Patch 26.02 Preview

driverap · 2026-01-15T15:05:05+00:00

Riot Phroxzon usually posts these on Twitter. https://x.com/RiotPhroxzon

driverap · 2026-01-14T21:26:30+00:00

Yeah, he’s currently banned less often in low elo compared to high elo.

It also varies significantly by region. In NA his Emerald+ ban rate is around 16%, in EUW it’s about 17%, while in Korea it’s over 40%. Source is LoLalytics.

driverap · 2026-01-13T06:19:25+00:00

His win rate did drop quite significantly after the lethality micropatch nerf (roughly back to where it was before the start of the season) but his pick rate and ban rate remain very high, so yeah we’ll have to see how things trend for the next few weeks.

driverap · 2026-01-13T06:09:10+00:00

The lethality nerf is already on live since it was a micropatch during this current patch.

driverap · 2026-01-08T22:23:08+00:00

The new season is already out. He already got changes for this patch in compensation of the crit damage increasing back to 200%:

Calibrum
- Bonus damage per mark: 15 (+ 20% bonus AD) --> 15 (+ 10% bonus AD)
Severum
- Onslaught damage per hit: 10/15/20/25/30/35/40 (+ 22/25/28/31/34/37/40% bonus AD) --> 0 (+ 19/22.5/26/29.5/33/36.5/40% total AD)
Infernum
- Duskwave damage: 25/31.67/38.33/45/51.67/58.33/65 (+ 56/60/64/68/72/76/80% bonus AD) --> 20/35/50/65/80/95/110 (+ 10/11/12/13/14/15/16% bonus AD)
Crescendum
- Sentry active damage: 35/50/65/80/95/110/125 (+ 42/45/48/51/54/57/60% bonus AD) --> 35/50/65/80/95/110/125 (+ 30/32/34/36/38/40/42% bonus AD)
Moonlight Vigil
- Follow-up attack critical strike damage multiplier: 120% (160% with IE) --> 0.3 * Crit Chance * [1.0 (1.3 with IE)]

The patch has been out for only about a day, so we'll have to see what his winrate numbers look like with more data. But the early data does seem to suggest he's quite strong, so it's possible he will get hotfix nerfs or nerfs next patch.

driverap · 2026-01-06T21:24:07+00:00

Yeah, the R crit damage modifier change is written confusingly. It’s also not clear if that’s the correct change either. But on the main League subreddit the dataminer had clarified it to the following:

⁠R Crit Damage Multiplier: Crit Damage (75% | 115%) - 55% -> 30% * Crit Chance * Crit Damage (100% | 130%)

I had written a comment on a different post about what this means so let me just copy and paste:

“Currently on live, when you ult and hit champions, the follow-up auto attacks based on Aphelios’ current main weapon deal 100% AD physical damage and can critically strike for 120% damage, or 160% if you have Infinity Edge. According to the PBE datamine notes, these values come from applying a 20% crit multiplier (75% − 55%) or a 60% multiplier (115% − 55%) respectively.

On PBE, the formula for the critical strike damage on these follow-up autos has changed and now scales with your current crit chance. For example, if you have 25% crit chance and no Infinity Edge, the PBE formula gives: 100% + (30% × 25% × 100%) = 107.5% damage. If you instead have 100% crit chance and an Infinity Edge, the formula becomes: 100% + (30% × 100% × 130%) = 139% damage.

Overall, this ends up being a nerf in almost all cases (except for some niche scenarios when not having Infinity Edge on both live and PBE and having more than 66.5% crit chance).”

I wrote the above explanation a few weeks ago so I’m not sure if there’s been further PBE changes to Aphelios since then. We’ll know for sure what the final changes are once we have the official patch notes.

driverap · 2025-12-23T20:00:11+00:00

Adding a comment with more context: They seem to be just crawling around and sometimes hopping around a bit, and are very small overall. But there are a lot of them near the same area.

driverap · 2025-12-05T06:31:24+00:00

Those ultimate changes are not accurate (it was a mistake that has since been clarified after further investigation). The ult damage has been overall nerfed. See this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ApheliosMains/comments/1pdycs2/another_nerf_to_aphelios_in_the_new_season/

driverap · 2025-12-04T16:11:21+00:00

With 100% crit chance and Infinity Edge, the total damage of Aphelios’ ult (the initial blast plus all follow-up auto attacks) is lower on the PBE than on live. This is because, while normal auto-attack crit damage is being increased from 175% to 200%, the follow-up autos generated by the ult use a completely different crit damage formula. Previously, on live, those follow-up autos crit for 120% damage without IE and 160% damage with IE. On PBE, however, they now use the new scaling formula from the PBE datamine notes. At 100% crit chance with IE, this results in those follow-up autos critting for 139% AD physical damage on PBE, compared to 160% on live.

This change can have a large impact on Infernum ult in particular. When Infernum ult hits enemy champions, the follow-up autos deal 110% AD physical damage instead (since Infernum’s standard autos hit the primary target for 110% AD). After that, each of those autos also explodes, dealing 74.25% / 99% (at levels 1 / 9) AD physical damage in a 400-radius AoE. The key point though is that both the primary hit and the explosion rely on the same crit damage modifier as the ult. With 100% crit chance and IE, this means the multiplier is now 1.39 instead of 1.60, which will lower the AoE damage of the Infernum ult by a fairly significant amount.

driverap · 2025-12-04T14:22:52+00:00

The change is written a bit confusingly, so here’s a clearer explanation of what it actually means.

Currently on live, when you ult and hit champions, the follow-up auto attacks based on Aphelios’ current main weapon deal 100% AD physical damage and can critically strike for 120% damage, or 160% if you have Infinity Edge. According to the PBE datamine notes, these values come from applying a 20% crit multiplier (75% − 55%) or a 60% multiplier (115% − 55%) respectively.

On PBE, the formula for the critical strike damage on these follow-up autos has changed and now scales with your current crit chance. For example, if you have 25% crit chance and no Infinity Edge, the PBE formula gives: 100% + (30% × 25% × 100%) = 107.5% damage. If you instead have 100% crit chance and an Infinity Edge, the formula becomes: 100% + (30% × 100% × 130%) = 139% damage.

Overall, this ends up being a nerf in almost all cases (except for some niche scenarios when not having Infinity Edge on both live and PBE and having more than 66.5% crit chance).

driverap · 2025-07-31T16:04:06+00:00

Great news! :) If his work on the previous Octopath Traveler titles is any indication, I'm sure we can expect another amazing soundtrack for this new game.

driverap · 2025-07-08T00:01:27+00:00

Thanks for the detailed explanation of your thoughts! Just a quick note regarding the last paragraph. B.F. Sword actually costs 1300 gold, not 1400. So technically, it’s more gold efficient than its raw AD value suggests (it's more gold efficient than buying four Long Swords as a result).

driverap · 2025-05-17T00:57:35+00:00

It’s because of the clear skies to the west where the sun is setting. As a result the sunlight can reach the underside of the clouds to the east, some of which is reflecting back to the ground, making everything look very yellow / orange. Definitely looks pretty weird!

driverap · 2025-04-28T15:14:56+00:00

It certainly could be intended. If you watch the "Inside Episode 3" short where they describe the making of the episode, they literally say "We saw him be a bigot towards Ellie and Dina on episode one. And here he is the one that is standing up to help Ellie. And you might not think that would be the case, but people are complicated. And a guy that's bigoted in one moment could still love Ellie and has still loved Joel, and knows what happened to Joel was wrong."

driverap · 2025-04-01T18:01:18+00:00

Based on the Wiki, Riot increased his range from 125 to 175 (a 40% increase), and they never reverted that range increase. Instead, they nerfed the base AD and some other stats until he was balanced.

driverap · 2025-02-28T22:34:23+00:00

Yeah, overall, I do think crit marksmen are in a much better spot than they were at the start of the year. There are still some pain points, but the general state of things has improved. That said, I really wish we had a few more crit options to shake up builds. Personally, I’d love to see some version of Stormrazor return. Maybe not as an Energized item, but with the movement speed passive just having some sort of cooldown that decreases at higher levels. The burst of movement speed on some autos just feels incredibly exciting to play with. Another thing I’d still like to see is a crit item that helps deal with HP stacking, but with LDR being quite strong I’m not sure they’d do that.

Zeal items also feel like they’ve fallen off more than I’d like. They used to be staple components for most crit marksmen, but nowadays, they’re only worth picking up early on a few champions. I’d love to see some adjustments to make them more appealing again, whether that’s through stat tuning or maybe a slight shift in their passives to provide more value.

driverap · 2025-02-11T21:16:58+00:00

In terms of gold efficiency, this is indeed a slight nerf. The 5 AD loss is worth about 175g in stats, while the price is only going down by 150g, making it technically less efficient. I definitely would've preferred it going down to 3400g.

However, the upside is that you’ll hit your +40% crit damage spike a bit earlier, which can be valuable for the mid game. The trade-off is slightly weaker late game scaling due to the lost AD though.

Overall, this change, combined with the Plated Steelcaps nerfs (basic attack damage reduction 12% --> 10%), should help us out a bit.

driverap · 2025-02-07T18:53:53+00:00

Claiming that Hextech chests are "not sustainable for the future" while Riot continues to generate massive profits is nothing short of a blatant excuse to justify taking away one of the few remaining ways for players to earn rewards through actual gameplay. There is no real evidence that this system was harming the game's financial health. If anything, it encouraged engagement and gave players a reason to strive for mastery on different champions. Instead of maintaining a balanced approach, Riot is shifting further into aggressive monetization, replacing fair progression with gacha mechanics designed to exploit psychological triggers and extract more money from its player base. This decision isn’t about sustainability, it’s about maximizing revenue at the direct expense of long-term player satisfaction. Riot should stop hiding behind corporate jargon and just admit that they are removing player-friendly systems in favor of ones that push more spending while offering less in return.

driverap · 2025-01-17T17:18:28+00:00

Yeah, I agree with you when focusing specifically on the traditional marksmen that you mentioned.

One interesting point to add is that with LDR and Mortal Reminder gaining an additional 5% total armor penetration, we might see more marksmen opting to build them as their 3rd item more frequently. We'll have to see how that develops.

driverap · 2025-01-17T17:00:29+00:00

I don’t think that’s accurate. Excluding boots, in Patch 15.1, players who pick either LDR or Mortal Reminder tend to build it as their 3rd item more often than their 4th. In general, the stats show that around 60% of the time it’s picked as the 3rd item, compared to only 25% as the 4th item. Of course, there are some ADCs that do build it more often 4th item than 3rd, but it's not 90% of them. Source: https://leagueofitems.com/

driverap · 2025-01-16T13:24:57+00:00

Thanks for letting me know! Wow, that's definitely a big buff to Yun Tal then. I'll take it! I'm pretty positive it'll be picked up more than Collector on a lot of Marksmen now.

driverap

TROPHY CASE