With major League of Legends tournaments returning worldwide, the upcoming patches from Riot Games are primarily focused on champions who are currently hot in the professional scene. The most notable is the upcoming patch 10.13, where Riot’s gameplay design lead, Mark Yetter, has revealed a list of buffs and nerfs along with system updates for the game. What we can easily notice is that these updates target current hot picks in tournaments. Specifically:
Recently, especially after Riot’s infamous “200 years of game development” remark, players have taken to calling Yuumi and Aphelios by less-than-flattering nicknames. Fans watching tournaments often spam phrases like “200 years” every time these champions do something outrageous, mocking Riot Games’ balancing efforts. Therefore, these two names are almost always included in the nerf list as part of the “community appeasement” strategy.
Meanwhile, more precise nerfs target two mage champions, Syndra and Cassiopeia. Both champions can dominate the mid lane, with strong crowd control and damage potential, even possessing burst damage in team fights, making such versatile champions a reliable choice in the professional arena.
In terms of buffs, we can see that most of the names here are champions who were either heavily nerfed before or are significantly weaker compared to current hot picks. Champions like Vi and Nocturne in the jungle role, Yorick and Gnar in the top lane, or Rakan are all sitting at very low power levels and are not appealing to players at all.
The two most surprising names among those getting buffs are Lucian and Ryze, both of whom are currently strong in solo lane positions in the professional scene. In fact, in the recent marksman update, Lucian even received buffs to his late-game power, which means he has already become much stronger, and further buffs are unnecessary.
The final major change we can mention is the new reporting system that will be introduced to League of Legends. Specifically, players can report and block chat even during the champion select phase, which may help reduce toxicity right from the champion selection stage. Hopefully, this update will put an end to the situation of Yasuo being picklocked regardless of position.