Riot Games has released the patch notes for League of Legends 13.17 and there are a lot of champion adjustments to read through, with the main focus being on durability for champions that either have too much or are finding ways to be viable with too little.
While there aren’t many overarching themes or changes in the patch notes, the one that keeps coming up is making adjustments to fighters and fighter items that impact durability. A fighter will, as you would expect, be the one who is always putting themselves in danger with the hope of securing kills. To do this, most champions would want to have a nice mix of durability and damage, but in recent weeks a lot of fighters have mostly been focusing on the latter and ignoring the former. That’s where changes to the likes of Aatrox, Hecarim, Vi, and Xin Zhao come in.
Aatrox gets an interesting change where his passive and W damage are now magic, which should stop some of his high damage low durability builds. Hecarim gets buffs to his base mana stats and spell cost decreases to hopefully mean he no longer has to get Manamune to be able to cast spells. Vi gets some cooldown buffs and passive improvements to try and undo some of the massive nerfs from a few weeks back, while Xin Zhao gets adjustments to his passive heal which should make tanky items viable on him.
To also try and balance fighters a bit more evenly some of their key items have been given some changes, most notably Spear of Shojin which basically gets some all-round buffs other than a small damage nerf. It now gives a massive 500 HP, which should make some more champions want to buy it, with Riot pointing out the likes of Hecarim and Jax as two who should have it a lot of the time.
Everyone’s favorite item Statikk Shiv is also getting a pretty big nerf to its bonus damage against champions. This is pretty much entirely because of LeBlanc, so if you are annoyed make sure to destroy the next LeBlanc you see in game.
In news that will surely please someone but seems pretty inconsequential, Dragons now have a visible patience bar and their AI has been reworked, so that’s fun.
Finally, the Blue Essence Emporium is back with this patch, giving you the chance to earn chromas, accessories, and more starting on September 6. The Emporium closes on September 20, so you’ll need to be quick if you want to get some cool stuff.
For those looking for some slightly bigger changes, Riot gave us the first tease of the upcoming preseason patch earlier in the week, revealing that we will get some map changes, a major ranked overhaul and the return of Nexus Blitz.
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