It’s a new year and a new season ofLeague of Legendsthat brings massive changes to Summoner’s Rift and more. Fans have been ready since the cinematic videohyped up a ton of cool champions, and everyone wants to see the new season in action. Patch 25.S1.1 has arrived (Yes, we don’t know why it’s patch 25 like the year instead of 15), so let’s break down everything you need to know before queuing up again.
A new epic monster, Atakhan Bringer of Ruin, hits the rift in two unique forms, nexus turrets can now respawn, there’s a new Noxus-inspired rift, new boots tied to a bounty system, and, of course, the usual champion tweaks of every new patch.
League of Legends 25.S1.1 Patch Notes
Atakhan Bringer of Ruin Hits the Rift
Atakhan becomes the third epic monster introduced to Summoners Rift, spawning between Rift Herald and Baron at the 20-minute mark. Atakhan has been brought in to help sway certain game states in League matches with his two different forms. What form and where Atakhan will spawn depends on how bloody a game is early on. At 14 minutes, two distinct walls will form in either the top or bottom lane, depending on which of the two has seen more champion damage and kills.
Snowballing off that, the amount of champion damage and kills will also affect which version of Atakhan spawns at the 20-minute mark. A slower-paced early game means players will get to battle Voracious Atakhan, who, when slain, grants the team that secured his death a permanent extra 40 gold buff to any champion takedowns permanently until games end. On top of that, Voracious Atakhan grants all five players who defeated him a one-time pseudo Guardian Angel revive for 150 seconds. If a player with this buff suffers fatal damage, they will enter a stasis for two seconds before respawning back at their fountain in full health. The enemy player that defeats said player will only be granted 100 gold compared to the 300 gold players get for a traditional takedown.
On the flip side, if a game is full of kills and champion damage, Ruinous Atakhan will spawn. Ruinous Atakhan is a bit simpler when it comes to buffs granted to the team that slays the beast. Upon taking down Ruinous Atakhan, the team gains a 25-percent buff to all gains from epic monsters in the game permanently, including those already slain epic monsters. This is a stats buff for epic monsters, especially impactful for dragon bonuses.
Ruinous Atakhan also drops a flurry of petals from a new plant, the Blood Rose. Blood Rose petals are another permanent stat-buff that gives a player a 25-percent experience boost depending on their K/D/A and adaptive force. These gains are permanent and cannot be removed, incentivizing players to grab as many as possible to also deny these gains to enemy players.
Feats of Strength: New Boots, New Rewards
Keeping in theme with the Nexus takeover, a new option for boots comes to League of Legends with a twist to some important milestones in each game of LoL. All boot variations at the tier one and two levels stay the same but can now receive powerful upgrades only given to the team that hits specific game goals first. Players will no longer be granted extra gold for first blood and first turret, as those will directly correlate with the boot upgrading system.
Teams will compete to hit two of three milestones first to unlock special upgrades to whichever tier-two boots are purchased during the game. The three goals are first blood, first turret, and the new addition, monster slaying, given to whichever team slays three epic monsters first. Once a team earns two out of the three, their boots will upgrade, providing varying levels of stats bonuses centric to the boots class (berserker greaves give extra attack speed, plated steelcaps provide extra armor, etc.).
This goes one step further, as earning these special boots through the Feats of Strength task also unlocks tier-three boots that can be purchased for even more extra stats later in the game. A player must have completed two legendary items to buy the tier-three upgrades and gain even more stat power scaling into the late game. This should force players to focus on these three new tasks, and the boots system has been completely revamped with all new splash arts, names, and stat bonuses to check out.
Nexus Turrets Now Respawn
To prolong matches, Riot Games has introduced new nexus turrets. This one is fairly straightforward. Similar to inhibitors, nexus turrets will now respawn three minutes after being demolished at full health, good as new. Losing your nexus turrets has always been a sort of “nail in the coffin” of a league game, as it used to leave your nexus exposed, making winning the game much easier for the enemy team. Now, if you stall out long enough, your last line of defense will respawn to give teams a better fighting chance when playing from behind.
Teleport Changes, New Splash Arts for all Summoner Spells
Riot has made it clear that this patch aims to prolong games by adding better comeback mechanics and slowing down the early stage of each match. No change is more aligned with that logic than the tweaks to the summoner spell Teleport. Teleport is by far the most popular summoner spell in the game after Flash and will now interact in some new and old ways.
The two biggest tweaks come to teleport in its base form, as it will now not operate as a straight blink after cast time. Champions will enter stasis and glide across the rift to their destination, with it taking four to eight seconds, depending on the distance, to arrive in base form, and four seconds always in teleport’s familiar later form Unleashed Teleport. To compensate for removing the blink teleport, Riot has lowered the cast time for the ability by a second and boosted the move speed time out of teleport by an additional second.
Minion Waves and Regular Turret Changes
Continuing Riot’s theme of slowing down early gameplay in League, both minions and turrets, in general, have been tweaked to reflect this new concept. Starting with everyone’s favorite gold farms, minions will now do more overall damage specifically to each other, cutting down on the ability to stack big waves that crash into towers and slowing the ability to take towers in the early game in general. To counteract this, in later stages of the match, minions across the board will get more HP later on and stop scaling attack damage much earlier than previous patches, allowing for more powerful pushes to win games the later the match has gone.
On the turret side, Riot has tweaked the turret’s damage amping while firing on enemy champions. The heat damage amp has been increased per stack or turret shot taken by an enemy champion while also growing the amp-up time from three to five seconds. This should deter a lot of turret dives, which will reinforce a slower early phase. To alleviate some of the turret’s power, Riot has scaled down the extra resistances for top and mid-lane tier one turrets from 85 to 50 percent, allowing solo laners to farm plates much easier now that dives become complicated.
Champion Changes: Hits to Early Game Power of ADCs
With so many significant changes to the map and playstyle in this patch, there aren’t too many tweaks to Champions in 25.S1.1 unless you’re a marksmen player. All four champions targeted in this patch are AD carries, with the same theme of slowing the early game down being the cause. Ashe, Kalista, Twitch, and Varus have all received changes that seem like nerfs for the early game, but do give extra stats moving into the later stages.
Take, for example, Ashe, who got her overall damage on her W volley ability nerfed significantly early on. However, the ability does scale harder now. Combined with boosts to her passive ability. Frost Shot’s crit on slowed champions, and her Q Rangers Focus bonus damage and attack speed make Ashe much more formidable as a mid-game marksman.
Kalista’s changes run along the same vein. Her classic early-game combo of throwing her Q, Pierce, into a Rend off the spear stack has been nerfed in both base attack damage and bonus AD on her rent. This should lower Kalista’s power over the lane in the first few levels. To counteract this for the mid-to-late game, Riot has boosted the attack damage ratios on both abilities above while also giving her a slower reduction on her passive hopping ability to allow for better kiting in team fights.
Varus is the last champion to receive tweaks in the vein of stunting his early-game power. His overall base mana has been reduced by 40 from 360 to 320, while both of his poke tools, Piercing Arrow, have significant damage reductions across the board, and Hail of Arrows’s mana cost increased by ten. The popular poke Varus with lethality items may not be viable anymore with these drastic changes.
Finally, Twitch got the most minor tweak of them all, simply boosting the slow behind his venom cask, allowing for more stacking on his passive and more auto attacks laid down by users.
Noxian Summoners Rift & New Skins
To wrap things up, let’s talk all things cosmetic. Firstly, Summoners Rift has received a Noxian facelift. Turrets now sport a much more militaristic, machine-like feel with laser-guided missiles. Minions now look as if they’ve spawned from the Immortal Bastion themselves ready for war. Even the shopkeepers are ready for a Noxian masquerade dawning new masks for the event. These changes won’t change gameplay at all but continue the red-heavy theme of Noxus.
You can’t have a new season without a new skin line! Say hello to the Masque of the Black Rose skin line, featuring Renata Glasc, Ezreal, Vladimir, Elise, and a prestige version of the skin for Katarina. Fans of thelatest league cinematicwill recognize Katarina and Elise’s skins from the video, with the overall vibe being a lot of red, a lot of fancy clothes, and masks to hide your identity.
Outside the Noxus-inspired skin line, Sett is getting a Chinese New Year-style skin calledRadiant Serpent Sett, which is also available on the patch.
you’re able to read the latest League of Legends patch 25.S1.1 noteshere.
Mel from Arcane Announced as Next League of Legends Champion, New Ability Teased
With a new season on the horizon, Riot Games has announced Mel from the hit TV show Arcane as the next champion coming to Summoners Rift.
