Wild Rift Patch Notes 3.3

Shine Bright—it’s patch 3.3! 

We’re channeling the elements and the stars this patch as Elemental Rift is here to permanently stay and transform the Rift in Ranked and Normal PvP modes. The Star Guardians, new and old, are also here to protect us from the forces of evil. New items to enchant your gameplay, three charming mini champion reworks, cooldown reductions to almost every ultimate, and of course your regularly scheduled balance adjustments!

Along with these shiny new updates we also have a new Ranked Season with a few adjustments and a new Glorious skin and goodies for you to earn on your climb! A new Wild Pass is also here, along with the ARAM Progression Track, and Legendary queue. 

We’re going to scurry off for now and swear our oath to the first star, but make sure to check out our latest Patch Preview to see what’s still to come in future patches during our Shining Bright update. We’ll see you back here for 3.3a! 

Reminder: content will be released throughout the patch.

NEW

ARAM PROGRESSION TRACK

You’ll now be able to show off your snowballing skills to all your friends with the ARAM Progression track! Up your snowball score by playing ARAM’s throughout the season and earn new and exclusive seasonal titles once a season concludes, based on your performance throughout. ARAM seasons will follow the same schedule as Ranked Seasons. 

ARAM season and Progression Track will begin July 16 at 00:01 UTC

CONTROLS

This patch we are adding in a new setting so that you can have anything that isn’t aimed or targeted as “On Button Down.” This means that with this setting, abilities that aren’t aimed or targeted will activate a few frames quicker! This is something we implemented a while back for Summoner Spells and Active Items, but are now adding it as a setting for some abilities, let us know how it feels!

ELEMENTAL RIFT

Thank you all for sharing your feedback while we iterated through tweaks, changes, and burned through iterations of Elemental Rift. After a mountain of testing we are ready for it to flood your ranked games. Elemental Rift will bring some massive changes to each game you play, literally reshaping the map after you slay the first dragon.

• Infernal: Burns away brush and collapses walls.
• Mountain: Causes walls and terrain to rise out of the earth.
• Ocean: Brush and Honeyfruit grow as the river floods.

Along with the map changes, we are also introducing an updated dragon slayer system. Slaying a single Elemental Dragon won’t give you much power on its own, but with each additional Dragon your power grows. Increasing its potency, while you collect the additional effects granted by each dragon your team slays. If you choose to invest in slaying all 3 Elemental Dragons you’ll be a formidable opponent before the other team has a chance to make a last ditch effort for the Elder Dragon. 

The Elder Dragon is also flying in with this update and is a late game objective, guaranteed to spawn at 20 minutes replacing the remaining Elemental Dragon if it is still on the map. Slaying this behemoth grants your team the ability to burn their targets to a crisp, attacks apply a burn, and champion damage that reduces your opponents to critical levels will execute them immediately.

DRAGON BUFFS

Elemental Dragons

• Dragon Slayer: The power of your elemental dragon buff increases as you slay more elemental dragons!
• Infernal Dragon: 4/8/12% Attack Damage and Ability Power
• Mountain Dragon: 6+3%/12+6%/18+9% Armor & Magic Resist
• Ocean Dragon: 3/6/9% missing Health Regeneration

Elder Dragon

• Damaging an enemy causes them to burn for 60 true damage per second for 3 seconds.
• Dealing damage with champion abilities, basic attacks, or Elder Dragon’s burn to an enemy below 15% health, instantly execute them.
  • This execute ignores shields, but will not affect targets who are invulnerable or immune to death.

When Elder Dragon is slain it grants its buff to all living members of your team, lasting for 2 minutes or until champion death.

DRAGON SPAWNING

Elemental Dragons

• First dragon spawn: 5 minutes
• Spawning non-repeating random Elemental Dragons
• Dragon respawns every 5 minutes
• First dragon’s death changes the terrain to the corresponding dragon’s element

Elder Dragon

• The Elder Dragon spawns at 20 minutes
  • Elemental Dragons despawn at 19 minutes
  • If an Elemental Dragon would respawn after 19 minutes, it will not spawn, and is instead replaced with Elder Dragon’s spawn at 20 minutes
  • If the Elemental Dragon is in combat it won't despawn until 19:30
  • If no Elemental Dragon was slain then the terrain changes when the elemental dragon despawns
  • Elder Dragon Respawns after 4 minutes

For a more in-depth look on Elemental Rift and how we landed on this version (and some fun facts about these Dragons), check our Elemental Rift Overview!

Elemental Rift will be live in Ranked and Normal PvP game modes July 14 at 00:01 UTC

RANKED UPDATES

Ranked Season 6 is here and brings with it some updates and new rewards for you to earn on your climb. As you embark on your climb this season and defeat wooorthy opponents you’ll be able to earn this season’s ranked skin, Glorious Crimson Fiora!

Along with the new seasons we have a few adjustments to Ranked:

• Ranked marks will now extend all the way to Challenger.
  • Once you reach Diamond, instead of gaining and losing Victory Points (VP) for wins and losses, you’ll now gain a ranked mark per win and lose one per each loss.
    • To progress through each tier of Diamond, you’ll now need to earn six marks per tier.
  • You’ll now need to earn at least 20 marks to fulfill the rank requirements to be promoted to Grandmaster.
  • You’ll now need to earn at least 40 marks to fulfill the rank requirements to be promoted to Challenger.
• To make the entire queue more consistent, Ranked Fortitude and Fortitude Shields will now persist into Diamond up through Challenger.
• Removing placement matches at the beginning of the ranked experience.
• Since we’re implementing a lot of new changes, our usual season reset will roll some ranks back a bit further than the previous season to help smooth the transition into these updated ranks.

Ranked Season 6 will begin July 16 at 00:01 UTC 

LEGENDARY QUEUE

A few weeks after the new ranked season we will introduce a new queue, Legendary queue! This will be an additional queue for you to climb your way through and show off your skill:

• Solo queue only.
• Available for players who achieve Diamond + in our existing Ranked system.
• Will only be available during certain hours of the day.
• Will share the same season cycle with our existing Rank queue
• Six new major ranks, and each rank will have four sub-tiers for you to climb your way through:
  • Warrior IV - I
  • Commander IV - I
  • Guardian IV - I
  • Vanquisher IV - I
  • Immortal IV - I
  • Legend
• If you climb to the top and achieve the prestigious rank of Legend, you’ll also be given a special global ranking on the leaderboard alongside the other players who are able to reach Legend.
• There will be a separate matchmaking rating (MMR) in this queue, so the rank and MMR you have in other queues will have no effect on your experience in this new one.
• Exclusive rewards will also be available for you to earn during your climb in this new queue!

Legendary Queue will begin a few weeks after Ranked Season 6 begins

WILD PASS

Here straight from the cosmos to brighten your gameplay and this Wild Pass is Stargazer Karma. She’ll be your reward for completing this pass, but don’t worry there's plenty of other dazzling new goodies for you to earn along the way. 

The Wild Pass will be available July 14 at 00:01 UTC

EVENTS

STAR GUARDIAN & REDEEMED STAR GUARDIAN

Swear the oath of the first star and embark on a magical journey!

The Star Guardian event begins July 15 at 00:01 UTC

CHAMPION ULTIMATE COOLDOWN ADJUSTMENTS

In addition to the other balance updates we are making adjustments *checks notes* to almost every champion's ultimate cooldown. So, we’re going to steal a page from League PC’s book and also spare our mental and skip writing context for every champion. But we do have some broader context on why we’re making these adjustments. 

  We’ve been listening to a lot of player feedback and seen that some ultimates cooldowns are quite long, and over the course of a game you may not get many opportunities to cast them. While Wild Rift’s game times are close to half of League PC’s, our ultimate cooldowns were only slightly shorter, so we are reducing ultimate cooldowns by a small percentage across the board. We hope this allows players to learn, experiment more, and increase the frequency of high moments for champions, while making sure we maintain meaningful windows of counterplay around ultimate cooldowns.

ULTIMATE DURATION ADJUSTMENTS

While reviewing our systems in combination with the ultimate cooldown changes in this patch, we found that combat-relevant ultimates in Wild Rift have very long durations compared to the duration of engagements. This can potentially lead to very high uptime on ultimates that can be frustrating or confusing when active so frequently, so we have gone through and cut down slightly on very long-duration ultimates.

URF CHANGES

GAMEPLAY CHANGES

ITEMS

NEW ENCHANTMENT: MAGNETRON ENCHANT

The selfless enchants we already have in Wild Rift are good when you want to help out your team as a whole, but not great options for supporting one ally in particular. Magnetron is here to allow for both more aggressive or peeling support choices. You can dive right into the fight to look for an engage with your teammate, or looking to peel for your squishy backline carry, Magnetron is here and packaged into a way to rapidly get to them and help them out whenever you get there.

• Target a nearby ally champion within 5 range to dash to them, then taunt the closest enemy champion within 2 range for 1 second. (90 second cooldown)
  • This effect can only taunt one enemy per activation.
  • This taunt only affects champions.
  • The taunt duration is reduced to .5s if the affected enemy champion has been taunted by the Magnetron Enchant in the last 10 seconds.
• Total cost: 800g

NEW ENCHANTMENT: REPULSOR ENCHANT

Repulsor presents a new enchantment for two purposes: pushing away nearby enemy divers, and splitting up the enemy team. We’re looking to open up some new space both for the selfish defensive uses and also for the more aggressive initiators with this short-range knockback.

• Knock back enemies within 3.5 range to 3.5 range away from the caster. (60 second cooldown)
• Yasuo is not allowed to use his ultimate off of Repulsor.
• Total cost: 500g

NEW ENCHANTMENT: VEIL ENCHANT

As with Magnetron, Veil is another option for helping out a specific ally rather than your entire team. Here we’re adding a spell shield for an ally as a way to either selectively block a specific spell with good timing, or use it early to deter enemies from using spells on your chosen carry.

• Grant a nearby targeted ally a spell shield for 3 seconds that blocks the next enemy ability. (45 second cooldown)
  • Cannot be cast on yourself.
• Total Cost: 500g

BOOTS OF SWIFTNESS → BOOTS OF FUROR

Boots of Swiftness main purpose is to counter slows, which has been long overshadowed by Mercury’s Treads simply offering Tenacity instead to reduce the duration of all crowd control effects. We’re looking to move this item into a different space by opening up the new Boots of Furor to attack-based champions that might be looking for a bit more in-combat speed to kite or chase down their enemies.

• Footwear movement speed :: Reduced from 50 → 40
• [REMOVED] Sleek: Movement speed slows are reduced by 30%
• [NEW] Rage: When you attack a target, you gain 30 movement speed for 2 seconds.
  • Does not stack with the Rage passive from Phage or its various upgrades.

FIMBULWINTER

Fimbulwinter is currently providing too much safety for ranged champions, so we’re pulling back on how much shield power this gives when ranged champions opt into this item.

• Shield ranged modifier: Reduced from 70% → 50%

GARGOYLE ENCHANT

Adding additional health based on a percentage of your current health is a lot of math to do and read, especially when you’re in the middle of trying to win out your games. We’re making the defensive output of this enchant into a shield rather than health gain which should be much more readable at a glance, while making sure it maintains the reduced damage to enemies to ensure that this item is primarily used as a defensive tool.

• [REMOVED] All current functionality
• [NEW] Gain a shield that absorbs 30% of your maximum health that decays over 4 seconds. The shield value increases by 100% if there are three or more nearby enemies. Deal 40% less damage for 3 seconds. (60 second cooldown)

HEXTECH PROTOBELT ENCHANTMENT

Protobelt is a highly flexible enchant that can be used to escape danger or dive right in, and its cost does not properly account for being so powerful both in the offensive and defensive use cases, so we’re adjusting it.

• Cost: 500g → 800g

HULLBREAKER

Hullbreaker is currently being abused by ranged champions in higher levels of play despite this item being designed as an option for fighters. We’re reducing the resistances this item provides to champions and minions when a ranged champion uses it so that Hullbreaker still remains an option for those champions, but not the most optimal pick up.

• Bonus Armor and Magic Resistance gained by the item owner: 10 − 50 (based on level) → 10 − 50 (5-25 if ranged)
• Bonus Armor and Magic Resistance gained by allied minions: 50 − 170 (based on level) → 50 − 170 (25-85 if ranged)

QUICKSILVER ENCHANT

Quicksilver has had trouble competing in the defensive space with other actives like Stasis, so we’re looking to push it into a space as the clear counter to crowd control. Adding both a short duration on the immunity and some additional Tenacity and Slow Resistance afterwards should reduce the sensitive timing required to make good use of this item as well as empower the enchant to be extremely effective against incoming crowd control, not just one specific spell.

• [REMOVED] All current functionality
• [NEW] Grants immunity to crowd control effects for 0.5s.
• [NEW] Grants 30% Tenacity and 30% Slow Resistance for 1.5s.
• [NOTE] This enchant can still be used while under the effects of non-knockup crowd control

SHADOWS ENCHANT - REMOVED

Shadows Enchant hasn’t met the bar for what we’re looking for in our item system. It isn’t purchased as much, despite being competitive in raw power compared to other enchants. We’re removing this for now, but are potentially open to exploring other options in the future for long-range chasing and scouting actives. 

STASIS ENCHANT

Stasis has always been the go-to enchant for defensive purposes, and often for offensive purposes as well. Its broad usability and flexibility are both huge selling points for this golden active, and ultimately it’s simply more powerful than the other boots upgrades, so we’re increasing the cost to make it clear it’s a tier above the other enchantments.

• Total Cost: 800g → 1000g

RUNE CHANGES

KEYSTONE: CONQUEROR

Conqueror has been an overly dominant pick within the rune system for quite some time. To sharpen this keystone and create space for other keystones to shine, we are reworking Conqueror so that it requires more stacks to reach its effect and provide bonus Physical Vamp and Magical Vamp opposed to bonus Adaptive Damage.

• Total Stacks: Increased from 5 → 6
• Maximum attack damage (Adaptive): Increased from 10-30 →12-36
• Maximum magic damage (Adaptive): Increased from 15-45 → 18-54
• [REMOVED] When fully stacked, deal 10% (melee) | 7% (ranged) bonus Adaptive Damage to champions.
• [NEW] While fully stacked, gain 8% (melee) | 5% (ranged) Physical Vamp and Magic Vamp

KEYSTONE: FLEET FOOTWORK

As an oversight to the last set of Fleet Footwork changes, we did not properly address the power of Fleet’s healing against monsters. We’re here to correct that mistake, as we don’t want junglers optimizing around using a keystone to bypass damage dealt by the jungle during their clears.

• Healing mod against minions → Healing mod against minions and monsters
  • 60% for melee, 20% for ranged (same)

KEYSTONE: GRASP OF THE UNDYING

We’ve been looking to open up more keystone options to a wider variety of champions, and Grasp of the Undying is only used by a few tanks and melee champions. With these adjustments we’re hoping to expand who this rune can be viable for, while also keeping it in a similar spot for those who pick it up to be more durable.

• Damage: 3% Maximum health → 3% Maximum health + 20% Attack Damage +10% Ability Power
• Range mod: 50% efficiency → 40% efficiency

KEYSTONE: KRAKEN SLAYER

Kraken Slayer has been less powerful in the later stages of the game than intended. We’re buffing up the base damage later on, and allowing more champions access to the power this keystone offers.

• On-attack effect → On-hit effect
  • This means that skills that apply the effects of attacks, such as Ezreal’s Mystic Shot or Fiora’s Lunge, can now stack and apply Kraken Slayer.
• Base damage: 28-70 → 28-84

DOMINATION: BRUTAL

Brutal is currently the most picked Domination rune due to how reliable and broadly usable it is for a large pool of champions. To promote rune diversity, we are sharpening Brutal to provide Adaptive on-hit damage instead of flat Adaptive Damage.

• [REMOVED] Gain 7 bonus Attack Damage or 14 Ability Power (Adaptive).
• [NEW] Basic attacks deal 7-14 bonus physical/magic damage on-hit against champions (Adaptive).

JUNGLE

SMITE & JUNGLE CAMP ADJUSTMENTS

Junglers typically opted into Brutal in order to improve their clearspeed. Since we’re taking away how optimal it is to pick a rune to just increase your clearspeed. But we don’t want to nerf jungle clears across the board, so we’re buffing up the burn damage junglers get from Smite and reducing early jungle camp health in order to get similar clearspeed to what was seen prior to this patch.

Smite

• Burn damage: 30 per 5s → 50 per 5s

Gromp

• Base health: 2200 → 2000
• Health per level: 80 → 100

Red Brambleback

• Base health: 2700 → 2500
• Health per level: 120 → 140

Blue Sentinel

• Base health: 2700 → 2500
• Health per level: 120 → 140

SYSTEM

TURRET PLATING SYSTEM

We’ve heard your feedback around wanting more focus on the laning phase and ability to play around individual leads, so we’re bringing in Turret Plates to increase the duration of the laning phase and allow for more opportunities to make skillful plays around a lead in a lane.

Early Game Stats Bonus:

• From 0 to 4 min, Mid and Baron Lane Turrets gain 90 Armor and Magic resist → from 0 to 3 min, Mid and Baron Lane Turrets gain 50 Armor and Magic resist
• From 0 to 4 min, Dragon Lane Turret gain 40 Armor and Magic resist for 4 minutes after game start → Removed

Turret Plating:

• All turrets have plating → Only outer turrets have plating
• Turret Plating Duration: Permanent → From 0 to 6:30 min
• Plating number: 3 plating equally distributed per turret → 5 plating equally distributed per turret
• Plating Gold (Local):
  • Outer Turret: 150 per plating → 150 per plating
  • Inner Turret: 125 per plating → 0
  • Inhibit Turret: 150 per plating → 0
• Turret Destruction Gold:
  • Global Gold: 75 (Unchanged)
  • Local Gold:
    • Outer Turret: 175 → 200
    • Inner Turret: 150 → 350
    • Inhibitor Turret: 175 → 200
• Plating Defense:
  • The outer turrets gain bonus armor/magic resist based on health status. When the health is no more than 100/80/60/40/20%, respectively the turret will gain 40/80/160/240 Armor/Magic resist

Early Game Siege Protection:

• Turrets gain additional bonuses for multiple enemy champions near it within 3 minutes of game start → within 6:30 minutes of game start
  • 2 champions: 10 Armor and Magic resist → 10 Armor and Magic resist
  • 3 champions: 250 Armor and Magic resist → 50 Armor and Magic resist
  • 4 champions: 300 Armor and Magic resist → 150 Armor and Magic resist
  • 5 champions: 350 Armor and Magic resist → 250 Armor and Magic resist

TRINKET AND WARDS

Since the updates to the trinket system, players have learned to take advantage of swapping between trinkets to gain extra value, particularly from the new control ward trinket. We’re removing this swapping optimization in order to make the choice between which trinket you take a more intentional choice, rather than allowing swapping to be a way to gain extra vision and/or vision denial.

• Using a trinket will cause all different wards placed by the trinkets to despawn
  • Example: using yellow or red despawns pink, using pink or red despawns yellow

ENCHANTMENT SWITCH SYSTEM

Previously, it was possible to swap between different enchantments, but only by selling your entire boots slot and buying a new one. We’re making it possible to simply open the shop and purchase a new enchantment whenever you’d like, but adding some additional rules around the cooldowns to prevent some of the more abusive or jarring situations that could happen by switching between actives. 

While you have a boot enchant, you may purchase another enchant directly from the shop rather than needing to sell your entire boots slot.

• Example: If you have Mercury’s Stoneplate, you can directly swap this for Mercury’s Glory by purchasing the Glorious Enchant in the shop.

• Gold Cost: The cost of “swapping” = (the cost to buy the same new boot and new enchantment) - (the gain of selling your current boots + enchantment)
  • The shop will calculate this value for the player, and display the cost of swapping.
  • Cooldown when Swapping Enchantment
  • After swapping, the new Enchantment will be placed in a cooldown state, where cooldown = 20% of the enchantment’s max cooldown vs. 100% of the enchantment’s current cooldown (if player has used it before and still on cooldown), taking the greater value of the 2

SKINS

Star Guardian Ahri Releasing July 15 @ 00:01 UTC	Star Guardian Miss Fortune Releasing July 15 @ 00:01 UTC
Star Guardian Orianna Releasing July 15 @ 00:01 UTC	Star Guardian Senna Releasing July 15 @ 00:01 UTC
Star Guardian Seraphine Releasing July 15 @ 00:01 UTC	Star Guardian Xayah & Rakan Releasing July 15 @ 00:01 UTC
Redeemed Star Guardian Xayah & Rakan Releasing July 15 @ 00:01 UTC	God Fist Lee Sin Actually releasing in 3.3a

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: Brimming Coffer; Sweet Surrender; Make A Wish; Guardian; Shield Up; Iced 

Icons: Connoisseur Poro; Star Guardian; Saki; Giru; Tocker; Treble & Bass; Kiko; Boki & Baki; Riku; Ninja Dash!; Heroic Landing; Race Ya!

Recalls: Return to the den, regain your strength, live to fight again; Make a wish!; Up, up and away! 

Player Emblems: Collector’s Pennant 

Spawn Tag: Watch me soar! 

Profile Borders: Treasure Box; Redeemed Guardian; Winds of Fate; Fiora’s Honor 

Icon Borders: Treasurer; Wolf Blade; Galactic Guardian; Windchaser

Rift Emblems: Earthly Blessings; Steeled Defense

Emotes: Connoisseur Poro (Tier 1 - Tier 6); Lovestruck; OTP; The Smolder; Smitten; OWO; Guffaw!; Oh Stop; Bored; Patient; Break A Sweat; Topsy Turvy; Prrpared to Pounce; Really, Tho? (Iron - Challenger)

All accessories will be released throughout the patch.

FREE-TO-PLAY CHAMPION ROTATION

Jul 14 - Jul 20: Akali, Amumu, Camille, Miss Fortune, Orianna, Rakan, Senna, Sett, Xayah, Xin Zhao

Jul 21 - Jul 27: Akshan, Braum, Galio, Jayce, Karma, Kah’zix, Lucian, Rengar, Singed, Varus