Wild Rift Patch 2.5 is a monster of an update. From a new guild system, changes to match making, and various gameplay balances, 2.5 provides far too much to go over. To facilitate the massive changes, here are all the gameplay relevant updates in patch 2.5. In essence, this will skip over the new guild system and new skins, and focus on the champion balances and in game updates. Hopefully, this analysis will provide some helpful insight.
Here is ProGuides Kerxx’s video breakdown of the patch:
MASSIVE CHANGES – Patch 2.5 ALL BUFFS & NERFS (Veigar Release) – Wild Rift (LoL Mobile)
Superb Villain Veigar
The new yordle releases alongside the patch update. As a castor mage, the champion excels at scaling into the late game, bursting down practically anyone who comes in his path. Scaling infinity with ability power, Veigar plays as practically an AP Nasus. One of the strongest tools in his kit is his area of effect cage that stuns targets who walk into the border of it. His ultimate bursts down
Watch this video for an abilities breakdown and quick guide.
VEIGAR PREVIEW – NEW UPCOMING CHAMP in Wild Rift (LoL Mobile)
Veigar will be released on October 15 at 00:01 UTC.
Riot provided description will be quoted. The player analysis of the changes will be at the end of each champion balance.
“Ahri is overperforming across all skill levels, so we’re giving her a tune down across the board.”
Base Stats
(1) Orb of Deception
The mana per level hurts Ahri more than anything else from this buff. Since she’s incredibly reliant on spamming her key abilities, less mana means less plays. The base HP nerf is pretty minimal, but the Orb of Deception nerf massacres the pick. Ahri’s fisrt ability deals damage twice, the way forward and the way back. Essentially, the damage has been nerfed by 10 in total rather than the on paper 5.
“We now have the technology to make Akshan’s Heroic Swing feel better when used in obtuse (greater than 90°) angles. Also, here are some quality-of-life changes to help Akshan players make better decisions about his ultimate.”
(3) Heroic Swing
(Ult) Comeuppance
Honestly, Akshan is pretty powerful. The pick has mobility, utility, and damage all built into his kit. With the additional mechanical adjustments, Akshan should feel better than ever in Wild Rift.
“Annie’s ultimate is too generous in allowing her to stun targets from long distance, and it’s currently too easy to snag multiple enemies in a single cast. We’re bringing down the radius and damage of the initial Tibbers cast, but to compensate, we’re pulling power out of her (3) Molten Shield in order to buff up the bear himself, and make him into a larger threat.”
(3) Molten Shield
(Ult) Summon: Tibbers
This is a rather interesting, well thought out balance adjustment. Before patch 2.5, Annie definitely played like an ultimate spamming machine. Her Tibbers reliability on hit was absolutely busted, destroying the entire enemy team with a single ability.
These changes focus on keeping her relevant in the meta, while adjusting her strengths. Tibbers activation was nerfed, but the passive damage was increased on all accounts. The change thereby increases her longevity in team fights, sacrificing her initial burst damage engage. Molten Shield nerfs target focusing Tibbers, but in actuality simply nerfs the overall utility of the skill.
“Ashe’s utility is not quite hitting the mark in general, so we’re boosting the Frost Archer’s passive slow to give her more room to kite her opponents and set up her allies.”
(P) Frost Shot
This very well may make Ashe busted. Though more time and experimentation must be had, increasing Ashe’s slow utility is a very risky move. Since Frozen Mallet no longer exists, Ashe is the only adc that slows with every auto attack. A 10% increase from crit alongside base 5% slow increase is actually massive. Keep an eye on this marksman.
“Aurelion Sol has quietly been a safe and powerful pick in the mid lane for some time. We’re reducing his base Armor and the mobility he gains from Celestial Expansion to open up more space (lol) for healthy counterplay.”
Base Stats
(2) Celestial Expansion
Celestial Expansion nerf guts the pick. His roams are the only thing that he excels in, and honestly Twisted Fate and Pantheon perform those functions far better. With a 10% decrease in movement speed, Aurelion Sol will not be able to effectively rotate the map.
This nerf is a clear example of poor balancing performed based purely on statistics. The champion is in a terrible place, and very much did not need these nerfs. Ever since the champion was gutted many patches ago, only Aurelion Sol one tricks really play the pick. Since only OTPs really play the celestial dragon, they will obviously have a slightly higher win rate than the typical player.
“Camille is dominant in multiple positions for highly skilled players, and we believe that she has too much flexibility in her position selection. We are removing her ability to clear the jungle quickly now the second cast of Hookshot no longer hits jungle monsters. This will also disable Camille’s ability to trigger Hookshot’s attack speed buff in order to make her jungle play a riskier bet that will rely more on ganks to succeed.”
(3) Hookshot
Riot is finally addressing Camille jungle. After being oppressive in the meta for literal months, they are attempting to eliminate this pick and place her in her proper lane. But Camille jungle never had great jungle clears. The bladed champion relies on her insane mobility for versatile ganks, and that very mechanic has not changed. Her clears will definitely be impacted by the nerf, but it’s unclear if that will actually impact her viability.
.jpg)
“Diana is very close to being a viable jungler so we are giving her a light nudge to help her succeed a little more.”
(P) Moonsilver Blade
Nobody plays Diana jungle in Wild Rift, but okay. 110% more damage on monsters sounds like she will simply have better wave clear in the mid lane. Since there are actually some jungle changes this patch, maybe Diana jungle will become a thing? Only time will tell.
“Players have given us feedback about Fizz’s ultimate fish not matching its hitbox—we agree! We’re fixing it to better match its visual so it’s easier to position around.”
(Ult) Chum the Waters
Good.
“Galio’s tanky support build is performing a little too well in all skill levels which makes him an overly flexible pick. We’re taking a light chip out of his (2) Shield of Durand to make playstyles that invest points in it early a little bit less effective.”
(2) Shield of Durand
Shield of Durand’s damage in the late game was impacted significantly, but the early game was left untouched. Seeing as how Galio is easily poked during the very early stages of game, the nerf definitely targets his strengths and weaknesses very well. In essence, the pick is still viable, simply brought down a peg.
“Gragas is a dominant pick in professional play and a multi-position flex. While it’s great when skilled Gragas players set up their team with a powerful knockback, (Ult) Explosive Cask currently holds too much damage and is available a little too frequently in the earlygame.”
(Ult) Explosive Cask
Much deserved nerfs. Gragas received nerfs a little while ago too, but the attention to the champion once again is very well warranted. The champion so often bursts anyone he likes by just throwing out his ultimate, so increasing the cooldown alongside decreasing the early game damage definitely creates more healthy playstyles. But the nerfs mitigate towards the end game, so the champion should still destroy during team fights.
“Jarvan’s flag-n-drag combo feels a little clunky so it’s getting smoothed out.”
(3) Demacian Standard
This is great. Jarvan IV is not weak by any means, but players seem to struggle with hitting the iconic combo. The buff increases his engage reliance, a very key portion to the champion’s kit.
“Jhin is sitting at an acceptable power level in most respects, but the strength of his utility is a bit under where we’d like it to be.”
(2) Deadly Flourish
Bad Jhin players will not see the impact of this buff, but skilled Jhin players will love this. An increased root duration increases his skill-to-reward ratios, allowing him to create more follow up opportunities for his team. Great buff as a whole, should increase his viability in the meta.
“We believe that Kennen is close to having a healthy presence in the metagame, but he has yet to make an impact in high-level play. We’re amping up his laning phase by increasing his base AD and increasing the bonus movement speed gained from Lightning Rush.”
Base Stats
(3) Lightning Rush
Base attack damage buff is huge. This allows Kennen to trade more effectively in lane. The Lightning Rush bonus movement speed is really scary, since that movement speed allows the yordle to position his ultimate. Keep an eye on Kennen, this buff is huge.
“Lee Sin is a popular and powerful jungler that has been particularly dominant in high level play. In order to reduce how quickly he can burst down targets, we are softly reworking Iron Will so that it persists across two attacks but deals less damage with each hit.”
(2) Safeguard / Iron Will
Good, much deserved nerf. Lee Sin is broken in the high elo, and stood as a highly contested pick and ban. Nerfing Safeguard’s bonus decreases his dueling potential significantly, a key trait for the early game jungler. The nerf diminishes his sustainability and damage during key early stage trades.
“Lux is very close to being in a healthy spot in mid. We are giving her some love to her ultimate’s scaling to reward high AP builds.”
(Ult) Final Spark
Ultimate buff for bigger lasers.
“Nunu & Willump’s power levels have snowballed out of control after their release. As players have grown to understand the boy and his yeti, they’ve grown to be a menace for players of all skill levels, so we’re lowering their survivability and clear speed.”
Base Stats
(1) Consume
Consume faces a much deserved nerf. The sustainability and jungle priority on the skill during the late game were incredibly broken. But still, 800 true damage to monsters is still massive, and should not impact him too significantly.
Nunu is broken moreso because of his fast snowball and high defensive stats. The armor per level definitely hurts him, but not nearly enough to phase him out of the meta. He will definitely still see play.
“Pantheon has been struggling to find his place amongst other Baron laners in high-level play, so we’re reducing the cooldown of (Ult) Grand Starfall to give skilled players more opportunities to make impactful plays.”
(Ult) Grand Starfall
Expect to see Pantheon ulting around the map even more now. This is his greatest strength, therefore the buff definitely helps his key playstyle.
“Riven is overperforming in multiple roles, so we’re taking this opportunity to cut down on two big points of frustration for playing against Riven: her early game damage output and the uptime on her defensive abilities.”
(1) Broken Wings
(3) Valor
Riven should have been nerfed way before, close to her release. The champion’s stats on broken wings were so broken, so it is good that Riot nerfed the first ability. 5 damage shaved off does not seem like much, but in the early game it definitely hurts her trading potential. Since the broken bladed warrior utilizes the skill thrice in a row, that is a total of 15 damage nerf, assuming Riven hits every skill.
Valor cooldown nerf is needed as well, slightly decreasing the amount of survivability and mobility Riven has. She should be a bit more killable. These nerfs as a whole should dissuade meta abusers, but for one trick Rivens, they will still be able to see great success on the champion.
“Seraphine’s getting the same quality-of-life feature from her PC version. Starting with max Echo stacks means she has a few more options at level 1.”
(P) Stage Presence
Why does Seraphine get such an advantage, but not Sona? There are plenty of champions that utilize similar stacking abilities, so why does Seraphine get this special treatment? Does not make much sense, but good for Serpahine users.
“Shyvana is struggling a little bit in organized play and high-skill ranked, so we’re amping up her strategic power as a power farmer and a dragon killer.”
(P) Fury of the Dragonborn
(2) Burnout
This barely does anything for the champion. Since there are two rift heralds this patch, putting more damage on Elemental Drakes does not impact her presence in the meta. Shelly and her companion will be the jungle priority. More damage on Burnout helps her slightly, but not much at all. This is very much a placebo buff.
“Soraka is falling off a bit too much in higher levels of play after our last round of changes. We want her to have a higher payoff when she is successful at popping her only hard crowd control.”
(3) Equinox
Very minimal buff for very unlikely mechanics. Hitting the root on Equinox is so unreliable on Soraka, and buffing the root by a mere 0.25 seconds per level hardly changes Soraka at all. Once again, another placebo buff.
“Tristana is underperforming at all ranks against compositions that she should be strong against, so we’re reducing her offensive downtime to make her slightly less punishable throughout the game.”
(1) Rapid Fire
(3) Explosive Charge
Cooldown reductions are not the fix to making Tristana meta. What she is lacking is damage scaling on her explosive charge. Without fixing this, there is no way Tristana will become meta. A simple cooldown reduction does almost nothing for tristana, especially since the cooldowns are still pretty long.
Change her damage numbers and scaling, rather than cooldowns, and maybe players will start picking the yordle up.
“Consistently across all skill levels, but particularly in higher skill games, Tryndamere has struggled as a laner but performed quite well as a jungler. This patch, we’re taking a larger swing at balancing out his positions by giving him a new mechanic he can take advantage of in lane more so than in the jungle. As a result, we also needed to rebalance some of his stats and abilities to make sure jungle Trynd was not overly buffed. This is a pretty large change, so we’ll be keeping an eye on how he performs. RAAAARGH!”
Base Stats
(P) Battle Fury
(1) Bloodlust
(2) Mocking Shout
(Ult) Undying Rage
Seems Riot is attempting to allow Tryndamere to scale better with consistent auto attacks. But the issue is, the base attack damage nerf is massive. Even if Tryndamere does gain more fury and scaling from it, his initial trade potential falls off too high from the base stat nerfs.
The changes may help him scale better with the newer itemization options laid out for him in patch 2.4, but some of the changes here are a little questionable. Play testing and experience is necessary to see the impact of these adjustments.
“Wukong is clearing the jungle too quickly, so we are removing his ability to amplify his damage against large monsters for his clear. Note: The tooltip incorrectly stated that this passive could stack against any unit, while it only stacked on champions and large monsters.”
(P) Crushing Blows
Wukong should still function perfectly fine in the jungle and in the baron lane.
“Ziggs is too powerful in the midgame where he can harass opponents and rotate around the map to demolish turrets more freely. We’ve retuned his passive base damage curve so it’s weaker in the midgame, but starts at the same value and scales to the same value at level 15.”
(P) Short Fuse
Good nerf, but needs even bigger nerfs as a whole. The champion is overpowered.
Scryer’s Blooms now appear on the Howling Abyss to scout enemies and units in the lane bushes!
Because of the above change, cannon minions no longer grant true sight of invisible units and traps. For Wild Rift, we felt cannon minion vision was a suboptimal overall, so the new vision system means you can use the Scryer’s Blooms to scout out traps, instead of escorting a cannon minion all the way up the lane.
To prevent miscasts, abilities that buff allies can no longer target clones. These include:
“After reviewing the effects of our changes to gold acquisition over the last year, we feel we’ve drained too much gold from supports as a role. We’re buffing the Graceful Charity passive gold mechanic from Patch 2.4 that should allow us to isolate buffs to the support position.“
Riot cannot seem to reach a consensus of how they like their passive gold income for support champions. The issue with this change is that they state that “isolate buffs to the support position.” But… Everyone acquires passive gold. That literally does not isolate the support position, and just accelerates everyone’s gold acquisition.
The best way to provide supports a way of passive income would be to provide a gold item or something of the like. All these adjustments made various times to bonus gold per second do NOT target supports. They are literal generalized buffs for every role.
“We’re making Flash interact more consistently with non-ultimate ‘skillshot’ dash abilities (dashes that don’t home in on a target). In Patch 2.5, Flash will cancel many dash abilities but still activate or bring their effects to the flashed location (e.g. Flashing during Riven’s third cast of Broken Wings will apply the knockup at the new location).
Some dash abilities do not allow Flash to be cast in the middle of their animation and these will remain unchanged. This change will likely give more options to skilled players on champions like Riven, Renekton, Fiora, etc.”
“We’re removing the ability for players to purchase multiple copies of the same Tier 3 item. To be clear, this is not a common way for most players to play the game, but it can be a trap that new players can fall into since item passives with the same name do not stack. Additionally, if an optimal build involves buying multiple copies of one item, it’s probably not super healthy overall—so we’re adding a restriction to keep things unique per build.”
Cannot stack the same item anymore, but nobody really did this anyway. As Riot stated, this helps new players not make some silly mistakes.
“We’re updating the Energized items to better reward players for investing in it by allowing Energized damage to stack.”
Not much application for this mechanic, but maybe Caitlyn will like them? Rapidfire Cannon is the more viable item option, with Statikk Shiv and Stormrazor definitely not holding nearly as much precedent.
“Generally when players use the Protobelt active effect in the middle of a dash ability, the objective is to extend their engage or disengage range. In previous patches, Protobelt’s active interrupts the current dash, so we’re adjusting it to buffer until the end of the dash animation. This change will make it easier to combine Protobelt’s active with other abilities for combos without requiring pixel-perfect timing on each button press.”
“After observing the jungle position over the last year we are making a decent amount of changes aimed at making jungle a bit less hectic to play and reduce the likelihood of unhealthy strategies like gold funneling. Overall, we expect the changes to be a small net nerf to jungle, as it’s currently the highest impact position in Wild Rift.”
“We’ve seen gold funneling creep up in terms of prevalence, and it’s not a super healthy strategy overall. We’re making Smite a bit more powerful in the jungle and weaker in lane.”
They are attempting to create more priority on jungle camps. This is generally a good direction to bring the jungle into.
“In conjunction with Smite’s changes, we’re tuning jungle monster gold to make sure junglers remain roughly equal in power to other positions. Respawn rates are also being tuned as we felt that the camps themselves were respawning too quickly, leading to too many conflicted situations where a jungler had to choose between power farming or ganking.”
SPAWN TIME
BOUNTIES
Interesting changes. The bounty decrease, but increased amount of gold for smite holders, should balance out regardless. These changes as a whole are good, and hopefully will create the intended balance of more jungle camp focus in Wild Rift.
“Baron Buff has felt strong in its ability to completely choke out a game. At the same time, it was also spawning quite early into the game and often avoided since teams are often unwilling to take the risk. We see an opportunity here to match up its spawn time closer with average game flow by pushing back the spawn and reducing its power to increase comeback potential.”
Baron has bene overpowered for quite some time, and the nerfs are very much warranted. The biggest nerf is to the empowered minion damage. The issue with this change is that developers have effectively increased the average length of games, which is great for more comeback mechanics, but creates an issue for players who played Wild Rift for the shorter matches.
“As Baron’s initial spawn time is increasing, we also saw a good opportunity to introduce more strategic interest in Rift Herald by allowing her to respawn if she’s taken early enough in the game—taking all suggestions for Shelly’s friend’s name.”
Second Rift Herald essentially makes the Baron side of the map the biggest priority in the game. Rift herald is almost always the better objective over elemental drakes, so having two on the baron side of the map drastically shifts the focus of the game.
As a whole, patch 2.5 provided great balancing to the game. From champion nerfs, buffs, and even drastic changes to the jungle role, there is a lot to look forward to. A lot of players were disappointed by patch 2.5 preview. Be patient, the game is improving slowly, but surely. This balance balance update is testament to Riot’s efforts.
You can find more pieces like Wild Rift Patch 2.5 Analysis and you can ‘Like’ The Game Haus on Facebook and ‘Follow’ us on Twitter for more sports and esports articles from other great TGH writers along with Terry.
“From Our Haus to Yours”
