Things are heating up in 14.2, say hi to Smolder everyone!

In this week's patch we’re looking to address some of the champions that the 14.1 changes hit hardest. Some champs, like Camille and Illaoi, need the help due to the terrain changes, while others, like Ezreal and Fizz, struggled or thrived with the new items at their disposal. In addition to champion balance changes, we’re also retuning a few of the items to get them into a better place. But that’s not all, we also have a whole list of quality of life changes!

Make sure you check out the sections below on Vanguard and our Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 deprecation coming in the next few patches.

Over in TFT, Lunar Festival has begun, bringing new cosmetics and TFT’s first ever set revival game mode (the return of Galaxies), so be sure to check out all the details at the TFT patch notes here!

Lilu "Riot Riru" Cabreros

Patch Highlights

Primal Ambush Sivir, Primal Ambush Riven, Primal Ambush Vi, Primal Ambush Talon, Three Honors Akshan, and Foreseen Yasuo will be available on January 24, 2024 at 20:00 UTC.

Our newest champion Smolder, the Fiery Fledgling, (and his Heavenscale skin) will be heating up the Rift on January 31, 2024 at 20:00 UTC!

Vanguard

In a few weeks we will be introducing Vanguard, Riot’s proprietary anti-cheat software that will be required for all League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics games. Starting patch 14.2, we will run a diagnostics check to see if your computer is ready for this update. If not, please review our troubleshooting guide or reach out to Player Support.

If you originally failed the check, it will re-run at a later point or you can manually re-run it by clicking on the settings icon on the top right and “Check for Compatibility” under General > Vanguard System Check.

This will not mean that Vanguard is active or being used for League yet, this is just to give players ample heads up and opportunity to be ready before it’s a requirement. For more information please check out our support article on Vanguard.

Windows Min Spec Update

Beginning Wednesday February 21st (patch 14.4), we are updating our minimum system requirements and will no longer be supporting Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 for all League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics games. To maintain the stability and performance of our game we sometimes need to deprecate support for legacy Operating Systems that aren’t widely used by our players. If you’re still playing on these versions of Windows, please consider updating to continue playing. Please see our min spec support page for more details.

MMR and Matchmaking

• Reducing the amount of games of demotion protection from tier boundaries (eg. Gold to Silver). This should only affect people who seed/promote into the bottom of a rank tier (eg. Gold 4) and then lose many games in a row. It will make no difference if you’ve been in the rank for a while.
• Fixed a bug where a small number of Diamond 1 players would sometimes receive negative LP gains (losing more LP on losses than gaining on wins). Unfortunately, while we cannot immediately resolve this issue for existing accounts, the problem will resolve itself with some games.
• Fixed a bug where players who would be seeded into Iron IV were seeded into Iron II with negative LP gains

Patch 14.1: How it Landed

We’ve been pretty happy with how 14.1 landed in terms of bug stability and overall balance after the 14.1 hotfix. Game time is stable, objective balance looks good, the tradeoffs associated with playing towards top and bot side seems to be reasonable, and snowballing is down. That said, we’re well aware that the amount of burst in the game is up. Some of these burst increases are due to Stormsurge and Bloodsong releasing strong (you’ll see nerfs to them in this patch and we’ll be watching how they land). We also increased AP values across the board, as having 200 AP at 3 items was pretty unsatisfying for players. We wanted to see how these AP increases landed to help identify which champion’s AP ratios or base damages need to be adjusted. We also wanted to reduce Ability Haste on items across the board and naturally, this means that more of an item’s power budget is in burst (either AP or AD).

We’re pursuing some burst reductions in 14.2 through stat shard changes, and targeted item/champion nerfs. Once we’ve done a comprehensive audit on which champions/classes are bursting which classes harder, and by how much, you can expect to see additional changes in 14.3 and beyond. Our goal right now is to get burst levels back to how they were in patch 13.24. We hope you’ve been enjoying all of the new changes and looking forward to seeing you on the Rift!

Stat Shard Changes

Stat Shards

We’re updating some stat shards this patch in order to create more strategically compelling choices that aren’t as punishing when improperly selected. When choosing between Armor and Magic Resist shards, it’s generally clear which is the better option (am I laning against Zed or Lissandra?), and that’s really all there is to it today. What’s more, unorthodox lane opponents, such as mages in Bot Lane, tend to throw players off, leading to non-optimal shard selections that contribute to strong statistical performances on these mages (despite not actually being as powerful as stats would suggest).

With that said, we’re replacing those less interesting decisions with more in-depth ones that are less likely to punish players for incorrect selections. Now you will be able to choose a non-damage and non-durability option in the Flex row and choose between early durability, late durability, and some targeted defenses via tenacity in the Defense row.

Row 2: Flex Shard Options

• Slot 1: 9 Adaptive Force (unchanged)
• new Slot 2: 6 Armor ⇒ 2% Move Speed
• new Slot 3: 8 Magic Resist ⇒ 10-180 (based on level) bonus health

Row 3: Defensive Shard Options

• new Slot 1: 15-140 (based on level) bonus health ⇒ 65 base health
• new Slot 2: 6 Armor ⇒ 10% Tenacity and Slow Resist
• new Slot 3: 8 Magic Resist ⇒ 10-180 (based on level) bonus health

Jungle Companion Compensation

Due to many junglers losing armor on their first clears, we’re increasing jungle heal per second slightly. Running flat health will provide plenty of early game safety and scaling health was already viable on a large number of them as well.

• Jungle Companion Heal per Second: 12-35 (based on level) ⇒ 14-37 (based on level)