The League of Legends Summer Season is here. Making sure everyone gets a fair amount of time under the sunlight, developers will be making adjustments to champions that have been left in the shade, like Akali, Xayah, Brand, and Viktor, as well as revisiting some of the most underutilized runes and summoner spells.

Riot Games developers are giving some extra attention to niche runes, in hopes to make them more accessible and easier to trigger, in hopes that players will have the chance to customize their runes according to their playstyle.

Runes like Guardian, for Supports focused on the well being of their players, had its movement speed removed, with an increase of tether range to 350, trigger condition of 90-250 post-mitigation, and a shield amount increased to 80-200. Predator had a cooldown reduction, with a damage degrease, removing channel interruption, and adding a bonus movement speed as well as only dealing damage and ending the hunt against enemy champions. 

Approach Velocity had been forgotten by players due to its unintuitive functions. The update will make the runes more simple to be understood, as well as a gain of 7.5% bonus movement speed when moving towards an impaired champion, and 15% if you caused the impairment. Unflinching, under the same pick issues, has gained 10% slow resist and tenacity, adding a 20% slow resist and tenacity based on missing health. Some runes like Taste of Blood have had simpler changes, like the cooldown indicator change. 

Summoner Spells like Ghost have been left aside by summoners. In order to increase its appeal, the spell now grants “Ghosting the Build-Up”, where its movement speed is activated instantly. But that’s not all, Ghost now has a longer cooldown, lasting 210 seconds.

Champion Nerfs and Buffs

Buffed

Akali had an increase of damage on Five Point Strike (Q) with a +65 to total attack damage and ability power, Senna had a bug fix, in which her critical attacks were not reducing the attack windup time, causing her to be overpowered. Fire boy Brand had a buff on his passive “Blaze”, with mana restore now of 20-40. Xayah is ready to ruffle some feathers with a generous buff on Featherstorm (R ) raising its base damage to 125/250/375. Viktor’s Siphon Power (Q) had its discharge damage ratio increased to 0.6 ability power, with his shield ration increasing from 0.15 to 0.2 ability power.

The League of Legends community had high hopes for Volibear's performance. The new artwork and the hype of his reworked version have made us expect a strong, buff, bear, but instead, we got a Teddy Bear. Sky Splitter (E), Stormbringer (R ) impact craters will not last as long but have an increased radius and an increase in its base damage at earlier stages. Frenzied Maul (W) had bug fixes and Thundering Smash (Q) will no longer be interrupted by crowd control once initiated, with an empowered attack scaling its timing with attack speed.

Nerf

Fiddlesticks is still subject of constant balancing, with Bountiful Harvest (W) having a minion damage reduction increased to 50%. Trundle’s base stats have been nerfed to take away power out of his Subjugation, and his Frozen Domain (W) had its bonus movement speed diminished. Cassiopeia’s base stats have been nerfed to make her a bit more squishy. Varus had a nerf to curb its Lethality build, with a decrease in attack damage growth to 3, and a damage ratio decrease on Piercing Arrow (Q) to 1. In order to make Yasuo more competitive in other positions than Bot Lane, his base health has been decreased to 490, with an increase in the shield activation of Way of the Wanderer (P) and an increase of Windwall (W) cooldown.

It's hiiiiigh noon

The High Noon skin series is back, this time bringing Senna, Irelia, and Jhin a new set of cosmetics. Your favorite scarecrow Fiddlesticks also will be receiving a wild west treatment with his new Bandito skin, because of course, he gets a bad guy look.

For all official patch notes, read the official blog post by Riot Games.

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