Official Patch 7.4 Notes Released

Introduction

The latest patch notes are available, and feature some large scale changes Cho'Gath. Meanwhile, lethality and armor penetration items were tweaked a bit coupled with various balance changes on the masteries. Check out the summary and full scope of changes below!

Summary

Nerfs: Corki, Jhin, Katarina, Maokai, Ryze
Buffs: Cho'Gath, Bard, Cassiopeia, Knight's Vow

Patch 7.4 notes

Greetings, Summoners.

First things first, Scarizard has left the patch crew. We aspire to continue to inform and entertain League of Legends players as he always has.

Returning to our regularly scheduled programming, welcome to 7.4, the one where we make our strongest strides yet toward addressing the #adcin2017 situation. In actuality, this is just the latest in a multi-patch campaign, but previous patches targeted the obstacles keeping marksmen down (overly tanky divers or oppressive early ganks), rather than marksmen themselves. This patch, we’re helping them make an earlier impact on the game so laning and early skirmishing feel less like fighting a fire with a squirt gun.

Finally, we’re taking this opportunity to visit Cho’Gath, who has been feeling pretty out of place for some time now. We’re tweaking everybody’s favorite giant Void monster to better fulfill his fantasy of “giant tank of death”, and letting him loose on the Rift.

And that’s it for us! Check out the full details below, and we’ll see you on the Rift!

 Paul "Aether" Perscheid Mattias "Gentleman Gustaf" Lehman Lucas "Luqizilla" Moutinho

Champions

Cho'Gath

Feast can stack infinitely against champions and epic monsters, and stacks no longer fall off on death. Feast’s ability power ratio down; bonus health ratio added.

Cho’Gath’s been pretty weak for a while now: his last visit to the patch notes back in 6.20 made Feral Scream a fairer ability to play against, but ended up weakening Cho by removing some reliability from his kit. We’re updating Feast to boost the cool aspects of Cho’Gath’s colossal, slobbering Void monster fantasy while removing the frustration of losing stacks when killed (it was a pretty terrible experience to reverse-snowball after a death). This makes Cho less of a gamble, while making tank builds feel like a good choice.

UPDATEDR - Feast

Changes to the rules around Feast stacks.

FOOD MEMORYCho’Gath no longer loses Feast stacks on death

FEED THE VOIDFeast can now stack infinitely (only five stacks can be gained from minions and non-epic monsters, though they don’t have to be the first five)

NOT THAT FILLINGFeast no longer heals Cho’Gath when it kills a unit at max stacks (nomming a sixth minion or non-epic monster doesn’t do anything beyond damage)

INDISCRIMINATE DIGESTIONFeast no longer grants two stacks on champion kill or half mana and cooldown refund on minion kill

FOOD CRITICFeast’s tooltip on the buff bar now tracks what Cho’s eaten

All the other stuff.

RATIO0.7 ability power ⇒ 0.5 ability power and 10% bonus health

BONUS HEALTH PER STACK100/140/180 ⇒ 80/110/140

BONUS HEALTH AT 6 STACKS600/840/1080 ⇒ 480/660/840

MAXIMUM ATTACK RANGE BONUS+50 (175 attack range) ⇒ +75 (200 attack range)

LET’S NOT GO CRAZY HERECho’Gath reaches his maximum size (and bonus attack range) at 10 stacks

Bard

Bonus movement speed when collecting Chimes increased.

Bard’s been away from the Rift for a while now (*sad chimes*). To help the golden boy out, we’re boosting his wandering skills to help Bard do what Bard does best: roaming and playmaking.

Passive - Traveler's Call

BONUS MOVEMENT SPEED18%, plus 12% for each chime beyond the first ⇒24%, plus 14% for each chime beyond the first

MAX BONUS (5 CHIMES)66% ⇒ 80%

Cassiopeia

Cassiopeia is now slick. Fixed a Flash + Ult bug.

General

NO HOVER SNAKESCassiopeia’s tail now follows her realistically as she moves and turns

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Bugfixes

DIZZY SNAKEFlashing during R - Petrifying Gaze’s cast time no longer resets the direction the cone fires in. It now consistently fires in the direction Cassiopeia faced before Flashing. This addresses a bug that sometimes caused Petrifying Gaze’s visuals to not line up with the actual effect.

Corki

Normal missile damage down. Missile count now tracked on secondary resource bar.

Corki stands out as one of the strongest midlaners at all levels of play. He brings a lot to the fray: strong poke damage, wave clear, and a fantastic moustache. We’re toning down Missile Barrage’s contributions to the first two, but leaving the Big One intact as an impactful moment for Corki and his opponents to play around. To that end, we’re adding a tracker for Corki’s progress toward the Big One so foes can react accordingly.

R - Missile Barrage

Normal missile damage numbers:

BASE DAMAGE100/130/160 ⇒ 75/100/125

TOTAL ATTACK DAMAGE RATIO20/60/100% ⇒ 15/45/75%

ABILITY POWER RATIO30% ⇒ 20%

Big One damage numbers:

BASE DAMAGE150/195/240 ⇒ 150/200/250

TOTAL ATTACK DAMAGE RATIO30/90/150% (unchanged)

ABILITY POWER RATIO45% ⇒ 40%

#clarity:

AMMO RACKThe number of missiles Corki has stored is now shown in his secondary resource bar. The resource bar turns red when the next missile is a Big One.

Jhin

R bullets’ slow duration decreased.

Jhin’s been plenty powerful throughout the beginning of the season, giving us a generous number of opportunities to evaluate more nuanced approaches than raw damage nerfs. We’re targeting one of the most frustrating aspects of playing against the Virtuoso: Curtain Call’s slow. Eating a single bullet often makes it near-impossible to dodge the rest. This neither provides sufficient opportunities to outplay Jhin, nor does it let Jhin demonstrate his mastery. The slow on Curtain Call still works as a set-up for his team to dive in, but won’t allow him to single-handedly kill squishies by spoon-feeding him every ult shot.

R - Curtain Call

SLOW DURATION0.75 seconds ⇒ 0.5 seconds

Katarina

Minus 2 MR from Slytherin.

Katarina had 2 more base MR than she was supposed to. Whoops.

Base stats

BASE MAGIC RESISTANCE34 ⇒ 32

Maokai

Q mana cost up. E impact damage removed.

Maokai has been the dominant super-tank in top lane, and not even the hefty Courage of the Colossus changes back in 7.2 felled this tree. Thanks to his seemingly-limitless waveclearing, the Twisted Treant has basically no losing lane matchup. We’re forcing Maokai to commit more resources if he wants to squash enemy minions, allowing opponents to win by attrition if they can sap him of his mana before a fight. Maokai will still be a mighty oak in the late game, but unless he branches into some early mana items, he won’t have the resources to farm and fight if he’s on the losing side.

Q - Arcane Smash

COST45 mana at all ranks ⇒ 45/50/55/60/65 mana

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E - Sapling Toss

REMOVEDFAT SAPLINGSSaplings no longer deal damage when they land (they still draw jungle monster aggro)

Ryze

Q bonus damage on E’d targets reduced.

Despite 7.1’s changes to reduce Ryze’s early game safety, the Rune Mage is still machine-gunning everyone to death once he eventually scales into mid/late game. That said, this is a far larger problem in pro play than normal play, and nerfing base damages would just make that worse. We’re targeting Q’s bonus damage, ensuring power’s pulled more heavily from matches where Ryze players are far more diligent in priming their targets with Spell Flux before tossing out an Overload.

E - Essence Flux

Q BONUS DAMAGE VS FLUX’D TARGETS40/55/70/85/100% ⇒40/50/60/70/80%

Yordle Finger Unification Pass

Don’t ask what we did with the fingers we cut off. It’s better for you not to know.

JHIN WOULD BE PROUDVarious Yordle splashes and in-game models have been updated to all have four fingers

Armor Penetration Items

There’s no denying Lethality builds are overtuned, but the solution isn’t as straightforward as “revert the buff from 7.2”. That buff addressed Lethality’s initial problem of being lackluster against squishy targets in the early game, and we want to preserve as much of that correction as possible. The nuanced (rather, lack-of-nuance’d) issue we now face is that Lethality builds are effective against everyone. To address this, we’re putting a damper on how efficiently Lethality builds pull in tank-busting items - washing out those builds’ intended weakness without significantly stalling their anti-squishy gameplan.

We’re digging into three percent-penetration items this patch: Black Cleaver, Last Whisper, and Lord Dominik’s Regards. In each case, generic damage is being shifted into the specific strengths desired by the classes those items are meant for. Enforcing Lethality’s weaknesses by tightening up its alternatives creates space for other builds to shine while leaving Lethality itself effective in cases where it’s supposed to succeed.

The result of this focus on the broader item system is that we’ve only got two direct nerfs to Lethality. One’s to Ghostblade; the other’s to the Precision mastery in the Cunning tree (scroll down a bit). Where we go from here will depend on how this patch shakes out, though there’s one step we know for certain we’ll be taking. Edge of Night’s got so much going on that changing it correctly is a more complex challenge than with most other items. We want to get this one right, so we held off on lumping it in with our initial batch of changes. Expect nerfs in 7.5.

Youmuu's Ghostblade

Lethality down.

Up until the introduction of Lethality, Ghostblade granted 20 flat armor penetration. We wanted to avoid shrinking that number during the transition away from flat penetration, which was a big enough change to get used to on its own. Now that Lethality’s found its place in the stats system, we’re bringing Ghostblade in line with Dirk’s other upgrades.

LETHALITY20 ⇒ 15

The Black Cleaver

Builds out of Kindlegem instead of Caulfield’s Warhammer. Health up, attack damage down.

While The Black Cleaver is meant for fighters like Darius and skirmishers like Fiora, it packs so much offensive power that glass cannon champs are buying into it as well. We’re shaking up Cleaver’s build path and stat offerings to better align with the extended fights its intended users thrive in. Swapping Caulfield’s Warhammer for a Kindlegem works out well for champs who need to live long enough to cycle through several rounds of spellcasts, versus champs who want to down their target in one go.

Fun fact: this is basically the version of Black Cleaver we had between patches 5.8 to 5.22, with a few gold numbers moved around. Though the change to Warhammer made sense in the 2016 pre-season, a lot’s changed about the game since then and the old version’s a better fit for where we are today.

BUILD PATHPhage + Caulfield's Warhammer + 850 gold (3100 total) ⇒Phage + Kindlegem + 950 gold (3000 total)

HEALTH300 ⇒ 400

ATTACK DAMAGE50 ⇒ 40

Last Whisper

Armor penetration up, attack damage down.

For marksmen, reacting to tanky threats required a 2700-gold investment in the form of Lord Dominik’s Regards or Mortal Reminder. The problem: “build an end-game item” doesn’t pass muster as a ‘reaction’, given how long it takes to bank that much coin. We’re letting Last Whisper serve as that reactive purchase all on its own, at the expense of effectiveness against targets without armor to pierce.

BUILD PATHPickaxe + 425 gold (1300 total) ⇒ Long Sword + 950 gold (1300 total)

BONUS ARMOR PENETRATION30% ⇒ 45%

ATTACK DAMAGE25 ⇒ 10

Lord Dominik's Regards

Damage bonus requires enemies to have more health than before.

Lord Dominik’s draws an interesting parallel with The Black Cleaver: one scales with enemy health, the other with enemy armor. There’s no right way to itemize against that combination, so to keep LDR+Cleaver from taking over as the new flavor-of-the-month build, we’re making Lord Dominik’s far less tolerant of Cleaver’s bonus health. Fortunately, this shouldn’t impact champs who are happy to buy Lord Dominik’s on its own.

PASSIVEDeal +1.5% physical damage per 50 ⇒ 100 maximum health difference against targets with greater max health than you (up to +15%)

MAXIMUM BONUS THRESHOLD500 max health difference ⇒ 1000 max health difference

Giant Slayer

Carry-over changes keep Giant Slayer and Lord Dominik’s consistent.

PASSIVEDeal +1% physical damage per 50 ⇒ 100 maximum health difference against targets with greater max health than you (up to +10%)

MAXIMUM BONUS THRESHOLD500 max health difference ⇒ 1000 max health difference

Items

Knight's Vow

Build path simplified.

A support’s inventory quickly fills up with multiple items like Sightstone, gold items, boots, and wards, leaving little room for components. We want supports to feel comfortable building towards Knight’s Vow, so we’re simplifying its build path.

BUILD PATHCrystalline Bracer + Crystalline Bracer + Cloth Armor + 700 gold (2300 total) ⇒ Crystalline Bracer + Chain Vest + 850g (2300 total)

ARMOR20 ⇒ 40

BONUS ARMOR WHEN LINKED40 ⇒ 20

TETHER RANGE900 ⇒ 1000

Masteries

Fervor of Battle & Warlord’s Bloodlust

A good trade is the first step towards winning a lane; repeat enough times and you can go for a kill. Hitting minions from range and lifesteal enables marksmen to weather the storm through lost trades far too easily. This is making bot lane pretty noninteractive; if there’s no real gain from risking a trade, why bother? We want to make sure trades feel worth the risk so aggressive bot laners can feel good about creating an advantage.

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Fervor of Battle

Stacks last longer.

STACK DURATION6 seconds ⇒ 8 seconds

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Warlord's Bloodlust

Less lifesteal.

MAXIMUM BONUS20% ⇒ 15%

Lower-Tier Mastery Tuning

Reducing damage from masteries. Meditation mana regen down. Fearless base resistances down.

Ultimately, we want a player’s impact to come from the decisions they make and the actions they take in-game. Masteries supplement that power, but over time the amount of power they bring has crept up. We like the gameplay that is created by impactful Keystone masteries, but we’re looking to trim some of the invisible power from masteries which only provide passive stats.

Tier 4

Fearless

BONUS RESISTANCES PER LEVEL2 (max 36) ⇒ 1.5 (max 27) (baseline +10% bonus resistances unchanged)

Tier 3

Merciless

BONUS DAMAGEAgainst champions below 40% health, deal 1% bonus damage per rank (max 5%) ⇒ 0.6% bonus damage per rank (max 3%)

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Meditation

MANA REGENERATION0.3% missing mana every 5 seconds per rank (max 1.5%) ⇒ 0.25% missing mana every 5 seconds per rank (max 1.25%)

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Tier 5

Precision

LETHALITY1.7 per rank (max 8.5) ⇒ 1.2 per rank (max 6)

FLAT MAGIC PENETRATION PER RANK0.6 per rank (max 3) ⇒ 0.3 per rank (max 1.5)

SCALING MAGIC PENETRATION PER RANK0.06 * level (max 0.3 * level) ⇒0.05 * level (max 0.25 * level)

TOTAL BONUS AT LEVEL 18, 5 RANKS8.5 lethality + 8.4 magic penetration⇒ 6 lethality + 6 magic penetration

Tier 4

Bounty Hunter

BONUS DAMAGE PER STACK1.5% ⇒ 1%

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Double Edged Sword

BONUS DAMAGE DEALT5% ⇒ 3%

BONUS DAMAGE TAKEN2.5% ⇒ 1.5%

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Battle Trance

BONUS DAMAGE MAX5% ⇒ 3%

RAMP-UPBonus ramps up over 5 seconds ⇒ 3 seconds 

Stealthed Trap Interactions

The introduction of control wards has given League of Legends too many trap-disabling effects, leaving trap-reliant champions in the same position stealth champions used to be: countered by a cheap item/trinket. We’re removing trap-disabling from most vision effects, but we want to ensure melee champions can attack the traps they reveal without accidentally stepping on them in the process.

Trap Hitbox Adjustments

Traps are more easily targetable by melee champions.

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Teemo's R - Noxious Trap

MUSHROOM CIRCLENow shows collision radius

TARGETABLE HITBOX50 units ⇒ 125 units (collision radius unchanged)

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Jhin's E - Captive Audience

TARGETABLE HITBOX50 units ⇒ 125 units (collision radius unchanged)

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Nidalee's W - Bushwhack

TARGETABLE HITBOX25 units ⇒ 50 units (collision radius unchanged)

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Shaco's W - Jack In The Box

TARGETABLE HITBOX25 units ⇒ 50 units (collision radius unchanged)

SPOILED SURPRISEJack in the Boxes now trigger when they’re revealed by a Sweeping Lens, Oracle’s Alteration, or Control Ward

Trap-Revealing Item Adjustments

Items that reveal traps no longer disable them.

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Sweeping Lens

HOW LAZYNo longer disables traps (still reveals them!)

CARRY-OVERAlso affects Oracle’s Alteration

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Control Ward

HOW LAZYNo longer disables traps (still reveals them!)

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Duskblade of Draktharr

HOW LAZYDuskblade’s Blackout passive no longer disables traps (still reveals them, and still disables wards!)

BUGFIXChampion clones (ex. Wukong’s W - Decoy) no longer instantly gains the Blackout passive when spawned

Game System Adjustments

Ward Reveal Rewards

Revealing wards is more rewarding.

Until now, you’d earn half a ward’s worth of gold when your allies destroyed a ward you’d revealed. This caused situations where players would compete for the last hit on wards, rather than getting rid of them ASAP. We’re changing things up so whoever reveals the ward and whoever kills it both get those precious gold coins without having to compete with one another.

WELL-EARNEDWards now grant full gold to both the player who revealed them and the player who killed them (bonuses don’t stack if the revealer also kills the ward)

BLOOMING BANKROLLSScryer’s Bloom now ‘tags’ wards for the revealed bonus

OVEREXPOSUREIf a ward is killed while revealed by two sources, the first source is the one that counts as having revealed the ward

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN SILLYPermanently visible wards (Control Wards, Farsight Wards) don’t grant the revealed bonus

Catch-Up Experience

Underleveled champions can better catch up to their teammates.

Should they ever fall behind in levels, certain champions - supports, utility junglers, what have you - have an exceedingly difficult time ever catching back up, even if they manage to contribute to their team’s successes in the face of that deficit. (In some cases, contributing to their team is the reason they fell behind in the first place - see: champs who roam between lanes or play into the deep vision game.) We want champions to be fairly rewarded for setting up the plays that lead their teams to victory at the expense of their own leveling.

Sidenote: we're also keeping a lookout for similar changes to stuff like Baron, Dragon and Turret kills.

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NEWTeamwork bonus experience

When you’re lower level than your team.

I'M STILL RELEVANTEarning a kill or assist while below your team’s average level now grants bonus experience

OFFICIALLY BEHINDTeamwork bonus experience kicks in at just over one full level behind your team’s average, scaling with XP (not level)

LET'S NOT GET TOO CRAZYThe bonus scales slightly more aggressively at first, capping at +60% bonus experience at four full levels’ difference

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Underdog bonus experience

When you’re lower level than your opponent.

SUBTLE STUFFBonus experience for kills/assists on higher-level champions has been slightly increased. (At 4 levels’ difference, this adds about 10% more bonus experience)

Turret First Blood

Gold reward down.

There’s a fine line between “working towards first turret is a valuable goal” and “let’s just always 5-man gank bot”. In the name of bot lane feeling less like everyone’s favorite karaoke joint, we’re dialing back the first turret benefit. That won’t mean bot lane won’t be pressured by other lanes, but we don’t want the gains from first turret to snowball the game quite so hard.

LOCAL BONUS275 gold ⇒ 300 gold

REMOVEDGLOBAL BONUSNo longer grants 25 gold to all teammates

TOTAL BONUS400 gold ⇒ 300 gold

League Client Update

Practice Tool is here, and we’ve also made significant upgrades for better performance and stability across a variety of machine specs. Beleaguered owners of potato-PCs may now see a notification about Low-Spec Mode (which we’ve buffed over the last few patches). If you’re still seeing issues with performance, we strongly recommend enabling it from the settings menu top right of the client window.

We’ve released a beta update that talks about our plans for replacing the legacy client and future development of the client. Check it out here.

You can also find solutions to most common issues in the known issues section of our support site.

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New features

Practice Tool and a big ol' buff to Low-Spec Mode.

NEWSICK (CPU) GAINSEnabling Low-Spec Mode now automatically closes the client once you've made it through champ select, focusing more of your machine's precious resources on the match at hand. If you enable this mode, you'll notice that it takes a few seconds longer to get to the end-of-game screen after your game ends. That's because a background process has to automatically re-launch the client. It's gonna look a bit like your client is exploding when this happens, but we intend to keep working on this feature to make it less jarring.

NEWPRACTICE TOOLPractice Tool is now available exclusively on updated client, finally destroying an ancient and exceedingly dank meme.

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Notable fixes

• Fixed the missing buttons to give permission / kick players in the lobby.
• Removed the loud ass sound effect when transitioning from champ select into game loading.
• Improved overall responsiveness during champ select.
• Reduced the time it takes to login to the client.
• Added a notification before matches to let you know if you’re not going to be earning IP/XP.
• When typing, words should no longer be awkwardly split across lines.
• Added a counter to folders so you can see at a glance how many of your friends are online.
• Removed unobtainable skins from champ select. These cluttered skin selection and made collectors feel mega bummed.
• Added a quick link to the League of Legends support portal from the client. You can find it in the client's top right corner.
• Players can now use tournament codes to enter a custom game without having to search for it.
• Players can now befriend, kick, or view the profile of a spectator in their custom game lobbies.

Queue Health Update

What does this update mean?

Ranked Solo/Duo

Ranked Flex

NORMAL DRAFTNormal Draft has been reenabled during 12pm and 12am CET. While this may impact the overall health of Ranked Flex, we are monitoring closely and will make future queue changes as needed. 

More information here.

Rotating Game Modes

All Random Ultra Rapid Fire (ARURF) is back from 2/24/17 - 2/28/17 and 3/3/17 - 3/6/17. Enjoy superspeed cooldowns, infinite mana, blazing attack speeds, randomized champ select, and the return of Runeterra's most renowned manatee.

Some things to note:

• Along with the points made above, we've also boosted gold gains, movement speed, and tenacity to keep things Rapid Fire.
• In this mode, you can spam the custom Urf emote, which replaces the Mastery emote.
• Rerolls are shared with ARAM, so using one in either mode consumes it in the other. To compensate, we’ve increased the rate you rack up rerolls for the weekend. You should stack a reroll every game or two depending on how many champs you have unlocked.
• Many non-ultimate shield scalings are down by 50%. Don't worry, shields are still awesome.

Join in on the insanity and GLHF, URFers.

Bugfixes

• Blackout passive no longer triggers individually on clones. We’re looking at you, Wukong
• Fixed a bug where abilities with circle range indicators were not displaying them correctly across elevation change
• Elise now correctly is not hit by turret missile projectiles during her E - Rappel invulnerability phase
• Jhin’s fourth shot now correctly crits after he takes Thresh’s W - Dark Passage
• Fixed a bug where Camille’s second cast of E - Hookshot wasn’t granting attack speed on hitting an enemy champion if she buffered her R - The Hextech Ultimatum
• Kled now can correctly dash through player-created terrain with his second cast of E - Joust
• Fixed a bug where Edge of Night’s active showed a radius when hovered over
• Kha’Zix now no longer is prevented from using his R - Void Assault passive by being “in combat” when stepping on Honeyfruit or attacking plants
• Fixed a bug where Gangplank got a massive Movement Speed boost upon killing multiple units with E - Powder Keg while being hit by Nautilus’ E - Riptide
• Nasus no longer plays the SFX for R - Fury of the Sands for the whole duration if he is dead
• Fixed a bug where clones killing the Rift Scuttler caused erratic behavior.
• Fixed a bug where game scoreboard icons would overlap
• The larger sphere from the Hexdrinker/Maw of Malmortius buff now appears in the appropriate location
• Classic Anivia no longer uses Blackfrost Anivia’s falling particles for R - Glacial Storm
• Buffs on Anivia now correctly align on her body even when she flies around for her Q - Flash Frost and R - Glacial Storm
• Blackfrost Anivia no longer has two bones jut out of her neck when using her Joke emote. You could say we got rid of her funnybones.
• Heartseeker Varus now correctly gets audio when hitting an enemy in Fog of War with Q - Piercing Arrow
• Blood Lord Vladimir now correctly gets audio quotes when he attacks
• Fixed a bug where Lunar Wraith Caitlyn’s Q - Piltover Peacemaker SFX were distorting when hitting multiple minions
• Primetime Draven’s Q - Spinning Axe no longer incorrectly uses Pool Party Draven’s SFX
• Fixed a bug where Urf the Nami-tee’s side fins bent outwards during her recall animation
• Fixed a bug on Arcade Corki where his model didn’t immediately reappear after his recall animation.

Upcoming Skins

Be on the lookout for Festival Queen Anivia, bringing samba to the Rift later in patch 7.4!

Festival Queen Anivia