuses (down to 8% from 10%) as well as the growth ratios (1% per 6
of the relevant stat instead of 1% per 5) of both disciplines have been reduced.
Graves also got knocked down a peg, with his autoattack range, base mana, and
Buckshot bonus damage all reduced.
On the other hand, Kassadin's Force Pulse got a buff to
its early-rank damage - up to 80 damage from 60 at rank one, with an additional
bonus over its previous amount of 5 fewer damage per rank until levelling out
with the same damage at rank 5. I'm interested to see how this affects his early
game on the Crystal Scar, where he was already fairly dominant. Keep in mind,
however, that Null Sphere took a hit to its range of just over 7% to compensate.
Malphite also got a couple buffs to his base armor and ability cooldowns.
Katarina's Shunpo has been slightly reworked. It will
now teleport you in front of the target, unless Killer Instincts is active, in
which case it will teleport you behind them instead. Similarly, Olaf's ultimate,
Ragnarok, has become even more powerful and now makes him immune to both blinds
and silences - as blinding Olaf was previously a fairly reliable hard counter to
him, I expect Olaf to be a much harder opponent to handle going forward.
The nerfs to AP-stacking Sion discussed in the Patch
Note Preview video are less far-reaching than implied - both of his AP ratios
have been reduced from 1:1 to .9:1 (in other words, a Sion with 100 AP will have
his damage from each ability reduced by 10). I don't see this as much of a nerf
to any but late-game, pure AP Sion players.
Some notable changes to items also took place. The life
steal granted by Wriggle's Lantern has been reduced by 3% (presumably this
change is related to the new Vampirism mastery). Meanwhile, Warmog's Armor has
been removed from the list of purchasable items in Dominion - a sensible change
given the conflicting natures of the gametype and the item in question - and the
Dominion-only item Priscilla's Blessing has been removed from the game entirely.
As a final note for this highlights review, the
long-standing bug that prevented allied portraits from updating with their
health, etc. when they weren't on screen has at last been fixed. This bug in
particular has frustrated me for a long, long time, and I'm very happy to
finally see it go - it should make timing abilities like Soraka's ultimate much
less of a hassle!
Patch note highlights:
1.0.0.124/Talon
Full patch notes
I can't honestly say this surprises me, but it appears that
the community's initial reaction to the Jax nerf was overblown. What we're
actually dealing with is a 15 base damage reduction to to both Leap Strike and
Empower at all ranks. This should help to stop him from taking out half of
people's HP in one hit at extremely early levels without significantly affecting
his late game power.
Kayle got some small buffs to her attack damage and speed
gains per level. In addition, Reckoning was buffed pretty noticably - it now
carries a 1:1 bonus AD ratio in addition to it's current 1:1 AP ratio, and the
damage amplification now starts at 6% and increases by 1% each rank, ending with
10% damage amplification at rank 5. Quite a step up from the flat 5% she's been
working with for the last month.
Most people are probably aware of the sustain (read: healer)
nerfs that were planned for this patch - now we have some actual numbers to work
with. The biggest hits seem to have gone into the AP ratios for healing
abilities, most of which were nearly halved. The actual base heals were mostly
untouched - Nidalee and Sona got some minor nerfs to theirs, Taric's Imbue was
left alone, and the base amount healed by Soraka's Astral Blessing was
actually increased, as well as its armor buff amount and duration.
In
combination with the buffs that the healing gang got in other areas, this should
be a relatively painless nerf, with lane sustain being pushed down to a more
manageble level while at the same time giving healers things to do other than
simply "stand back, push button, wait for cooldown." I'm excited to try out a
more offensive Soraka build utilizing Malady, and Nidalee's Cougar Form looks
much more viable than it used to.
Lastly, there were a number of improvements to both the
client and in-game UIs. Most notably, YouTube videos for champion and summoner
spotlights, etc., will now be embedded into the client main page, shop browsing
has been yet again improved, and the "kill callout" system Riot has been touting
for the past couple of weeks (which should make it easier to keep track of kills
and deaths in hectic teamfights) has finally been implemented.