Going past Ionia (3) when it’s Path of the Blades is like putting an eraser on a pen—sure it’s cool, but what does it do? With a higher chance of additional attacks, hopefully we can put that eraser-clad pen to slightly better use.

You almost never wanna play Gunslinger (4) cause the buff from the trait isn’t worth fielding the unitemized lingering gunners.

Piltover is a trait that continually gets innovated upon. While that’s very thematic, we have some tinkering to do on individual Modules so you can invent freely, without one option feeling worse than the rest.

Jhin landed slightly weak after our 16.3 rework, so we’re bringing him up with one more 4 added to his tooltip.

Sona is the only forceable 1-cost reroll comp in the set. While the comp is fun, it’s far more reliable than we want a 1-cost reroll comp to be, so we’re hitting its most annoying source of power: its ability to stall through healing.

Bard reroll is still weak as a carry, especially at our higher levels of play where his one and two-star forms can’t keep up with other early game boards.

Tristana and Xin Zhao are almost never itemized nor fielded at three-stars. We’re attempting to change that by buffing them with a focus on their three-star scaling.

Darius has another bug that was severely impacting his playability, but even with that resolved, we think he could use a small quality of life buff to allow him to trigger his execution more often via an extended bleed duration.

Darius’s bro is also not doing well. He’s doing better than Darius, but not by much, leaving him in a middle-ground of forgetability—in fact, I can’t even recall his name. If only he had a punchline to help, like, “Welcome to the League of Darius,” no that can’t be it…

Jinx was bugged to attack slower than intended, with a damage per second loss of around 30%. So we’re fixing the bug and shipping a compensation damage nerf that is intende to be a neutral change for 1-2 stars and a three-star buff.

Many gamers see our Ambessa buff as yet another Noxus buff. We want Noxus to be in a place where any of its carries can carry. With a buff to Draven, Darius, and Ambessa, the decision should be who to itemize and in doing so, feel those buffs, instead of who to splash into your Noxus (5) or (7) comp to use your items. For our non-vertical minded players, the goal here is to allow Ambessa to be a primary item holder instead of taking your leftover Bel’Veth items in your Void/Slayer/Flex comp.

Lissandra is already finding success in Freljord + Disruptor comps, so why are we buffing her? Well, the comp’s being carried by the power of Freljord + Disrupter, which has a bug (see Bug Fixes) with their overlapping damage amp. With that bug fixed we expect to see the comp drop in power, a lot, and since we’re not seeing Lissandra perform well in other comps, she’s the best candidate for a compensation buff.

With Kai’Sa coming earlier, Void flex comps have been able to come online earlier and stay online longer. Instead of nerfing Kai’Sa here, who we see as a benchmark 4-cost at this point, we’re hitting their overperforming tank.

Yunara is still one of the most reliable 4-cost carry, so we’ve got an AS nerf that is actually meant to hit her AP scaling as well for her more dominant builds that get extra AP via items like Titan’s Resolve.

We’re pushing the Omnivamp fantasy for Aatrox as his unlock condition makes you build so much of it. This should be a big buff to one-star Aatrox, but we’re slapping on a small compensation nerf on two-star Aatrox so it doesn’t go too far.

While the dragon’s mid-patch adjustments in 16.3 put him in a better place, players are too quickly pivoting off of Aurelion Sol’s Targonian friends, and those higher breakpoints are a bit TOO rare. We’re letting him stack a bit faster at 1-star, but compensating by pushing his 2 biggest upgrades later (they should happen at similar times), and making his ultimate black hole upgrade a little easier.

We’re making Sylas more worth the chase with a buff to his Cataclysm and Demacian Justice damage.

Our T-Hex buffs are intended to open up innovative build/HexMech combos. Our buffs here are to help one and two-star units that haven’t typically been pilots get their T-Hex credentials. Will drain tank T-Hex rise? Maybe, but I wouldn’t dust off the Jurassic Park memes just yet.

When we gave Nashor’s Tooth 5 AP, it ended up being more like 7.5 AP due to the item being paired with spell-crit.

I for one, miss the days of solo frontline Warmog’s plus Gargoyle’s.

We’ve got three (well kinda three) new Augments with 16.4. First up is Gilded Steel, our new Championship Augment to celebrate the Tactician’s Crown winner for K.O. Coliseum. Congrats once again WithoutYou! Next up we’ve got a Prismatic version of Trials of Twilight. Surely this one will help you fill out your Lorefinder! Finally, we’ve got the return of a reworked World Runes, which now functions as an econ-engine that helps you unlock Ryze as early as possible so you can enjoy playing this wild 5-cost with as many traits as you’d like.

In addition to the exciting new stuff, we’ve taken a balance pass on our most powerful econ Augments. Many of these Augments have become the backbone to three-star 4-costs, and while those will definitely still be possible, they’ll be slightly less guaranteed with some of their resources pulled down.