Hi Summoners,
Welcome to patch 4.19! Not much in terms of design content as we continue work behind the scenes on the 2015 preseason and the eventual arrival of the updated Summoner's Rift.
As a reminder, this is the last week for the 2014 season, so good luck for those of you trying to power through to the next tier! Just remember that losses are inevitable, and it's what you can learn for the future that counts. That's some deep philosophy for a patch notes foreword.
On with the changes!
Chris "Pwyff" Tom
The last major set of SRU files is going out with 4.19 (so expect another large download!) and we'll be starting the Summoner's Rift open beta soon. Check out the beta release plan for additional details!
STICK 'EM IN THE GOO! ... Also Insanity Potion gives more bonuses at rank 3. And Singed has been updated!
Our initial context was to say, "Sometimes you just want to buff Singed, man," but then someone read it and said it wasn't very informative. So. Right now we like Singed and how he fits into the game, but thought we could give him some small, exciting buffs to stay interesting. For the "LONG PATCH NOTE" section, we'll reiterate: it's a neutral change, just that we've shifted the mini-stun on landing into the actual throw itself (this came from re-scripting Fling to fix the bug where Singed was occasionally tossing people in the completely wrong direction). Also, Singed has been updated! Check out the article if you want the full story, or below if you just want the specifics.
Lots of bug fixes along with a small mana cost shift from Sion's Q + W to E.
We've got a little room to give Sion some post-update love, so we decided to focus on his best stat: health. Additionally, we've made a lot of quality-of-life changes & bug fixes to help Sion be the best he can be. Final note for that passive change, we changed it because it was punishing Sion for building HP, which was dumb. Now health-stacking Sion should stay up a little longer in his zombie form in comparison to a damage-focused, low-health Sion. Logic!
CAW CAW CAW!
W's cooldown stays the same at all ranks (aka higher at later ranks).
While this isn't a very large change, we want to create harder choices for Janna for when she should use her W, giving her enemies more windows of vulnerability to engage on their target (or her!).
Helping you make those... flashy plays.
W no longer has an attack damage ratio, but gives more movement speed bonuses at later ranks. R's cooldown has been significantly raised (particularly at later levels).
You know, for a 'short-range' champion, Lucian's got access to a lot of long-range damage once he gets past the early game. Our big focus here is to push Lucian into closer combat range more often by reducing the power on some of his safer spells. At this point you might ask why Q has a 1100 range (well, 500 cast but 1100 total), and that would be a good question. Also, when you consider it, The Culling's 50 second cooldown at rank 3 is pretty crazy.
Q's base damage has been reduced across all ranks.
As a strong late game scaling champion, Ryze's ability to bully out other top laners early is pretty bonkers, so we're reducing his base damage in lane while still leaving his ability to scale past laning phase intact. We'll be keeping an eye on Ryze over the next few patches, however, as these nerfs might be on the light side for how dominant a champ he is.
This is it, we got the last global passive in the game.
While our stance on global passives is fairly well known (hidden power, impacting lanes outside of an opponent's control, etc), we typically don't like nerfing champions when they're down (as in unpopular or seen as underpowered). With Zilean's rise as a high-priority competitive and - by extension - normal pick, we can now at least reduce that global passive to a more manageable range.
As we've mentioned previously, the splash art team is engaged in a long-term effort to update our oldest base splashes. We've got 18 more ready to go this time!
The 2014 ranked season began in January, and now the battle for League Points draws to a close. The 2014 season ends on November 11, 2014 at 12:01 AM PST. Visit the End of Season page to learn more about the end of the season rewards and the new Master tier.
In addition to other rewards, players in Gold tier or higher in any ranked queue at the end of the season will receive the Victorious Morgana skin!
We've been working to improve Suggested Players since launch in 4.14 so players have an easier time filling out their premade lobbies. This patch, we're addressing two common points of feedback. Suggested Players will now prioritize players you've honored over other potential suggestions, and the friends-of-friends component will now take your skill level into account to ensure better matches. We're continuing to closely monitor the system for further upgrade opportunities, so please keep giving us feedback!
We've made a couple usability and polish improvements to the patching screen!
This skin will be released during Patch 4.19: