Patch 26.20 Preview

“Some champs like Ambessa, Cassio, K'Sante have been stale for a while” — Riot

“We've added an Ashe nerf into the patch as she is one of the dominant pairings on the patch, even with the Hurricane nerf (as a lot of her builds don't build it)” — Riot

“our Cassio nerfs recently undershot a bit for Pro Play

However, they've been pretty effective at moving her power budget around in regular play to higher AP builds

As mentioned above, some of the safer scaling hyper carries are a bit too strong, even with the slight Hurricane tapdown we're planning and given Lucian's large nerf in organized play” — Riot

“Diana mid is in a mostly fine spot, but Diana Jungle, which plays more like a bruiser and builds a lot more health needs a little more help

Overall, we're not looking to add a ton of power to Diana as she does get a bit statchecky when strong” — Riot

“Lillia's changes last patch were a good start, but we feel we can go a bit further on the Sleep changes

Overall, we want to do a better job of balancing Lillia between skill levels and Lillia typically struggles at the higher skill brackets, especially after we made her early clears a lot weaker

Average play Lillias often don't get the most out of her Sleep duration, whereas higher skill players are much better at coordinating around it” — Riot

“Lucian's best pairings (eg. Enchanters like Milio) have received a large nerf as a result of the 26.19 changes and so we're returning some power back to Lucian in generic power

In combination with the Support laning changes from last patch, Lucian's early kill threat has gone down significantly and so we think we can buff him up a bit” — Riot

“Neeko support (and Mid) have been a bit worse for wear

Neeko support has become a lot weaker, especially at the higher levels of play after we made adjustments to her Clone and its interaction with vision

We think Neeko could use a little more power as a result” — Riot

“Smolder has also been on the weaker side after we made a bunch of adjustments to Black Cleaver and Deathfire Touch several months ago

We're continuing to add more power to him, but into his Crit builds as his Bruiser builds have worse counterplay given his scaling profile

Vayne also received a nerf recently due to her strength in Top lane in both Pro Play and high level SoloQ

We're being very careful about adding more Ranged tops back into the meta as that has been something players have been complaining about, but think that a generic buff + a nerf to Hexplate will make her neutral there (or at least have to go for squishier builds) while buffing Vayne bot back up” — Riot

“With the nerfs to experimental Hexplate this patch (for her Top lane), we feel like we can give Vayne a little power in bot lane

She still has builds in Top that don't build Hexplate, but we're more OK with those as she isn't as durable while dishing out a lot of damage

Vayne also received a nerf recently due to her strength in Top lane in both Pro Play and high level SoloQ

We're being very careful about adding more Ranged tops back into the meta as that has been something players have been complaining about, but think that a generic buff + a nerf to Hexplate will make her neutral there (or at least have to go for squishier builds) while buffing Vayne bot back up” — Riot

“We're also adding a moderate nerf in for Yunara as her level 1 laning is a bit too strong given how well she scales

We expect after this and the Lucian buffs for the bot meta to be in a much better spot” — Riot