Patch Day: Balance Update 2

Thresh is coming later, but for now we have plenty of patch notes to evaluate. There's a lot to cover so I won't mention every change and bug fix.

Some of Alistar's nerfs have been rolled back. His jungling in Season 3 took a significant hit, and he's long since fallen off the ban lists, so Riot probably felt safe giving him a little nudge.

Annie gets a few quality of life changes, and a visual upgrade in the near future. Despite her lack of popularity straight buffs aren't necessary. If bruiser/assassin teams continue to be popular Annie is likely to see a lot of play for her AoE damage/initiation and tankiness.

Blitzcrank's passive gets duly hit with the nerf bat. For his trouble he does get vision on grabbed targets, which is a huge quality of life change. Knowing that you've landed a grab thrown into fog of war (and who you landed that grab on) is extremely important information.

After being given a very thorough beating in previous patches, Diana has been given some recompense. While she won't resume her frightening domination of the meta (in part because of all the AD assassins now chilling in the mid lane), restoring some of range to her ultimate and giving her shield extra duration and collision detection will be very noticeable.

Evelynn, who is all too familiar with the nerf bat, received another round of nerfs. The bonus Attack Damage ratios on Q and W aren't all that significant in the face of increased mana costs and cooldowns couple with reduced range and damage. Evelynn will still be good, but definitely not as good.

Changing Ezreal's base attack speed may not seem like a big deal, but it's actually huge. That 0.04 reduction is equivalent to reducing the effectiveness of all Attack Speed on Ezreal by 6-7%. A similar nerf dropped Graves from favor not long ago. To be honest, however, I doubt Ezreal will cede from popularity until Riot increases the cooldown on Arcane Shift.

Today we lay to rest the most enduring and frustrating bug of all time, Kassadin's reverse Force Pulse. Surviving through the beta all the way to the present day, the Force Pulse bug has befuddled and infuriated Kassadin players for years. It will not be missed.

Kha'zix, everyone's favorite overgrown cockroach, was understandably nerfed. He's been extremely popular even in the post-nerf Black Cleaver era due to his ridiculous damage with just that one item. His poke with evolved W is also extremely potent. Both of those aspects of him have been nerfed, but not by enough to sate the anger of his detractors.

Lee Sin didn't see these nerfs coming. The armor on Safeguard has been removed, and the range and effectiveness of his Cripple have also been reduced. These changes will hit both his survivability in the jungle and lane, and his early gank strength. He will still be overpowered in the right hands, and hilariously useless in the wrong ones.

The little support, Nami, received a few small buffs. The speed increase on her ultimate will make it much easier to hit, but isn't so large as to reduce the ominous, slow nature and corresponding psychological factor. The change to her base movement speed should her when trading early or trying to land her stun.

Rengar received changes which are, for the most part, actually buffs. Stacking health early on Rengar will no longer yield impossible healing values, but regardless of what you build the healing at level 18 is equialvent to what you would have received if you had 4000 Health. With extra Attack Damage on his Bonetooth Necklace and longer duration Attack Speed buffs and stealth, he's actually probably slightly better in the late game. The problem is whether he can still lane well, which remains to be seen.

Riven can thank her lucky stars she wasn't nerfed as hard as Evelynn, but she still received quite a few herself. The hits to her sustain and damage mitigation are big, and the cooldown nerf on her ultimate will severely impact her effectiveness early on. She might be fine regardless, but Riven players are definitely going to notice these changes.

Syndra gets a couple notable buffs. The increased range on her ultimate at level 16 makes her dramatically easier to use in a teamfight, and reducing the cooldown on her push back makes her harder to reach. It's likely we'll now see her in competitive play.

While Talon got nailed with the nerf bat at first glance, his ability to assassinate targets actually hasn't changed. His AoE damage took a hit, but that was largely necessary due to the bug on his E. Without these nerfs that bug fix would actually have made him incredibly strong.

Udyr, long forgotten after the "farm forever" jungle meta died in Season 2, has finally received a buff. It's not a huge buff, but 12% Armor and Magic Resistance will help him survive being kited long enough to accomplish something, hopefully.

Vi stands for viable. It only took more quality of life changes and bug fixes than any champion, to my knowledge, has ever received in a single patch before.

In addition to all the champion changes, there are some other changes of note.

Jungle creeps have redistributed health toward the bigger creeps, and picked up some extra gold in the process. The advantage of AoE junglers is now close to non-existent. Jungle gold values are at a point where simply farming the jungle is equivalent to a lane where creeps are last-hit with 75% accuracy. Depending on where the meta goes we might see some interesting changes in who we place in the jungle.

There are a lot of item change, but I'm going to stick to the most important ones.

Crystalline Flask's cost has gone up by 120 gold. It's now cost efficient after 6 uses, rather than 3, but only after it's sold. In the meantime you've locked 345 gold down for infinite potions. It won't be a bad item, but it will be harder to fit into builds.

Last Whisper now has a greater combine cost, raising its price to 2300 gold. This nerfs AD carries, and also nerfs bruisers who stacked Black Cleaver and Last Whisper. I'm curious why they felt this was necessary.

Iceborne Gauntlet remains a very good item even after the nerfs. The duration of the field isn't a particularly damaging change when you're chasing people as they tend to run out before 3 seconds are up anyway. However, it is noticeable when running away.

Spirit of the Spectral Wraith and Spirit of the Lizard Elder both got additional stats for free. They generally hadn't been picked up very often, and may yet see more buffs before they are accepted as useful items. Health regeneration simply isn't valued highly by the community (with reason).

Finally, the minimap now features animations/icons for when teammates recall or teleport. The next time I ping for my team to back off, tell them in chat that I'm no condition to fight and need to spend gold, and then recall, they'll now have three different vectors of communication they ignored rather than just two.

This is actually a very big patch even without Thresh and the upcoming changes to how rankings are determined. It seems bit much this early in Season 3, when players still have so much to figure out. We'll see if Riot continues this trend of extensive changes throughout the year.