Wild Rift Patch Notes 2.5

NYEHEHEHE! What’s black and blue and is about to show you the meaning of pain?! Veigar, the tiniest and evillest Yordle, makes his way to the mid lane for some explosive mage experiments, and he’s bringing a lair-load of new features to Wild Rift too!

With Guilds, you and your communities can get a little closer with chat, a shared space in-game, and ways to level up together. Then, harness those bonds in the fires of competition in Guild vs Guild. Check out the matchmaking improvements to keep things fair on the Rift!

Finally, a whole host of balance changes are sure to shake up the meta before next month’s Horizon Cup, and we’re hoping a fresh look at the jungle keeps ganks flowing.

Check out the latest /dev di-- uhh, Patch Preview to get a peek at the weeks ahead.

Note: Patch 2.5 is releasing a little later than its usual cycle. Expect to see the 2.5a balance patch on October 26th or 27th (depending on timezone).

Reminder: content will be released throughout the patch.

NEW

NEW CHAMPIONS

VEIGAR, THE TINY MASTER OF EVIL

An enthusiastic yordle sorcerer, Veigar has embraced powers that few others dare even approach. As a free-spirited inhabitant of Bandle City, he once longed to learn more of the celestial magic practiced by mortals, but his natural curiosity was twisted by imprisonment in the Immortal Bastion. Now a stubborn creature with the dark fury of the stars at his command, Veigar is often underestimated by others—and though he believes himself truly evil, there are some who still question his deeper motivations…

Veigar will be released on October 15 at 08:01 GMT+8.

NEW FEATURES

GUILDS

A long awaited social feature, Guilds are here! Guilds are in-game communities where you can connect to likeminded players, share news, chat and more.

Read more about Guilds here!

CREATING A GUILD

• Guilds are available from account level 9 onwards
• Creating a Guild costs 200 Wild Cores or 400 Poro Coins. We’re adding a small cost here because we want to encourage players to create and join Guilds for the long term
• Use the Guild Finder to search for a Guild based on shared interests, skill level, or language

BEING PART OF A GUILD

• In the Guild Chat… chat to your whole Guild!
• In the Guild Feed, react to posts with emotes
• Post an invite to your Guild to fill premade lobbies
• Moderate Guilds and nominate Officers to help keep the peace

PERSONALIZATION

• As a Guild Leader, select a name, icon, tag, labels, and description to show off what your Guild is all about
• When part of a Guild, you’ll obtain a Guild Plate: your Guild’s name and icon appears in several places in Wild Rift, including your profile banner, lobby, leaderboards, and more

LEVELING AND REWARDS

• Playing with your Guild awards Guild Points, leveling up the entire Guild with more customization options, an increased member cap, and more benefits
• Playing with Guildmates awards the Poro Blessing: a small bonus to Blue Motes and account XP (the more Guildmates you play with, the higher the bonus)

GUILD VS GUILD

The fun doesn’t stop there! Harness those bonds and stoke the fires of competition in a new seasonal matchup series, Guild vs Guild (GvG)!

GVG BASICS

• A weekly competition between two Guilds selected to go head to head
• Earn Supplies for your Guild by completing community missions—some attainable solo, many missions will require you to team up with Guildmates
• The highest Supplies total at the end wins that week of GvG!

WEEKLY MATCHUPS

• Each week, all Guilds are assigned one of two champions in that week’s matchup
• Guilds will take the side of one of Runeterra’s champs to fight for their cause, with unique dialog in-game
• The first GvG season is set in Piltover and Zaun!
• A Guild’s first matchup will be a Battle Exercise against a bot Guild as a practice run

MISSIONS

• Missions are completed cumulatively throughout the week by the entire Guild
• Each mission has multiple milestones; the more milestones completed, the more Supplies the Guild earns
• Completing missions also reward Guild Points to level up your Guild

ARMED AND UNARMED

• At the start of each week, all Guild members will be assigned one of two states: Armed or Unarmed
• The more Armed players in the Guild at the end of the week, the higher your Champion Favor, which multiplies your Supplies total
• Only the Guild with the higher Champion Favor avails of the boost
• To max out your final score, aim to have as many of your Guild Armed as possible
• Unarmed players do not receive Trophy Points from missions, but “bank” their Trophy Points for when they become Armed
• Unarmed players can become Armed by playing with another Armed Guildmate
• Armed players receive bonus rewards for playing with Unarmed players

SABOTAGING

• Late in the week of GvG, the currently-losing team will be offered a chance to Sabotage their opponents
• Sabotaging is a last-ditch effort to reduce your opponents’ final Supplies total
• Only premade groups of five Guildmates can contribute to a Sabotage, which requires winning games as five-person groups in a 24-hour period
• The winning team is then able to defend the Sabotage with their own premade-as-five wins over the following 24 hours

WINNING GVG

• The final Supplies total takes into account the Guild’s completed missions (including individual contributions), Champion Favor (the Guild with the higher Armed rate), and Sabotage totals (reducing opponents’ Supplies)
• The Guild with the highest total Supplies wins that week of GvG!

REWARDS

• By participating, winning, and completing objectives, earn unique rewards exclusive to Guilds
• Trophy Points are awarded to level up seasonal GvG progress
• Earning Supplies and/or winning in Guild vs Guild improves a Guild’s rank on the leaderboards, and upgrades the Guild Plate

MATCHMAKING

To address some key matchmaking issues, several upgrades will roll out over the coming weeks of Patch 2.5:

• A new matchmaking algorithm which causes the system to focus more on MMR (matchmaking rating: a number behind the scenes that determines how well we think you will play in your next game) than rank. This change will make matches much fairer overall, but you may see wider rank discrepancies in game. This will be rolled out gradually throughout Patch 2.5.
• To address the rank discrepancies above, we’ve added a Rank Competence Tag to the loading screen—when a player’s MMR is significantly higher than their rank, you’ll see this in the loading screen to have more confidence you’re being put into the same game as similarly-skilled players.
• We’re introducing a backend system that adjusts the way we create matches in real-time. It’s a bit complex, so bear with us:
  • In patch 2.4 and before, the matchmaker only let players match if their MMR and rank were within a certain distance of each other. That distance started small, and then grew a set amount every second, which happened over a 2 minute period. After that, the allowed Rank and MMR gap had fully expanded, and the system stayed in this “expanded” state for the next 18 minutes for a total of 20 possible searching minutes. At that point the search timed out and needed to be restarted. Note: this meant it was always faster to keep waiting than it was to restart your search within that 20 minutes, because every time you restarted your search, you’d have to re-expand over 2 minutes.
  • In patch 2.5, the matchmaker starts out with the expansion set to be as big or small as needed using real time data on the players in the matchmaking pool. This new system aims to guarantee every player finds a match within a reasonable amount of time, and well within the 20-minute timeout period. We are hoping to get it closer to 3-5 minutes at maximum. Overall, this means you’ll find fairer matches at a faster rate.
• Ranked gains, particularly in high-rank games, should now be more consistent. This change also fixes an issue where players could “catapult” from Master to Challenger by manipulating VP gains.

WILD PASS

The Wild Pass is improved with few features and content!

Read more info on the updated Wild Pass here.

• Upgraded the Wild Pass UI to make it easier to see which rewards you’ll earn next.
• With the free version of the Wild Pass, players will earn a reward at every level up to 50.
• Purchasing a Basic or Elite Pass gives you access to seasonal missions to help power up your progress, and more content beyond level 50. These seasonal missions were previously only accessible to Elite Pass players, so Elite Pass players will now gain the Wild Pass Boost, which grants more XP for each mission and sets you on the fast track to maxing out your rewards.
• Added profile borders as a brand new reward type.
• Earn Hexplorer Tristana for reaching Level 50 on the Premium or Elite Pass.

TWITCH STREAMING

Added a new feature to make it easier to stream directly to Twitch. Use the button in the “Settings > Other” menu to head directly to the Twitch app and start broadcasting with the in-game overlay!

POSITION PREFERENCE

Position preference has been added to unranked PvP games! Before you get into a match, order your preferred positions (solo, jungle, mid, duo, support) from most to least preferred. From there, matchmaking will prioritize one of your top positions most of the time. It’s still possible to get any position, but you’ll have more control over your preferences, even if you don’t get your top choice.

Unranked PvP matches will remain simultaneous blind pick, and will not feature champion bans.

TOURNAMENT DRAFT

In Custom games, you can now select Tournament Draft mode. Tournament Draft features an esports-style draft with a phased champ select, featuring 5 bans per team and alternating champion picks. Community organizers, it’s your time to shine!

LEADERBOARD LOADOUTS

Added the ability to set your loadout based on what the best players in your region build. The top 3 players’ on each champion leaderboard will have their builds populated into the loadout screen in champ select.

END-OF-GAME IMPROVEMENTS

Upgraded the end-of-game flow:

• Improved visuals and streamlined the awards in the EOG screen to give more focus to non-MVP/SVP awards
• Added summoner spells to EOG screen
• MVP plate now shows on EOG lobby screen instead of EOG stats screen
• Improved visuals and information on who “likes” you as a teammate in the EOG lobby

EVENT REMINDERS

In the events screen, use the bell icon to choose which events you’d like to receive reminders for.

SKINS

Releasing October 15 @ 08:01 GMT+8:

• Superb Villain Veigar
• Hexplorer Tristana

Releasing October 20 @ 08:01 GMT+8:

• Eternal Dragon Brand
• Fae Dragon Ashe
• Lagoon Dragon Kai’Sa
• Storm Dragon Aurelion Sol
• Zephyr Dragon Master Yi*

ACCESSORIES

You can earn or purchase accessories from a bunch of different sources. Please check the relevant page in game for more information on how to get ‘em!

Baubles: Third Place; Not Your Best Work; Drink’s On You; Goodbye My Sweet (Strawberry); Goodbye My Sweet (Vanilla); Goodbye My Sweet (Fudge); Goodbye My Sweet (Mint); Shiny Scaled Egg, Remnant of the Dragon

Icons: Protection of the Fae; Courage of the Lagoon; Will of the Eternal; Poise of the Zephyr; Tenacity of the Storm; Troves of the Dragon's Treasure; Malicious but Mini; Drawn to Greatness; Poro-splosion!; Lazy Times and Good Vibes; Jumping For Joy; Target Locked

Emotes: O Hai!; Evil Genius, Unmatched; Heads Up!; No Monkey Business; World Championship Poro; Poro, Comin’ On Up!; I’m Watching You; Flamin’ Taunts; Yes to Success; Focused and Prepared; Away, Worm!; Think, Fam… Think!; Behold, My Grand Finale; Another Day, Another Explosion

Icon Borders: The Dragon’s Eye; Right On Target

Recalls: Path Upon The Clouds; BOOM

Player Emblems: Valor In Arms (Cobalt); Valor In Arms (Plum); Valor In Arms (Malachite); Valor In Arms (Viridian)

Rift Emblems: Rooted Victory; Smouldering Ashes; We Got This (Navy); We Got This (Indigo); We Got This (Bold); We Got This (Scarlet)

Spawn Tags: The Fae; The Eternal; The Storm; The Zephyr; The Lagoon

Profile Borders: Tristana Display Case

All accessories will be released throughout the patch.

EVENTS

VEIGAR’S ARRIVAL

Quake in fear, for the Tiny Master of Evil is here! Complete missions to unlock him for free. *Cue villainous laugh*

The Veigar’s Arrival event begins Oct 15 at 08:01 GMT+8.

WAY OF THE DRAGONMANCERS

The dragons seek a new champion. Which blessing will you earn?

The Way of the Dragonmancers event begins Oct 20 at 08:01 GMT+8.

ARAM CHANGES

SCRYER’S BLOOMS

Scryer’s Blooms now appear on the Howling Abyss to scout enemies and units in the lane bushes!

CANNON MINIONS

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 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.

GAMEPLAY CHANGES

SYSTEMS

ALLY BUFFS

To prevent miscasts, abilities that buff allies can no longer target clones. These include:

• Annie: (3) Molten Shield
• Soraka: (2) Astral Infusion
• Janna: (3) Eye of the Storm
• Lulu: (3) Help, Pix!

GRACEFUL CHARITY

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.

• Bonus passive gold starting time: 5:00 → 4:00
• Bonus gold per second: 1G → 2G

SUMMONER SPELL: FLASH

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.

• Flashing during a ‘skillshot’ dash completely cancels the ability and its effects → Flashing during a ‘skillshot’ dash applies the dash’s damage or effects at the flashed location

ITEMS

TIER 3 ITEMS

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.

• Players can purchase multiple copies of the same Tier 3 item → They cannot do that

ENERGIZED ITEMS

We’re updating the Energized items to better reward players for investing in it by allowing Energized damage to stack.

• Kircheis Shard, Rapid Firecannon, Stormrazor
  • Energized Attack’s bonus magic damage now stacks with other Energized item passives
• Statikk Shiv
  • Energized Attack’s bonus magic damage now stacks with other Energized item passives
  • Clarified that Statikk Shiv’s individual portion of an Energized attack’s bonus magic damage can critically strike

PROTOBELT ENCHANT

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.

• Using Protobelt Enchant during a dash will now queue the effect to occur after the dash finishes

JUNGLE

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.

SMITE

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.

• [NEW] Having Smite equipped grants 20% extra gold from monsters
• Minion Gold/XP penalty: -20% → -25%

JUNGLE MONSTERS

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

• Small/Large monster respawn time: 90s → 105s

BOUNTIES

• Greater Murk Wolf bounty: 100G → 90G
• Ancient Krug bounty: 80G → 60G
• Large Raptor bounty: 70G → 60G
• Small Raptor bounty: 30G → 25G
• Gromp bounty: 140G → 130G
• Rift Herald bounty: 300G → 250G
• Rift Scuttler bounty: 120G → 100G
• Red Brambleback bounty: 140G → 130G
• Evolved Red Brambleback bounty: 220G → 180G
• Blue Sentinel bounty: 140G → 130G
• Evolved Blue Sentinel bounty: 220G → 180G

BARON NASHOR

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.

• Initial spawn time: 10 mins → 13 mins
• Baron-empowered minions bonus damage: 40% → 20%

RIFT HERALD

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.

• [NEW] Rift Herald can now respawn once after 4 minutes
• Rift Herald default despawn time: 9:00 → 12:00
• Rift Herald charge damage to structures: 200% AD + 20% HP → 1500 + summoning champion’s level × 50
• Rift Herald self damage on charge: 100% AD + 10% HP → 70% current HP

COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIAL

• Ping, chat, and emotes now all share the same spamming cooldown
• Increased the activation area for the emote wheel
• Revival effects and Zhonya’s Enchant now have a countdown bar only visible to allies
• The in-game text chat has been slightly widened
• Added the ability for players to share a unique URL to invite friends to join Wild Rift and add them as a friend in game
• Added ability cooldown pings to the main in-game ping/communications panel

CONTROLS

• For melee champions, tapping the attack button has increased sensitivity to choosing enemy champions outside of your melee attack’s range. This change will mean that melee champions will need to rely on the minion button more often to farm in lane. We’ll be keeping an eye on your feedback around this change and will offer a setting if enough players feel like it is hard to adapt, but we expect this tuning to resolve more issues that it creates as it will make it way less likely for a melee champion to randomly attack a passerby minion while chasing down an enemy.
• While the ‘Dash in Move Direction’ setting is on, tap casting a dashing ability without a move stick input now dashes at targets instead of the direction that the player’s champion is facing.
• We’ve done some general tuning to make accidental drags when furiously tapping the attack button less likely to occur.
• We’ve increased the maximum size of an ability button to help players drag-aim on longer range abilities and have a wider range of tuning for drag sensitivity.
• Added touch feedback for store and other areas for Android and iOS.

STORE

• Added a yellow dot for the Store, which will now appear whenever new content is available
• Players are now granted a one-time opportunity to select from 1 of 5 skins after they purchase Wild Cores (of any amount) for the first time after Patch 2.5

EXTRA BITS

• Upgraded the visuals of the social share screens
• Thresh’s model and splash have been updated to more closely match his visuals in Thresh Unbound: A Night at the Inn
• Optimised patches on Android to reduce the size of downloads after updating to a new version
• Updated flow for new players, with specific new-player-related missions
• Made adjustments to the second tutorial, adding Target Lock and info about jungling so new players learn more about Wild Rift earlier in their first few games

FREE-TO-PLAY CHAMPION ROTATION

Oct 14 - Oct 20: Ahri, Draven, Jarvan IV, Renekton, Rengar, Riven, Senna, Sona, Xayah, Yasuo

Oct 21 - Oct 27: Camille, Kha’Zix, Lee Sin, Lucian, Nami, Orianna, Singed, Thresh, Vayne, Ziggs