[Patch 25.11] LoL 25.S2.3 Patch Notes

May 28, 2025.

The game is feeling decently balanced for most levels right now; a lot of the things that remain are larger structural issues with certain systems, etc. that aren't resolvable in small balance changes.

Mage Items

• Mage items overall have landed in a decent spot, but Horizon Focus is clearly too weak; there's been a bunch of shakeups to the DoT paths (Liandrys paths) and burst paths (Ludens builds are such are certainly more viable)

Cho'Gath

• Cho’s buffed overswung a tad but his skew is about right; looking to keep the skew but take his power down a little

Smolder

• Smolder's buff also overswung a tad, so we're pulling that one back a bit too

Steady State Balance

• We feel our balance is in a pretty good steady state right now, and don't really want to net nerf or buff champions unneccesarily
• As a result we're doing some power neutral changes to relatively champions like Kassadin, Samira for their mastery curves to make them feel more powerful without giving them more power. (eg. Samira being better at snowballing or teamfighting with a power neutral change or Kassadin being slightly more functional in the early game so he can get to late game a bit more reliably)

Aatrox

• Making Aatrox feel better about traditional fighter items by making his W physical damage
• Also making Aatrox a bit more rewarded for hitting sweet spots relatively

Garen

• Adjusting Garen's builds to feel better about non-crit builds and feel better about fighter items
• Part of this is also to make it so that Garen has a bit more repeatability in his pattern through lower E cooldown and by extension enable non-burst patterns more
• Trying to avoid cooldown going too low so that there are still windows to play against him

Junglers

• Rengar, Diana, Udyr receiving some simple buffs; Udyr and Diana in particular was pretty reliant on Liandrys and now we're giving them compensation since Liandrys is in a better state now

AP Twitch

• Trying to focus changes in the direction of farming AP Twitch compared support AP Twitch which we're less happy with
• Granted, the buffs here take an extremely weak champion to a still weak champion, just a little less weak

AP Item Fallout

• Some other champs like Twisted Fate, Kassadin and Ryze have received indirect nerfs (from Swiftness, Archangels and ROA nerfs in particular)
• While Spellbook was being buffed, it's still pretty unpopular and needs some time to pick up steam
• Now that items are in a stable spot, we want to adjust the champions
• As for the items themselves, we're monitoring some of the stronger and weaker items; we want to position ROA as a flexible item (for some set of more controlly mages) that helps you survive lane with double ruby but not output as much for champs that opt into it (and therefore it's weaker as an actual item)
• We're keeping an eye on Stormsurge, Lich Bane and Ludens paths as items that are a bit on the stronger side (they're not far enough over to immediately need nerfs though)

Samira

• Samira has been appropriately powerful for her mastery curve, but not super satisfying or with a clear identity
• Two of the things her kit gives her over the roster is her snowballiness and her teamfight ability
• This changelist is positioned to make Lifesteal more effective on her, which may make the difference between her surviving and getting that Pentakill off or not and may make certain builds like BT first (similar to Draven) more viable

Kassadin

• Kassadin's been stuck between being a bit of an anti-mage and a bit of a giga scaler
• We're giving Kassadin a tad more early game power so that he can contribute more in the early and mid game while taking a little out of his late game to compensate
• This will hopefully make him more viable in more situations especially in higher levels of play that punish early games a lot harder