A hotfix is on the way for patch 6.9

By Andrew Ross | May 7, 2016

Patch 6.9 just came out and Riot has already noticed a few things they want to change. The mid-season update was a massive patch that was headlined by the mage class update, and that’s the area that Riot wants to tweak a bit.

Riot Meddler – the game’s Lead Gameplay Designer – announced on the League of Legends boards a couple of days ago that four of the mages from the latest patch will be getting a hotfix. “We’ve got a balance hotfix that, all going according to plan, should be going out sometime late this week or early next week. It contains small to moderate buffs to Swain, Vlad and Cass and a small to moderate nerf to Malz. Our expectation is that we’ll do additional work on each of those champions in the next patch too (these changes won’t address all their issues). This hotfix isn’t intended to be a massive change, more to take the edge off major balance outliers while we assess the reworked kit’s learning curves, the state of the meta and work on additional changes,” explained Meddler.

He also added: “Oh, also just for clarity’s sake it’s worth mentioning there are a lot of other champions we’re looking at as possible buff or nerf candidates in 6.10. Hotfixes involve some risk though, both on the technical side (less testing/implementation time) and the on the design side (reacting quickly off limited data and analysis). As a result we’re only hotfixing the extremes, even if there are other champions, items etc that will almost certainly receive changes in the next patch.”

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Cassiopeia changes:

-E cooldown to be decreased from 0.90 to 0.75

-E mana cost decreased from 60-80 to 40-80

-E range increased from 550 to 700

Malzahar changes:

-Q mana cost increased from 60 to 80

-W mana cost increased from 60 to 80

-Neutral monster damage reduction changed to 50 percent instead of 75 percent

-R damage decreased from 6/8/10 percent to 5/7/9 percent

Malzahar is crazy powerful on this patch, and a big reason for that is because of his passive. While Riot isn’t doing anything to it in this hotfix, Meddler did note that it would be looked at in the next patch.

Swain changes:

-Q damage increased from 25-85 to 30-110

-R cast time on toggle removed

Vladimir changes:

-Q empowered missing health ration increased from 2.5 percent ability power to 4.0 percent

-E base damage increased from 30-70/60-140 to 30-90/60-180

It’s impressive to see Riot touching on these champions so quickly. The mage update is a big deal, and they want to make sure they get things right.

Many people were curious about Bloodrazor and the champions that use it, and Meddler also gave some insight on that topic. “Bloodrazor’s looking like it might be too weak, lot of champions its the best choice for are struggling. Might also be some champs who’d been nerfed due to how powerful they were in a game with Devourer we can put power back into now, not sure yet,” said Meddler.

It shouldn’t be surprising if the upcoming patch is filled with buffs to former Devourer junglers because many of them went on Riot’s wild ride of getting nerfed, nerfed again, nerfed some more and then also had their core items nerfed. This has left them in a really bad place, and it’s quite a shame since the jungle is very exciting right now.

It isn’t surprising to see Riot doing this much work on a patch that just came out. 6.9 felt like a preseason update and there would obviously be things that needed some tweaking. Patch 6.10 should be filled with follow-up moves to the most recent patch.

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