Matt Leung-Harrison engagement report

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• Sep 15, 20267.4x their median

  Patch 26.19 Preview! This is the first of our 2 Worlds patches, with Worlds happening on 26.20! Support HP Regen - After Support roaming was nerfed in 26.16, pre grub spawn Support roaming is all the way back down again, especially in Pro Play which is what we were after - That said, Enchanters and Ranged supports are now dominating the meta again - So we're making some targeted adjustments to melee supports so that they are able to engage and withstand some poke, rather than get poked out and not be able to engage again - Overall, this isn't going to be a giant swing, but hopefully enough of a nudge up for Melee Supports that players think about dynamics of the lane a bit differently Top Role Quest - For quite a while now, in some regions, especially at higher skilled play, Top has been a decent amount weaker than Bot (who are the natural counterparts) - That said, Top in regular play is both very popular and very powerful, and we're not looking to change the dynamic very much (and also why we're not nerfing bot lane overall) - So we're giving a targeted adjustment to the more skill skewed aspect of Top lane, through the Teleport and upgraded Teleports from the Role Quest, which are typically used more effective in skilled play (where Top needs the help) - That should allow Top to exert its influence on the map more reliably, especially in split push scenarios Ranged Top Laners - We hear a lot of the complaints about Ranged Top laners and agree that when these champs get too powerful it leads to pretty degraded "low gameplay states". That said we do think it's reasonable for Ranged Top laners to be a thing you can play there viably, it just needs to be at the appropriate power level with the appropriate power curves - We don't feel comfortable taking a large swing here, especially before Worlds, but just wanted to let y'all know that we're working on some small changes to make it a bit more tolerable for melee champions - This will hopefully allow us to also buff some of the ranged champions that are normally played bot who were nerfed due to their top lane performance (eg. Vayne), but we won't be able to do this until this set of systems changes is released Simple Champions & Nasus - In the post the other day about simple champions, I mentioned that we think it's good to have simple champions be strong at all levels of play. Not all of them, but some - This can often be frustrating, especially when in moment to moment combat, their play patterns are very straightforward and feel lower counterplay if they can meet their success condition - Our philosophy is that if a simple champion is overpowered and causing frustration, then that might be a cause for nerf - However, if a champion is frustrating and simple, but not overpowered, if it doesn't have an unintended design flaw, we're likely to leave it as it is (eg. Viktor) - Viktor is strong in lane, but he's also easy to gank and weak in early skirmishes; we think this is a reasonable strength and weakness profile and also over the last few years we've taken (imo) too much power out of early game trading from many champions, which has caused laning phase to lose texture broadly across the game - Nasus however, has been strong according to this principle, even when accounting for his mastery curve and he has more sharp success conditions now with Q 4 stacks; in lanes where he can stack freely he becomes more of a threat, while in lanes where he's contested, he's easier to keep down - This often means when you run into Nasus in a good matchup, he's often scaled without much holistic counterplay for the team (only his lane opponent) - So while we think this shape of Nasus is broadly correct, it does warrant sitting at a slightly lower resting power level due to these considerations

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• Jun 2, 20266.6x their median

  Patch 26.12 Preview! MSI is on Patch 26.13, so this is the penultimate patch before then. There are a few things that we'll be monitoring on the 16.11 patch as we see how the 16.11 changes impact the Bot Lane meta, which is currently pretty heavily dominated by Enchanters and Ranged Supports. Teleport - Especially in Pro play recently, we've been seeing some usages of Teleport at very short ranges to prepare quite large shields for tactical usages in combats (such as objective fights) - While this is a cool usage of the spell, it's a pretty unintuitive behavior and we want to skew its usage to be better to use for its cross-map and "joining fights" capabilities - As a result, we're reducing the duration of the shield and increasing the shield amount by a bit to compensate Yuumi - Last patch, we had a change to Moonstone that fixed it being doubly impacted by either Grievous Wounds or Heal and Shield Power - Yuumi is one of the few champions who has Heal Shield power baked into her kit and so she was disproportionately impacted - As a result, we're compensation buffing her Lee Sin - On 26.10, we made some adjustments to Lee Sin that gave power back to some of the fun elements in his kit that lost a lot of power over the years (namely the amounts of dashes he has access to, etc.) - This made Lee Sin a pretty strong champion in higher levels of play again and in a way that we think is fantasy aligned for him - However, the magnitude is a bit too much, so we're pulling it back slightly - We're happy with the shape of the changes and how it's affected his power curve though Mid Meta - For average play, AP Xin Zhao has been tearing up the rift with a lot of his power budget in healing, especially in the early lane creating some pretty uninteractive lane states - We're tapping this down, as well as some of the top end healing in the later game - Otherwise, a few adjustments to the champions who have a bit of room in Solo Queue like Hwei, Sylas, Syndra and nerfs to some of the top end like Cassio (who really benefited from Deathfire Touch being added) and Ryze and Ori who have been strong for pretty much the whole season

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• Oct 13, 20266.2x their median

  Patch 26.21 Preview! This is our first post World's patch and we're stabilizing the Ranked environment for end of season climbs, while giving a bit of breathing room to some of the champions that have had suppressed winrates due to Pro Play (Azir, Ori, Ryze, etc.) Systems - Gluttonous Greaves is proving a bit too strong, especially on Marksmen; and so we're tapping it down a bit - Hubris is also being nerfed for Ranged and a buff to melee, as it is mostly strong on champs like Jhin and MF, but suppressed for those other champions - Bastionbreaker's stats are a bit too strong in particular (the lethality) and so we're moving some of the power out of that and into the anti-structure/objective passive - Broadly, the item is too good at both killing people and giving assassins wider game impact (we're happier with it if it's purchaseable because of the latter) - Dawncore is just a weak item that doesn't get purchased, except in situations where the player is already giga winning; it's not fulfiling its spot as a desirable capstone item for enchanters at this tuning Lee Sin/Qiyana Nerfs - Lee and Qiyana have been 2 of the strongest junglers, especially in higher levels of play and especially in certain regions - We're nerfing here, but also (especially in Qiyana's case) being mindful of not double nerfing too hard with the Bastionbreaker nerfs also in the patch Yasuo/Yone - Yasuo and Yone have been picking up Shieldbow first a lot more and it's been looking pretty strong on them - Overall, we're pretty supportive of this as feeling like their passive can kick in early feels great for their fantasy - Secondly, having access to early lifesteal in lane, (eg. with vamp scepter for bork) makes their lane play lower quality - Finally, it's good to open up structural weaknesses for them before they complete first item, but allow them to be quite strong when they get there (and have power in durability vs straight up "kill you power") Taric/TF QoL - Taric is getting back the ability to have Q and R apply to untargetable allies - TF ult now reveals untargeable units (eg. Yuumi W, Master Yi Q, Hexgate, etc.) Overall Approach - This patch, we're trying to strike a good balance between preserving strengths of champions, while redistributing power budget for champions into places that might be more appreciable power for them - In some of these cases (like with Locke), trying to make things that are meant to be more costly (eg. mana costs) appropriately costly - Or otherwise try to expose certain weaknesses for champions in order to allow their strengths to be holistically reasonable More on how we're applying this tomorrow

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• Jun 16, 20266.1x their median

  Patch 26.13 Preview! Mostly champion changes today for our final MSI Patch, so going to go a bit lighter on context to chat more about them tomorrow. Locke - Locke will also hit the Rift some time during Patch 26.13 - We're super excited for his release (I know I will be playing him a bunch :D) and have seen a lot of community hype for him as well - Currently, we're trying to lock down a few tunings and timings on some of his abilities as well as where we want his power budget and maxes to be (a process called fine tuning) - A lot is changing day by day, in particular, the amount of power budget in his W has been something we're trying to fine tune as well as how Normal vs Elite skewed he is Doran's Helm - Doran's Helm has started to be picked up on a few ADC's, especially ones that have particularly strong synergies with the resists (Senna through healing and the effective health it provides synerging well with the resists) and Jhin (as he has a lot of his early damage in base damage) - We're looking to keep these incentives intact directionally, but try to make the item a little more balanced for these users, while trying to grow the user pool a bit as a result Imperial Mandate - For systems changes, we have an Imperial Mandate buff. So far it has added a few users into the pool, however a bunch of these are midlaners like Galio, fringe TF, Liss, etc. - This set of changes is meant to position it to be more fantasy forward for Support champions while also giving it a bit of a power up. It's not really the "best item" on any support at current tuning and for an item with as strong kit synergies as this it probably should be if it's appropriately powerful Champion Changes - At a high level, changes this patch are mostly aimed at making some of the fringe picks a little more viable and tailored towards the situations teams might want to pick them, especially in later series of the MSI tournament

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• Sep 16, 20265.7x their median

  Patch 26.19 Full Preview! Top Role Quest Teleport - In last week's Patch Rundown, I talked a bit about how role strength varies significantly in various regions - For example, Top Lane is extremely popular and powerful in lower skill brackets all the way through to medium skill (around Emerald), but starts to drop off in popularity after that - In the Eastern regions, it's relatively stable, even at higher skill brackets, contesting for the 3rd most popular position in some regions at high skill, however, in many of the Western regions, it is often near or close to the bottom at those higher skill brackets - Separating how fun the role to play from how powerful it is, it's pretty clear that players in those regions either think the role is not fun to play, not powerful or both - At present, both statistically, and feels wise, we think Top Lane is underpowered at those higher skill brackets (but not the lower or medium skill brackets) - Part of this is how at higher skill brackets, the power that Top loses appears to be gained by ADC's who are better at positioning, farming and don't get caught out as much, whereas a lower skill Garen for example can often walk up to an ADC and kill them (this still happens at higher skill, but not as often) - Our approach is to buff up the Top Lane teleport as that is better used by higher skill Top Laners and helps to reinforce the side lane raidboss split push identity that many Top laners have Support Tuning - We're moving some of the power of base health in the Support items into Health Regeneration to better benefit Melee Supports who are often on the receiving end of Ranged support poke and also makes Ranged Supports easier to kill - While this is a relatively small swing, we expect it to be subtly impactful at all levels of play Lucian - There was a lot of discussion about Lucian when the notes were revealed yesterday - Our current approach is to make Lucian's reliance on specific supports much less tightly bound - Lucian Mid and Top are also at extremely low power levels (high 30's/low 40's) which would be considered borderline griefing if picked - So we're trying to make the lives of Solo Q Lucian pairings more pleasant, while also trying to keep the list power neutral overall for Bot Lucian - This change is better framed as an adjustment, rather than the nerf that was listed yesterday Master Yi Q CD - For a long time (even after we removed Duskblade, which caused us to put this functionality in in the first place), Master Yi's Q Cooldown has scaled negatively with ability haste - Now that Duskblade isn't in the game we don't think this functionality is necessary anymore Nasus - Yesterday, I mentioned out philosophy for how we are going to balance simple champions - This patch, we're giving a flat 10 damage nerf to Nasus' Q so it's a bit harder for him to access his higher stack counts and can be punished more by lane opponents that can keep him down - We like his higher highs, but those need to be comboed with lower lows Ryze/Ori - We've pulled Orianna from the patch due to concerns about nerfing an already weak champion for regular Ranked play - For Ryze, we're looking at a roughly power neutral adjustment by nerfing his pushing power in the early lane and attempting a power neutral compensation to his durability - Ryze is often already one rotationing champs later in the game with Actualizer and so we're being cautious about compensating with damage output back

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• Jul 21, 20265.7x their median

  Patch 26.15 Preview! Systems - Bastionbreaker has been a pretty niche item and is pretty expensive to deviate for a strategic output, so we're looking to make it more accessible - Jack of All Trades nerf was also pushed to this patch; it has been a bit too strong and too present, especially for users that opt into strong defenses and are able to also supplement that with strong offense - Sundered Sky has been strong and meta defining at the highest levels of play for quite a while now, so we're looking to take a pass at the fighter item system, now that we're out of the tournament windows - Notably, we think it's been suppressing a bit of meta diversity, especially for things like AP jungle, or Tank JG. Part of that is intentional but the magnitude is a bit off Buffs - Alistar has been closer to the bottom of the pecking order for the melee support. That said, our meta adjustments to move melee supports up relative to ranged supports has been reasonably successful, so we're pretty happy with how that's played out Nerfs - Locke is still pretty strong; he has been tapering off in the lowest skill brackets and the high skill brackets, but in the "skilled" skill brackets (around Emerald/Diamond), Locke is able to both take over the game and also not throw it - At the higher skill brackets, he can snowball but needs to play very well without throwing as he falls off sharply - At the lower skill brackets, the executional demands and constant throws can make him fall off faster - Overall, we feel his release has landed well More on other champs tomorrow with the detailed changelists

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• May 19, 20265.4x their median

  Patch 26.11 Preview! In 26.11, we're making a few adjustments to the Support ecosystem to improve diversity, especially in terms of melee vs ranged balance.  We're also doing some continued followup to champs after some of the Season 2 changes have been optimized.  AP Xin Zhao has popped out as one of the most striking and fun champs, but his healing is a bit on the high side, especially when he's outhealing some of the champs designed around healing.  That said, we still think healing a bunch is exciting and worth supporting, just not at this magnitude.  Systems - With the role quests in Season Start, ranged supports have risen to the top of the pecking order - They're both the best at multiplying ADC's who are strong currently, as well as benefiting the most from being in lane for role quests - Roaming also pays a higher systemic cost as it puts both yourself behind on quest progress and makes it so your ally ADC can't stack their quest - Overall, this has been desirable, as we think in 2025, roaming was too high for the most part and especially undercut the satisfaction of players in bot lane wanting to a play a “real laning phase” - At the same time though, we do want to open up a bit of roaming power on the grub timing after early lane is done and so we're buffing up the reward of grubs just slightly - We're making a broad set of changes to both improve the desirability of some underpurchased items, as well as more finely tune the purpose of various items in the ecosystem - Other systems adjustments this patch are changes to Experimental Hexplate that aim to make it shine on both melee and ranged users.  - Currently the best users are champs like Nocturne, Olaf, Vayne, Varus and we think we can strike a better balance on more champions while also making the item tradeoffs more apparent for durability vs damage on Vayne and Varus (mostly manifesting in Top) - The other systems impacting changes are some adjustments to Diana and Ekko jungle who have been slightly worse for wear there (though Mid is mostly fine)

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• May 5, 20265.2x their median

  Patch 26.10 Preview! Arena - We're really excited that Patch 26.10 will be 6 teams of 3!! - We're really excited to see how y'all like this Patch 26.9 - There's been a lot of cool and fun things coming out of 26.9 social media 😅 - We've seen AP Statikk Shiv Xin Zhaos, people claiming 36% Winrate AP Ezreal is busted, people having a good time trying to figure out who Deathfire Touch is on... - And also people trying to make some of the alt builds work, but alas they may just be too weak... Systems Changes - Probably the biggest chatter on the patch are Deathfire and Gluttonous Greaves - Deathfire is looking a little too strong, especially in the laning case, but the audience it's landed on has been great in giving some of these champs a keystone they're actually happy with - After the micropatch nerfs, the power level is in a much more reasonable spot, so just a small adjustment here - Gluttonous Greaves has picked up a nice new user base, especially Fighters and AD Assassins who might not have another offensive boot option (outside of Lucidity) - We think the boots are too strong, both in non-mid roles and in mid with the boot upgrade - So far Stormraider's has landed a bit weak, so we're giving it a bit of a tap up - One of our goals with the Dusk and Dawn changes was to help differentiate it a bit from Lich Bane - We think we can give Lich Bane a bit of an upwards adjustment to further differentiate - Will talk about champions tomorrow Apex Ranked (reset regions) - We're going to let Apex MMR's settle for another patch before re-evaluating whether or not duo should be re-enabled - Have investigated several of the "Emeralds in Masters lobbies" cases, they have so far fallen into: 1. A player who didn't play much prior to the reset, so they are still starting from Emerald (as if they were playing in the early days of 2026) 2. A person who is climbing a fresh account and has a really high winrate (and close to Masters); though a reminder that this is not faster to climb than playing on your main 3. An Emerald (or multiple) duoing with another Emerald or Diamond player (especially Diamond player with a high MMR) - So far, I haven't seen anything broken about these games; they are typically fair both MMR and LP wise, even if visual ranks look a bit off

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• Jul 8, 20265.2x their median

  Patch 26.14 Full Preview! Mages Bot - we've pulled brand from the patch given the concerns around mages bot - that said, we know this is a contentious topic, and I'll give some high level thoughts on how we see the situation (and more detailed thoughts in the patch rundown) - we see mages bot as creating healthy diversity for the bot lane experience overall (roughly 4:1 ratio of traditional marksmen to mages), even though for some traditional marksmen, they can be quite frustrating - it's important that players experience a mix of games at high intensity (eg. Playing adc against rengar/talon + mages bot) and also games that are more comfortable and low threat (maybe ivern jungle) as it creates the variety and flow state that keeps the game fun - too much intensity or too little intensity would make the game unfun in the long run as you'd never really feel those spikes of cortisol and triumph (which is one of the reasons assassins need to be strong for example) or be constantly stressed - marksmen are still the most popular bot carry in both pro and regular play - mages bot also need to be viable picks to allow teams to undoom themselves in champ select for an ad mid pick like zed/yone/Yasuo - that said, mages bot have pretty high winrates (often the highest), so aren't they overpowered? - The winrates don't really tell the full story, but they are definitely strong for several reasons. Mages, especially simple ones like brand, veigar or Swain for example have quite shallow mastery curves (usually only gaining 3-4% after playing ~50 games and also starting very high on game 1) in addition to not being deeply played in bot lane (ie. many mage bot players haven't progressed the mastery curve that far when you encounter them AND the mastery curve is not that steep) -> a similar effect to if you played autofilled malphite top (high skill floor) - adcs by contrast are typically harder to play but also reward that mastery depth more, meaning their winrates are relatively suppressed compared to mages bot - I'm not saying that mages at high levels of mastery/skill are weak (see them in pro play or high elo ranked), but mainly saying that winrates don't tell the full story and we see them as relatively similar in power level overall, just often more forgiving and can be more tolerant of matchup - adcs also have accelerated 3 item spikes in this season (compared to the other roles) due to bot quest, which also presents an interesting strategic balancing point (the mages a bit stronger on early item spikes and weaker on later ones) - another balancing aspect of mages bot is that they typically represent a composition tradeoff. Eg. ori + yunara/lulu bot lane and win on 2/3 items or AD mid plus ziggs+engage bot and need to end the game fast - if struggling with mages bot, champs like ezreal/sivir/zeri can be quite effective against them (dodge skills and have strong 2/3 item spikes and out scale) - anyway, a nuanced conversation that I'll dig into more in a video later Azir - players have been complaining about a bunch of bugged functionality for Azir ever since we made the changes to make on hits work on him - the team has fixed the vast majority of these bugs, eg. Things like jungle monsters not getting shuffled, pta not working, conq stacks, etc. - thanks to all your bug reports in helping track these down and keep them coming! Proto Harness - when looking at our jungle nasus nerfs, we ended up deciding that a better nerf would be to target proto harness - other users like shen jungle are also pretty strong, so we think pulling the champ nerfs and nerfing the item instead is a better direction and helps retain the power level of top nasus for example The other changes in this patch are relatively straightforward, but lmk if there's any more detail wanted and I can cover them in the rundown next week

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• May 20, 20264.8x their median

  26.11 Full Patch Preview! The major changes this patch are to the Systems mentioned yesterday to adjust the relative balance of Ranged vs Melee supports in bot lane. There are also some changes to Statikk Shiv to make it slightly more attractive on AD users and a nerf to Hexplate for Ranged which are primarily being picked up on Varus and Vayne Top Lane. We're not looking to remove it from them, but are looking to get it into a spot where its top end balance doesn't need to be maintained around those 2 champions. We're also restoring some of the power we removed from Heartsteel a while ago as it lost some of its fantasy and power in a way that we think we can restore now. It will also incidentally help some of the Tank Supports in niche cases when they start snowballing Deathfire Touch - We're adjusting Deathfire Touch this patch to deal Magic Damage - Part of the impetus for this is how strong the synergy is with Black Cleaver and in addition, it feels like more of a magic coded effect - So we think this strikes a reasonable balance of fantasy fulfilment and practical balance considerations - Otherwise, we think Deathfire Touch is in a pretty reasonable spot Brand, Smolder - Brand Botlane and Smolder have both benefitted from Deathfire Touch - While we are making changes to the Deathfire Touch interaction that will affect Smolder, we still think he will be too strong after these changes - The changes to Smolder are targeted at also making his squishy Crit builds more optimal so he is more assailable later in the game Heimerdinger - After the minion changes in the previous patch, Heimer's turrets are a bit worse for wear - We're giving him a feelsgood QOL change so that his turrets aren't killed by ranged minions without being able to attack back - Despite being 550 range on paper, 550 range champions (which are most of them) will still be able to outrange turrets at max range due to the way this range is calculated - In addition, there is a small increase to the E vision duration so that the Beam actually manages to fire before losing vision in some cases Teemo - For Teemo, he is one of the more powerful Top laners, while also being on the higher end of frustration - He is also receiving a small buff to Statikk Shiv this patch and so we're compensation nerfing him with an intent for this to be lightly power down Quinn - Quinn has landed in a pretty weak spot for Jungle and in this state, it's pretty close to griefing team when picked - So we're giving it a pretty sizeable buff to give it a legitimate shot at being powerful and viable - Players so far have expressed interest in playing it!

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