Deathfire Touch and Stormraider's Surge Return

It's time to hunt demons with Patch 26.9!

In this patch we've got updates to champions, items, systems, and runes galore. Including bringing back some old s like Deathfire Touch and Stormraider's Surge, and giving you a lot of new options to experiment with like new starting items and a variety of alternate champion builds. For role quests, we've got some balance changes, tweaks to make progressing them more straightforward, and a small mid lane quest reward rework to better fit a scaling fantasy. Finally, we've given Shyvana some love to give more differentiation to AD and AP builds and paths to be a durable Dragon.

Over in the Arena, we have a new update with events, new Augments, a new map, and more! We also have some adjustments and bugfixes for ARAM: Mayhem, WASD is coming to Ranked, and we have some demon-themed skins to kick off Season 2: Pandemonium!

Looking for more information on all things League of Legends? Check out our community-run wiki here!

Wrong patch notes? You can find the TFT patch notes here!

Axiom Arc

Last year, we adjusted Axiom Arc to have a higher base refund on its ultimate effect with less scaling. We think this was a mistake, as offering an item early in the game that reduces ultimate cooldowns to this degree on high burst lethality champions can lead to very narrow windows of opportunity for opponents to act.

• Flux: On takedown, refund 15% (+.15% per lethality) of your ultimate's total cooldown ⇒ 10% (+.25% per lethality)

[NEW] Stormraider's Surge

Since Stormraider's Surge asks the user to commit to dealing a lot of damage and generally ends up having its input scale well over game time, it is able to support much of the same pattern as Phase Rush in a healthier and more exciting way for the intended users.

• [NEW] Sorcery Tree Keystone: Dealing 25% of a champion's maximum health within 3s grants a movespeed and slow resistance for 3s. 20-10s cooldown, scales based on level.
• [NEW] Speed: 40%; 75% for ranged champs
• [NEW] Slow Resist: 50%

Arcane Comet

Previously, Comet was given a cooldown refund mechanic for damage over time and sustained damage casters. Now that Deathfire Touch exists, Comet no longer needs it, and can now better serve its original intended audience of control mages and artillery mages with a damage-per-distance mechanic that should be exciting for those subclasses to play with.

• [REMOVED] Cooldown Refund: Removed
• [NEW] Damage: Now deals up to 100% increased damage based on distance from the target, max damage bonus at 750 range away
• Damage: 30 - 130 (based on level) + 10% bonus AD + 5% AP ⇒ 15 - 100 (based on level) + 10% bonus AD + 5% AP

Hail Of Blades

Hail of Blades has become an extremely niche keystone that gives an eye popping amount of attack speed and basically nothing else. In other words, these blades are too sharp! We're shifting some of the attack speed power budget into a new bonus damage effect so we can tune it more comfortably for a broader variety of champions.

• Attack Speed: [160% Melee || 80% Ranged] for 3 attacks, increased by +1 attack if you cast an ability that resets your auto attack ⇒ [120% Melee || 60% Ranged] for 3 attacks, increased by +1 attack if you cast an ability that resets your auto attack up to +2 attacks
• New: Attacks empowered by Hail of Blades deal 4 - 20 (+8% bonus AD) (+6% AP) bonus true damage
• Bugfixes: Fixed various Attack Reset abilities not properly granting bonus attacks (Bel'Veth Q, Kai'Sa R, K'Sante Q3, Gwen E, Quinn E, Rell Remount W, Riven Q)

SR Ranked Season 2 will start at 12:00:00 noon, April 29, local server time.

For Apex (Master, Grandmaster, Challenger) players in NA, EUW, EUN, LAN, BR, TR, their rank status will be reset to Master, 0 LP. For all other players, nothing will change. If you want to read more about why we're resetting Apex in some regions, check out the dev blog to learn more.

For all regions and all players, Victorious Ranked Mission (15 ranked game won) will be reset with Season 2 start.

End of Season 1 Ranked rewards will be distributed shortly after 26.09 is live, shard transfer service will be temporarily disabled until rewards are fully granted.

Welcome to *drum roll* *drum roll* *drum roll* THE ARENA!!!!

Arena is receiving the major update we promised last year and we're excited to share it with all of you. Our goal with this release was to really deliver on the build crafting, adaptation, experimentation, and team focused, tactical combat that is the heart of Arena. We've amplified all of these aspects and are excited to see how you LEVEL UP your Arena game and leave the crowd speechless. We've listened to the community feedback about different ways to play, from the exciting Bravery Queue and the brand new 3x6 Arena, and the desire to push your augments to their limits! We can't wait to welcome you, and one or two friends, back into *drum roll* THE ARENA!!!!

For more details on these changes check out our full dev blog here.

Events

• Release (Patch 26.9): To start things off we won't be having an event to give players a chance to learn all of the new guests of honor, augments, and systems we're adding in Season 2.
• 3x6 (Patch 26.10): Exactly what it sounds like, three players on each team with a total of six teams. In a game with 170+ champions built with Summoner's Rift in mind, there are quite a few that have fallen by the wayside when forced into 2v2 gladiatorial combat. Our goal with introducing 3x6 is to bring even more champion diversity into the Arena by allowing for a wider variety of team comps.
• Bravery (Patch 26.13): When you load in to champ select you'll notice a significantly smaller number of options. You'll have the good ‘ol random champion button which we hope you'll pick, but if true random isn't your cup of tea we've still got a few crowd s for you to pick from. Bravery is primarily to give many players a version of Arena they've been asking for, but we also wanted to find a way to support players that want to overcome any obstacles the Arena throws at them with their adaptability and ability to flex into many different champions.
• Swift Arena (Patch 26.14): With this event we'll be going back to our roots of two teams of four for those looking to get the full Arena experience without the full Arena time commitment. Additionally, for those of you able to remember your opponents playstyles and weaknesses this should give you the edge as you'll be fighting the same teams more consistently.

Augment Systems

Augment Levels

• Augments now have anywhere from 1-3 levels, depending on the augment. Some Augments have a Keystone effect when they reach their max level, granting an additional effect. For example, Quantum Computing will give your augments a chance to multicast up to 4 times!
• Once you have two levelable augments you'll be offered an augment level in place of one of your offered augments.
• Upon reaching the maximum number of augments (typically 4) you'll only be offered augment levels or the ability to tier up an existing augment, allowing you to remove an augment and select another that is one tier higher.
• If all your augments are at the maximum level then you'll be offered the ability to tier up an existing augment or gain a stat anvil.
• At certain points you'll be given the ability to remove or replace one of your augments. Use this to discard augments that aren't working for you, and gain a bonus, while also freeing up that slot for you to gain a replacement augment later in the game.

Arena Debuting Augments with Levels

• Get Excited
• Adamant
• Upgrade Collector
• Upgrade Hubris
• Wind Beneath Blade
• Protein Shake
• Weil of Warding
• Ominous Pact
• Critical Rhythm
• Escape Plan
• Glass Cannon
• Final Form
• Quest: Void Immolation
• Pinball Snowball
• Infinite Recursion
• Donation
• Shrink Engine
• Growth Spurt
• Stuck In Here With Me
• Poro King
• Speed Demon
• Twin Fire
• Hextech Soul
• Crack Open That Egg
• ???
• Critical Missile
• Weighted Popoffs
• Little Devil
• Zealot
• Purist Caster
• Double Tap
• Juiced

New Augments

We could tell you what they do, but that'd take away the fun of discovering them.

• Chroma Flux (Prismatic)
• Demonic Clasp (Gold)
• Grievous Venom (Silver)
• Magical Girl (Prismatic)
• Mercy (Gold)
• Rice and Chicken (Gold)
• Rice and Fish (Gold)
• Rice and Pork (Gold)
• Scavenger (Gold)
• Silver Spoon (Silver)
• Spellcraft (Prismatic)
• Transmute: Silver (Prismatic)
• Trash To Treasure (Silver)
• Unstable Transmutation (Gold)
• Wild Fire (Prismatic)

Reworked and Adjusted Augments

• Doomsayer: Health per stack doubled, stack rate reduced by half.
• Tank it or Leave it: Now scales with crit damage.
• Critical Healing: Now scales with crit damage.
• Calculated Risk: Now gives a Prismatic if this is your first or second augment, otherwise it will give a Gold augment.
• Self Destruct: Changed to Auto cast every 25 seconds instead of just exploding once.
• Unshackled: On takedown reduce Hijack's lockout and cooldown by 20%.
• Snowball Fight: Removed
• Juice Press: Removed
• Slow and Steady: Now locks your Attack Speed at 0.65 and only grants AS if you would go above the cap.
• Spellwake: Explosion delay now scales inversely with distance, so long range hits will have a much lower delay, while point blank hits are increased slightly.

Game Pacing

• Augment Selection Duration: 37 seconds ⇒ 42 seconds
• Item Choice Round Duration: 42 seconds ⇒ 47 seconds

Buy Round Structure

Crafting Round

• A Crafting Round will occur on Round 8 and you'll be able to choose one of the following options:
• Gain an 5th augment slot, in 5 rounds gain a silver augment.
• Remove 1 of your augments to give 2 levels to your remaining augments, randomly selected. These levels can both go to the same augment or to different ones.
• Gain a Prismatic Stat Anvil.

New Fame Track

Fame Track Level

• The amount of Fame needed to unlock each tier has been decreased.

Guests of Honor

New Guests of Honor

• Atakhan: Absolute Carnage
• Annie: Wall of Fire
• Evelynn: Just a Fling
• Fiddlesticks: A Harmless Scarecrow
• Garen: Perseverance
• Hwei: Blank Canvas
• Kayle: Divine Ascent
• Kindred: Death and Rebirth
• Jarvan IV: Heavy is the Crown
• Lux: Light of Demacia
• Morgana: Tormented Shadow
• Nocturne: Darkness
• Poppy: Rightful Wielder
• Shaco: Absolute Chaos
• Tahm Kench: Dark Bargain
• Taric: Dauntless Vanguard

Reworked Guests of Honor

• Swain: Demonic Ascension: Now, when half the lobby is eliminated the remaining teams gain a prismatic stat anvil.
• Katarina: Dance of Voracity: Augment tier ups are offered alongside new augments.

Voting Round Changes

• Guest Of Honor descriptions now allow you to press Shift to see the long description when hovering the Guest of Honor's icon.
• No longer waits for all players to vote, and instead waits for all players that have moved to vote, so if you wish to abstain just stand still.
• You can no longer move early by clicking on the Guest of Honor's icon before players are allowed to move.
• Players can now move their camera while players are voting.
• Moved the camera slightly closer.
• When the winner is selected all other players will turn to look at them.
• There is a chance for blastcones to spawn around the vote arena.
• There is a chance for hats to spawn around the vote arena, picking them up will grant you the hat.

Anvils

Stat Anvils

• Silver Stat Anvils: Now have a set value rather than rolling from a range of values.
• Care Package (Prismatic Stat Anvil): Gain 500 gold per round lost.

Legendary Item Anvils

• Cost: 2000 gold ⇒ 2250 gold

Items

Shardblade (New)

• Granted when you obtain Shardholder
• Enhances stat anvils by 20-80% (decreased to 20-50% in 3x6)
• You can no longer purchase items
• Does not work with Augments that grant items

Hexblot Companion

• 75% Attack Speed
• 500 Health
• 4% Movement Speed
• Covering Fire: Every 10 seconds, Autocast fires a bolt towards a nearby target that applies On-Hit Effects.
• Energized: Moving and Attacking generates an Energized Attack.
• Unload: Your Energized Attacks trigger your Autocast effects.

Reverberation

• No longer needs to stack to apply On-Hit effects when you immobilize a target.

Twin Mask

• Removed

Flesheater

• Cannibalize: When you takedown an enemy champion, steal 10% of their stats and size for the remainder of the round.

Kinkou Jutte

• Between the Ribs: Now creates 4 Weakpoints around enemies, refreshing when the last one is broken.

Turbo Chemtank

• Supercharged: Active has been removed. New passive ignores the first Immobilizing effect that hits you (30s Cooldown) and drops a canister nearby. Pick up the canister to restore max Health and reduce the Cooldown by 15 seconds.

Starter Items

• Removed

Maps

Petricite Grove (New)

• A new map from the outskirts of Demacia. Scattered throughout are some unexploded mining bombs used to help harvest the tough Petricite.
• Hitting these mining bombs causes them to roll before exploding, damaging enemies and plants.

Ancestral Woods (Adjusted)

• Now has 2 Power Flowers on the bottom left and top right of the map.
• The center now has the Bulwark Blossom, a durable bit of flora that grants its last hitter a massive shield, healing, and adaptive force before regrowing over 10 seconds, this bonus is increased if you are outnumbered.

Koipond (Adjusted)

• Koipond's lily pad trigger radius is reduced slightly (terrain creation unchanged).

General Changes

• Energized Stacking: 200% ⇒ 150%
• Combobreaker has been updated to match ARAM: Mayhem. You will now gain ramping Tenacity while you're immobilized and if you have been unable to act for 4 of the last 7 seconds become unstoppable for 7 seconds.
• Attack Speed is now capped at 4, but certain augments allow you to break past this cap.
• The reroll system has been updated to match ARAM: Mayhem. Rerolls are no longer a currency and each slot now has its own reroll that refreshes each time you open an anvil/augment.
• The extra reroll granted by selecting Bravery has been updated. Now every anvil/augment offering card will have the chance to have up to 1 bonus reroll.

Misc Changes

Hats

• Hats are no longer lost on death and are instead lost on round loss.

Items

Hubris

• Attack Damage: 60 ⇒ 55
• Ability Haste: 15 ⇒ 10

We have a few small adjustments for Mayhem focused on time-based abilities for Bard and Ornn, Health Relic improvements, and a few balance tweaks for some Augments.

Champions

Bard

• Caretaker's Shrine W Move Speed: 20 / 22.5 / 25 / 27.5 / 30% (+ 6% per 100 AP) ⇒ 25 / 27.5 / 30 / 32.5 / 35% (+ 7.5% per 100 AP)
• Caretaker's Shrine W Ammo Cooldown: 10 ⇒ 8

Ornn

• Living Forge P Cooldown: 120 seconds ⇒ 90 - 10 seconds (based on level)

Systems

Health Relic

• [UNCHANGED] 8% Missing Health / Mana on Pickup
• AOE Effect - Missing Health and Mana: 16% ⇒ 22%

Augments

Upgrade Sword of Blossoming Dawn

• [REMOVED] Basic attacks against champions now deal 50% damage

Prom Queen

• Cooldown: 25 seconds ⇒ 35 seconds

Grandma's Chili Oil

• Base Damage per second:100 ⇒ 150
• Bonus Damage per burn source: 60 ⇒ 50
• Base Heal per second: 60 - 150 (based on level) ⇒ 30 - 75 (based on level)
• Bonus heal per burn source: 50 ⇒ 25

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where Lightning Strikes granted 20% bonus attack speed instead of 20% total attack speed in Mayhem.
• Fixed a bug where Kaenic Rookern and Opportunity did not benefit from Item Haste.
• Fixed a bug where Azir's mana costs appeared doubled with Overflow but were not actually increased in Mayhem ARAM.
• Fixed a bug where Ekko stayed invisible after using Clown College followed by E in Mayhem ARAM.
• Fixed a bug champions with recasts were charged for their recast spell with the Augment Overflow.
• Fixed a bug where selecting Buff Buddies before Ocean Soul caused Red Brambleback to become ineffective in Mayhem ARAM.
• Fixed a bug where Taliyah T-posed after dying to Empowered by the Faithful's execution in Mayhem ARAM.
• Fixed a bug where some champions could not trigger the Marksmage effect with empowered attacks in Mayhem ARAM.
• Fixed a bug where Vel'Koz's Q mana cost was not doubled after selecting Overflow in Hextech Mayhem ARAM.
• Fixed a bug where Shaco's clone did not display a health bar or model at high Shrink Engine stacks in Mayhem ARAM.
• Fixed a bug where Empowered by the Faithful effect was lost if revived by Zilean's R in Mayhem ARAM.
• Fixed a bug where Droppybara's actual damage range exceeded its indicator range.
• Fixed a bug where Xayah and Aphelios could continuously trigger ReEnergize without cooldown in Mayhem ARAM.
• Fixed a bug where selecting Hextech Biggest Snowball Ever followed by Hextech Pinball caused Pinball to lose its true damage in Mayhem.
• Fixed a bug where Neeko displayed Draw Your Sword VFX while disguised as a non-champion.

Shortly after patch 26.9 is available, WASD will be enabled for Ranked, including Clash.

• Fixed a bug where some mouse macros (such as binding a keyboard key to the scroll wheel) were not properly supported when using WASD controls.

QoL Changes

• Serahpine's Q has been re-scripted. The visual should now more accurately reflect the hitbox of the spell.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that caused Seraphine's Q not to deal damage to units walking towards the center of the area of effect.
• Fixed a bug that caused Seraphine's R not to extend when killing champions with zombie passives (e.g. Karthus, Sion), or revives.
• Fixed a bug that caused Seraphine's abilities not to double cast when she had the exact correct mana to cast them.
• Fixed bugs that caused Malphite W, Twitch P, and Kog'Maw W to not work properly as typical on-hit effects.
• Fixed a bug that caused Viego's slayer (if Viego has possessed someone) to have 4 Scoundrel stacks, and killing the slayer with 5 or more stacks would only revive the last slain champion on Akshan's team, instead of the whole team.

The following skins will be released in this patch:

Pandemonium Annie & Kindred

Demoncursed Vayne

Prestige Pandemonium Shaco

The following chromas will be released this patch:

Demoncursed Vayne