Patch 26.22 Preview! Hearts go out to Cyanide and saddened to hear of his passing 😭; on top of being an incredible player, he was a super funny guy and many of his quotes are legendary. He will be missed :( Mel - Mel's mini-update will be Live on Patch 26.22 - When we released Mel, we intentionally went for a new ability that was pretty ambitious; we like to try to push the boundaries with new champions and mechanics to give players new puzzles to solve with each release - After being on Live for a while, it's clear that many players feel that Mel's reflect was too frustrating to play against - There are things in League that are allowed to be frustrating, as that can create a feeling of triumph when overcoming it and challenging players to grow, but there are some things that are too frustrating even given those upsides - Realistically, every champion should have something that they do uniquely that other players might feel is frustrating - So we're reworking Mel's W to keep the feeling of destroying projectiles, but not have it hard counter some subsets of the roster - We tried many versions of Mel's W that tried to retain the reflect, but we couldn't find one that would hit the mark for Mel players and would be satisfactory for opponents - We know this is disappointing for Mel players and we're sorry we couldn't uphold this end of the contract with you all - That said, we hope this will allow Mel to be balanced at relatively higher resting power levels and be more effective for Mel players Systems - Overlord's Bloodmail has been pretty weak overall and it's pretty hard bound to Sett as currently tuned - We're looking to try to buff this for other users who should be interested in an item that converts Health to Damage (Mundo, Sion), but some aspects of the item make it too Sett skewed [eg. the missing HP portion] - Doran's Bow has been a bit too strong relative to Doran's Blade, especially at higher levels of play - So we're looking to balance out the relative tradeoffs of the items a bit - We're overall happy wtih the direction of how the tradeoffs are playing out though! Just that the magnitude is a bit off

youtu.be/UU3_pDrMKzM Patch 26.21 rundown is out! Talking about buffs to Ryze, Azir, Orianna and how they landed. Also an adjustment to Varus that is intended to nerf him for Top lane, while leaving Bot lane intact

The first day of Worlds main stage is over, how are people feeling about the meta and the gameplay so far?

Patch 26.21 Full Preview! Credit to @RiotAuberaun for the suggestion to add pictures (it's a bit hard to see... but I think better than not having it) Bastionbreaker - We’re trying a pretty spicy change here to give Sabotage an infinite duration to help it serve its strategic niche better - This will also help us give these type of strategic outputs more value (which are often hard to put enough power in to be satisfying) and make Bastionbreaker holistically balanced without being overstatted Viktor - Overall, we don’t really think Viktor needs a major nerf here and the pattern of his long range hard to dodge poke is always going to be frustrating - We think that’s a pattern that’s worth preserving for Viktor and something that his players really enjoy about him - We think making his weakness more apparent (his inability to move around the map and weakness to ganks), while preserving his strengths is an appropriate way to keep players holistically happy without reducing Viktor’s satisfaction overall Yone - We’re opting to nerf Yone this patch, but not Yasuo, as while Yasuo rates highly on banrate, Yone is showing up significantly higher on our frustration surveys - Players are also more likely to play against a competent Yone than a Yasuo, so that factors into the overall perception of how powerful he is Locke - Locke has overall landed pretty well - One area we think is a bit off is his mana costs and how little consequences there are when he messes up - We do like his ability to have pop off moments and really high burst when he can meet his success conditions, but it should feel more risky when he messes up (eg. poor usage of W’s and spells in general) - We’re intending this to be an relatively power neutral adjustment and incentivizing Locke to rank up E second and have a higher amount of power in landing E1 (his W second is more powerful in many cases) Varus - The goals of the Varus changes are to reduce power in his lower gameplay W max builds, while moving power into his Q max builds which at least have something to dodge - This is also an attempt to make Varus Top vs Varus Bot more reasonable to play against for Top laners Caitlyn - Caitlyn has been one of the more frustrating champions for average players - That’s not inherently a bad thing, but we do think something about her strength and weakness profile is a bit off; in particular how much top end burst she can do with little warning - We want to move a bit of the power out of the some of the headshot damage and into her Q which can be more understandable and also make Q more worth casting later in the game Xin Zhao - Since the nerfs to Sundered Sky and repeated collateral nerfs to his AP build, Xin has been a little worse for wear - So we’re giving him a bit of power back for those attack oriented builds Lee Sin - Lee has been a little on the stronger side for a while after doing the adjustments to him in 26.10; we’re taking a bit of power out of how mobile he is (don’t think it’s super far off) - We think some of his point and click damage is a little on the higher end for how reliable it is and want a bit more of its value to be in using it to reposition enemies Tristana - Tristana’s level 1 power is a bit too strong, especially given its hyper synergy with Lethal Tempo - When Trist is succeeding, we think it’s a bit more appropriate from Rocket Jumping on opponents rather than just low gameplay outpushing enemies Azir - As a champion who doesn’t regularly purchase a mana item, regular players often struggle to manage their mana properly, whereas higher skill players are already handling this well Ryze - We’re looking to give Ryze stronger late game capabilities, so long as he’s able to get through his early laning phase - Right now, he is able to get a bit too much throughput from how much his EQs do in the early game Sion - This is a high fantasy buff, but we’ll be monitoring the magnitude to see if it’s over - One of the most fun things on Sion is when you ram your full powered R into someone

Patch 26.21 Preview! This is our first post World's patch and we're stabilizing the Ranked environment for end of season climbs, while giving a bit of breathing room to some of the champions that have had suppressed winrates due to Pro Play (Azir, Ori, Ryze, etc.) Systems - Gluttonous Greaves is proving a bit too strong, especially on Marksmen; and so we're tapping it down a bit - Hubris is also being nerfed for Ranged and a buff to melee, as it is mostly strong on champs like Jhin and MF, but suppressed for those other champions - Bastionbreaker's stats are a bit too strong in particular (the lethality) and so we're moving some of the power out of that and into the anti-structure/objective passive - Broadly, the item is too good at both killing people and giving assassins wider game impact (we're happier with it if it's purchaseable because of the latter) - Dawncore is just a weak item that doesn't get purchased, except in situations where the player is already giga winning; it's not fulfiling its spot as a desirable capstone item for enchanters at this tuning Lee Sin/Qiyana Nerfs - Lee and Qiyana have been 2 of the strongest junglers, especially in higher levels of play and especially in certain regions - We're nerfing here, but also (especially in Qiyana's case) being mindful of not double nerfing too hard with the Bastionbreaker nerfs also in the patch Yasuo/Yone - Yasuo and Yone have been picking up Shieldbow first a lot more and it's been looking pretty strong on them - Overall, we're pretty supportive of this as feeling like their passive can kick in early feels great for their fantasy - Secondly, having access to early lifesteal in lane, (eg. with vamp scepter for bork) makes their lane play lower quality - Finally, it's good to open up structural weaknesses for them before they complete first item, but allow them to be quite strong when they get there (and have power in durability vs straight up "kill you power") Taric/TF QoL - Taric is getting back the ability to have Q and R apply to untargetable allies - TF ult now reveals untargeable units (eg. Yuumi W, Master Yi Q, Hexgate, etc.) Overall Approach - This patch, we're trying to strike a good balance between preserving strengths of champions, while redistributing power budget for champions into places that might be more appreciable power for them - In some of these cases (like with Locke), trying to make things that are meant to be more costly (eg. mana costs) appropriately costly - Or otherwise try to expose certain weaknesses for champions in order to allow their strengths to be holistically reasonable More on how we're applying this tomorrow

Patch 26.20 Rundown is out! Comment feedback that I'll take into consideration for the next one. 1. We pulled Fiddlesticks buff because we couldn't find a great change for him and after looking more closely he was in a decent spot 2. Flashbang with white screen noted if watching in a dark room 3. Will try to release it the day before the Patch goes Live; that day is usually very busy for me, but will try my best youtu.be/uqW2P_NkFo4

Caps spacing is too powerful

Patch 26.20 Full Preview! Rocketbelt - We're adjusting rocketbelt to be much more about the go in aspect of it and less power budget in the haste - The haste is adding a lot to the repeatability for mages in particular, but also as a burst oriented item, it means that the item broadly isn't creating the right tradeoffs with other items like Cosmic Drive, etc. that should be purchased for the higher haste values Lillia - Lillia's changes last patch were a good start, but we feel we can go a bit further on the Sleep changes - Overall, we want to do a better job of balancing Lillia between skill levels and Lillia typically struggles at the higher skill brackets, especially after we made her early clears a lot weaker - Average play Lillias often don't get the most out of her Sleep duration, whereas higher skill players are much better at coordinating around it Diana JG - Diana mid is in a mostly fine spot, but Diana Jungle, which plays more like a bruiser and builds a lot more health needs a little more help - Overall, we're not looking to add a ton of power to Diana as she does get a bit statchecky when strong Neeko - Neeko support (and Mid) have been a bit worse for wear - Neeko support has become a lot weaker, especially at the higher levels of play after we made adjustments to her Clone and its interaction with vision - We think Neeko could use a little more power as a result Smolder - Smolder has also been on the weaker side after we made a bunch of adjustments to Black Cleaver and Deathfire Touch several months ago - We're continuing to add more power to him, but into his Crit builds as his Bruiser builds have worse counterplay given his scaling profile Vayne - With the nerfs to experimental Hexplate this patch (for her Top lane), we feel like we can give Vayne a little power in bot lane - She still has builds in Top that don't build Hexplate, but we're more OK with those as she isn't as durable while dishing out a lot of damage Yunara Ashe - We've added an Ashe nerf into the patch as she is one of the dominant pairings on the patch, even with the Hurricane nerf (as a lot of her builds don't build it) - We're also adding a moderate nerf in for Yunara as her level 1 laning is a bit too strong given how well she scales - We expect after this and the Lucian buffs for the bot meta to be in a much better spot Pulled Changes (Varus, Sylas) - We pulled Varus and Sylas from the patch - Varus because we feel like we need larger work on him to make his builds more satisfying and make sense - Sylas, because we don't feel comfortable changing him overall without messing up his role balance, especially given the Protobelt changes in the patch

Patch 26.20 Preview (World's Patch) This is the final World's patch and we've been pretty happy with the meta from playoffs and don't feel like there's much more we can improve it (aside from this patch) without causing excess damage to SoloQ, which is also a high priority for us Systems 1. Rocketbelt continues to be one of the premier items on Pro Play mages that gives them a bit too much durability. We think Rocketbelt is better positioned as a "go in button" and so we're making it better at that use case and worse at the flexible use cases for mages (though it is skill expressive). It mostly results in Mage champions having minimal weaknesses in the highest levels of play while also making them need to be nerfed for regular players (see Orianna's winrate) That said, there are some "go in" Ranged champions that we expect this to be power neutral on (eg. Annie, Neeko) that their player bases still love this item on, it should just take a larger tradeoff on damage repeatability 2. We're further nerfing Experimental Hexplate to allow us to buff up some champions that have been balanced around it (Vayne top). This will also allow us to give Vayne bot a buff 3. Hurricane was a little overbuffed and so we're pulling back the buff ever so slightly (not by a huge amount here). We're also featuring a Yunara nerf in the patch, but we're being careful not to overdo it there in combination Stale Pro Champs - Some champs like Ambessa, Cassio, K'Sante have been stale for a while and our Cassio nerfs recently undershot a bit for Pro Play - However, they've been pretty effective at moving her power budget around in regular play to higher AP builds - As mentioned above, some of the safer scaling hyper carries are a bit too strong, even with the slight Hurricane tapdown we're planning and given Lucian's large nerf in organized play Lucian - Lucian's best pairings (eg. Enchanters like Milio) have received a large nerf as a result of the 26.19 changes and so we're returning some power back to Lucian in generic power - In combination with the Support laning changes from last patch, Lucian's early kill threat has gone down significantly and so we think we can buff him up a bit Vayne - Vayne also received a nerf recently due to her strength in Top lane in both Pro Play and high level SoloQ - We're being very careful about adding more Ranged tops back into the meta as that has been something players have been complaining about, but think that a generic buff + a nerf to Hexplate will make her neutral there (or at least have to go for squishier builds) while buffing Vayne bot back up Sylas - We're making an adjustment to Sylas, to give him a slight buff in Mid, while keeping his Jungle steady overall - Overall, this will be a bit of a reshape to Sylas to make him more powerful in the matchups he's good in, while not having much change in matchups he's already bad in More on other champs tomorrow

I don't want to come off as overly defensive here, but I don't agree it's reasonable for 2.5 item 2/4/5 starting Trist with abilities down jumping into 3 item 8/3/3 Heimer to expect to win. I don't think Heimer is the paragon of gameplay or anything but jumping into basically any carry in that situation without abilities is a death sentence, let alone Heimer that is known for having a lot of damage in turrets. That's his whole thing. That said, I'd be curious to and open to understanding what you'd actually like to be changed about this situation, just to understand the request clearly.

Patch 26.19 Rundown is out! 26.19 is the first of our 2 Worlds patches and I talk about the Lucian adjustments, the Teleport buffs for Top Lane role quest, Nasus nerfs and the impact of the Support HP and HP regen changes. Overall, we feel like we're striking a decent balance of Solo Q satisfaction for all skill brackets vs Pro Play meta excitement and diversity, so we're not looking to change a huge amount. youtu.be/z5wmreB6iA4

Apologies that Patch Rundown is late this week, been super busy but expect it to be done today. It works out a bit because I can also talk about how the changes landed and what we plan to do next Secondly, I know Ekko ult does damage 😂😂 my point in that comment from the other day was that Ekko can't forcefully hit you with ult as part of his combat pattern like many other assassins can, so his full damage combo is both less ult reliant and less likely to just instantly kill you at level 6. Therefore he needs other things to supplement that. Most other assassins become significantly more dangerous at level 6 in terms of top end burst, but ekko doesn't really (and that's awesome because he's unique and is still powerful despite that!) but that does mean he's allowed to have different strengths (Eg. Waveclear) ------------------------------ Previous post for reference: (For champs that are giving up certain things that turn into core weaknesses, they're allowed to have other things that can make them powerful to the point of frustrating in those other aspects (eg. Viktor for laning, because no dashes or demand hard CC, Ekko waveclear because non-damaging Ult, etc.)

Thanks for the thoughts and appreciate calling out the good things that are happening this season! Firstly to respond to the waveclear stuff, since I was super busy the past few days, sorry 😢 I can see the points you're making; I still overall think that Akshan (given that he has decently strong laning already) can and should need to opt into things like Focus/Gathering to clear the wave. The alternative is that Akshan gets to clear the wave and also take combat summs like Bone Plating. That removes a core weakness of being bursted for him, that I don't think is overall good, given his escapability profile (stealth and dash). If he gets caught, he should have a higher chance of dying, especially given that he has so much agency to snowball the game. ------------------------------------------ Re: Gameplay Agree that the gameplay is balanced, but for high skill players might be a bit stale. That said, satisfaction and enjoyment for the vast majority of players seems very high given how popular the game is right now. So we're being careful about how much we change, because we feel (and have heard feedback) that gameplay is in a good state right now overall and the types of changes we could make through to the end of the year aren't the types of changes that would actually resolve the staleness adequately (mostly balance changes) ------------------------------------------ Re: Ranked Stuff Agree that the state of Apex in EU needs improvement and we're thinking about how we can deliver durable improvements here for next season. We don't really want to mess with things as they are right now as it risks further instability. 1. EUW for example has the same number of Challenger and Grandmaster slots as many smaller regions and that exacerbates things like the amount of LP we're seeing for the higher players 2. We acknowledge that the state of Aegis currently doesn't create great incentives and overly advantages certain role combinations. While we wanted to reward being able to play flexibly and be proficient in playing multiple roles, it's clear that changes are needed 3. I think there is a reasonable debate on having negative LP gains at the top of the ladder. On one hand, you're saying you like it. On the other hand, many players point at negative LP gains at the top of the ladder as being unfair and the ladder being degraded 4. Agree on the length of the ladder being demoralizing; we're discussing potential approaches here

Happy to have a good faith discussion about it. I don't think I'm going to be able to change your mind on your perspective, but I'll just lay out some of where we're coming from (I considered your points as well but disagree with some): 1. Champ Matchups should make the game play differently: It isn't desirable for champs to play the same way every game, that might mean sometimes you need to make a tradeoff between being able to survive/win lane vs hit breakpoints vs scaling. In the Viktor example, I think it's pretty reasonable that Viktor has strong laning as a tradeoff for lack of on-demand hard CC and difficulty in moving around the map compared to other similar mages If Akshan just "had everything" (waveclear, roaming, gap closes/escapes, gank survival+followup, good sidelaning, etc.) then he just has no weaknesses. I don't think that's a reasonable set of strengths and weaknesses (at least for soloq); in organized play, there's a lot of differences 2. Just because a champion is difficult doesn't mean if you master them you should always be able to go even against other champs: I get that the mages are easy compared to say Yasuo or Akshan, but that is also by Design. They test different skills and not every champ is meant to be equally difficult in order to serve the millions of people who play League in addition to having as best a balance as we can for high MMR as y'all are much more sensitive to that I do still think at the top levels that the high agency champions still on average perform better. Top 10 or even top 50 in regions has relatively low representation of vegan mages players (eg. Viktor/Ori) for example Champs need to have good and bad matchups for the game to be fun and strategically interesting in the long term. Some games you're more reliant on your team to play the game and we think that's a good thing, not a bad thing; you can't be the main character every game, even though we understand that's really fun 3. Champions should be holistically balanced: Champs don't need to have equal quantities of everything; some champs should have more waveclear, some should have better roaming, some have hard cc, etc. For champs that are giving up certain things that turn into core weaknesses, they're allowed to have other things that can make them powerful to the point of frustrating in those other aspects (eg. Viktor for laning, because no dashes or demand hard CC, Ekko waveclear because non-damaging Ult, etc.) For Qiyana, it's probably more likely that we tap her down in the future however; she's certainly strong and falls more into the "non-clear weaknesses" camp

Saw an interesting thread about Lord Dominick's today reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends… 1. Agree that Assassins building this reliably is off; champs like Rengar come to mind here, but champs that are building Crit (like Viego) seem more reasonable (you wouldn't expect them to pivot into a non-crit item for late game armor penetration) The subtle change that was made to it in 26.1 was that compared to previous versions of Lord Dominick's, it now only cares about the target's bonus health (rather than max health), rather than checking how much health delta there is between you and the target. This was meant to make it more satisfying to purchase broadly, expand the user pool to some melees and make the user not have to worry about buying HP reducing their damage output (which is a weird thing to have to worry about) 2. In 26.1, we buffed Lord Dominick's by a lot as it was a strongly community requested change. At the time, ADC's were pretty weak, but the combination of Role Quests, Lord Dominick's changes and buffing Critical Strike Damage up from 175% damage to 200% has made ADC's extremely powerful; arguably too powerful in many brackets of play and region. 3. Adding another multiplier back to the ADC class means they have Attack Damage, Attack Speed, Armor Penetration, Lord Dominick's Multiplier and Crit. This makes their late game DPS unrivaled compared to previous seasons 4. Mortal Reminder generally feels pretty weak compared to LDR, it's hard to feel satisfied when purchasing it compared to LDR, because you're losing so much damage from not having Giant Slayer Anyway, curious to see what you all think about these changes and whether they were good for the game and what adjustments we should make to the ecosystem

The war on boosters, cheaters, hitchhikers and derankers is and will continue to be one of the major focuses for League. Anti-Cheat team and League have been doing a ton of work on that front to make League of Legends games more enjoyable for you all. We know we have a lot more to go with improving Ranked integrity, ladder stability, etc. and it's part of our ongoing desire to make League the best competitive multiplayer game on the planet.

Patch 26.19 Full Preview! Top Role Quest Teleport - In last week's Patch Rundown, I talked a bit about how role strength varies significantly in various regions - For example, Top Lane is extremely popular and powerful in lower skill brackets all the way through to medium skill (around Emerald), but starts to drop off in popularity after that - In the Eastern regions, it's relatively stable, even at higher skill brackets, contesting for the 3rd most popular position in some regions at high skill, however, in many of the Western regions, it is often near or close to the bottom at those higher skill brackets - Separating how fun the role to play from how powerful it is, it's pretty clear that players in those regions either think the role is not fun to play, not powerful or both - At present, both statistically, and feels wise, we think Top Lane is underpowered at those higher skill brackets (but not the lower or medium skill brackets) - Part of this is how at higher skill brackets, the power that Top loses appears to be gained by ADC's who are better at positioning, farming and don't get caught out as much, whereas a lower skill Garen for example can often walk up to an ADC and kill them (this still happens at higher skill, but not as often) - Our approach is to buff up the Top Lane teleport as that is better used by higher skill Top Laners and helps to reinforce the side lane raidboss split push identity that many Top laners have Support Tuning - We're moving some of the power of base health in the Support items into Health Regeneration to better benefit Melee Supports who are often on the receiving end of Ranged support poke and also makes Ranged Supports easier to kill - While this is a relatively small swing, we expect it to be subtly impactful at all levels of play Lucian - There was a lot of discussion about Lucian when the notes were revealed yesterday - Our current approach is to make Lucian's reliance on specific supports much less tightly bound - Lucian Mid and Top are also at extremely low power levels (high 30's/low 40's) which would be considered borderline griefing if picked - So we're trying to make the lives of Solo Q Lucian pairings more pleasant, while also trying to keep the list power neutral overall for Bot Lucian - This change is better framed as an adjustment, rather than the nerf that was listed yesterday Master Yi Q CD - For a long time (even after we removed Duskblade, which caused us to put this functionality in in the first place), Master Yi's Q Cooldown has scaled negatively with ability haste - Now that Duskblade isn't in the game we don't think this functionality is necessary anymore Nasus - Yesterday, I mentioned out philosophy for how we are going to balance simple champions - This patch, we're giving a flat 10 damage nerf to Nasus' Q so it's a bit harder for him to access his higher stack counts and can be punished more by lane opponents that can keep him down - We like his higher highs, but those need to be comboed with lower lows Ryze/Ori - We've pulled Orianna from the patch due to concerns about nerfing an already weak champion for regular Ranked play - For Ryze, we're looking at a roughly power neutral adjustment by nerfing his pushing power in the early lane and attempting a power neutral compensation to his durability - Ryze is often already one rotationing champs later in the game with Actualizer and so we're being cautious about compensating with damage output back

Context on Lucian Mid is that he's currently considered very weak in basically all skill brackets. (Anywhere between high 30s to low 40s in various skill brackets, with Gluttonous Greaves having selection bias for games where he's already dominating) For people who enjoy playing him there, role quests have been a relative nerf to him and the Vigilance passive for bot is doing a lot to make him viable there. There's an open thread to discuss either nerfing vigilance passive further to reduce his reliance on specific supports or removing it altogether but that still needs to be investigated. Removing Vigilance passive wholesale is possible to run into Lucian top as well, which wouldn't be ideal due to more frustrations with ranged tops (though when he had that era he was usually running BPRK or Galeforce). Some amount of ranged tops is healthy for the game overall, but too much there probably tips it over.

Patch 26.19 Preview! This is the first of our 2 Worlds patches, with Worlds happening on 26.20! Support HP Regen - After Support roaming was nerfed in 26.16, pre grub spawn Support roaming is all the way back down again, especially in Pro Play which is what we were after - That said, Enchanters and Ranged supports are now dominating the meta again - So we're making some targeted adjustments to melee supports so that they are able to engage and withstand some poke, rather than get poked out and not be able to engage again - Overall, this isn't going to be a giant swing, but hopefully enough of a nudge up for Melee Supports that players think about dynamics of the lane a bit differently Top Role Quest - For quite a while now, in some regions, especially at higher skilled play, Top has been a decent amount weaker than Bot (who are the natural counterparts) - That said, Top in regular play is both very popular and very powerful, and we're not looking to change the dynamic very much (and also why we're not nerfing bot lane overall) - So we're giving a targeted adjustment to the more skill skewed aspect of Top lane, through the Teleport and upgraded Teleports from the Role Quest, which are typically used more effective in skilled play (where Top needs the help) - That should allow Top to exert its influence on the map more reliably, especially in split push scenarios Ranged Top Laners - We hear a lot of the complaints about Ranged Top laners and agree that when these champs get too powerful it leads to pretty degraded "low gameplay states". That said we do think it's reasonable for Ranged Top laners to be a thing you can play there viably, it just needs to be at the appropriate power level with the appropriate power curves - We don't feel comfortable taking a large swing here, especially before Worlds, but just wanted to let y'all know that we're working on some small changes to make it a bit more tolerable for melee champions - This will hopefully allow us to also buff some of the ranged champions that are normally played bot who were nerfed due to their top lane performance (eg. Vayne), but we won't be able to do this until this set of systems changes is released Simple Champions & Nasus - In the post the other day about simple champions, I mentioned that we think it's good to have simple champions be strong at all levels of play. Not all of them, but some - This can often be frustrating, especially when in moment to moment combat, their play patterns are very straightforward and feel lower counterplay if they can meet their success condition - Our philosophy is that if a simple champion is overpowered and causing frustration, then that might be a cause for nerf - However, if a champion is frustrating and simple, but not overpowered, if it doesn't have an unintended design flaw, we're likely to leave it as it is (eg. Viktor) - Viktor is strong in lane, but he's also easy to gank and weak in early skirmishes; we think this is a reasonable strength and weakness profile and also over the last few years we've taken (imo) too much power out of early game trading from many champions, which has caused laning phase to lose texture broadly across the game - Nasus however, has been strong according to this principle, even when accounting for his mastery curve and he has more sharp success conditions now with Q 4 stacks; in lanes where he can stack freely he becomes more of a threat, while in lanes where he's contested, he's easier to keep down - This often means when you run into Nasus in a good matchup, he's often scaled without much holistic counterplay for the team (only his lane opponent) - So while we think this shape of Nasus is broadly correct, it does warrant sitting at a slightly lower resting power level due to these considerations