League of Legends patch 9.14 introduces major changes

The League of Legends 9.14 patch has just hit the live servers around the world. Patch 9.14 introduces various changes to both League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics. We’ve already covered the changes to Teamfight Tactics, so we’ll focus on League now. Here is a rundown of everything you need to know for what might be the biggest patch of the season.

Champions buffed in patch 9.14

• Blitzcrank gained a new passive on his ultimate ability, Static Field. Static Field now removes shields on enemies before the damage and silence effect.
• Renekton’s W – Ruthless Predator – now removes shields on targets when empowered with 50 Fury. This is on top of the other improvements 50 Fury gives to Ruthless Predator.
• Katarina’s ultimate ability, Death Lotus, sees its healing reduction increased from 40% to 60%.
• Kled’s Q, Bear Trap on a Rope, now reduces all enemy healing by 60% for 5 seconds when it pulls in an enemy.
• Karma and LeBlanc’s snaring abilities now reveal rooted targets. Morgana’s ultimate ability, Soul Shackles, will gain this same effect. However, Morgana’s Q, Dark Binding, does not gain this effect.
• Ahri’s E, Charm, now cancels in-progress dashes. This, however, comes at the cost of two seconds of bonus damage, dropping it from 5 seconds to 3 seconds. However, since Ahri mainly deals its damage in burst cycles, this should not impact her much.
• Poppy’s W, Steadfast Presence, now slows enemies if their dashing or movement abilities are canceled by Steadfast Presence. This comes at a cost of 0.5 seconds of increased movement speed, but this is compensated by a 5% increase in the movement speed gained.
• Alistar sees his base mana increased by 71.16 mana and his mana growth increased by 2 per level. These buffs attempt to allow Alistar to make a return into the solo queue meta.
• Aurelion Sol sees his main ability, Starsurge, improved drastically. The maximum stun duration has increased by .55/.60/.65/.70/.75 seconds based on rank. The maximum size of Starsurge has also increased by 33%. Another major buff to Aurelion Sol is to Comet of Legend, which now scales the maximum movement speed bonus by level, rather than by rank.
• Jhin’s W, Deadly Flourish, sees its cooldown reduced from 14 to 12 seconds. On top of this, the root duration has increased by 0.25 seconds for all ranks.
• Nidalee sees a small increase in damage on her E (in cougar form), Swipe. Patch 9.14 increases her damage by 10 damage at all ranks.
• Ryze sees his health regen and health regen growth increased slightly, going from 7 to 8 Health regen per second and from 0.55 to 0.8 per second growth per level. Besides this small buff, Ryze also sees bugfixes to various abilities. Overall, these fixes should make him more consistent to play.
• Urgot sees a small change to the recast timer of his W, Purge. Rather than the 1 second it took previously to recast, it will now only take 0.5 seconds between activating or canceling the ability. This is overall a pretty major buff to the champion, as Purge slows Urgot slightly while Purge is active. This change allows Urgot to escape ganks and move around the lane more easily when he achieves rank 5 Purge.

Changes to champions

Patch 9.14 also sees some major design changes of certain champions abilities and playstyles. Let’s take a look at some of the most important changes of the patch.

• Fizz sees her passive redesigned. Nimble Fighter used to reduce between 4 and 14 damage from auto-attacks based on Fizz’s level in the game. Now, it scales using the formula 4(+0.01 ability power), and the ability will reduce damage against all sources of damage, which is major. As an example, if Fizz has 500 AP, which isn’t hard to achieve by the end of a game, she will reduce all sources of damage by 9.
• Leona’s W, Eclipse, loses some of its armor and magic resist but gains a flat pre-mitigation damage reduction. Between 8-24 damage will be mitigated from all sources of damage before the hits will be reduced by magic resist and armor. This comes at the cost of 25 armor and 20 magic resist at rank 5. Also, Leona loses her passive effect from casting her ultimate, Solar Flare.
• Cassiopeia sees a whole host of changes this patch. She now gains the ability to buffer her abilities, which makes her much more smooth to play. However, this comes at the cost of various stats, such as her early game mana-pool, and some ability to heal from minions and small monsters. Overall this is a huge improvement to the champion, and she will almost certainly see play in competitive play and ranked play soon.
• It seems Riot Games has finished with Akali for the moment, as they effectively gutted the champion this patch. Her kit has seen a lot of changes, but she lost everything that made her unique. This includes her obscurity, which Riot has changed to invisibility. This change allows true sight effects, such as a Sweeping Lens, to reveal her entirely rather than only her outline.
• In a move that surprised everyone, Diana got several “bugfixes” which are nothing but nerfs? She never really saw any play before, and now she got nerfs to every aspect of her kit.
• Galio got a bunch of changes to his kit as well in patch 9.14. The only important thing here is that his W, Shield of Durand, now no longer works with Flash. This was the only thing that kept Galio even remotely in the meta after the already insane amount of nerfs the champion received.
• Lux support was a menace over the last few weeks. The changes this patch are good in my eyes. They target Lux support while buffing Lux mid. The nerf to her W, Prismatic Barrier, will hurt her the most, since the ability now no longer doubles the amount of shielding it used to give on the return of the ability to Lux.
• Malphite sees various improvements to his looks this patch. He also sees some changes to both his Q and W ability that won’t affect the champion’s playability in any way.
• Riot Games still saw Mordekaiser as too strong on patch 9.13. As such, we will see even further nerfs to the champion’s passive and E, Death’s Grasp. Death’s Grasp’s magic penetration will see a reduction of 2.5%/5%/7.5%/10% at ranks 2/3/4/5 of the ability.
• Pyke received buffs this patch. His E, Phantom Undertow, now stuns non-champions it passes through but deals no damage to them. This will allow for more aggressive play in the lane phase while keeping control of the minion wave. Other changes in patch 9.14 are to his ultimate, Death From Below. Pyke will now deal less damage to champions that survive, but this is compensated by a major increase in his income. Assists will now give Pyke “Your Cut” as well, which before was only given to his teammates if Pyke got the kill credit. Your Cut is an item that gives a champion as much gold as the kill credit would have been to make up for his assassin playstyle in the support role. On top of this, Pyke now receives 2 Your Cuts if he assists on a kill, but doesn’t take the kill credit through casting the ultimate ability, Phantom Undertow. However, this comes at the cost of his Ultimate ability only dealing 50% damage against champions that survive Phantom Undertow.
• Next up is Swain, who Riot effectively reworked. Every aspect of his kit has changed entirely, and they changed around all damage numbers and effects. His abilities overall still do what they used to, which is the only thing stopping this from being a complete rework.
• Sylas jungle was the flavor of the week recently. However, Riot Games did not want this to continue any longer, and as such they have reduced his passive damage by 20% against minions. To make up for this reduction in damage, his E, Abscond, now shields Sylas from all magic damage for 2 seconds. Additionally, Sylas’ ultimate ability, Hijack, has received major nerfs. These basically ruin the champion and what it was made to do. Hijack saw nerfs across the board, with the cast range reduced and the cooldown increased massively at all ranks. The hold duration of ultimates has been reduced by 30 seconds. And on top of this, Riot also nerfed the scaling damage of the stolen ultimates.
• If you thought Tahm Kench wasn’t dead yet, he sure is now. Once more, Riot has effectively nerfed his entire kit. Let’s just forget the champion exists and wait until the company reworks him at this point.
• Yuumi saw some small balance changes this patch to her passive, Prowling Projectile (Q), and Zoomies! (E). The changes are extremely minor and are unlikely to impact her playability at all.
• Bard got some rebalancing this patch, seeing a small increase in base Health, +40 at level 1, which is compensated by his health regen which is reduced from 7.5 to 5.5. Additional changes are to his E, Magical Journey. This has a slightly increased travel speed for everyone, and a change from a scaling speed bonus to allies to a flat 33% at all ranks.
• Finally, we see the change we discussed last week about Aatrox and the removal of his revive. Surprisingly, the change made it to the live servers. To compensate for the loss of Aatrox’s revive, Riot has increased his base health regen and self-healing. And the cooldown of his [now useless] ultimate has been reduced by 20 seconds.

Nerfs to ranged top laners

Ranged top laners have been incredibly powerful for a very long time in pro-play. Patch 9.14 sees the reduction in strength of a few of the most commonly played ranged top lane champions. Jayce, Kennen, and Neeko see a reduction in base stats, replacing some of the attack damage with attack damage per level. Further, Neeko also sees a small change in her base attack speed, which has changed into attack speed per level as well.

New Skins in patch 9.14

Riot will also introduce two news skins during patch 9.14. This patch will see the introduction of a new theme, Demacia Vice. The first two skins will come for Lucian and Garen. As with most new skins, these are expected to be priced at 1350 RP. Additionally, players will have 7 chroma’s available to purchase for each of these skins.

For a better look at these and other skins and champions in League of Legends, you can use League Displays.