Patch 26.18 is arriving a day late, and Riot's balance lead gave a one-line reason: a public holiday.
The preview named seven things it touches, Team Voice got its rollout rules, and Riot spent a fortnight arguing about losers queue.
Red Post Roundup
August 24 to September 9
Issue #5Patch 26.18 is arriving a day late, and Riot's balance lead gave a one-line reason: a public holiday.
The preview named seven things it touches, Team Voice got its rollout rules, and Riot spent a fortnight arguing about losers queue.
The short version
Every quote below is modern League. The one League Classic item in this window is Riot's own announcement, tagged where it appears.
- Patch 26.18 and its Patch Rundown both move back a day. Riot's stated reason is a public holiday.
- Seraphine and Zeri get nerfed, Cassiopeia gets rebalanced, and Ekko, Viego, Zaahen and Rageblade get buffs.
- Cassiopeia sits at roughly 47% for average players while dominating pro play, so power is moving into her AP ratios.
- Team Voice ships region by region, and the gate is whether Riot can moderate voice in that region's main languages.
- Riot's product director offered to deny a rigged-matchmaking mechanic on live television.
- Buying discounted RP from a third party gets your account banned when the payment is charged back.
Want these as they happen?
Our League of Legends Red Tracker collects everything Riot devs say in public and refreshes every fifteen minutes. This roundup is the weekly read. The tracker is the one you leave open.
Open the Red TrackerThe big one: 26.18 is a day late
Modern LeagueRiot's lead gameplay designer for League posted the whole explanation in one sentence, late on the night the patch would normally have been finalised.
Since yesterday was a public holiday, Patch (and Patch Rundown) will be a day later than usual.
Matt Leung-HarrisonLead gameplay designer, Leagueon X
What it means: the Patch Rundown video moves with the patch. 26.17 went live on Wednesday 26 August and League runs a two-week cycle, which put 26.18 on Wednesday 9 September and now puts it on Thursday the 10th. Riot did not name the holiday, but the Monday before that post was Labor Day in the United States, where League's balance team works.
One day is small until it is your day. If you were sitting on LP waiting for a buff, or holding off a climb until a nerf lands, everything moves with it.
The 26.18 numbers are on the PBE right now
Riot's preview gives you the champions and the direction. Our PBE Changes page gives you the values, read out of the game files on the test server and diffed against live, with every entry marked as announced by Riot or found on the PBE only. An extra day is an extra day of tuning, so this is where 26.18 turns from a direction into a number.
See what's on the PBEWhat 26.18 actually does
Modern LeagueThe preview came in two parts, a day apart. Cassiopeia is the headline, and Riot's case is a gap between skill brackets rather than a win rate.
Cassiopeia is in a pretty rough state for average players (~47% winrate), while being too strong in Pro Play and above average in Elite play [...] One of the ways we're attempting to accomplish this is by moving more of the power into her AP ratios over her base damages as Average players tend to purchase more AP
Matt Leung-HarrisonLead gameplay designer, Leagueon X
What it means: base damage is the part of an ability that works the same for everyone. An AP ratio only pays if you buy ability power. Pros play Cassiopeia for her lane, often light on early AP; everyone else builds it. Moving power from base damage into ratios pays the second group and taxes the first.
Seraphine's nerf is aimed at her farming lanes, with the support build meant to walk away untouched.
We're making E rank up incentives worse for the damage oriented roles, while intending for this to have relatively minimal impact for Support Seraphine who maxes this ability last
Matt Leung-HarrisonLead gameplay designer, Leagueon X
What it means: mid and bot Seraphine rank E early, support ranks it last. Making each rank worth less is a nerf you only feel if you max it, so two of her three roles take it and the popular one does not. Riot says in the same preview that it cannot serve all of her audiences at once.
Zeri is the simple one. She got stronger because Hurricane did, and Riot's stated order is to fix items first and champions after, so the champion takes the nerf and the item keeps its buff.
Team Voice ships where Riot can moderate it
Modern LeagueRiot's Dev Update on 8 September covered Team Voice. The product director followed it with the part players keep asking about: why the rollout is regional.
Some background on our rollout plan for team voice: we worked with players around the world to gather feedback on what they expected from our team voice chat feature set. We heard clearly that voice moderation is a baseline expectation. As a result, we are shipping in regions when we are able to provide voice moderation in the most-spoken language(s). We do not expect moderation to catch everything. It is the baseline starting point shippable experience and a space we'll look to expand on in the future as detections and technical capabilities improve.
Drew LevinDirector of Product and Strategyon X
What it means: your region gets Team Voice when Riot can moderate the languages most people there speak, not when the feature is finished. A server with a lot of language mixing waits longer. Riot is also saying up front that the moderation will miss things.
The obvious objection is that voice chat has a mute button. Levin does not accept it.
generally people join voice chat hoping that their teammates will use it constructively, and we don't believe that "mute your midlaner" is a good enough solution to poor behavior given the real value of having a midlaner who calls things out instead of flaming teammates
Drew LevinDirector of Product and Strategyon X
A second problem is already open inside Riot: players below Honor 3 lose their comms, and their teammates lose them too.
great point and it's a real internal discussion right now about what is the best way of matchmaking people with comms restrictions, since you're right, it does partially harm the experiences of their teammates who didn't ask for this shit
Drew LevinDirector of Product and Strategyon X
Riot offered to deny losers queue on live TV
Modern LeagueLosers queue ran for most of the fortnight. Asked to swear that nothing in matchmaking deliberately hands you harder games, Levin qualified it once and then went all in.
outside of skill evaluation and resulting updates to your MMR, which gets used to put you in higher skill (but MMR-balanced) lobbies? I would swear that such a mechanic does not exist on live TV.
Drew LevinDirector of Product and Strategyon X
What it means: the carve-out at the front is the whole answer. Winning raises your MMR, a higher MMR puts you in stronger lobbies, and stronger lobbies are harder to win. That is the mechanism people feel, and there is no second switch on top of it.
He also wrote the belief out in its own voice. It was the most-shared thing he posted all fortnight.
Blaming yourself for losing a game of Ranked is the most narcissistic thing you can do "I should've pathed safer" "I should've backed on better timers" "I could've waited to start that fight" You're NOT the main character Grow up, be mature, and start blaming losers queue.
Drew LevinDirector of Product and Strategyon X
Under the sarcasm sits a real concession, naming something Riot took out.
I am a team lead that signed off on pulling loser Aegis and having the team make tradeoffs between making queue times longer and lobby skill ranges narrower in season 3. All of that came from talking with players on pain points and what could be improved.
Drew LevinDirector of Product and Strategyon X
What it means: Season 3 traded queue time for tighter lobbies. You wait longer and the ten people you get sit closer together in skill. That is the opposite of the trade losers queue assumes.
Everything else Riot cleared up
Rageblade is getting power back
Modern LeagueA 26.14 rescript moved Guinsoo's Phantom hit trigger "from 6 to 7", which quietly cost the champions built around it. 26.18 gives some back to the item and to the worst affected, Master Yi named first.
on X
Ekko, Viego and Zaahen all get buffs
Modern LeagueEkko gets waveclear and mana aimed at mid. Bruiser Viego gets explicit support after Divine Sunderer left. Zaahen gets power back plus a fix for his Q "coming out of revive more consistent".
on XAn unban that turned into a different ban
Modern LeagueA player asked Levin to review a ban and got both halves at once: "good news I reviewed and reversed this", followed by a fresh ban for a game Riot's systems had missed. Public appeals cut both ways.
on XCheap RP is how accounts get banned
Modern LeagueSellers below store price are mostly "laundering stolen credit card transactions", Levin said. When the real cardholder reverses the payment, Riot pulls the RP and the account that received it. You lose both.
on XEnemy scouting is a ranked 5s feature only
Modern LeagueDatamined champion pools and mastery in champion select are not coming to solo queue. Levin: "this is a ranked 5s only feature, and what will be displayed is not final."
on XLeague Classic players get a vote
League ClassicRiot opened The Council, a way for players to vote on what comes next in League Classic. It shipped alongside the mode's continuing rollout in 26.17.
on Riot's siteNext week
Thursday is when Cassiopeia, Seraphine and Zeri stop being a preview and Ekko, Viego, Zaahen and Rageblade start paying. Riot is also hiring designers from outside the industry until 14 September. After that, Team Voice is the one to watch, because the rollout is gated on moderation rather than on the feature, so the next real news is which region clears the bar. Until Thursday, our PBE Changes page already has 26.18's values.
Don't wait a week
The Red Tracker carries every one of these within minutes of Riot posting it, plus everything that didn't make the cut here. Filter by subject, search the archive, check it whenever a patch drops.
Open the Red Tracker
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