Hello there, Steemit community!

This is the second part to the League of legends patch 7.23 post. The first part of the patch post focused on the new champ, Zoe, whilst today will mainly be on META changes and updates to gamemodes. Click here to go to the previous post.

Fortnightly, Riot Games implement new changes to League of Legends as a way to reshuffle the META and release new features, skins or champions every once in a while. Today brings a whole host of additions to the game, with a clear focus on completely changing the effectiveness of certain runes!

This post will focus on statistical and balance changes to runes and certain champions, in response to the current META right now.

Unless they are major, all bugfixes will not be accounted for in this post (it's kinda boring to go over EVERY problem with each champion that they fixed, but if you would like to know the bugfixes, check the post by Riot here)

Note: This patch seems to mainly only consist of simple base statistical changes, probably because Riot want to still let the new rune META play out and only tweak the game slightly. At the end of preseason, larger, more impacting buffs/nerfs will most likely be inbound, so I will be more in depth when the time comes.

Gragas

Attack speed increased.

Giving Gragas a bit of power that'll particularly help with his first jungle clear. "Innate bonus attack speed" is the same mechanic that we used last patch to compensate other junglers (Amumu, Maokai, etc): We're boosting Gragas' starting attack speed without increasing the value he gets from bonus attack speed elsewhere.

Base stats

NEW - BONUS ATTACK SPEED: 8% (level 1 attack speed: ~~0.625~~ ⇒0.675)

A small change to help the champions ability to kill monsters in the jungle faster to gain gold quicker. Riot usually change base stats to help with early in the game.

Rammus

Armor decreased.

Rammus and Aftershock are a match made in heaven, but between his new keystone and Defensive Ball Curl, Rammus is rolling over the competition. We're reducing some of his innate tankiness to push him toward relying more on his cooldowns when he needs to armor up.

Base stats

BASE ARMOR 40 ⇒ 36

Another small change, but affects the champion as Rammus revolves around his building up of armor since he is a tank. This change, like the Gragas change, just negatively impacts his early game.

Shyvana

Base attack damage decreased.

Shyvana's emerged as one of the top performers in the jungle across a number of keystones. We're reducing her base attack damage so she doesn't gain quite as much value with the early attack speed many of her preferred Runes builds opt into.

Base stats

BASE ATTACK DAMAGE 69 ⇒ 66

Again, this reduces the champions potency in the early game. Her reduced damage makes her less deadly early in the game

Taliyah

Health and armor growth stats increased.

Though Taliyah started in a rocky spot when Runes launched, we've seen significant improvement as players continue to experiment with new builds. A bit more hardiness will let Taliyah maintain more aggressive positioning, particularly with Rune builds where she's chasing enemies down with Phase Rush.

Base stats

HEALTH GROWTH STAT 87 ⇒ 90

ARMOR GROWTH STAT 3 ⇒ 3.5

Finally, Taliyah has buffs to her base stats for an improvement in survivability in lane, as she is way too weak in terms of health.

Summon Aery (Sorcery Keystone)

Damage decreased.

Keystones are supposed to have meaningful tradeoffs between each other, but at the moment Aery is just far and away the best for damage, thanks to how often it can be applied. We're looking to keep it as the lowest cadence Keystone between itself, Arcane Comet, and Electrocute, but that means its damage needs to come down a bit.

BASE DAMAGE: ~~20-60 (at levels 1-18)~~ ⇒ 15-40 (at levels 1-18)

BUGFIX: Aery now deals the correct adaptive damage type based on your stats

This rune was way too strong in terms of its damage which resulted in many champions adopting the rune, despite the idea of the rune being solely for healers and supports. The reduction in damage makes it standout less as the best rune, compared to other keystones such as electrocute or arcane comet.

Predator (Domination Keystone)

Cooldown decreased.

Predator has a steeper learning curve than many of our other Keystone Runes because it’s an active effect. However, with such a long cooldown, players don't get to use it regularly enough to progress along that learning curve. Decreasing the cooldown serves two purposes: Giving players more room to experiment with and master Predator, while bringing it more in line with other Keystones.

COOLDOWN: ~~180-120 seconds (at levels 1-18)~~ ⇒ 150-100 seconds (at levels 1-18)

As Riot states above, the aim of the cooldown reduction is to allow players to be able to use the active keystone more often to help with the steep learning curve (the difficulty in learning a skill) that players face.

Zombie Ward (Domination)

Zombies carry gold, too.

We've supported the "kill something, get money" feedback loop throughout our game so thoroughly that it feels weird not to get something from Zombie Wards.

GRAVEROBBER: Killing a Zombie Ward now grants one gold

I was amused by this change, as it doesn't really have a major effect on gameplay, but is rather a little (little, as in, very minute) reward for killing zombie wards.

New Game Mode: Overcharge

Join the hunt in a 3v3 marksman-only deathmatch during the PROJECT: Hunters event. Destroy charge bots to overcharge your team, granting invulnerability, higher movespeed, and more points for champion kills. If your opponents overcharge, stick to the shadows until they power down.

Kills grant one point. Overcharged kills grant five points. The first team to 50 points wins.

This is a little minigame, as a way to celebrate the new PROJECT Jhin, Vayne and Vi skins (shown respectively in the picture below).

The Jhin and Vi skins will be Epic skins (1350RP) whilst the Vayne skin will be a legendary skin (1820RP).

And that wraps up my overview for patch 7.23 on League of Legends. I am really excited to see how the rune changes apply, especially with the Summon Aery as I am a support player (No flame towards me please :D) and the changes will adapt the META for that role. Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed reading on the patch notes and let me know if you have learnt something new in the comments or any feedback you'd like to give. I'll be happy to reply on your thoughts about this game and its changes (To be honest, I'm happy to talk about anything!).

Thanks for reading, always appreciated.

Riyad/Rags

Sources: