League of Legends Patch 10.1 breakdown: Welcome to Season 10

Varus

"Q – Piercing Arrow Cooldown: 20/18/16/14/12 seconds -> 18/16/14/1210 seconds Blight Cooldown Refund: 4 seconds -> 3 seconds"

Sniper Varus is back on the menu and ADC Varus will also see improvements on Patch 10.1. Due to the cooldown refund nerf, this basically means that Piercing Arrow’s cooldown is reduced by 1 second at all levels, which is a nice buff for Varus players and should go some way to improving his horrible 46.93% win rate from Patch 9.24.

Vi

"R – Assault and Battery Vi remains unstoppable during knockup animation."

Cool QoL change for Vi. Now she can complete the full crowd control onto her intended target without being interrupted, allowing her to completely lock down an enemy champion for 1.25 seconds while her team bursts them down.

Zyra

"E – Grasping Roots Slow: 30%, no stacking -> 25% stacking up to 2 times, but only once per plant"

Zyra’s in a stable state right now in the support role, sitting comfortably at a 50.85% win rate with a decent play rate on Patch 9.24.

However, it is quite annoying when her E plants auto-attack you a single time and doom you to be hit by skillshots thanks to the 30% slow. Now, a single auto-attack from a Zyra E plant will only slow for 25%, but this can stack if the plant hits you twice. This may not be the most welcome change for Zyra players, but for those playing against her, she just got slightly less obnoxious to deal with.

Runes

Omnistone

"Cooldown: 7-3 seconds (11-7 seconds for ranged) -> 5-3 seconds (9-7 seconds for ranged)"

Omnistone is the cool, new rune on the block and has a tonne of potential for outplays and winning lane match-ups with RNG. Right now, though, it’s basically just a troll keystone taken whenever a player is having fun or can’t decide on which primary rune to take.

Reducing its early cooldown by 2 seconds for all champions is a pretty huge change and could see players start to take the keystone seriously on Patch 10.1 onwards as it offers much more utility than a regular keystone thanks to the fast cycling. That being said, it is still very reliant on RNG and high elo players may still be worried about taking a rune that has the potential to be useless the majority of the time.

Items

Relic Shield Line

"Relic Shield New: 25% Base Health Regeneration Targon’s Buckler New: 50% Base Health Regeneration Bulwark of the Mountain New: 100% Base Health Regeneration Ability Power: 40 -> 25"

Steel Shoulderguards Line

"Steel Shoulderguards New: 25% Base Health Regeneration Runesteel Spaulders New: 50% Base Health Regeneration Pauldrons of Whiterock New: 100% Base Health Regeneration Attack Damage: 24 -> 15"

Spectral Sickle Line

"Spectral Sickle New: 25% Mana Regeneration Harrowing Crescent New: 50% Mana Regeneration Black Mist Scythe New: 100% Mana Regeneration Attack Damage: 35 -> 25 Health: 150 -> 100"

Spellthief’s Edge Line

"Spellthief’s Edge New: 25% Mana Regeneration Frostfang New: 50% Mana Regeneration Shard of True Ice New: 100% Mana Regeneration Health: 150 -> 100 Ability Power: 60 -> 45"

For the first time since their introduction to League of Legends, the new support items are seeing some major changes. The balance team has seemingly decided that players simply weren’t interested in the stats provided by certain support items and to replace them with health or mana regeneration.

Ultimately, support players are pretty rigid when it comes to which support item suits which support champion, so it doesn’t matter what stats are provided with each item. However, adding mana regeneration and health regeneration to the support items should help champions through the laning phase without running out of resources and could lead to a shift in certain supports choices when it comes to items due to the new trade-offs.

This is one to look out for, but we don’t actually know how these changes will impact the bottom lane until Patch 10.1 hits live servers.

Was Patch 10.1 everything you hoped for? What changes do you want to see on Patch 10.2? What do you make of the new Sylas? Let us know in the comments!