Riot Games has released the patch notes for League of Legends update 13.14 and it’s a big one featuring the launches of the Soul Fighter event, the new 2v2v2v2 Arena game mode and in a couple of days, new champion Naafiri
For most people who rarely venture off the Rift, Naafiri will be the most significant addition in patch 13.14, with the new champion set to launch on July 20 at 20:00 UTC. With abilities that summon cute little wolves who will be trying to kill anyone that comes near them, Naafiri already looks like excellent fun to play and will likely become a quick fan favorite.
Elsewhere the Soul Fighter event launches in the main client and brings with it the fantastic new 2v2v2v2 Arena game mode. For most players, this will probably be little more than a quick distraction from action on the rift, but having tried it on the PBE I can say it’s great fun and a perfect way to learn new champions without greifing ranked matches.
There’s also the Tournament of Souls mini-game that will be available in the client. You play as Samira in a street fighter-style battler which features ten different opponents to beat and a load of rewards to unlock.
And finally, before we get to the regularly scheduled balance changes, there’s also the mid-season ranked reset to talk about. Whereas ranks are typically reset towards the end of the year as the season ends and a new one starts, this year there is a mid-season ranked reset that will happen over the next day or so. It’s basically the same as a normal reset, but now you’ll only need to play five placement games instead of 10, and there’s a rank in the form of Emerald, which sits between Plat and Diamond.
Now to the good part. This is a pretty big patch in terms of balance, with a few key themes to look out for. Top lane carry potential is being buffed, while early jungler ganks and bot lane mobility are being nerfed. There are also quite a few quality-of-life improvements that some champions definitely needed.
One interesting area of the patch notes is a buff to Spear of Shojin, an item that has been underwhelming recently. It gets a 100 gold price decrease and gives an extra 50 health, which should improve things for the item. However, champions such as Heracim and Jax have in turn been nerfed, because they will be picking up this item now and are already somewhat annoying to deal with. Also, an unintended manna buff for Jax from earlier this year has been reverted.
And rounding things out, in what is a very much appreciated QOL improvement, if you hold the mute button on the scoreboard, it will now mute all communications from that player. I expect I will be using that feature a lot.
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