League of Legends Patch 11.18 has been released for nearly 24 hours, and the game’s developers are already reflecting on the data since the changes were made.
Patch 11.18 will serve as a preliminary patch for this year’s World Championship, while Patch 11.19 will be the patch the tournament is officially played on. If anything, Patch 11.18 is being used by the game’s developers as a testing ground for what will actually make the live version of the game by the time Worlds rolls around next month.
While certain changes are being rolled over between Patch 11.18 and Patch 11.19, many of the buffs and nerfs that Riot implemented in the current patch will be either reverted or adjusted ahead of the Worlds patch, according to Head League of Legends Game Designer Jeevun Sidhu.
“[Patch] 11.18 is out and we have some early data already,” said Sidhu on Twitter. “Out of the 33 champions we changed, 27 hit their targets pretty cleanly. I’m here to talk about the other six.”
The “other six” champions that Sidhu referred to in the remainder of his Tweet were Fizz, Qiyana, Renekton, Soraka, Singed, and Varus. All six of those champions were adjusted pretty extensively when Patch 11.18 launched yesterday. For starters, Fizz was buffed far too extensively, as Nimble Fighter (P), Seastone Trident (W), and Chum the Waters (R) have all been buffed. The champion has already been hotfixed to compensate and will receive a more conservative buff in Patch 11.19. Singed was also buffed in Patch 11.18, and Riot claimed it is “okay with this for now, but [it would] like to see more games with him to confirm.”
Related: Here are the notes and updates for League of Legends Patch 11.18
The nerfs applied to Varus require “more data” before Riot can make an effective decision. Additionally, Renekton was nerfed “quite hard,” and Riot is looking for “safe buffs” to apply to the champion in Patch 11.19. Finally, Qiyana and Soraka were both buffed relatively intensively, and there has been no indication of Riot pulling anything back on those two champions in particular at the moment.
League of Legends Patch 11.18 is currently live on all global servers, while Patch 11.19 will go live on Sept. 22, according to the game’s official patch schedule. That patch will play host to this year’s edition of the League World Championship, which is set to begin on Oct. 5.
