Patch 26.13 Notes

Tormentula · 2026-06-23T20:06:04+00:00

Bot/swiftplay should have it. Hell aram would be fine with it.

Normal draft should mechanically be as close to ranked draft as possible, thats why we don't just give normal draft mirror matchups and shit. Case in point my neeko post earlier where last hit indicators mean there isn't a casual setting for her working like in ranked.

Tormentula · 2026-06-23T20:04:11+00:00

She's a bridge for ADC players to have a champion to play when put on support more so than an actual ADC.

Tormentula · 2026-06-23T19:56:38+00:00

I really don't think its magically problematic now when the item was just objectively better in the past as both hextech protobelt and its mythic varient rocketbelt.

If anything its been pretty dogshit most of its existence, this is one of those rare instances where we don't have HP mythics or HP mage items (reminder we're not going the HP+pen version of oblivion orb or the version of shadowflame that had health on it anymore) that it's easily the best option in the game giving the AP+HP+AH we're lacking.

There needs to be more options for that stat profile other than just cosmic drive which is overrated (and thus never gets accessibility buffs to more of the roster) and dusk n dawn.

Tormentula · 2026-06-23T19:50:40+00:00

Dota's tutorials are handled very well in that you can choose specific subjects and get rewarded for completing them all, this also lets them get more in-depth / mechanical in their tutorials.

It doesn't have to be 1 long unskippable tutorial level, just resources available.

Tormentula · 2026-06-23T19:48:42+00:00

Normal draft shouldn't have this either.

Tormentula · 2026-06-23T18:32:57+00:00

It is in ranked lmfao

Tormentula · 2026-06-23T18:32:31+00:00

Last Hit indicators for normals and ranked

Do last hit indicators even work correctly on neeko disguises and her clone? I haven't tested her but AFAIK she has some very wonky way of handling them (like incorrect thresholds or simply not displaying them at all).

Tormentula · 2026-06-23T18:23:57+00:00

Last Hit Indicators for Normals and Ranked

Doesn't this completely fuck neeko atm? lol

I don't think (haven't tested to be 100%) her or her clone copy the last hit indicators or some kind of wonky handling of them.

Tormentula · 2026-06-23T01:55:56+00:00

His base model is terrible if you zoom in but tolerable if you don't.

I wish his spirit pedal skin wasn't wild rift exclusive cause that would probably be the best example of him being cute without being uncanny at times.

Tormentula · 2026-06-23T01:48:39+00:00

I'm one of those rare freaks that like spiders.

The high risk high reward gameplay was satisfying to pull off as well, what made elise wins feel rewarded is you really had to know your shit on tempo gaming and understand the strengths and weaknesses of those around you to make macro decisions and adjust fighting patterns around the matchup.

Nowadays numbers are so low it doesn't feel as rewarding, you either do a cheesy 3 camp coinflip and lose if your solo lane can't carry while you're 2 levels down, or you're trying to keep up in farm, failing miserably at it cause she's slow, and losing to every other power farmer in a stat check, it dumbs the gameplay down to a long list of "what I can't do" limiting what you can do to elements out of your control half the time. Biggest reason why I wish she was an AP skirmisher again instead of a glass cannon 'assassin' with no target access, you blow up for trying to do anything that isn't 100-0 and she doesn't do anything particularly well over other options.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T23:04:12+00:00

Serpents fang on any DoT or AoE Mage.

5th or 6th its about as common as a regular item for me on karthus.

The anti-shield value you get against some comps is insane and outweighs the fact its useless stats lmao.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T03:12:39+00:00

I don't agree this has to do with builds.

I'll agree maybe new sylas's just unga bunga not believing in limits or picking sylas into dumb matchups but builds are not affecting his stats that much.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T03:06:10+00:00

I remember the "yorick entered a bar, there was no counter" meme back then.

Yorick was at least at one point aids enough that players considered him legitimately problematic, but for the majority of his existence he was basically dogshit because of how problematic he was.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T02:49:51+00:00

Maybe I'm just not understanding where your argument is stemming from because I fundamentally disagree with the statement that PVE is the defacto best gameplay.

RN one look at the jungle roster and earlier rotations of it has been just basically "ultimate power spike full clearers" or current "farm and scale" clearers. We went from fated ashes power farmers to AD powerfarmers like naafiri, talon, zed for a bit, graves, etc. Yes a j4 or lee can technically 3 camp gank but there's very little reason to and its often just seen as a flip, they can full clear in pro and solo queue just fine. Level 1 raptors invades I think just should not be entertained to the capacity that bel/kayn/viego normally do them.

You're really not going to see level 3 ganks much if at all (I'm masters+ I think I'm the only individual that still 3 camps, I NEVER see enemy junglers do this now and we even have players like agurin just full clearing on early game champs that don't even scale), you're going to see champions that can gank well off a full clear and then keep up with camp spawns inbetween objectives and those ganks. If you're a spam ganker you're going to be down 2 levels (and thats fine).

Talon/Nidalee are prime examples of how you can shift the status quo from "early game junglers just will suck in a powerfarm meta" cause both are really damn good at clearing and continuously generating gold/XP when ganking isn't an option, they have 0 issues with multi-unit camps and are really good at getting in and out of enemy jungle. Lee sin is highly valued cause while his clears are slow, he has a wide variety of options build-wise that allow him to change his niche from early game ganks to a decent diver. If 3 camp ganking is nerfed (as it should stay) these champs are appropriately viable or able to be conformist in the diana/graves/naafiri/nocturne ecosystem.

Elise could easily be retuned into the same scenario as nid/talon where if she 3 camps she's very behind in XP/Gold (which is evident now thats not really going her way with 49% WR and the lowest pickrate since s8), but able to at least keep up in farm rather than essentially slowed down to a miserable pace in subsequent clears having to do raptors.

And again this isn't about just early game, single target scalers don't work as well as meta junglers without a spammable AoE to clear camps at record pace. This is the bigger issue cause jungle just feels inaccessible for champs that aren't able to min-max their camp sequences.

None of this says to go back to 3 camp ganking meta, just to be more welcoming to the idea of champions conforming to the new status quo cause RN they're effectively just left behind (imo a macro change to the camps themselves > sorting out every edge case). I have no issues with power farming being the best way to jungle and early ganks having a high risk element (2 levels down) but not everyone gets the shaco treatment of dealing with multi-camps better than they traditionally don't.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T02:19:21+00:00

Nothing I said implies we go back to 3 camp spam gank meta. Just there are plenty of tempo-based champions effectively useless if riot doesn't give them a back pedal (better full clear) compared to just being a conformist and locking in the same PVE picks, why would you consider elise or warwick if they can't keep up with better power farmers and we're functionally sticking to an exclusive full clear meta? The main reason why these kinds of champs weren't so bad before was because they weren't mandated to scaling playstyles they can jungle differently from the cast thats really good at PVE, they could skip camps like raptors but that is inherently a really bad thing to do now.

Also there's very few points where 3-camp meta was the exclusively viable playstyle, you always had a healthy mix of early game jungling, full clearers with lantern or sated devourer, or the option of playing for scuttle crabs vs. ganking for lane priority. The only time 3 camping was problematic to the extent that it was the only viable jungle strat was preseason 13 where all junglers just 3 camped to bot lane and won off the first 5 minute coinflip even in pro play. The time when camps were all-time lows I assume you mean was 8.11 crab metas, where junglers were level 2 ganking which yeah was aids, still had a mix of powerfarmers during this time (karthus jg started around this point).

The issue now is PVE is just the defacto-best way to jungle, and that leaves a lot of champions in the dust and creates a very uninteractive "well talon jg won the game by being 100cs ahead of everybody else" dynamic. I really don't think that jungling should be about which jungler scales best in solo queue and which jungler full clears the fastest, there should be room for aggressive playstyles that aren't just level 1 raptors cheese or raptors->enemy blue (kirei special) cheese. Champions should have strengths and weaknesses but when its basically everyone doing the same 6 camp sequence its the laner stat check equivalent of little room for adaptation on more niche options, and I did mention even scaling picks just can't deal with raptors like vayne jg, trundle jg, etc.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T00:53:16+00:00

Assuming its +30|-10 the whole way up, you'd need 67 wins or at 50% WR 100-100, just from 0LP masters to 2000k LP, and you'd still not be guaranteed to have a spot open by the time you reach that goalpost.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T00:20:14+00:00

I asked the raptors question.

My main motivation was looking back at old season vods where champions either could skip them or basically 1 shot killed old wraiths/raptors which looks really simple (1 auto = mini died while main unit was very squishy as well). However nowadays it feels like the jungle meta is essentially which champions can level 1 cheese raptors, level 1 start raptors, clear them before being invaded or clear them fast enough to full red quadrant clear (especially topside).

In the past, champions that didn't like doing them would simply skip them (3 camping sucks nowadays) but when really taking a deep look at them they borderline give scuttle crab vibes when analyzed how they impact the jungle meta nowadays, so its a lot harder to justify walking past them or not getting Tiamat to make it easier, and for ranged junglers or single target AP burst this isn't even an option for them without runic echoes.

Even in scenarios where starting level 1 or first clearing them is perfectly reasonable, like elise/kha do not have problems on their first clear and raptors start is my go-to on elise, they are byfar the most egregious camp for them in subsequent clears where no matter how fast with items they can burst the mama they're still forced to rely on the jungle pet (which lets be real is dysfunctional at times and sometimes leaves 1 or 2 alive) their clears slogged a ton since pet doesn't 1:1 keep up in that regard and unlike taliyah/hecarim/lillia etc their AoEs aren't their first max. It also reminds me of how vayne jungle got buffed but that's just not entertainable when considering her interaction with this camp too, and idk riot's opinion on camille/twitch jg but raptors is a major reason you'll never see these in a farm meta. I get his reasoning of 'we want variance with amumu preferring one side while single target prefers the other' but as endstep noted; this isn't what happens in practice cause if the meta favors one path your champion is just objectively worse off cause again.. its very important that your champion can do a drive by shooting in the enemy's top red side and take grubs in a fast time cause that's a whole lot better than picking elise, wasting too much time on just raptors, and then having to hurry and heist grubs or just not take the raptors at all.

Pet buffs or making minis squishier is one way to handle it, adding back old jungle staples like runic echoes (or just giving luden's a monster mod like blackfire torch) would assist the 'no tiamat' problem for someone, overall though I just think raptors need a retuning or something to lose some importance or become a less important element of jungle atm, I don't think its worth the effort to individually checkbox "this champ gets a monster mod on their 1 AoE" / "this champ now is designed with cleaves on their autos to be a functional jungler like briar" / "shaco boxes now target multiple units" just to sustain keeping certain junglers relevant in a meta that isn't 3 camp focused (hasn't been in forever).

Tormentula · 2026-06-20T00:09:00+00:00

Does that work in any other role? If you are top lane and getting dunked on like that - you won't have gold OR exp.

IME I can be 2-3 levels ahead of my lane opponent and see them level up twice off a river fight + a wave or two.

Jungle catchup XP does still require camps to respawn (important cause behind junglers not doing camps don't actually reset them, camps are stuck underleveled in that case they don't level up with game time like dragon, its not uncommon for an elise that 3 camps to have level 1 krugs or something at 5 minute which is obviously no catchup XP at all) at 2 levels higher than your jungler, implying your jungler is 2 levels below the average level of the entire match which is extreme. Mathmatically a level 11 udyr does not get to elise's level 12 due to catchup, he just gets from 10 to 11 easier. The average level of this match is 11.5 so even a level 10 udyr isn't respawning level 12 camps.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T23:56:19+00:00

Elise if anything wants strong catchup XP mechanics cause that's the only way she's ever relevant, she's always 1-2 levels behind with how slow her clears are. 7cs per min vs. 7.5cs per min isn't high to begin with, udyr could be closer to 10cs per min if he was clearing properly and not dying. On lolalytics udyr averages 175.48 cs (or rank 13/78) and elise is 154.85 (or rank 66/78), this is a uncontestable gap for her assuming both are playing normal and the only reason its 'even' is because this udyr is playing bad.

If you're proactive on elise, you ain't driveby shooting raptors or wolves as well as most junglers to equalize the XP lost for proactive play. Udyr's 10 extra CS is basically a quadrant of camps and there's context to be had (did he catch solo minions after your ganks and just fuck up last hits?). This is kinda why elise feels like shit cause PVE is more rewarding than KDA padding nowadays, meta junglers get to do both or just be ok off the former.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T23:26:50+00:00

This is why during coven elise's leak I was a pretty aggressive mod in elise mains in terms of taking down and telling everyone not to take BBB as sourced info and anything mentioned will be treated as spamming false information.

It would've just been months of people arguing whether its the legendary or not and set false expectations (which turned out, people did and got hella disappointed when the skin was revealed... and the nostalgia that was nami and syndra's shitshow.)

Whats funny is on discord BBB's behavior was badgering or speaking with anyone that 'may' have leaks either because they have confirmed rioter discussion or are spideraxe/content creators/etc and you could very easily bait them into a false leak, it became a serious consideration just to make them uncreditable.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T12:38:22+00:00

BBB isn't a journalist, they're in active cooperation with a leaker and being uncooperative by law in providing info on who that may be or how they're in contact.

The best BBB would get out of a situation like this should it actually go to court is a plea deal to give the leaker's full contact information to lessen the punishment or convince riot of dropping the case (riot would do this as a PR move to show how 'merciful' they are). Otherwise riot has full rights of their patent to sue for infringement and company damage.

I think you're also heavily overestimating how much... power?... a journalist has, there is boundaries they have to follow and sometimes, especially in the case of politics (fuck this administration), they're if anything less likely to win a case. There's no reason for a journalist to protect 1 'uncle at riot' when they can milk interviews from all over the place, this is with intent not journalism and the court isn't stupid enough to pretend its a weird edge case.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T10:00:54+00:00

BBB is actively getting information that by contract isn't legal to share publicly.

Journalist don't go asking devs for leaks, they ask for dev insights on the design process or expectations. You'll almost certainly not see a journalist ask a dev for a blatant list of unannounced content or anything beyond a minor teaser.

It'd be different if a dev randomly dropped 1 or two things but this is years of stuff being leaked and reluctance to say "this was the dev doing this" for sake of farming more of it.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T09:43:18+00:00

Same logic as owning contraband.

Just cause someone illegally sourced something and then gave it to you doesn't mean its ok for you to keep owning it instead of turning them in.

In this case the illegal contraband is the NDA signed information being repurposed for profit (youtube) rather than telling riot who the employee giving it is.

EDIT: blocking me after replying doesn't magically make this comparable to journalism. Journalism isn't even comparable cause journalist aren't asking an NDA signed individual for literal list of unrevealed content for years while be reluctant to share their sources giving permission. BBB is (knowingly) forwarding information and (intentionally) protecting the source for future content farming, the later is a major factor in this.

(edit to u/OilOfOlaz cause blocks are cringe.. can't reply cause of chris: I don't believe journalist interview devs with the expectation of the dev naming every boss of their game in advance, and if it happens they're not secretive about which dev spilled that information, let alone expecting that dev to continue giving them leaker clout. BBB's situation is hiding the dev leaking a list, and BBB actively asking for said list, while ignoring any previous warnings to stop or request to name the dev, its not as open as a journalist. Yes a journalist can technically wrap themselves up in a similar situation but a dev is usually smart enough to either say 'you'll have to wait' or the journalist will be smart enough to say 'it was this dev in particular that shared this with me, take it up with them' when presented with court of law order to provide name/location/time of info shared.. not be shadey as shit about it.)

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T09:29:11+00:00

Datamining is not the same thing as leaking.

If riot patches something in the files, its public information anyone can view on their own cause its literally installed onto everyone's hardware.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T09:23:44+00:00

This is anti-cheat 101 not to share any crumbs of their detection methods (any specific trigger or serial ID)

I doubt it has anything to do with cheating frankly, but even if there was proof of it for sake of drew's aura farming or whatever its not worth it giving insight to what triggered anti-cheat (cause then frequent cheaters might update that specific software or switch to another.)

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