As a champ in both Top and Support, Tahm Kench requires periodic maintenance as the meta shifts to ensure both roles of his roles are equally supported. In this case, Dusk and Dawn's addition to the game this season has shifted this balance in favor of top lane, so we’re adjusting how his passive scales to help balance him out.

Tahm Kench is overperforming in both top lane and support. We like that he's tanky and can sustain himself back up if his opponents can't drag him down but he's overall too deadly, so we're delivering a straightforward damage nerf to his bread and butter ability.

Kench's top lane hybrid HP+AP build is starting to catch on and it's really REALLY strong. While he's meant to be tempted to build greedy AP items, it should only be good when he's quite ahead and not looking to support his teammates, so we are nerfing it down to a more reasonable power level.

Tahm Kench gained plenty of power from our buff last patch and while we're going to let him keep a lot of it, we've chosen to walk back on some of it. Since he's performing reasonably as a support, we'll be particularly targeting his gold scaling by nerfing his passive bonus health ratio. We intend for this change to put Tahm Kench in a more reasonable spot while still keeping the power increase from patch 13.21.

The frog is clogged, thus we need to uninhibit the ribbit, unload the toad, and unbench the kench (did I miss any?). We want to avoid tuning Tahm in a way that will allow him to stat check his top lane matchups, so instead we’re opting to increase how well his passive scales once he gets some gold in his pockets. Additionally, we’re buffing up his W so that it feels more rewarding when successfully used to commit to engaging onto his opponents.

AP Tahm Kench croaked a little when the Preseason changes made it to him, resulting in the Kench being downgraded to the bench. We’re giving him some buffs that should help his tank builds while also doing some followup buffs to his AP builds from a few patches ago.

AP Tahm Kench has never really been a thing... until now. Maybe.

UNBENCHED. UNLOADED. UNCLOGGED. The Durability Update wasn't particularly nice to Tahm in any of his roles, so we're granting this fish's wishes by giving him some compensatory buffs to his heals and shields which should help him stick around longer in extended fights.

We did a mini-rework of Tahm Kench back in 11.13 because his old kit held huge advantages in highly coordinated team play. Our goal back then was to lower his priority in Pro pick/ban while putting him in a place where he could have a fun playstyle, as well as reasonable winrates in both of his roles. (Historically, his top lane winrate has been higher than that of his support.) The rework is looking pretty good so far in terms of Pro play as he doesn't have nearly as much priority there as he used to. When it comes to his winrates, the rework didn't dramatically affect the difference between his support versus top capabilities, but it did highlight the gap. This left support Tahm Kench players feeling like the catfish was no longer viable in their role. Now that we've had some time to observe all of these effects together, we're willing to take a riskier swing to buff support Kench while nerfing his top lane capabilities to keep him in check up there.

Tahm Kench’s early game power has been especially strong in top lane, where he’s able to issue beatdowns and heal through brawls. We’re dialing both back to give his enemies more time to lick their wounds.

One of our goals with Tahm Kench’s mini-rework in 11.13 was to get him off the "he can't be buffed because of Pro play" bench, and to help him find more success as a support. As of right now, we suspect he’s weaker than where he should be, so we’re cautiously buffing him until we have conclusive results from Pro play. Another goal was to push the Kench more towards support, whereas before he was mostly seen in the jungle or top lane in solo queue. He’s not seeing as much support play as we expected, so we’re adjusting his scaling to be less gold and experience dependent.

The Kench is shinier and slimier than ever with a pretty big update this patch! Historically, our favorite catfish has been limited by his power because his kit is so strong in professional play, forcing him to remain weak for the vast majority of players. To resolve this, we’re making a few major adjustments, so buckle up. First, we’re moving power from Devour—which is heavily used in coordinated play to completely negate allies’ weaknesses and enemies’ actions—into other abilities that reward him for proactive play. Previously, Tahm’s main contributions revolved around standing by to unconditionally save an ally with Devour. With this rework, he will need to take greater risks with his new Abyssal Dive and capitalize on licks and cool tricks (tongue healing, anyone?). Second, we’re making Devour easier to use with allies. They will now see a clear indicator when Devour is available so they know when to run to him for safety. Third, we’re adjusting Abyssal Voyage from being entirely about coordinating with an ally for a cross-map play (a strength heavily restricted to Pro play environments) into being an ability that works on its own. Last but not least, he’s getting new VFX so that the Kench can get a lick leg up on his competition, in style.