Hello, friends! It’s been a while since my last article, but today I’m going to be going over a pretty robust collection of changes that the PBE has experienced over the last few weeks.

As always, PBE content is subject to change, but that goes double this time around: A lot of the changes that I’ll be talking about today are preseason changes. While I live in hope, I have no idea if these will be out in patch 4.20, or if not how soon we will see them. Riot has put out a few excellent dev blogs about Strategic Diversity, Objective Changes, the New Jungle, and Itemisation Changes, so I’d recommend checking those out. Also, the numbers on preseason changes are definitely changeable.

I’ll try my best to split this article into normal balance stuff and preseason stuff, but it’s not exactly apparent what falls into which category, so don’t be surprised if I’m wrong. At any rate, let’s take a look at what’s going on this cycle!

Preseason Changes

Jungle

A few things are changing in the jungle this season. Jungle items are receiving an overhaul, new incentives and mini-objectives are being placed in the jungle, and there are a few tuning changes to the jungle itself. First of all, Smite’s cooldown has been pushed back up to 1 minute, from the 40 seconds that it is on live.

The health on jungle monsters has been buffed, so it’s much harder to take them down now. Mid laners who want to take wraiths (or Raptors as they are now) will have a much harder time of it nowadays. To compensate, though, the experience and gold rewards from the jungle have been increased.

Here’s a chart of some sample gold rewards from the non-buff monsters in the jungle on live as compared to preseason. As you can see, wraiths in particular have become quite a bit more lucrative. Keep in mind that the new jungle items don’t generate any gold, so what you see is what you get.

Live Preseason 2 8 12 18 2 8 12 18 Gromp / Wight 66 72 76 81 72 76 79 88 Wolves 57 62 65 70 76 81 83 93 Raptors / Wraiths 48 51 54 58 78 84 85 96 Krugs / Golems 71 77 81 87 84 89 93 103

Also, each large monster now gives a unique reward in the form of a buff that is granted upon smiting the monster in question, which gives junglers some more interesting objectives to fight over.

Hunter’s Machete

Jungle items have recieved quite the overhaul in this preseason patch. All four of season 4’s jungle items have been scrapped in favour of a more diverse approach to jungle itemisation. Hunter’s Machete now costs 400 gold (up from 325) and instead of giving +10 AD and +5 damage reduction vs. monsters, places a damage-over-time effect on the opponent and gives you some regen.

Attacks place a DoT that does 30 magic damage over 2 seconds, and being in combat with monsters causes you to gain 8 health and 3 mana per second. This is good news for tank junglers and junglers with low attack speeds, who no longer have to rely on faster autoattacks to clear.

Machete still upgrades into 4 items, but they are items of a very different flavour than the spirit stones and madred’s razors that we’re all used to. Rather than focusing on preferred stats, the upgrades to Machete (which cost 350 gold each) upgrade the machete’s stats to 45 magic damage over 2 seconds and 10 health and 5 mana per second, as well as changing your summoner smite spell to have a new effect depending on the role you wish to take as jungler.

Stalker’s Blade

Passive- Chilling Smite: Smite can be cast on enemy champions, dealing reduced true damage and reducing their movement speed by 50% for 2 seconds.

Stalker’s Blade is the item you’ll want to pick up if you’re going to be focused on heavy ganking, especially when playing a champion that lacks CC. The slow is very helpful for closing on slippery opponents when coming out of the bush, and it’s only on a 1-minute cooldown. The damage on it isn’t huge (it’s about 7-8% of the total damage of smite), but it’s something. The slow is what you’re going for, though.

Junglers that want to spend a lot of time in the lanes will want to pick this up. Champions like Wukong and Skarner benefit from the slow as it helps them get in close and personal. The drawback to this item, though, is that you’ll want to be saving the slow for ganks, so you won’t really have a smite to clear with. If your ganks are successful, however, the lower farm will be made up for. Just make sure you save smite for dragon attempts.

Poacher’s Knife

Passive- Scavenging Smite: When you Smite and kill a large monster in the enemy jungle, the cooldown of Smite is halved, you gain +20 bonus gold, and you gain 175% increased movement speed decaying over 2 seconds.

Counterjungling makes a comeback! Poacher’s Knife is your go-to choice if you plan on sneaking into your enemy’s jungle and taking their stuff. The stats on this bad boy support a style more focused on taking your enemy’s gold and then running for the hills; the movement speed buff makes it very easy to escape with your ill-gotten gains.

Control-based counterjunglers like Udyr and Nunu will have a great time with this item, as the extra gold and lower cooldown on smite will enable them to put their enemy behind and make up for the energy they put into leaving your jungle. You’ll also be stealing your opponent’s smite buffs, which are now on every large jungle monster (more on that later). The main disadvantage to this item is that if your opponent sees it in your inventory, they’ll be on guard for invades and likely ward up their jungle more than they normally would.

Ranger’s Trailblazer

Passive- Blasting Smite: The cooldown of Smite is reduced by 15 seconds. Smite also deals half damage to all monsters and enemy minions near the target and stuns them for 1.5 seconds. Casting Smite on a monster restores 15% of missing Health and Mana.

Ranger’s Trailblazer is the farming item for season 5. The AoE smite helps clear out jungle camps very quickly, the reduced cooldown helps not only your clear speed but also gets you more Smite buffs, and the health and mana restoration really help keep you up in the new jungle (which is significantly more punishing than the old one). It can also help when pushing lanes, as the splash-Smite works on normal minions as well as jungle camps.

Farming champions like Master Yi and Warwick (sometimes) will enjoy this item. Not only does it make your jungle-clearing more efficient, but it actually frees you up to gank a bit even if you want to spend most of your time in the jungle, Hopefully we won’t get too many Yi jungles who stay in the jungle for 20 minutes while the lanes feed to the enemy team’s pressure. The only downside to this item is that your enemy will definitely out-gank you.

Skirmisher’s Sabre

Passive- Challenging Smite: Smite can be cast on enemy champions, marking them for 6 seconds. While marked, you deal bonus true damage to them on hit, have vision of them, and reduce their damage to you by 20%.

Skirmisher’s Sabre is perhaps the most radical of the jungle items in season 5. While the other ones focus on ganking, counterjungling and farming (all of which are established jungle tactics), Sabre’s focus is on invading the enemy jungle, specifically with the intent to duel your jungle opponent on their own turf, which isn’t done too often at the moment.

Characters with high duel potential like Lee Sin and Nocturne might consider picking up the Sabre. The bonus true damage isn’t incredibly high (about 4-5% of the damage of Smite), but the 20% reduced damage will pretty much guarantee you winning a duel if all else is equal. The Sabre has limited effectiveness in ganks since it does nothing for your laner, but someone who already has plenty of CC like Nautilus or Sejuani may consider picking it up if they’re feeling ballsy.

Enchantments

Each of the four items that I’ve listed can upgrade in four different stat-related directions to make them worth the item slot. The upgrades function in a similar way to the upgrades on boots. The four items, times four upgrades, gives us sixteen possible choices of jungle item slot, which makes me really excited for the potential diversity of build paths for junglers this season.

The enchantments each involve a bit of buildup and a recipe cost, totaling 2250 gold (or an extra 1500 if you already have your machete upgrade). The four upgrades are as follows:

Enchantment: Warrior +45 Attack Damage +10% CDR +10 Armour Penetration Builds from upgraded Machete and Brutaliser

Enchantment: Magus +80 Ability Power +20% CDR Builds from upgraded Machete and Fiendish Codex

Enchantment: Juggernaut +500 Health +10% CDR Unique Passive- Tenacity: Reduced duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, silences, blinds, polymorphs and immobilises by 35% Builds from upgraded Machete, Ruby Crystal and Kindlegem

Enchantment: Devourer +50% Attack Speed +40 Magic Damage on hit Unique Passive- Devouring: Killing large monsters increases the magic damage of this item by +1. Champion kills or assists increase the magic damage of this item by +2. Builds from upgraded Machete and two Daggers



The four enchantments are made for AD Casters, AP Mages, Tanks and Attack Speed champions respectively. You may have noticed the glorious return of Tenacity on the Juggernaut enchantment, which will take champions like Nautilus back to their golden days of being able to buy Mobility Boots.

The Devourer enchantment is also noteworthy for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it stacks up damage based on farm and kills / assists a la Feral Flare. This definitely supports an attack-speed carry sort of playstyle, but the item doesn’t have AD or AP on it, so AD-AS characters and AS-AP hybrids will have equally good times with it.

The sixteen combinations of jungle items represent a pretty radical shift in itemisation for junglers, and will hopefully yield a lot more diversity in build paths. Now that we’ve covered them, let’s take a look at the biggest change to jungle objectives in season 5; Smite Rewards.

Smite Rewards

Season 5’s jungle camps all give specialised rewards when their large monster is smited. These rewards give a nice amount of depth to the smaller jungle camps, as they each have an individual benefit rather than just giving gold. The reward replenishes when the monster respawns, which means if you smite a monster without killing it, the reward won’t come back.

The rewards are as follows:

Gromp (Wight): Gift of the Toadstool: Attackers are poisoned for magic damage over 3 seconds

The Gromp gives a buff that does damage over time to attacking players. This can really help with your clear speeds, or with combat with other players (particularly for tanky characters).

Blue Sentinel (Ancient Golem): Restores the player’s mana upon smiting

The Sentinel gives you back some mana if you smite it. This isn’t terribly exciting, since it also gives Blue Buff, but it does help out junglers who hurt their mana pools when giving blue up to their midlaner. Just smite before Sentinel’s in death-range and you’ll get some of your mana back.

Murkwolves (wolves): Releases a floating wisp that sits at the junction between Wolves and Blue Buff for 90 seconds which grants vision and chases nearby enemies

The Murkwolves don’t give a buff; rather, they cause a wisp to sit in your jungle and warn you if people come in. This can be pretty handy against counter-jungling opponents to dissuade them from invading or to punish them for sticking around. The wisp lasts 90 seconds, the same length of a pre-9 ward trinket.

Raptors (Wraiths): Razor Sharp: If spotted by an enemy ward, this unit will be alerted and given magical sight

This buff is super-useful if you’re planning on ganking. It pretty much gives you a replacement red trinket; if you walk by a ward, you’ll get a nofication and you’ll be able to see wards for a few seconds. This is great for clearing out a ward before you come back to gank, or just to apply some pressure to a lane.

Red Brambleback (Ancient Lizard): Restores the player’s health upon smiting

This one isn’t too interesting either, but it can be handy for sustaining in the jungle, especially since the Brambleback and his Cinderling minions do a fair amount of damage.

Krugs (Golems): Gift of Heavy Hands: Your first attack and every fifth attack after stuns monsters and minions. Attacking a tower inflicts bonus true damage and consumes the gift of heavy hands

This buff has pretty interesting applications. The stun only affects monsters and minions, so it’s only really useful for taking less damage while farming the jungle. However, the extra damage to towers could be pretty useful if you have the opportunity to push an enemy out of lane.

Scuttle Crab

The Rift Scuttler (a.k.a. the scuttle crab) is a new monster in season 5. It doesn’t reside in either team’s jungle; rather, it scuttles (as its name implies) up and down the river. There are two crabs (one for each side of the river), and they will run away from you if you attack them.

Killing the crab will give you 35 gold at any point during the game, which isn’t much, but it will also cause it to burrow under the ground and give your team a 90-second ward at the entrance to Dragon or Baron pit. The crab’s health scales up with level, so you need to commit more and more to fighting it the longer the game goes.

The vision it grants is very helpful, as it prevents the need for warding outside of Baron and Dragon pits. To my knowledge, the vision is not sweepable either, so it’ll be tough for your opponents to sneak by it. However, it’s not too oppressive as the vision covers outside the pits but doesn’t actually extend into the pits themselves.

Objective Changes

A few objectives are being given differing rewards to what we’re used to. The objective is to make differing objectives contribute differently towards different goals. Your preference for objective may depend on your team’s strategy; for instance, there may be situations in which a dragon is preferable to a baron. I have less specific patch notes on these things, but I’ll do my best to give a breakdown of the info in the dev blog.

Turrets

Outer and Nexus turrets are unchanged, but inner turrets and inhibitor turrets have received some changes to try and tone down the power of certain comps.

Nexus Turrets: Now have a 200-health shield that regenerates after 30 seconds. Nearby friendly champions receive a shield that stacks up 30 health per second up to a total of 300 health, which then decays over 2 seconds after leaving the tower’s range.

Inhibitor Turrets: Instead of firing standard shots, inhibitor turrets fire a steady beam that does damage, slows the target, and reduces their damage dealt.

The changes to Nexus turrets should make it so that the early-siege kinds of teams will have a harder time pushing middle lane oppressively, since both the turret and the enemy team is protected. The inhibitor turret change is more aimed at diving, since the reduced damage and slow on the inhibitor turret’s laser will make diving much more risky.

In general, these changes should lower the power of these kinds of comps and open up more room for counterplay against heavy siege and dive comps, but not nerf them to the point where they don’t work anymore.

Dragon

Dragon has been changed pretty significantly. It no longer gives any global gold to the team (although last-hitting it is still worth 25g). Instead, it gives everyone on your team a permanent buff called Dragon Slayer which gives extra stats as it stacks up.

The buff stacks up to 4 permanent stacks. For every dragon your team manages to kill after the fourth one, your team will get a buff for 3 minutes called Aspect of the Dragon, doubling all of your dragon-based bonuses and causing your auto-attacks to burn enemies for true damage.

There’s a catch, however. For every stack of Dragon Slayer that you have, the dragon itself does an extra 20% damage to you, and takes 7% less damage from you. This makes it much riskier for a team to go after those higher-tier rewards. This is a good move on riot’s part, since the aspect of the dragon buff could be as strong as a baron buff to certain teams.

Buff: Dragon Slayer

1 stack- Dragon’s Might: Gives teamwide +8% AD and AP

Gives teamwide +8% AD and AP 2 stacks- Dragon’s Dominance: +15% damage to minions and monsters

+15% damage to minions and monsters 3 stacks- Dragon’s Flight: +5% movement speed

+5% movement speed 4 stacks- Dragon’s Wrath: +15% damage to Towers and Buildings

+15% damage to Towers and Buildings 5+ stacks- Aspect of the Dragon: Doubles other bonuses and your attacks burn enemies for 150 true damage over 3 seconds. Lasts 180 seconds.

Baron Nashor

Baron’s had a bit of makeover as well. He’s now much more focused on smashing the enemy’s base defense, which has always been his main purpose but is now much more clear from the buff.

The health and mana regen have been stripped from the buff, and have been replaced by an enhanced recall and a minion empowering aura. This will make the buff a lot less helpful for teams trying to stall out their enemy, but a lot better for teams trying to push hard into the enemy base.

The recall buff makes recall times much shorter, which helps teams regroup and prepare for plays after getting the buff. The minion buff makes minions near champions with the Baron Buff more powerful; Melee minions get tankier, caster minions do more damage, and cannon minions get increased range.

These changes might seem counter-intuitive to the goals behind the changes to the inner turrets, which were, after all, intended to nerf early sieging. However, Baron’s spawn time has been pushed from 15 minutes to 20 minutes, so the daring super-early baron strat is not a potential reality. Thank god. Plus, the beast does a bit more damage and has some more interesting attack patterns now, so be on your toes.

Itemisation Changes

Elixirs

The old red and blue elixirs have been scrapped and replaced with more specialised buffs. They now cost 400g each, but are mutually exclusive. Each of the elixirs lasts 3 minutes, as before.

Elixir of Ruin

250 Health

15% bonus damage to towers

Nearby minions gain 15% bonus damage to towers and gain movement speed based on character’s movement speed.

Elixir of Iron

25% increased size

Slow resistance

Tenacity

Moving leaves a path behind that boosts allied champions’ movement speed by 15%

Elixir of Sorcery

40 Ability power

15 bonus mp5

Damaging a champion or tower deals 25 bonus true damage. This effect has a 5-second cooldown against champions but no cooldown against towers.

Elixir of Wrath

25 Attack damage

Dealing physical damage to champions heals for 10% of the damage dealt. Scoring a kill or assist increases the duration of this flask by 30 seconds.

Elixirs are always situational, since they only last 3 minutes. You’re going to want to pick these up for specific goals; Ruin for killing towers, Iron to initiate teamfights, and Sorcery and Wrath to boost your damage. Since these elixirs are mutually exclusive, you’ll have to make good decisions when picking which one to buy.

Chain Vest and Negatron Cloak

Buying armour and magic resistance at early stages of the game can have its pros and cons. If you want to buy early resistances, you want to pick up a cloth armour or a null-magic mantle since they’re the cheaper options for resistances. Unfortunately, your build paths out of both of those items are pretty limited. Null-magic mantle in particular doesn’t build into any of the three heavy MR items (banshee’s veil, spirit visage and locket of the iron solari).

Riot is solving this issue in season 5 by making Chain Vest actually build out of Cloth Armour, and removing Negatron Cloak from the game entirely. NMM costs 100 extra gold and has 5 extra MR, so it’s just as gold efficient as it was before. All of the recipes involving Negatron Cloak have been updated so that the later items all cost the same amount, but buying early MR is much more convenient now.

Regen

Health and Mana regen are both being changed to be percentage-based values instead of flat values on all regen items. This change will make regeneration items capable of a lot more late-game power, since flat values have the problem of being good early but falling off later. This will hopefully make it so that regen-based builds are a little more viable, which will be a boon to health-stacking tanks like Sejuani and Mundo.

New Items

There are a few new items coming to the rift in season 5 as well. There are one or two more items that I know of that are still in the works and haven’t seen the light of day yet, so we might see more than just these three in the future, but these are the ones that we know of for sure.

Crystalline Bracer

+200 Health

+50% base health regen

Builds from Ruby Crystal + Rejuvenation Bead + 20g, for a total of 600g.

Builds into Righteous Glory and Warmog’s Armour (Warmogs builds out of 2 crystalline bracers and a giant’s belt).

Bracer is a nice early-game regen item for regen-based tanks (and possibly supports) that builds into Warmog’s armour and the new top-tier item, Righteous Glory. There’s not much to say about it other than that it’s basically a slightly better ruby crystal. It’ll probably be pretty great as an early purchase for certain tanky top-laners. Garen in particular will enjoy it, since his passive will go nicely with all this regen itemisation.

Raptor Cloak

+30 Armour

+100% base health regen

Unique passive- Point Runner: Builds up to +30% movement speed over 2 seconds while near turrets.

Builds from Rejuvenation bead + Cloth armour + 520g for a total of 1000g

Builds into Ohmwrecker

Raptor cloak is an interesting item that seems to be intended for split-pushers and siegers, or in some cases for defending towers. Its unique passive gives you movement speed when you’re around towers, which will make it easier to maneuver under towers or between them. It builds into the redesigned Ohmwrecker, which I’ll get into in a bit.

Raptor Cloak was also intended to build into one of the items that’s still in development, which is a pushing item that can open portals to bring out extra minions. We’ll see if that ends up making it to PBE any time soon, but for now, Ohmwrecker is your only option.

Righteous Glory

+500 health

+300 mana

+100% base health regen

Unique Passive- Valor’s Reward: Upon leveling up, restores 150 health and 200 mana over 8 seconds.

Unique Active: Grants +60% movement speed to nearby allies when moving towards enemies or enemy turrets for 3 seconds. After 3 seconds, a shockwave is emitted, slowing nearby enemy champion movement speed by 80% for 1 second (60s cooldown). The effect may be reactivated early to instantly release the shockwave.

Builds from Catalyst + Crystalline Bracer + 700g for a total of 2500g.

Righteous Glory is a pretty cool new item geared towards tanky initiators. It builds from Catalyst, so it has limited effectiveness on champions without mana, but it works pretty well on any tanky character with a mana pool. It basically fills the niche that Shurelia’s Reverie used to fill on some initiators, before the gotta-go-fast active was moved to Talisman of Ascension.

Talisman, however, is a support gold item, so anyone outside of bottom lane can’t feasibly pick it up. Righteous Glory solves that problem by giving non-support tanks a way to get the team-wide speed boost that’s actually stronger than the one on Talisman. This item will really help tanky initiator top-laners and junglers get back into viability. Looking at you, Skarner my old friend.

Ohmwrecker (redesigned)

+300 health

+50 armour

+100% base health regen

+10% CDR

Unique passive- Point Runner: Builds up to +30% movement speed over 2 seconds while near turrets.

Unique Active: Prevents nearby enemy turrets from attacking for 3 seconds (120 second cooldown). This effect cannot be used against the same turret more than once every 8 seconds.

Ohmwrecker is one of those niche items that’s niche to the point of nobody building it. Right now on live, it’s a tanky-AP item that nullifies turrets. The preseason is seeing it be a little more broadly useable, as it now just has tank stats on it and no damage. The CDR is nice too.

The active is still the same thing as live, with a slight buff to the time on the turret deactivation. However, it also has the Point Runner passive from Raptor Cloak, which has some nice merits to it. This item is still probably going to stay pretty niche, but maybe will be bought a little more often for when teams want to get super-divey.

Back to Reality

That’s about it for preseason stuff as of now. There’s a lot to look through, I know, but I’m very excited for the upcoming changes to the game (and not just because I’m a jungle main!) As I said earlier, I do hope that these changes hit live soon, but there’s a possibility that we won’t see them for another patch or two. However, there are still some regular changes that will definitely go in the next live patch, so let’s take a look at some of those.

Balance Changes

Champion Balance

Before I begin, let me just mention that several champions have received some changes to their base stats for the preseason, which means that some of these changes are going to look a little bit odd.

New Champion: Kalista

A new champion has hit the PBE this cycle; Kalista, the Spear of Vengeance! I wanted to focus more on preseason in this article, so I won’t say much more about her, but you can check out [email protected]’s report and Riot’s official reveal if you haven’t already seen them.

Amumu

Despair (W) damage changed to 1/1.5/2/2.5/3% of enemies maximum health from 1.5/1.8/2.1/2.4/2.7%

Amumu’s Despair is being rebalanced a bit to be stronger early but weaker late. This is probably due to all of the new health itemisation and the way that regen works now, to make Amumu’s percent-health damage a little smoother.

Azir

Conquering Sands (Q) Sand Soldier damage increased to 75/105/135/165/195 from 60/90/120/150/180

Arise (W) AP ratios decreased to .6 from .7

Shifting Sands (E) shield value increased to 80/120/160/200/240 from 60/100/140/180/220

Azir still isn’t where we want, so he’s getting buffed a bit more. His Q and E are being increased in their effectiveness, with a bit of a nerf to his soldiers’ autoattacks.

Fiora

Blade Waltz (R) base damage lowered to 125/255/385 from 160/330/500

Blade Waltz (R) successive strikes against same target damage increased to 40% from 25%

Fiora has actually been a bit of a pain lately. Her effectiveness in teamfights is a bit much from her ultimate, so it’s being nerfed considerably in terms of base damage. However, the damage against repeated targets is being increased a bit to compensate and buff her dueling potential. After all, she is a duelist.

Gnar

Base Health Regen lowered slightly

Rage Gene (Passive) stats adjusted slightly, Mini MS up, Mega HP/5 up, Mega HP per level up, Mega AD per level up.

Boomerang Throw (Q) damage lowered to 5/35/65/95/125 from 10/45/80/115/150

Boomerang Throw (Q) AD ratio increased to 1.15 AD from 1 AD

Boomerang Throw (Q) width increased to 60 from 55

Boulder Toss (Mega Q) damage lowered to 5/45/85/125/165 from 10/50/90/130/170

Boulder Toss (Mega Q) AD ratio increased to 1.2 AD from 1.15 AD

Hyper (W) flat damage lowered to 10/20/30/40/50 from 25/30/35/40/45.

Wallop (Mega W) active cooldown changed to 15/13/11/9/7 from 12/11/10/9/8

The changes to Gnar’s health regen are mostly just to reflect the preseason stuff. His Q is doing a little bit too much damage in lane (in both forms), so its base damage (in both forms) is being lowered. The damage on his auto-attack enhancement W in small form is being nerfed too, and his early cooldown on his big-W has been increased.

Gnar is a champion with a pretty high skill cap, since you need to be able to time your assaults around his transformation. Now that people are getting better at him, his buffs have made him a little too powerful, so he’s being toned back a bit.

Heimerdinger

Base health regen increased significantly

Techmaturgical Repair Bots (passive) no longer affects Heimerdinger.

This is really just to balance around preseason stuff.

Katarina

Death Lotus (R) cooldown increased to 90/60/45 from 60/52.5/45

Death Lotus (R) damage reduced to 350/550/750 from 400/575/750

Katarina has seen some sudden popularity lately, and is starting to climb back to permaban status. She’s getting a hit to her ultimate to make her a bit less snowbally.

Kha’zix

Void Spike (W) cooldown increased to 10 seconds from 8 seconds

Riot’s apparently not quite satisfied with the Kha’zix nerfs from a few patches back, so they’re hitting him again slightly. Although, this may be a reaction to preseason regen rebalances.

Rammus

Powerball (Q) cooldown increased to 16/14.5/13/11.5/10 from 10 at all ranks.

Puncturing Taunt (E) armor reduction reduced to 5/10/15/20/25 from 10/15/20/25/30

As it turns out, Rammus is OP. Who would have thought? So he’s getting nerfed. His Powerball cooldown is getting hit really hard at early levels, and his tankiness on his E is being smacked as well. He’s OK with it though.

Sona

Hymn of Valor (Q) aura on hit magic damage AP ratio lowered to .2 from .25

Aria of Perseverance (W) healing now (increased by .5% per 1% missing HP) from (1% per 1% missing HP)

Aria of Perseverance (W) base heal increased to 30/50/70/90/110 from 25/45/65/85/105

Sona’s had a bit of a tweak to her power levels. Her poke is lower due to a nerf on her Q, but her healing is up. She’ll be less dangerous to stay in lane against, but more easily able to stick in lane with her carry.

Soraka

Starcall (Q) now has a “fixed travel time cast paradigm”

Astral Infusion (W) range increased to 550 from 450

Equinox (E) cooldown increased to 24/22/20/18/16 from 18/17/16/15/14

Soraka has recieved a buff to the range on her heal to help her get those ambulance saves in. Her E, however, has been nerfed to have a really high cooldown at early levels, so you’ll have to be smart about when you use it. Her Q has had a few tweaks to its aiming to make it feel a little more intuitive in when it hits the ground.

Warwick

Infinite Duress (R) cooldown increased to 110/90/70 from 90/80/70

Warwick has actually been pretty strong lately if used correctly. If he ganks on every ultimate cooldown, he can severely damage a lane in a very pre-nerf Vi sort of a way. His ult’s cooldown has gone up to try and prevent this sort of thing from happening.

Cosmetic Changes

Maokai Visual Update

The Twisted Treant is getting a very nice new look this patch. With this and the new jungle, I’m going to play the crap out of him.

Battlecast Kog’Maw and Battlecast Alpha Skarner

Kog’maw and Skarner have joined the ranks of Viktor’s death machines! Check out these two new robots. The Skarner skin is legendary, and has some pretty awesome new animations, sounds, and VO.

Safecracker Evelynn

Safecracker Evelynn is one of four themed skins that have come to the PBE this cycle. Guard your jungle, your gold is not safe!

Pickpocket Twitch

Twitch has received a bit of a facelift. He reminds me of another character, but I can’t put my finger on who…

Captain Volibear

Volibear with a mustache and shades is quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever seen. This is what officer Caitlyn should have looked like.

Constable Trundle

Trundle is coming along with Captain Volibear to give him a bit of support chasing criminals.

Battlecast Ward Skin

Kog’maw and Skarner are bringing a new ward skin with them.

Texture Updates:

Another wave of texture updates has hit the PBE, this time with updates to base textures and some skins for Amumu, Caitlyn, Ezreal, Fizz, Gragas, Kog’Maw, Mordekaiser, Talon, Udyr, Urgot, Vladimir, Zilean, Jax, Riven.

Phew! That was a big one! Thanks again to [email protected] for patch notes, pictures and videos, and thanks to you for reading!