League of Legends patch 26.21 is live

What changed and why

Patch 26.21 reached live servers on Wednesday 21 October, with Riot's notes published the evening before. It is the first balance pass since the Worlds patch locked, and Riot's lead gameplay designer Matt "Phroxzon" Leung-Harrison described it in his preview as a patch to steady ranked for the end-of-season climb while loosening the grip on champions that pro play had kept weak. The tournament itself is played on 26.20, so from 23 October the Worlds meta and your solo-queue meta diverge.

The nerfs that matter in solo queue

• Lee Sin: W cooldown 7 → 8 s and R kick damage 175/400/625 → 150/350/550; the Tempest reveal bug on stealthed targets is fixed too.
• Caitlyn: Headshot damage 60–100 % → 60–80 % AD with slower crit scaling, offset by more Q base damage (50–210 → 50–230).
• Jinx: base HP 630 → 610 and AD growth 3.25 → 3 per level.
• Yone: Q AD ratio 110 % → 105 %. Tristana: Q attack speed 60–120 % → 40–120 %.
• Qiyana (Q 80–200 → 70–190), Rammus (W armour 27–47 → 25–45 and the % scaling capped at 50 %), Nidalee (cougar W damage and human E attack speed), Viktor (−5 move speed, smaller Q shield) and Wukong's passive armour per stack (6–10 → 4.5–10).

The buffs

• Mid mages: Azir mana growth 40 → 50, Orianna Q/W ratios 55/80 % → 60/85 %, Ryze Q Flux 10–100 % with faster Q move speed and a 70 % W ratio, Taliyah E 70–250 (+70 % AP), Vel'Koz passive 35–205 (+65 % AP).
• Miss Fortune: E 90–210 and R crit damage 130 % → 145 %. Nunu's R max damage 750/1100/1450. Sion gains HP growth 87 → 95 and up to +200 % R damage over a full channel.
• Darius Q cooldown reaches 4 s at rank 5; Xin Zhao (Q ratio 45 %, better E scaling), Zyra (faster seed recharge) and Wukong's base regen (3.5 → 5.5) also edge up.
• Varus and Locke are reworked in place: Varus moves power into a fully charged Q — the channel bonus rises from up to 50 % to up to 70 % on Q damage, W procs and the cooldown refund, while W's flat on-hit damage drops (4–40 → 4–28); Locke pays more mana on W (50–70 → 60–80) and gets a stronger E blink (40–100, +50 % AP) with a rescaled W store.

Items, replays and the rest

Bastion Breaker's Sabotage now lasts the whole game, paid for with 22 → 18 Lethality and lower Shaped Charge damage; Gluttonous Greaves cost 1,000 → 1,100 gold; Dawncore gives 15 AP per 100 % base mana regen; Hubris starts at 15 bonus AD for melee and 10 for ranged. Replay downloads are capped at 10 per hour from this patch — your own games, friends' games and other players' games remain downloadable — after Riot had delayed its own-games-only restriction from 26.20 to this patch. Elsewhere: Mordekaiser, Yorick, Hecarim and Lucian join League Classic, Arena gets a wide balance sweep, ARAM Mayhem adds headliner rules and a new augment set, and the AMD minimum spec rises because the launcher now needs SSE 4.2.

What it means for your climb

• Nothing changes for ranked itself: no LP, reward or season-end change is in the notes, and our early-January season end stays an estimate.
• Lee Sin, Caitlyn and Jinx mains should expect tougher games; Azir, Orianna and Ryze come back into the mid pool, and Miss Fortune and Varus are worth re-learning for bot lane.
• Boosters on ranked orders this week play on the new numbers from the moment 26.21 deploys in their region; an order built around one champion should be checked against this list.
• Mel's midscope (the W reflect goes) is set for 26.22, so a Mel-focused order now has a few weeks left on the current kit.

What we are watching

Riot's post-patch hotfixes for 26.21, a 26.22 preview from Phroxzon, Worlds Swiss Round 1 on 23 October, and any word on the ranked season end.