A new League of Legends patch, Patch 14.9, has been shipped, and with it, a handful of changes have come to certain champions in ARAM.
ARAM didn’t receive too heavy of a patch this time around, considering many of the devs who work on the game mode were likely tied up with the return of League’s Arena mode. But we can likely expect more thorough ARAM patches in the future, where needed.
In total, only three champions were adjusted in Patch 14.9, with all three of them being nerfed. Smolder, Nami, and Hwei—the latter two of which had received recent buffs on Summoner’s Rift—were all nerfed on Patch 14.9 in ARAM.
Here is the full list of ARAM balance changes for League Patch 14.9.
LoL ARAM Patch 14.9 champion changes
Buffs
- No champions were buffed for ARAM in this patch.
Nerfs
- Hwei: Ability Haste reduced from 20 to 10.
- Nami: All healing received reduced by five percent. All damage dealt reduced by five percent.
- Smolder: Ability Haste reduced from zero to negative 10. All damage taken increased by five percent.
LoL ARAM Patch 14.9 item changes
- Hubris: Passive AD and buff duration of passive effect increased.
The biggest change on ARAM this patch easily came to Smolder, who’s having his base Ability Haste reduced into the negatives. In addition to that, Smolder received a nerf that causes him to take more damage from all sources. When you combine these two changes, the champion should be less of a durable threat that pumps out damage on a consistent basis.
“At this point it’s quite clear that Smolder is becoming an ARAM menace, so we’re aiming to tune him similar to other infinite stacking champions,” Riot said in the official Patch 14.9 notes. “We will keep an eye on him to see whether spell specific tuning is needed after these changes though.”
