Ambessa

“We had always anticipated that Ambessa would have a jungle audience and we're happy to see that she's taken root there, but she also needs to be equally balanced across her two primary roles, so we're lightly nerfing her monster damage.”

Annie

“Annie has all but disappeared from the current game so we'd like to bring her back up to viability. While her primary player base is likely to be in mid lane, she's often enjoyed success at support as well, so we're also fanning the flames of her more supportive outputs.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	5.12%	11.71% 6.59%

View all Annie builds

Aphelios

“Even after our hotfix nerfs in 26.1, Aphelios remains as one of the most dominant marksmen in the game. We're lowering his damage to make him a little less powerful at all stages of the game.”

Brand

“Brand jungle has been smothered as of late, so we're giving his clear speed some additional firepower to see if he can find his place again.”

Braum

“We undershot our Braum nerfs last patch so we're delivering another similarly-sized nerf to get him to the right spot. We're happy that he can reliably remain his team's front line, but that doesn't mean he needs to be as good as he is at starting late game teamfights.”

Camille

“Though Camille is statistically balanced, she's so feast or famine that she doesn't feel like it. We're giving her some extra reliability this patch by granting her Hookshot's attack speed any time she successfully dashes off of the wall, regardless of whether or not she hits her enemies. This should help her more generally so she can succeed in a wider variety of situations.”

Darius

“Last year Darius was tearing up the jungle so we nerfed his monster mod to keep him from taking over. This year, after the changes, Darius is very weak in the jungle, so we're going to split the difference so that he can be in a stable, fair power level there.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	9.75%	15.46% 5.72%
	9.69%	10.95% 1.26%
	6.68%	7.67% 1%

View all Darius builds

Fizz

“Fizz jungle made a splash in our big jungle patch last season, but his pick rate quickly dwindled. We know he'll need more than just clear speed to stay afloat, though this change will help us test the waters before making any changes that affect him in both mid and jungle, and hopefully helps some of his new builds with W max and/or Dusk & Dawn thrive.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	21.83%	23.25% 1.42%
	10.37%	10.37% 0%

View all Fizz builds

Graves

“Graves has a moderately successful lethality burst build right now, but it means he doesn't have much of a fallback pattern if he doesn't high roll a crit. We'd like to reintroduce his more durable builds of old by rewarding Graves more for maintaining Quickdraw stacks.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	6.14%	40.12% 33.98%

View all Graves builds

Gwen

“With all the extra experience and/or gold scaling in Gwen's primary roles, she's become a total monster in the new season. While her recent jungle nerfs brought her two roles to similar power levels, they're both equally overpowered. We're not looking to significantly change her power curve, just make her fairer to play against and since we want to maintain her as a premier AP fighter, this means reducing her burst damage.”

Hwei

“After Hwei's adjustments late last year, he's a little weaker than he ought to be. We don't want to buff his wave clear back up as that was the original problem he had, so instead we want to reward him for using his whole toolkit and coordinating with his team.”

Illaoi

“Illaoi is having trouble staying above water in the new season so we're here to throw her a lifeline. Considering level scaling is all the rage in top lane right now we're giving her more strength in the role she calls home.”

Jinx

“Jinx is currently one of the big winners of the new season. It turns out when your primary output is crits, and they get stronger, you do, too! Considering explosive basic attacks are core to her identity, we're leaving them just as they are. But we're going to make sure that she's squishy enough that if she's directly next to an explosion while falling dozens of stories, she's not somehow tanky enough to survive all of that. This isn't canon, but c'mon, we all know how this works.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	5.65%	8.49% 2.84%

View all Jinx builds

Kassadin

“Kassadin's been having a great time now that he's able to stack multiple Tear of the Goddess items. Seriously, get on the Seraph's + Muramana train! But because this newfound power has taken him over the edge, we need to appropriately balance him. We want to preserve his high late game damage and mobile scaling fantasy, but we want to balance those strengths with appropriate weaknesses once he gets there.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	7.08%	29.38% 22.3%
	5.60%	49.98% 44.38%

View all Kassadin builds

Kayle

“Just about everyone had Kayle on their “winners of the new season” Bingo card due to her reliably reaching level 16 more often. As those assumptions have proved true, it's time to tune her more appropriately. Players have increasingly come to understand that maxing Q is optimal on her, and we'd like if the choice between Q and E were closer.”

Kennen

“Kennen's so sneaky that he snuck under players' radars for a while, but as the new season has dawned, many of you have come to understand that small shurikens can pack a big punch. We want to create windows of opportunity to succeed against him, which means preserving his power when everything's available, but creating larger gaps between those moments.”

Lee Sin

“Right now Lee Sin's W2 is the only ability in the game that grants both Life Steal and Spell Vamp. We're looking to combine those into Omnivamp along with a couple other systemic changes to maintain similar gameplay with clearer wording.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	7.25%	27.27% 20.02%

View all Lee Sin builds

Lux

“Lux is straightforward to play, which means she should look quite strong in the hands of most players. Unfortunately, she isn't doing particularly well, especially as a support. Our changes this patch are a mix of skewing her base stats to be more synergistic with the World Atlas and a direct injection of power aimed at making both her primary roles better.”

Maokai

“Maokai was able to find much more comfortable roots in the Top and Support roles, but his ability to Jungle is still lagging behind other tanks. With this clear speed buff, we're looking to keep him in line with the other tree champions in the jungle.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	8.95%	13.48% 4.53%

View all Maokai builds

Naafiri

“Naafiri is pretty evenly split between mid and jungle now, but is too powerful in mid lane at the moment. We'd like her to still hit as hard when she lands her bread and butter Q and uses her mobility to effectively trade, though right now she can spam a bit too effectively, threatening all-ins and pushing at the same time.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	9.03%	43.97% 34.94%

View all Naafiri builds

Qiyana

“Qiyana's mid lane performance among experts is one of the strongest in the game and is due for a nerf. We're happy that she's a lethal assassin, we just want to make her less generically strong.”

Rengar

“As the dust has settled around Rengar's bug fixes and affinity for new items (hi Umbral Glaive!), we're now certain that Rengar is simply too strong when piloted by players who know what they're doing. Overall he gained a lot more damage in the new season, so we're going to bring some of that damage down now.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	16.39%	26.46% 10.07%

View all Rengar builds

Rumble

“Rumble is not in pro jail. I repeat, Rumble is not in pro jail! After fixing a long-standing bug that substantially reduced his damage when played on the red team and associated follow-up, he's just a very strong champion at almost all levels of play once players get over his steep learning curve. As a result, we're looking to bring him to a more appropriate power level so we're making him more susceptible to aggressive laners and worse at simply equalizing away poor wave states.”

Ryze

“You've seen it, we've seen it. We've revisited Ryze's ult and an unintuitive interaction causing champions to not warp when they'd otherwise expect to. This was an intentional mechanic that aimed to anticipate players' needs but as time has gone on, this predictive help has caused more confusion than it's worth.”

Samira

“Samira is already a solid performer every way we can measure it, so this change isn't meant to be a significant buff. Instead, this change is more an acknowledgement that Bloodthirster should be competitive with Endless Hunger and shouldn't heal her for less just due to some rules text.”

Senna

“Senna has found herself in a weird state where she can be quite powerful, but not when playing her more popular offense-focused builds. So we're shifting some power around with the goal of maintaining her viable supportive playstyles but making damage-focused builds much better.”

Swain

“Swain is running rampant through bot lane right now and doing quite well in mid, too. His bot lane playstyle is more strongly tied to Malignance and his role as a bot laner is more about his damage output. Meanwhile in the support role, where the majority of his players are, they mostly rush Rylai's and perform as more of a pseudo-frontliner. So with all of that in mind, we're nerfing his AP-scaling ultimate damage and inherent crowd control power in hopes to nerf bot lane while leaving support as unscathed as possible.”

Syndra

“Syndra has been rising through the ranks recently, with high CDR builds performing especially well. We don't want to hit how she feels with her Q poke and main defensive tool in Scatter the Weak, so instead we're going to take at some of her more guaranteed damage.”

Teemo

“Teemo has been struggling in the jungle ever since season start, even for the most dedicated scouts. Though we can't make him sneakier in a world of Faelights, we're giving him some more clear speed to help him do his job as the Swift Scout.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	11.13%	38.63% 27.5%

View all Teemo builds

Twitch

“Twitch really benefitted from the new items introduced this season, and players are really gravitating towards his glass cannon playstyle. With that in mind, he's a bit too resilient to be considered glass, so we're making sure his damage comes with appropriate tradeoffs.”

Udyr

“We want both Q-max and R-max Udyr to be viable builds, but right now they're quite far apart in power. Similarly, maxing W or E second should also be comparable but regardless of build, W is weaker. We'd like to rectify both of these issues by improving the rank-up incentives of both Q and W without giving too much burst damage to AD Udyr and without giving him too much sustain to ignore his lane opponents.”

Xayah

“Xayah appears statistically balanced, but players feel like she lacks agency. We're looking to make her base spells more available, giving more access to her spellweaving fantasy and more juicy W-auto uptime. These changes will also help her spread her wings and not be as reliant on Essence Reaver.”

Build pickrate increases Increase >5%

Build	PR increase	Pickrate
	7.19%	20.37% 13.17%

View all Xayah builds

Zac

“Zac has been truly explosive in the new season, and while his ability to tank and engage are meant to be core strengths, he's also too lethal for a tank with deep backline target access. So to give everyone a fair shot against him, we're reducing his burst damage when it's slime time, especially against squishies.”