With Bruiser getting their two strongest units (Volibear and Rift Herald) earlier and more consistently, we’re nerfing the reach trait for the class.

Our 16.5 Demacia nerfs were a miss, so we’re correcting them with 16.6 while also delivering one more buff to their crossbow carry who’s struggling to do that second part of the moniker.

We’re doing a few tweaks for Ionia to open up flexibility and react to our Unlock changes. First up, Transcendence. With the big allure of Transcendence being rerolling Yasuo to ultimately cap out with Yone, we’re delivering a rather large three-star buff to incentivize reroll with the trait despite Yone being accessible with only a two-star Yasuo. The Path of Generosity has been too generous, creating a more rigid Ionia line that disincentives pivoting late game due to the power and gold the trait hacks up. Path of Blades has largely been of the Path of Yunara (and barely even that), often only running Ionia (3) in favor of other synergies. By adding Ability Power onto the trait, and removing the bonus damage on-hit we’re opening up the ways you can play the Path at the cost of the name, Path of Blades, being a bit weird—blades can be magic right?

We’re nerfing Ixtal since they’re getting much easier access to their two 4-costs, which makes the quests that don’t require losing a lot more powerful.

With Piltover (6) easier to access, we’re reducing the Gold chance that Mining Drill has so as not to make the trait an easy path to fast (9) or (10).

With Aatrox and Yone much easier to Unlock, Slayer is getting a big buff whether you’re plashing their high-cost Slayers or playing the full class.

For Void, we want the Adrenaline Modules mod to be the damage option, while Leeching Nucleus focuses on healing. This has not been the case this set, with Leeching Nucleus far outperforming its adrenalized counterpart.

Yordle (8) has been overperforming, especially in our middle-range skill brackets, so we’re slightly lowering the drip on their drip-econ, while allowing 2-cost Yordles to appear in the grab bags—which should make Tristana/Teemo reroll comps more consistent too!

Tryndamere and Ashe reroll are still struggling to thaw out of their nerfs all the way back in 16.2. They’re very close though, with Ashe struggling to hit her stacking fantasy due to her weaker early game stats. A bit more AS here and AD there should have that true ice feeling truly nice.

With our Zaun bugfix in 16.5 Ekko has fallen out of the meta. We’re hopeful that a damage buff will have him chronobreak back into reroll comps near you.

Yorick will be a lot easier to Unlock, so we’re adjusting his one star form to be more in-line with our standard 2-costs.

The last patch did not move the needle enough for our three star 3-cost carries despite that being the primary goal of the patch. We’re back to bring them up to par with the investment and risk needed to three star them.

Of note here is our generous three star buffs to single target carries, who need to, well, kill their single target. Some of these buffs exceed our typical framework even, but like with Ahri for example, we need to compensate for how often they overkill their target. We’ve also got a big buff for Leona, whose flat damage reduction falls off late game, so alongside a small increase in that, she’ll now be able to hit (and stun) an additional target when three starred. Position her well and maybe you can stun a backliner early on in a fight. Similar to Leona, Zoe hasn’t seen the consistent success we’d like partially due to her Threat-like trait, but also due to the limited targets of her ability. Dramatically increasing her damage at three stars should add that Trouble back into her Double Trouble Bubble.

With Nidalee less dependent on a super-tank Neeko (previously required for her Unlock), we’re able to adjust her to be a bit more durable herself, while also lowering her damage.

Lissandra is our worst performing AP 4-cost. We’re giving her a Mana buff that may look small on paper or patch note, but is far bigger than it appears with her Invoker trait.

Like Ekko, Warwick has been howling in pain since the Zaun bugfix. But with this buff, he’ll be howling earlier, and it won’t be his pain…

With Veigar obtainable via a short and easy Unlock, we’re lowering his damage to keep it from reaching the top of the charts earlier.

Since two starring Yasuo is a lot easier than three starring him, we’re retuning Yone to be more in line with other 4-costs and no longer stable at one star—since he was often at one star for a long time after players stayed at Level 6 to hit him.

Between his quest to Unlock all of Shurima and the handy Sand Soldiers, we didn’t budget enough power to make Azir an actual carry. We’re doing so now by trading some of his Sand Soldier durability for carry potential.

We’ve got a few adjustments for Ryze now that he is easier to play with three traits. We’re pulling power from his overperforming Origins and putting it into his base ability to allow players to lean into a variety of traits with the safe consistency of a stronger Ryze.

We had to go back to Piltover Park in patch 16.5. And when we did, players discovered a strong combo with Blue Buff and Damage Amp combinations (IE/Striker’s Flail), that brought T-Hex back stronger than intended. Now we’re here to correct that and add an additional nerf to compensate for how much earlier you can access this theropod.

Thresh is a drain tank tunable at Stage 5-1, but now that he is coming earlier he needs a nerf, mostly in his durability (which makes his drained HP even more effective).

With many unlocks moving to Level Requirements, the value of gold (and leveling) was buffed. So we’re nerfing the overperforming econ Augments across the board to keep their power in check.

One such Augment, Max Build, was disabled as with Unlocks easier than ever, a guaranteed 4 or 5-cost makes Max Build’s output of a consistent two star too good.